SANS SNOWY WEATHER, GARNER CAN'T SHOOT.

Byline: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

James Garner, who plays a high-profile, shady celebrity attorney in TNT's Oct. 4-debuting ``Legalese,'' expects to team with Julie Andrews in ``Winter Visitor'' before too long.

Actually, he thought he'd be making the CBS TV movie last year. ``But they never got the script right, and then it was past the time to shoot - we needed snow. I expect we'll do it in November.''

And that would suit Garner just fine. He's got nothing else on his schedule at the moment, and he says, ``It would be ideal to do two TV movies and a feature a year. That would keep me busy and still give me time to play around.''

Garner won't be doing his playing on his 400-acre ranch in California's Santa Ynez Valley - as had been his dream. After waiting for completion of an 8,000-square-foot home at the ranch, where he and wife Lois planned to settle down, they put the spread on the market for $9.4 million.

It hasn't sold, but Garner says he'll wait.

He explains, ``My wife has never lived more than 25 miles from L.A., and the idea of moving her out into the country wasn't a bright idea.''

Close call

Ricki Lake is still feeling the aftershocks of a bad scare she got while making the upcoming Disney movie ``Mrs. Murphy.'' ``A horse threw me during rehearsals. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life,'' reveals the actress/talk show host. Something startled the animal, it reared, and ``I'm told I did a back flip off of him, landed on my feet and then did a backward roll on the ground. I really lucked out. I could have been killed,'' Ricki says. She got up announcing ``Lesson's over! Lesson's over!'' - but has no memory of doing so. ``Mentally, I lost it. And, of course, they get you right back on the horse after something like that. Well, I did what I needed to do - with the help of a double. It was fine. I'm a professional. But in every scene I had to do on horseback, my knuckles were white from gripping the reins.''

Disney is already talking about turning ``Mrs. Murphy'' into a big-screen franchise. That's swell with Ricki, who enjoys playing the mystery-solving character created by Rita Mae Brown. Ricki is an animal lover and advocate, and the fact that Mrs. Murphy is assisted in her sleuthing by animal sidekicks was an attraction to the role for her. But if there are more ``Murphy'' movies, Ricki says, they'll be done sans equestrian scenes.

The Hole truth

Courtney Love isn't the first name anyone would associate with the word ``responsibility,'' but the lead hellcat of Hole has some startling things to say about the responsibilities that come with celebrity - a topic she says she's discussed with Madonna. ``Some of what (Madonna) says I think is a load of hogwash, and some of what she says is true. It's like, a 17-year-old comes up to you and tells you that she does drugs because you did drugs. I mean, that's like a heavy, negative social responsibility. How do you atone for that?'' asks Love in the October issue of Spin magazine. She goes on, ``I see pictures of how I looked. It's disgusting. I'm ashamed. There's death, and there's disease, and there's misery, and there's giving up your soul ... The human spirit mixed with certain powders is not the person, it's the demonic presence.''

Black watch 

Clint Black hits the road again this week after wowing Los Angeles audiences with his socko performance Saturday at the Greek Theatre. The country star, who will have covered 110 cities by the time his concert tour is through, will be all over the place in the next few months - from Caesars Tahoe (this weekend) to Anchorage, Alaska (Sept. 28), the Bahamas (Oct. 3) and finally to Caesars Las Vegas (Dec. 10-13). Then, Clint will concentrate on writing for a while.

Stars in the desert

Classic movie names, including Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel, are hightailing it to Las Vegas this weekend, when filmmaking great George Sidney (``Show Boat,'' ``Kiss Me Kate,'' ``Annie Get Your Gun'' ... ) will receive the first Lifetime Achievement Award to be given at the Las Vegas International Film Festival. Beloved broadcaster Gary Owens emcees the Saturday night fete, at which fest winners will also be announced, and it's going to be a night of tension as well as fun for Gary. His son, Christopher Dane Owens, is up for Film of the Year honors with his fledgling cinematic effort ``Border to Border'' - which already won the Grand Jury Award for Best Comedy at the New York Film Festival.

With reports by Stephanie DuBois.

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3 Photos

Photo: (1) James Garner

Ranch on the market

(2) Ricki Lake

Trouble with horses

(3) Clint Black

Have guitar, will travel