The Slap That Was Seen Around The World

According to People magazine (May 9, 2022 issue), actor Will Smith traveled to India right after slapping comedian/actor Chris Rock at the Oscars on March 27. Smith slapped Rock because Rock made a joke about Smith's wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who has hair loss as a result of alopecia.

The trip to India was "for spiritual purposes, to practice yoga and meditation." Too bad Smith didn't do those things prior to Oscar night. He would have avoided being banned by the Academy for ten years. Some people have to learn the hard way.

"Hollywood Babylon" Books On TV?

I don't know if Kenneth Anger published a third or fourth sequel to his books Hollywood Babylon (Straight Arrow Books, 1975) and Hollywood Babylon II (Dutton, 1984), but if he hasn't he should. Both books are sitting side by side in my bookcase.

These books are focused on the dark side of Tinseltown fame--suicides, murders, drug addiction, sex scandals, mental breakdowns, etc.

I'm surprised that HBO, Showtime, the History Channel or one of the other cable networks hasn't done a documentary series based on the Hollywood Babylon books. If they did, I'm certain the number of viewers would be astronomical.

Remembering Forgotten Actors And Other Entertainment People

A website I stumbled upon recently is called forgottenactors.blogspot.com. I discovered it when I was looking up info on an actor named Sam Buffington, who I had seen on television in an episode each of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Highway Patrol. Both episodes were filmed in the 1950s. I learned that Buffington, a promising talent, died in 1960 at the age of 28, a victim of suicide. Buffington was a gay man at a time when being gay was not considered a cool thing.

I began thinking that Entertainment Weekly, a publication to which I subscribe, should do a column each issue devoted to forgotten members of all branches of the entertainment industry like Buffington, actor James Edwards (the up-and-coming black actor before Sidney Poitier), et al.

There should also be a "Where Are They Now?" feature in the magazine that brings readers up to date on the whereabouts and doings of people no longer prominent in the entertainment industry.


Note: Today is Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

Scotty Bowers, Pimp To The Stars

I first learned of Scotty Bowers and his memoir, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars (Grove Press, 2012) while browsing the Summer Movie Preview double issue of Entertainment Weekly (April 27/May 4, 2018) and found out that a documentary based on the book will be released in late July. The film is called Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood.

I immediately obtained a copy of this fascinating tell-all book and I hope to see the documentary version when it is screened in theatres this summer.

Bowers, now 94 years old, was in the Marine Corps during World War II and later became a matchmaker and trick to many famous names in Hollywood in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

Donald J. Trump, The Terminator-in-Chief

Donald Trump is one of about 28 successful people interviewed for Harvey Mackay's We Got Fired!...And It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us (Ballantine Books, 2004).

Others interviewed for the book include boxing legend Muhammad Ali, talk show host Larry King, entrepreneur Michael Bloomberg, and tennis star Billie Jean King. Trump's is the lead interview.

At the time the book was published, Mackay was, and probably still is, a syndicated columnist and motivational speaker.

"In the early 1990s," Mackay remarked as a preface to the Q&A interview, "Trump was in the red. Not millions. But billions." Among the setbacks were his failing Atlantic City casinos.

"Although [Trump]was never in his life actually fired from any job," acknowledged Mackay, "Donald Trump experienced far worse. The financial community and the press pulverized him." This happened at a time when he was having a lot of financial woes and was an easy target for his enemies.

Mackay, in total awe of Trump's financial wizardry, referenced Trump's book, Trump: The Art of the Comeback, in which "he chronicled perhaps the greatest personal rebound in financial history." That led to his hit NBC-TV reality show, The Apprentice, which premiered in 2004 and ran for ten years with him as the host.

According to Joshua Green, the author of Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (Penguin Press, 2017), "Mark Burnett, the show's creator, had originally sold the concept to NBC as one where Trump would host The Apprentice for only the first season, after which he would give way to a succession of iconic business moguls, such as Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, or Martha Stewart." Following the airing of episode one, NBC decided, said a network executive, that "we want more Trump." And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Mackay, in a brief phone interview, asked Trump how he went about firing people. Trump told him that "I've fired people slowly, letting them down gently over a period of months and even years. And I've fired people on the spot. Whenever you terminate someone," he continued, "the end result is always the same. They always hate you. There are certain people whom I've not only eased out over a period of months, I even got them new jobs. [Italics mine.] Then I found out that they still hate me."

Did Trump try to find new jobs for former FBI director James Comey and former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara after he fired them shortly after being inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States? I'm certain that he didn't.

A Hollywood Dream Job

How would you like this as a dream job: scrapbooker for a Hollywood celebrity?

According to the August 14, 2006 issue of Time magazine, action-movie actor Bruce Willis "hired a childhood friend to be his personal scrapbooker," a job that involved "organizing treasured photos, videos and memorabilia in exchange for free room and board" at the actor's home in Los Angeles. A good deal, right?

Here's the unfortunate part. Willis ended up suing his childhood friend, also named Bruce, reported Time, "for $1 million."

Why? Because his friend, continued the magazine,"threatened to sell Willis' personal effects and write a tell-all book...unless Willis paid him $100,000 and bought him a car." A great show of gratitude and friendship, right?

It would be interesting to learn, eleven years later, the outcome of Bruce Willis's lawsuit. And whether or not he hired someone else for the scrapbooker job. He might have decided to do the scrapbooking himself or hire a family member.

Zsa Zsa Gabor Slapped A Cop

Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, who recently died at the age of 99, several years ago slapped a police officer during a traffic stop in Beverly Hills, California. If she had been a black woman, the outcome would have been fatal.

Rap Vs. Jazz

May 18, 2006

To the Editor:

You never hear that young jazz musicians like Wynton Marsalis, Joshua Redman, or Roy Hargrove have had a run in with the law, been involved in a shootout, or started a verbal feud with a colleague. It makes me wonder what it is about rap music that brings out the worst in its practitioners and followers.

Sincerely yours,

Charles Michael Smith

Note: This is from a handwritten draft. I'm not sure which publication I had intended to send it to. Perhaps I had the New York Daily News in mind. I remember posting something similar on my Facebook page.

The High Cost Of Moviegoing

October 4, 2005

To the Editor:

I recently went to an afternoon press screening of Good Night, and Good Luck* and was relieved not to be bombarded in the first fifteen minutes with commercials and [trailers for] coming-attractions  as I would have been in a regular movie theatre. Now I read  that the E!channel is packaging celebrity news and gossip to add to this mix because of its lucrativeness. If this "pre-show entertainment" is such a moneymaker ($458 million), how come the ticket prices keep going up?

Sincerely yours,

Charles Michael Smith

*Note: This film is about CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow's on-air confrontation with the anti-Communist senator from Wisconsin Joe McCarthy, whose questionable tactics Murrow opposed.

I found a handwritten draft of this letter which was never sent. The draft does not indicate which publication I had in mind when I wrote it.

Honoring The Dead (2012)

Several months ago, Charlie Rose devoted an entire episode of his late-night public television show to video clips of past guests who died in 2012. The broadcast was riveting and memorable. After each clip, viewers were shown a still photo of the guest with the years of birth and date superimposed on the screen. Among the late luminaries interviewed by Rose and who were featured in the memorial telecast  were playwright/journalist Nora Ephron (b. 1941), film director Tony Scott (b. 1944), novelist Gore Vidal (b. 1925), jazz pianist Dave Brubeck (b. 1920), journalist Mike Wallace (b. 1918), scholar Jacques Barzun (b. 1907), novelist Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928), politician George McGovern (b. 1922), actor Andy Griffith (b. 1926), and art scholar/author Robert Hughes (b. 1938).