My friend Barbara Walters is so internationally famous that peo ple in downtown Ghana want to know how she’s doing. But like her staff begs not to be harassed, I also ask to be left alone. I am a close friend but I am not a conduit.
She’s doing well. All things went well. She should be home next week. Barbara’s so unused to missing things that I told her I’d find somebody she can give an award to when she’s up to it. Even if it’s just the Keys to the Liquor Closet she can hand them to David Hasselhoff.
AMY Yasbeck, John Ritter’s widow, has written her life with him. Out in September, it’s called “With Love and Laughter: John Ritter.” They met when co-starring in the 1990 film “Problem Child.”
She tells what it’s like to deal with the painful process of sudden grieving. No advance warning. One moment the TV star of “Three’s Company” was here, the next on Sept. 11, 2003, not.
She is dedicated to preserving his name. This book is Step 1.
JAMES McAvoy on doing Broadway: “There’s every chance I will. I’m dying to.” . . . And conservative col umnist Laura Ingraham will soon be pushing “The Obama Diaries,” a satirical takedown — in their own words — of the administration and its “calamitous plans to remake America.”
SITCOMS — remember them? — are on the way back. The public is regur gitating the reality crap, and sitcoms are cheap to produce even if you include the laugh track. Seems it’s a time people need to laugh . . . Carrie Fisher: Asked would she ever do another “Star Wars”? “I have so much baggage now that if I ever did another people would ask, “Why is she out of the mental hospital and in another galaxy?” . . . With the money Annette Bening‘s earning in her new movie on motherhood, I’m hearing she may manage to buy husband Warren Beatty a full pardon on “Ishtar” . . . Hey, whatever happened to the maybe “Beverly Hills Housewives” TV reality thing? It was supposed to have starred Kathy Hilton . . . Robin Williams has a shirt that says “I love NY” in Arabic.
AND fresh word out from Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky: You maybe she heard she’s gotten engaged again. She says: “I hope this is more than just a summer romance. I’m tired of short-term relationships — like marriage.”
AND on the lovely Sunday afternoon we just had, where would one imag ine one might meet the outdoorsy Al Sharpton? In Borders on 57th Street . . . With every other Supreme Court jurist (and maybe jurist) from Harvard, the school is the topic at dinners. Asked about her years there, Natalie Portman said: “I felt I always had to prove that I belonged at the institution.” At least she proved that someone not only bright but beautiful can come out of that place . . . Public relations men Jack Mitchell and Tony Manning giving a small dinner for Pia Lindstrom and twin sisters Ingrid and Isabella before they leave for Sweden and a memorial service for their late stepfather Lars Schmidt.
WHY I’d mention David Hasselhoff twice in one column, no idea. Why I’d be writing about him once, I can’t imagine, but he’s around town with 17-year-old daughter Hayley . . . Also telling Joan Jedell his reality show “Meet the Hasselhoffs” again and again is coming to A&E. He does not say why . . . Cynthia Nixon donating one of her awards to Linda Kaplan Thaler. Seems Thaler taught Cynthia piano lessons before she was a star . . . Princess Firyal, who needs more money like Obama needs more teleprompters — she’s the one who fought and won her late boyfriend’s sons to keep the top two floors of the Pierre, which she claimed he always promised her — has written a children’s book. Something about a little girl being a peanut butter sandwich. Look, what do I know?
IN the movie business, everyone’s a spe cialist. Fight sequence specialist. Dance specialist. Makeup specialist. Wardrobe. Hair. Dialogue. Speech. Accent coach. History specialist. Period movies etiquette coach. Swordsplay specialist. Everything on that silver screen is about as naturally crafted as my roots. There’s the propmaster — and when I saw advance trailers of the The ‘Sex and the City” girls in Morocco, I understood there was a camelmaster . . . And maybe even a dunemaster, so wherever this camel was it looked like Marrakesh, not Rabat or “Casablanca.” I mean, maybe you wouldn’t know, but if you watch some foreign filmmaker show you the Turnpike and tell you it’s Madison Avenue . . . I don’t think so. Having spent lots of time in Marrakesh, where this was filmed, I knew lots about the pardon-the-expression open-air food markets and the water and the silverware and the plates washed and the ice for the cocktails. And the tummy problems. And the air-conditioning problems. Last year I talked with the foodmaster. I did so again yesterday now that the movie’s out. Tomorrow we’ll talk more about how you make a movie in downtown Marrakesh.
OUR so-called Paper of Record had a wedding announcement of an 85-year-old man to a 90-year-old woman. The bride’s brother said: “Maybe it took that long to get the announcement printed.” Only in York, kids, only in New York.