‘The Queen of Versailles” is a 100-minute documentary about the Siegels nobody knows, who’ve built this cockamamie largest in captivity 90,000-square-foot house but ran poor with our economy, but now, cobbling together a few billion more, they’re back building so Magnolia Pictures immortalized this 22-carat rhinestone-in-the-rough and invited a VIP crateload to view it.
Mrs. Siegel was once crowned Mrs. Florida. First name, Jackie. Hair blond blond blond; long long long. Neckline low low low. Boobs large large large. Dress tight tight tight. Stomach and rear both protruding like question marks. Her house throw is the real skin of a real dog. OK? In a Sarasota luncheonette, she requested Ossetra caviar. OK? Oy, is she to the manor born.
She smiled: “My husband might sell for $100 million, but for that I’d come with it.” I joked that’s maybe a realty ploy to knock down the price. She stared.
I asked around for the definition of “class.” Blue-blood silver-spoon socialite Gigi Mortimer, whose husband’s grandpa was Averell Harriman: “It’s not in your face. It’s understated. Simple. Not what you spend.”
Beth Rudin DeWoody, who frequents Art Basel and owns Jasper John’s and Frank Stella’s: “It means restraint.”
Nouveau whoknows Jackie, 30 years younger, is Mr. Siegel’s second wife. They have seven children, an eighth is his. She says: “We had eight nannies but had to cut down to one. With nine nannies again, I’ll have another child.”
Vogue’s Hamish Bowles: “Elegance, refinement, has not to do with material things. It’s refusal.”
Paris Hilton’s parents Kathy and Rick: “It’s living within your means.”
Peter Brant II, whose daddy’s the ace polo player, on inviting trashy rich home: “I should hope not.”
Austin Hearst of the Hearst Hearsts: “Their house is no San Simeon.”
Forget Florida’s decline of produce. About its society, furrier Dennis Basso sighed: “To me taste is simple. It’s whoever buys my sables or chinchillas.”
GARY Oldman likes the Lowell because the hotel has working fireplaces. In summer? Seems even in 97 degrees they regularly restock the fireplaces with wood . . . The 24th, 4 p.m., 82nd and Madison’s Crawford Doyle Booksellers, Ward Morehouse reads from his “Inside the Plaza” book . . . “Dan’s Papers” founder Dan Rattiner published his third book “Still in the Hamptons.”
CRIME specialist for AP and New York Magazine Nick Pileggi wrote “Goodfellas,” “Wiseguys,” “Casino.” The late Nora Ephron’s husband of 20 years, his “Vegas” series starts on CBS.
“It stars Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis,” he told me. “Director’s Jim Mangold, who did the Johnny Cash film, ‘Walk the Line,’ which won Reese Witherspoon’s Oscar and ‘3:10 to Yuma’ with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.
“I created the show. Wrote it, did the screenplay, and I’m its showrunner. We filmed in Santa Clarita, Calif. It’s a Western. Classic Wild West hombres. Shoot-’em-up cowboys, gambling, criminals, tough gangsters who work in all cash, prostitution, which then was legal in Vegas. This is set in its early days.
“It’s about when guys like Bugsy Siegel reigned and the mob built what that one-horse town became. Quaid, who can ride a horse, plays Sheriff Ralph Lamb, a fourth-generation ranger who ruled southern Nevada then. Now 85, he’s still around. It’s about warrants, arrests, lines like ‘I’m the law’ and ‘Get outta my casino’ and then in moves this Chicago mobster.”
“Vegas” airs in September.
TAMPA BAY. On the Gold Coast. Site of next month’s GOP convention. Garden spot of the world. County seat on the west coast of the state of Florida, the oldest permanent European settlement in the US, Year 1565. Probably when Tampa hotels sprang up which, today, Republicans can rent for $109 a night. High spot is St. Petersburg, 22 miles across the bay. And lest the GOP mandarins not know, Spanish settlers brought the area oranges and in 1823 grapefruit arrived from the West Indies when French aristocrat Count Odette Phillipe planted the first tree near Tampa Bay. And that’s all I know.
BROOKLYN Diner on West 57th immortalized a booth with a shiny new bronze plaque bearing my name. So, wolfing down pastrami or mac ’n’ cheese, let it be known eaters in my booth should have respect. Don’t spatter my nameplate . . . Ricky Gervais nibbling outside at a 62nd and Lex French café . . . Comic Pat Cooper: “Every floor needs a bathroom. Now at a restaurant I have to wear a diaper.”
AT a Fifth Avenue dinner party: “Sony’s developing a new TV equipped with radar. It buzzes if you’re approaching a reality show.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.