The Liz Smith Column | 04/27/2009 11:00 pm
Liz Smith: Is the American Conservative (Magazine) Dead?
Our Gossip Girl also brings us Manhattan meanderings: Allegra Huston, Norris Mailer, Salman Rushdie, Lauren Bacall and more.
In the pushing and shoving I lost the proposed book’s title, but I know it has the name “Luca” in it.
Not so incidentally, Norris Mailer told me that the proposal to turn the Mailers’ Provincetown house into a center for writers is in peril. The money needed to finance this project and civic and national interest in supporting it seem to have waned in the cratering economy. Unless something drastic happens soon, the house will have to be sold and the Mailer Writing Project for aspiring authors will have to build elsewhere.
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Recently that grand lady Lauren Bacall made a rare visit to the Friars’ Club to join the tribute to Broadway veteran Lee Roy Reams. The Friars’ host, Freddie Roman, reminded the audience that Bacall’s first experience with the club was at a roast for her beloved, Humphrey Bogart, back in 1955.
At the time women were not allowed to cross the threshold of the Friars. (Imagine that!) So Bacall sent an audio tape to congratulate her husband. The tape began, “This is Lauren Bacall, Mrs. Humphrey Bogart. You rat bastards!”
But when the tape finished, Bacall in person popped out on the stage. She had been smuggled in.
The guys went crazy, of course. They promptly forgot why they had barred women in the first place.
While Freddie was telling this incident at the Reams tribute, Bacall started heckling him from the audience. Freddie searched out Bacall and shot back with an affectionate grin, “You rat bastard!”
Lauren Bacall © AP
Not so incidentally, Norris Mailer told me that the proposal to turn the Mailers’ Provincetown house into a center for writers is in peril. The money needed to finance this project and civic and national interest in supporting it seem to have waned in the cratering economy. Unless something drastic happens soon, the house will have to be sold and the Mailer Writing Project for aspiring authors will have to build elsewhere.
——————————
Recently that grand lady Lauren Bacall made a rare visit to the Friars’ Club to join the tribute to Broadway veteran Lee Roy Reams. The Friars’ host, Freddie Roman, reminded the audience that Bacall’s first experience with the club was at a roast for her beloved, Humphrey Bogart, back in 1955.
At the time women were not allowed to cross the threshold of the Friars. (Imagine that!) So Bacall sent an audio tape to congratulate her husband. The tape began, “This is Lauren Bacall, Mrs. Humphrey Bogart. You rat bastards!”
But when the tape finished, Bacall in person popped out on the stage. She had been smuggled in.
The guys went crazy, of course. They promptly forgot why they had barred women in the first place.
While Freddie was telling this incident at the Reams tribute, Bacall started heckling him from the audience. Freddie searched out Bacall and shot back with an affectionate grin, “You rat bastard!”
Lauren Bacall © AP
Read more about: Allegra Huston, Andre Breton, Anita Clark, Anjelica Huston, Books, Brian de Palma, Celebrity, Earl McGrath, Entertainment, Freddie Roman, Friars' Club, Gossip, Humphrey Bogart, Jeremy Irons, Jill St. John, Joan Juliet Buck, John Huston, John Patrick Shanley, John Richardson, Lauren Bacall, Lee Roy Reams, Lillian Ross, Liz Smith, Nell Campbell, News, Norman Mailer, Norris Church Mailer, Pat Buchanan, R.J. Wagner, Roger Waters, Salman Rushdie, Taki Theodoracopulos, The Liz Smith Column, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, William F. Buckley Jr.
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There’s a new fat book out containing Mailer’s letters. Here’s an excerpt from one written in 1952 to Lillian Ross, a New Yorker writer:
Anyway, I’m back from vacation, suntanned, fat and pretty, with a hole in my heel and piles in my bottom. The piles I got from not writing for two weeks, and the hole in my heel by trying sand-skiing on a sand dune, sitting on a plank. So I limp and qvetch and people say, what a poor gimp, so young…[now talking about Hemingway] I know what it is about him I can’t stand. He is always saying in effect I am a man who happens incidentally to be a great writer. I know all of you will be interested in my noble, strong, and beautiful attempts to exercise myself as a great man, and I will be happy when I succeed except for professors, other writers, and assorted cocksuckers.
It took me thirty years, but I finally… finally… sent Lauren Bacall a letter of appreciation a few months ago. How do you tell someone who’s never met you that you get such a kick out of them without it sounding lame? Oh well, too late. Anyway, she very kindly signed a few pics for me, which I posted on my blog if anyone wants to check them out.
http://happymayberry.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/lauren-bacall-adds-a-link-to-the-good-karma-chain/
Thanks for the link…..great pictures, lucky you….and loved your post about Arlen Specter…great writing:
"Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter made like a passenger on the Titanic and stepped into the warm and welcoming lifeboat of the Democratic Party today when he renounced his errant ways as a Republican.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael “Looney Boots” Steele immediately responded with voodooesque remarks about Specter’s mama and a threat to throw him down on a mat and give him a Melvin."
Friend me on Facebook….lots of people in my group would love your writing.
Suzanne,
The lifeboat you described has no marking in it ….either Democrat or Republican. The only marking on it is ‘America’ and it is sinking from a $11.1 trillion dollar national debt and $55 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities. There is no money in the Social Security Trust Fund. Just IOU’s. In just 11 weeks, Obama has spent 4 times (with borrowed money) what Bush spent in 8 years. In 94 years, the dollar has lost 96% of it’s value. China doesn’t want our bond debt and they are moving to copper and gold. Prepare yourself for a gallon of milk next year that costs $9 and see what effect that has on the 2010 election.
‘Liz Smith Encourages Teen Sex in Texas’
NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT
I just wanted to see how certain pundits could selectively choose words from a paragraph to have their way with the facts. In the current ‘Texas Monthly’, 81 Texans were asked how to improve the state. Among those consulted, Liz Smith, native of Fort Worth and legendary newspaper columnist.( and PHS grad)
What our gossip maven actually said was two fold: 1) "Texas should lead the nation in turning down useless federal funds for..absinence.. classes, " and 2) "Comprehensive sex education in schools is the answer.’
Now Liz Smith did’t get her facts from her Big Apple connections Turns out, "Texas now has one of the highest teenage birthrates in the country," while at the same time, "Texas boasts the unfortunate reputation as the number one state in the union when it comes to spending for abstinence-only programs"
Now you know what she actually said in case…no names shall be mentioned…says something otherwise on his radio program.
And please, Liz Smith, please point out to Mr. Rushie that because of current economic restraints ‘fatwads’ are considered tasteless, if anyone should even be so lucky…
Peace and grace
I will be sure to get the Norris Mailer book because I’m a huge fan of Norman Mailer and was shocked to hear that he once stabbed his wife at a party!
What I’m reading right now though is really fantastic. The autobiography of Osama Bin Laden’s African mistress, Kola Boof, "Diary of a Lost Girl." Highly recommend it. Much, much better than I could have ever thought.