A copycat candle in the wind?
Even before Tuesday’s announcement that Larry Birkhead – not Howard K. Stern – was the daddy of the late Anna Nicole Smith‘s baby, Hugh Hefner wanted one thing understood: “I can make clear at this time that I am not the father of the child.”
Hef was joking, but the Playboy magazine magnate is serious about his tributes to the former centerfold: a 10-page pictorial in the May issue, an hourlong retrospective on Playboy TV and an online memorial on Playboy.com.
“There was very clearly a Marilyn Monroe quality about her and that aspiration was clear from the very beginning,” Hefner says of the 1993 Playmate of the Year. “She talked about Marilyn Monroe all the time.”
At a 2004 Halloween party, he says, she came dressed as Monroe, along with three men in tuxedos: Stern, Birkhead and son Daniel, who preceded her in drug-related death.
“The tragedy is she lived large as Marilyn did and died in a very similar way,” Hefner says.
The 70-plus-year itch
Hefner, who turned 81 on Monday, is busy working on the third season of “The Girls Next Door,” an E! reality show about life with his girlfriends Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson.
“I am in a very serious relationship with Holly,” he says. “I love all three of the girls, but the relationship with Holly will last, certainly, for the rest of my life.
“Whether it leads to marriage, we will see. I’ve tried marriage twice before without great success, and at this moment, I don’t want to spoil the relationship.”
Gentlemen prefer blondes
John C. McGinley, who plays the acid-tongued Dr. Perry Cox on “Scrubs,” married his yoga instructor fiancée Nicole Kessler over the weekend.
McGinley has his 9-year-old son, Max, to thank for meeting Kessler in the first place.
“My son walked up to Nicole on the beach and I was throwing the ball for the dogs in the ocean,” he recalls. “And Max went over to this hot blonde behind me and I was just aghast.
“I was like, ‘Max, you get the dogs. I’ll talk to the hot blondes.’ And so we switched.”
No business like show business
Hollywood is unreal, Kate Beckinsale admits.
“Everybody is retouched, stretched, lengthened, slimmed and trimmed,” she says.
“My 8-year-old daughter will point to a woman and say, ‘Look! That woman’s had too much Botox.’ She spots them because they all look a bit like Lord Voldemort from ‘Harry Potter.’ “
Some don’t like it hot
Singer Sheryl Crow, riding aboard a bus that uses biodiesel fuel, is on an 11-stop college tour to raise awareness about global warming.
She’s accompanied by Laurie David, producer of the Oscar-winning Al Gore documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Each stop on the tour will include remarks by David, a short performance by Crow, clips from the film and a dialogue with students.
The birthday bunch
Actor Joel Grey is 75. Actress Louise Lasser (“Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”) is 68. Actor Meshach Taylor (“Designing Women”) is 60. Country singer Jim Lauderdale is 50. Singer Lisa Stansfield is 41. Singer Joss Stone is 20.