“Driving” Jones to the Cort
Broadway’s Cort Theatre was simply renamed for my longtime good friend James Earl Jones.
I possibly know James Earl per week or two below without end. I’ve been backstage in his dressing room. The play was “You Can’t Take It With You,” and he was sitting simply in his drawers. I knew his spouse. I do know his son.
I used to be there when son Flynn zipped him up and adjusted his suspenders earlier than he met the general public. I recall Jimmy and spouse Cece in my kitchen. I can’t neglect calling him when the Tony winner with assorted Emmy noms stated: “Write me. I can’t hear nicely on the telephone.” And Christmas I keep in mind him studying Lincoln’s 1848 manuscript aloud.
When he was in Broadway’s “Driving Miss Daisy,” he stated, via a cookie in my condo: “The play’s construction is absolutely easy. No make-up. If I get shiny, they powder me. The present’s solely 90 minutes. No intermission.” After which this unimaginable onetime nice voice for CNN added: “So if you must pee, you’ll should crawl over somebody.”
James Earl Jones, I really like you.
Roiled in royal confusion
Princess Diana I met. I understood. Kristen Stewart, Oscar nom for playing her, I don’t perceive.
Kristen: “I needed to be taught the whole lot objectively. We haven’t goal experiences with folks we don’t know. It’s at all times via some funnel or lens. She had unstoppable vitality — however was stopped. Shedding her made her character ghost-like. She was distant, however appreciated folks — type of. Unknowable, she helped folks join with fellow people. Everybody ought to have a unique expertise with the film. To have the ability to maintain her vitality once more.”
And, “We’re all Girl Di once we watch ‘Spencer.’ ”
Film, good. Rationalization, not.
A woman’s charms
The Bernie and Sid present, WABC radio’s enormously successful program — 770 on the AM dial 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. — celebrated International Women’s Day.
On their air, I stated girls in the present day are executives, pilots, bus drivers, carpenters. However our extensively superior place on race and intercourse hasn’t reached everybody.
An lawyer I do know acquired on an elevator. One different passenger. A younger woman. Each acquired off on the similar ground. This senior gentleman stepped again to politely enable her to exit first. She screamed at him. Railing how previous hat and silly he was.
Perhaps we have to work on coaching gents moreover educating them primary rest room habits.
Meals & ideas
Yesterday’s Publish wrote about Carmine Avenue’s Ukrainian restaurant Sveta. Outdoors, Ukrainian flags fly. Inside, realizing her household’s struggling devastation in Kharkiv, Svetlana Savchitz cries.
Boris Kleyman, my Russian born/American citizen techie and good friend 20 years: “Mom and son run NYC’s Sveta restaurant. It’s the place I needed to go along with you. We had been planning to go there for dinner. I do know her and her son very nicely. Now her household is being bombed.”
Florida smarties
Florida deficiency thrives. Its governor desires to be president. Its former governor, Rick Scott, now a junior GOP senator, is one other main mind. On Zoom with Ukraine’s Zelensky he went mute. He was additionally admonished. Non-techie and doubtless preferring crayons to ship a message, this wizard additionally voted towards publish workplace upgrades. So for one thing from Florida — try oranges.
What pols love greater than bashing NYC is to go to it. Kevin McCarthy, California congressman/minority chief of the Home of Representatives, was on the St. Regis. Cartographers checklist {that a} actually giant schlep from downtown Palo Alto.
Solely in New York, children, solely in New York.
