Scrooge of the Airwaves Jack Benny, 39 going on 80, has finally met his match in parsimony--the Internal Revenue Service. Benny, who for more than 60 years has capitalized on his radio/TV reputation as the ultimate tightwad to amass a fortune in seven figures, is now being sued for back taxes by Uncle Sam.
It seems that in 1967-68, Benny gave his private collection of pictures, radio and TV scripts, radio-show recordings, tapes and some other miscellaneous memorabilia to U.C.L.A. He then deducted from his federal taxes, as a gift, the collection's appraised worth: $154,000.
Presenting Benny with a $109,081 tax bill, the IRS rejected the deduction on the ground that the value of the donated material may have diminished if Benny had sold any of the production (dramatic, radio, TV or movie) rights in it. But Benny says: "I owned everything." Asked whether his predicament could be compared to, say, that of President Nixon, whose tax deduction for the gift of his vice-presidential papers to the National Archives is now being reviewed by the IRS, Benny was laconic: "The difference is that for those two years I paid $500,000 in federal taxes, not to mention $100,000 hi state taxes, while Nixon only paid $800 or $900."
Furthermore, said Jack, referring to his taped memorabilia, "My tapes have not been erased."
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"I'm sorry, sir, your credit card has expired," said the Butler Aviation official at Palm Beach International Airport. The short, gray-haired man in the blue sports outfit had just stepped off a silver-gray and blue Olympic Airways Learjet, which had stopped for refueling on a flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to New York. But it seems that Greek Oil Tanker Tycoon Aristotle Onassis, 67, had failed at a simple piece of domestic scheduling: his Shell Oil credit card was out of date, and Ari had no charge account with Butler. So while he coped with the necessary paper work to have his card renewed, Wife Jacqueline ordered up bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches for the couple at the airport coffee shop. An hour later, the Onassises were once again airborne.
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On his latest tour of duty for his Commander in Chief, Geological Engineer and Naval Reserve Commander Edward C. Nixon has run into heavy weather--in his home harbor of Seattle. The President's youngest brother was paid $1,500 a month for 14 months as a consultant to the California-based Richard Nixon Foundation, which is raising money for a proposed presidential library. His job: to find a suitable site for the library. Foundation President Leonard Firestone rates Ed's productivity high: he reviewed six sites and came up with three possible Orange County locations. But Ed's wife Gay is not so enthusiastic. "While he's off being paid to do nothing," she told reporters, "I'm here alone. I'm trying to teach school, and I've got two kids. Let me tell you, it's tough."
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"Yes! Say yes," commanded Liza Minnelli. Shiny brown eyes open wide and black derby askew, Liza was back on Broadway for the first time in seven years. In 1965 she was a Tony winner for her role in Flora the Red Menace.
This week she returns as the full-fledged star of her own revue (once again under the aegis of Flora's lyricist Fred Ebb), based on a 50-minute show that Liza took round the U.S. last fall on a three-month tour. Within 36 hours of the box office opening at the Winter Garden Theater, all seats for the three-week run were sold out. But Liza was already looking beyond her song-and-dance routines. Come spring, she will play a non-singing-and-nondancing role in the movie Carmela, to be made in Italy by her father, veteran Hollywood Director Vincente Minnelli.
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Second-honeymooning at Venice's fashionable Hotel Danieli, Richard and Elizabeth Burton were seldom out of each other's sight. While Richard was acting in Italian Director Vittorio De Sica's new film The Journey, the convalescent Elizabeth, attended by a nurse-secretary-companion who accompanied her from Los Angeles, watched over her husband. From a balcony above the San Marco Canal, she could see Richard playing a love scene with Co-Star Sophia Loren in a prop gondola. Perhaps she also saw her husband growing cold--physically, that is. Whatever the reason, Richard next appeared wearing his wife's sable coat. After posing amiably for a pretended fashion news shot, he re-embarked on the gondola and snuggled down again with Loren.
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It seemed a moment for a legend --and an era--to live again, and some 5,000,000 people wanted to be in on it.
Folk Singer and Composer Bob Dylan, 32, was making his first concert tour in eight years, with a six-week, 21-city series of concerts. Last week the 20,000 fans who thronged Dylan's opening appearance in the Chicago Stadium were mostly over 30--veterans of the protest movements of the 1960s for which Dylan's early songs had been the anthems. They were restrained but almost reverent; twice they lit matches in the traditional tribute to a musical guru, and several times they sang or hummed along with him.
Dylan, bearded and blue-jeaned, wearing his trademark harmonica on a brace around his neck, was backed by his longtime colleagues--now stars in their own right--the Band. He spoke to the audience only once, before intermission ("Be back in about 15 minutes"); otherwise he said what he had to say in his songs. Many were recapitulations of his beginnings as a mordant chronicler of war, injustice, poverty and alienation. Others reprised the more introspective ballads that followed his withdrawal from the scene after a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1966. If his followers expected a new political consciousness for the '70s, the three new songs that Dylan unveiled provided none. As he sang in Wedding Song: "It's never been my duty to remake the world at large/ Nor is it my intention to sound the battle charge."
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"She has a tremendous sense of humor without being flippant," is one description. Another is: "A typical Wellington, snappy at times but sociable." Oh, well, the British prefer their royals a little naughty, and Lady Jane Wellesley, 22, only daughter of the eighth Duke of Wellington, was seen risking leese-majeste by shying melons at Prince Charles' head on his recent visit to her parents' Spanish estate. Now Charles, a childhood friend of Jane's, apparently thinks of her as more than just a girl-next-door romance, and so do many of his subjects. When dark, petite Jane was invited to spend the New Year's holiday with the royal family at Sandringham, more than 10,000 Britons drove, biked or hiked past the castle to catch Jane and Charles together. Despite the recurring engagement rumors, Charles departed unbetrothed for a four-month stint with the Royal Navy in the Far East, leaving Jane behind at her job with a London art gallery. But a Sandringham estate worker made his own unofficial announcement. "They seemed," he said, "to squeeze hands and kiss an awful lot."
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A favorite male chauvinist taunt is that men make not only the best chefs (Careeme, Escoffier) but the most demanding gourmets too. To kill the latter canard, New York magazine's food maven Gael Greene helped organize a ladies' feast at Manhattan's posh Four Seasons restaurant. One of France's premier chefs (helas, un homme), Paul Bocuse, whose Lyons restaurant bears his name as well as the Guide Michelin's esteemed three stars, flew over the day before the banquet burdened with such Gallic specialties as pate de foie gras, truffles, Mediterranean bass and goat cheese. Among the guests: Playwright Lillian Hellman, Couturiere Pauline Trigere, Journalist Sally Quinn, Author Marya Mannes, New York Times Op-Ed Page Editor Charlotte Curtis, Sculptor Louise Nevelson, Former New York City Consumer Affairs Commissioner Bess Myerson, and Boston-based Gastronome Julia Child. Sipping her Veuve Clicquot '66 at the end of the ten course, eight wine dinner, Julia gave her verdict: "The whole thing was a great deal of fun." Chef Bocuse smilingly surveyed his table of ladies and gallantly toasted them: "I adore women!" he cried, adding diplomatically, "They are great cooks."
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Hollywood Dress Designer Mr. Blackwell, who has made a name for himself more by criticizing than creating clothes, has announced his annual selection of the worst-dressed women of the year. The No. 1 spot for 1973 was captured by the self-avowed last of the truly tacky women, Pop Star Bette Midler, because "she looks like she took potluck in a Laundromat." Runners-up were such alleged exemplars of basse couture as Princess Anne, Raquel Welch, Tennis Champ Billie Jean King, Jacqueline Onassis (who has been given a lifetime spot on Blackwell's list), Elke Sommer, Sarah Miles, the Andrews Sisters and Liv Ullmann. Coming in at No. 10 was British Hermaphrodite Rock Singer David Bowie, only the second man in 14 years to make the list (the first: Milton Berle). Explained Blackwell: "Bowie's a cross between Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich doing a glitter revival of New Faces."
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