Singer-actress Barbra Streisand, who originally endorsed Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential primary race, has jumped on Barack Obama’s bandwagon with both feet to sing for the newly anointed Democratic nominee at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser next week.  Organizers say the hurriedly planned Sept. 16 event will probably mark Obama’s final stop on the Hollywood political money trail before the November election.

According to political consultant Andy Spahn, a co-host of the fund-raiser, the evening will begin with a dinner for the Illinois senator and about 250 guests at the landmark Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. Dinner will be followed by a reception in Obama’s honor at the main ballroom of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, featuring a performance by Streisand and others. The ballroom holds a crowd of up to 800 people. 

Seats for the dinner and reception together go for a whopping $28,500 per person, but supporters who just want to hear Babs sing for Obama can get in for as little as $2,500 per ticket, Spahn said. At those prices, the two-part event could bring in nearly $9 million, making it the biggest single Democratic fund-raiser for the current election cycle. The money would be divided between Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Other members of the hosting committee include DreamWorks studio co-founders Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. Spahn said the rest of the evening’s entertainment lineup has yet to be confirmed.

Streisand, 66, one of Hollywood’s leading Democratic activists and donors, was a longtime supporter of former President Bill Clinton and backed the presidential primary campaign of his wife until Obama finally clinched the nomination in June. At that point Streisand, an Oscar winner for her 1968 film debut in the musical “Funny Girl,” immediately switched her allegiance to Obama.

Rarely performing in public, Streisand sang at fund-raisers for the last two Democratic presidential nominees — Sen. John Kerry in 2004 and then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000. They both lost to Republican George W. Bush.

Eleven months after her disastrous performance on the MTV Video Music Awards, pop star Britney Spears is back to promote this year’s show, appearing in a series of upcoming promotional ads shot with a real-life, 9,000-pound elephant literally in the room with her.

The 10- to 30-second promos were recorded earlier this week on the Paramount studio lot in Hollywood, site of this year’s show, featuring Spears giving tongue-in-cheek hosting advice to the new emcee, British comedian Russell Brand from the recent film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” An MTV spokeswoman says the mostly ad-libbed spots, in which the elephant poses in the background, will begin airing this coming weekend.

The 25th annual edition of the Video Music Awards, long considered a looser, hipper version of the Grammys, will be broadcast live on MTV on Sept. 7, returning to Los Angeles for the first time in a decade.

Spears, coming off two marriages, two children and two stints in rehab, sought to launch a comeback on last year’s show with a performance of the song “Gimme More.” Instead, she drew a torrent of ridicule for lumbering around on stage in an ill-fitting black bikini as she awkwardly lip-synced her way through the dance number. The incident proved a publicity bomb for Spears but a ratings boon for MTV.

With Spears said to be back in the recording studio this summer working on her next album, and her personal life more or less back in order, the big question is whether she would dare venture a return engagement on the Video Music Awards. Hence, the presence of the 9,000-pound pachyderm in the commercials she filmed this week.

MTV is making the most of the suspense for now, refusing to say whether Spears, 26, might appear as either a presenter or performer on next month’s show. She’s nominated for two awards — best female video and best pop video, both for the song “Piece of Me.”   

Jennifer Garner, who last appeared on screen as an adoptive mother in the teenage-pregnancy comedy “Juno,” is said to be expecting her second real-life baby with husband and onetime co-star Ben Affleck.

There’s no official word from either star’s publicists on recent online gossip about a Garner pregnancy, which has been fueled by recent photos of the actress in loose-fitting tops. But Usmagazine.com reports that her close friend and former “Alias” co-star, Victor Garber, confirmed that Garner is with child. And the magazine quotes an unnamed source as saying, “She is five months pregnant. They are very happy.”

Garner, 36, and Affleck, 35, who battled each other on screen in the 2003 superhero action film “Daredevil,” are parents of a 2-year-old daughter, Violet.  The Hollywood couple announced her first pregnancy and their marriage simultaneously in June 2005. Her pregnancy ultimately was written into the story line of the character she played on the ABC espionage thriller “Alias.”

Garner, who recently appeared on Broadway in a production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” was quoted last fall in the British magazine Marie Claire as saying she looked forward to having a second child. “We definitely wonder what it would be like to have another — hopefully, knock on wood, someday,” she said then. “My job is great to have as a mom. I get to take breaks and then work in a really concentrated way. During that concentrated time, it sucks, but whatever.”

Ladies, get ready to gulp more Cosmopolitans. Enthused by the box office success of the recent “Sex and the City” movie, HBO executives are working with distributor Warner Bros. to lay the groundwork for a big-screen sequel. That word from HBO’s programming president, Michael Lombardo, who told a group of TV critics yesterday that interest in a follow-up film at Warner Bros. is “enormous.” Think Mr. Big.

“They’re trying with our help to put that together now,” he said. “Everybody associated with that project was really heartened by the enthusiasm from fans …  so absolutely — there’s a lot of energy behind thinking about another ‘Sex and the City’ movie.” As for when the film might materialize, he added, “I can’t say.”

Warner Bros. had nothing official to add, though a studio insider said plans for a “Sex” sequel were only in their infancy. The first film is still playing at the multiplex.

Coming to theaters four years after ending their six-season run on HBO, columnist Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) and her gal pals unleashed a frenzy among the show’s female fans, who organized large catherings to catch up with their heroines’ exploits. The movie also proved a marketing bonanza for designer merchandise. Since its May 30 release, the film has grossed nearly $345 million worldwide, easily ranking as one of the biggest chick flicks of all time.

If there were any doubt the Hollywood screenwriters strike would take a toll on television ratings, Nielsen’s late-night data from the first month of the walkout shows what the networks may soon be facing in prime time if the labor dispute lasts much longer. The strike, which began Nov. 5, immediately threw late-night talk program, including NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and the CBS “Late Show with David Letterman,” into immediate reruns. And as cited by the entertainment trade paper Daily Variety, Nielsen’s figures show that audiences are far less willing to stay up late with Jay and Dave for deja vu performances of the same old monologues and top-10 lists.

       Leno, while still No. 1 in late night in November, saw his ratings drop 40 percent among the key young-adult audience (viewers aged 18 to 49), compared with the same month last year. Letterman, his chief rival,  was down 21 percent for the same period among the 18-49 crowd, while Leno’s designated late-night heir, Conan O’Brien, lost 36 percent of his young-adult audience.  Comedy  Central’s two late-night stars, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, likewise were hard hit, falling 29 percent and 33 percent, respectively. ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” declinced 14 percent in young adults, but his overall audience remained flat.

         The Nielsen results have no doubt given chills to network TV programmers, who are scrambling to figure out how to fill their prime-time schedules early next year, when many of their scripted dramas and comedies are expected to run out of fresh episodes unless the writers strike ends soon.  Some of the networks have already unveiled plans to keep the lights on with a larger-than-usual offerings of reality series, game shows, specials and a handful of new and returning series that broadcasters have saved for mid-season.  Reruns will inevitably be a big part of the mix, too, though the networks are trying to stick with repeats of shows that have a proven record of performing fairly well in “encore” broadcasts.     

photo by Reuters