Well quipped for stardom
A James Earl Jones memory.
In the movie “The Great White Hope” he played black boxer Jack Johnson.
Driving through the South — a blond in the front seat — Johnson got pulled over by the fuzz, fined $50, then he handed the cop a C-note.
The cop asked why.
The fighter said, “The reason is I’m coming back.”
Telling the story Jimmy added: “Be resilient. Make yourself bigger. Never be diminished by an oppressive society.”
Fine lines
Jeffrey Zaslow’s paperback “Talk of Fame” reports Sonny Bono saying: “Cher shouldn’t hang it all on glamour. Better she should once take a grandma’s role. But she’s not moving on.”
What Cher would like to tell Sonny has not yet been printed.
There’s Chazz Palminteri’s “Bigger you are, the nicer you should be because there’s more reasons to be in a better mood.”
Judy Brown’s “Comedy Thesaurus” reports Jay Leno’s “Two out of three ladies had sex with someone in their office. But me, I can’t even get the toner to go into my copier.”
Gladys Knight, resenting stardom’s penchant for youth: “It’s like they say, ‘OK, you’ve had your turn, old lady.’ ”
Our late comedian Milton Berle — the beginning star of burgeoning TV — once went on the air with me to speak of his glorious grandchildren “Gloria and John.”
Seconds after we finished the program, his wife Ruth called to say: “That’s not the name of our grandchildren. They’re named James and Mathew.”
1861.
Abraham Lincoln saw an elderly lady, overly dressed in a plumed hat, flop into a puddle crossing the street.
Reportedly he said: “Like a duck. Feathers on her head, down on her behind.”
Nice.
Harry Truman — when told FDR wanted him to be his VP, replied nicely: “Let him go to hell.”
But then there’s the good stuff.
Like, just now, despite uniformed NYPD all around — on the Upper East Side’s shuttered buildings and bodegas due to a debate dinner with Biden — there was Hugh Grant and the missus strolling Second Avenue.
No coat, no tie, no cap, no sunglasses.
The blue eyes could be seen from across 74th Street.
Like Trisha Yearwood: “On a really bad hair day I stick on a hat. Works. People think you’re cool.”
LL Cool J stays cool.
He says: “Don’t do many colors. Forget sneakers that look like you stepped into different flavors of sherbet.” Or anything else!
Tipple tips
David Letterman’s loving holiday thinking.
“Often a relative asks ‘How long’s Mom been drinking like this?’ Just because after assorted Bloody Marys, she says to the turkey, ‘Here, kitty, kitty . . .’ ”
Comes immortal words of Woody Allen, who says so beautifully: “Sex is great between a right man and a right woman. Problem is, it’s tough to get between a right man and a right woman.”
AND in the famous words the famous Plato made this famous comment famous: “You can’t diet without exercise. When I was young I thought nothing of a 10-mile run — and I still don’t.”
And in the not so famous words of infamous Madam Adams: Me, either.
