“I saw Daddy kissing Santa Claus … I live with Mommy now!” This is one of my favorite Christmas cards from the agent-manager Michael Black in Hollywood.

It was Michael who used to answer his difficult clients with the remark, “Suckez-les-oeufs!” 

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It pays to marry Madonna! Several weeks ago this column said that the mighty M would shell out a lot of dough for her divorce from director Guy Ritchie, even though he has money in his own right.

Guy Ritchie’s camp had been putting out a lot of self-congratulatory “see what a gent he is” statements. “He’s walking away without a penny.” We ignored that, and printed what we knew. But the rest of the media was swept away by Guy’s supposed gallantry.

Ha! So now our projected figure of $70 million for the settlement seems to have become $75 million – perhaps even $92 million! You read it here first that it would really cost Madonna to be “free” again.

P.S.  I understand the only real laugh Madonna had during the divorce imbroglio was the report she slept slathered in exotic crèmes, wrapped in plastic binding. The great star rolled her eyes and said, “That’s me, a fabulous Italian sausage!”

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Very thankful am I to see that the Oscarcast will turn back to a real actor as host this year. Hugh Jackman is one of the nicest, most regular guys in the business. Charm, grace, sincerity and sex appeal. And maybe this time, not a lot of those “inside baseball” type jokes that leave the audience bewildered. (Remember, Hugh won the Emmy for hosting Broadway’s Tony Awards.)

Beautiful Christmas cards from The Donald, Melania and Barron Trump … a fabulous white dove on her card from Elizabeth Taylor … and Renée Zellweger has a beautiful greeting citing donations to three big charities (Cambodian Children’s Fund, Not on Our Watch and The Hole in the Wall Gang) in my name. And one of the best of these was an engraved message from Diane Sawyer and Mike Nichols saying if I’d return their enclosed stamped envelope and cite a charity, they would send my Christmas gift direct there. (This time I picked the New York Landmarks Conservancy which is trying to save NYC’s buildings and monuments, because this good-deed organization has to compete with so many charities whose subjects seem much more dramatic. But the Conservancy still deserves our support.)

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Spoke to the widowed Pat Schoenfeld today and we had a warm talk about her late husband, Gerald, titan of the Shubert Organization. Patricia said that as shocked as she was to lose Gerry, he died in a way she could only describe as “humane.” They’d had a big night out at the premiere of “Australia,” he took a snack at home of tuna fish and a diet drink, and in the night woke, calling her name. He was out of bed and had fallen; she called the doctor in their building who was there in three minutes with an ambulance. Gerry never spoke after saying, “I have an upset stomach.” His heart had simply stopped. It looks now as if the Schoenfeld memorial will be held in Gerry’s own theater on February 23. He is already so missed.

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I did love the actor Van Johnson who died recently in Connecticut at age 92. Van was a standby of my own movie magazine youth when he was MGM’s golden boy, almost died in an early auto accident, survived to go on as a romantic leading man to many of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. I hope they buried Van in his ubiquitous red socks. I never heard a single bad word about Van in all his career.