The icy hauteur and old-fashioned eyepiece belong to Actress Faye Dunaway, 35, now at work on a new picture titled Voyage. Based on the true story of Jewish refugees who set sail for Cuba back in 1939, the movie features Dunaway as the starchy wife of a university professor, played by Austrian Actor Oskar Werner. The filming, some of which took place off the coast of Barcelona, caused some seasickness problems among the moviemakers, but Dunaway seemed to have had more worries about costuming than mal de mer. "My problem," she says simply, "was in trying to keep the monocle clamped on."
Though he could think of some cases where an extramarital fling "might save a politician's sanity," said Democrat John V. Lindsay, 54, that philandering politician in the former New York mayor's first novel is strictly fiction. The central character in The Edge is dapper Mike Stuart, an ambitious Congressman with a wife, three children and a mistress. The author, insisted Lindsay, is an ambitious ex-Congressman with a wife and four children. Period. "As my old friend Bill Buckley said, there is a certain amount of obligatory sex in a book," Lindsay observed at a Manhattan publishing party held in his honor last week. And how had the former mayor kept his own sanity during those trying years in City Hall? "We used to go to the theater ... to the ballet," answered John. "I read a lot."
"He is much less of a monster than he used to be; it's just our vision of him," smiled Composer Richard Rodgers, 74, considering the subject of his new Broadway musical Rex. Based on the life of Henry VIII and scheduled to open in April, the play will feature music by Rodgers, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick (who wrote Fiddler on the Roof) and British Actor Nicol Williamson as Henry. Despite his past successes (The King and I, Carousel, Pal Joey), the old pro composer faces some tough competition from two other Broadway veterans. As Rodgers put the finishing touches to his score last week, Lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and Composer Leonard Bernstein began rehearsals on their own new musical, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The show, says Lerner, deals with "the first hundred years of the White House, roughly from 1800 to 1900, and the previous attempts to take it away from us."
His opening lines included quotations from Philosopher Francis Bacon and Quarterback Johnny Unites, as well as a no-nonsense warning that was pure Howard Cosell. "I am not here to entertain you. We're here to work," the broadcaster rasped at the 18 students (out of 200 applicants) who had won seats for his twelve-week seminar on "BigTime Sports in Contemporary America" at Yale University. Humble Howard's course will include guest lectures by National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Baseball Players' Negotiator Marvin Miller, plus readings from classic texts like Cosell's own autobiography, Cosell. "I was amazed that he really does talk like that," allowed Sophomore Andy Durham after two hours of Howard's portentous delivery. "He insulted students when they said something stupid—the same way he does on TV."