News from Comic-Con that has next to nothing to do with comics, though it is comic in the “broadly humorous” sense: Apparently director Walter Hill is at work with Warner Bros. on a remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the sixties Grand Guignol freakout wherein Baby Jane torments her sweet, paralyzed Read More
Trust a defense honcho to quietly conquer a palatial triplex apartment.
Former Bush assistant secretary of defense, James Shinn, and his wife, Masako, an artist, have bought a ninth-to-11th-floor unit at 2 East 70th Street originally listed for $19.5 million last February. But even a coveted address overlooking the Frick on Fifth Avenue couldn’t prevent the price from parachuting Read More
Yesterday evening was Liz Smith‘s socialite-studded Fete de Swifty—a silent-auction-based benefit held in a tent on 73rd street.
Under the tent, wait staff wandered between partygoers with plates of maple bacon. Wax likenesses of Bono and Tina Turner were donated by Madame Tussauds and positioned for Poloroids. There was an ice cream stand, a photo Read More
NOT THE GIRL NEXT DOOR: JOAN CRAWFORD, A PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY
By Charlotte Chandler
Simon & Schuster, 336 pages, $26
It’s easy to feel superior to Joan Crawford. There are her Great Lady affectations, that pissy upper-crust speech reeking of noblesse oblige. “My audience always deserves the best I have to give, Read More
It’s always tough to say farewell to great and cherished folks, but 2006 took an unusually high toll. My heart is heavy when I think of June Allyson, a legendary film star and my close personal buddy, who shared a few tears and a lot of hearty laughs with me through the years. Singing and Read More
When Louis B. Mayer saw Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, he exploded, “How dare this young man, Wilder, bite the hand that feeds him?” (Wilder, who was present, replied, “I am Wilder and go fuck yourself.”) As Joan Crawford in the much-ridiculed Mommie Dearest, Faye Dunaway doesn’t so much bite the hand that feeds her as Read More
“Well, I know y’all are probably on a deadline,” said newspaperwoman Liz Smith on the phone. She was, as she nearly always is, about to rush out the door of her office.
Ms. Smith, now 82, originally of Fort Worth, Tex., has lived in New York City since 1949, but she still retains a Read More
She had this thing about brownies. She liked ‘em chewy. Hated ‘em if they had the texture of cake. Like everything else that crossed her path, Katharine Hepburn wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense from brownies.
Imagine my surprise, then, to find myself on a rainy January afternoon in 1979 sitting on the floor of her old Read More
Re spring cleaning: Aren’t you heartily sick of all that black soot cascading in through your cracked windows and soiling your pristine abode? No, this isn’t fallout from 9/11–I’m talking about that perennial Manhattan grime that turns to mud when you try to Windex it off those newly painted window sills.
You could consider doing Read More
