PEOPLE

PEOPLE

Dangerfield Home; Recuperation on Track

Rodney Dangerfield was back at home Wednesday after being released from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was recuperating from a minor heart attack on Thanksgiving Day--his 80th birthday.

An angiogram performed Monday revealed good blood flow to the major part of his heart, negating the need for surgery or angioplasty, Dangerfield’s publicist said. Doctors said that the comedian’s health is good and will not compromise his performing.

Dangerfield recently finished filming the comedy “The 4th Tenor,� playing a restaurant owner who learns to sing opera to win the affections of a woman. He is completing his autobiography, “It’s Not Easy Being Me,� for Harper Collins.

Adkins Sentenced on Drunk-Driving Charge

Country singer Trace Adkins was sentenced to two days in a Tennessee jail and won’t be able to drive for a year after pleading guilty to drunk driving. The sentence is the minimum for a DUI conviction in that state.

Adkins, 39, also admitted in court this week that he violated the open-container law and was speeding when a police officer pulled him over last July. The singer’s publicist said Adkins “feels embarrassed and concerned about the incident.�

New Ad Campaign Touts N.Y. Museums

When New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani began promoting nights on the town as almost a patriotic duty after the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the effort, including celebrity-packed TV commercials, went into boosting ailing Broadway shows and restaurants.

But of all the city’s cultural institutions, museums may be the hardest hit. The tourist-dependent Guggenheim recently laid off 80 employees, citing a nearly 60% drop in admissions at its Fifth Avenue museum. And today, at the American Museum of Natural History, which has experienced a 20% decline, political and cultural officials will unveil a $1-million “I Love New York� ad campaign--as well as ticket and gift shop discounts--to encourage attendance at 68 cultural attractions.

Pulitzer Winner Gets Grawemeyer Award

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis has snagged another award--this one from Kentucky’s University of Louisville.

Kernis, a prodigy who taught himself piano at 12 and composition at 13, won the school’s 2002 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his cello concerto “Colored Field.� The prize includes a check for $200,000.

Kernis, 41, was inspired to write the 40-minute piece, which premiered at the Minnesota Orchestra last year, after visiting the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau. The composition is about “translating very complex feelings into another medium of expression,� he said.

The movies “The Manchurian Candidate� and “Network� and the TV series “Happy Days� and “Maude� have been chosen as hall of fame inductees by the Producers Guild of America, to be honored at the group’s annual awards ceremony on March 3.... Fox has ordered full seasons of two new series, “24� and “The Bernie Mac Show.�.... Actress Holly Hunter and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, married six years, have announced their legal separation and said that divorce proceedings have begun.

Elaine Dutka