POP/ROCKSpringsteen Reunion: Bruce Springsteen has returned to...

POP/ROCK

Springsteen Reunion: Bruce Springsteen has returned to a New York studio with members of the E Street Band to record two songs that will be included on a greatest hits album that could be released in the spring, a source confirmed Friday. It’s unclear whether he also plans to reunite the band, which backed him through most of the ‘70s and ‘80s, for a new concert tour and future recordings. Springsteen fired the E Street Band in 1991 and put together a new group of musicians for his 1992 tour. Many fans complained that the shows lacked the spirit of the E Street tours.

MOVIES

Oscar Time, by George: There’s a method to the Samuel Goldwyn Co.’s efforts on behalf of “The Madness of King George.” In order to bring star Nigel Hawthorne to America to support its bid for a best film Academy Award nomination, the studio paid approximately $40,000 to shut down two performances next week of “The Clandestine Marriage,” a London stage production in which Hawthorne stars and also directs. Hawthorne will arrive in New York via the Concorde Sunday night and return to his stage role Wednesday evening. Hawthorne’s movie role is based on the story of King George III, as written by British playwright Alan Bennett. It was originally a stage hit in London and New York. But unlike the play, the movie dropped the Roman numeral III from its title. Bennett has explained that producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. didn’t want potential ticket-buyers to think they had missed parts I and II of a King George series.

*

Dancing Dave?: When David Letterman hosts the Oscars in March, “I don’t think he’s going to be doing musical numbers,” “Late Show” executive producer Robert Morton said jokingly. You never know, of course, with Letterman and his “Late Show” writers. “The Oscar people want Dave to be Dave,” Morton said. Letterman’s writers are expected to write material for him for the Oscar telecast. Morton said that he and “Late Show” co-executive producer Peter Lassally will be involved “to some degree” in the show, which is being produced for ABC by producer Gilbert Cates.

STAGE

Directors Named: Luis Alfaro and Diane Rodriguez have been named co-directors of the Mark Taper Forum’s $2.27-million Latino Theatre Initiative. Their selection follows “an extensive search” since Jose Luis Valenzuela resigned from the position last summer, said Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson. Although Alfaro is best known as a performance artist and Rodriguez as a former member of the comedy troupe Latins Anonymous as well as Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino, Davidson said the selection does not indicate a shift in the initiative’s goals toward more performance art. The commitment is to “an inclusive band of art and the mix of Latino cultures,” Davidson said.

ART

Lively Auction: A successful auction of Old Master paintings from the collection of the New York Historical Society--staged to raise funds for the financially strapped institution--brought a total of $12.2 million in sales Thursday at Sotheby’s New York. All but seven of the 183 works offered found buyers in a spirited sale that sometimes sparked competition among 10 bidders for a single item. “It has been a long time since I can remember such extremely broad bidding on so many pictures,” said George Wachter, head of Sotheby’s Old Master paintings department. “The Triumph of Fame” by 15th-Century Italian painter Lo Scheggia, commanded the auction’s top price of $2.2 million, well below its $3 million to $4 million pre-sale estimate. An unidentified London dealer cast the winning bid, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art preempted the deal, exercising an option that allowed New York institutions to match the sale price of works in the auction. The Lo Scheggia, a two-sided, circular painting celebrating the birth of Lorenzo de’ Medici, had been on loan to the Met since 1979.

QUICK TAKES

Ross Perot, who announced his candidacy for President in 1992 on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” tries his hand at subbing for King on Monday’s program. Perot’s guests will include Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and a Democrat to be named later. . . . NBC anchor Tom Brokaw faults CBS, not Connie Chung, for broadcasting Chung’s controversial interview in which House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s mother whispered an unfriendly term she said her son used for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. “I would have gone to Gingrich and said, ‘Here’s the tape of your mother . . . Is that fair?’ And given him a chance to respond to it,” Brokaw tells Dick Cavett on CNBC Sunday night. . . . Top TV host Oprah Winfrey, 40, broke down in tears Wednesday while taping Friday’s show and admitted she had smoked cocaine in her early 20s, the Washington Post reported. Deborah Johns, a spokeswoman for the show, said: “Oprah made a spontaneous admission to mothers battling drug addiction that she had also used drugs.” . . . Actor Paul Newman’s food products company, Newman’s Own Inc., which gives away its profits, handed out another $6 million to various groups, including the Harlem Boys Choir.