It's nearly a done deal for Matt Lauer to replace Bryant Gumbel as cohost of NBC's Today show, alongside Katie Couric, when Gumbel's contract with NBC expires in January. Lauer has served as Today's primary news reader since January '94 and has regularly substituted for Gumbel. With Lauer having just stepped down from his other assignment, as coanchor of a local newscast on NBC's New York City channel, a source close to Lauer's negotiations tells me that the official word on the Today job should come at any time. That is, of course, unless Gumbel changes his mind at the last minute about leaving Today after 15 years....
Pamela Lee, Bay watch's No. 1 babe, just sent publishers a proposal for an autobiography, tentatively titled Pamdemonium. Lee is prepared to discuss her own sex life, to offer tips on how to have what she calls outrageous sex, and to write about her plastic surgery in a chapter titled, "The History of My Breasts." Also in the proposal: Lee quotes Oprah Winfrey as recently telling her, "I should take a lesson from you and live my life with more abandon." Todd Gold, deputy chief of PEOPLE'S Los Angeles bureau and the coauthor with Richard Pryor of Pryor Convictions, the comic's autobiography, will cowrite Lee's book....
Early in the movie hit The First Wives Club, Bette Midler's character quizzes Goldie Hawn's about her cosmetic surgery, asking, "Did you get the whole enchilada?" But in the trailer for the film, Midler asked, "Did you get the whole Ivana?" The reference was, of course, to Ivana Mazzucchelli (formerly Trump), no stranger to the occasional nip and tuck. Could it be that Paramount and the filmmakers changed the line so as not to offend Ivana, who has a cameo in the film? Well, not according to a Paramount representative, who says Ivana became enchilada "because it was funnier." You be the judge....
That Mel Gibson is some kidder. Actor Liev Schreiber, at the recent Manhattan premiere of the movie Big Night, said that while he was working with Gibson on the forthcoming thriller Ransom, due in November, Gibson would keep a fake dead rat inside his coat. When women fans came up to him on the set and requested autographs, Gibson would throw open his coat and flash them the rat. "He just loved watching their reactions," says Schreiber. Gibson's rep didn't exactly smell a rat, saying, "That sounds like something he would do. Mel's a real practical joker."...
After seeing actor Anthony Hopkins play artist Pablo Picasso in the new movie Surviving Picasso, I wondered if his stint as the Spanish genius had turned Hopkins into a collector. Guess not. Hopkins's manager Bob Palmer tells me that Hopkins "doesn't own any real Picassos or prints—or fakes."...
And finally, Madonna's doctors have told her to expect her baby girl anytime between Oct. 7 and Oct. 14. The baby will be born in L.A., but the mother-to-be has yet to decide whether to have her daughter at home or in a hospital. As for the father-to-be, personal trainer Carlos Leon, I am assured he'll be at Madonna's side when the baby arrives.
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