PERSONALITIES

ActorMartin Sheen, who played activist for the homeless Mitch Snyder in last year's television movie "Samaritan: The Mitch Snyder Story," is back in town to show he is still committed to the cause of the homeless and hungry. Here today to promote his new television movie, "My Dissident Mom," Sheen will meet with Snyder and help serve food to the homeless at the daily meal on the Capitol grounds. Then he will spend the night with Snyder sleeping on a heating grate behind the Library of Congress.

Beating a Path to McMurtry Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington writer Larry McMurtry has a new novel coming out in April that apparently has Hollywood pounding on the door of his agent Irving Lazar with fists full of dollars. New York Daily News columnist Liz Smith is reporting today that the bidding to buy "Texasville" for the movies may reach $1 million.

Lazar confirmed in a phone call yesterday that he has offers that indicate McMurtry may even get more than $1 million for the film rights. "Texasville" is a sequel to his highly successful "The Last Picture Show." That book was made into an Academy Award-nominated movie by Peter Bogdanovich in which "Moonlighting's" Cybill Shepherd made her film debut as "the prettiest girl in town."

Bogdanovich has already expressed interest in directing "Texasville," with Shepherd and another "The Last Picture Show" veteran, Jeff Bridges, in starring roles. McMurtry has dedicated the novel to Shepherd, a longtime friend. He also has said he wrote his Pulitzer Prize-winner "Lonesome Dove" with Shepherd in mind for a film role. Lazar says McMurtry's new novel should be twice as successful as "Lonesome Dove" since it has about half as many pages.

Out and About RoyalWatch: It's official now. Prince Edward has had enough of the Royal Marines and, after four months of training, has resigned from the officers' training program. His macho father Prince Philip is said to be "furious" about the decision. He is a former naval officer and has collected a number of decorations for his uniforms. Uniformed services have always been an important symbol to royal families. Edward's brothers Prince Charles and Prince Andrew have commissions in the Royal Navy. There were reports in London that the 22-year-old Edward, the youngest of Queen Elizabeth's children, was having problems with the Marines' rigorous training program. The palace is denying that, saying he simply decided he didn't want a military career. He reportedly argued to his family, "If I don't resign now, I will be trapped in a career I detest" ...

Media Movements: John Mashek, a U.S. News & World Report correspondent, is leaving the magazine after 22 years to become a Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution as part of the new team that Bill Kovach, former New York Times Washington bureau chief and now editor of the Journal and Constitution, is putting together ... L. Edgar Prina, senior correspondent and former bureau chief of the Copley News Service, has announced he is retiring. He has been a Washington reporter for 38 years and before Copley, worked for the New York Sun and the Washington Evening Star ... New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger has named his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., to the newly created position of assistant publisher. Sulzberger, 35, spent two years in The Times' Washington bureau and two years as a reporter and assignment editor on the metropolitan news staff. He also was a reporter for the Raleigh (N.C.) Times and London correspondent for the Associated Press ...

Footnote to the Redskins' shutout: A few days before the game, sportswriter Mo Siegel met night-talker Larry King and offered him a bet, but not on who would win. Siegel said he would bet King at 7-to-1 odds that the Redskins wouldn't score. King, a man who knows a sure thing when he hears one, took the bet. Yesterday he put a check for $700 in the mail ...

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.