• May 10, 1993
• Vol. 39
• No. 18

Chatter

By Kim Cunningham

HUMAN TRANQUILIZER [BR] Grudgingly passing up Aretha Franklin and other Motown faves. Murphy Brown (played by Candice Bergen) has spent the past season lulling baby Avery to sleep by crooning Harry Manilow hits. "When the) first called and asked if they could use 'Copacabana' to humiliate me, I said okay, but begged them to be gentle," says Manilow, 46, who will make a guest appearance at Avery's first birthday party in Murphy Brown's season finale (May 17) on CBS. "Murphy has had trouble bonding with her child so I sit her down and sing a ballad, 'I Am Your Child.' By the time it's over, she's weeping, and the music she's been putting down is the thing that brings her and the baby together." Murphy, in turn, has changed Manilow's viewing habits, since he's now a devotee of the show. "I stopped watching TV when I Love Lucy went off the air. I am probably the only person in the universe who has never seen an episode of Cheers." [P] WHITHER WITCH? [BR] Elizabeth Montgomery, who twitched her nose for eight years as suburban sorceress Samantha on TV's Bewitched (1964-72), has since starred in more than a dozen TV movies, including her latest, Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story, which airs this Monday (May 3) on NBC. Ask her about a possible lien itched reunion special like those staged by The Brady Bunch et al, and she turns up the legendary nose at the idea. "I wouldn't do it again because it's been done, and I did it," says Montgomery, 60. "[But I did hear one hysterically funny idea—that Penny Marshall wanted to remake it as a feature with Meryl Streep and Hilly Crystal and Dame Edna Everage as Endora!" [P] IDLE GOSSIP [BR] In the new comedy movie Splitting Heirs, former Monty Pythoner Eric Idle. 50, plays a down-on-his-luck duke hoping to wrest the family fortune from a Yank (Hick Moranis) who claims to be the duke. Idle has no illusions about his own humble beginnings. I get royalties from my music—that's as close to royalty as I come," he says. "My ancestors are Yorkshire woolen spinners from a place called Idle. I was on TV once saying I thought 'idle' was a term used in the cotton mills for when the mills were idle. George Harrison faxed me and said, 'Don't give me that, you're just from a long line of lazy bastards!' " [P] COPPING A LINE [BR] Aidan Quinn, 34, currently onscreen in Benny & John, is playing a tough police detective in Blink, a thriller shooting in his hometown of Chicago. He prepared for the role by hanging out with local homicide detectives. "I literally stole lines that came out of their mouths and stuck them in the script," says Quinn, citing his favorite: "We will solve no crime before there's overtime." [P]