NEWS LITE : CBS NEWS ANCHOR TAKING THE DAY OFF AFTER 23 YEARS OF SATURDAY BROADCASTS.

Dinner? A movie? The Saturday night possibilities are now endless for anchorman Bob Schieffer, who's leaving his spot on the ``CBS Saturday Evening News'' after 23 years.

Schieffer, 59, choked up a bit Saturday night at the end of his last broadcast, which was done from Chicago because he is covering the Democratic National Convention.

``I've come to the time in my life where having Saturdays off is going to be very nice,'' he said.

For the past 20 years, the Washington-based Schieffer has been flying to New York each Saturday. He thanked his wife for never complaining.

The network announced in May that Paula Zahn, formerly a ``CBS This Morning'' anchor, will step into the Saturday evening slot.

Schieffer said he will still be host of ``Face the Nation'' on Sunday mornings, and will continue to cover Congress.

Actress steers talented daughter

As Broadway's ``Annie,'' Andrea McArdle waited for the sun to come up tomorrow. These days, she's more likely waiting for her daughter, 8-year-old actress Alexis.

``I have become a glorified limo driver,'' McArdle told the New York Daily News after her first week as a stage mom.

Alexis, whose father is composer Edd Kalehoff, debuted last week in the long-running hit ``Les Miserables.'' Her mom performed in the same show four years ago.

``After doing this for a week, I have a new appreciation for what my own mother did for me when I was a kid,'' says McArdle, who played ``Annie'' in the original 1977 Broadway production.

``Les Miserables'' executive producer Richard Jay Alexander, who hired Alexis for the role of Cosette, said her first few performances went off without a hitch.

``She seemed very comfortable on stage,'' he said. ``And unlike other Cosettes I've hired, she didn't throw up before her song.''

Trip to the hospital wasn't by the book

The emergency medical technicians who helped William Shatner after a horse riding accident wouldn't make it on his show, ``Rescue 911.''

Shatner, best known as Captain Kirk in the ``Star Trek'' series and movies, talked about his own emergency at Charleston's (W.Va.) fourth Star Trek Convention Saturday.

After a horse rolled over him, Shatner was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, but someone forgot to secure his gurney, he said. It rolled back and forth throughout the trip.

``In every episode of `Rescue 911' I've ever seen, there's someone standing beside the gurney,'' said Shatner, 65.

LSD guru's parting shot, or filmmaker on `head' trip?

LSD guruTimothy Leary has been dead three months, but a new documentary shows him still perfectly capable of blowing people's minds.

The gruesome final scene of Paul Davids' ``Timothy Leary's Dead'' shows surgeons in a hospital room removing Leary's head from his body and placing it in a glass-covered cabinet to be frozen cryonically.

Leary's stepson, Zachary Leary, insists in Newsweek's Sept. 2 issue that the scene is a fake.

``Oh God,'' Zachary Leary said. ``That never happened.''

According to the younger Leary, his stepfather's body was intact when it was cremated following his death from prostate cancer May 31.

Friends have said Leary decided just before he died to have 7 grams of his ashes packed in an aluminum capsule and shot into space during a satellite launch.

A scene during the closing credits of the Davids documentary shows the still-living Leary being fitted for a mask - a possible indication that the ``decapitation'' was done with a cast of Leary's head.

Davids refused to say whether the scene is real or not.

``I'd have to say point-blank that Leary asked me never to discuss it in a way that would absolutely craft it one way or another,'' Davids said.

``It's not intended to be exploitational; it's intended to give people something to talk about.''

Davids' film is scheduled to debut later this year at film festivals in Venice and Toronto.

Beatty diplomatic about new film

Warren Beatty will have no one to blame but himself for the success or failure of his next movie. He's directing, he's writing, he's producing, he's starring just like he did for ``Reds,'' which earned him a best-director Oscar in 1981. The movie, as yet untitled but set to begin filming next month, focuses on ``problems in a politician's life during the last weekend before a primary,'' Beatty says. ``I didn't originally want to direct this, it's too much work. But because I have a lot of misguided preconceptions about how to play politicians, I thought I'd probably be less of a pain to everybody if I went ahead and did it myself.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1) William Shatner: Needed a rescue

(2) Bob Schie ffer: Thanks his wife