Pulitzer Prize

The touring producion of Angels in America, the celebrated two-part work that won a Pulitzer Prize and two Tony Awards for best play, will come to two Philadelphia theaters in November. An unusual production arrangement will put the play by Tony Kushner in the Zellerbach Theatre of the Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut St., from Nov. 7-12 and in the Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., from Nov. 14-19. Angels in America will be part of a 1995-96 season at the Merriam that also includes Chita Rivera's reprising of her Tony Award-winning role in Kiss of the Spider Woman; Hal Holbrook in a revival of Death of a Salesman; and the acclaimed 50th-anniversary revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.

In an early Bill Mauldin cartoon, five soldiers are crowded around a puny fire in the snow. One is holding a Very flare pistol pointed skyward while another reads from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and says, "Corp'l Ginnis an' his Very pistol will now contribute the Star o' Bethlehem. " That was the soldiers' Christmas to Mauldin, interpreter of World War II GIs to themselves - an occasion for hardy sentimentality. Christmastime in wartime meant not comfort, but the lack of it. A later cartoon, published on Christmas Day (and reprinted in Up Front, Mauldin's enduring World War II classic)

Michael Bennett, the director-choreographer whose A Chorus Line became the longest-running show in Broadway history, died yesterday at the age of 44. In his brief time, he represented a new style in Broadway musicals and a different way of creating them. Bennett died in Tucson, Ariz., less than a week after the Broadway opening of a revival of his last hit musical, Dreamgirls. He had been under treatment since December at the Arizona Health Science Center. His lawyer, John Breglio, said the cause of death was "lymphoma as related or caused by AIDS.

Paul Vathis, 77, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who spent the last half-century chronicling presidents, sports figures, and Pennsylvania public officials for the Associated Press, died in his sleep yesterday at his Mechanicsburg home. A Marine Corps veteran who learned his skill aboard a World War II bomber, photographing wreckage that the aircraft left behind, Vathis was best-known for his poignant shot of President John F. Kennedy with former President Dwight D. Eisenhower at Camp David in 1961.

It was as if a rock star were standing a few feet in front of Alex Palmer, not a balding, soft-spoken man in a cardigan and sensible shoes. "I've never actually met a composer," said an excited Palmer, 15, motioning toward Aaron Jay Kernis, the musical celebrity in question. "I got to pick his brain. " For aspiring musicians at Palmer's South Philadelphia public school, the Girard Academic Music Program, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to learn from a legend. Kernis, born in Philadelphia and raised in Olney and Bensalem, is a Pulitzer Prize winner whose works are performed around the world.

Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, The Inquirer's nationally acclaimed team of investigative reporters, are leaving the newspaper after 26 years to work for media giant Time Warner. Barlett and Steele, who have reported on such topics as nuclear waste disposal, federal tax policy, the energy crisis, American foreign aid and housing fraud, said Friday that they will write for various Time Inc. magazines and hope to branch out into television documentaries. "This is a rare, extraordinary opportunity," said Steele.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author Anna Quindlen has withdrawn as the commencement speaker at Villanova University this Sunday because of what she said were objections by a "vocal minority" to her support of abortion rights. Quindlen, who was also to have received an honorary doctorate of humane letters, said in an interview yesterday that she did not want to "ruin the day or cast a shadow" on the graduation ceremony. Antiabortion activists had planned to protest her appearance by walking out of the commencement ceremonies at the start of her address.

President John Kennedy at one point tried to get the New York Times to pull its correspondent David Halberstam out of Vietnam. "I remember thinking, 'That's odd, why would he do that?' It didn't make me feel angry with him," Halberstam says. "I think it was irritation. . . . [Kennedy] wanted Vietnam to be on the back burner. He wanted to run for a second term and beat Goldwater, and then figure out what to do for his second term. He told Arthur Schlesinger, 'I can find out more stuff from his stories than I can from the admirals and generals.

The compulsion to measure, weigh and analyze every nuance of modern life - as if a precise label might somehow enhance understanding - is perhaps what has led critics to categorize poet W. D. Snodgrass' work as "confessional. " But Snodgrass, who will appear at Ursinus College on Wednesday, is far from comfortable with the term commonly used to characterize his work. "I don't like the label at all," Snodgress said during an interview. "It's a kind of journalists' tag. I don't like it especially because it sounds like you're writing about somebody's bedroom memoirs, or about some religious confession.

The Steinway in George Walker's music room is 9 feet long, the studio only a few feet longer. Components for digital recording edge every available wall. When George Walker is playing his piano, there's no room for anyone to listen. This narrow room is a big chunk of Walker's world. Night after night at his home in this placid residential neighborhood, the composer makes records - as both performer and engineer. He tried having his son operate the equipment, Walker says with a smile, but "the room is so small, his presence became intrusive.