AT THE FIRST ANNUAL AMERICAN COMEDY HONORS ON AUG. 23, THE dress code may have been black-tie, but the jokes remained rip-roaringly off-color. Suddenly Susan's Kathy Griffin—decked out in a chocolate-brown Odessa dress—introduced honoree Roseanne as "a star so famous she's only known by one name. Unfortunately, you can't say that name on TV" Frasier's David Hyde Pierce good-naturedly roasted costar Kelsey Grammer as the actor accepted his comedy kudos. "Most people know about your life only by what they read in the tabloids," Hyde Pierce told him, "but the real thing is much scarier."

All kidding aside, the ceremony at the Beverly Hilton hotel paid serious tribute to both legends and newcomers (the broadcast will air Dec. 2 on Fox). "Candice Bergen asked me to present her," said Larry King, who came with fiancée Shawn Southwick. "I was honored by that." But as guests congratulated one another over filet mignon and mashed potatoes, the show's cohost, Jerry Maguire's Jonathan Lipnicki, 6, admitted that his high spirits were the result of one simple reason. "At my age," he said, "it's great to be out after dark."