This Time It's for Real
Every time something really
bad happens, Americans seem to lose their innocence all over again. So too are
the tabloids, ever hopeful about the promise of celebrity love, constantly made
cynical by its failure. But who wouldn't be moved by the stirring vows famous
people incessantly exchange? Take this account in the Globe of the
wedding of Frasier star Kelsey Grammer--his third. "Wildman Kelsey
Grammer made a touching vow of eternal love to his [ Playboy pinup] bride
Camille Donatacci at a tender wedding filled with romance and roses--that cost
a whopping $450,000."
Talk-show
host Larry King had two beautiful weddings to infomercial host Shawn
Southwick--one in his hospital bed, while awaiting heart surgery, and one
post-angioplasty in Beverly Hills. According to the National Enquirer ,
so sure is King that he has found "the love of his life" with his seventh wife
that he ignored the advice of his daughter and his financial advisers to get a
prenuptial agreement. This week's Star takes us inside former Golden
Girl Rue McLanahan's "Fairytale Wedding to Hubby #6." She says, "We both feel
that we've met the soulmates that we've been searching for." Then there was
Kenny Rogers' moving promise to his fifth bride that a friend of the singer's
reported to the Enquirer : "I'm going to make this work no matter what!"
Of Rogers' waltzing with his 28-years-younger new wife one guest told the
publication, "It looked like a Father-Daughter Day Dance at a high school." And
former Charlie's Angel Jaclyn Smith shed tears of joy at her fourth wedding,
according to the Enquirer , promising all her guests, "This one is
forever."
Though the tabs are fools for love, occasionally even they
find a wedding not touching but tawdry. That is how the marriage between Woody
Allen and Soon-Yi Previn, daughter of Woody's former lover Mia Farrow, was
portrayed this week. While Allen calls the wedding, which makes him Farrow's
son-in-law, a "wonderful thing," Farrow family spokesman Dr. Stephen Herman, a
child psychiatrist, is quoted in the Globe as denouncing it: "rude,
nasty and most of all, it's a reflection of his own narcissism."
Sometimes,
the tabs report, the wedding day leads right to the divorce lawyer's payday.
According to an account in the Star , country singer Tracy Lawrence's
marriage to a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader "began to deteriorate soon
after her fairy-tale wedding." For his wife, Stacie, it ended when he beat her
up following a concert--Las Vegas police charged him with battery. It legally
began to unravel when he had her served with divorce papers while she was
returning home from a CAT scan to assess her injuries. In the case of actress
Robin Givens, Mike Tyson's ex, her wedding day actually was the only day of her
marriage to Yugoslavian tennis player Svetozar Marinkovic, according to last
week's Globe . At a party after the ceremony she reportedly announced,
"Svetozar is the man of my dreams and I plan to spend the rest of my life with
him." Since Givens did not pass away during the night, her prediction was not
to be. The Globe says that in her divorce papers, she revealed the
couple separated the day they married.
This unwritten rule also emerges from the tabs:
The more elaborate the wedding, the greater the trouble ahead. Take the saga of
actress Geena Davis and her third husband, director Renny Harlin. According to
the Globe , their wedding was a $1 million extravaganza. As a wedding
present, Davis had the name "Renny" and a picture of Cupid tattooed on her leg.
However, this week's Enquirer reveals there's only a patch of very white
skin where Cupid and "Renny" used to be. As a friend of the couple's told the
Globe , "Renny was Hollywood's biggest playboy while he was married to
Geena." That assessment was borne out when, the Globe reveals, it turns
out that Davis' personal assistant, Tiffany Bowne, returned to her family in
Arizona not for some R&R but to have Harlin's child. This only proves
another unwritten rule: Never, ever hire a personal assistant named
Tiffany.
Kelsey
Grammer and his wife are still together after their lavish wedding (the pastry
chef was flown in from Denmark, says the Star ), but all the tabloids
have taken to chronicling their bumpy road to bliss. While exchanging vows,
Grammer was so overcome that he burst into tears. "Excuse me, I'm so happy!" he
said, according to the Globe . However, the next morning, the Star
alleges, he was calling friends, asking, "What have I done?" after both he and
his wife took turns storming out of their room at the Bel-Air Hotel. They made
up in time to leave for their Caribbean honeymoon, the Star says. But
there was another jolt, reports the Enquirer , when he opened her wedding
gift to him: a Stairmaster. "You're fat and I hate fat men," she told him.
Recently, says the Enquirer , Grammer has been lobbying Frasier 's
producers to give his wife a part on the show because she's so bored while he's
at work. Let's hope she doesn't decide to get a tattoo.
Then there are the marriages that are giving readers
whiplash--most prominently those of singer Michael Jackson and Debbie Rowe, his
dermatologist's former receptionist; and talk-show host Kathie Lee Gifford and
her sportscaster husband, Frank. This week the Enquirer made news with
the revelation that Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis' daughter and Jackson's former
wife, confided to her uncle, a minister, that she had found evidence during her
marriage--which was never consummated, according to the story--that Jackson was
sexually interested in boys. The uncle, the Rev. Rick Stanley, went public
because of a recent report in the tabloids that Jackson and Presley have
traveled the world together--with her young children by another marriage--even
as Rowe is pregnant with the singer's second child. According to the
Enquirer , Rowe said to a friend, "I told Michael that I would share him
with Lisa Marie." She'll have to if the Star is accurate when it reports
that Jackson has talked about Rowe serving as a surrogate mother for a child
artificially conceived between Jackson and Presley. "He's convinced they could
create the next Elvis," says the Star .
On the
Gifford front, the Enquirer , in what it calls "A Tender Love Story," has
Kathie Lee advising "skirtchasing" Kevin Costner to reconcile with his ex-wife.
The counseling sessions gave her new hope that "she can reignite the flames of
passion with her own hubby." But according to the Globe , which helped
douse the Gifford marriage when it videotaped the sportscaster's tryst with an
unnaturally well-endowed former flight attendant, the flame is out. "Kathie Lee
to Divorce Frank!" predicted a recent cover. The Star , meanwhile, is
hedging its bets. It reported last week that Kathie Lee is planning to get
breast implants "to save her self-esteem--and maybe her marriage." But the
publication also says that she is recording a blues album, all the better to
"[rub] her martyrdom in the face of her errant husband."
Many celebrity marriages could be called Ponce
de León unions. Take the wedding of Anthony Quinn, 82, to his former secretary,
Kathy Benvin, 35, the mother of his two young children. A guest told the
Star that after the ceremony, Quinn launched into his Zorba the Greek
dance. "You could see him growing younger before your very eyes." When William
Shatner, 66, married Nerine Kidd, 37, he told a friend, according to the
Globe : "She is my fountain of youth. ... Her love energizes me." It's
fortunate she is not his sole source of energy--the Star reports she had
canceled their wedding plans three times previously. But having to constantly
administer youth serum can send a spouse fleeing into the arms of someone who
actually is young. Take the case of actor Rod Steiger, 72. He discovered that
his wife, 38, was discussing more than drywall with their married contractor,
40, when the pair was photographed by the Globe . The publication seems
to have a sort of social consciousness about not letting celebrities suffer the
delusion that they are happily married.
Then again, the tabloids
have to give credit when love proves the cynics wrong. That's what the
Globe had to do last week for actress Bo Derek and her director husband,
John. When they married 20 years ago, the Globe reports, people said it
wouldn't last. But they showed what true love is when Bo took over John's
medical care and for seven weeks forced him to drink gallons of water to flush
out stubborn kidney stones. Concludes the Globe : "She's more than a
perfect 10!"
