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From Bess Myerson's messy romance to Malcolm Forbes' birthday party, from Roseanne Barr's backstage tempests to William Hurt's palimony trial, the private doings of public figures preoccupy the supposedly serious mainstream press. Decades after Walter Winchell, Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper and their ilk went the way of the dodo, their patented elixir of career hype, marital comings and goings, feuds, fortunes and celebrity pratfalls has become the journalistic cocktail of choice. In the great public circus of American life, gossip is back in the center ring.
New York City, the U.S. media capital, has become a metropolis where most of the newspapers offer not just one gossip page but three or four. They feature glimpses of everyone from sitcom heroes and sports stars to obscure if self- important entertainment and publishing executives, social-climbing plastic surgeons and dress designers, deposed royalty, offspring of ousted dictators and legions of the nouveaux riches or, rather, nouveaux gauches.
Gossip columns may even feature other gossip columnists. Although most practitioners are too competitive to mention one another, they all take frequent note of Claudia Cohen, who moved from "Page Six" at the Post to the I, Claudia column at the Daily News to her current bully pulpit, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee on ABC-TV. Along the way she vaulted into the ranks of privilege by marrying an A-list name, corporate raider Ron Perelman.
In Los Angeles the names often come from studios and talent agencies; in Washington, from government and politics; in Chicago, from local pro sports teams, although any item about talk hostess Oprah Winfrey will do; in St. Louis, from Busch brewery heirs; in Boston, from the corridors of the state house and city hall, the Kennedy clan and the remnants of the Cabot-and-Lowell Brahmin aristocracy. In every city there is an inevitable reliance on local TV personalities. A few elite names are good anywhere, anytime, whether they have done something recently or not. Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Onassis and Barbra Streisand are always news; so are Frank Sinatra and Teddy Kennedy and Sylvester Stallone. Some celebrities, like Sean Penn or Robin Givens, may prove ephemeral, but are omnipresent for their moment. Some celebrities become famous for doing something. Others, like Malcolm Forbes -- who died suddenly of a heart attack last week -- are famous for how lavishly they've spent in the company of celebrity friends.
Many gossip-column names, like the Trump clan, become famous primarily for being famous. Long before Trump ranked as one of the wealthiest Americans, he made himself one of the best known simply by trying. He followed a social path that one public relations counselor says is available to any Manhattan couple with about $100,000 to squander, "not counting the jewelry." He and his wife adopted the right charities, made sure they were photographed at the proper < benefits and balls, acquired well-publicized luxury possessions and set up holiday homes at fashionable times and places.