JILL JACKSON’S HOLLYWOOD

By Jill Jackson
HOLLYWOOD … Interesting. Coats, shirts and ties are once again appearing on the Hollywood horizon of parties and premieres. For a while it was all open collars, T-shirts and great informality. Then all of a sudden, men are “dressing” again. Even tuxedos are making a comeback. It will be interesting to see who is wearing what when Oscar time rolls around. … On the femme front, you can bet your last buck that the “little-nothing black dress” will be a frontrunner. So much for the “fashion front” and on to “who’s doing what.” Which leads us to the fact that …
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Nicolas Cage is really keeping New Orleans before the public, what with all he is doing for The Big Easy charity-wise and making movies about it. At the risk of being redundant, it’s amazing how many star names are calling New Orleans home these days: Helen Mirren, Francis Coppola, Cage, John Goodman, Brad and Angelina, and several others looking at property. I guess it’s a choice between hurricanes and earthquakes. And having lived in both places, take my word for it, at least you get a warning before the wind and rain hits, but there “ain’t no warning” before that BIG RUMBLE! Having been in both, I’ll take the hurricane. At least you can hide in a closet.
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Aside to Kenneth G. of Biloxi, Miss.: You ask about awards shows. Oscar is the most prestigious, but the Golden Globes are more fun. For the Academy Awards, everyone sits in a theater as an audience. For the Globes they attend a dinner at a hotel with lots of good food and more than lots of alcoholic liquid refreshment. They talk, table hop and have fun. So, there is a great deal of difference, wouldn’t you say?
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Another aside to Gladys F. of Palm Beach. Fla.: You say you are shocked that Mackenzie Phillips wrote a “tell all” book about having been raped by her father. You feel something like this should be kept quiet. I don’t quite know what to say in response. It’s quite shocking, but who is to say what should and should not be done about something like this. The person to whom it has happened should be the judge, and obviously she is not too embarrassed to talk about it in public.
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And speaking of those “little-nothing black dresses” that all the femme stars seem to be wearing, they were NOT worn by Dana Delany and Eva Longoria at one of the big bashes. Delany wore a knee-length, long-sleeved red dress; Longoria wore a black dress, but it was high-necked, sleeved and covering the knees. So, I would say out Hollywood way, it’s “chacun son gout” as we say in Francaise. If you don’t speak French, it means “each to her own taste.”
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BITS ’N’ PIECES: Betty White gets the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award come Jan. 23, and Mary Steenburgen got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Someone had to put up $3,000. … As Oscar award time looms on the horizon, one sidelight is the number of winners who are children of stars. There’s Angelica Huston, Michael Douglas, Liza Minelli, Jane Fonda and maybe some more … AND at the moment, Paris, Lindsay and Britney have not surfaced to any loud extent.