Really, Now, How Long Can This Thing Drag On?
The latest in that ever-evolving “Victor/ Victoria” soap opera: Liza Minnelli’s manager says she wants to return to the gender-bending Broadway show this summer, but only if co-star Tony Roberts gets the boot.
Roberts, you may recall, staged a “sick-out” for a few performances to protest on-stage mistakes by Minnelli, who stepped into the lead role for a vacationing Julie Andrews.
Roberts returned last Tuesday, but two days later, Minnelli came down with a throat infection and missed five shows, including her final scheduled performance Sunday - prompting hundreds of disappointed ticket-holders to demand their money back.
Andrews returns tonight, but will leave again this summer.
Loose talk
Liza Minnelli, on the gay community’s fascination with her (in New York magazine): “I think it is so complicated. Which is fine. It is something I am grateful for without completely understanding.”
Suppose he’ll start doing some Pat Boone tunes?
Alice Cooper turns 49 today.
For now, it seems, we’ll just have to guess
Remember how Anna Nicole Smith seemed to be getting bigger every day? On the syndicated “Extra” television show Monday night, the former Playboy playmate and Guess? jeans model said that following the 1995 death of her husband, 90-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, “I was in a very depressed state. All I did was eat and I watched TV.” She’s since dropped 50 pounds - but won’t say how, because there are endorsement contracts pending.
Actually, we hear he makes some good felafel
Martin Scorcese’s mother, Catherine, may have died last month at age 84, but her memory lives on - every time he turns on the Television Food Network. “I loved to watch my mother cook,” the director told Details magazine. “Ever since I was a boy, I’ve loved to watch cooking shows … These shows are soothing, like music.” As for his own culinary skills, he added: “I can kind of make water boil.”
And after dinner, he always has a demitasse
Bruce Willis, who hails from Penns Grove, N.J., has picked neighboring Wilmington, Del., as the location for his next film, “The Broadway Brawler” - in part, apparently, because of Vincente’s restaurant. “He’s a bug about roasted garlic,” owner Vincent Mancari said. “And he likes the crab cake and the Caesar salad.”
There was even a brief glimpse of top sirloin
And speaking of the Television Food Network, Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken’s “Too Hot Tamales” show got hotter than expected the other day. Says one startled viewer: “As they were showing a close-up of the flank steak, all of a sudden they were replaced by about five seconds of hard-core pornography.” The network is investigating.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino