Word: show-biz
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...Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford? "Could it be anything else but money?" he snaps, resenting all the new books, the tributes, the upcoming HBO movie, the kids pretending to be swingers. More or less retired, he could have used this interview for an autumnal victory lap, but deflating show-biz pretense was always part of his act, and apparently still is. Now he's good and crotchety...
...Every show-biz saga has a pivotal scene in which the pleasure of performing is undermined by the poison of ambition. For me that painful moment came earlier this month when I snagged a tryout for the Letterman show. My instructions from Dave's people were explicit: "You'll do seven minutes at the Gotham at 9:30 Tuesday night. We'll be watching." I was primed, since I had just done two killer half-hour shows at a Planned Parenthood benefit in Greenwich, Conn. In hindsight, perhaps I should have realized that contraceptive-loving wealthy suburbanites were...
...would be best, of course, if you were a player, a singer, a fellow musician. But with luck and fine timing, you could also be a casual guest, a dinner companion, a colleague's spouse--even, if the furies were snoozing, a journalist. In 1988 Sinatra, the paragon of show-biz sangfroid, told Larry King, "I swear on my mother's soul, the first four or five seconds, I tremble every time I take the step and I walk out of the wing onto the stage, because I wonder if it will be there when I go for the first...
There was a time when banks liked to present themselves as staid old conservative places. Not anymore. First, Citibank sponsored an Elton John tour. (So it's not the Foo Fighters--it's a start.) Now three show-biz types have bought a bank. MAGIC JOHNSON, JANET JACKSON and former head of Motown Records Jheryl Busby have spent about $3 million on a controlling share in the California-based Founders National Bank. They hope to use their contacts and drawing power to get the African-American elite to plunk their savings there. They also hope to be able to attract...
...line springing in air, curving back on itself, joining with others in a frazzle of twists, hanging from a string and responsive to the lightest touch of a finger or breath of air. Most of them were portraits--some of fellow artists (Miro, the composer Edgard Varese), others of show-biz celebrities like Josephine Baker or the great honky-tonk comedian Jimmy Durante, whose famed nose, translated into wire profile, becomes a fearsome proboscis. They were witty, vital (the faint quivering of the wire from room vibration gave them an odd subliminal life) and completely without pretension. They were also...