Something borrowed
PR stories about Hollywood’s “best marriages” leave something to be desired — like truth.
He’s a $3 bill and needs a live-in psychiatrist. She’s a lush enrolled in AA, who thinks that’s her report card.
“Misunderstood” screams a magazine about this female’s 12th wedding where she’s urgin’ for mergin’ again because “Now it’s the real thing.”
She’s 52. Her p.r. says she’s 46. The studio says “47” and she admits to 39. What’s 39 is her bust measurement. So’s her oldest daughter.
Stars crossed
An astrologer sanctioned this 13th marriage. They’ll wed right after his bar mitzvah because the stars are right. Saturn’s in the House of Jupiter, Venus is in the Louvre and 13’s her lucky number.
They’ll live near his school and her analyst will give her away. Way away.
Hubby’s community already awarded him a best contribution to their weekend town because his hobby was to keep the girls off the streets.
He and this newie meet one another. Then date. Hide. Make sure nobody knows about it. Then photos of themselves pretending to arrive places separately. Then house shop. Then it’s move in together. Then there’s talk about going steady. Then denials. Then her kids meet his kids. Then p.r. photos. Then engagement talk. Then the ring. Then the arguments.
Dreaded bliss
To maintain the p.r., second step in Hollywood is the marriage. But if no photographer or reporter’s covering them, why are they together when they, basically, don’t even like one another.
A cuddly mattress is one thing. A messy kitchen’s another. One year is an eternity in a California marriage.
When they’re working, everyone cootchy-coos at them: hairdresser, makeup person, assistant, director, toupee fixer, scriptwriter, lunch maker, someone’s even in charge of his earpiece batteries.
Barely drop an unmanicured hand and some serf slaps a salad in it. Visitors stand behind security people.
But: Come home and the semi-star wife — no longer running so hot — is expecting the same solid gold treatment.
Plain “simple girl at heart” is used to taking a taxi to the bathroom. Lotsa luck. You want coffee? Get it yourself. Want a wife who’ll love you, care for you, cook for you, adore you? Then you’re in the wrong house.
Subdivision
Act 2: Twenty minutes later it’s lawyers — and who gets the kid (away at a military-style school) and who gets the wisdom tooth-sized Chihuahua.
His raison d’être for the divorce? Malnutrition. Her reason? Because her career’s in the toilet and Netflix is showing her last film in Romanian.
Meanwhile, their psychiatrists live in. Being his agent’s coming over he’s rushing to put away the Monopoly set and she’s mulling an offer to play an extra in a Danny Bonaduce remake which will film in the Kazakhstan language, play on weekends in Madagascar and be introduced by Lana Turner’s hairdresser.
As they might say along the shore of Brighton Beach: “A Hollywood husband is what’s left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.