It's reassuring to know that celebrities are capable of short bursts of civility when they're in the spotlight. But it's more fun when they can't manage even that.
_____________________________________________
OF ALL THE REPREHENSIBLE HOLLYWOOD HABITS OF TODAY, surely the most dispiriting is the practice of being officially "nice." Yes, far be it from the politically correct sobersides of contemporary showbiz to ever be caught publicly uttering anything less than complimentary about their esteemed coworkers. What does it matter that Hollywood is the planets most back-stabbing, double-dealing, throat-cutting, ego-slashing industry, an environment in which people have been saying and doing vile things to each other since D.W. Griffith helmed Intolerance? Just so long as everybody has happy thoughts about everybody else when tape is rolling. Well, in this bland era of toothless celebrity sound bites, here is our salute to those brave few who have, over the decades, shown the guts, the recklessness, the immodesty, the style to dish their colleagues on the record the way they do in private. To each of our mouthy stars we've awarded points in two categories--the first for depth of dish and the second for way with words. Alrighty, then. Let's dish.
1. Ave Maria
Ava Gardner, Tinseltown's reigning love goddess from the late '40s through the early '50s, made head-lines and set an Industry standard for dish in 1966 when, as the veteran of a rocky marriage to Frank Sinatra, she was asked by the press what she thought of Sinatra's marrying waif-like rising star Mia Farrow. "Ha!" she exclaimed. "I always knew Frank would end up in bed with a little boy." Thank you, Ava, (10, 10)
2. Lips Lopez
Those who mourn the death of con-temporary Hollywood-on-Hollywood verbal vandalism idolize Jennifer Lopez as the mouth that roared. In 1998, Lopez had demonstrated chat, in terms of talent, she was the real thing, but she knew she was underrated. Since she had just finished shooting Out of Sight (in which she was sensational), what bet-ter time to openly assess her competition? So she told Movieline what she really thought about Gwyneth Paltrow: "I swear to God, I don't remember anything she was in. Some people get hot by association. I heard more about her and Brad Pitt than I ever heard about her work." And Madonna: "Do I think she's a great performer? Yes. Do I think she's a great actress? No." And Winona Ryder: "In Hollywood, she's revered, she gets nominated for Oscars, but I've never heard anyone in the public or among my friends say, 'Oh, I love her.'" And Salma Hayek: "It makes me laugh when she says she got offered Selena, which was an outright lie. If that's what she does to get her-self publicity, then that's her thing," And Cameron Diaz: "A lucky model who's been given a lot of opportunities I just wish she would have done more with." In the same spirit of candor, Lopez also leveled one at her Money Train costar Wesley Snipes, who, she said, had hit on her incessantly and didn't appreciate rejection: "He wouldn't talk to me for two months, I was like, 'What an asshole' Actors are used to getting their way and to treating women tike objects." Brava, Jennifer, even if you went around telling people you were quoted out of context (hey, we've got the tape). (10, 9)
3. More Latina Than Usted
Salma Hayek protested to a journalist for Britain's The Sunday Times that she'd actually been defending another highly quotable actress when she said in an earlier inter-view, "People say 'Latino' like we're all identical, but Jennifer Lopez is American. She's from New York. She doesn't have an accent, some of these Latin people--their Spanish is pathetic. They learned it when they became famous as Latinos." (10, 9)
4. Fisher King
Onetime superstar Eddie Fisher recently published his autobiography, Been There, Done That, in which he describes his life with Debbie Reynolds as "a sham for the media," and disses his ex-wife: "Debbie's whole life has been an act." Of another ex-wife, Elizabeth Taylor, he says, "She had the face of an angel and the morals of a truck driver." And, assessing the gray matter of yet another ex-wife, Connie Stevens, he relates, "I remember walking into the kitchen one afternoon while she was having a conversation with her best friend about religion and I said something about Jesus Christ. 'Eddie, that's not fair,' Connie complained. 'You read books.'" (10, 9)
5. Power Play
After making The Eddy Duchin Story with screen goddess Kim Novak, Tyrone Power spouted to gossip columnist Louella Parsons, "Confusion between temperament and bad manners is unfortunate. She made my life hell. She was often late, inevitably rude and incredibly cold." He later told the London Daily Express, "the film industry is divided between the professionals and the amateurs. So far, Kim Novak is the latter... at least on my film," specifically pointing out that she was "a bitch and a spoiled brat." (9, 9)
6. Not So Silent
Mabel Normand, one of the silent era's most popular comediennes, was a party girl and entirely the opposite of "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford, the box-office queen. Setting an early high-water mark for Hollywood broadsides, she told an interviewer in the early '20s, "Say anything you like, but don't say that I 'like' to work. That sounds like Mary Pickford, that prissy bitch. Just say I like to pinch babies and twist their legs. And get drunk." (10, 10)
7. Pacino Punches
Al Pacino mostly sticks to talking about his craft these days, but back in 1980 when he was reminded by a Playboy interviewer what The New Yorker critic Pauline Kael had written in her Serpico review--that she couldn't distinguish Pacino from Dustin Hoffman--he fired back, "Is that after she had the shot glass removed from her throat?" Bashing critics isn't nearly as admirable as sticking it to colleagues, but kudos anyway, Al. (9, 10)
8. A Spoonful of Sugar...
For another slap at the press, try habitually sugary Julie Andrews's uncharacteristic and now-famous comment about one of Hollywood's reigning gossip columnists in the 70s, Joyce Haber: "She needs open-heart surgery and they should go in through her feet." (10, 10)
9. Sugar and ...
Julie Andrews herself was often the object of scorn for her saccharine screen persona. Her leading man in The Sound of Music, Christopher Plummer, dealt her an unsportsmanlike blow when he told an inter-viewer, "Working with her is like being hit over the head with a Valentine's card." (8, 8)
10. Simply Sharon
Sharon Stone has given lively inter-views For years, but few people realize that even before she was famous enough to weather retribution she was commendably dishy. Before Basic Instinct hit screens, she reminisced for Movieline about her Total Recall sparring partner, Arnold Schwarzenegger: "Someone said one day, 'You know, Arnold doesn't like you,' After thinking about that, I called this person and said, 'Did any-body bother to wonder if I liked Arnold? Or does only his opinion count because he's a big star?'" (9, 9)
11. Stoned Again
Sharon Stone proved she'd lost none of her spark when, before the picture was released, she said of her Sliver costar Billy Baldwin: "I mean, Billy's 29 and he seems so young. I like most people I've worked with in the business. My vote's out on Billy. I never really quite got his trip." (9, 9)
12. Bullitt Head
Studio executives routinely see appalling star behavior, but are subject to the same code of niceness as the stars themselves, so when one of them speaks pointedly of star behavior, it's notable. Sony Pictures chief John Calley, who had tangled with notoriously difficult superstar Steve McQueen in his days at Warner Bros., told The New Yorker in 1994 that the actor "was a nightmare. He got paid more than any-body in those days, but when you made a deal with him, his attitude was that what you were really doing was renting his nude, filthy, unshaven body for however long the filming was going to last... If you wanted him clothed, you had to buy him clothes. So you would get these bills--40 pairs of Levi's, 300 sweaters, underwear, socks, shoes, the whole works." (8, 8)
13. Knock Wood
Tough guy Steve McQueen was as blunt as he was rude. Of Natalie Wood, his Love with the Proper Stranger leading lady, he said, "I never saw what was so great about Natalie. She was short and lousy in bed." (8, 8)
14. Party Pooper
With an admirable lack of respect for a fellow actor, Robert Mitchum said, "A Steve McQueen performance just naturally lends itself to monotony. Steve doesn't bring much to the party." (8, 8)
15. Poison Penn
Master thespian Sean Penn had been friends with Nicolas Cage for years--they made Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Racing With the Moon together in the '80s--when he talked to Newsweek last December about being "appalled when talented actors debase them-selves" and "shit on their profession all the time." Clearly offended by the many eight-digit payoffs Oscar-winner Cage was collecting for his action films, Penn also told The New York Times, "Nic Cage is not an actor. He could be again but now he's more like ... a performer." (New York Post's columnist Richard Johnson reported Cage's response: "I was particularly upset because the day before he made his hurtful remarks, Sean visited me and my wife [Patricia Arquette] on the set of our new movie... He pretended to be our best friend. We all went out for drinks and supper and he kept calling us his family and then the next day he stabs me in the back.") (10, 7)
16. Dancing With Kevin
For a more recent incident of executive dish, consider what Universal cochairman Stacey Snider said to the Los Angeles Times after Kevin Costner told Newsweek that the studio executives had pandered to the "biggest common denominator" by toning down For Love of the Game to get a PG-13 rating: "Kevin's not the director and it's not fair for him to hijack a $50 million asset. Our feeling is that we have backed the filmmaker and his name is Sam Raimi, not Kevin Costner." Score: (8, 8)
17. Kevin's Lack
In her behind-the-scenes documentary Truth or Dare, Madonna dismissed an A-list star in a nutshell as follows: "Kevin Costner has personality minus." (9, 9)
18. Dangerous When Wet
In her recent autobiography, The Million Dollar Mermaid, Esther Williams pulls out all stops to recount the affair she had with Jeff Chandler while they made Raw Wind in Eden in the late '50s. At the time, she was a bathing beauty, he was a ruggedly sexy Oscar nominee, and both were going through divorces. The affair got so serious, the two lovers contemplated marriage. But before taking that step, Chandler decided to reveal a hidden side of his character to Williams: he presented himself to her in full drag. Williams records her final retort to Chandler as she eased out of his life: "Jeff, you're too big for polka dots!" (10, 10)
19. Good Time Charlie
When the irrepressible Charlie Sheen assessed the new breed of actors in town in 1994, he exceeded even his own dish standards. He told_ Movieline_, "Oh, and Leon (sic) DiCaprio with his Oscar nomination and all his fucking James Dean bull-shit? Shit, some of these punks got no fucking respect," and went on to say, "I mean, how does fucking Francis Ford Coppola, one of the greatest filmmakers of our time, see Keanu Reeves's work, see what we've all seen, and say,' That's what I want in my movie'? 'How does Bertolucci see that and say, 'That's my guy'? Emilio [Estevez] and I sit around and just scratch our flicking heads, think-ing, 'How did this guy get in?' I mean, what the fuck?" And he achieved true eloquence on the subject of Kristy Swanson, his costar in The Chase. "If ever a thought went through that airhead of hers, it would perish from loneliness." (10, 8)
20. The Contender
In a 1978 Playboy interview, Marlon Brando, having just made Apocalypse Now, in which he would appear on-screen at a shockingly high weight, dismissed a fellow American legend as follows: "Elvis Presley--bloated, over the hill, adolescent entertainer--had nothing to do with excellence, just myth. It's convenient for people to believe something is wonderful." (8, 8)
21. The Horror
In a 1995 Playboy interview, Harvey Keitel described what it was like to have Francis Ford Coppola yank him out of the lead role (in favor of Martin Sheen) in Apocalypse Now: "It was a matter of a young actor who was an ex-Marine out of Brooklyn meeting with a talented director who was out of UCLA and some fraternity, I don't think we communicated well." (8, 7)
22. Young and Foolish
Nobody exactly knows what sparks flew between beautiful rising star Sean Young and volatile actor James Woods around the time they were shooting The Boost, but whatever went down between them, Woods and his then-fiancée Sarah Owen filed a 1988 civil suit charging Young with very weird, stalker-style behavior. In a 1990 interview with Movieline after the brouhaha had apparently been settled out of court, Young called Woods "a criminal" and "an extortionist," someone "who couldn't have a consistent relation-ship with a doorknob," then went on to remark, "God would have been merciful if he had given him a little teeny penis so that he could get on with his life." On a roll, the actress also described Kevin Costner, her No Way Out costar, as "an excellent businessman, an average actor, very good at work-ing the camera. She zinged Warren Beatty as "impossibly self-centered, more vain than any woman I've ever met, and obsessed with sex, his penis and conquering women," and explained that director Beatty fired her after seven days' shooting on Dick Tracy because she "made him look too old and didn't respond to his end-less hitting on me." (10, 10)
23. The Warren Report
In her autobiography, '60s sex kit-ten/bad girl Mamie Van Doren described past-lover Warren Beatty as "the kind of man who will end up dying in his own arms." (10, 10)
24. Shore Leave
During a short-lived burst of fame back in 1994, Pauly Shore commented in print on his pal Charlie Sheen's relationship with porn star Ginger Lynn: "The reason Charlie Sheen liked going out with Ginger Lynn was because it was like dating himself: trash. He's trash." As a saving grace, Shore, who also dated porn stars, added, "I'm trash." (10, 10)
25. Adieu, Audrey
Hefty Hollywood legend Orson Welles proved he was willing to say anything when he declared, "Audrey Hepburn is the patron saint of anorexics." (10, 10)
26. Gloria Cabs
Newspapers around the world had a field day when, in 1958, the young daughter of screen sex goddess Lana Turner stabbed to death her mother's gangster gigolo boyfriend. When syndicated columnist Walter Winchell wrote passionately in defense of Turner (whose daughter was later acquitted through "justifi-able homicide"), Gloria Swanson zinged Winchell publicly: "I think it's disgusting that you are trying to whitewash Lana. She is not even an actress...she is only a trollop." (10, 10)
27. Battling Bombshells
In the early '50s, the international press had a field day with the alleged rivalry between sexpot star Gina Lollobrigida and then-rising star Sophia Loren, both of whose careers were furthered by producer Carlo Ponti, whom Loren eventually married. In 1954, the Italian newspaper Il Messagero quoted Lollobrigida saying of the younger Loren, "Sophia is a very pretty girl but she cannot threaten me because she is incapable of playing my roles." At an Italian film week in London later that year, Loren told a reporter, "Why is Gina so mad at me? I want to be friendly with her, why not? It is true that my measure-ments excel hers, but is that a rea-son to be furious with me?" (Lollobrigida: 10, 9; Loren: 10, 10)
28. Bowlegged
The charismatic Clara Bow, one of the silent era's great sex symbols and box-office supernovas, was a studio publicist's nightmare. In a 1930 interview, she raided through a list of her household-name sexual conquests as follows: "Gilbert Roland was the first. He's got another mama now, but I still got tender thoughts about him. Not that I want him again. Not me--I wouldn't have him on a bet. Then I met Victor Fleming, the director. There's a man for ya. He gave me a lotta good advice, but he was too darn old for Clara--and besides, I had Gary Copper comin' up. Gary was a swell boy, but jealous. I didn't wanna get married. I went everywhere and did everythin.'" And how. (9, 8)
29. St. Paul the Apostle
The 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls was full of dish from and about larger-than-life characters from the '70s. Particularly notable, though, considering the power and image of the person being skewered, was writer/director Paul Schrader's com-ment about fellow artist Steven Spielberg: "He probably still has the first dollar he ever made--screwed to the wall." (8, 8)
30. Week and Neck
Also in Easy Rider, Raging Bulls, wild-man producer Don Simpson, a man who aroused extreme reactions in everyone he met, is quoted on the subject of director Robert Altman, with whom he made Popeye: "None of us really wanted to make Popeye, and we hated Altman, who was a true fraud... he was full of gibberish and full of himself a pompous, pretentious asshole." (10, 9). In the same book, Altman says of Simpson, who died in 1996, "Simpson was a bad guy, a bum... It's a big plus to our industry that he's not here anymore. I'm only sorry he didn't live longer and suffer more." (10, 8)
31. Hello, Gorgeous
Omar Sharif, who romanced costar Barbra Streisand while making Funny Girl with her, let Rex Reed know that the romance was over when, in an interview after the movie won Streisand an Oscar, he said, "She's a monster. But she's a fascinating monster. I think her biggest problem is that she wants to be a woman and she wants to be beautiful and she is neither." (10, 10)
32. Hello, Gorgeous II
Streisand seems to inspire any number of people to be un-nice about her. Walter Matthau, after battling the singing diva throughout the film-ing of Hello, Dolly!, told the press, "I'd love to work with her again, in something appropriate. Perhaps Macbeth." (10, 9)
33. Faye, Dearest
On completing the now-classic Chinatown, director Roman Polanski made a pointedly unaffectionate remark about his leading lady, Faye Dunaway, describing her as "a gigantic pain in the ass. She demonstrated certifiable proof of insanity." (10, 10)
34. And God Created Woman...
Beefy Stephen Boyd described the pleasures of making the 1968 Western Shalako with sex kitten Brigitte Bardot as follows: "All I can say is that when I'm trying to play serious love scenes with her, she's positioning her bottom for the best angle shots." (9, 9)
35. Some Like Her Not
In the late '50s, Marilyn Monroe drove her coworkers to distraction with her chronic lateness, erratic behavior and inability to remember dialogue. While making the now-classic comedy Some Like it Hot, Billy Wilder gave an interviewer this description of his legendary star: "She has breasts like granite and a brain like Swiss cheese." (10, 9)
36. Cruise-O-Matic
James Woods called Tom Cruise "a kid off a Wheaties box." (8, 8)
37. Coming Up Short
Esteemed acting giant Meryl Streep said of meeting fellow acting giant Dustin Hoffman, her Kramer vs. Kramer costar, "He came up to me and said, 'I'm Dustin--burp-- Hoffman,' and he put his hand on my breast. What an obnoxious pig, I thought." (10, 10)
38. City Slicker
When Jack Palance won a 1991 Oscar for his role in City Slickers, he paid tribute to the picture's star (and evening's Oscar host) Billy Crystal by cracking, "I crap bigger than him." (10, 7)
39. Doin' la Del Rio
Director John Ford won no points from the most gorgeous Latin star and playgirl of the '30s and '40s when he said, "As a beauty, Dolores Del Rio is in a class with Garbo. Then she opens her mouth and becomes Minnie Mouse." (9, 9)
40. Sisters of Mercy
Oscar-winning Joan Fontaine said of Oscar-winning sister Olivia de Havilland, "I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she'll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!" (9, 9)
41. Dolphin-Safe
Alan Ladd had been a romantic, tough-guy leading man since the '40s when he was paired with young, sexy Sophia Loren in Boy on a Dolphin. The 43-year-old complained that "working with her is like being bombarded by water-melons," and told New York Herald Tribune columnist, "[the director] fell in 'love' with her, so she got all the good close-ups. All you ever saw of me in most scenes was the back of my neck." (9, 9)
42. Valentine
Martin Rackin, the producer of Two Mules For Sister Sara, called his star, Shirley MacLaine, "a disaster, a fucking ovary with a propeller who leaves a trail of blood wherever she goes. A half-assed chorus girl, a pseudo-intellectual who thinks she knows politics, thinks she knows everything, wears clothes from the ladies of the Good Christ Church Bazaar." (10, 10)
43. Slammin' Raquel
The 70s sex symbol Raquel Welch did not wow everyone. "She's silicone from the knees up," declared George Masters, one of Holly-wood's leading hair stylists and makeup men. (10, 10)
44. Goddard Gabs
When early thirtysomething Paulette Goddard made So Proudly We Hail with fortyish Claudette Colbert and twentysomething Veronica Lake, she was asked by an interviewer which costar she preferred. Goddard answered, "Veronica, I think. After all, we are closer in age." (8, 8)
45. The Evans Treatment
In a 1993 interview with Movieline, the colorful and controversial producer Robert Evans recalled the "horrendous fights" he had with the then-relatively untested director Francis Ford Coppola on The Godfather. "He only became the macho of the Industry from that film; then he became a genius. If his cut was shown, it would have been on television." (10, 9)
46. Dueling Divas
Larger-than-life Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were rival divas on the Warner Bros, studio lot in the '40s, and when they got thrown together 20 years later in the hit What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, little had changed. Crawford withdrew from the proposed rematch Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, but it was not until she appeared at a Town Hall lecture series in New York in 1973 that she explained, "Bette and I work differently. Bette screams and I knit. While she screamed, I knitted a scarf that stretched clear to Malibu." (10, 10)
47. Bette Noir
Movie queens Bette Davis and Joan Crawford never tired of dissing each other, Davis gleefully skewered Crawford's sexual history by saying, "She's slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie." (10, 10)
48. Misleading Lady
Joan Crawford was the star of the Freudian Western Johnny Guitar in 1954, but that didn't mean her coworkers actually had to like her. On finishing the flick, straight-shooting costar Sterling Hayden told an interviewer, "There is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford." Even the film's director, Nicholas Ray, declared: "As a human being, Miss Crawford is a very great actress." (Hayden: 10, 8; Ray: 10, 10)
49. Gone with the Good Manners
In a 1993 biography of Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh is quoted as saying about the notion that she might have considered starring with Davis in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte: "I could just about look at Joan Crawford's face at seven o'clock in the morning but I couldn't possibly look at Bette Davis's."
(9, 9)
50. Not a Team Player
Sabrina star Humphrey Bogart called costar William Holden "a dumb prick," said that costar Audrey Hepburn was "awright... if you don't mind a dozen takes," characterized director Billy Wilder as "the kind of Prussian German with a riding crop," and called the movie "a crock of shit." (9, 9)
_____________________________________________