Hollywood Follies

According to the authoritative New York Post’s “Page Six,” Jon Peter’s auto-biography “Studio Head” was a case of premature ejaculation.

Leaks from the book proposal reached all the usual sounding boards before Peters withdrew “Studio Head.”

"Somehow this proposal has become a kind of Holy Grail of gossip,” Peter is reported saying in the Post, “and I have become Hollywood's 'Man Who Knows Too Much.' I have been besieged by potential lawsuits and threatened litigation by some of the most important figures in the world of show business. What's worse . . . is the fact that I consider all these people my friends . . . I want my book to be a celebration of, never an attack upon, the remarkable people I have known and worked with . . .”

Vanity Fair, printed some choice excerpts from Peter’s celebration of his friends.

“In the late 60s,” according to Vanity Fair, “ Peters caught his second wife, actress Lesley Ann Warren, in bed with Warren Beatty and chased the actor around the block, ‘instilling more fear in the serial Lothario than the rednecks who would kill his character in the upcoming Bonnie and Clyde.’

“When I ran this by Beatty,” Vanity Fair reporter Frank DiGiacomo wrote, “he laughed and told me that these assertions were ‘amusing but totally untrue.’ Lesley Ann Warren concurs: ‘It’s funny and colorful, but there’s not an iota of truth in that.’”

Barbara Walter invited Peters to her New York apartment prior to hosting a news special featuring Peters and Barbara Streisand.

“Keeping things very chummy,” Vanity Fair summarizes the book proposal, “ with no pretense of journalistic objectivity, she plied Jon with champagne and caviar, then changed into ‘something comfortable,’ leaving her bedroom door strategically ajar as she stripped down to her bra and panties, giving Jon a 20-20 view, as it were, of the Barbara W in all her glory. Whether Barbara was setting a trap to get the scoop of a lifetime, or whether she was making a sincere pass, Jon didn’t snap at the bait. One Barbra was enough, and he had a blockbuster to promote.”

Responding through a spokeswoman for Walters, the magazine reported that Walters issued a statement: “This is the most absurd, ridiculous thing I have ever heard. My only contact with Jon Peters was when I interviewed him and Barbra Streisand, surrounded by television cameras in 1976 for an ABC News special.”

Nothing spoils a good Hollywood potboiler quite as much as Hollywood lawyers. There will be no mini-series until Peters has redrafted his bio so as to make his friends in Sodom and Hollywood purr like Cheshire cats.

Casey Chadwick’s Uneasy Life after Death

Casey and her mother Wendy "I just started grief counseling. I'm always sad. I'm sad and in pain and I miss her." Wendy Hartling Hartling is the mother of Casey Chadwick, murdered in 2015 by Jean Jacques , an illegal Haitian immigrant. Jacques was convicted of the murder of Chadwick in a New London Superior Court jury trial and sentenced by Judge Barbara Bailey Jongbloed to a 60 year term in prison. Since Jacques is 44 years of age, the sentence was, in effect, a life sentence. Connecticut Commentary coverage of the Chadwick murder may be found here , and here and here . Jacques could not have been sentenced to death because Connecticut’s Democrat dominated General Assembly, under pressure from the state Supreme Court, had abolished Connecticut’s death penalty law in 2012 . The slaughter of Chadwick was particularly brutal. Her body had been found by a friend who, opening a door to a closet, discovered Chadwick stuffed in a dark corner drenched in blo...

Understanding North Korea Through Dramaturgy

The U.S. military is sending the Vinson Strike Group, including the carrier and two guided-missile destroyers, to operate in the Western Pacific Ocean in response to Pyongyang’s recent missile tests. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, asked about the strike force, issued a terse statement: “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.” Is this a post-Syrian bombing mission? Will the US take out North Korea’s missile launching sites, possibly with the unspoken concurrence of China? Never let a bombing go to waste. There are some in the United States who think any such incident should be used to rid North Korea of that runty little totalitarian cock-of-the-walk who keeps his countrymen starved, in fear and at his knees. Since we only have one chance, they say, go for the clean sweep -- no more Kims. Connecticut Commentary is reprinting an earlier piece about the Kims here. Best read with a glass of port.

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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