Jaws Wide Shut

HITCHING POST Early reports last week of ''Dawson's Creek'' star Kerr Smith's engagement had him getting ready to tie the knot with actress Ali Hillis, his erstwhile girlfriend. Actually, his fiancée is Harmoni Everett, an actress who had a bit part last year in ''Josie and the Pussycats''...

The talent lineup at David Gest's upcoming wedding to Liza Minnelli looks even more impressive than the roster he rounded up for Michael Jackson's 30th anniversary concerts last fall. Michael and Tito Jackson will share best-man duties (Jackie, Marlon, and Randy will have to settle for slots as groomsmen or ushers; Jermaine didn't even make that cut). Minnelli's maids of honor will be Elizabeth Taylor and actress Marisa Berenson. Others in the wedding party include a mix of pop singers young and old (Mya, Chaka Khan, Petula Clark, James Ingram, Freda Payne, and Michael McDonald) and old-time Hollywood royalty (Mia Farrow, Janet Leigh, Robert Wagner, TCM host Robert Osborne, Claudia Cardinale, Gina Lollobrigida, and Esther Williams). Minnelli's march down the aisle will be accompanied by no less than Whitney Houston, singing ''The Greatest Love of All.''

And that's just at the ceremony, at New York's Marble Collegiate Church on March 16. Then there's the reception, at the Regent Hotel near Ground Zero. ''Liza and I felt Wall Street would be the perfect place to hold our reception as we want the world to see that life will continue from Ground Zero,'' he says. ''People must realize that this area is still very much alive.'' He says he's booked at least four dozen performers to sing at the reception, from youngsters like Shaggy, Monica, and Usher to adult-contemporary faves (a reunited Doobie Brothers, Roberta Flack, Dionne Warwick) and classic crooners (Tony Bennett, Robert Goulet, Ed Ames). No word on whether Gest and Minnelli plan to turn their wedding video into a CBS special.

LEGAL BRIEF Sophie Marceau, the French actress best known here for her starring roles in ''The World Is Not Enough'' and ''Braveheart,'' was mugged in a Paris suburb last Tuesday night. Five attackers confronted her as she was parking her Volkswagen Passat in an underground garage in Neuilly-sur-Seine and stole the car. Marceau, who has a 6-year-old child by director Andrzej Zulawski, is four months pregnant. The 35-year-old actress was not injured.

PASSING NOTES Chuck Jones, the legendary animator who created or helped develop such Warner Bros. characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and the Road Runner, died of congestive heart failure at 89 at his home in Corona del Mar, Calif. on Friday. Jones was known for directing sophisticated and nasty six-minute cartoons, more than 300 of them, that starred Bugs and Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, and his own creations: Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Marvin the Martian, Pepe Le Pew (star of ''For Scent-imental Reasons,'' one of three Oscar-winning cartoons Jones directed), and Michigan J. Frog, among others. After Warner Bros. stopped making the shorts in 1962, he turned to other TV projects, including his classic animated version of Dr. Seuss' ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas.'' His Bugs-and-Elmer short ''What's Opera, Doc?'', whose refrain of ''Kill the wabbit!'' introduced untold numbers of kids to the music of Richard Wagner, was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1992. Jones won a lifetime achievement Oscar in 1996. He entered his eighth decade as an animator in 2000, with a series of Web-based shorts starring a new character, Thomas Timber Wolf.