A Weblog by L.A. Daily News Reporter/Columnist Tony Castro
Jim Bellows in Excelsis
March 12, 2009The names most often associated with Jim Bellows, the fabled newspaper editor who died Friday at the age of 86, were Jimmy Breslin and Tom Wolfe – the legendary journalists whose early careers he helped shape into the biggest bylines in the country.
But the names I most associate with Jim are those of three artists who became indelibly linked with him in my memory the night he hosted a cocktail party at his Brentwood home for all his new hires at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in February of 1978, not long after he became that newspaper’s editor.
In the broad living room of his impressive house on Rockingham Avenue, the original pop art works of two of those artists immediately bowled you over: Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.
Jim’s lovely wife Keven modestly accepted your compliments about their collection, while – over the squeals of kids running between them -- Jim offered self-deprecating anecdotes of how he had come to know the two artists, stories he delivered in mumbles and with hand gestures while gripping an elegant ebony cigarette holder in his teeth.
The squealing kids were running to their mother, a beautiful, WASPy blonde who happened to be an actress of some fame herself in the 1970s, Blythe Danner. She was there with her husband, Bellows’ friend and producer Bruce Paltrow, the older brother of one of the young reporters Jim had hired.
The Paltrows brought their brood over to introduce them to me and other Herald Examiner staff members, and one of them, even at the tender age of five, had a remarkable presence. Young Gweneth Paltrow would grow up to win a best actress Oscar in 1998 for “Shakespeare in Love.”
All of this is to say that my personal recollection of Jim is not so much tied to journalism necessarily as to fame, celebrities and beautiful people. For each big-name journalist whose name is linked to Bellows, you could also find the Hollywood famous. Jim ate it up, which was one of the reasons his Herald Examiner indulged in a Page Two gossip and celebs column long before many other mainstream papers.
Perhaps it is just to underscore that Jim had a unique appreciation for the lines and form of art and of people, which also included stylish writing and a penchant for undertaking underdog newspapers and trying to dramatically turn around their fortunes as if he were journalism’s Rocky
By the time he attempted to re-invent the Herald Examiner, he was already a legend for being the last editor of The New York Tribune, which many regarded as the ultimate writer’s newspaper in America, in large part because of the emergence of Wolfe and Breslin and the birth of a Sunday supplement which became New York magazine.
Those of us in that first group that came to work for Bellows at the Herald Examiner in 1978 – those who were at that February cocktail party – sought desperately to recapture with Jim those glory days at the Tribune, and some of us from that group and from later cadres at the paper reminisce romantically about the greatness of that period.
But the only times that period at the Herald Examiner possibly did recapture such magic was on the day Wolfe, in town to seal his movie deal for “The Right Stuff,” strutted alongside Jim through the newsroom, or the day Breslin visited the office while in Los Angeles during the 1980 presidential campaign.
Instead the real Herald-Examiner was, as Jim himself put it, playing at being a metropolitan newspaper using smoke, mirrors and Band-Aids. There were big headlines, great graphics, blown-up photos and a lot of stylish posturing with overplayed stories, like the one about Bubbles, the hippo that escaped from the zoo.
Newspapers were information dinosaurs in their late Jurassic period, and Jim may have been the only one among us who knew it. I always sensed his heart wasn’t in the Herald Examiner. Not really, and some of us suspected taking the job at a newspaper that was already near collapse had been his way of getting closer to Hollywood where he later became managing editor of television’s “Entertainment Tonight.”
Bellows left the Herald Examiner after barely three years and in his final year, 1981, he called me into his office one day. He pulled a wad of newspaper clippings from his desk drawer and handed them to me.
“This is good writing,” he said. “You need to enter this in some of the contests.”
My head was swollen more than usual as I left his office all the way to my desk where, as I unfolded the clippings, I recognized them as a series I reported for the paper – in 1978.
“Oh, that’s Jim,” I recall his wife saying to me when I mentioned this incident to her the next time I saw her. “He doesn’t read the newspaper. He doesn’t have time. He relies on the judgment of some real good friends who give him feedback and tell him things.”
I took all of it then and now for what it was.
It wasn’t so much the journalism, at least at the Herald Examiner, which made Bellows the oversized, almost mythic figure he became in our minds. It was what he inspired through his vision.
He was like that Rauschenberg or the Warhol he had in his home – an irreplaceable work of art to admire.
Tony Castro, a staff writer for the Daily News, was a columnist for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner during Jim Bellows tenure as editor from 1978 to 1981.
Posted by Tony Castro at 07:37 PM | Permalink
Walking in Paris Hilton’s wonderland
December 19, 2008SHERMAN OAKS — TV choppers overhead, are you listening?
In the lane, paparazzi lenses glistening.
A celebrity sight,
We’re the big news tonight,
Walking in Paris Hilton’s wonderland.
Gone away is the jailbird,
Here to report is a news bird
He sings a sad song,
Of all the bling gone,
Walking in Paris Hilton’s wonderland.
Maybe Christmas carols playing in her home might have frightened away whoever broke into Hilton’s Mulholland Estates mansion around dawn Friday morning and stole a reported $2 million in jewelry and other possessions.
Armed guards at the gate, wrought iron fencing surrounding the exclusive homes and security video equipment certainly didn’t deter the burglar or burglars -- including a man described by police as wearing a hooded sweatshirt and gloves who forced entry through the front door and ransacked Hilton’s bedroom.
Fortunately for hotel heiress’ personal safety, she still had not yet come home to her 7,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style estate on Clerendon Street from a night of dancing at the Hollywood club Bar Deluxe, according to People magazine.
But by mid-morning, as detectives from LAPD’s Van Nuys division conducted their investigation in Hilton’s home, the sleepy community with a Beverly Hills zip code but overlooking the San Fernando Valley had become another California celebrity roadside attraction.
“
A slew of paparazzi befitting her place as a tabloid queen hung out most of the day along Mulholland Drive, along with television cameras, all hoping to capture Hilton leaving or arriving in her car.
“She’s a person who is famous for being famous, and it’s part of the business of attention paid to her just because she seeks it and when she professes not to want it, it belies belief,” said Elizabeth T. Adams, professor of popular culture at California State University, Northridge.
“So much of our celebrity culture feeds itself. Like this robbery. Now people are not just paying attention to Paris but to police as they investigate the robbery of her jewelry.”
Indeed, one French photographer was so obsessed in finding a colorful subject that he asked a taco truck to juxtapose the vehicle next to the Mulholland Estates gate -- so he could shoot a likeness of the Virgen of Guadalupe on the side of the truck seeming to watch over the entrance.
One queen of the angels watching another or something like that.
The media circus that descended on the exclusive compound that is also home to actor Charlie Sheen and singers Tom Jones and Avril Lavigne, among other celebrities, thrust Hilton back into the paparazzi glare she sought to avoid when she moved there in September 2007.
It was part of the “new beginning” she had promised on The Larry King Show that summer after the notoriety of a highly publicized jail sentence for violating probation on a driving while intoxicated conviction.
But Quintana said he doesn’t believe some of her bad habits have changed, such often inviting people she has barely met back to her home.
“She’s sort of an easy mark,” said Quintana. “She’ll invite random people back to her home just because they’re hot or cool.
“She parties at home, and a lot of times there will be 100 people at her home, most of whom she doesn’t know.”
Hilton’s publicist did not return e-mail and phone requests seeking comment.
But in a more timely sense, said Professor Adams, this burglary at Hilton’s mansion may have been a much-needed Christmas gift to the rest of us.
“In times of economic troubles, people get occupied with the minutiae of celebrities’ live so they don’t have to think about their own,” she said. “Even more so when those celebrities have money and loses some of it.
“Of course, nobody is say, ‘Oh, poor Paris.’”
Ah, yes.
When money’s tight, ain’t it thrilling,
Though your purse gets a chilling
We’ll gossip and pray, the celebrity way,
Walking in Paris Hilton’s wonderland.
Posted by Tony Castro at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Obama Volunteers Kick Off New Campaign
November 21, 2008President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign battle cry -- "fired up and ready to go" -- took on new life Thursday as many of his volunteers kicked off a new drive to help the incoming administration pass a bold, progressive agenda.
Many supporters got together at some dozen “Fired Up and Ready to Go” gatherings in the San Fernando Valley, which organizers said were “to celebrate our big win, brainstorm next steps for our organizing, and kick off efforts to help Obama make bold, progressive changes.”
“We want to show Congress that Obsama absolutely has a mandate from the people to make changes in Washington Canoga Park
On Thursday Valley for Obama campaign leaders also announced they were holding phone bank operations Sunday to make calls to Georgia voters on behalf of Democratic Senate candidate Jim Martin who is in a Dec. 2 runoff in that state against Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss.
“Everyone in the Obama campaign is committed to staying involved,” said Peter Rothenberg of Northridge, co-chair of the Valley for Obama campaign.
Sunday’s phone banking is in response to Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, who in a mass e-mail sent to former workers Wednesday, asked how much time they could spare for four missions integral to Obama’s effort to transform his victory into a broader political movement.
Campaigning for progressive state and local candidates like Martin was one of those missions.
Meanwhile, Thursday night’s gatherings – 1,300 throughout the country -- were organized by MoveOn.org, which says it mobilized almost a million volunteers to help put Obama in the White House.
“We need to make sure that Obama’s progressive agenda – on education, the economy, health care, the environment and the war are acted on by quickly by Congress,” said maintenance business owner Mary Lee-Dysart of Canoga, who hosted one of the gatherings.
The new movement answers one of the inevitable questions of the two weeks since Obama’s election: what's next for the hundreds of thousands of people across the country who registered new voters, made get-out-the vote phone calls, sold baked goods, and made his election an obsession.
Rothenberg said local Obama volunteers received recognition at a celebration earlier this week from the state campaign which announced that California
“It was simply one of the most remarkable achievements of the campaign,” said Rothenberg. “Toward the end (of the campaign), our volunteers were making between three and four million calls a day.”
Posted by Tony Castro at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
'A Child Shall Lead the Way...'
June 21, 2008In Barack Obama's presidential campaign, the mantra of the faithful has been that a child shall lead them - but few were taking that literally.
Now, though, they have 14-year-old Joshua Steele of Studio City, who is too young to vote but not too young to show them the way...
Posted by Tony Castro at 04:16 AM | Permalink
Obama to Hillary: Read My Lips
June 17, 2008When Hillary Clinton fired campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle some months
back, the ouster effectively branded the top Latina in her presidential bid the scapegoat for her failure. The move also quietly angered Latino political insiders who knew the campaigns flaws ran much deeper.
On Tuesday, Solis Doyle got some revenge -- and a lot of respect -- back when Barack Obama named her the chief of staff to whoever winds up becoming his vice-presidential running mate.
Obama is either trying to heal wounds between the two women or sending a message to the Clintons that he has kissed off Hillary as his VP, and only a fool would believe the former.
Meanwhile, the appointment hasn't gone unnoticed in Latino political circles which have warmed up significantly to Obama since he clinched the nomination.
Posted by Tony Castro at 01:10 AM | Permalink
Couple Marks California's First Same-Sex Marriage
June 16, 2008BEVERLY HILLS -- A wrongful arrest years ago in New York for impersonating a woman led Robin Tyler to becoming the best female impersonator of her time – yes, she really was a woman, a leading gay rights activist and a career in show business.
“I did Judy Garland, and I could really sing like her,” says Tyler. “But the guys in the show had to show me how to walk in (high) heels.”
On the other side of the country, the granddaughter of a former governor of California, Diane Olson was born into a life of privilege in Beverly Hills that could have led to debutante ball and society circles.
“My grandfather was the first Democratic governor of California,” says Olson. “He was progressive and ran on the platform of separation of church and state.”
On Monday, their two unlikely paths led to history when they became the first same-sex couple to legally marry in California – the result of their lawsuit that knocked down the state’s laws against gay marriage.
Tyler, 66, and Olson, 54, who share a home in North Hills in the San Fernando Valley were married shortly after 5 p.m. by Rabbi Denise Eger in a Jewish ceremony on the front steps of the Beverly Hills courthouse where they were denied a marriage license each Valentine’s Day each of the last eight years.
Technically, they shared the moment of being the first same-sex couple to marry in California with Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon who were married also shortly after 5 p.m. in San Francisco by Mayor Gavin Newsom.
The two couples were allowed to marry on the eve of when the state begins to issue marriage licenses to same-sex partners because of their unique roles in lawsuits from Los Angeles and San Francisco that led to last month’s Supreme Court decision declaring the ban on gay marriage unconstitutional.
Their landmark marriages took place even as opponents of same-sex marriage, including Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese and other religious leaders, objected with their belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
On Tuesday, hundreds of same-sex couples are expected to jam courthouses in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other counties applying for marriage licenses, with many of them also marrying that day.
Among those will be actor George Takei, who best known for his role as helmsman Hikaru Sulu on “Star Trek,” and his partner Brad Altman. They will help open the wedding license facility in West Hollywood, where hundreds of couples are expected to get their licenses and marry Tuesday.
But on Monday it wa the two early marriages that stole the thunder.
Wearing identical three-piece, cream-colored suits, Tyler and Olson exchanged vows before a throng of relatives, friends, supporters, on-lookers and a national news media spotlight.
As the days counted down to when they could marry, the two San Fernando Valley women captured most of the focus in large part because of their backgrounds.
Tyler, a former comedienne and national gay rights activist who organized three national gay rights movement marches on Washington, D.C. Olson, the granddaughter of Culbert Levy Olson, governor of California from 1938 to 1942.
Understandably, in the days just before the long-awaited ceremony, they became slightly irritated at some of spotlight they found bothersome.
“Is there this much attention paid to what heterosexual couples (who are marrying) are wearing? The cake they’re ordering? The flowers?” Tyler asked about all the questions on their wedding arrangements.
Assured that there is similar curiosity about all weddings, Tyler softened.
“Well, okay,” she said. “I guess it is kinda big.”
But there were also some funny moments.
When a reporter for a Jewish publication seemed curious that she was marrying a non-Jew, asking questions such as whether they had a mezuzah on their front door and whether she believed in intermarriage, Tyler shot back:
"If women want to marry men, it's perfectly okay with me!"
“Stupid, I'm not,” says Tyler. “I knew this was about Diane not being Jewish. But I quickly told him, ‘We both believe in a higher power.”
Tyler’s name at birth was Chernick, which she says she changed when “I was in teens so my mother wouldn't know I was performing on high holidays.”
Both women also were supported by their families in their wedding day.
Tyler’s brother Robert Chernick and his wife Maureen came into town days earlier and rode on a float with the bridal couple in the Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade.
“They dressed as California Supreme Court justices and held up our hands in victory,” says Tyler. “Yes, we wore tuxedos, and they had signs saying "Supreme Court" hanging around their necks. Believe it or not, several gay people asked them for autographs.”
Also attending the wedding were Diane's sister, Debra Olson, and Debra's grown daughters, Chrysta and Kaitlyn.
It was Debra Olson who introduced Tyler to her sister almost four decades ago, and the two later become close friends and developed a relationship 15 years ago.
“She was sober, and in the program for many years,” says Tyler. “I began going to 12 steps meetings with her, and gave up drinking. We fell in love. But we had known each other well and been friends for years.”
For Tyler, her wedding day was a long way from the trauma in 1962 of getting arrested in a New York gay club and, she says, arrested by police who mistake her for a woman dressed as a man and charge her with violating the cross-dressing laws on the books at the time.
From jail, Tyler says, she called the New York tabloids with her story, ultimately becoming a cause celeb and attracting the attention of a local drag club owner who hired her to impersonate Judy Garland, who was a heartthrob of the gay nightclub crowd.
“I looked like her,” says Tyler, showing a visitor to her office photographs from that period showing a remarkable resemblance to the entertainment icon. “This wasn’t lip-syncing. The club had a 15-piece orchestra, and I could sing like her.”
She breaks into what is still a respectable Judy Garland vocal riff and for further proof shows off a video of her impersonation.
For her part, Olson just smiles and enjoys the moment. She is friendly but reserved.
“Because Diane is soft spoken she has never been on the front lines of the gay movement but always on the sidelines, totally supportive,” says Tyler.
“She never used her political pedigree about being Culbert Levy Olson's granddaughter, but when we sued to get married, she decided to make it public, because he ran on the platform of 'separation of church and state.' She turned to me and said, ‘Go for it.’”
Posted by Tony Castro at 02:18 PM | Permalink
The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage
June 13, 2008A story lost in the buzz and uproar of the onlaught of same-sex marriages that begins Monday night is the political backbiting that has gone on behind the scenes.
The quietly feuding sides are the gay and lesbian community of San Francisco and the two pairs of Los Angeles-based original co-plaintiffs of the landmark lawsuit that last month resulted in the California Supreme Court knocking down the ban on same-sex marriages.
One of those Los Angeles couples, Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, will wed Monday evening when they become one of the first two same-sex couples to marry legally in California.
A special arrangement with officials will allow Tyler and Olson to marry early to recognize heir role in the case, and similar arrangements in San Francisco will allow Mayor Gavin Newsom to officiate at the marriage of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon Monday evening. Martin and Lyon were the first same-sex couple to marry during the 2004 Winter of Love in that city, but this time their wedding will be legal.
But it is the Tyler-Olson wedding that has stolen the thunder, much to the chagrin of activists in San Francisco, who even employed a public relations firm to help establish it as the heart of the same-sex marriage movement.
Only in the past month, though, has it become clear that Ground Zero of same-sex marriage has been in L.A., specifically the Beverly Hills courthouse where Tyler and Olson had tried unsuccessfully every Valentines Day since 2001 to get a marriage license.
Tyler and Olson, along with two other co-defendants, actually filed the first lawsuit challenging the state’s marital law through high-powered attorney Gloria Allred.
Last week, as they were making arrangements for their historic wedding, Tyler and Olson recalled that their original lawsuit had made negative waves even within the gay and lesbian communities.
"The truth is we started this lawsuit against everybody telling us we would lose,” says Tyler. “But a lot of the people who shunned us for filing this lawsuit are the same ones who are now getting a lot of credit.”
We stepped out of the loop,” says Olson. “(Some gay activists) were mad at us that we didn’t go through a gay law firm to do this. (But) Gloria (Allred) has been a friend of ours for a long time. They kept telling Robin, ‘Wait. Wait. It’ll be political suicide. Don’t rock any boats. It’s too soon. It’s a Republican-appointed Supreme Court.
"I said I’m not afraid of conservatives if they’ll interpret the constitution.”
Posted by Tony Castro at 02:59 PM | Permalink
Clinton Lessons for Antonio's Trip to Israel
June 11, 2008As a national co-chair of the just-completed campaign debacle of the Clintons, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa should have learned a few lessons for his own future campaigns.
1. Do not refer to yourself as the honorary "Jewish mayor of Los Angeles."
Resist the temptation, especially as you try to corner the important Jewish vote which will be critical to your ambitions of becoming governor in 2010. Even if this is your third trip to Israel during your political career. Remember what price Bill Clinton had to pay as "America's first black president" when that mantel backfired. Or the price Hillary had to pay.
2. Do not "recall" that you "landed under sniper fire" of your visit to Sderot.
In a future campaign it will be tempting to impress with being in danger in the Middle East, especially since Sderot is a town on the Gaza border that has faced repeated rocket attacks by Palestinians. Just recall how well such recollections about Yugoslavia paid off for Hillary.
3.Watch what you say to Israelis on those village streets.
Remember Bill's lesson on the rope line talking to a crowd at Millbank, S.D. You never know when someone's a citizen journalist and when your words will wind up on YouTube.
Posted by Tony Castro at 11:32 AM | Permalink
McCain's Latino Strategy: The Cubans
June 10, 2008Leave it to John McCain to kick off his wooing of the Latino voter with a Spanish radio commercial appealing to the Cubans in Florida who are possibly the closest thing to a lock-cinch for the Republicans next to the party's loyal right-wingers.
In an attempt to knock Barack Obama's willingness to meet with some enemies of the U.S., McCain's ad tells Cuban Americans he would effectively continue the four-decades-old embargo of Cuba and not meet with new Cuban president Raul Castro until the release of all political prisoners in that country.
"While some support a dialogue with Raul Castro, John McCain believes we should support the courageous men and women who continue to stand up for freedom in Cuba. Rather than resume relations with Raul Castro, John McCain wants first and foremost for all political prisoners to be released."
A more important Latino voting bloc that poses a potential threat to the GOP's hold on states such as Texas are the Mexican Americans in the Southwest, and McCain hasn't yet begun addressing that constituency in the months since clinching the Republican nomination.
Smart, John.
Posted by Tony Castro at 04:38 PM | Permalink
Antonio in an Obama Administration?
June 09, 2008Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's name has already popped up in the Barack Obama camp's discussions transforming his primary organization into a political machine for the general election.
Villaraigosa has been mentioned in talks about sending organizers and surrogates into important possible swing states like Texas, Colorado and Michigan -- states with large blocs of Latino voters, which were one of Obama's noticeable weaknesses in the primaries.
Antonio was one of Hillary Clinton's national co-chairs and campaigned for her extensively among Latino voters. He endeared himself to the Obama campaign last week when on the day after the final June 3 primaries, he endorsed his Illinois senator and acknowledged he was the presumptive Democratic nominee while Clinton held out for three more days.
Villaraigosa figures to be potentially be one of Obama's important campaign surrogates among Latinos along with former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros.
Posted by Tony Castro at 02:03 PM | Permalink
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