Focus
When Ralph Nader portrayed the Chevy Corvair as a coffin on wheels in his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, he wasn't thinking about Rose Martin. Still, on May 6, Martin, who died at 84 of heart disease, was laid to rest inside her 1962 white Corvair at Tiverton, R.I.'s Pocasset Hill Cemetery.
"She loved her car," says body-shop owner George Murray, 60, one of two mechanics who had kept the vehicle humming since Martin purchased it new, 36 years ago, for $2,500. "She kept it right up to par." Martin's auto suited her particular needs. A 1970 hip operation had left her with a disfigured right foot, and—as her son Robert, 53, says—the Corvair, which had no hump on the floor, "was the only car she could drive with her left foot."
Over the years, Martin drove the car to her job as a police matron, to the funeral of her husband, Angelo, in 1981 and around town—putting 84,000 miles on the odometer. Robert and his sisters Patricia Boyer, 55, and Agatha St. Amour, 52, first realized the depth of their mother's feelings about the car last year, when she began making arrangements to be buried with it. "We tried our darndest to talk her out of it," says Robert. "But she said, 'No way. That car's going with me.' "
And it did. On a drizzly day, after a Catholic mass, Martin and her car, its original bill of sale still in the glove compartment, were lowered into a grave beside her husband. "She always said she was going to take it with her," mechanic Murray noted. "She wasn't kidding."
Geraldo Punches Out
Swearing off must-sleaze TV, Rivera exits daytime and goes gently into the night
After 11 years, 2,163 shows and one broken nose, Geraldo Rivera left daytime TV on May 7. Rivera moves on to a six-year deal with NBC news reportedly worth $30 million, where he will host NBC specials and a new CNBC show while continuing with CNBC's prime-time Rivera Live. At 54, Rivera admitted feeling "wistful and nostalgic" as he looked back on the show that helped pave the way for Jerry Springer. "I've had more ups and downs than the Cyclone at Coney Island," he says. Below, some Geraldo moments we'll always treasure:
November 1988: During a row with neo-Nazis, a flying chair smashes Rivera's nose.
February 1992: With the cameras rolling, Rivera has fat from his butt injected into his face to smooth away wrinkles.
August 1992: In a show shot at a Wisconsin Klan rally, Rivera is arrested for misdemeanor battery. The charges were dropped.
After looking back, does Rivera suffer a twinge of regret? No, it was all in the heat of competition. "Those with taste and judgment pulled out [of the outrageous end of daytime]," he says. "Those with dogged determination to succeed at all costs stayed down there."
THIS WEEK IN COURT
CASE #1
Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart is seeking $825,000 in damages from a landscaper who she says is lying about their run-in last summer near Stewart's house in East Hampton, N.Y. In the complicated dispute's latest salvo, Stewart, 56, charges Matthew Munnich, 24, with fabricating the story that she tried to run him down with her Chevy Suburban after she discovered a fence he'd built for a neighbor with whom she was feuding (over the neighbor's shrubbery). Police investigated but brought no charges. Munnich's lawyer Leonard Austin says Stewart "tried to run over him with a car and now is trying to run over him with litigation."
CASE #2
George Harrison won a suit in London to stop the sale of a recording by the Beatles made during a drunken evening in the Star Club in Hamburg, West Germany, in 1962. Musician Edward Taylor said John Lennon had given him oral consent to record the songs. But Harrison called the album (which includes cuts released in 1977 on Polydor) one of the "crummiest" Beatles records. Said Harrison: "One drunken person recording another bunch of drunks does not constitute business deals."
A Tall Tale of Style
Never heard of Randolph Williamson, one of the biggest names in fashion? Chances are you can't slam-dunk either. Called Nashville's best-kept secret by none other than Michael Jordan (we know you've heard of him), Williamson—a former pro-football player who spends his nights as a forklift operator at Nissan's Smyrna, Tenn., car plant—tailors clothing for oversized men, particularly athletes. His clients include Jordan (who ordered 9 dozen shirts with 40-inch sleeves) and ex-Dallas Cowboy Ed "Too Tall" Jones.
Williamson, 43, started stitching in high school and by college was dressing teammates. "It was very difficult to find clothes that fit," says Jones, 6'9", a teammate at Tennessee State University. "The big guys kind of forced him to make our clothing."
A fan of Calvin Klein's style, Williamson hopes one day to sell his line—which includes $300 shirts and $2,500 suits—in stores. But even with revenues of $200,000 last year, he's keeping the 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. shift at Nissan he started 12 years ago that bankrolled his business and paid for his parents' home. "It works," he says of his routine. "I'm a good napper."
THE NAME'S THE SAME
Clint Eastwood
Sharing a name with a star often doesn't make Clint Eastwood's day. When he was a kid, says the sheet-metal worker from Belton, Mo., "people thought, 'You must be a tough guy.' I ended up getting my butt whipped a lot." Now he gets a "Yeah, sure" when he orders things over the phone and a steady trickle of 2 a.m. calls from the not entirely sober. "On a daily basis," says the non-famous Eastwood, 32, "somebody makes a comment."
He isn't bitter though. Eastwood, who was named after a great-uncle, says there has been good along with the bad and the ugly. He met his wife, Christine, 29, a nurse, after she had noticed his name on a soft-ball sign-up sheet and wanted to see what he looked like. "Then he showed up," she says, "little Clint Eastwood."
Big Clint got invited to the other Eastwood's wedding in '87, but they never heard back. "He probably thought it was a joke," Eastwood says. The couple now have three kids and a good marriage, no doubt in part because Eastwood is nothing like his namesake's screen persona: "I tell my wife I love her every day."
Mary Green WANTS TO KNOW
This week, Godzilla destroys New York City. Which U.S. city do you think most deserves Godzilla's wrath?
Spin City's Richard Kind
"Wherever Kenneth Starr is living."
Joan Rivers
"D.C., because Clinton, with a smile on his face, could ask, 'Is there a Mrs. Godzilla?' "
No Looking Back director Edward Burns
"Seattle. They gave my movie the worst reviews."
Party animal
Beck the Halls
Santa Monica Museum of Art.
Rock fans know Beck the Grammy-winning music man, but are they ready for Beck the collage artist? Some folks in the art world think so; the ultra-hip gathered on May 7 for a bash celebrating Beck's first exhibit. To create his art, Beck, 27, uses vitamin tablets, Polaroid self-portraits, a smashed 45 and other "things that aren't generally acknowledged as being aesthetically valuable," as he puts it.
UNREAL ESTATE
Today's Katie Couric, 41, is selling the Virginia retreat she shared with her late husband Jay Monahan and their two daughters. The 200-year-old brick house, called Valhalla, sits on 9½ acres. For $425,000 the new owner also gets politico couple Mary Matalin and James Carville as neighbors.
Card Sharks
A pair of kings in his hand, Matt Damon figured he couldn't lose, so he put up everything he had—$6,200—and waited to see what the man two seats away held. Flashing a pair of aces, Doyle Brunson proved why he's the two-time world champion poker player—and Damon's just an actor. "It was a great way to lose," the Oscar winner said. "To the best player in the world when he has the best hand."
Armed with $10,000 each, Damon and actor pal Edward Norton held their own on May 11 for several hands of Texas Hold 'em, a seven-card-stud game that's the championship event at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. The duo had fine-tuned their poker skills last fall to prepare for their upcoming movie Rounders, in which they star as card sharks moving through Manhattan's underground poker world.
Seated at separate tables in a vast tent that housed 352 players from 30 countries, the poker-faced pals harbored few illusions about fleecing this crowd. "I probably have a better chance of getting through a few rounds at Wimbledon," Norton joked. He was out two hours into the tournament.
"I was going to lose," said Damon, who lasted three hours longer. "The question was how."
You Transparent Heel!
Every couple of decades, it seems, America's stylesetters seek clarity in their footwear. In the '50s, Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield strutted about sexily on see-through stilettos. And in the '70s disco dudes and divas sported chunky, transparent heels, which they sometimes filled with water—and (slosh—Do the Hustle!—slosh) goldfish! Lately, such Hollywood stars as Minnie Driver, Gwyneth Paltrow and Geena Davis have shown a liking for spikes of solid Lucite. "They're Cinderella-like with a '50s twist," says stylist Karin Labby. Today's glasslike slippers are practical too. Says Halston shoe designer Randolph Duke: "They fade to nothingness and work well with every dress."
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!
