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Thursday, December 10, 1998 5:16:42 PM EST

• Yoko Ono gives to food bank as art exhibit opens
• Howard Stern helps abandoned dog find a home
• RKO may turn 'Citizen Kane' into a musical
• Springsteen wins injunction in unauthorized collection

Ono

SANTA ROSA, California (CNN) -- Yoko Ono donated 33,000 pounds of food to the Redwood Empire Food Bank in this northern California city as an art show of her late husband's artwork arrived in town. A spokesman for the food bank compared Ono's early Christmas gift to the lyrics in one of John Lennon's songs. "It's like the song, 'Imagine there's no hunger,'" said Michael Flood, whose organization distributes food to 120 charities. The traveling show of Lennon's lithographs is touring the country and will be on exhibit in Santa Rosa from Friday through Sunday.

Stern

VINELAND, New Jersey (CNN) -- Howard Stern is showing signs of having a golden heart as well as an acid tongue. Stern came to the rescue after a listener faxed him a copy of an Internet bulletin urging help for Nala, a Labrador retriever supposedly scheduled for lethal injection at a New Jersey shelter.

The owner of a black Lab himself, Stern put out a plea for Nala on his nationally syndicated radio show Tuesday. Within hours, more than 20 people called the shelter offering to adopt Nala. "This kind of stuff tugs at your heartstrings," the shock jock told his audience.

However, the animal shelter's director, Linda Catalano, said Nala was never scheduled for a date with the needle. The dog was adopted Tuesday but not by a Stern listener, she said.

"Citizen Kane"

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- It sounds like something Andrew Lloyd Webber would do: RKO Pictures is planning to turn "Citizen Kane" into a musical. The studio is working on several deals aimed at turning some of its classic films into musicals -- particularly "Citizen Kane," Orson Welles' 1941 film about a powerful fictitious newspaper publisher.

Remaking classics is risky because of comparisons with the original, but RKO Pictures CEO Ted Hartley said an adaptation of "Citizen Kane" to a different medium shouldn't be termed a remake. "Clearly, 'Citizen Kane' as a Broadway musical is not 'Citizen Kane' as a movie,'" Hartley said. "It's a totally different form so you couldn't call that a remake."

RKO, which was once owned by billionaire recluse Howard Hughes, also plans to turn other titles it owns into musicals, including the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers classics "Swing Time" and "Top Hat." RKO made no films for several years before restarting in the 1980s. It co-produced the soon-to-be-released "Mighty Joe Young," a remake of a 1949 film, with Disney.

Springsteen

LONDON (CNN) -- Bruce Springsteen won a court battle Thursday when a judge blocked the release of an unauthorized collection of songs recorded early in the rock legend's career. Springsteen argued that the release of "Before the Fame" would harm his artistic integrity, saying the songs didn't meet his high standards.

"I came over here to defend the ownership of my music. It's something I fought for since I was young, and I'm really satisfied," he said outside the courtroom.

A London-based record company, Masquerade Music, had claimed a legal right to the songs because it was licensed to use them by Jim Cretecos, a member of Springsteen's former management team. The songs were recorded between 1972 and 1974.

One of rock's most bootlegged artists, Springsteen has defended his songs against music pirates often in the past. "The music you release is the way you shape your career," he said. "The music is yours. You wrote it, you came up with it. You're sitting in your room late at night with your guitar, and it's one of the most personal things in your life to you," he said.

Reuters Limited contributed to this report.