Mom’s Mere Presence Gave Arnold A Real Lift

If Arnold Schwarzenegger had listened to his parents, he’d still be in his native Austria, with the action in his life limited to teaching kids in his classroom.

But despite her doubts and her husband’s outright disapproval, Aurelia Schwarzenegger supported her son’s interest in what she considered the strange sport of bodybuilding.

“She would sit there in the front row,” Schwarzenegger recalls in an interview in Family Circle magazine.

“When I was in the middle of lifting the weight and needed total concentration, she would be the one screaming, ‘Come on, Arnold, you can do it!’

“Of course, that screwed up my concentration, and I would drop the weight. But nevertheless she was there, trying to support me.”

Roseanne, on today’s sixth anniversary of the death of Lucille Ball (in Women’s World magazine): “Lucy paved the way for women like me. She was the first genuine female star on TV that men took seriously.”

And speaking of path-paving redheads …

Carol Burnett turns 59 today.

This hero’s got more action than he can handle

Elsewhere on the muscleman front, Jean-Claude Van Damme, who last December left wife No. 4, Darcy, to return to wife No. 3, Gladys, is not only back together with Darcy but is expecting a child by her in October.

Thanks, TV Guide, for cutting us off at the knees

TV Guide has backed off from its report, repeated here Tuesday, that Tonya Harding’s segment was dropped from an upcoming CBS “Where Are They Now …?” special after she accused the network of paying her mother to secretly tape record their conversations. Only the accusation itself was cut, the magazine now says.

You could say they don’t exactly see eye to eye

After CBS co-anchor Connie Chung supposedly suggested crime was running rampant in Oklahoma City while police were busy with the bombing aftermath, three local women started selling T-shirts that read “Who the hell is Connie Chung?” on the front and a less complimentary comment on the back.

They obviously know that charity begins at home

Oklahoma natives Troy Aikman, the Dallas Cowboys quarterback, and Joe Diffie, the country singer, have pitched in to help their fellow Sooners. Aikman donated $10,000 to relief efforts, while Diffie collected $6,200 from concert goers in Alaska and added enough of his own cash to make it an even $15,000.

So much for monkeying around with the script

“Outbreak” star Dustin Hoffman brought in poet Maya Angelou to help him rewrite the ending of the killer virus flick, reports Esquire magazine. “The producers hated the new ending, but Hoffman insisted they shoot it, so they did,” said a source, adding: “Most of it ended up on the cuttingroom floor.”

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino