No-one is recognised as knowing more about Hollywood and celebrities than David Hartnell MNZM. He’s not only spent a lifetime reporting on Hollywood’s trivia, gossip and scandals, but he counts many celebrities among his personal friends. Every Monday morning David will give you an exclusive weekly update on the gossip, scandals and trivia of Hollywood’s elite.
David is an award winning broadcaster and columnist and he is also the patron of The Variety Artists Club of New Zealand Inc.
Her Majesty The Queen, awarded David the Insignia of a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (formerly an MBE) in the Queen’s birthday Honours list 2011 for his recognition for his services to entertainment.
In 2012 he was made an Ambassador St James Saviours, the trust formed to save the iconic Auckland theatre. In 2014 he was made an Ambassador to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of New Zealand.
In 2016 he was made Patron of the Brotherhood of Auckland Magicians.
Visit David’s Website
‘Under a spell – David Hartnell’s First Love,‘ in the NZ Woman’s Weekly. View the article here on David’s website.
Be in to win monthly DVDs
…simply answer a question correctly, from this week’s column and you will be entered into the draw.
This week: In the movie Born on the Fourth of July, Tom Cruise played a veteran from which war?
Answer by clicking here.
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Monday 14th November 2016
I’m not one to gossip but……………My love of brass bands goes back to my childhood, infact, when I was at collage I had the cheek to ring trumpet player Lloyd Thorn and ask him if I could borrowed a trumpet for a show I was doing. He didn’t know me from a bar of soap, but kindly agreed to loan me one of his trumpets.
One of my all time favourite musical movie moments is, Robert Preston singing Seventy Six Trombones from the 1957 movie Carousel. While living in the UK, I had the pleasure of working with the man with the golden trumpet Eddie Calvert. My connection with trumpets these days is award winning trumpet player, good friend and one of the nicest men
in show business not to mention one of New Zealand’s best trumpeters, John McGough.
I’m an absolutely terrible cook, but my partner Somboon is a wonderful creative cook. This is his personal recipe for the real Thai style Pad Thai Noodles with free range chicken. We have been together for 23 years, in the first week we were together I cooked dinner, that set the bench mark for the rest of our lives – he does all the cooking and I do all the washing up!
So why am I telling you this? A brand new cook book called Music On The Menu had just been published with recipes from kiwi celebrities, artists and prominent citizens to raise money in aid of the National Band of New Zealand. Kiwi personalities like, Maggie Barry, Dame Malvina Major, Greg Johnson, Dame Alison Holst, Suzanne Prentice OBE, Lorraine Downes, Roger Fox, Prime Minister John Key and yours truly are amongst the many that have contributed with their secret recipe for the book.
These recipe books are $20 plus $2 p&p and you can inquire about purchasing
one from John who is also part of this star studded brass line up. If you would like to support please email him at johnm@trumpetguy.co.nz for details on how you can place your order.
This is a unique recipe book on the New Zealand market and will appeal to a wide variety of people. It will make a great Christmas present for the person who has everything.
Best in Brass Head Back to the World Championships.
The 2017 National Band of New Zealand has been selected to take on the
world’s finest at the World Band Championships in Kerkrade Holland July
next year. The band consists of the finest brass musicians in the country that made themselves available through a rigorous auditioning process.
Eight residents of Auckland have been chosen in the 36 piece band and to
raise funds the band have put together a recipe cook book featuring many
prominent New Zealanders who like the National bandsman.
The National Band of New Zealand is not a regular playing band and only get together for key engagements like these world championships. The first band was selected in 1953 and your help combined with their hard work, will be a huge step to ensure they are as successful as the National Representative bands that have gone before them.
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As Bruce Forsyth’s health fears hit the front pages, frantic preparations are underway at the BBC to prepare an obituary that won’t come back to bite them in the arse – no small challenge these days.
Biographers and friends are being sounded out about any potential skeletons that might be hidden in his closet. After all, Brucie’s career spans a number of decades, taking three marriages, numerous affairs (including one with Britain’s second ever Miss World, 19 year old Ann Sidney) and big overlaps at the Beeb with Savile, Stuart Hall and other such ‘characters’.
Word coming back so far is (thankfully) all good. Though he was a bit of a shagger in the Sixties, it all seems to have been above board – no bombshells expected. Now here’s something you can drop into a conversation and kill it stone dead! Bruce (born February 1928) is five months older than sliced bread (first sold July 1928). Now aren’t you all the better for
knowing that?
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The highly anticipated film is set to hit theatres in the US and UK on November 18, and fans can hardly wait.
Eddie Redmayne (who plays Newt Scamander in the movie) and his co-stars – Ezra Miler, Dan Fogler, Katherine Waterston and Alison Sudol – spoke on stage at the Apple Store Soho presentation of Meet the Cast: Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them in New York City.
The day before, the same cast members plus director David Yates and producer David Heyman attended a screening of the film in Toronto, Canada.
Since we have to wait another week to watch it, here’s a cute story Eddie shared about his favourite part of being a dad to his four-month-old daughter Iris to keep you occupied!
“It’s in the morning,” Eddie told the American magazine People. “If Iris has managed to sleep through the night and then you hear a gentle squeak and you go in [her room] and turn on the light … and the massive grin that’s like, ‘It’s a whole new day.’ That’s probably the greatest thing.
“Hilariously, she’s learned to shout,” he went on. “She doesn’t cry much, but she’s learned to shout. It’s hilarious, she’ll just be sitting there going, ‘Behhhhh!’ Like, what is that noise? From this tiny little thing. She doesn’t sound like a sheep, but it definitely doesn’t sound like a noise that could come from someone so small.”
“The amazing this is that everything that everyone has ever told you — all of the clichés — you become the person starting to spout out the clichés, as if they are the newest thought,” Eddie added.
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Just a few days before her marriage to one of the world’s richest men, the world’s most beautiful woman got cold feet.
Hollywood siren Rita Hayworth had been seduced by the sophisticated charm of billionaire playboy Prince Aly Khan in 1948.
Famed for his prowess with fast cars, fast horses and widely whispered to excel at the Egyptian sexual techniques of Imsak (similar to Tantric), he pursued her around the world, regularly lifting her flaming red tresses to fasten hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of diamonds around her neck.
But Hollywood’s 29-year-old Love Goddess was a worrier and a homebody and nothing like the smouldering femme fatales she played in movies such as Gilda, once dryly noting that ‘men go to bed with Gilda … and wake up with me’.
Hayworth was also still in love with her second husband, the brilliant actor, writer and director Orson Welles. Their marriage had broken up after his affair with Marilyn Monroe and her retaliatory fling with David Niven. But Welles was the father of her young daughter, Rebecca, and so, just before she was due to wed her Prince, she sent for Welles and begged him to remarry her.
Although Welles knew that her intended was ‘the most promiscuous man in Europe’, he advised Hayworth to go ahead with what will always be remembered as the most ostentatious wedding on the French Riviera.
The Prince emptied 200 gallons of cologne into the Olympic-sized swimming pool of his villa, the Chateau de l’Horizon, and 500 wedding guests consumed 600 bottles of champagne and 50lb of caviar while Hayworth — now officially Her High Princess Margarita — cut the cake with a glass sword.
The scene was typical of the giddy hedonism that had dominated the French Riviera ever since European aristocrats and artists made it their playground in the Twenties. Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Noel
Coward and Rudolph Valentino all enjoyed a carousel of cocktails and scandal.
In the early Thirties, a trio of glamorous women ran the show. Coco Chanel, Wallis Simpson and American actress Maxine Elliott hosted an endless round of parties at grand villas built to their precise specifications.
But while Simpson’s man, King Edward VIII, abdicated his throne for her, both Chanel and Elliott refused the repeated proposals of English aristocrats, preferring to control their own privileged lives. As Chanel said: ‘There have been several Duchesses of Westminster, but only one Coco Chanel!’ Like Hayworth, Maxine Elliott had made her way up from humble beginnings in the theatre (sleeping upright on trains in touring productions across the U.S.) to become celebrated as one of the most beautiful women of her day.
And this book’s author, Mary S. Lovell, is justified in dedicating the first third of her crisp, fizzy book about the Riviera Set almost entirely to the
extraordinary story of this bright, witty and unstoppable woman.
A captain’s daughter, Elliott married at 16 and caused a scandal by divorcing her alcoholic first husband before turning 20. Taking shrewd creative and financial control of her meteoric rise through the theatre, she became one of the world’s wealthiest women, picking up investment tips from her friend and lover J. P. Morgan, breaking into the closed circle of English aristocracy and eventually becoming a confidante (and possible lover) of King Edward VII.
During World War I, the fearless Elliott bought a 300-ton barge and took it
through the canals of Belgium, treating the wounded, delivering blankets and
serving soup to up to a hundred starving people per day.
Lovell first became interested in Elliott while writing her terrific 2011 book about the Churchill family, noting how Winston’s long stays at Elliott’s villa on the Riviera had refreshed and sustained him during some of the most difficult years of his political career.
Dynamited into a secluded, rocky cliff, halfway between the hotspots of Cannes and Antibes, the Chateau de l’Horizon was a low, white art deco masterpiece, built for Elliott in her late 40s. She was rumoured to have let her hair go white to match her new home’s vast marble staircase.
Guests parked their cars in a garage built to accommodate 100 vehicles and took baths filled by servants with champagne to cool their feet after a night’s dancing.
After decades in the theatre, Elliott knew exactly how to set a stage. Maids whisked incense through the halls; white lilies were sprayed to match table settings and when clouds blocked the evening shimmer of lunar light on the waves, Elliott simply switched on the large electric moon she had installed in the trees to complete the romance of her thyme-scented soirees.
When Churchill came to stay (usually without his wife Clementine) Elliott ensured there were pretty girls present to lift his mood, including Cara Delevingne’s great aunt Viscountess Doris Castlerosse (who had had an affair with Churchill’s son Randolph) and Daisy ‘Wanton’ Fellowes, who had attempted to seduce Churchill in Paris in 1919 by inviting him to a room in which he found her lying stark naked on a tiger skin rug.
On the Riviera, kind-hearted Doris thought nothing of sending her chauffeur on a 400-mile round trip to collect a swimsuit left behind in London, while sharp-tongued Daisy — who ‘lived on minute helpings of grouse, iced carrot juice and lashings of vodka’ — poured benzedrine into her punch bowl to ensure parties went with a whoosh.
After his abdication as King Edward VIII in 1936, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor leased a villa called La Croe just along the coast which the Duchess filled with mirrors — friends nicknamed her ‘Wallis through the Looking Glass’.
The Duke also brought over bagpipers, often setting a skirl of Scottish sound adrift on the Mediterranean breeze. He wore full Highland dress for dinner, causing the French staff to titter over his ‘little skirt’.
The grand houses fell into disrepair during the war. Coco Chanel occasionally popped by to check on her magnificent villa, La Pausa — built on a five-acre lavender farm — with her high ranking German lover, without ever knowing that the house’s architect was hiding Jewish refugees and operating a Resistance radio in the cellar.
After the war, Prince Aly Khan bought Elliott’s old villa. Churchill remained a regular visitor throughout the Fifties, when the Riviera set now included Hollywood, rather than aristocratic, royalty: Greta Garbo, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable and Frank Sinatra, who offended the Englishman by shaking his hand outside a casino in Monte Carlo: Churchill hated to be touched.
Lovell’s book ends with the death of Prince Aly Khan, aged 48, in 1960: he suffered massive head injuries after crashing his Lancia sports car while speeding to a dinner party. His pregnant fiancée, leading French fashion model Bettina, survived the accident, but miscarried their baby.
Today the Chateau de l’Horizon is owned by the Saudi royal family, who bought it in the Eighties. The famous chute to the sea — built to accommodate Maxine Elliott’s ample derriere — has been removed and the original villa makes up only a fifth of the massively extended building.
Russian oligarchs and Chinese super-entrepreneurs have snapped up the other properties — the average price of a five-bedroom house there reaches £18 million.
So although movie stars still flock to Cannes every year, the Riviera continues to live up to its old reputation.
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Believe it or believe it not! 2016’s four biggest box office films are all from Disney Studios and have collectively taken more than $4 billion (US).
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The next Miss Golden Globe has been selected and there’s a bit of a twist
this time – three ladies have been chosen! Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet
Stallone, the three daughters of Golden Globe winner Sylvester Stallone,
will be on stage during next year’s show helping presenters hand out awards.
“For the first time in Golden Globe history, we have proudly selected not one but three Miss Golden Globe representatives. The Stallone sisters will continue our time honoured tradition of handing out the statuettes at the awards ceremony,” HFPA President Lorenzo Soria said in a statement. “Each of the lovely young women in the triad have had success whether it be in academics, sports or pursuing a modelling career.
With being raised by such role models Sylvester and Jennifer (Flavin), we can’t wait to see what the future has in store for these ladies.” The Miss Golden Globe this year was Jamie Foxx’s daughter Corinne Foxx. “We’re thrilled to not only be part of the Golden Globe tradition, but to be making history as the first set of siblings ever chosen for the title and duties,” the sisters said in a joint
statement. “We are proud to be part of the HFPA family, an organisation that multiple times has recognised our father’s work in film.”
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A new tell-all on the late Joan Rivers titled Last Girl Before Freeway: The
Life, Loves, Losses And Liberation Of Joan Rivers is coming out next week.
And the author, Vanity Fair vet Leslie Bennetts, spoke to the American
tabloid magazine Star about what is in the pages.
The writer talked about the Fashion Police star’s romantic track record that
included flings with Johnny Carson, Robert Mitchum and John F Kennedy. And she touched on Rivers’ penchant for stealing soap from hotels and bitterly hating on her competitors like Kathy Griffin, 56.
‘Joan was not faithful to her husband Edgar,’ the writer started. ‘That was by her own admission.
‘And she left him briefly during one affair.’
The blonde funny lady was married to TV producer Edgar Rosenberg for 22
years. Together they had daughter Melissa, who works on TV’s Fashion Police and was close to her mother till the end.
Edgar committed suicide in 1987 at the age of 62. That death prompted Joan to consider suicide, Leslie asserted. But the TV darling instead reinvented herself.
Bennetts added Rivers liked men who were loaded. ‘She also claimed to have trysts with everyone from Johnny Carson and Robert Mitchum to John F Kennedy.’
Joan also talked about ‘touching Carson’s p****, and I would like to know if she was telling the truth,’ said Bennetts. The acid-tongued star also dated Orin Lehman, but left him after he cheated on her. The author said she later regretting leaving him.
Money was a driving force for Joan. When she went into debt after her husband Edgar died, she did everything she could to remake herself. ‘She went on to make an extraordinary comeback, and build a billion-dollar business in her 60s and 70s,’ said Leslie.
At the time of her death at age 81 in September 2014 from throat surgery gone wrong, she was reportedly worth $150 million (US). But the blonde icon still felt poor. ‘Joan struggled for years before she made it in comedy, and she never got over that fear of being poor,’ she said.
‘She always felt she had to stock up on everything from expensive shoes to motel soap bars, because the hard times might come again.’ The star also did not like the new guard.
She was friends with Kathy for years, but didn’t like how popular she was becoming. ‘She saw her success as a threat to her own status as the Queen Of Comedy,’ said Bennetts.
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The popular chat show host Graham Norton has discussed his relationship with alcohol.
Graham recently opened up about his drinking habits, calling himself a
“borderline alcoholic.”
Graham chatted about his love of alcohol in a recent interview with Woman
magazine. “I am very open about who I am. I am borderline alcoholic,” he said. “I prefer my life with alcohol – and I don’t feel I have to explain that
because it’s not like I have a niche interest.”
The gay chat show star also insisted that he always comes first in his relationships. Norton – who quit Twitter recently – said his romances are always “unequal,” because his lifestyle always comes before that of his boyfriend’s.
“My relationships are always unequal. For starters, my diary will always take precedence over a boyfriend’s,” he admitted. “If someone’s office Christmas party clashes with a TV recording night, I’m not cancelling that tot go to your stupid office party.
“If I’ve got two months off and he’s a surgeon with life-saving surgery to do, I’d be like, ‘For God’s sake, it’s the only time I can go on holiday.’
“You see the problem. All men have a little bit of alpha in them and aren’t wired to be the plus one.”
Last year, Norton said he thinks gay men his age don’t want to date “someone their age.”
The host said he felt pressure to be “settled,” and that people often asked when he was going to get into a serious relationship.
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With the 20th anniversary of JonBenet Ramsey’s death coming up next month, many networks have been airing movies and specials about the mysterious crime.
In case you didn’t know, JonBenet was a six-year-old beauty pageant star who was murdered in her home back in 1996 – and the crime remains unsolved.
In a Lifetime original movie called Who Killed JonBenet?, which premiered on Saturday (November 5), the narrator’s voice (played by Payton Lepinski) is spoken from the point of view of JonBenet, causing some people to wonder if the decision was a little too bold (and eerie).
The movie’s director Jason LaPeyre recently explained why he made this choice. “I mean, that was something that originally came from the writer, but I immediately really liked the idea,” Jason told E! News. “I liked it because I felt it was haunting, literally, but I thought it was a very unsettling device.
“But yeah, it was this idea of this human being, JonBenet Ramsey,” he added. “Lots of people have seen video of her dancing and heard her singing, but I’m not sure anyone’s ever stopped to think of her saying something or having a conversation, or having her own ideas about what may have happened that night, so we thought dramatically that was an interesting device with which to frame the story.”
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Jennifer Aniston is so in love with her husband Justin Theroux and she is gushing about him in her cover story for Marie Claire’s December 2016 issue.
Here is what the 47-year-old Office Christmas Party actress had to share with the mag:
On why she decided to write her Huffington Post op-ed: “My marital status has been shamed; my divorce status was shamed; my lack of a mate had been
shamed; my nipples, have been shamed. It’s like, Why are we only looking at
women through this particular lens of picking us apart? Why are we listening
to it? I just thought: I have worked too hard in this life and this career to be whittled down to a sad, childless human.”
On her husband Justin Theroux: “Why is he the right person for me? All I
know is that I feel completely seen, and adored, in no matter what state. There’s no part of me that I don’t feel comfortable showing, exposing. And
it brings forth the best part of myself, because I care about him so much. And he’s such a good person. It hurts me to think of anything hurting him.”
On what’s next for her: “This is a time when I’m not completely sure what I’m doing. I’m at this sort of crossroads trying to figure out what inspires me deep in my core. What used to make me tick is not necessarily making me tick any-more … The most challenging thing right now is trying to find what it is that makes my heart sing.”
For more from Jennifer, visit MarieClaire.com!
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Eddie Redmayne, 34, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them star revealed that he feels a certain pressure taking on the legendary Harry Potter
franchise.
“Do you feel pressure? Of course you feel pressure. Also, particularly because I loved the Potter films. There was something so warming about being able to dive back into that world every year or two. And if you’ve enjoyed something, you don’t want to be the one who comes in and screws it up,” Eddie told the UK Guardian. “But pressure’s there with every film. With The Theory of Everything it was knowing Stephen and Jane and the family would see the film. With The Danish Girl it was all the people that I’d met in preparation for the film who came from the trans community. It’s pressure here of a different type, which is called hardcore fandom.”
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Love Letters to the Landscape
54 New Zealanders write about the places in their hearts
Compiled by Paul Little
Everyone has a place with which they feel a special connection – a place in the heart. For some it’s a significant site from childhood, for others it’s a place they’ve discovered late in life. In this beautifully presented book, more than 50 well-known New Zealanders tell us about the places that mean something to them. From Cape Reinga to Stewart Island, from a suburban backyard to the ocean itself, it’s an often moving, sometimes funny and always joyful celebration of our land and people.
Contributors include: Aroha Awarau, Arthur Baysting, Judy Bailey, Chris Bourke, Jane Bowron, Jodi Brown, Suzy Cato, Mai Chen, Jeremy Corbett, Murray Crane, Erica Crawford, Theresa Gattung, Kate de Goldi, Fiona Farrell, Diane Foreman, Kerry Fox, Jarrod Gilbert, Jason Gunn, Nathan Haines, Lynda Hallinan, Paul Hartigan, Debbie Harwood, Donald Kerr, Sido Kitchin, Joel Little, Jordan Luck, Suzanne Lynch, Suzanne McFadden, Karl Maughan, Nick Malmholt, Moana Maniapoto, Anika Moa, Pete Montgomery, Scott Morrison, Stacey Morrison, Wendyl Nissen, Brian Parkinson, Philip Patston, Jenny Pattrick. Alexis Pritchard, Mike Puru, Kevin Roberts, William Rolleston,
Paula Ryan, Jo Seagar, Vaughan Smith, Robert Sullivan, Jack Tame, Denys Watkins, Gillian Whitehead, Penny Whiting, Joan Withers, Louise Wright, Brando Yelavich.
This a stunning book extremely well produced and would make a very special Christmas gift for the person has everything
$54.99 pclittle@gmail.com
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A TASTE OF THE WINERY TOUR
Blenheim will host the first ever A Taste Of The Winery Tour at the ASB Theatre in Marlborough on Valentine’s Day, 14th February 2017, adding something a little extra and special to The Winery Tour 2017.
Along with the stellar Winery Tour 2017 artist line up of Brooke Fraser, Bic Runga and Benny Tipene, A Taste of the Winery Tour will also offer a delicious tasting menu of local cuisine and wine from the Marlborough region, making for a night that promises to be full of great NZ food, wine and music.
Doors will open at 6pm. Each artist will play their own set. Between each set patrons will be able to enjoy the offerings of the local providers. The show will conclude at 10pm.
A Taste of the Winery Tour is an R18 event.
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GRUMPY OLD WOMEN ARE BACK IN GAME OF CRONES
Touring NZ in February, March & April 2017
Tickets on sale NOW
Yes they’re back! This time with magic! GRUMPY OLD WOMEN bring their Game of Crones to answer the unanswerable. How to fix absolutely everything!!
They conquered NZ with GRUMPY OLD WOMEN, took Australia and the Universe by storm with 50 Shades of Beige and now they’re in another World. Yes!
GRUMPY OLD WOMEN: GAME OF CRONES is coming and it offers practical remedies for the atrocities of modern life.
Advice for administering safe torture to prevent snoring using BBQ tools. Demonstrations of how to clean the bath whilst having mediocre sex at the same time. How to overeat on a diet. What to do when the man in your life kisses your miniature Schnauzer more than you.
In Game of Crones, the young are discussed and then dismissed. Men are lovingly disemboweled. Old fashioned house- keeping practises resurrected; is it too late to learn to sniff meat to determine if it’s past its use by date?
GRUMPY OLD WOMEN will stop for nothing on their mission to slay the dragons of nonsense and reclaim the kingdom of common sense …well maybe a glass of wine and a lie down.
The show has plenty of laughs, poorly supported breasts and unreliable statistics, so for a night of unbridled fun bring your swords and handbags and learn from the sorceresses themselves, how to survive the modern kingdom of Aoteoroa.
Geraldine Brophy directs and stars with Lynda Milligan and Julie Edwards in this hilarious piece of fantasy thankfully without nudity or real blood.
February
28 Whangarei Forum North 8pm Ticketek
March
1 Whangarei Forum North 8pm Ticketek
2 Kerikeri The Centre 8pm The Centre
3 Auckland BMC 8pm Ticketmaster
4 Hamilton x 2 Clarence Street 4pm and 8pm Ticketek
5 New Plymouth TSB 8pm Ticketek
7 Wellington Opera House 8pm Ticketek
9 Rangiora Town Hall 8pm Ticketek
10 Christchurch Aurora Centre 8pm Ticketek
11 Christchurch x 2 Aurora Centre 4pm and 8pmTicketek
12 Oamaru Opera House 8pm Ticketdirect
13 Invercargill Civic 8pm Ticketdirect
14 Dunedin Regent 8pm Ticketdirect
15 Timaru Theatre Royal 8pm Ticketek
17 Ashburton Event Centre 8pm Ticketdirect
18 Blenheim ASB Theatre 8pm Ticketdirect
19 Nelson x2 Theatre Royal 4pm and 8pm Ticketdirect
21 Lower Hutt Little Theatre 8pm Ticketek
22 Kapiti Southwards 8pm Ticketek
23 Palmmy Regent 8pm Ticketdirect
24 Wanganui Royal Opera House 8pm RWOH
25 Carterton Events Centre 8pm www.eventfinda.co.nz
26 Napier x2 Century Theatre 4pm and 8pm Ticketek
28 Gisborne War Memorial 8pm Stephen Jones Photography
29 Rotorua HMPAC 8pm Ticketmaster
30 Auckland Sky City 8pm Ticketek
31 Auckland Sky City 8pm Ticketek
April 1 Auckland Sky City 4pm Ticketek
2 Tauranga Baycourt 4pm and 8pm Ticketek
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…………………. Until next week my lips are sealed!
David H. W. Hartnell MNZM copyright 2016
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Monday 7th November 2016
I’m not one to gossip but…………… Nicole Kidman may be divorcing for a second time — and Scientology could be to blame again! RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned her Kiwi husband Keith Urban‘s involvement in the cult-like church in the 1990s could lead to a $200 million (US) divorce.
“The marriage was already on the ropes, and this could be the knockout blow,” an insider close to the A-list couple told Radar. “This would be the final insult for Nicole. Keith knows how much she hates Scientology!”
Kidman, 49, will be “livid if she finds out,” as the church has been known for destroying her marriage to her first husband, Tom Cruise, 54, by labelling her a “suppressive person.”
David Dobson, a Nashville music figure close to Urban, revealed his ties to
the religion. “The last few times I talked to him, Keith was talking about being a Scientologist. He wasn’t with Nicole then,” he said of the former American Idol judge. “He was pretty hard into it.”
Urban’s former writing partner, Vernon Rust, claimed he hoped the religion would kick-start his career. “These were lean years for Keith,” Vernon said. “He was desperate to make it. He would consider anything that would help him — including Scientology!”
The revelation comes after Kidman and Urban have spent only 119 days together this year. The actress has been in Australia filming, while he has been on tour to promote his brand new album. They were last photographed together on August 13 in New York.
“Keith had five days off from his tour, and he could have been at his wife’s side,” the insider said. “But he claimed that he was too busy.”
As The National ENQUIRER reported, cheating rumours are also contributing to their marital issues, as Kidman’s close relationship with co-stars Alexander Skarsgård and Jude Law have Urban reportedly upset. But he isn’t innocent, as he has been spending time with 23-year-old singer Kelsea Ballerini. Kidman is also “worried sick” her husband may return to drugs and alcohol while on the road.
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This stunning replica of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress cost Netflix a
huge £30,000 to make and took seven weeks to create. The dress steals the
show in new £100 million Netflix drama The Crown, one of the most extravagant television programmes ever made.
The Crown charts the life on Queen Elizabeth from childhood to the present day, and follows the early partnership of Elizabeth and Philip as they are thrust into the limelight as a young couple when George VI dies and Elizabeth inherits the throne.
The 10-part first series was released on the online streaming service yesterday, and follows The Queen from her early years up until the 1950s. A second season of the show, covering the 1960s, is already being produced, and The Crown has received rave reviews from critics.
Read more here.
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David Beckham is opening up about why he is proud to wear a poppy even
though FIFA wants to ban poppies on shirts during the World Cup qualifiers
taking place on Remembrance Day.
The memorial day is held to remember the members of the armed forces who
have died while in duty and has been held on November 11 since WWI.
David was spotted wearing a poppy on his jacket while stepping out on
Thursday (November 3) in London, England. He took to Instagram the next day to share why he is proud to be wearing the poppy.
“I was always proud to put on an England shirt and I feel the same way about wearing a Poppy. For me the Poppy is a small way we can show our appreciation for the incredible sacrifice that millions of men and women did
on our behalf. It’s our way of showing we remember them. We should always be allowed to show our respect and remembrance for that sacrifice,” David captioned a photo of a veteran grabbing a poppy.
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Michael Bublé has cancelled his tour and all other engagements after son
Noah has been diagnosed with cancer.
Little Noah, who just turned three in September, had travelled to the US
with his mum, Luisana Lopilato, and dad Michael after they raised concerns about his health.
The pair have cancelled their work commitments for the forseeable future as
they care for their young son. It is thought the star planned on touring in
2017 and he was due to host the UK Brit Awards. He was also due to host the
Juno Awards.
In a statement posted on Luisana’s Facebook, Michael said: “We are
devastated by the recent cancer diagnosis of our eldest son Noah who is
currently in treatment in the United States.
“We’ve always talked a lot about the importance of the family and the love we have for our children. Katie and I are going to spend all our time and attention to help Noah to get better, by suspending our professional activities for now.
“During this difficult time, we ask that you pray for him and please respect our privacy. We have a long road ahead of us and we hope that with the support of our family, friends, fans around the world and our faith in God, we can win this battle.”
I’m sure we all want to send the family a lot of love in this difficult time.
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The great Meryl Streep has won eight Golden Globe Awards and is certain to
be a winner again when the Globes are handed out on January 8. It’s just
been announced that Miss Streep will be the recipient of the Golden Globes’
Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement.
The prize has in the past gone to such people as Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Nicholson, Doris Day, Robert Redford, Steven Spielberg and last year’s recipient Denzel Washington.
The award is given to a talented individual for outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment. Miss Streep is only the third female recipient of
the award since 2000, when Streisand won it. Jodie Foster was honoured in 2013.
Streep has earned 29 Golden Globe nominations and could get a 30th this year if she receives a nod for Florence Foster Jenkins. She last won in 2011 for
playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.
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Nicole Kidman wears Dior Haute Couture on the cover of Town and Country magazine’s December 2016 issue.
Here’s what the 49-year-old actress had to share with the mag:
On her personal connection to her new film Lion: “I can see now, for Lion,
that it was important to me because I’m a mother with adopted children. This
movie is a love letter to my children. [My character] Sue is deeply maternal
and full of unconditional love, which is beautiful. That’s why I wanted to do it. I relate to that. I feel that for my own children who are adopted.
“It’s not about anything else other than ‘I wanted you.’ It’s that deep and
personal, and whatever your journey is, I’m here to love and support you. That’s what I connected to.”
On her pattern in picking projects: “I call myself the wild card because I
have no idea what it is. I’m so spontaneous—sometimes to my detriment and
sometimes my benefit—but it’s how I’ve always been. My husband [Keith Urban] never knows what I’m going to choose. And then he’ll ask me to explain why and I can’t!”
On her desire to be thrilled, both in projects and in life: “The mistakes I’ve made have always involved people not matching the extreme artistic desire—when I’ve tried to be a bit more homogenised, or tried not to be as bold. When I’ve been guided into places that don’t suit what I am intrinsically—that’s when it doesn’t work out…I’ve been the same way since I was 14. I don’t conform. That’s just my nature.”
For more from Nicole, visit TownandCountryMag.com.
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One thing about Johnny Depp – he’s always heavily accessorised – it must
take him awhile to get dressed in the morning. He’s been drowning his divorce sorrows by playing music with Alice Cooper and enjoying the rock world.
Depp’s next project is a remake of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Director Kenneth Branagh plays the role of detective Hercule
Poirot that Albert Finney played in the 1974 version. Michelle Pfeiffer has
the role Lauren Bacall originated, and Johnny plays Richard Widmark’s role as the murder victim with a lot of enemies.
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Michael Bublé has won the hearts of men and women across the world – but it turns out his wife wasn’t too sure about which he preferred.
The legendary singer opened up about meeting his wife, Argentine actress Luisana Lopilato, back in 2008 in an interview with PrideSource.
He recalled: “She walked in this room with a man, and the man was so good lookin’ that he made Brad Pitt look dumpy, so I assumed they were together. I naturally assumed that this was her boyfriend or her husband, so I refused to hit on her.
“It didn’t help that she didn’t speak English either at the time. Not a word. But the more I drank that night, the more brazen I got about trying to find out what the situation was between them.
“Finally, after two hours – and I don’t know how many shots and glasses of whiskey – I finally said ‘You guys are such a beautiful couple’, and he said, ‘We’re not together’.
“He said, ‘She came because she likes you.’ And at the same time, she was on the phone texting her mom saying, ‘Oh my god, Michael Bublé is all over my friend. He’s so gay’.
Elsewhere in the interview, Bublé was asked how he would react if one of his children came out, He said: “With nothing but love – and I’m not saying that to you because it’s you or the magazine. It’s because I love them, man. I love them so much that I just want them to be happy.
“My goal in life is to make them beautiful, happy human beings, and if that’s who they are – because I’m killed, just devastated, when I hear people saying they ‘choose’. Choose? What are you f**king talking about? You don’t choose. It isn’t a choice. It is genetic. And I understand some people have an issue with the whole marriage thing and the sanctity of this word ‘marriage’.
“I mean, I don’t get it, but I can choose to listen to their point and hear it. I don’t agree with it. I always joke, everyone jokes: Why can’t gay people be just as miserable as straight people who are married?
“But listen to me, we are in a world – a dangerous world – right now, and if you’re not standing up against intolerance, then you’re for it. God, I sounded like George W. f**king Bush right there, holy s**t. ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us!’.
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Celine Dion is absolutely gorgeous while attending the 2016 ADISQ Gala held at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts in Montreal, Canada.
The 48-year-old singer hit the stage to accept the Félix trophy in honour of her late husband and manager Rene Angelil.
“Not only one of the greatest visionaries of the Quebec music industry. He was also one of the biggest fans of musical artists that ever existed,” Celine expressed during her speech.
“He had an immense respect for people who had that passion. René always thought of others before he thought of himself.
“Of course it was a great honour for me to receive trophies over the years, but to be here to receive a trophy that’s not for me, that’s even more touching,” Celine added backstage. “He’s not physically present, but I’m sure he’s here tonight. I don’t think he missed any of this, and I’m sure he’s very proud.”
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Former Hollywood actress Tippi Hedren has revealed in intimate detail the appalling sexual menace inflicted on her by Alfred Hitchcock during the years he held her captive by an ironbound contract.
The legendary director’s sadistic obsession with the regal blonde was as twisted and sinister as the plot of any his classic suspense movies, including Psycho and Rebecca.
Hitchcock made her a star in his 1963 masterpiece, The Birds, quickly
followed by the simmering, psycho-sexual drama, Marnie.
He then ruined her career after warning the helpless beauty if she didn’t succumb to him, he’d deprive her of the means to support her elderly parents and little girl, Melanie. Both her daughter, actress Melanie Griffith, and her granddaughter, Fifty Shades’ Dakota Johnson, today enjoy the stardom that Hitchcock stole from Hedren.
But at 86, happy and content, she is finally ready to tell all.
Previously Hedren has shared some of the story, even consulting on the 2012 movie, The Girl, starring Sienna Miller.
Hedren declares that while she has been interviewed and quoted countless times through the decades on the subject, she’s found a new resolve as a thrice-married grandmother and animal rights activist.
‘It’s about time I stop letting everyone else tell my story and finally tell it myself,’ she writes.
Hedren was divorced and raising her little girl, four-year-old Melanie, on her own in Los Angeles when she got the call.
The brilliant Alfred Hitchcock wanted to put her under contract. The director had spotted her in a commercial. Likely one of the last jobs she’d could hope for as a model. At 31, her career was fading.
Hitch, as he was known, didn’t seem to care if she could act. He and his wife, Alma, coached her through the screen test the studio, Universal, demanded.
It was all so seamless, until she was called into Hitchcock’s office to meet with a grim-faced attorney who informed her there was a problem. Various sources from her days modelling in New York claimed she’d been ‘available to men’. Hedren stormed out offended.
Hitchcock then proposed another screen test. In this she would drink martinis and answer provocative questions. The naïve actress found the excitement in his voice ‘creepy’ as he described how, under his direction, she’d slowly get wasted and ‘lose all my inhibitions on camera’.
The moment passed and Hitchcock never followed up. Instead, one night she met him for dinner at his booth in Chasen’s – the fashionable Beverly Boulevard hangout of Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Clark Gable. He handed her a small gift, an exquisite gold and pearl pin, of three birds in flight.
It was then Hitchcock revealed his grand plan. She’d been cast as Melanie Daniels in The Birds, one of Hollywood’s most talked about projects. It was a coveted, star-making role. ‘Who the hell is Tippi Hedren?’ asked everyone in town, including the disgruntled studio heads.
She was a novice but welcomed by the vastly more experienced cast including Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette and Veronica Cartwright. Still, there was no off set socialising. Hitchcock had made it clear she was his property. She later learned he’d given specific orders to Taylor, and then Sean Connery in Marnie, not to go near her.
He’d train an unwavering stare on her as she moved around the set, growing icy if she chatted with a male crew member. His demented intensity made everyone uncomfortable.
‘I’m really sorry he’s putting you through this,’ fellow actress Pleshette told her in a quiet moment.
One day after work, just as the limousine pulled up to their Santa Rosa hotel, Hitchcock threw himself on top of her, trying to force a kiss. This happened in front a crowd of guests, valets and crew members. Hedren screamed and shoved him off, disgusted, making her escape into the hotel.
The next day on set, Hedren was shooting the famous scene where a shaken Melanie frantically tries to make a call from a phone booth as the birds attack. Somehow, one of the mechanical birds shattered the ostensibly shatterproof glass.
Filming was suspended while glass shards were picked out of Hedren’s face. Hedren says she wondered if Hitchcock had found a way to punish her for ‘rejecting him and doing it so publicly’.
Shortly afterward, she joined Hitchcock and his wife for dinner. When Alma excused herself to chat with friends, he launched into a story about directing Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief. Shooting the memorable scene in which Grant pulls Kelly into a long, passionate kiss, Hitchcock confided in her that he became aroused. Once again, Hedren was gone like a shot.
In another incident, the director cornered her on the set one day and asked her to touch him. He also had her followed and her handwriting analysed. His personal assistant, Peggy Robertson, would try to convince her to have drinks, or dinner, with Hitchcock.
Instead, she treated him respectfully but kept her distance as the six-month shoot moved into final stages. She was soon to pay the price. In the movie’s climatic scene, meant to rival the shower scene in Psycho, character Melanie is trapped in a bedroom, defenseless as the birds attack in a fury.
Preparing for the scene, an assistant director couldn’t meet her eyes when he told her there was a problem with the mechanical birds. She would be set upon by real birds.
Hedren bravely walked into the cage built around the bedroom door, bracing herself against the moment when handlers would reach into the cartons of ravens, doves and pigeons and hurl them at her. ‘It was ugly, brutal and relentless,’ she writes.
Cary Grant was on the set that day, and told her between takes that she was the bravest woman he’s ever seen. Hedren says she was in shock, and by the fifth day of filming, the shock had deepened into trauma. On the last day, she was incoherent as some of the birds were affixed to her body with elastic bands.
Again she was pelted with live, screaming and frantic birds. Later she was told the crew found this final day the most ‘horrifying and heartbreaking’ to watch.
Mid-afternoon, a bird tied to her shoulder, went for her face, barely missing her eye. ‘I’m done!’ she shouted, then broke into sobs. By the time she looked up, the sound stage was abandoned. She was left alone to find her way to her feet and home.
Hedren kept fading into unconsciousness over the weekend, and once when her daughter Melanie tried to wake her in a lawn chair, she came to flailing and screaming, ‘No’.
On Monday, Hedren somehow made it to the set and as far as her dressing room, where she passed out. When next she woke, she was in her own bed under medical supervision for a week. The Birds was a blockbuster hit and Hedren was a newly anointed star.
Her next film, under her contract, was another coveted role, the female lead in the steamy suspense film, Marnie. Her character, Marnie, is a habitual thief driven by a deeply rooted sexual trauma.
Connery played her boss, Mark, who traps her into marriage and is determined to make her confront her pathological aversion to men. On their wedding night, he rapes her. Hedren reveals she was aware of the widespread belief that the scene of ‘a man taking his frigid, unattainable bride by force was Hitchcock’s fantasy about me’. And the reason he