ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

PEOPLE WATCH

Harrison Believed He Was Dying: Former Beatle George Harrison shouted, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna!” in an attempt to disorient his knife-wielding attacker, an English jury was told Tuesday at the start of the accused assailant’s trial. Through a written statement read in court, Harrison said that he thought he was going to die as the man pushed a knife into his chest and he felt blood rising toward his mouth. Harrison’s wife, Olivia, who also was attacked, testified in person of her desperate attempts to stop the man she believed “was succeeding in murdering us.” The accused attacker, Michael Abram, 34, has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity to two counts of attempted murder in connection with the Dec. 30 attack at Harrison’s home near Oxford. George Harrison, 57, suffered a punctured lung in the attack. “I vividly remember a deliberate thrust of the knife toward my chest,” Harrison’s written testimony said. “I felt my chest deflate and the flow of blood toward my mouth. I believed I had been fatally stabbed.”

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Griffith Enters Drug Treatment Program: Actress Melanie Griffith has entered a Los Angeles-area hospital drug-treatment program, her publicist confirmed Tuesday. “My doctor has referred me to the Daniel Freeman Hospital to step down from the prescribed medication that I have been taking for a neck injury,” Griffith, 43, said in a statement. She gave no details of the neck injury, the type of medication or how long she had been using it, and there was no indication how long the hospital treatment would last. Griffith--who previously underwent rehab for drug and alcohol addiction in 1988--recently starred in John Waters’ “Cecil B. Demented” and got an Emmy nomination for HBO’s TV movie “RKO 281.”

THEATER

NAACP Honors: “Jitney” won four Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP Theatre Awards Monday, including writing honors for August Wilson, while Wilson’s “King Hedley II” won three. However, both of the Mark Taper Forum’s Wilson productions were edged by “Forbidden Broadway” in the best produced Equity show category. Wilson accepted a “Trailblazer” award at the Beverly Hills ceremony and dedicated it to the memory of his grandfather and other African Americans who left the South to test “America’s willingness to live up to its creed.” Robert Guillaume received a lifetime achievement award, noting wryly that, “I shall proceed with the assumption that you do me no harm. . . . Growing up black and poor is bound to make anyone suspicious.” In local theater categories, the August Strindberg Society’s “The Father” was named best produced and Kosmond Russell was named best playwright for “The Marriage.”

TV & RADIO

Rediscovered Scripts: Forty-seven boxes of long-lost scripts and other memorabilia from “Your Show of Shows” and other pioneering TV productions have been discovered stashed in a locked closet near the legendary New York office known as “The Writers’ Room,” where Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca and Carl Reiner worked with then-unknown writers including Neil Simon and Mel Brooks to create their classic 1950s comedy sketches. The papers were owned by Max Liebman, a legendary TV producer who died in 1981, and were believed to have been undisturbed in the closet for close to 40 years, according to the New York Times. The cache was found, the Times reported, when a building tenant requested more storage space, forcing a maintenance crew to pry off the closet’s locked door. The documents--which also include scripts from “The Admiral Broadway Revue,” “Max Liebman Presents” and “Stanley”--are being donated to the Library of Congress’ Moving Image section, whose director, Patrick Loughney, called the discovery “near miraculous.”

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Prager’s KIEV Start Delayed: Dennis Prager’s new gig at KIEV-AM (870) has been delayed for a week because of contract issues with his former station, KABC-AM (790). He will now start his 9 a.m.-noon shift on Monday, KIEV says, while Bob Dornan continues in the slot for the rest of this week. Meanwhile, the rest of the station’s daytime schedule has been tweaked as a result of veteran broadcaster George Putnam, 86, signing a new three-year contract and moving into the 3-5 p.m. afternoon drive slot. Michael Medved has moved up to noon-3 p.m., while Larry Marino now airs from 5-7 p.m.

QUICK TAKES

Husband-and-wife actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, who have often collaborated on screen, will receive the Screen Actors Guild’s Life Achievement Award on March 11 for their “acclaimed body of work, their philanthropic encouragement of performing artists and their courage to live their convictions.” . . . New York’s Joseph Papp Public Theater has hired Fran Reiter, a former New York deputy mayor under Rudolph Giuliani, as executive director. Reiter will reportedly handle the theater’s administration and business operations, while producer George C. Wolfe will continue overseeing the organization’s artistic side. . . . The Family Friendly Programming Forum, a coalition of national advertisers uniting to promote wholesome “family” programs, announced that CBS and ABC will participate in its efforts to develop scripts for programs meeting those criteria. The forum has already been working with the WB network, which helped give rise to the new series “Gilmore Girls.” . . . Actor David Carradine reprises his “Kung Fu” character--or his voice, anyway--in “Kung Fu 3D,” a new weekly animated Web series premiering today at https://www.entertaindom.com and https://www.kungfu3D.com.