The Liz Smith Column | 08/04/2009 11:00 pm
Liz Smith: Marie Brenner Tosses 'Apples and Oranges' at the Stage
Dominick Dunne battles on … Benefit of the doubt – Debbie Rowe … and more from Our Gossip Girl.
"That which we call sin in others is experiment for us," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.
***
Is that a dagger that I see before me? No, it’s a confluence of Pulitzer Prizes. I have been harping and jumping up and down for all the months since Marie Brenner’s memoir, Apples and Oranges, came out, saying that this book should have won the Pulitzer Prize.
Now, it seems that dramatist Alfred Uhry – a Pulitzer Prize winner for "Driving Miss Daisy" and a nominee for "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" – has taken up Marie’s wonderful book about her life with a contentious brother in a dysfunctional family, to render it for the stage. The Manhattan Theater Club hopes to have this in workshop up and running within the next six months. Their head lady, Lynne Meadows herself, will direct.
I had a terrific experience on my recent vacation in Connecticut when I went to the celebrated R. J. Julia bookstore in Madison, in a driving rainstorm, to hear my pal, Marie, talk about what life is like for Southern families where they sit about arguing the merits of being Polish, Russian or German Jews. Marie says, "You know, all those mixed-up Texans like my family in San Antonio or Alfred’s family in Atlanta, where secular arguments raged and everybody minded everybody’s business and nobody got along very well."
If I were a casting director, I’d be trying to get Meryl Streep to play the excellent writer Marie Brenner onstage, although the showy role will be that of Marie’s tempestuous brother, Carl, a man who produced the famed honeycrisp apple in his Washington orchards.
I recall that, during Marie’s Q & A in Connecticut, somebody in the audience asked her if she’d have written Apples and Oranges were Carl still alive. "Oh, no," said Marie. "I wouldn’t have dared. But I like to think now he might have secretly loved the book." I don’t wonder. It makes Carl so real.
And, of course, I am aware that suggesting Meryl Streep to play any role is just a fool’s game as everyone suggests her for everything. I can’t wait for her to play "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" and "King Lear."
P.S. Marie’s book did win many plaudits though not a Pulitzer. But now there’s no excuse for you not to read it. It is everywhere in paperback!
***
The peripatetic columnist and author, Dominick Dunne, has now flown back to Germany for stem-cell treatment and won’t return to the United States until mid-August.
He is traveling with a helpful concerned friend and he has nothing but praise for the way his magazine, Vanity Fair, has backed him up as he battles cancer.
***
If it’s true (and none of us seem to really know what to believe these days!) that Debbie Rowe settled the custody case of her two children with Michael Jackson by making an intelligent, concerned-for-the-children agreement with grandmother Katherine Jackson, with no money passing between them – then I say, brava, let’s hear it for Debbie Rowe!

The Jackson children © Getty Images
I met Debbie in Dr. Arnie Klein’s office years ago right before she agreed to have the two children. She was sweet and down-to-earth. She admired Michael as most people did then and I never thought she did it just for the money. She deserved to be recompensed for carrying those two children (no matter where the sperm came from). And although Michael made her financially comfortable, I know she never bargained for the notoriety and criticism that has fallen on her.
Now – with Michael gone and the children in a bewildering situation, if Debbie Rowe feels like stepping in and visiting and getting to know them and "being there" for them, then I think that’s good. I always believed she’d have "been there" more but Michael didn’t really want her to have much input, as they belonged to him and him alone.
***
Is that a dagger that I see before me? No, it’s a confluence of Pulitzer Prizes. I have been harping and jumping up and down for all the months since Marie Brenner’s memoir, Apples and Oranges, came out, saying that this book should have won the Pulitzer Prize.
Now, it seems that dramatist Alfred Uhry – a Pulitzer Prize winner for "Driving Miss Daisy" and a nominee for "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" – has taken up Marie’s wonderful book about her life with a contentious brother in a dysfunctional family, to render it for the stage. The Manhattan Theater Club hopes to have this in workshop up and running within the next six months. Their head lady, Lynne Meadows herself, will direct.
I had a terrific experience on my recent vacation in Connecticut when I went to the celebrated R. J. Julia bookstore in Madison, in a driving rainstorm, to hear my pal, Marie, talk about what life is like for Southern families where they sit about arguing the merits of being Polish, Russian or German Jews. Marie says, "You know, all those mixed-up Texans like my family in San Antonio or Alfred’s family in Atlanta, where secular arguments raged and everybody minded everybody’s business and nobody got along very well."
If I were a casting director, I’d be trying to get Meryl Streep to play the excellent writer Marie Brenner onstage, although the showy role will be that of Marie’s tempestuous brother, Carl, a man who produced the famed honeycrisp apple in his Washington orchards.
I recall that, during Marie’s Q & A in Connecticut, somebody in the audience asked her if she’d have written Apples and Oranges were Carl still alive. "Oh, no," said Marie. "I wouldn’t have dared. But I like to think now he might have secretly loved the book." I don’t wonder. It makes Carl so real.
And, of course, I am aware that suggesting Meryl Streep to play any role is just a fool’s game as everyone suggests her for everything. I can’t wait for her to play "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" and "King Lear."
P.S. Marie’s book did win many plaudits though not a Pulitzer. But now there’s no excuse for you not to read it. It is everywhere in paperback!
***
The peripatetic columnist and author, Dominick Dunne, has now flown back to Germany for stem-cell treatment and won’t return to the United States until mid-August.
He is traveling with a helpful concerned friend and he has nothing but praise for the way his magazine, Vanity Fair, has backed him up as he battles cancer.
***
If it’s true (and none of us seem to really know what to believe these days!) that Debbie Rowe settled the custody case of her two children with Michael Jackson by making an intelligent, concerned-for-the-children agreement with grandmother Katherine Jackson, with no money passing between them – then I say, brava, let’s hear it for Debbie Rowe!

The Jackson children © Getty Images
I met Debbie in Dr. Arnie Klein’s office years ago right before she agreed to have the two children. She was sweet and down-to-earth. She admired Michael as most people did then and I never thought she did it just for the money. She deserved to be recompensed for carrying those two children (no matter where the sperm came from). And although Michael made her financially comfortable, I know she never bargained for the notoriety and criticism that has fallen on her.
Now – with Michael gone and the children in a bewildering situation, if Debbie Rowe feels like stepping in and visiting and getting to know them and "being there" for them, then I think that’s good. I always believed she’d have "been there" more but Michael didn’t really want her to have much input, as they belonged to him and him alone.
Read more about: Alfred Uhry, Arnie Klein, Books, Celebrities, David Patrick Columbia, Debbie Rowe, Dominick Dunne, Gossip, Katherine Jackson, Liz Smith, Lynne Meadows, Marie Brenner, Meryl Streep, Michael Jackson, New York Social Diary, News, Peter Rogers, R. J. Julia Bookstore, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Liz Smith Column

























15 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
I love New York Social Diary, and I think the "House" section must be my favorite.
A girlfriend and I were talking about Dominick Dunne the other night when all of this business came out about Ryan O’Neal in the new issue of Vanity Fair: wishing Mr. Dunne were around to give us the news on everything that’s been going on lately. We always rushed to read his articles first in the magazine, and we talked about how it breaks our heart that he’s so sick when he’s so important to so many people who love him and his work. His absence has left a hole. Prayers on wings.
Phyllis: Well…for starters, the article in Vanity Fair reports that Ryan hit on his daughter Tatum after the funeral….he didn’t recognize her. Let me see if they have the article online yet. It’s the latest issue and has Farrah on the cover. Beautiful photograph of her, by the way. Found it. Here’s your link:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2009/08/farrah-fawcett-leslie-bennetts.html
And wOw…forgive me. I try not to post links unless I think it’s really helpful.
Thanks for the connection to the great article on Peter Rrogers.
Bill
I wish I had a friend like Peter Rogers or better yet Peter himself! Kent is one of our favorite haunts––even looked at houses to buy there once. It’s gorgeous country and Peter’s view is spectacular. Am not too crazy about the Zebra motif, but love the light that streams in the rooms.
The Madison book store, like the one in Kent and one in New Haven, are almost precious relics nowadays. What fun it was to browse, to pick up a book, settle in one of the oversized armchairs and read away.
Thanks for the update on Dominick Dunne Liz. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the man.
And… the picture of your friend… that BOWL OMG!! or Vase or whatever it is… the orange and multi colored. drool drool drool…
Chrome: I did see the entire layout as it is…which is an advanced blurb, and that’s why I used the URL instead of a link…so you could put in the http if you had to. What you can do is, go to Google, or Firefox or Yahoo and type in "Vanity Fair." Make sure you get the dot. com that is the online magazine, not for the subscription. Let me get back there so I can tell you what to look for. Wait a minute. Ok. Scroll down past that lead in article on the tv show "Mad Men" and then right beneath it, that article on "North Korea’s Dollar Store," and you’ll see some photograph icons that will take you to the upcoming story being released in a few days. Click on the black and white photograph of Farrah that is…..in between the pictures of Michael Jackson and Ruth Madoff…second from the left. That should show you the entire piece…so far. You will see at the bottom that the full story doesn’t hit newsstands until today in New York and Los Angeles and nationwide on August 11th. If you don’t get Vanity Fair, then check back online after August 11th, and I think the full piece will be in there. In the meantime….
By JEANE MacINTOSHLast updated: 11:58 am
August 3, 2009
Ryan O’Neal wishes he’d never had children and is so estranged from his own kids that he didn’t recognize his actress-daughter Tatum — and shamelessly flirted with her — at Farrah Fawcett’s funeral, the actor admits in an explosive new interview. "I had just put the casket in the hearse and was watching it drive away," O’Neal, 68, said, "when a beautiful blond woman comes up and embraces me. I said to her, ‘You have a drink on you? You have a car?’ She said, ‘Daddy, it’s me — Tatum!’ "I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it’s my daughter," O’Neal said. "It’s so sick."The actor recounted the bizarre encounter in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine, which hits stands this week. Asked if he’s sorry he had children, O’Neal nodded and said, "A couple of them I would take back. "I don’t think I was supposed to be a father," said the actor, who had Tatum, 45, and Griffin, 44, with first wife Joanna Moore; son Patrick, 42, with actress Leigh Taylor-Young; and son Redmond, 24, with Fawcett. "Just look around at my work — they’re either in jail or they should be," O’Neal said. He said Redmond, who is in jail for violating probation on drug charges, is the only child he still sees. I’m not in touch with them now," O’Neal said of his other kids. "And I’ve never been happier." When asked about the exchange with her dad at Fawcett’s funeral, Tatum told VF, "That’s our relationship in a nutshell … You make of it what you will. "It had been a few years since we’d seen each other," she said with a sigh. "And he was always a ladies’ man, a bon vivant." Ryan O’Neal isn’t as tactful talking about his daughter. "She wrote a book — bitch!" Ryan fumed about Tatum, who penned a tell-all about her dysfunctional family, replete with details about her parents’ over-the-top drug use and her dad’s physical and mental abuse of his children. "How dare she throw our laundry in the street for money!" Of Griffin — whom O’Neal barred from Fawcett’s funeral — O’Neal declared: "I hate him!" Griffin retorted to VF that his dad is a "narcissistic psychopath" who tried to make money off Fawcett’s death. "All those crocodile tears!" Griffin sniped. "I consider him a vulture presiding over a carcass. My dad’s only goal was to make sure he would be in the will," O’Neal’s eldest son said. "It was so disgustingly transparent as soon as he found out she was terminal … Ryan thought he was going to get everything." Tatum, meanwhile, said her dad "had every right to be angry" about her book, telling VF, "No parent wants to hear their kid saying s - - - - y things about them. "Anyway, it’s past; I’ve moved on," Tatum said. "I’m older now, and I forgive him." In the piece, O’Neal takes a much softer tone when reminiscing about his life with longtime love Fawcett, who died in June after a long battle with cancer. "I wish I could do it over with [her]," O’Neal said. "I would have been much kinder, more understanding, more mature. I’d lose some of the savagery."
THIS is why Dominick Dunne has to get well and get in there with his encyclopedic memory to add layers. I’m teasing. I’m sure he has far weightier issues on his mind, but I sure do miss him. wOw is going to hate me for splashing that dirt up there. Sigh.
Well, Liz Smith, what’s not to love! A bodacious beau you have there and what taste, in women and decor. A true Southern Gentleman..set out and did conquer Yankeeville and planned his return to the juleps and and junipers…ah, and that’s what I love about the South. Not lost on me, Liz Smith, a photo of your office and a description (in your own words), let me parahrase, "My friends think I live like a freshman in college." As do I, all the more appreciative are we of those who can get all that neat stuff together and still be able to walk through the rooms without tripping over a pile of books or ‘steppin’ in something.
Thank you for the news of Dominick Dunne, what an inspiration. Which reminds me, Liz, when will you wOw women be journeying up to Richard Gere’s bed and breakfast?
Peace and grace
I really love reading your column and I am always happy when you have something about our friend Peter. You are a good writer and I really enjoy reading you everyday.
Charles Thomas