Chilly Philly
Philadelphia declined graciously when Sly Stallone offered the city's art museum an eight-and-a-half-foot statue of himself to be placed at the top of the steps where Rocky trained. But the likeness, depicting Stallone in boxing trunks, is in the works anyway. A city art committee agreed (but not unanimously) that the statue could stand there for two weeks during the filming of Rocky III in the spring. Afterward the city will keep it, but officials haven't said where. A Stallone spokesman insists it was altruism that motivated native son Stallone. "Sly realizes that Rocky is a great draw," he explains, "and would attract people to the finer pieces of art inside the museum."
Fear of Hiring
Actress Susan (Blume in Love) Anspach says 1980 led her to four film roles and a major breakthrough in her therapy. "I created a situation around me to sustain things," says the single mother of a daughter, 12, and son, 10. Translation: some new hired hands. To her full-time housekeeper, she's now added a business manager and a gardener at her Santa Monica home. "I used to think of things like that as too upper-middle-class for me—that I was the artist and they didn't fit," she sniffs. "Even now, it all sounds so grown-up."
Better than Cheese
Group photographs—with local officeholders, constituents and power groupies—are an essential if boring part of any politician's life. Now comes some advice from Ronald Reagan, who learned a thing or two in Hollywood. He recently counseled Illinois GOP Congressman Henry Hyde always to stand at the far right end of the group facing a camera, so that in the left-to-right caption his name would be first. But that's only the beginning. "The actor Fredric March had a wonderful technique," Reagan continued to Hyde. "He not only stood at the right but he would watch the photographer carefully and just as he was pressing the shutter, Freddie would shout. Everybody would turn to look at him, and the picture that resulted showed a smiling Freddie as the focus of attention."
Rabbit Robot
What to give the man with everything? A bunch of Hugh Hefner's buddies (including James Caan, Bob Culp and songwriter Carol Connors) chipped in $4,000 to buy him a 60-inch-tall robot for his West Coast mansion. The helpful bucket of bolts, a neuter named Hef Jr., asks visitors to sign the guest book, brings Hef's pipe and drink, announces the film in the screening room and has a TV in his belly—but no centerfold staples.
Cut the Cracks, Just the Facts
To TV audiences of the last five years, he's Col. Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H, but a slightly older crowd remembers Harry Morgan as Officer Bill Gannon, Jack Webb's sidekick in Dragnet, canceled in 1970. Since then Morgan has proved himself in comedy, and Webb has bored deeper into producing, all the while maintaining his terse perfectionism. Asked if he would ever give up M*A*S*H, Morgan boomed an almost definite no. "Only," he said as an afterthought, "if they revived Dragnet. And Jack."
Furthermore
•Peter O'Toole says the major misconception people have about him is that "I'm mad—and I'm not." In addition, the star of Stunt Man says he is "not an alcoholic or a homosexual. I love women. I marginally prefer them to men." So there.
•While visiting the Middle East on his avowedly unofficial visit, Henry Kissinger had a meeting with former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban. Kissinger said he was completing Volume II of his memoirs, "and you, Eban, look very well in them!" Referring to another tome, Eban snapped: "That's nothing compared to how well I look in the book I wrote myself!"
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