High life
The original Maggie
Mid
his is a great place if one likes privacy and dignity. Take, for example, the Monte11 Williams television show. Williams is a black, shaven-headed cretin of the Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey persuasion. Last week on his show two married men revealed to their wives for the first time that they were having affairs with other men and planned to continue doing so. The shocked wives heard all this before a live audience. Mostly black, I might add. The programme was of such moral squalor, it would have shocked even Michael Jackson.
Speaking of that pelvis-churner, NBC manufactured the 'Jackson Family Hon- ours' special, a misnomer if there ever was one. And of course Elizabeth Taylor was there to receive a prize from the pervert and to give a little speech defending him. Don't laugh. It was all for real. Best quote of the night was the one from the fat one's spokesman who said that 'the Jackson par- ents have the courage and the strength to believe in their children and their talent'. This about a family that makes Agamem- non's seem normal.
American recovery culture lives. Jackson now looks like a mediaeval figure, a death's head representing the plague. His is a danse macabre unparalleled in its hideous- ness. But the great American public cheered for ten minutes. Go figure, as they say in the Bagel.
What I will not have trouble figuring is the Kennedy clan en masse in Belfast, help- ing to clear Paul Hill's name. The Demo- crat congressman Joe Kennedy, with whom I once night-clubbed in Athens under extremely bizarre circumstances is an English hater sans pareil. He is also a shrill loudmouth of very little intelligence whose Only talent lies in having lotsa moolah. This Particular family get-together should rival the Jackson clan's as an all-time low. But for some strange reason I don't think Joe Will ask the to go night-clubbing this time.
On a far sadder note, Lady St Just died last week. Maria St Just was a great friend. One time or another I was in love with her two daughters, but struck out both times. Maria did not hold it against me. She had a hell of a life. Born in St Petersburg, she studied ballet and as a child danced in Covent Garden with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She studied at the Actor's Studio in New York, and played Blanche in
A Streetcar Named Desire off Broadway. She was the model for Maggie in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof I always kidded her that she was more than just the best friend of Ten- nessee Williams, and it is on such occasions that she would turn into, well, Maggie. We were very close, and she left the mother of my children as executor of her will. Maria knew a good thing when she saw it. While I was in Pentonville she wrote to me regular- ly, and forced many of her famous artist friends to write also. This was more than my ludicrous brother did. I shall miss her spunk and spirit and her volatile Russian temperament. As will Katya and Natasha, her two girls. But she did die suddenly, sit- ting in her marvellously cluttered Gerald Street drawing room, and in view of her life and the kind of world we're living in today, this was great luck indeed.
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