Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review March 14, 2003 / 10 Adar II, 5763

Bill Steigerwald

Bill Steigerwald
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Vanity Fair gets us ready for month's big event


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | It's coming soon.

It cannot be stopped by protestors.

It's logistics have been planned for a year.

The media are ready for the brutal, life-changing action to begin. Before March ends, the hot desert floor will be spattered again with the blood, sweat and tears of men, women and children from America and foreign lands.

Oscar Night in Hollywood is always a big deal. War or no war in Iraq, it happens every year during Tinseltown's holy month of March, when Academy Awards are handed out in bunches.

The awards ceremony will be conducted with the usual mix of class and crass March 23, so you have to read fast if you hope to finish all the good stuff in Vanity Fair's "The 2003 Hollywood Issue."

The ninth straight March VF devoted to America's most morally challenged export industry, the issue is, as Vanity Fair's cover accurately describes, "450 pages of stars and star-makers, Oscar favorites and old-timers, glamour and glamour, legends and leading ladies, history and mystery."

You've probably heard about the Michael Jackson piece, "Losing His Grip," which, unless it's going to be turned into the treatment for a horror movie, has nothing to do with Hollywood.

Without getting into details about Mike's legal, surgical or sexual problems, or trying to describe what's left of his poor nose, the story confirms everything strange and pathetic you've heard about the 44-year-old former black person - and then some.

Much classier (except for a few exceptions) are full-page portraits of female glamour-pusses such as Nicole Kidman by the late Herb Ritts, and 41 pages of "legends, big guns and scene-stealers" by Annie Leibovitz and other A-list photogs.

Among a dozen long articles packed into VF's love fest are ones about some of Hollywood's superstars of yore, such as Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and comedian Phil Silvers, and "Spiegel's Mighty Shadow."

An excerpt from a book about Sam Spiegel, a stereotypically sleazy and obnoxious Hollywood producer, the piece tells how Spiegel assembled the money and the stars to make four Oscar-winning movies - "The African Queen," "On the Waterfront," "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Lawrence of Arabia."

Not that movie stars and their enablers back then didn't do cruel and sordid things they wouldn't want their mothers to read about in Confidential, the Los Angeles celebrity magazine that, as a Vanity Fair piece explains, brought down-and-dirty tabloidism to Hollywood in the 1950s.

But reading about classy, interesting gents such as Grant and Stewart might make you wonder if, 50 years from now, people will read similar accounts about the lives of Ben Affleck and Tom Cruise with as much interest.

Speaking of Ben and Tommy, if you want to know how much they and their pals earn, spend and save while toiling in Hollywood's "factory in the sun," see "Earn, Baby, Earn" in the March 17 People.

Julia Roberts and Leonardo DiCaprio get $20 million per movie. But it might give little people some consolation to know that by the time they pay their army of agents, managers, attorneys, publicists, stylists - plus $5.7 million in state and federal taxes - their take-home pay is down to a crummy but still guilt-inducing $6.3 million.

Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.




JWR contributor Bill Steigerwald is an associate editor and columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Comment by clicking here.

03/11/03: A road map for Iraq's liberation devised by James Madison? … 10 minutes with James S. Robbins
03/06/03: Iraq war will come and go before we know it
02/28/03: America takes time out for swimsuits
02/26/03: 'We shall be seen as liberators' .... 10 minutes with noted Brit commentator David Pryce-Jones
02/21/03: Terrorism one of many losing battles
02/14/03: Editors planning for the day after Gulf War II
02/12/03: The 'religiosity' of Ronald Reagan … 10 minutes with author Paul Kengor
02/10/03: Should the shuttle crash be the end of NASA?
02/06/03: Dear Joan ...
01/31/03: Newsweek, Nation ponder pros, cons of Gulf War II
01/24/03: 'Original' ideas follow New Deal philosophy
01/22/03: When handicapping 2004, watch the economy: Ten minutes with … Charlie Cook
01/17/03: New Republic fans hatred for SUVs
01/14/03: 10 minutes with Santorum on ... taxes, steel and Lott
01/10/03: Newsweeklies move on to latest menace
01/07/03: The best of the Q&As
12/30/02: Rosie's demise tops list of 2002 highlights
12/23/02: GOP must stick to its principles: 10 questions for ... Bill Kristol
12/20/02: Lott fiasco uncovers bigger problem
12/18/02: Free markets king in Sweden, at least for a day: Ten minutes with …. Donald Boudreaux
12/13/02: Corruption of Indian casinos no surprise
12/06/02: Giving credit to young philanthropists
12/02/02: Ten minutes with …. Chris Matthews
11/26/02: It's critical to memorialize communism's victims: 10 minutes with … Lee Edwards
11/22/02: JFK's secret health woes are revealed
11/19/02: “It's best to contain Saddam”: Ten minutes with … Col. David Hackworth
11/15/02: Brushing up on the affairs of a wild world
11/12/02: Make Dems filibuster … 10 minutes with … Robert L. Bartley
11/08/02: National Geographic: Urban overpopulation is good
11/05/02: The bloody consequences of a broken INS: Ten minutes with … Michelle Malkin
11/01/02: Going to pot; thank heaven for media overkill
10/29/02: It's all about federalism: Ten minutes with … Jonah Goldberg
10/25/02: Frank Sinatra, Kurt Cobain, Mad Magazine will never die
10/22/02: Here's why Orwell matters: Ten minutes with … Christopher Hitchens
10/18/02: The sniper knocks Iraq off the covers
10/15/02: Iraq, oil and war: 10 minutes with ... economist/historian Daniel Yergin
10/11/02: England's gun-control experiment has backfired
10/04/02: Buchanan the media baron?
09/27/02: Analyzing Esquire, GQ is not for the squeamish
09/20/02: CEOs: The rise and fall of American heroes
09/13/02: Skeptics remind U.S. to calm down
09/10/02: 'A failure to recognize a failure': 15 minutes with ... Bill Gertz
09/06/02: Rating the 9-11 mags
08/30/02: Bad trains, bad planes, and bad automobiles
08/28/02: Baseball, broken, can be fixed: 15 minutes with George Will
08/16/02: 9-11 overload has already begun
08/13/02: Tell us what you really think, Ann Coulter
08/09/02: A funny take on a new kind of suburb
08/02/02: It's not the humidity, it's the (media) heat wave; the death of American cities
07/12/02: Colombia's drug lords are all business
07/09/02: If capitalism is 'soulless' then show me something better: 10 minutes with … Alan Reynolds
06/25/02: Origins of a scandal: 10 minutes with … Michael Rose
06/21/02: 9/11 report unearths good, bad and ugly
06/18/02: The FBI is rebounding … 10 Minutes with Ronald Kessler
06/14/02: U.S. News opens closet of Secret Service
06/11/02: 10 minutes with … William Lind: Can America survive in this 'fourth-generation' world?
06/07/02: America, warts and all
05/30/02: FBI saga gets more depressing
05/13/02: The magazine industry's annual exercise in self-puffery
04/30/02: 10 Minutes with ... The New York Sun's Seth Lipsky
04/26/02: Will the American Taliban go free?
04/23/02: 10 minutes with ... Dinesh D'Souza
04/19/02: Saddam starting to show his age
04/12/02: Newsweek puts suicide bombing in perspective
04/09/02: How polls distort the news, change the outcome of elections and encourage legislation that undermines the foundations of the republic
04/05/02: Looking into the state of American greatness
03/25/02: The American President and the Peruvian Shoeshine Boys
03/22/02: Troublemaking intellectual puts Churchill in spotlight
03/20/02: 10 minutes with ... Bill Bennett
03/18/02: Suddenly, it's cool again to be a man
03/12/02: 10 minutes with … Ken Adelman
03/08/02: TIME asks the nation a scary question
03/05/02: 10 minutes with ... Rich Lowry
02/26/02: 10 minutes with ... Tony Snow
02/12/02: Has Soldier of Fortune gone soft?

© 2002, Bill Steigerwald