Senators take to big screen

Richmond, Va. — Two U.S. senators and one who recently retired have a few seconds of face time as Confederate officers in a Civil War movie that opens next month.

Sen. George Allen, R-Va.; Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.; and former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Tex., are cast in “Gods and Generals.”

The movie is set amid the battles of Fredericksburg and the Wilderness campaign and focuses on Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and Union commanders Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Winfield Scott Hancock. Robert Duvall plays Lee and Jeff Daniels has the Chamberlain role.

The senators are largely unrecognizable in period costume and makeup. Allen wears a fake mustache, said spokeswoman Carrie Cantrell.

“Actually, he’s cast doing something he does well — spitting tobacco,” said Julie Rautio, a former Allen staffer.

‘King’s’ queen to tie knot

Los Angeles — Leah Remini, a star of the CBS sitcom “The King of Queens,” will tie the knot with longtime boyfriend Angelo Pagan, a musician and actor.

Pagan proposed to the 32-year-old actress on Christmas Eve in a Studio City restaurant, said Remini’s publicist, Samantha Hill.

“She was completely taken by surprise,” Hill said Friday. “She was crying and so excited.”

The couple plan to wed this summer.

Pagan had several guest appearances on “The King of Queens,” in which Remini stars as the wife of a deliveryman from the New York City borough.

Tears flow at singers’ wedding

New York — Nick Lachey wasn’t embarrassed about getting emotional during his wedding to pop singer Jessica Simpson.

Lachey, of the boy band 98 Degrees, teared up when a soloist performed a ballad Simpson had written for him, titled “My Love.”

“I’m an overly emotional person,” the 29-year-old says in the spring issue of InStyle Weddings. “I even cry at weddings of people I barely know.”

Simpson, 22, held his hands and smiled as he fought back tears before more than 250 guests in Austin, Tex. The Oct. 26 wedding is featured on the cover of the magazine, on newsstands Tuesday.

Hope gives to service families

Shalimar, Fla. — Bob Hope and his wife, Dolores, have donated $1 million for a welcome center and auditorium at an Air Force Enlisted Foundation’s housing complex named for the comedian.

Groundbreaking is set Monday at Bob Hope Village in this Florida Panhandle town next to Eglin Air Force Base. The housing complex is for widows of Air Force enlisted men.

The 6,000-square-foot building will be named for retired Air Force Col. Bob Gates, 83, of nearby Fort Walton Beach. He flew Hope around the world when the comedian entertained troops during World War II.

In later years Hope held benefit shows to raise money for the foundation.

The Bob Gates Welcome Center-Auditorium will include a stage and seating for 170 people.