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Wednesday, March 17, 1999 2:38:42 PM EST

• City must pay for unlawful 'Tin Drum' seizure
• Elizabeth Taylor reveals childhood abuse
• Larry Hagman stands up for transplant patients' rights
• The people speak: Poll rates 'Saving Private Ryan' best picture

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (CNN) -- Payments totalling $400,000 were approved by the Oklahoma City Council to settle a lawsuit brought against the city over the seizure of the award-winning movie "The Tin Drum."

Police confiscated copies of the movie in 1997 from private residences and video stores, after a state judge said the film contained child pornography.

The $400,000 settlement approved Tuesday will be split between three groups, including the Video Software Dealers Association. District Attorney Bob Macy's office will also pay an additional $175,000.

"The Tin Drum," which won the Academy Award for best foreign film in 1979, centers on Oskar, a boy who chooses to physically remain a child and who expresses frustration and anger by banging on his tin drum and making a high-pitched scream.

A U.S. District judge ruled last year that the film was not child pornography under Oklahoma law. He said police also violated a federal law guarding video renters' privacy, and said authorities did not follow constitutional procedures.

Taylor

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- In a TV interview to air Sunday, Elizabeth Taylor reveals that she was beaten by her father when she was a child film star, but has long since forgiven him.

"I don't talk about it. But when I was a little girl, my father was abusive when he drank and seemed to kind of like to bat me around a bit," Taylor told Barbara Walters in a show to be broadcast Sunday night before the Oscars on ABC. She denied suffering any lasting emotional effects, and added, "I don't blame him at all. I know he was drunk when he did it. I know he didn't mean to do it."

She attributed her father's behavior, in part, to her sudden success as a child. She was signed to a contract with Universal Pictures in 1941 at the age of nine.

The two-time Oscar winner has been largely out of the public eye since having surgery to remove a brain tumor in 1997. Taylor won best actress Academy Awards for "Butterfield 8" in 1960 and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in 1966. The interview is scheduled to air Sunday as part of of Walters' annual Oscar night interview special.

Hagman

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former "Dallas" star Larry Hagman made a personal appeal to Congress to lift Medicare's time limit on covering anti-rejection drugs.

At roughly $11,000 per year, anti-rejection drugs can be prohibitively costly for people who must pay for them out-of-pocket, he said; Medicare currently pays for only three years' worth of the drugs. Hagman, who had a liver transplant in 1995, says the anti-rejection medicines he is still taking are literally keeping him alive.

Rattling a blue plastic pill case, Hagman told a Capitol Hill news conference Tuesday, "I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be anywhere. I'm not kidding."

"Saving Private Ryan"

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- If movie-goers made the vote, the epic World War II film "Saving Private Ryan" would win the Oscar for best picture by a landslide, and John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn would be named the greatest film stars of the century. Those were a few of the results from a Reuters/Zogby poll released Tuesday.

The survey of 1,181 Americans also found Tom Hanks, the star of "Private Ryan," heavily favored to win the Academy Award for best actor. In the best actress category, respondents would give the Oscar to Meryl Streep for playing a dying mother in "One True Thing."

While millions of viewers worldwide will watch the televised awards ceremony Sunday, the awards are based solely on some 5,500 votes cast by members of Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts, and Sciences. Tuesday's poll reflected the opinions of ordinary movie-goers.

For best picture, runner-up "Shakespeare in Love" gathered the support of 10.2 of those polled, far below "Saving Private Ryan's" 36.7 percent support.

In Hollywood, critics have already predicted that "Ryan" will win for best movie, but few people have made clear predictions for the best actor and actress awards. If Hanks and Streep do pick up those awards on Sunday, it will be a third Oscar for each.

Reuters contributed to this report.