PEOPLE WATCH

Money Machines: The Grateful Dead was the highest-grossing U.S. and Canadian concert act of 1993, generating $45.6 million in its 81 shows, the music newsletter Pollstar reported Thursday. It was the second time in three years that Jerry Garcia and his veteran rock group had topped the publication’s annual survey. (U2 was the concert leader in 1992 with $67 million in receipts.) Rod Stewart, with $30.5 million in 68 performances, finished second, followed by Neil Diamond with $29.8 million in 75 dates. The rest of the Top 10 in order: Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Garth Brooks, Jimmy Buffett, Reba McEntire and Kenny G. With an estimated $900 million in total receipts, the concert business was down approximately 10% from 1992, but is expected to rebound in 1994, thanks to planned tours by stadium acts Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones. The Stones’ 1989 “Steel Wheels” tour holds the Pollstar record for a single-year gross: $98 million.

ART

Good Timing: Gherardo delle Notti’s “Adoration of Child,” the first painting restored after being damaged in a May 27 bombing, has been returned to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. While museum director Anna Maria Petrioli Tofani said that it was just a coincidence that the painting was finished before Christmas, the work depicts baby Jesus in a manger and has been reproduced on Christmas cards around the world. The painting was one of 33 damaged by a bombing that killed five people and devastated a wing of the Uffizi. Italian authorities have not yet made any arrests. The Uffizi reopened most of its galleries a month after the bombing and has said it hopes all of the museum will be open for visitors by spring.

MOVIES

Top Entertainers: Film director Steven Spielberg, creator this year of both pop hit “Jurassic Park” and critical favorite “Schindler’s List,” has been named entertainer of the year by Entertainment Weekly magazine. The magazine’s Dec. 31 issue names talk-show host David Letterman second, noting both his high-profile job change leaving NBC for CBS and his success in the ratings battle with “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno. Actress Holly Hunter, a critical triumph in “The Piano,” was in third place, while the film was pegged as movie of the year. Other winners, in order, were: author John Grisham, singer Whitney Houston, actor Tom Hanks, TV star Shannen Doherty, rap star Dr. Dre, radio talk-show host Howard Stern, country music star k.d. lang, comedian Jerry Seinfeld and his producer Larry David, and actress Emma Thompson.

* Festival Roster: The fifth annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, running Jan. 6-16, will open with director Jean-Marie Poire’s comedy “Les Visiteurs” and close with Michael Apted’s new film, “Blink,” starring Madeleine Stowe and Aidan Quinn. Also planned are a Federico Fellini retrospective and presentation of the festival’s lifetime achievement award to Sophia Loren.

TELEVISION

Kid Vid: Disney’s animated film “The Jungle Book” has become the best-selling video outside of North America--taking the top spot from “Beauty and the Beast.” To date, 9 million copies of the film, distributed by Buena Vista Home Video International, have been sold overseas, and the international release isn’t even finished. The video is out in countries including France, Italy, England, Germany and Australia, and will be released in Latin America and Asia in early 1994.

* Toasting With ‘Soap’ Bubbles: Cable’s Comedy Central will toast the new year with “All the ‘Soap’ in the World,” a 46-hour marathon featuring the late-1970s ABC sitcom “Soap.” The marathon, from midnight Dec. 31 to 10 p.m. Jan. 2, will feature all 93 episodes of the half-hour soap opera parody, which centers on the wealthy Tates and the blue-collar Campbells. The series, starring Richard Mulligan, Billy Crystal, Katherine Helmond and Robert Guillaume, was controversial in its day because of its story lines touching upon subjects including homosexuality, exorcism, infidelity and paranoia.

QUICK TAKES

The Laugh Factory, the Sunset Boulevard comedy club that last year served more than 800 free Christmas dinners, once again hosts free holiday meals for struggling or lonely comics and other entertainers beginning today at 2:30 p.m. . . . Operation USA, a Los Angeles-based international relief and development agency, and country music star Clint Black announced $72,500 in grants to six Missouri nonprofit agencies for their flood recovery programs; initial funding for the grants came from a benefit concert performed by Black and Wynonna Judd last August in Des Moines, Iowa. . . . Bob Hope, Steve Allen, Joan Rivers, Vin Scully and Steve Garvey were among celebrities to tape audio holiday greeting cards that will be sold to raise funds to combat degenerative eye disease.