ABC means Always Be Changing. To review “The View,” the view looks cloudy: Joy Behar, axed. Meredith Vieira, whose career it revitalized, left. Hasselbeck, the blond right winger sports star’s wife, gone. Show’s creator Barbara retired. Minus notice, new addition Jenny McCarthy’s now a subtraction. Sherri Shepherd, fired.
Also let go — its senior producer. Walters’ producing partner for 25 years, “View” co-creator Bill Geddie — iffy. On hiatus, the show’s due back September. With who? They need new staff. New cast. With ratings sliding, also new viewers. Couldn’t fire everybody so remaining only — Whoopi, who had a two-year pay-or-play contract.
No stars, second stringers, are penciled in for the cast. You shouldn’t think Angelina Jolie. They’ve even burbled about refloating Rosie O’Donnell.
And there’s Diane Sawyer, whose David Muir replacement’s p.d.q. Sept. 2. No last-minute decision. I heard of this months ago. Maybe they want everyone 12 years old. Maybe they feared losing Muir, who’d have other options. Their morning show lost its weatherman and second anchor. To stay happy, Stephanopoulos got big promises, big money and big assurances he’ll get the big interviews.
Diane, not one to bolt the big picture anymore than Hillary, said she wants to do great stories, in-depth documentaries. What she’ll say, what they’ll say, what anyone will say down the line is a crapshoot.
Political ambition
Not just Cuomo scratching for the Oval Office. So’s Maryland’s Governor Martin O’Malley. The figuring is, can’t hurt to make the shot. Prime challengers get fame and can end up as VPs. So this dude nobody knows is off to Michigan and Iowa to throw his hat and fund-raisers into the ring. Ask not how I know. I know.
The Misfits’ died in order
Marilyn Monroe’s final film was “The Misfits,” 1961. Close friend photographer Jim Haspiel knew her better than anyone all her life. Alongside for her costume fittings at Fox Movietone’s old West 54th studios, he says:
“The cast was Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach. Gable died Nov. 16, 1960. Marilyn, Aug. 5, 1962. Clift, July 23, 1966. Ritter, Feb. 5, 1969. Eli Wallach, June 24, 2014. They died in order of their billing.
“Eli completed the cycle. It reminded me of their dancing scene and the dialogue which was: ‘We’re all dying, aren’t we?’ ”
Who’s responsible?
My “New York Social Diary” friend Liz Smith sends me this: “At French restaurant Le Veau d’Or, a familiar woman approached me with: ‘I’m Sean Young.’ ” [She was hot in the ’80s/’90s in “Blade Runner,” “Dune,” “A Kiss Before Dying.”] “Then she asked, ‘Aren’t you responsible for Cindy Adams?’ ” What Sean’s doing now, who knows? What Liz is doing was taking absolutely no responsibility for manufacturing me.
Odds and ends
Sandra Lee called officials personally two years for the permit to shoot on Southampton’s Coopers Beach. Finally got done and is in her this month’s magazine. Those Kartrashians got OKs faster. Must be Kim’s asset is bigger . . . More Hamptons. Ron Rifkin, Ken Olin, Patricia Wettig at Red Stixs chinesery in Water Mill . . . Yesterday’s Treasures, Route 27’s terrific antiquity place, gets all the stars. Dark glasses, cap low, nobody recognized Billy Joel plinking a back room’s old piano.
ALL the Scottos, the complete pack, the entire family that runs the famous Italian restaurant Fresco, hit Donna Karan’s daughter’s Southampton eatery. The whole dozen ate fish. Nobody did spaghetti, ravioli, or clams oreganato.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.