People

By Michele Orecklin

FROM CASTAWAYS TO COLUMNISTS

In the 1980 film The Blue Lagoon, BROOKE SHIELDS and CHRISTOPHER ATKINS were such comely castaways that they managed to make natural childbirth and trapping your own dinner seem enticing. But while Shields' career blossomed, Atkins' seemed marooned (unless you count Beaks: the Movie or Dead Man's Island). Soon, however, he'll reunite with civilization, and Shields, on an upcoming episode of Suddenly Susan. No longer a hunter-gatherer, Atkins plays Tony, a bridge columnist whom Susan meets at a journalism convention and pursues to get even with her ex-boyfriend. Alas, Tony is impervious to her advances. Perhaps she neglected to pack the loincloth.

ABC GOES AFTER E! ON OSCAR NIGHT

For those made anxious by change, this year's Academy Awards may prove deeply disturbing. For the first time, the show will air on Sunday rather than Monday, and in a first of potentially far greater importance, the Academy plans to produce its own pre-show. It's set to air live on ABC in the half hour before the main event, and the Academy has decreed that no other networks can broadcast from the red carpet during this time. Meanwhile GEENA DAVIS, who will host the pre-show, has promised not to ask arrivals about their outfits, which may leave little to talk about. "Maybe she'll ask them about algebra," muses JOAN RIVERS, who has traditionally owned that piece of airtime on the E! channel and will broadcast this year until she's cut off. "She shouldn't ask about fashion," Rivers continues. "She's a lovely girl, but this is a person who wears pirate outfits."

DO NOT RETURN TO SENDER

Everyone knows ELVIS PRESLEY met his future wife Priscilla while stationed in Germany in the late 1950s. News has surfaced that another underage girl captured his attention around that time, only she didn't find out about it until 39 years later. In 1960 Karen Golz, then a 10-year-old German schoolgirl, sent Elvis an effusively admiring letter in which she promised to marry him and informed him of her upcoming birthday. Elvis, touched, penned a return missive: "Dear Karen, may you have a very happy 11th Birthday and a lot of 'Teddy Bears.' Your Friend, Elvis," and gave it to his landlady to mail. Bad move--she never sent it. When she died recently, relatives found it among her belongings and had it delivered to Golz, now a 50-year-old hausfrau. The letter's value is estimated at $6,000, peanuts really, compared with how Priscilla made out.

WHEN BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE BREAK UP

WHO: Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck

WHEN: Just after they finished promoting their film Shakespeare in Love

HOW LONG THEY DATED: About a year--they began at roughly the same time her best friend Winona Ryder started dating his best friend Matt Damon

OFFICIAL REASON FOR SPLIT: Oddly, the stars' publicists declined comment

WHOM EACH MIGHT DATE NEXT: Tabloids link Paltrow to former A Perfect Murder co-star Viggo Mortensen; Affleck could hook up with Alanis Morissette, with whom he co-stars in an upcoming film (she plays God, a figure traditionally hard to resist)

RELATIONSHIP RETROSPECTIVE Was it as good for them as it was for us?