Also: Listen to "Celebrity Watch" from CNN Radio's Ken Pauli
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Showbuzz
Web posted on:
Friday, December 11, 1998 3:48:10 PM EST
Today's buzz stories:
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Marilyn Monroe and Yankee great Joe DiMaggio kiss as they waited in the judge's chambers
for their marriage ceremony
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NEW YORK (CNN) -- Before she became Marilyn Monroe, 16-year-old Norma Jeane Baker wrote a five-page letter in which she talks about her excitement at the chance to meet her father for the first time. The missive is expected to bring between $20,000 to $30,000 when it goes on the auction block at Sotheby's on December 15.
The letter is a rare glimpse into the early days of the screen legend who spent her childhood in orphanages and foster homes, where she was both neglected and abused. It is dated February 16, 1943, and was written to Grace McKeen Goddard, the friend and legal guardian who had always encouraged Norma Jeane to believe that she would eventually be a star.
The future star writes of her father: "Oh Gracie, you just can't imagine how excited I am, to think I am really going to see him at last. Golly I just hope that he will want to see me...". Although it can't be confirmed, it's unlikely that the meeting with her father ever took place. In the letter, she also writes of her husband of eight months, aircraft factory worker James Dougherty, how little money they have, shopping with her ration book and getting more photos of herself taken.
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Clinton
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LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has announced the debut of a special CD featuring artists including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan. The Warner Bros. project, "Song America: A Celebration of America and its Music," will raise money for the "Save Our Treasures" program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The First Lady chairs the Millennium Committee to Save America's Treasures. Stevie Wonder performed at the announcement ceremony.
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Hewitt
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NEW YORK (CNN) -- Don Hewitt, the executive producer of "60 Minutes," says television networks should combine their newsgathering efforts for a video wire service and spend some of the money saved in the process to put news back into newsmagazines.
"Each network doesn't have to have its own man or woman on the scene at every river that overflows its banks, every border where there's a skirmish, every town up and down the coast battening down for a hurricane," Hewitt said Thursday at the Frank Gannett Lecture series at the Freedom Forum.
ABC, CBS and NBC have approached officials at CNN about ways of joining forces to cover news outside the United States, but no agreements have been reached, in part due to competitive reasons. Hewitt is a frequent critic of newsmagazines other than "60 Minutes" for being more concerned with entertaining viewers and making profits than with producing serious journalism.
"Soap operas, which used to be the stuff of afternoon television, have moved upstairs and now run at night under the guise of newsmagazines," Hewitt said. He spoke on the same day that CBS announced he will deliver at on-air apology Sunday for a "60 Minutes" report on drug trafficking that was based on a documentary uncovered as fake. Hewitt also continues to take heat for the decision last month to broadcast video of Dr. Jack Kevorkian allegedly giving lethal drugs to a terminally ill man.
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Thomas
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LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- As he prepares to see his last episode of "Home Improvement" with the broadcast of Tuesday's Christmas show, Jonathan Taylor Thomas is looking toward college but he wants to be accepted to a top school based on his merit, not his celebrity.
"People have said, 'Oh, you're a celebrity and that will help you get into a school,'" Thomas tells USA Weekend. "My answer has always been, 'OK, great, so I get into a school based on my name. But how will I fare once I'm there? If I can't be competitive, it's a waste of my time.'"
The 17-year-old actor has been part of the "Home Improvement" cast since he did the pilot in 1991. He is ending a career that brings him what industry insiders estimate is no less than $50,000 a show. "It is walking away from a lot, and I know that," Thomas told USA Weekend on his last day of taping. But, he added of his entertainment career, "I don't want to grow up in this business and only know this business," he said.
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"Babe: Pig in the City"
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LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Although "Babe" got roasted at the box office the second time out, toys based on the porcine protagonist of "Babe: Pig in the City" are selling well this season, which is shaping up to be a better holiday season for movie toys than last year.
But kids are really going buggy for critters from that other big children's movie. "It's going to be 'A Bug's Life' Christmas. It's not going to be a 'Babe' Christmas," said Jeffrey Thomison, an analyst for Hilliard Lyons. "A Bug's Life," an animated Disney adventure about ants, opened to huge box office business during Thanksgiving weekend. "Babe: Pig in the City" opened the same weekend and flopped. It got generally good reviews but some critics found it too scary for children. Nevertheless, one of the most popular items in recent weeks has been a talking stuffed animal called Real Live Babe.
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