GOOD MORNING: “You make me look like an absolute ass all the time,” Fred De Cordova told Rip Torn as they sat down for their first meeting. “But I love you!” Fred added. “Whatta talent,” he added to me. Torn, of course, plays the De Cordova-like producer of “The Larry Sanders Show” to Garry Shandling. Garry just invited De Cordova to be a guest on the show taping this week. “I’m a big fan of Garry’s,” Fred admits. “And I’d love to be on the show.” As executive producer (and four-time Emmy winner) of “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson for 22 years and executive consultant with Jay Leno since he took over, May 22, 1992, De Cordova occasionally stepped up on camera but always for an ad lib. This will be fully scripted and Torn meets De Cordova face-to-face on camera! The occasion adds a posie to De Cordova’s career bouquet — he will be 85 years young Oct. 27 … Coincidentally, Bernie Brillstein admitted to me the fact his 65th birthday “was fast approaching” (April 26, 1996) had a lot to do with his memo to the Brillstein-Grey company last week, saying, “It’s time to take it a little easier,” thus giving Grey the chairman title, and Bernie “founding partner.” Proof that Bernie was only kidding about “taking it a little easier”– he wants to add to the seven TV shows, movies and management action the project he REALLY wants to do –“produce one great (movie) script for the company”… I don’t want to make this sound like a geriatric column, but there’s a lesson here somewhere for young turks: Monday, Angela Lansbury celebrated her 70th birthday — getting up at 5 ayem, working in “Murder, She Wrote” on a downtown location — the Balian ice cream factory. The cast and family presented her a cake in the shape of a giant Tiffany (blue) box. She said, “This is the last birthday I’m going to have — for the next five years!” Peter Shaw, Angela’s husband of 45 years, presented her a necklace of baroque pearls. The crew also signed a giant card. She is so well loved. Angela thanked them all saying “how lucky” she felt. The feeling’s mutual.
BETWEEN PLANES, EN ROUTE to Telluride where he’s buying a new home (moving from Newport), Dudley Moore happily reported he’ll be playing Jeff Bridges’ best buddy in Barbra Streisand’s “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” Dudley met with Streisand to talk his role. What did she tell him? “Just wear a tweedy suit and a not-too-full bow-tie.” Moore has a full sked: Between days working on the pic, he’ll be on his concertour, the first in Montreal. He 88’s Mozart mixed with a little Gershwin and cabaret classix as well. Moore’s also busy doing the voiceover narration for National Geographic’s “Really Wild Animals” special … Jeff Pollack will be ABC’s “Good Morning America” entertainment correspondent on rock … David Picker and Sandra Jetton (non-pro) were married Oct. 14 at Central Park’s Tavern on the Green. Guests included his sister, Jean Picker Firstenberg, plus Warner LeRoy, Stanley Jaffe, Herb Gardner. The newlyweds are honeymooning in Boston — between takes of “The Crucible,” which David’s producing for Fox … The good life was personified by the good feeling exuding from the tent at Lynn and Norman Lear’s home as they partied Ben Bradlee and wife Sally Quinn on publication of Bradlee’s “A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures.” Future “adventures” for Bradlee, he said, was fundraising for children’s charities. The group of 100 at the Lear home, now restored — by decorator Joan (Mrs. George) Axelrod) post-earthquake — included the cream of TV producers, newspapering friends and talented friends like Alan King, one of the toasters to Bradlee. Others raising a glass included Howard Stringer, who admitted he’d been toasting Bradlee regularly the past week. Also toasting was Barbara Howar, who admitted she was just one of many ladies who’ve had a crush on Beau Brummel Bradlee. Lear displayed twinkle toes to the dance band at the evening advertised as “cocktails, dinner, dancing and revelry.” It was all of that and more.
IN A RUSH TO GET OUT THE WORD, Sharon Gless and husband Barney Rosenzweig and Tyne Daly took off on seven cities in seven days for CBS’ quick-skedded “Cagney & Lacey: The View Through the Glass Ceiling,” which airs Oct. 25, night of the fourth World Series game! They have one more C&G pic remaining in the can, “True Convictions”… Sidney Poitier addresses the USCinema students Wednesday on “MGM and the Studio System,” followed by a Q&A — and screening of “The Blackboard Jungle.” Peter Bogdanovich is in Chicago readying the start of the CBS/TriStar “To Sir With Love” sequel. The London sequences (which start the movie) will film last … The annual L.A. Dance Awards, “the Bob Fosses,” given at the new Century Club, honored Toni Basil, Patsy Swayze, Jack Cole, Jerry Evans, Bill & Jacqui Landrum. Shirley MacLaine noted, “Even before the word, there was movement — I should know, I was there!” Robert De Niro, no slouch at the tango, was among those who joined in the festivities at the Century.
