Nuts for Babs!

Just days before the May 21 official sale date, resale sites such as StubHub and scalpers on eBay are selling Barbra Streisand concert tickets for crazy-ass amounts. One on eBay is already at $53,000, The NY Post is reporting!

I could not find the “$53K tickets” on eBay but I did find “Suite seats” (more like sour!) up for nearly $20K and spotted two front row seats going for 10K.

StubHub notes: Prices are set by sellers and may be higher than face value.

Ya think?

Streisand’s publicist for the event, Ken Sunshine, told The Post…

“Stay tuned, we’re going to rectify the situation.”

With a name like Sunshine, how could he not fix this mess!

They arrived via invisible plane.

In case you’ve been living under a rock and need the 411 –Bruce Vilanch is a gag writer who, according to Nathan Lane, has given stars “more lines than a Hollywood coke dealer.”

Bruce Vilanch makes me happy.

He’s the man behind the quips at such events as the Oscars and other made-for-TV events (you thought they were the actors’ random thoughts? Think again!). Bruce’s clients include Billy, Whoopi, Robin, Bette and even Barbra.

The garden of good, evil and fab.

And he’s the object of affection in the hilarious must see doc, Get Bruce! — which features cameos by everyone who’s anyone.

Did I mention he has the best t-shirt collection of any living human? Well, he does.

I hope they're scrubbing your toilets now.

Last but not least, Bruce appeared on “Windy City Live” this morning and put the whole gay marriage thing in a nut shell so easy to understand even people like Romney and Dr. Daniel “ice cream” Heimbach might get it.

Take a look-see.

Bruce is in Chicago filming Scrooge & Marley — a very queer Christmas movie. Yay!

It’s been decades since Barbra Streisand left Brooklyn and now the time has arrived — Streisand is coming home — literally!

As a child growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Barbra says she shared a small apartment with her family. “I grew up in Williamsburg until I was 7, and that was a $40-a-month apartment,” she says. “I lived in one room with my mother, in the same bed, and my brother had a foldaway cot in the same room.”

Barbra and her family then moved to the projects, which at the time, she says she considered “hotsie totsie.”

“I remember it was $105-a-month rent,” she told Oprah in an exclusive interview.

America's First Voice

As I reported in March, and today confirmed by ABC News, Barbra Streisand will launch her 2012 North American tour this fall at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

On Monday morning, the blogger Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report posted a screen grab showing the seat map listing.

No dates have been confirmed. Updates will be posted as they develop.

Did you ever think you’d read “Jay-Z” and “Barbra Streisand” in the same headline?

Gypsy Rose Lee: stripper, raconteur, mystery novelist

I think there’s a general awareness that the musical Gypsy was based on Lee’s 1957 published memoirs. And some people also know that Lee wrote a mystery novel called The G-String Murders in 1941, which became the Barbara Stanwyck film Lady of Burlesque. What few people seem to know, though, is that Lee wrote a second mystery, in 1942, called Mother Finds a Body, and that the “Mother” in the title is an undisguised representation of Rose Hovick.

'Mother Finds a Body (Femmes Fatales)'
Click the cover art to purchase via Amazon.com

The book, a sequel of sorts to G-String Murders, has been long out of print but I found a crumbling hard-cover copy of it on Amazon recently. (The volume itself was doing its impersonation of an ecdysiast. By the time I finished it, I’d gone through about a half-roll of Scotch tape, in a moderately successful attempt to keep it from casting off parts of its cover.)

The protagonist of the book is a fictionalized version of Gypsy/Louise herself, and the mother is named “Evangie” (Lee’s mother’s maiden name was Rose Evangeline Thompson.)

While Lee was not exactly Agatha Christie or P.D. James when it came to mystery plotting, her depiction of Evangie will be fascinating to anyone who is interested in learning more about the Rose Hovick character (Barbra, can you hear me?)

Get a load of the novel’s hilarious opening paragraphs, which take place in a trailer camp near Ysleta, Texas:

“A temperature of one hundred and ten, at night, isn’t exactly the climate for asthma or murder, and Mother was suffering from a chronic case of both. She pushed damp, tight curls off her forehead and tapped her foot impatiently on the trailer doorstep:

“‘You either bury that body in the woods tonight or you finish your honeymoon without your mother.’”

Lee has set the stage beautifully for the sort of slangy, comic fun that can only ensue when you take some wisecracking strippers, introduce them to some twangy Texas locals, throw in a corpse or two, and top it off with the pervasive presence of the ultimate stage mom. Mother/Evangie is an indomitable figure: street-smart but with a propensity to mangle the English language that recalls Shakespeare’s Dogberry and Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Mrs. Malaprop. “How did you think I could get everybody out of our trailer unless I did something drastical?” she asks at one point. At another, she refers to marijuana as “marinello.” And whenever Mother says, “You know, I was just thinking…” it’s clear that there’s big trouble just around the bend.

As I said, up till now it’s been a bit tricky finding a readable copy of Mother Finds a Body. But that is about to change. Early this summer, The Feminist Press at the City University of New York will reissue the novel as part of its Femmes Fatales series. (Feminist Press previously republished The G-String Murders in 2005.) Lee’s son Erik Preminger (his father was film director Otto Preminger) wrote about his mother for the book’s foreword:

“So how did she learn to write? She began by reading. Books were her escape from dirty dressing rooms and dismal theatrical hotels, her escape from feeling like a failure because her sister [June Havoc] could sing and dance but she could do neither, her escape from the loneliness that she experienced because she couldn’t relate to the other children in the act. She didn’t know it at the time, but she was, quite simply, smarter by far than all of them. She read any book she could buy or shoplift….”

According to some reports, the real-life Hovick was no stranger to homicide–was herself a femme fatale, in fact. She reportedly killed a female lover who made a pass at Louise–but the death was listed as a suicide. All that, though, is much darker than the stuff of Gypsy Rose Lee’s comic mystery novel.

You can order Mother Finds a Body in advance, through Amazon.com. (See link above.)

P.S. Fun Fact of the day: Gypsy Rose Lee appeared on the 1960s TV series Batman, playing a newscaster. Also guest-starring on the series: Otto Preminger (Mister Freeze) and Ethel Merman (Lola Lasagne).

Gypsy Rose Lee died on this date in 1970 less than a year after she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She was only 59 years old.

There was a lot more to her life than even the musical Gypsy. One of the great loves of her life was Mike Todd before Elizabeth Taylor nabbed him more than a decade later. She was a connoisseur of art – at, at least, artists. Her collection included works by Picasso, Miro, Chagall, and Ernst which she claimed were all gifts given to her by the artists themselves. She and Picasso became “close” with their involvement and support with the Popular Front movement during the Spanish Civi War.

Patti LuPone — “Rose’s Turn”

She also attended many Communist United Front meetings and was investigated by Senator Joe McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee.

Gypsy Rose Lee joins 'The Ritz Brothers' (Harry, Jimmy and Al) in a quartet on the set of 'You Can't Have Everything'

She had a son named Erik from her affair with director Otto Preminger. Erik claimed Gypsy’s mother Rose murdered her own female lover when she caught her making a pass at Gypsy but it was passed off as a suicide and Rose was never tried for the crime before dying herself of colon cancer in 1954.

Below is a clip of Gypsy Rose Lee on “What’s My Line?” only a few days after the musical “Gypsy” opened on Broadway. It’s a hoot. And I love how she is too much of a “lady” to correct Arlene Francis who says that Ethel Merman is portraying her in the musical. Merman was Mama Rose. I also love how she complains about having to get up so early to hear Dorothy Kilgallen on her 8 a.m. radio show since Gypsy herself would soon by doing an early-morning television talk show herself in San Francisco on KGO-TV. –Kevin Sessums via Facebook

Related: “Gypsy” with Barbra Streisand in the lead is officially on again

Barbra Streisand and her left side — it’s what every photographer, film director and talk show host must be mindful of before working with the living legend.  The diva insists that she be shot from this angle, because, as she says, it’s her feminine side — her good side.

Everyone on the right is fired.

Well, now there’s scientific proof to back it up.

New research shows that the left side of the human face is generally more appealing to others than the right side–which may help explain why portraitists tend to paint their subjects’ left profiles.

Photos showing the left sides of faces were rated more “pleasant” than those showing right sides–no matter whether the portraits were shown as taken originally or in mirror-reversed form. The researchers corroborated that finding by gauging the pupil size of the study participants’ eyes. Research has shown that gazing at pleasant or interesting images causes an increase in pupil size, whereas gazing at unpleasant images causes pupils to constrict.

“Our results suggest that posers’ left cheeks tend to exhibit a greater intensity of emotion, which observers find more aesthetically pleasing,” the researchers said in a written statement.

The moral of the story?

Streisand is always right.

Update: Rosie confirms via Twitter that this entire National Enquirer story is false…

@simplyshowbiz – quote me – THIS IS A COMPLETE AND TOTAL LIE – THE ENTIRE THING IS MADE UP – IT NEVER HAPPENED – #SIMPLYBULLSHIT

— Rosie O’Donnell (@Rosie) April 17, 2012

If you watch The View, you know Barbara Walters enjoys inviting people she’s fired back to the show as guests to rehash uncomfortable, embarrassing topics.

If they cry, all the better.

Now a “source” tells the NE…

“Barbara called Rosie, begging her to tell her side of the story about Oprah canning her from her OWN talk show.”

Rosie allegedly turned Babs down without hesitation.

“Rosie said she’d never heard “word one” from her old boss when she could have used a View plug for her new talk show.

“Rosie was like, ‘Oh, Barbara, now you want me on because I’ve got a sad-sack story to tell?’”

“She won’t do it, because she wants no part of helping The View.”

Related: Barbra Streisand fires back at “The National Enquirer” over “Streisand’s war with gay son” story

The National Enquirer’s executive editor, Barry Levine, says…

“We have a proven track record of breaking the biggest political bombshells, but still the mainstream media will not often pursue our stories.”

When asked about whether he was nominating his reporters for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, Levine told the Huffington Post:

“Our Enquirer reporters do deserve to be nominated for a Pulitzer, but you know the mainstream media would rather see the Earth explode first!”

Related: Despite their “yellow journalism” The National Enquirer is Officially in the Running for Pulitzer Prize

—

BARBRA STREISAND turns ponderous proboscis up at her only child because he refuses to stop his gay-party lifestyle, settle down and make her a grandmother.

Although Barbra, 69, has never taken issue with the fact that her son Jason Gould, 45, is a ho­mosexual, she’s never been able to put up with his “promiscu­ous” ways and hasn’t talked to him in more than a year, say sources.

Jason – Barbra’s son with “M*A*S*H*” star Elliott Gould, her first husband – is HIV-positive and has a reputation as a Casanova in New York City’s gay community, ac­cording to the sources.

“It’s terribly sad,” an insider revealed. “There’s a tremendous strain in their relationship and it’s because they’re both so similar – stubborn and pigheaded.

“Jason has a reputation as quite the Romeo. He dates a lot of different guys and is always on the lookout for a new conquest.

“Barbra is ter­rified that he’s neglecting his health and fo­cusing too much attention on his social life.

“She wants him to fall in love with a nice boy and settle down. But Jason says that’s just not in the cards.”

When Barbra first heard rumors last year that Jason was involved in relationships with multiple men and en­gaging in public displays of affection, she blew up.

“She screamed, ‘I don’t want to hear it!’ whenever anyone brought up Jason’s love life,” the insider said.

“At that point she called Jason and told him he needed to settle down with one guy and to quit all the playing around – and if he was go­ing to be irresponsible with his life then she was going to wash her hands of him.

“But Jason takes good care of himself and feels that his sex life is his own business.

“He told his mother in no uncertain terms to take her nose out of his business – and she hasn’t talked to him since.”

The “Funny Girl” singer is doubly devastated by Jason since he told her he wasn’t interested in adopting a child or hiring a surrogate in order to be a father.

“Barbra is almost 70 and she wants a grandchild,” the source noted. “She’s upset with Jason for denying her that pleasure.”

For now, neither is willing to budge.

“Barbra says she’s not go­ing to call Jason until he changes what she calls a dan­gerous lifestyle,” added the source. “And Jason won’t call Barbra until she can learn to mind her own business.”

—-

The print edition of the story includes a photo of Streisand’s son, Jason Gould. The one hiccup? The photo is not Jason. Whoops.

“I was just made aware of a ridiculous story in one of those weekly rags. This is just to say that the story is untrue in every respect, just unmitigated, sloppy, and malicious invention. The madness of the constant inaccuracy of these publications is evidenced by the fact that in this recent story the main photo they use of “Jason” is not even Jason!” –Barbra Streisand, April 12, 2012

The veteran reporter was the first correspondent hired for "60 Minutes."

“All of us at CBS News and particularly at 60 Minutes owe so much to Mike,” said Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and executive producer of the newsmagazine. “Without him and his iconic style, there probably wouldn’t be a 60 Minutes. There simply hasn’t been another broadcast journalist with that much talent. It almost didn’t matter what stories he was covering, you just wanted to hear what he would ask next.”

His interviewees read like a Who’s Who of newsmakers: the Shah of Iran, Eldridge Cleaver, Nguyen Cao Ky, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Deng Xiaoping, Manuel Noriega, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Menachem Begin, Anwar el-Sadat, Yasir Arafat, King Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, Kurt Waldheim, H.R. Haldeman, Vladimir Horowitz, Itzhak Perlman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Leonard Bernstein, Johnny Carson, Louis Farrakhan, Jack Kevorkian, Jose Canseco and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That last one netted him, at age 89, his 21st Emmy award.

Wallace was also known for being a bully during interviews — most famously during this interview with Barbra Streisand:

Wallace died Saturday night, peacefully surrounded by family members at Waveny Care Center in New Canaan, Conn., where he spent the past few years, CBS News spokesman Kevin Tedesco said.

Organizers hope to have the Obama dinner at Katzenberg’s $35 million Beverly Hills mansion, if it is finished in time, and sources say the Democrats’ favorite diva, Barbra Streisand, could perform.

Four years ago, Streisand sang for Obama at the Beverly Wilshire, and despite the industry’s muted enthusiasm for the president this time around, a Streisand-Obama bill probably could sell out the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The entertainment industry donated $1.54 million directly to the Obama campaign in 2011. That compares with $2.8 million four years earlier, but the campaign hopes the industry will step up with the race becoming clearer.

A Streisand 2012 tour and singing for the President. What could be better, I say!