Henry Kissinger was a face too famous for an American Express commercial, but his booming baritone is perfect for selling haute culture. This summer he's found his way into Texas living rooms with a TV spot that features him, surgeon Michael De Bakey and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. His portion goes like this. Announcer: "What's it like to be an ex-Secretary of State?" "Well, actually, I'm not worried. I've got season tickets to the Houston Grand Opera." Socialite Lynn Wyatt persuaded Kissinger to boost the opera and, though he's been offered $25 a minute, he's doing it free. He nixed a script that co-starred him with Farrah Fawcett-Majors and Muhammad Ali (too showbiz). "Although," he said with the oh-Henry twinkle, "I wouldn't mind meeting the young lady."
Taste Treat
"I thought it was disgusting and in very bad taste," sniffed disco queen Grace Jones at her birthday party after Divine, a hefty transvestite, sat squarely in the 1,510-pound birthday cake and started lobbing gobs of it at fellow celebrants. Before Divine's arrival, the cake had been topped by 6,000 carnations and a Honda 400. "Some people will do anything for a picture," scolded Jones, who a few moments before had left $300 worth of heel marks on a rented Lincoln Continental she had been posing on for New York paparazzi. "I wanted to get down on the dance floor," she explained, "but then I didn't want to step in all that cake and ruin my $90 shoes."
Skate Date
In the midst of a tax revolt a governor needs whimsy. So rockin' Linda Ronstadt, frequent companion to the governor of California, whizzed into one of Brown's favorite restaurants on skates to meet him for dinner. "Jerry can roller-skate real well, but I can't yet," Linda told the staff at L.A.'s El Adobe Cafe.
Leg Up
She tapped with Ginger Rogers in Stage Door (1937) and with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland in Easter Parade (1948), so it seemed a little late for Anne Miller, 55, to succumb to stage fright. "I'm not ready, I'm not ready," she fretted, as lights dimmed at the breakfast musical extravaganza that the Milliken textile people throw for clients annually at New York's Waldorf. "Oh, yes you are," declared her circa-200-pound dressing lady, who hoisted the reluctant hoofer, carried her some 25 feet from dressing room to stage and pushed her into the spotlight. Ann danced.
Pshaw
To Coloradans there was something wrong with that State Department report that the Shah of Iran was going to build a million-dollar Aspen castle to replace his Swiss retreat. Robert Cox, who contributes to a column in The Weekly, down the Roaring Fork a piece in Glenwood Springs, put his finger on it: "...in Aspen, a $1 million castle is otherwise known as a two-bedroom condo with a garage and a garbage disposal."
Furthermore
•Undecided about what to buy at Phyllis Morris' tony L.A. sleep shop (PEOPLE, April 17), rasp rocker Rod Stewart slipped into the powder room—and bought that. Or rather, an exact replica. Rod took a shine to the light-studded, bronze-mirrored floor, walls and ceiling, which a staffer explained creates "an illusion of infinity." Infinity costs $8,000.
•Somebody's bound to be hurt in a divorce, even in those wonderful new painless splits like the Valerie Harper-Dick Schaal one. "We are totally happy," bubbles Valerie. "We've divided everything right down the middle." So who's unhappy? "Our lawyers. They're very disgruntled because they've had so little to do."
•Dick Gregory and Alex Haley dined together one night at the home of flamboyant lawyer Melvin Belli, where the activist comic told the 1970s' most famous genealogist that he's been researching the family trees of America's richest families. Said Gregory: "It seems the Rockefeller roots suddenly began along the Missouri-Kansas border at exactly the same time Frank James, Jesse's brother, dropped out of sight." Harrumphed Haley: "Dick, you've started more rumors than any man I know."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
