‘DEPARTING SUMMER hath assumed / An aspect tenderly illumed/The gentlest look of spring / That calls from younger leafy shade / Unfaded, yet prepared to fade / A timely caroling!” wrote William Wordsworth.
READING PAGE Six’s story of how Ste ven Soderbergh plans to direct Michael Douglas and perhaps Matt Damon in a life story of the late Liberace, reminds me of visiting Lee when he was at the height of his career.
I went out to interview him in Las Vegas at his museum and also at his ranch house. The latter was long and low, very ornately finished inside with lots of choice bric-a-brac and glass doors. I was surprised by the extremely low ceilings. The ceiling in the living room was actually painted with a re-creation of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
That was a bit much, but then Liberace had insisted on hanging a big crystal chandelier over a large square coffee table. The chandelier, obviously meant to hang from a much higher ceiling, was jostling there only about three feet above the coffee table. It was quite disconcerting.
But not so sad as a meeting I had with Liberace on NBC-TV not long before he died in 1987 with AIDS. Lee kept insisting he was not ill just as, all those years, he had insisted he was not gay. He told me in his exact words: “I feel great; I have been on a watermelon diet!”
AT THE Hill Country barbecue joint on West 26th Street, there was the CBS veteran Bob Schieffer in his big white Stetson and boots. He looked great. “Cowboy casual” read the invite to celebrate a book of fabulous essays Bob has rendered over the years at CBS. The title? “Bob Schieffer’s America.”
Television’s elite poured in to decide between the moist and the dry barbecue and whether they’d take white bread, corn bread, pickles, pinto beans, cole slaw or macaroni and cheese with that.
And you thought Bob Schieffer and Katie Couric of CBS were mortal enemies? That’s the story that’s gone around. But there was that good sport, Katie, getting ready to go downstairs to applaud Bob’s country-western band. (Katie said her only problem is that one of her daughters is already worrying about college, and that is killing her – the mother.)
It was quite a night – even if every single person I encountered stopped dead in their tracks and asked me, pointedly, “What do you think about Sarah Palin?”
THE popular Hugh Laurie, who plays the irascible doctor on TV’s “House,” was recently named one of the highest-paid actors on TV. He signed a new $10 million deal to go on acting as the brilliant Gregory House. At that point, Hugh found himself criticized in his homeland.
Known in the past for acting as Stuart Little’s tender and sweet adoptive father, Hugh reacted with “House-like” sarcasm: “There’s a notion that I’ve sold out. Sold out what exactly? There’s a peculiar British attitude that I took an oath I wouldn’t be successful, and reneged on it.”
YOU ARE forever hearing about “power breakfasts,” but here’s one that’s re ally hot, happening Tuesday at the Pierre Hotel when the Young Women’s Leadership Foundation and Ann Tisch honor Time’s Ann Moore, JPMorgan Chase’s Kimberly Davis and Mayor Cory Booker of Newark. (He’ll get “The Man We Love” award.)
You can already go to charityfolks.com/ywlf and bid until Sept. 30 on fantastic items from the rich, famous and well-connected. You could even buy a posh lunch with me, though that’s small potatoes among the other posh offerings.
And the Fete de Swifty is happening tonight beginning at 6 p.m. at Lex and 73rd to benefit the Mayor’s Fund to Advance NYC. Come buy a ticket at the door, and enter our crazy tent. We also have goodies up for auction. Call up charitybuzz.com and click on “View Lots.”
Speaking of auctions, you’ve heard of the feisty Brigid Berlin, who is rumored to have created many of Andy Warhol’s best paintings. Doyle New York is auctioning her entire collection of fab costume jewelry, 200 lots, on Oct. 7. Jane Holzer, Shelly Dunn Fremont and Marina Schiano host a Brigid party, with Interview magazine, on Oct. 1 at Bergdorf Goodman. Brigid is also exhibiting her needlepoint pillows of New York Post covers at Glen Horowitz Bookseller, 50 1/2 E. 64th, from Oct. 21-Nov. 22.
THE FALL’S sizzler is the Nov. 10 bash that NY Stage and Film does for their not-for-profit company.
They’ll have Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, of whom there is no more compelling couple of the moment, plus Douglas Harmon. He’s the producer who turned out Frank Langella‘s little gem movie “Starting Out in the Evening.” So call 212-736-4240 if you want to rub elbows with “The Closer” and Mr. Six Degrees of Separation. On Monday: Friends of the Upper East Side will honor yours truly with an “Ambassador” award. My pal, the writer Marie Brenner, will do her stuff introducing. Call 212-535-2526 if you’d like to join us. It’s informal business attire, not that many of us are still in business after this tormented week!
THE NEW York Times critic Frank Bruni tried to kill Michael’s popular restaurant with a bad review. So on Sunday I’ll tell you how crowds of VIPs are flocking in. Can it be? The mighty Times – defanged!