If you Google the name of retired Hollywood actress Arlene Dahl, the primary search result is a wonderful 1985 article by People magazine reporter John Stark. Today, FishbowlLA is thrilled to be able to add to this strand by means of a “lost” interview done with Dahl ahead of her July 1984 marriage to Marc Rosen.

Separated in age by 18 years, the two tied the knot several decades after the coupling of Mae West and Chester Rybinski/Paul Novak, and years ahead of two other more famous older-woman-younger man Hollywood unions: Susan Sarandon-Tim Robbins and Demi Moore-Ashton Kutcher. Unlike those last two pairings, Dahl and Rosen are still together today, in spite of an age difference greater than that of Moore-Kutcher (15 1/2 years) or Sarandon-Robbins (12 years).

In the lost, pre sixth-wedding conversation, Dahl explains why she has been married so many times and candidly shares her concerns about the Rosen age difference. Her union was sealed long before the term “cougar” was coined by a Canadian dating site in 1999 and further popularized in a 2001 book by Valerie Gibson. But if the Internet had been around back then, you can be sure bloggers would have made liberal use of the term. From the lost interview:

“I was raised in the Midwest and I’ve done everything according to form. I’ve been a very old-fashioned girl. I don’t have romance until I get married. And I always [until now] marry an older man.”

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Rock star, punk poet and bestselling author Patti Smith played a private show Wednesday night as part of KCRW’s Berkeley Street Sessions, and FishbowlLA was lucky enough to score an invite. We rocked out with a crowd of approximately 175 public radio supporters including Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Ellen Page, Tim Robbins, Amy Madigan and Jason Bentley‘s mom. We sat next to Bookworm‘s Michael Silverblatt, who was getting his groove on, and watched Ed Harris bark like a dog during Smith’s performance of “Banga.” Magical.

Halfway through the show the music stopped and Smith was joined onstage by KCRW DJ Anne Litt for an interview that touched on a number of topics, including music, motherhood and Smith’s award-winning book, Just Kids. When Litt mentioned how much she’d been enjoying the audiobook version, narrated by Smith, the author revealed that publishers had so disliked her South Jersey accent that they told her to re-record parts of the book speaking “normally.” Thankfully, Smith declined, and her drawl remains on the audio version.

The event was recorded for Morning Becomes Eclectic and will air on November 14. The full recording of the event will become available in the station’s archives that same day.

Photo by Larry Hirshowitz

The prolific novelist, playwright, and essayist passed away at his Hollywood Hills home on Tuesday evening. According to his nephew, complications from pneumonia was the cause of death.

Gore Vidal made Los Angeles home in 2003, but his history with Hollywood is a long one. In 1948, the uproar over his homosexual coming-of-age novel The City and the Pillar saw Vidal blacklisted by the literary world.  For years Vidal was unable to get his work reviewed by critics, and to earn a living he began writing for film, television, and the stage.

The entertainment industry embraced what the literati had rejected, and Vidal enjoyed steady work. Two of his plays, “Visit to a Small Planet” — itself adapted from one of Vidal’s TV scripts — and “The Best Man,” enjoyed success on Broadway before being turned into films. His many screenwriting credits include Suddenly Last Summer with his friend Tennessee Williams, the sexually explicit commercial flop Caligula, and an uncredited stint as script doctor to Ben Hur.

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Last night at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, Michael Moore kicked off the 16th year of long-running non-profit literary conversation series Writers Bloc Presents with a couple of great LA stories. He was there, along with journalist-moderator Anne Thompson and a pair of bodyguards, to promote and sign copies of his new book Here Comes Trouble.

Moore explained how, on the weekend of his Oscar win for 2002′s Bowling for Columbine, a casual invite from Tim Robbins turned into a hotel room full of Hollywood stars, each sharing their suggestions for his possible Best Documentary acceptance speech. Sean Penn pitched the idea of 45 seconds of stone-faced silence, while Robbins—with others like George Clooney and Eddie Veder looking on–thought perhaps that Moore could announce he was giving up the Academy Award statuette in honor of Lent.

But the real LA humdinger occurred the following year, 2004, when TIME magazine arranged for Moore and Mel Gibson to travel to LA for a photo shoot and sit-down interview in support of a shared “Person of the Year” cover:

“The night before, Mel went to his church in Malibu and had a revelation,” Moore explained. “Jesus, God, the Holy Ghost, who knows… Or as the lady in the front row here just said, St. Jack Daniels. But a voice told him, ‘You are NOT to appear on the cover of TIME magazine with the Devil.’”

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The title of USC professor Steven Ross‘ upcoming book is hard to ignore – Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics.

The concept is equally intriguing. He chooses to examine the topic by focusing on ten individuals: Charlie Chaplin, Edward G. Robinson, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ahead of the book’s publication in September via Oxford University Press, the Australian caught up with Ross in Sydney, where he was recently a visiting professor:

Ross found two things that defied conventional wisdom. First, conservatives had a longer history in Hollywood than liberals, beginning with MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who developed a relationship with the Republican party in the late 1920s, effectively turning MGM studios into a publicity wing.

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During an interview last July on the BBC 4 radio program Desert Island Discs, actor Tim Robbins joked at one point that this forthcoming debut album perhaps should be titled “The Midlife Crisis Album,” or maybe even “Songs of Love and Misery.”

Released in September, the import was actually called “Tim Robbins and the Rogues Gallery Band.” But by then, it didn’t matter. The actor’s innocent deadpan joke had been re-purposed around the world, via print and online mediums that lost all nuance of the original delivery. Ahead of some Australian concert dates later this month, Robbins chatted at the Chateau Marmont with Sydney Morning Herald contributor Bernard Zuel about this very strange viral vortex:

“It was pretty surreal,” Robbins says, shaking his head slowly. “If you listen to the original [BBC 4] interview, it is so clear I am making a joke: she’s laughing, I’m laughing… It is so clearly a self-effacing moment.”

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Cord Jefferson at Jossip names a couple of real stinkers Jermaine Dupri, Tim Robbins, Paul Reiser, Casey Gane-McCalla and of course Pete Wentz.

Jefferson writes:

Tragically, HuffPo, once a fountainhead for interesting, angry liberal opinions, is fast becoming the Hollywood club of news blogs: everyone’s invited, but the celebrities have the run of the place. And boy are they ruining it.

And…

While we can’t disagree with much of what Gane-McCalla has to say – Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are idiot bigots – it’s a little hard to take discussions about racism seriously from a guy of color whose most famous song is a celebration of humping white women. Sample lyric: “You and me baby can start making up for slavery.”

Ha! Do more! There’s WAY more than just five dumb celebrity bloggers on Huffpo – that could be a daily feature…on somewhere besides Huffpo. Ahem.

Not that we at FBLA like to support this crap, but we had go give it to the boys over at Newsmax for finding an all-new way of chastising Hollywood liberals.

The so-called news magazine is issuing a free “Deck of Weasels,” or in other words a deck of cards with images of all their favorite Hollywood types interspersed with politicos, including Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Jacques Chirac, Barbra Streisand, Teddy Kennedy, Kofi Annan and many more.

In as many ways as you want to interpret it: Gag Me With A Spoon.

Doesn’t this sound like a great idea for a movie?

Rhodes Scholar gets recruited by CIA, and eventually is elected President. In wacky twist, his wife runs for the same office against POW war hero. As campaigning heats up, the duo lean on former agents to provide POW’s interrogation records, thus destroying him forever.

We like Tim Robbins and Parker Posey as the power couple and maybe Sam Shepherd as the ex-POW. Have your girl call us.

(Yes, Dr. Jack Wheeler is at it again.)

The Hollywood Walk of Fame continues to astound. In 2008, these folks will kneel down on the nicely swept sidewalk for the cameras:

MOTION PICTURES:
Angela Bassett, Cate Blanchett, Stan Lee, The Munchkins, Tim Robbins and The Westmores of Hollywood

The Munchkins were played by Singer’s Midgets. Fictional characters have been honored before.

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