‘Blonde’ joins cadre of odes
In theaters everywhere Friday and streaming Sept. 28, Netflix cranks out “Blonde,” another saga about Marilyn Monroe. Says photographer James Haspiel, 84, author of books about Marilyn as well as being her long-ago friend:
“Films, TV, ballets, documentaries, plays, about 50 projects have been done about her.
“One last year suggested her August 1962 death was due to suffocation. The actual detective who actually bugged her house heard all and claims she was suffocated with a pillow. Back then a TV executive who audited that 42-minute tape says he heard Bobby Kennedy ask Peter Lawford for a pillow. Muffle sounds were then audible.
“Empty pill bottles were in her room. The autopsy, a public document, found no residue in her stomach.”
Age 16, Haspiel first saw Marilyn outside the St. Regis while she filmed her famous “Seven Year Itch” skirt scene. A fan, he followed her and over time became part of the entourage.
“Although divorced from Arthur Miller, that famous evening she sang to JFK? Her escort was her ex-father-in-law who adored her. Late that night she and her chauffeur drove him back to Brooklyn. And when she got home 4 a.m. I was there to meet her.
“Peter Leonardi, who drove her, was the one did everything for her. Took her clothes to the cleaner and to her therapist five days a week. Two days 10:30 a.m., three she went 4:30 in the afternoon.”
Haspiel had a $5 camera and that was how he spent his youth.
The new Netflix film stars Ana de Armas as Marilyn.
Flotsam and jetsam fuel
FORGET coming back, restaurants are coming in. Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Greenwich, Conn., newie is Happy Monkey. Tapas. Sharing dishes. Fun. Jammed. If I wasn’t with Judge Judy Sheindlin I’d still be waiting for a bar stool . . . AND que pasa with style? EVERYONE’s in tees, sneakers, jeans, shorts, braless boobs bobbling and pants that graze the ground. NYC’s got crime and poverty? How about shloomps? . . . “RADIO’s Greatest of All Time,” a biography begun by Rush Limbaugh in 2020, finished by his widow Kathryn and brother David, is out Oct. 25. Threshold Editions, a Simon & Schuster imprint specializing in conservative nonfiction, publishes. Rush aired on 650 radio stations nationwide, 15 million listeners. He knew what he wanted to do at age 8.
Safe is safe?
A top-secret-cleared army officer told me he had to change his post’s safe combination nightly because it’s where “Top Clearance” documents were stored. Only the provost marshal general and his adjutant knew the combination. But somehow these papers had somehow been moved about in the safe.
His thinking mentioned Mar-a-Lago in that maybe the finders maybe themselves could maybe even be the ones who maybe riffled some papers around — maybe.
HAVING been Fashion Week, let’s give those recent Emmy awardees a round of applause. One nearly fell off her 7-inch platform shoes. She’d have injured herself except that those eyelashes broke the fall.
If not only in New York, kids — at least mostly only in New York.
