Darth Vader, Liz Taylor Feted

The nation may be on the brink of war, but priorities are priorities. And so on Sunday night, President Bush took time out from various global crises to honor the voice of Darth Vader.

In addition to Star Wars intoner James Earl Jones, the President also paid homage to screen queen Elizabeth Taylor, singer-songwriter Paul Simon, Broadway vet Chita Rivera and longtime Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine--recipients all of the 2002 Kennedy Center Honors.

The fab five were feted at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C., in a ceremony attended by the ultimate Capitol Hill power couple, President Bush and first lady Laura, and Hollywood luminaries including Sidney Poitier, John Travolta and Steve Martin.

The Kennedy Center Honors is a lifetime achievement award for the best of the best in film, television, theater, dance and other arts. Past recipients include the legendary likes of Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball.

"This year, we've brought together in one room a legend of Broadway [Rivera], the conductor of the Met [Levine], the composer of 'Mrs. Robinson' [Simon], the face of Cleopatra [Taylor] and the voice of Darth Vader [Jones, natch]," Bush said Sunday at a White House reception prior to the Kennedy Center gala. "Each one of you is known to the American people in a way that runs deeper than fame."

Bush ceded that one of the recipient's fame even outstrips that of the leader of the free world.

"People say that the voice of the president is the most easily recognized voice in America," Bush said. "Well, I'm not going to make that claim in the presence of James Earl Jones."

Jones, of course, is more than the voice of Vader. The 71-year-old is also the voice of CNN, as well as a Tony Award winner, an Emmy Award winner and a onetime Oscar nominee, for his 1970 film breakthrough, The Great White Hope.

Taylor, 70, is easily the most world famous of this year's honorees. The two-time Oscar winner, as celebrated for her off-screen traumas as her on-screen dramas, was her typically frail self over the weekend. She also was her typically show-biz trooper self, attending all Kennedy Center-related events with the aid of a wheelchair. Taylor's walking difficulties reportedly stemmed from chronic back trouble, as well as complications from recent dental surgery.

Taylor was honored for her nearly 60 years in film (from 1943's Lassie Come Home to 2001's These Old Broads), and her AIDS activism.

Curiously absent from Taylor's big night: Her curious friend Michael Jackson. Asked if the pop oddity had been invited, Kennedy Center producer George Stevens Jr. cracked to USA Today, "He was busy in a hotel room, on a balcony with a baby."

At Sunday night's ceremony, each recipient was treated to special tribute performances. Simon, 61, who earned his nod after original honoree Paul McCartney bowed out over a scheduling conflict, heard his 1960s Simon & Garfunkel hit "Bridge over Troubled Water" get a jazzed-up treatment from R&B singer Alicia Keyes; two-time Tony winner Rivera, 69, one of the original stars of Broadway's West Side Story, saw a rendition of "America" as pounded out by 80-plus dancers.

The honorees, including Levine, at 59, the baby of the bunch, were presented with their red-white-and-blue ribboned medals in a State Department dinner Saturday night.

Like President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell used the occasion to lighten up, singing snippets of West Side Story for Rivera, and cracking of the ubiquitous, "This is CNN"-spouting Jones, "I can't escape the brother."

Sunday's event at the Kennedy Center will be broadcast December 27 on CBS.