HOLLYWOOD

Tom Cruise

HOLLYWOOD — The much-ballyhooed $50 million lawsuit Tom Cruise dropped on The Bauer Media Group and its magazines “In Touch” and “Life & Style” is over. In cover stories, both magazines intimated that Cruise abandoned his daughter with Katie Holmes, Suri. Both Cruise and Bauer were prepared to fling dirt from TMZ to The Wall Street Journal. Their Mexican stand-off ended because they realized they could tarnish their reputations forever, so the lawsuit was dropped.

Cruise was prepared to accuse Bauer Media of having un-American ties, while Bauer was prepared to rake Scientology over the coals. For instance, Tom involved his three wives — Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes — in the religion, but all three left the church soon after cutting ties with him.

Scientology has had some major defections to worry about. Jason Beghe, best known for the films “Thelma & Louise” and “X-Men: First Class” and who will star in the upcoming NBC series “Chicago PD,” premiering Jan. 8, left the church in 2007. In 2009, “Crash” director Paul Haggis, a 35-year member, left. In 2012, Lisa Marie Presley exited quietly, for fear she would alienate her mother, Priscilla Presley, still a Scientologist. And most recently, “King of Queens” star Leah Remini announced on “Dancing With the Stars” that she’d left the church. Luckily for the religion, its board of directors is made up of many lawyers, who can resolve most of their legal problems swiftly and quietly.
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CBS thinks we’re ready for a reboot of Neil Simon’s classic “The Odd Couple” and has chosen “Friend’s” star Matthew Perry to play the messy Oscar Madison … now that is odd!
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Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber may have lost his way with his latest musical effort. The musical genius who gave us such megahits as “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Evita,” “Cats,” “Starlight Express,” “Phantom of the Opera,” “Sunset Boulevard” and recently “The Wizard of Oz,” has chosen “Stephen Ward” as his latest project. Who is Stephen Ward, you ask?

In 1961, Dr. Stephen Ward was at the center of the infamous Profumo scandal in which the very-married John Profumo, secretary of state for war for the British government, began an affair with a call girl named Christine Keeler, who also was having an affair with a naval attache at the Soviet Embassy in London. The affair lasted only two weeks, and the story didn’t break until 1962. Variety’s British theater critic described the show by saying, “How could the fallout from Britain’s most notorious real-life sex-and-politics scandal have been turned into something so flaccid?” Well, that certainly is a stiff review!