Chatter

In a Lather

Golden-tonsiled, silver-bearded Kenny (Love or Something Like It) Rogers is plagued by a case of tonsorial trauma. “I’ve had my beard for 13 years,” relates Kenny, “and right before Marianne and I got married last year I thought about shaving it off, just to see if I still had a chin. I lathered my whole face and stood in front of the mirror.” And? “I just couldn’t do it—I didn’t have the strength. There’s an old saying I kept thinking of: ‘Man, like a tree, measures best when cut down.’ I guess I didn’t want to find out.”

X-Change

Covergirl-actress Lauren Hut-ton’s recent telemovie Someone Is Watching Me was originally called High Rise, until someone discovered that High Rise had already been made—as a porno movie. The title was switched before air time, but not, Hutton reports, before she “came back from Hollywood and told people in New York that I’d made High Rise—and got a lot of funny looks.”

Putting On the Dog

Still faithful to his old White House friend Liberty (First Canine during the Ford administration), crooner Tony Orlando gave the golden retriever an imaginative Christmas present: custom-designed apparel from a dog toggery called King Mutt in New York. A cotton khaki jacket decorated with Old Glory and the presidential seal is just right for casual entertaining at Liberty’s Palm Springs home, while a more distinguished Harris Tweed is perfect for après-ski at the Fords’ Vail winter retreat. Ex-President Ford, speaking on behalf of Liberty, said the family “was delighted with them—we thought they were wonderful.”

Update

Rocker Rod Stewart, who last carried on with Britt Ekland, and Alana Hamilton, who used to be married to George Hamilton, are now a cooing twosome, and here’s what they’re doing and what they’re not. He’s not supposed to be drinking (“My liver is swollen”), but he is (“I sneaked down three Bacardis last night”). He is on tour, but she is not. They might get married (“We are going to talk about it,” he says), but not live together first (“I wouldn’t want my 4-year-old son to be brought up in that kind of household,” she says). Should she nevertheless become preggers, she has no prerequisites. He does, however: “If we have a boy he must be born in Scotland so he can play football for Scotland later.”

Exposed

“People believe in him,” Erich Segal once wrote of Howard Cosell, and Howie himself is always telling it “like it is.” So nobody blinked when he wrote in his 1973 biography, Cosell: “I was born on March 25, 1920.” That his birthplace was Winston-Salem, N.C., he writes, “is a piece of biographical data I now find curious; no one thinks of me as a Southerner.” Actually, no one thinks of him as 58, either, back in Winston-Salem, where the city records clearly show he hit the big six-oh last spring.

Furthermore

•There have been other variations of the joke, most not suitable for Washington parlors. But the latest crack making the rounds in the capital, especially among Republicans and others worried about big, bumbling government, goes like this: “What are the three most common lies told in the English language?”

“I just put your check in the mail.”

“Yes, darling, I’ll still respect you in the morning.”

“I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help you.”

•Now that she and TV producer Jack Haley Jr. are divorcing, will Liza (The Act) Minnelli marry again? Not likely. “For someone in my position, that piece of paper is a terrible thing,” sighs Liza, 32. “I never in my life again want to put someone in the position of being called ‘Mr. Minnelli’—except my father.”