Anne Hathaway
“This city is in my heart. I played small clubs like the Purple Onion when I was launching my comedy career with my crazy monologues, and I love returning here,” says Joan Rivers, who was visiting San Francisco after swaning on a Mardi Gras float in New Orleans. She was crisscrossing the country on behalf of her two books, Murder at the Academy Awards, and Men Are Stupid … They Like Women With Big Boobs.
“Murder at the Academy Awards is fun and bitchy … a whodunit that’ll tease you into guessing who inspired our characters,” adds Joan, giving co-author Jeralyn Farmer credit. “I don’t know computers, so Jeralyn writes what we discuss, then I clip with scissors and paste with Scotch tape. I rewrite and rewrite.”
She emphasizes that the boob book, written with Valerie Frankel, is dead-on serious. “If I get to heaven, God may not recognize me, but I’ll never be sorry for what I’ve done with plastic surgery. I’m of the school that once you’ve taken the plunge, it’s smart to do just a little extra from time to time. Never do anything that’s drastic, best to make subtle changes. Face it, men age better, the years give a bit of character to their looks. I remind all my friends that it’s imperative to research your doctors.
Mae West
“I’m all for that ‘miracle in a needle’ Botox. Valerie and I cover everything you wanted to know about a boob jobs, boob jags, lifts, reductions, and how to tweak a nipple. Truth is that smaller boobs look better in clothes. We delve into tummy tucks, and how to get your pre-preggers body back.
“Liposuction didn’t work for me. It turned out to be lumpy, bumpy, and horrible. I should have gone to a doctor who does it while you’re standing, which makes sense, once you think about it. We explain how to get the fat out of your body, butt, chin, knee—wherever it lurks.”
Joan says that the jewelry she wears is of her own design. “Absolutely everything, it’s what I sell on QVC. This wristwatch is made in Tokyo, where Giorgio Armani also manufactures his jewelry.”
SHOWTIME
“Sarah Jessica Parker looked like Cinderella waiting for the Prince to return her glass slipper. As this is Hollywood, she had no idea that he was trying it on for himself,” jokes Joan about the 81st Academy Awards, which got a thirteen percent bump in ratings this year, thanks to the innovations from the show’s first-time producers Larry Mark and Bill Condon. Oscar week pumps more than $130 million into the local economy.
Insiders loved the decision for five former Oscar winners to announce the five nominees in the acting categories. But many were disappointed the producers suggested that some stars bypass the Red Carpet, which Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates refused to do, as did Sarah Jessica Parker, wearing Dior Haute Couture by John Galliano, who remarked. “Aren’t we here to show off these gowns?”
Mae West with Cary Grant
Troppo (overdone) is Giorgio Armani’s slap when fashion goes overboard, and “too Dubai” is Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s comment. Count on the Oscar show not to disappoint. Shall we mention fashion victims … Marisa Tomei, Heidi Klum, Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, and Jessica Biel? Swaning fashion stars included Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Anne Hathaway, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep, Evan Rachel Wood, Natalie Portman, Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis.
YANOU THE SMUGGLER
What do friends do for friends? They may become smugglers. PR dynamo Yanou Collart, based in Paris and Monte Carlo, is a longtime pal of Jerry Lewis, who was honored with the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscars. Arriving the night before, Jerry—who’s raised $2 billion for Muscular Dystrophy research—invited Yanou to join him, wife Sam, and daughter Danielle for dinner at Marino, his preferred Italian restaurant in Los Angeles. That’s when Yanou surprised him with her smuggled gift of slices of jambon d’alis from her Paris charcuterie. “We French prefer it to Parma ham,” she says. “This is the tender pink flesh from the leg of the pig.” Additionally, she smuggled Jerry’s favorite Reblochon fromage, along with the Dijon Amora moutarde that he favors. “How did I manage?” shrugs Yanou. “Where else, but in the folds of my Perla lingerie.” She adds that Jerry’s fixated on French food, having often cooked with legendary chef Paul Bocuse and other culinary titans.
OVERNIGHT HIT
Two million viewers tuned into the most watched original HBO movie in five years: Taking Chance. Destined to be a classic, it captures the time and place, as classics do, of a heartbreaking experience from the Iraq war. Credit goes to producer Brad Krevoy, who had attended the funeral of a friend, Second Lieutenant JP Blecksmith, USMC, a fallen Iraqi hero. Brad had offered to accompany Blecksmith back home to California before learning of the military’s policy of escorting their own.
Marisa Tomei
After the funeral, he heard of a “trip report” of just such an escort mission. Lance Corporal Chance Phelps was killed by hostile fire in Al Arbar Province, Iraq, and awarded the Bronze Star for his heroism during the ambush that led to his death. The report, a twenty-page journal, was kept by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, USMA, a Desert Storm veteran with seventeen years of military service; it documented his experience accompanying Chance’s remains from the Dover mortuary to his family in Wyoming. Brad quickly pursued this powerful story of Strobl’s odyssey, with Kevin Bacon being the first choice to portray Strobl.
“Every single service member who died in the war gets treated exactly the same way,” reveals Brad. “Fallen, but not forgotten. The goodness of everyday Americans is so openly displayed in the movie. Lieutenant Colonel Strobl says that this is why he wrote the story.” A masterwork of patriotic ritual and tribute, Taking Chance is slated for Emmy awards.
NO SMOKING
One of the earliest no-smoking advocates, Mae West, asked smokers to leave her lair and light up outdoors. “I’ve never kept ashtrays here,” she told Charlotte Chandler, who’s written a definitive biography of the sexy icon, She Always Knew How: A Personal Biography. “I don’t want to breathe smoke, don’t want it getting into my furniture, and I never liked being touched by a man who smoked. Not smoking keeps your skin soft.”
Mae came out of “interview retirement” for Charlotte, who reveals that Mae was born Mary Jane West in 1893, and made her stage debut when she was five at the Royal Theatre in Brooklyn. “I was aching for the spotlight, and consider that my first love affair.”
Joan Rivers: Men are Stupid
By 1926, Mae was convicted of obscenity after starring in her play, Sex. Sentenced to ten days in jail, where she was treated as a celebrity, she emerged a major star, the highest paid female performer in the world. As the Number One box-office attraction during the 1930s, she rescued Paramount Studios from bankruptcy with her films co-starring Cary Grant and George Raft.
Claiming she owed her decades of good health to eating almonds and having an enema a day, Mae was often invited to do commercials for various products, but refused—until Poland Spring Water came along. “I agreed to several radio promotions, only because for years, I not only drank it, but washed all my vegetables in it, bathed in it, brushed my teeth, washed my hair, and sprayed my breasts with it.”
Mae’s spontaneous one-liners continue to be quoted in print and on the air. Among them: “When a man was courting me, he’d want to put a diamond on my finger, and as soon as he thought he had me, he wanted to put an apron around my waist … When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.” During her nightly curtain calls in the ’40s for her Broadway play Catherine the Great, she told audiences, “Catherine ruled thirty million people and had three thousand lovers. I do the best I can in two hours.”
