People: Wa-wa under the bridge?
After three decades of keeping mum, Barbara Walters is disclosing a past affair with married U.S. Senator Edward Brooke, whom she remembers as “exciting” and “brilliant.”
On “The Oprah Winfrey Show” scheduled to air Tuesday, Walters shares details of her relationship with Brooke, which lasted several years in the 1970s.
A moderate Republican from Massachusetts who took office in 1967, Brooke was the first African American to be popularly elected to the Senate.
Both of them knew that public knowledge of their affair could have ruined their careers, Walters says.
At the time, the twice-divorced Walters was a rising star in TV news and co-host of NBC’s “Today” show, before later jumping to ABC (where she now co-hosts “The View”).
Her affair with Brooke ended before he lost his bid for a third term in 1978. He later divorced, and has since remarried.
Asked by Winfrey if she was in love, Walters says: “I was certainly – I don’t know – I was certainly infatuated. … He was exciting. He was brilliant. It was exciting times in Washington.”
Frisky business
In what’s shaping up as romantic confessions week on “Oprah,” in an episode set to air Thursday, Cher, 61, discusses how she dated Tom Cruise, 45, when he was just a “shy boy.”
“So how much of a date was that?” Winfrey asks.
“Oh, that was a long date,” Cher replies. “Really. I lived in his apartment. … He was so wonderful. And I was so crazy about him. And he was so, like, different. He was a shy boy. He didn’t have any money.”
Oprah, Uma, icky
Uma Thurman testified Thursday she was “completely freaked out” by a card from her accused stalker bearing a picture of an open grave and a man standing on a razor blade.
Thurman said Jack Jordan visited the set of “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” in 2005 and asked to see her. Her assistant delivered the card.
Along with the drawing, the religious confirmation card contained random words written in a spiral – including “chocolate, mouth, soft, kissing” – and the sentence, “My hands should be on your body at all times.”
When she opened the card, Thurman added, little bits of torn paper fell out, including a picture of a bride with her head torn off.
Back in the box
Mindy McCready has “caught her breath” and gone back to work on a new album following her admission of a long-standing relationship with Roger Clemens, her rep says.
McCready has said she “cannot refute anything” in a New York Daily News report that she and the star baseball pitcher had an affair beginning when she was 15 and he was a married 28-year-old father of two.
Clemens’ lawyer confirmed they were longtime friends but said no sex was involved.
The birthday bunch
Singer Engelbert Humperdinck is 72. Singer Lesley Gore is 62. Country singer Larry Gatlin is 60. Singer Lou Gramm (Foreigner) is 58. Actress Christine Baranski is 56. Country singer Ty Herndon is 46. Wrestler-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is 36. Actress Jenna Von Oy (“Blossom”) is 31. Singer Lily Allen is 23. Actress Kay Panabaker is 18.