Last week PBS filmed the big-shot hot-shot Gershwin Prize for a future showing. Stevie Wonder, Sheryl Crow, Burt Bacharach, Michael Feinstein, Dionne Warwick, Diana Krall, Mike Myers all booked. All on time, all warmed-up, all on their mark — except Dionne Warwick. They were told, “Don’t expect her . . . she won’t be in it . . . she isn’t participating.”
Venue for the filming? The White House. A little probing elicited the comment: “She couldn’t get security clearance.”
Dionne Warwick can’t get clearance for the White House? Those scurvy sleazy Salahis got in, tour j’eted around, shook hands with Obama, had photos with him, wormed so close to B.O. that semi-married Mrs. Salahi nearly got named as his next vice president . . . and Dionne Warwick couldn’t make it?!
RAOUL Felder. Even in an ancient Aramaic thesaurus that name stood for “lawyer.”
He’s just written “Reflections in a Mirror of Love, Loss, Death and Divorce.”
Raoul: “Besides my legal career, this memoir’s a picture of our times and lives interwoven from Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, up to the present. In Chandler’s novel ‘The Big Sleep’, the character General Sternwood says: ‘You are looking, sir, at a very dull survival of a very gaudy life.’
“Who knows . . . maybe the shoe fits me.”
It’s Barricade Books. Out late summer.
CARTIER’s Chairman Emeritus Ralph Destino took me around its special exhibition of its famous 1969-1974 pieces. The Love Bracelet then cost $250; now a couple of grand. Destino, subpoenaed when client Imelda Marcos was on trial here in the ’80s, remembered:
The Duchess of Windsor’s panther bracelet was $14,000. At her jewels auction they bought it back for $90,000. Destino was involved in the necklace Richard Burton made for Elizabeth Taylor’s famous La Peregrina pearl. The original sketch bears her handwritten comments: “Change gold to platinum” and “Make pearl detachable to use as a brooch.”
The exhibition runs through tomorrow.
JONAH Hill and L. DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” True story of a jailed broker who lived high, albeit fraudulently. Wow. Who’d believe so flimsy a tale, right? . . . Tomorrow, Gotham Hall, World Childhood Foundation: Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden, Her Royal Highness Princess Madeleine of Sweden, Her Bigness Deborah Norville of TV. Wow. Such classy attendees . . . Barton G. Weiss, called impresario, hotelier, restaurateur, publisher, is doing a new Vault Magazine on The Art of Being Social. Wow. A such as myself could use a subscription.
MAY’s premiere of “Men in Black 3” will be aboard The Intrepid . . . Zach Grenier, who plays boss Richard Chessler in the movie “Fight Club,” rescued and returned a tagged puppy running terrified in the street. Owner Ed Salzano lost it en route from plugging “Be Kind To Animals Week” on “Good Morning America.”
ANDERSON Cooper likes Malibu Diner, 23rd and Seventh, weekends . . . Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor likes East Side’s Sfoglia Restaurant. Its private upstairs room’s decorated by actress-cum-shopkeeper Phoebe Cates . . . Arnold Palmer being interviewed in East 54th’s Golfsmith window . . . Natalie Portman and two friends in a nook in West Hollywood’s Il Covo, which once was Joe Allen’s.
And I just discovered NYC’s A-Number-One best pizza joint. Lucali. On Brooklyn’s Henry Street. It’s dark. Candles, no lamps. Jammed. The line’s outside. A pie is $24, five-cheese calzone — $10. Owner Mark Iacono minds the oven. VIPs like Beyoncé and whatever her husband’s name is are devotees.
FRANK Rich. Former NY Times superpro, now HBO creative consultant, is part of “Veep,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ series about a lady VP. It was OK’d for year two. For 20 months before it aired, Rich “was there for casting, script reading, rehearsals, shooting, checking rough cuts.
“I don’t write for TV,” he said. “The writers are a team, but a lot is ad-lib. Improvised. On their feet, seven principal cast members throw some of their own lines in an intense, long rehearsal period. The writers then cannibalize what works. It’s collaborative. Many versions of a script. Like a spin-and-dry cycle. Then we decide what works.”
COMING next year is a documentary on Steven Sondheim. James Lapine of “Sunday in the Park With George” exec-produces. Material is on Sondheim’s life, fresh interviews he’s not given before, videos and new versions of his songs. Mr. Sondheim’s given it his blessing.
A lifetime ago, our Gov. Thomas E. Dewey ran for president but didn’t make it. He did, however, make a law firm with five names but is now known just as Dewey & LeBoeuf. Also known as maybe shutting down maybe. Anyhow, last week. The Waldorf’s Grand Ballroom. The annual black-tie Law Day Dinner. Hundreds go. Every seat taken. Only one table totally empty. Table 17. Who was to plop there? The esquires from Dewey & LeBoeuf. Not one single solitary attorney showed.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.