Old Gossip: Carrie Fisher

Can you even imagine what a weird life celebrity kids have???

JUDY, Judy, Judy! Stop dropping acid! Carrie Fisher says her dad, Eddie Fisher, was so sure she was an LSD freak, he got Cary Grant, a known tripper, to counsel her. "I was completely humili ated," Fisher writes in "Wishful Drinking," out next month. She also recalls how once, when her mom, Debbie Reynolds - who also worried about her getting high - couldn't reach her in London, "She called Ava Gardner, and she asks Ava to come to my hotel and get the concierge to let her into my room to make sure I'm not dead."
(Source: Page Six)

Johnny Carson: Sad & Depressed

As tittitaling as tell-alls are, I always question the motives of the author. Johnny Carson's longtime lawyer, agent and manager has written a book about him and it sounds like Johnny was a pretty sad person. Apparently the auther and Johnny were best friends for many years but by the end of Carson's life his longtime friend had been shut out by the notoriously private Carson. It doesn't surprise me that Carson suffered from demons and depression - isn't that a prerequisite for being a successful comedian?

JOHNNY Carson's longtime lawyer is blowing the lid off the secret life of the beloved "Tonight Show" host - painting him as a sad, depressed man who cheated on his wives, was tormented by his mom and refused to visit his son in a mental hospital.

"He was a great star, but not a great man," Henry Bushkin - who was jokingly dubbed "Bombastic Bushkin" by Carson on his late-night NBC gabfest - told Page Six.

"Many great comedians were miserable human beings . . . Johnny suffered a great many demons brought about by what I call a toxic sort of mother," Bushkin said. "His mother couldn't give a compliment. He's the biggest star in the world and she couldn't even acknowledge it."

Bushkin, who was also Carson's agent and manager, is shopping a warts-and-all memoir about the late-night legend through superagent David Vigliano, in which he'll tell how the comic:

* Was so miserable at the top of his game that he constantly "questioned his own ability to have happiness in his life."

* Enjoyed the use of a 10,000-square-foot penthouse with a private pool at Caesars Palace when he played Vegas and routinely entertained the "18 beautiful girls in the chorus line that opened his act . . . and he was certainly involved with some of them."

* Refused to visit his son, Rick, when he was committed to Bellevue with severe emotional problems. "The kid was there for 4½ months and he never went. I had to take care of everything and was there almost every day. Rick [who died in a car crash in 1991] was a lovely human being."

* Abandoned many of his closest friends, including Bushkin, who says, "At one time we did everything together. At the end, he treated me like everybody else - like I didn't exist. At the end, it was like I was an irritant. In many respects, he was the saddest guy I ever knew."

(Source: Page Six)

Old Gossip: Elizabeth Taylor

George Hamilton describes Dame Elizabeth Taylor as a "Dame" in the best sense of the word: "She'll drink with you, dance with you, play cards with you. Pig out with you." I love that! The nudity party, tho, no way. All my friends know: I don't do nudity.

DAME ELIZABETH TAYLOR once gave a paparazzo permission to sell pictures of her sunbathing topless, after hunting him down so she could approve the saucy snaps.

Veteran actor George Hamilton makes the revelation in a new memoir, which documents his year-long affair with the Hollywood legend.

After Taylor was snapped with her breasts exposed during a Spanish vacation in 1987 - when she was 55 - she handed Hamilton the task of tracking down the photos before they could be published. When he did so, Hamilton was shocked to find Taylor loved them, and gave the photographer the go ahead to sell them.

He writes, "(She said) 'I like them, don't you? My breasts look rather good don't you think?' 'You look spectacular', I was forced to admit."

"(She said) 'I hate censoring the press anyhow. Not my style. I'm a First Amendment gal.'"

The couple dated from 1986 to 1987 after mutual friends set them up - and Hamilton describes the intensity of their affair in Don't Mind If I Do, which hits bookstores later this month (Sep08): "She was a dame in the best old sense of the word. She'd drink with you, dance with you, play cards with you. Pig out with you."
(Source: Showbiz Spy)

Old Gossip: Sidney Poitier & Diahann Carrol

Wow! What a jerk!

OSCAR-winner Sidney Poitier played his most dramatic role off-screen - that of a real-life, married cad who promised his mistress the moon, then cruelly double-crossed her.

In her new memoir, "The Legs Are the Last to Go," Diahann Carroll - the Bronx-born beauty who made history as TV's first black sitcom star in "Julia" - portrays Poitier as a heel who convinced her and first hubby Monte Kay to divorce after confronting Kay, saying he loved Carroll and was splitting from his wife to be with her. But Poitier then broke his promise, prompting her to date another man in frustration, Carroll charges.

She writes: "Sidney called me at my hotel . . . 'You bitch, whore, tramp,' he yelled. 'I know he just left your bed. I won't have you running around with other men. You belong to me!' "

Things got worse when, she says, Poitier told her he'd finally called it quits with his wife, Juanita Hardy, bought her a ring, and had her decorate a 10-room Riverside Drive apartment he'd bought. "I was only home a few days when he called to say his wife was having second thoughts. Our wedding plans would have to be postponed," Carroll writes. "When the apartment was ready and I was about to move my daughter in with me, Sidney told me he didn't want her there . . . He changed the locks so I couldn't get in. Then he made me write him a check to offset his purchase and decorating costs. I did as I was told, submissive and desperate."

Poitier, who had no comment on the book, would go on to wed actress Joanna Shimkus, while Carroll married three more times, her last husband being singer Vic Damone. "Sidney and I are now friends. That's a lovely thing that comes as you age - forgiveness and perhaps a relaxing of standards," Carroll writes. She notes that at the age of 73, "I'm told I look pretty good for my age, with, I am ashamed to admit, a little help from my plastic surgeon." The book, from Amistad, hits stores next week.
(Source: Page Six)

Old People Gossip: Ed McMahon

My Grandma reads my gossip from time to time, so every once in awhile I like to include something for her. I really don't feel sorry for Ed McMahon. How do you lose that kind of money? I mean, sure - I can see losing $20 when you're drunk...but $200 million?

ED McMahon's years of boozing are partly to blame for his going broke. Johnny Carson's famed sidekick - who once had real-estate holdings of more than $200 million - is in danger of losing his Beverly Hills home in a foreclosure. "You drink and you don't pay attention to your business affairs," his manager, Johnny Podell, told Page Six. "He wasn't paying attention and probably got some bad advice." McMahon, 85, who also suffered through two expensive divorces, hasn't touched a drop in more than 10 years, and needs a break, said Podell. "I'm hoping America will rally around him and somebody will have a great idea to make him a spokesman."
(Source: Page Six)

Princess Leia & Han Solo : Real Life Hook-Up

Wouldn't it be fun to just sit around and talk to Carrie Fisher for an hour or so? She must have some of the BEST stories.

THE sexual force was with Princess Leia and Han Solo. In a British TV interview, Carrie Fisher giggly hinted she hooked up with Harrison Ford when they made "Star Wars" in 1977. "I went on the film saying, 'I'm going to have an affair,' like it was a kiwi, an exotic fruit - because I'd never had one," Fisher gushed. "I had a crush on Harrison for sure. Harrison is great fun when he's had a few drinks." Laughing and smiling, Fisher added, "I'm going to get in so much trouble . . . Once I left the room and came back and he was in the closet not wearing a lot of clothes." A rep for Ford could not be reached.

Old Gossip - Hemingway Jabs Hollywood

ERNEST Hemingway and Hollywood had a tempestuous relationship - but his utter hatred of the movies made from his famed novels is now just coming to light.

In "The Good Life According to Hemingway," out next month, A.E. Hotchner, who traveled the globe with him, bares a series of never-before-published slaps Hemingway took at the film business.

When producer David O. Selznick crowed that his wife, Jennifer Jones, was starring in "A Farewell to Arms" and he'd pay Hemingway a $50,000 bonus from any profits, the novelist wrote back: "If by some miracle, your movie, which stars 41-year-old Mrs. Selznick portraying 24-year-old Catherine Barkley, does earn $50,000, you should have all $50,000 changed into nickels at your local bank and shove them up your [bleep] until they came out of your ears."

Darryl F. Zanuck, the boss of 20th Century Fox, was trashed when he asked Hemingway to shorten the title of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," which starred Gregory Peck. Hotchner quotes Hemingway, "I said, you want something short and exciting that will catch the eye of both sexes, right?" He then reeled off the first letters of Hollywood studio names that together spelled out the F-word. "That should fit all the marquees and you can't beat it as a sex symbol." Zanuck titled the film "The Macomber Affair."

Of "The Sun Also Rises," Hemingway raged: "Any picture in which Errol Flynn is the best actor is its own worst enemy." As for "The Old Man and the Sea," "I sat through all of that movie, numb. Spencer Tracy looked like a fat, very rich actor playing a fisherman."

Hemingway, who committed suicide in 1961, snarked that in a love scene in "For Whom the Bell Tolls," Gary Cooper "didn't take off his coat. That's one hell of a way for a guy to make love, with his coat on - in a sleeping bag."
(PageSix)