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Saturday, December 29, 2007

OH, BABY! EVERYONE WANTS IT

EVA Longoria's desperate to make ba bies almost even more than she wants to keep making "Desperate Housewives." She also wants to make movies. But for now, babies. Everybody's into babies. Jennifer's having babies, Halle's having a baby, Aguilera's having a baby, Jessica Alba's having a baby, Nicole Richie's having a baby, keen tween Jamie Lynn's having a baby. So who's next to have a baby? Ellen DeGeneres. Clearly this future Mother of the Year has had it up to here with dogs. Also cats, neighbors, Anne Heche and animal adoption agencies. So, what's left? However, Ellen says she isn't up to carrying it. Her partner Portia de Rossi is talking about adopting.

IF you missed that blockbuster of an SRO Oscar winner "Sex and Zen," something named Shu Qi was its star and, in clothes, she's now around London eateries with Hugh Grant. Someone told me they were seen kissing but I don't know for sure. I wasn't there my very own personal self. . . . Reese Witherspoon's little son wants to grow up to be a pizza delivery boy, her little daughter a scientist. A sighing Reese sighs: "But their career ideas change every day." . . . Sienna Miller's 2008 challenge is her closet. She's been sent too many clothes, too many Chanels, she doesn't even open half the boxes. Besides that tragedy, her guy's Rhys Ifans, and his good friend Kate Moss says, "If she breaks his heart, I'll be really mad at her."

MORE. I have more. Anthony Hop kins on ever doing plastic surgery: "Ridiculous." He also says he re cently met an old friend actor and "almost didn't recognize him." . . . Heather Mills McCartney Mills suggested, for their daughter Beatrice's sake, to have Christmas all together en famille. But Paul, whose turn it was to have Bea this holiday, said no. No. A thousand times no. . . . James Blunt sold his London house, took up residence in Switzerland and wants to become a Swiss resident. And don't anybody say anything about anyone having tax reasons.

SO I'm reading about 20th Century Fox's president drumbeating "eido phor, the new large-screen, three-di mensional color television system which will supplant TV." It was a "gift of science" following "12 years of research and experimentation by scientists at the Swiss Institute of Technology." This was in the New York (now defunct) Mirror of 1952. We're talking 55 years ago - and, if you forget this reality stuff, I'd say we've still got some remnant of television still going.

Same 1952's entertainment section advertised a Times Square movie palace starring a Patricia Neal movie plus an all-star stage show - for 50 cents admission. A live Dixieland jazz concert at the Paramount Theater building dared to institute a buck-fifty minimum. Tickets for Broadway musicals like "New Faces" at the W. 45th Royale - $1.20. And, Mel Brooks, take note: An ad for the top musical of the season, "Of Thee I Sing," starring Jack Carson and Paul Hartman, with "music by George Gershwin," had a top price of $3.60.


I looked up 100 years ago. Broadway of January 1908. Ethel Barrymore (then an actress, now a theater) lit up Som erset Maugham's comedy "Lady Frederick." Others in lights were Maude Adams, Mary Boland, John Drew, Billie Burke. It was Mrs. Fiske in "Salvation Nell." Tyrone Power, movie star of the '40s and '50s, in his first show. Ferenc Molnar's "The Devil" starred George Arliss and Miss Theodosia de Cappet who later became the screen vamp Theda Bara. And there was a revival of the always rerevived "Prisoner of Zenda."

"Wildfire" starred Lillian Russell and a young scamp named Ernest Truex. Douglas Fairbanks titillated in "A Gentleman From Mississippi." George M. Cohan and His Royal Family, as he then billed them, headlined "The Yankee Prince." Nora Bayes and Gertrude Vanderbilt and Anna Held in "Ziegfeld Follies" of 1908. Eddie Foy in "Mr. Hamlet of Broadway." Names like Francis X. Bushman, who became a silent screen idol, and Carter DeHaven, whose daughter eventually made movies as Gloria DeHaven and Trixie Friganza. They mean nothing to us now, but they were the big bright lights of Broadway of 100 years ago.

WHETHER Black Eyed Pea Fergie ever does Broadway, I don't know. I do know she's doing the Web cam with fiancé Josh Duhamel. She's also doing Josh. Also doing it with a stripper pole and putting that on the Web site, too. . . . And Celine Dion's 2008 dream? A recurring one. She's in the front row with her mom and dad when she's announced as winning the Best Actress Oscar for playing Maria Callas. . . . Dustin Hoffman taking medication for acne, and he's age 70. He says the good news is his oily skin keeps him from getting wrinkles.

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