by George Wayne
One of the remarkable things GW found as he continued to produce each and every monumental issue of R.O.M.E. was how easy it was to find the right, receptive magazine sellers to help peddle his one-of-a-kind, avant-garde journal. But one person in particular stands out as a godsend: Margit Larsen, the legendary magazine-stand czarina at the old Condé Nast building. She was always there with support, always calling up GW and informing him when an important editor or Condé Nast chieftain bought an issue of R.O.M.E. One day Margit called “Lilliput,” the R.O.M.E. headquarters (and tiny GW residence in the historic West Village), and hissed excitedly in that guttural German tongue of hers, “Si [Newhouse, the ruler of the revered Condé Nast magazine empire] just bought two issues of R.O.M.E.!” She paused. “Vell?! Aren’t you excited?”
GW was beyond excited. The year was 1991, and it was because of that news from Margit Larsen that he worked up the courage to pen a memorandum to Emperor Si, basically listing ten reasons why he ought to buy R.O.M.E. and become a supreme, truly acknowledged patron of the arts. A few days after the letter was mailed, GW got a phone call from a woman by the name of Linda Wells, asking him to come into her office. She was currently all the talk of the glossy magazine industry because Emperor Si had decided to launch her as his next megastar editrix; he handed her the reins to a brand-new magazine for women about beauty, which, of course, turned out to be Allure. When GW went to meet her, Linda told me point-blank that she wanted me as an exclusive contributing editor to Allure magazine, and offered me a fat and juicy Condé Nast contract to go with the title. I almost fell off my chair.
That was unquestionably the happiest day of my life since my arrival in New York City. GW was well aware that this was Emperor Si Newhouse’s way of trying to help support the craft of George Wayne. And GW also knew that being one of the first writers recruited to help create the prototype, the DNA, of this new Allure was a tremendous challenge and amazing opportunity. GW’s first assignment was to visit the chic Caribbean island of St. Barthélemy during the height of the winter season. Can you imagine? Thirteen days in St. Barts—thirteen days under the auspices of Allure magazine—spending Christmas 1992 with Quincy Jones, Martha Stewart, Anna Wintour, Herb Ross and Lee Radziwill, Diane von Furstenberg, and other such stellar members of the glamorama. What about the second assignment? What could possibly top that trip to St. Barts? Well, the editor in chief decided that GW ought to scour Paris during the height of the supermodel era and the October prêt-à-porter season. Needless to say, those first four years were the gloria-in-excelsis years.
The year 1992 was without a doubt the most significant of the nine years since the arrival of this Jamaican in New York, and not only because of the amazing Allure position. It was a year when the brand name R.O.M.E. made international headlines, linking forever the names George Wayne and Claudia Schiffer when the German fräulein lobbed a thirty-million-dollar lawsuit in the lap of the magazine. The ice maiden of the catwalk was furious that R.O.M.E. volume VI had featured a tongue-in-cheek series of photos of her topless as she changed backstage at a Chanel fashion show in New York City. It was the first time that any publication had ever featured any intimate part of Claudia Schiffer’s body. And she went ballistic. The R.O.M.E. v. Claudia Schiffer lawsuit made the front page of the London Times and every major daily from Sydney, Australia, to Bonn, Germany. It would be total misinformation for GW to declare that I was not a stressed-out, nervous wreck at the time of the lawsuit. (In hindsight, I’m tremendously disappointed that I didn’t seize the moment and milk the publicity wheel for all that scandal was worth.) God is great, however: the lawsuit was resolved without R.O.M.E. forfeiting a penny to the outstretched palm of Claudia Schiffer.
All this GW talk wasn’t lost on the brilliantly astute, newly appointed editor in chief of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter, who soon offered GW the dream gig he so craved. And so the GW celebrity Q&A column for Vanity Fair was born. It’s become an institution for the Vanities section of the Condé Nast jewel in the crown. There are well-read people all over the globe who “get,” who understand, the philosophy of George Wayne. And that is why, we truly believe, they will be quite thrilled to learn of GW’s pièce de résistance: this collection of my absolute favorite GW Q&A columns. Here they are in all their glory. Published as one for the very first time. The dates atop the interviews indicate the month and year they were actually published. What now follows is a truly original update of my oral history with celebrity. These are clearly not all of my celebrity interview encounters, but are unquestionably some of the most cherished and memorable.
JOAN RIVERS
MARCH 2004
Joan is now with her beloved Edgar in that iCloud heaven somewhere over the rainbow, but New Yorkers especially will always hold a revered place in their hearts for Joan Rivers. The last time I saw Joan Rivers in the flesh was on November 28, 2013. I was walking on the street where she lived in the rarified air there in the Fifties between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue of New York City when she spotted me way before I noticed her. By the time I realized who it was, we were touching cheeks as she squealed, “You look exactly the same as the day I met you!” She was still as sharp as a tack, this legend, and clearly enjoying each and every moment of her resurgence and pop culture relevance. She asked me where I was going. I told her just around the corner to one of my favorite restaurants in the world, which is Nello, to have some squid ink pasta alone on the eve of my birthday. She didn’t flinch and told me to keep in touch as she scribbled her private email address.
But my most unforgettable memory was the day I went shopping with Joan Rivers at Barneys. A trip to Nepal was on her agenda, and she was looking for a fashionable anorak to help her contend with the chill of the Himalayas. Not that Joan Rivers needed any excuse to go shopping. I remember going to her vast Manhattan apartment and immediately noticing the pincushion in her sitting room—I SHOP THEREFORE I AM, it read. Going shopping with Joan was like nothing I had ever experienced. It involved a full-on entourage, not just the stylist, but the hairdresser, the makeup artist, the business manager, and yes, her pet-a-pouf Spike Rivers (her beloved Yorkshire terrier).
“I haven’t got time like these ladies to go to the spa or to the beauty shop,” she said in that signature hoarse voice of hers.
“Everything I do, I do on the run. I always shop on tour. I’ll have a day in Houston where I just bought a wonderful white suit. I’ll have a day in Toronto where I got a great scarf. Barneys gives me my basics.”
Of course, the topic soon strayed to plastic surgery. “I was never the pretty girl—ever. But I’ve done no more [surgery] than the Chers or Carol Burnetts. I haven’t had my eyes changed. I haven’t had my nose fixed or my teeth replaced. I haven’t had my boobs done. I haven’t had a chin implant. I haven’t had my arms thinned—and my ass has not been filled! Jane Fonda, for all that talk about health and vegetables—she was eating them on the way to the plastic surgeon.”
That may be so, but I also so fondly recall attending a 7:00 p.m. fashion show in February 2011, where Joan was sitting in the front row of Elie Tahari during New York Fashion Week. And as we air kissed and I made my way to my seat, I couldn’t help but think to myself that her face was pulled tighter than the sail of a Larry Ellison America’s Cup yacht. We did this interview at her apartment seven years before I saw her perched in that front row. And she was, and will always be, the indefatigable Joan. . . .
GW:
So, darling—are you still mourning Edgar? It literally became one of your famous one-woman shows, your mourning of Edgar. So GW had to wonder—are you still mourning E?
JR:
No, I’m not mourning Edgar, that’s gone now. There is a sweetness that remains. But I am still angry at Edgar. I will never forgive him for what he did.
GW:
That must have been devastating.
JR:
Devastating. I had a sixteen-year-old daughter at the time who got the call that her father had committed suicide
, and she had to come and tell me. It was a very rough time for our family. But some good jokes have come out of it. I like to say that Edgar committed suicide because we were making love and I took the bag off of my head. I solve everything with humor—he went from the bed to the window.
GW:
True or false—Joan Rivers is the only person on this planet who has had more plastic surgery than Michael Jackson.
JR:
Absolutely such a lie. I am so tired of this. I came out because I was so sick of sitting there with a room full of women saying to me, “What is it like?” and they are talking through the parts in their hair. I came out just to say to everybody, “Don’t believe these people that are saying to you, ‘I am naturally beautiful, I’m sixty-five, and I’ve done nothing.’”
GW:
There is still no denying that one of your favorite hobbies is reversing the age process.
JR:
Excuse me?!! Absolutely. Look at the ladies I’m with—we are all dipped in formaldehyde.
GW:
You say you are sixty-five, but you’ve been sixty-five for the last ten years, Joan.
JR:
Actually it’s twelve, but I’ve watched Sophia Loren get younger than me, Elizabeth Taylor get younger than me. I’ve watched a whole group of ladies get younger than I am, but I’m the only one who gets picked on.
GW:
Who is the phoniest person in Hollywood?
JR:
Russell Crowe—phooey. First of all, I hope he never stops to talk to me on the red carpet of an award show, because I don’t think he’s learned to bathe yet. The man needs a good bar of Joan Rivers Fragrant one hundred percent French Mill soap.
GW:
Who is your favorite authoress of all time?
JR:
Edith Wharton, hands down, because she got it. Because she holds up. You go back and read The Custom of the Country anytime, and it’s timeless.
GW:
Joan, darling, GW sometimes feels that he suffers from tri-polar disorder instead of bipolar disorder. You are the ageless icon of American princesses, so how does Joan Rivers temper her violent mood swings?
JR:
And I have them. I scream. I will go into a closet and scream and come out. I really do. Also, I say what I think, and then it’s gone. I cannot hold a grudge.
GW:
What are the other guidelines that you try to live by?
JR:
Don’t look back, don’t dwell on the past. So your father slept with you! That was forty years ago—tough. Get on with it. And, also don’t worry about anybody else—wear blinders. Never forget that, on a bad day, count your blessings, because they could always be worse. If you think you’ve hit the bottom, there is always the gutter.
GW:
Who is the peer that you idol-worship the most? The one that riles the most envy in Joan Rivers?
JR:
Robin Williams and Chris Rock—those are the ones where I just go, “Damn, why didn’t I think of that?!”
GW:
Do you think that you will ever get married again?
JR:
Never, absolutely not—but for ten carats, maybe.
GW:
Would you agree that you owe a great deal of your career to Johnny Carson?
JR:
I owed my career to Johnny Carson in the beginning. And I think that is one of the reasons he was so angry with me, because he in some way felt that he owned me. When I left, he never forgave me.
GW:
And he still doesn’t speak to you. Who is your all-time favorite Hollywood director? Please don’t say Steven Spielberg or Chi Chi LaRue.
JR:
Robert Altman.
GW:
Joan darling, you are still tart, still taut, still very much a bitch on wheels! We live for Joan Rivers.
JR:
Thank God.
DEBBIE REYNOLDS
FEBRUARY 1997
There was a time, way back in the day—when the landmark hotel Essex House on Central Park South, New York City—was a fusty, dusty home-away-from-home, long-term residence for the old-school Hollywood legends who often took refuge on the East Coast; think Judy Garland and Debbie Reynolds. This, of course, was way before the Middle East petro-dollars hoovered up, reconfigured, and reimagined this hostelry, which today is the Jumeirah Essex House. To this day, every time I saunter down Central Park South past this hotel, I cannot help but think of that afternoon in December of 1996 when Debbie Reynolds herself opened the door to her musty junior suite dressed in a dowdy, threadbare frock, bed-head and all—and a hot iron steaming from her right hand! Golden-age Hollywood had long dubbed her “the girl next door” and she clearly was living up to her myth.
The writer had clearly interrupted her banal and rather personal household chores. But this Hollywood grande dame was totally unfazed, and had not a care in the world about her dotty dishabille. She was so warm and so genuinely effusive and game for our afternoon tête-à-tête. And so after she poured tea, it was truly time to read the tea leaves.
GW:
I had assumed that you’d truly retired from the cinema, Debbie Reynolds.
DR:
I did. I haven’t done feature films in twenty-five years. Instead of me sitting around waiting for an agent to get me work, I put an act together and went to Vegas. I had children to raise. And since I kept having bad marriages . . .
GW:
[Starts to laugh.] I don’t mean to laugh . . .
DR:
That’s all right—many people have this problem.
GW:
Your daughter, Carrie Fisher, has taken charge of your career and put you back in film.
DR:
That is true. Carrie called me in Vegas at around midnight. She said, “Mother, I’ve had this wonderful idea from Albert Brooks. It’s a movie, Mother, and it’s possible you can get this part.” I accommodated Carrie, so she wouldn’t yell at her mother. She loves to boss me around.
GW:
Were you nervous reemerging to take on this part?
DR:
I was a wreck. I developed ulcers, because I had to learn this enormous part.
GW:
You’ve spent all your money collecting Hollywood memorabilia for your museum in Las Vegas. Do you really have Dorothy’s—
DR:
—slippers and the gingham dress? Yes.
GW:
Would one be able to find Mae West’s vibrators amongst the artifacts?
DR:
Well, I know who probably has them. She always surrounded herself with men. So she had this one secretary who is still alive who I think has all her personal items. But I don’t think she ever bothered with a vibrator. She used the actual thing twice a day.
GW:
Has Debbie Reynolds ever forgiven Elizabeth Taylor for stealing her husband Eddie Fisher?
DR:
When Mike Todd and Elizabeth were married, I was her bridesmaid. He died in a plane crash, and she just fell apart. I heard almost when she did, and when I arrived at the house, the press was everywhere. I called Eddie, he flew home, and I sent him right up there. I didn’t think it would go anywhere, because he is not her type. And that is exactly what happened, because she threw him out after a year and a half. Of course, it broke up our marriage, and devastated me and my daughter. Our only son was only six months old.
GW:
Have you seen E.T. since?
DR:
We were on the same boat going to Europe, and I was with my second husband, so I sent her a note saying we should have dinner and talk this out. She came with Richard Burton. We talked about it. I said, “That was really a wrong move, Elizabeth.” She said, “Yes, well I hope you forgive me for it, because it was very selfish. I needed somebody, and I didn’t really care.” But that’s thirty-eight years ago. It’s done, it’s past, but people still ask me about that.
GW:
Life goes on, Debbie.
Tell me about your next film, In and Out.
DR:
It’s a movie based on the true story of when Tom Hanks won his Oscar for Philadelphia and thanked his drama teacher, and mentioned that he was gay, which is something the drama teacher had rarely admitted. Kevin Kline is the drama teacher, and Matt Dillon plays his student who is up for an Oscar, and I play Kevin’s mother.
GW:
I know you’ll be brilliant in it, Debbie. You’re still America’s sweetheart.
CARRIE FISHER
NOVEMBER 2006
Talking to the smartest, wittiest people on earth is one of the greatest thrills of my life. And this moment is one I will always cherish forever. I do believe that Carrie Fisher was a better writer than she was a member of the Screen Actors Guild. And yes, indeed she will forever be Star Wars’ Princess Leia Organa, and too, the first princess of Hollywood nepotism which continues to be a long-standing tradition—just ask Casey Affleck or Paris Jackson. But Carrie Fisher, in fact, was a brilliant writer. Another brilliantly quirky fact to all this is probably that I may be the only writer in history to have interviewed her mother Debbie Reynolds [February 1997], her father Eddie Fisher [not included in this compendium], and Carrie Fisher herself. The outpouring of grief that Christmas of 2016 when Carrie’s heart exploded on that first-class flight from Heathrow en route to LAX was too much to bear, most of all for her mother, who we all know, died suddenly the day before Carrie’s funeral. Theirs was, indeed, a sad but real Hollywood ending. . . .
