My Word!

PLAY BILLS In an idea worthy of its protagonist, Max Bialystock, Broadway's ''The Producers'' is trying to thwart scalpers by jacking up its top ticket price to a whopping $480. That far outstrips the current high of $100 charged by ''The Producers'' and some other shows. The idea is to price the best seats out of the reach of scalpers, who buy in blocks, while capitalizing on the demonstrated willingness of individual ticket buyers to pay any amount to get into the show while Nathan Lane is still starring in it. Whether this will start a precedent is unclear; other plays may not be able to demand such prices, and the cost may still not be high enough to deter scalpers. To prevent accusations of being entirely motivated by greed, ''Producers'' producers will donate $150 from each of the $480 tickets to the Twin Towers Fund, at least for a few months....

Meanwhile, Broadway continues to try to lure tourists back to Times Square with a concert of non-Broadway artists performing show tunes, to be televised on Bravo. ''Broadway's Best From Bravo'' will be taped November 12 at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom, though it won't air until March. Performers include Trisha Yearwood, Jill Scott, Mandy Moore, Cyndi Lauper, Lee Ann Womack, John Hiatt, the Bacon Brothers, and Linda Eder.

BIRTH DAY Kelsey Grammer has a new little analysand around the house. He and wife Camille welcomed an 8-pound, 5-ounce girl, named Mason Olivia Grammer, into the world on Wednesday, delivered by an unidentified surrogate mother in Los Angeles. The baby is the first child for the couple, who have been married for four years. The ''Frasier'' star has two other daughters by previous relationships: Spencer, 16, and Greer, 9.

PASSING NOTES Eugene Jackson, an early cast member of the ''Our Gang'' kiddie shorts, died Friday at 84 of a heart attack in his Compton, Calif. home. Dubbed ''Pineapple'' because of his Afro by producer Hal Roach, the 6-year-old Jackson made his screen debut in 1923 in the ''Our Gang'' series (later repackaged for TV as ''The Little Rascals''). Fifty years and dozens of movies later, he was still acting in such groundbreaking African-American TV shows as ''Julia'' and ''Sanford and Son.''