THE HYPE KNIGHT'S MOVES GLADYS, THAT IS, WHO AFFIRMS HER LONG-STANDING LOVE FOR BROADWAY.

All things being equal, Gladys Knight probably wouldn't mind being off the road right about now.

``I just got married,'' says the 57-year-old singer/actress who married her third husband, William McDowell, in April. ``I love cooking and family and being here in Las Vegas. I've been traveling all my life so this is nothing unfamiliar to me, but I'm a homebody, too.''

At the moment, however, domesticity will have to wait. There's wailing to be done.

A Pip-less Knight arrives at the Wilshire Theater tonight for a quick eight-performance run of ``Smokey Joe's Cafe, the Songs of Leiber and Stoller.'' Featuring such songs as ``Hound Dog,'' ``Love Potion No. 9'' and ``Yakety Yak,'' the show ``Smokey Joe's Cafe'' ignited Knight's fire when she saw it on Broadway a few years back.

``Somewhere along the way, I always wanted to do Broadway,'' says Knight. ``And my Heavenly Father grants most of my wishes.''

Knight originally joined the Broadway cast for a weeklong engagement as a means of boosting sales, but she was determined to be a full cast member rather than a guest artist. That week became two weeks, then a month.

And now the tour. This is the third cast Knight has joined.

``They allowed me to pick and choose my songs, and there were some I really wanted to do,'' said Knight, who has five songs in the show. `` 'I (Who Have Nothing)' is the one Leiber and Stoller song that I've recorded before. 'Dance With Me' is another one of my favorites that I grew up with.

``And then there's 'Falling,' a little nothing song, but it reminded me so much of 'Every Beat of My Heart.' And the arrangement they've got, with three guys from the group backing me up, so it's like Gladys Knight and the Pips.''

Knight says she'd also love to return to the Great White Way, possibly in a project of her own developing.

``I am living to do that,'' she said. ``I want to die on Broadway.''

- Evan Henerson

``SMOKEY JOE'S CAFE, THE SONGS OF LEIBER AND STOLLER''

Where: Wilshire Theater, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills.

When: 8 p.m. today through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday; through Sunday.

Tickets: $34.50 to $59.50. Call [phone].

QUOTABLE 

``He is the singer for a great band. These days, he's also a celebrity, which means that he's a bit ... generic. Hell, in order to make him a great mythic rock 'n' roller, it's almost as if you have to make half the story up. So that's what we did. But only half.''

- The intro to Esquire magazine's profile of R.E.M's Michael Stipe by Tom Junod. In the article, Junod describes Stipe eating all of the sugar in a dispenser at an L.A. restaurant, then licking the top clean, taking a five-hour limo trip to see the Hoover Dam and sucking on two pennies and then sticking them on his eyelids. None of these things happened, says Junod, but readers are still left to speculate whether other events are true.

< TRIBUTE

BEFORE MARILYN: Long after the world knew her as Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood star remembered the two years she spent as a child at the Los Angeles Orphan's Home Society.

Her mother gave 9-year-old Norma Jeane Baker over to the foster home, hoping for a better life for her daughter. It was there that she first hoped for a movie career, according to Anna Strasberg, widow of Monroe's acting teacher and mentor, Lee Strasberg.

``Marilyn told Lee that when she was a little girl at Hollygrove (as the facility now is known), she could see the RKO water tower from her dorm window,'' Anna Strasberg said. ``She dreamed that she would one day walk through the gates of the studio as an actor.''

Strasberg, executor of Monroe's estate, gave $100,000 to Hollygrove for its new performing arts program.

On Thursday, the night before what would have been Monroe's 75th birthday, Hollygrove will pay tribute to its most famous resident with a fund-raiser at Morton's Restaurant on Melrose Avenue. Mariel Hemingway will host the event, and jazz singer Diana Krall and the children of the Hollygrove performing arts program will perform. Guests include Al Pacino, Meg Ryan and Sophia Loren. Tickets start at $1,000 each. Information: [phone].

- Valerie Kuklenski

MUSIC BEAT

DENSITY'S CHILD: Prog-rock has had a progressively rockier time since the genre's creative and financial peak in the mid-'70s.

That's changed with the growing acceptance of ambitious and musically dense prog ensembles like Radiohead, Sigur Ros and Air, the Parisian duo whose 1998 debut, ``Moon Safari,'' signaled a new image for a sound that never seemed less cool.

Out today is ``10,000 Hz. Legend,'' the follow-up to Air's soundtrack for ``The Virgin Suicides,'' and the album reaches new heights of prog weirdness. But just because the cover looks like a Yes album, don't expect daylong synth solos, tales of interstellar hobbits and musicians with beards and pork-chop sideburns.

Also in stores today are new albums from Mary Chapin Carpenter, Everything but the Girl, and Goo Goo Dolls.

- Fred Shuster

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Photo:

no caption (Gladys Knight)