From PEOPLE Magazine
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Columbia TriStar has taken out additional insurance to protect itself against loss for the May 13 Donny & Marie show. That's the day Donny Osmond and sister Marie will call three audience members onstage and offer to pay $1 million to any one of them who outsmarts magician Howard Posener. Posener will have four keys to a lock. If one of the contestants picks the key that works, he or she gets the money. Posener has never performed this trick. "I didn't tell [Columbia] that. They don't know it's as risky as it is," he says, adding optimistically, "I've been practicing, though."
New papa Gil Bellows, who plays Ally McBeal's ex-boyfriend on the show, is clearly going to be a hands-on dad. At the L.A. premiere of his Cinemax film Judas Kiss, Bellows and his wife, actress Rya Kihlstedt (Deep Impact), sat in the back row of the theater cuddling with daughter Ava Emmanuelle, born April 4. Asked whether fatherhood keeps him up at night, a smiling Bellows told us that "it keeps me up in a good way. I stay up and watch sports news and then I go to sleep. I have another shift when I wake up before I go to work."
It sure helps, when holding a school fund-raiser, to have parents like Patti Scialfa and Bruce Springsteen in the audience. I hear that at a dinner benefiting the Rumson Country Day School in Rumson, N.J., Bruce donated a signed guitar. When someone bid $10,000, Springsteen said that wasn't enough and threw in a 30-minute guitar lesson. The offer then went up to $17,000. Still not satisfied, Bruce threw in two front row seats to a Springsteen concert this summer. The bid that finally won over the Boss? A tidy $27,000.
In response to reader e-mail asking why CBS is scuttling five new episodes of The Nanny leading up to the May 12 finale, we spoke with executive producer Robert Sternin, who says he wasn't told of the decision (made, we understand, due to low ratings) until a few weeks ago. "I'd like to apologize to fans, who probably feel as betrayed as we do," he says. The only solace: CBS will run the episodes this summer.
