“The origins of Carnival are unclear,” notes one historian, “but most agree it started as a pagan celebration in ancient Rome or Greece”—“carne vale” literally means “go away, meat”—the  last gasp before fasting for Lent. “Carnival balls were imported to Rio de Janeiro from Italy in the late 19th century, and had their golden era in the 1930s through 50s, with the most legendary ball taking place at the historic Copacabana Palace.”

The Sleuths were lucky enough to attend the Copa’s “Magic Ball” this year … other guests included Madonna,  former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger and perennial party girl Paris Hilton …. and they were blown away by the elaboratenes—and explicitness—of the attendees’ costumes! The only problem was in guessing the gender of the revealing revelers—even the restrooms were unisex—though Sleuth is pretty sure that this dancer in décolletage he snapped as she samba’d by was a girl.

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Carnival in Rio is Hot! is a post from: The SleuthSayer

“Jean Simmons was the most beautiful actress I ever saw in the movies,” a fan wrote to Parade magazine in the 1980s … and Sleuth concurs. But after countless costume dramas in the Fifties such as playing Napoleon’s nymph in Desirée—where Sleuth managed to unearth a wardrobe test in which Jean’s costume was decidedly see thru {blow it up for maxi•mam exposure}—she derisively dubbed such roles “poker-up-the-ass parts … very boring.”

One playboy who found Simmons anything but boring was billionaire Howard Hughes {with Ginger Rogers}, who made it clear he’d like to poke•her up the ass … alas, he was overheard by her then-husband, actor Stewart Granger: “I’d sure like to get my teeth into that,” Hughes drooled to Cary Grant in the men’s room. “That Granger is a goddamn lucky son of a bitch.” The reclusive romeo was unlucky again, when he told Jean over the phone: “When are you going to get away from that goddamned husband of yours? I want to talk to you alone, honey.” Granger grabbed the phone and shouted: “Mr. Howard Bloody Hughes, you’ll be sorry if you don’t leave my wife alone!” As for Hughes being “sorry,” it was only a matter of Time.

And it was only a matter of time before the straight-laced Simmons would strip on screen: “I hope I don’t shock anybody,” Jean wondered when news leaked she’d skinny-dip in 1960’s Spartacus. “I must say I shocked myself a little in consenting to do it.” The nude swimming scene “was not in the original script,” the actress revealed, “but director Stanley Kubrick and Kirk {Douglas} both suggested that it would be more effective if played nude {and we’re betting Kubrick didn’t keep his Eyes Wide Shut!}. I kept agreeing, and then realized: ‘What have I said?’” What she’d done was prove her beautiful buoyancy … but only on HER side of the pond … as American audiences only saw her bare back before “doing” Douglas.

Yet unlike Spartacus, Sleuth is no slave to the censors … so he rebelled by importing these European exposures of Jean’s elegant epidermis from an overseas print of the film: Sipping some bubbly while her boobies bobbed below the surface, sultry Simmons showed a pair of flotation devices that might have saved the Tit•anic!

Jean would get along swimmingly for the next five decades … remarkably reprising the 1946 Great Expectations debut that made her famous forty-three years later … only this time as the malicious Miss Havisham! In her later years, the actress said she continued to receive fan mail but that younger writers “often confused me” with someone else: “One day a letter arrived from a 10-year-old,” she recalled. “It was the usual fan letter, saying things like, ‘I think you’re wonderful.’ Then I got to the P.S.:  ‘I love it when you spit blood!’ That’s when I realized,” joked Jean Simmons, “the letter wasn’t for me.”

But Sleuth’s favorite story concerns the time amorous Ava Gardner—then the lover of “Simmons-smitten” Howard Hughes—burst into Stewart Granger’s bedroom at 2 a.m. while on location in Africa in 1956 filming Bhowani Junction and demanded to know why he didn’t find her attractive. “Ava, you’re probably the most attractive woman in the world,” Granger gasped, “but I’m married to Jean.” Griped Gardner: “Oh, fuck Jean!” Grinned Granger: “I’d love to, darling.” Who wouldn’t …

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It’s All in the Jean’s is a post from: The SleuthSayer

“Vieira Mortified By ‘Naked’ Video” trumpeted the lead story on AOL earlier this month, less than 12 hours after Jay Leno “played a series of clips showing Vieira’s early days in broadcasting. He ended,” Popeater reported, “with the most revealing—a fully exposed still of the anchor on The Naked News, leaving little to the imagination.” Actually, the obvious fake left everything to the imagination! “Wow, I feel so liberated!” {and so badly photo shopped},  Meredith mused in the silly segment—professing that she “hadn’t seen the video yet” and “was taken aback by the whole charade.”. So taken aback, apparently, that she was ready with a quip about her stint on the buff broadcast: “Just one month!”—which, supposedly shocked co-hostess Ann Curry. I mean, do they think we’re all idiots {and not just the ones who get up in the wee hours of a winter morning to hold up banners hawking their legal services on national TV}?

Naturally, the “log rolling” media lined up to flog the phony story for the Emmy-winning host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire—with over 15,000 syndicated stories cropping up on Google by mid-morning. Wow, fake news travels fast! “Who was your mentor, David Letterman?” lightweight Al Roker remarked {referring to the late night host’s ongoing sex scandal}, as Ann advised: “Well, don’t try that now!” The supposedly stunned Vieira instantly interjected, “Nooo! They’re way down here now! I wouldn’t do it now.” Actually, this lovely publicity pose is probably the last time the so-called “MILF Gold Standard” ever kept her legs closed!

“The Today Show may be losing Katie Couric’s legs,” Gawker.com lamented when the longtime morning hostess moved to evening in September 2006, “but there’s still hope if Meredith Vieira takes her place: Vieira eschews underwear in favor of nature’s breeze” {eschew on this for a bit}! As the National Ledger later expanded: “Meredith Vieira appeared as a host of The View several times without wearing any underwear. Will she take this tradition to Today ? Vieira never pulled a Sharon Stone Basic Instinct type move (or did she?) on ABC’s show {Sleuth shows its small screen equivalent}}, but according to AOL’s TMZ, she finds wearing underwear with pantyhose redundant” {as guest host David “Stretch” Gregory of Meet The Press shockingly found out}.

“I tend to mouth off now because it’s the freedom I haven’t had,” Meredith opens up. “Sometimes I think, ‘God, did I just say for the sixteenth time that I don’t wear underpants and that my husband pokes me when I’m sleeping?’” Saying she “prefers leotards and pantyhose to panties,” Vieira later seemed vexed when reminded of it: “Someone said it was in an article,” she sniffed, “and ‘Why would you give the job to someone who doesn’t wear underwear?’ What difference does it make? It’s not like I’m sitting there with my legs open” {well, on occasion}.

“How long before Meredith Vieira tells Matt Lauer she isn’t wearing any panties?” an in•quiring mind asked Yahoo when she took Today by storm {chill out, Matt}! No wonder that when Meredith asked guest Stephen Colbert this past March, “Do you Twitter…Tweet?,” the rogue Report-er replied: “I have Twatted.” “Oh my gosh,” Vieira gasped. “Well, actually, so have I !”  Indeed … but at least the first-generation Portuguese proved she didn’t have a Brazilian when she found herself going to the dogs in a hairy moment while “twatting” on Today !

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Meredith Vieira: Who Wants To Be a Shillionaire? is a post from: The SleuthSayer

“She’s gone,” sobbed longtime love Ryan O’Neal. “She now belongs to the ages {with apologies to Abraham Lincoln!}. She’s in a better place now.” There are few worse places to get cancer than in the anus, though an article in today’s Washington Post headlined: “Cancer That Killed Fawcett Is Rare but Often Treatable.” In fact, anal cancer strikes only about 5,000 Americans a year—compared to 215,000 cases of lung cancer—and according to the American Cancer Society: “It occurs most often in people who have many sexual partners, have receptive anal intercourse or have a weakened immune system” from drug use {widely rumored after her dazed demeanor with David Letterman in 2004}.

Farrah was just 62—it seems like only yesterday she was halfway there—so we prefer to remember her finer points: the ever-erect duo on her chest! “I can’t really put my finger on why the show is such a big hit,” the sexy starlet said when Charlie’s Angels took off in 1976 … so let’s tweak her memory: “Farrah’s major focal point on the show was her very erect nipples that were always pushing against her too-tight shirts,” notes the AngelsForever.com tribute site. “When the show was number three [in the ratings],” Farrah later quipped, “I figured it was our acting. When we got to be number one I decided it was only because none of us wears a bra.” That should put any other explanation to bed …

Once Farrah’s “very erect nipple” pushed too hard on “her too-tight shirt” … and managed to escape on prime-time television (a broadcast first!) at the same time she and Angels Jaclyn Smith and Kate jackson were escaping from prison in its highest-rated episode ever, 1976’s Angels in Chains. And it also managed to escape the network censors! Admits series producer Leonard Goldberg: “Angels in Chains was my favorite episode. The show got a 56 share {more than half the homes watching TV}! The rerun got a 52 share. I told Aaron Spelling we should just run it every week until it dropped below 40.”

Or in Farrah’s case, 33½ B. “In high school,” Fawcett admitted {her 1964 senior pic from W.B. Ray High in Corpus Christi, Texas}, “the football players all went for the girls with tremendous bosoms, and I was a little flat, if you know what I mean”—as Raquel reveals in Farrah’s Myra Breckinridge debut. So a•pair•ently she decided to remedy the tit•uation, boosting her bust to a 36D. Clearly she was drawn to the enlarged assets, even painting her pert pair in her mid-40s!

Yet her God-given gifts were sufficient to send her 1976 poster over the top: it remains the best-selling wall-hanging of all-time! “The key was Nipples,” her agent Jay Bernstein boasted. “Those nipples reached every guy going through puberty” {rare outtakes from the swimsuit session}. They also reached the Sleuth guy … my Collection includes an extremely hard-to-get original poster signed by Farrah just two months before her death!

We can’t think of a more (form) fitting farewell … as she takes a final bow.  R.I.P., FF.

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Farrah Fawcett: R.I.P. and N.I.P. is a post from: The SleuthSayer

Like her, we’re chest thrilled to hear it … and you’ll be thrilled to hear today’s interview on The Howard Stern Show with the lover whose arms (and charms) she’ll probably be diving into right upon release. Butt, a bit of background first…

“I refer to the women I work with in adult films,” verified-Vagetarian Janine joked during her “Girls Only” phase, “as going into a donut shop; they’re all tempting and you just want to take a bite out of each one.” But what if the “donut” has only one hole?

“There are still some things sexually that I haven’t done yet,” Neen surprised Sleuth by saying as she headed off to The House…the Big House! “And I  think I’d like to try something new too.” When yours truly inquired, “Such as?,” lusty Lindy laughed: “I think I’m gonna keep that on the down-low for now, Sleuth. It’s a secret, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do!” Our Q & A session ended there … but the ‘A’ turned out to be a ‘T‘ !

“You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen,” Janine gushed the night she met Vaniity, the first transsexual ever to win an Adult Video News (AVN) award as Performer of the Year. The tattooed blonde admits to “being in love with her for a long time” and finally decided to take the plunge—she explains that Vaniity “still has her male plumbing“—before “going inside” {wonder if J9 was reading Ball• Sac in “the hole”?}

“All that’s left is the cock and balls,” the soon-to-be-in-the-slammer star told Howard Stern. “Oh, my God. It so amazing! For a woman to like women, and a woman to like men, and to have them both … on the same plate {Dining At The Why?} … is amazing.” Naturally, Stern dug deeper: “And she fucks you?” “Yeah,” sighed Janine. “And do you eat her ass?” “We have yet to do that,” the blonde blushed. Well, Sleuth has dug even deeper …

Now, as California inmate 70051-065 prepares to wipe the slate clean,  perhaps she and her ‘T‘ will get back together. After all, the future looks brighter … and Vaniity seems to invite her! “It was like making love to a guy and a girl at the same time,” Janine recalls of their first seating, “but all in the same person. And it was better.” As for Our Girl, they don’t make ‘em any better. The End.

P.S. Now see exclusive video and stills of Janine and Vaniity’s “First Time” together at FreeJanine.com .

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JANINE in Jail: Inmate Update is a post from: The SleuthSayer

When the young British actress was “found hanging from the ceiling of her mansion block apartment near the River Seine” in Paris two days before her 29th birthday last Wednesday, most of the post-mortems echoed Wikipedia in saying “she starred as the reporter Jennifer Dugan in the 2007 film Spider-Man 3.” In truth, she was in the film for a grand total of 13 seconds—reporting breathlessly outside the scene of the Arachnid Avenger’s latest sting operation when he was strangled and left for dead.

Frenzied news crews would gather outside her French flat exactly two years later: “It was a horrific scene,” gasped one grizzled gendarme. “The young woman has taken her own life in terrible circumstances. We are not seeking anyone else. It was a clear case of suicide.” But despite Lucy leaving two personal notes, her live-in lover—bespectacled, bearded cinematographer Jérôme Alméras—was questioned for two days by French police! The forty-something father of four became famous for his brilliant camera work last year on I’ve Loved You So Long … which recounts an inexplicable murder … but had only loved Lucy for a matter of months when she moved from Manhattan to Paris to be with him.

“It must have been very impulsive,” recalls her New York neighbor Amitabh Gordon {no relation} of the actress’s abrupt flight from her East Village apartment to join her new lover. “I asked Lucy how old Alméras’s kids were and she said there was quite an age spread. One maybe close to college age and one quite little.” Added another New York girlfriend:  “She packed up all her things and moved to Paris a few months ago. She trusted everyone. She was very sweet and kind. When she told me she had a new boyfriend, I thought, ‘What’s the real situation?’ She said he was in his 40s and had four children. I wondered, ‘Is he still with the mother of his children, is he divorced?’ Lucy didn’t say. She was just very excited.”

“She told me she was in love with her boyfriend,” confirms photographer Michel Haddi, who photographed Gordon just before her death for an Italian layout in which the guy was left hanging. “I told her she must like older men,” recalls the 42-year-old lensman. “She looked like a girl with a plan. She had everything to live for. But she was hiding that turmoil inside {though being choked by a pearl necklace in the Rome shoot was quite a harbinger}. It’s devastating. All of us have a tendency to want to kill ourselves {let’s not get carried away!}, but it’s different to just think about it.”

“Call the police, my girlfriend has hung herself,” Lucy’s lover screamed as he ran into the street after cutting her body down, insisting he “was asleep” when she hanged herself. “Why? Why?” Alméras wailed … though neighbors “reported that the couple had been heard arguing” late that night “and Lucy was audibly crying” through the apartment wall “before being found dead the next morning.” A judicial source stated: “We will try to establish a motive for her sudden suicide {Almeras alleged that she “had been deeply affected by the recent suicide of a friend in Britain,” so Sleuth offers her Facebook page as possible evidence}. She was flourishing in her professional life {glowing at the Spider-Man 3 premiere in New York}, so emotional problems related to her personal and love life would be a principal line of inquiry.” Despite reports of the loud “lovers’ tiff,” a French police spokesman stated: “The autopsy is a routine procedure which follows an apparent suicide. Hanging appears to be the obvious cause of death, considering the horrific circumstances in which the young woman was found.”

So let’s concentrate on what was lost: Born May 22, 1980 in Oxford, England, Lucy was attending her  $20,000-a-year hometown Oxford High School—whose most famous pupil is Dame Maggie Smith {Sleuth unearthed this topless outtake of mid-40s Maggie deleted from 1978’s California Suite}— when she was “spotted” by a modeling talent scout as she and her  mother visited a local clothing exhibition. Signed at 16, Lucy quickly became the face of prestigious Cover Girl cosmetics in 1997…while continuing her studies in history, biology and French. “I’m terrified about taking my A-levels {Advanced Placement Exams},” the Sweet Sixteen (with garotte like scarf) said at the time, “but equally terrified about not having any option apart from modeling in the future” {her last major ad}. Though hardly in Dior straits, Lucy listed “a number of things that keep me at school. I could get bored with being a model. I could even get fat {hardly—with her then 32B bust}. I don’t want to be stuck for choice at 25 {she didn’t make it to 29}. If I’ve passed my exams, then I will still be able to do a lot with my life.” Instead, in one of the more bizarre international headlines in Internet history, she was reportedly “baffled and devastated” by her own death! As another Cover Girl ad of hers noted, “Life is complicated.”

And ironic: Lucy’s first acting role was alongside hearththrob Heath Ledger in The Four Feathers {at its 2002 premiere}. Just 16 months before Gordon’s demise, “The Joker” was found dead of a mysterious drug overdose—meeting his end in an apartment owned by Mary-Kate Olsen!

“Being a model,” Lucy lamented, “doesn’t make you immune to your insecurities, either {evaluating her ass-ets in the mirror}. One thing you get used to is rejection.” It’s been speculated that perhaps her “distraught” fortyish Frenchman wasn’t…but there’s no doubt that gamine Gordon’s career was headed straight to the top: She had just won raves for her portrayal of model-turned-actress Jane Birkin in the upcoming biopic of legendary lover Serge Gainsbourg, Vie Héroique, which was previewed at the Cannes Film Festival on the eve of her death! In fact, Lucy “had been due to appear in a live interview at Cannes” within hours of when she was found hanged. “We are devastated,” gasped the festival’s official spokesman. “All those attending had been hugely impressed by Lucy’s work. Lucy was a star in the making.” Read ‘em and weep…

“The film owes a lot to the generosity, gentleness of spirit and immense talent of Lucy Gordon,” the producers of Gainsbourg, A Heroic Life said in a statement. Not to mention her uncanny resemblance to the bohemian beauty of the Swinging Sixties. So much so, that she beat out Birkin’s own daughter by Serge, lookalike Charlotte Gainsbourg for the part! And in a final macabre twist to the harrowing hanging, Charlotte won the Best Actress prize at Cannes within days of Lucy’s death. How’s this ad from Gordon’s early modeling days for foreshadowing the grim Gainsbourg connection?

Yet Sleuth can’t help noting that the still-striking 62-year-old Birkin’s other lookalike daughter, mad hatter Lou Doillon is now represented by the same modeling agency, IMG as fronted for the late Lucy.  And speaking of fronts, they also shared identical 32.5 inch bust measurements! As did mom Jane…so it’s transparently clear that little Lucy was born to play her. And that daughter Charlotte’s web couldn’t quite measure up to the Spider-Man starlet. Why even Gordon’s boyish pose mirrored Jane sans clothes! Speaking of which, I’ve managed to uncover Lucy’s one and only nude image … which stands as a fitting leg-acy. “Her career had just been taking off,” sighed her forlorn father Richard, “and it’s a tragedy that it has been cut short so soon. Her death has come completely out of the blue. Everything about how she died is just speculation at the moment, and we want to concentrate on paying tribute to our daughter. We are obviously devastated.”

Her only famous film, Spider-Man 3, became “the most successful new release in history” two years before she “ended her own days,” as Gordon’s agent put it—taking in $148 million in its opening weekend. “There were many factors that contributed to it,” the studio’s chief executive explained, “and there’s a part that you just put down to ‘We’ll never know.’” Perhaps the most fitting epitaph to lovely Lucy in the sky…

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Suicide Brunette: Spider-Man’s Lucy Gordon is a post from: The SleuthSayer

Great Caesar’s Ghost! Do you think I’ve got superhuman powers?! Well, maybe in certain areas. And I believe it’s transparently clear where you probably saw them in the 70s! {the original vintage cover}. Feel free to towel off with the other Margobilia you mentioned {originally published when I was working here}. At the time Kidder was one of the most recognizable People in the world, but continued to wear “see thru blouses” in her private life as well! And you didn’t need X-ray vision to see through to What Lies Beneath! Ain’t she Super?

As to the original aspect of your question, Margot must be considered the “hottest Lois Lane” by virtue of being the one who introduced S-E-X to the uptight girl reporter always trying to get her “Ten Cents in” since her debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938 {her very first frame of the strip}. “Margot Kidder was and remains the quintessential Lois Lane,” opined a sci-fi fan just last year. And Playboy concurred back in the days of Superman II: “Christopher Reeve continues to impress, but it’s Margot Kidder who dominates the movie s pert Lois Lane…in a skillfully pointed performance. Kidder becomes the kind of girl that any man, Super or not, would want to take off with” {a favorite still from my private stash}. Added Time magazine: “Margot Kidder gives Lois Lane the sex appeal that schoolboys always knew she had.”

Especially if they’d seen the model she was literally drawn from: Joanne Carter, a self-described “skinny little kid” who placed an ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in late 1937 looking for work. It caught the attention of two struggling young pals {Canadians like Kidder}, artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel…and, chaperoned by her mother, Joanne agreed to pose for Shuster in his apartment, wearing her sister’s “two big” bathing suit. “He said, ‘Never mind, I’ll put a bit more here and a bit more there,’” she recalls…and the voluptuous result led to Lois!

Sleuthian insights: Basing the character’s personality on Torchy Blane–a feisty female reporter in a series of 1930s films–Siegel took her moniker from the star of the latest Torchy film, luscious Lola Lane. And her heartthrob from the German Übermensch —”the goal for humanity to set for itself”—in the classic 1883 treatise Thus Spoke Zaruthustra by mad-genius Friedrich Nietzsche. It literally means “Over man,” but the first translation into English in 1909 rendered the term as “Superman.” This concept—designed to create a “master race’—was often blamed for spawning the Nazi desire for “Aryan supremacy”…and indeed the first short story Siegel wrote with the name was of “a powerful villain bent on dominating the entire world.” Shuster later realized that the only way this Superman would be a successful comic book character was as the “wholesome, morally upright figure of modern times” we know today…so they added his “mild mannered” alter ego Clark Kent—borrowed from the first names of lookalike leading men of the time, Clark Gable and Kent Taylor. Yet unlike the “one-man woman” she inspired, original model Joanne Carter dated artist Shuster before marrying his partner Siegel! Now that’s just plain evil…

Enough background, now let’s move to the front! “Generally, I find that if my body is in good shape I love working nude,” mused Margot Kidder. “Love it. I just feel sexy and wonderful. There’s something very sexy about being photographed without your clothes and knowing you’re beautiful.” Except the nude scene she “hated” in 1975’s The Reincarnation of Peter Proud–even though the actress thought her body “looked fine.” Playing a 52-year-old woman {exactly twice her age}  having an emotional breakdown {foreshadowing?} while bathing, Margot claims the director “assured me the bathtub scene would be shot from the shoulders up. Then when I saw it,” she hisses, “he had shot it from all sorts of angles {an original frame from Sleuth’s private collection}. My hand was floating around in the water while I was crying, which made it look as if I were masturbating. That made me furious {and masturbate furiously}, because I’d been lied to and tricked.”

Often by men: “Actors only get uptight about their own bodies,” Kidder critiques. “They have this thing about their cocks. They go crazy when they’re asked to work nude. They’re afraid of getting erections, or that someone will think that they’re too small, or something. If women felt about their breasts the way men feel about their cocks, we’d spend our whole lives running around in muumuus.” As did her ravishing roommate: “My best friend, Jennifer Salt {daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt}, for one, is uptight about nudity,” Margot mulled. “But you don’t have to do it, you know. You can say no and still get work.” Or you can say yes, as Jennifer finally did for dad’s Midnight Cowboy, and get even more work!

After three marriages that lasted less than a year—to novelist Thomas McGuane {in hot tub as his son watches}, actor John Heard {for a month!} and famed French filmmaker Philippe de Broca {they met making a miniseries in 1983 and divorced before it aired!}—Kidder sighs: “I was never good at male/female relationships, though God knows I try.” So did she ever try a same-sex session? “Honey,” she smiles, “I think most people are bisexual. If a woman wants to sleep with a woman, she should go ahead and do it.” So have you done it? “Yes, I’ve slept with a woman, and I don’t think I’m an outlaw or a bad person for doing it. It was something that didn’t particularly appeal to me and didn’t work, but I did try it.” Reportedly with Rosie Shuster, head writer on the original Saturday Night Live: “We got Rosie dressed up in a tuxedo and bowler hat” to attend the 1981 Oscars as Kidder’s date, she recalls, “and my agent got 10 phone calls asking, ‘Is Margot Kidder a lesbian?’” Actually, she muses: “Life might have been easier for me if I had been a lesbian, but I’m not {damn!–”Olivia Hussey was a bit of an odd one,” she says of filming Black Christmas in 1974}. It’s just very natural for me to have a man.”

Even a Superman! “The thing everyone wants to know,” Kidder kidded before Superman II, “is whether there’s a love scene in the sequel. I can say right now, you’ll have to wait till 1980 for that,” she teased. “Will it be nude, I’m asked. Wait and see, I say.” Unlikely in the PG franchise, but she did bed the hero: “We make love, and after that he gives up his super powers, so I guess Lois is a good lay {Reeve seems lost in reverie}.” So did Chris get to experience bliss in real life? “No. We know each other too well. We can kiss onscreen, but in general I think it would be easier to close my eyes and have someone have sex with me than to be kissing him. We have too much in common.”

One tragic thing they had in common: Everyone recalls Christopher Reeve’s 1995 horse-jumping incident {shown just moments before it}, which rendered Superman flightless, wheelchair bound and led to his death in 2004, but his “Lois” was similarly paralyzed five years before him in a car accident on the set of the USA cable series Nancy Drew on 10/15/90. She was fired a few days later…and unable to work for two years—filing for bankruptcy {with debts of over $800K} in August 1992. Ironically it was the only time that the words “Margot Kidder” and “flat” have ever appeared in the same sentence {no, that’s not a wheelchair she’s sitting in}! “I’m shattered,” the actress sobbed. “I can’t walk, and have no use of my left hand {that sucks}. I can’t even fly on a plane” {couldn’t Chris rescue her?}. Yet after Reeve’s fall, Margot bravely flew from the Czech Republic to be at his bedside.

“Lois Lane!” Kidder commented after the first film. “God, it’s almost like playing the Virgin Mary.” Yet though the self-described “whore” insists she was never intimate with her Superman {looking cozy before his marriage}, she proved Lois “was a good lay” with nearly everyone else! “I was never hard to get if I wanted to be gotten,” Margot maintained. “If I didn’t want to be gotten, there was no way I could be. Though at one point in my life,” she admitted, “making love was no more than shaking hands. I used to feel guilty if I didn’t sleep with somebody…”. And once she “went black”—four flings with Richard Pryor {”I fell in love with him in two seconds flat. Richard was irresistible“}—she never went back: having public love affairs with California political boss Willie Brown in 1983, as well as original Late Night with David Letterman {and now John Mayer’s} drummer Steve Jordan in 1987.

Yet the curvy Canadian was just warming up: Two nights before the California Primary in 1988, “Margot KIdder was filmed leaving candidate Jesse Jackson’s hotel suite at 10:30 p.m., declaring that the reverend’s bedroom was a mess.” A newswoman with the ABC crew noted that “Kidder appeared drunk and also proclaimed, ‘I’m Margot Kidder,  and I’m whacked.’” The lady reporter {”High and Lois?”} revealed that the actress “later insisted the word was white, not whacked.”  Jackson campaign workers also confided that Kidder “does travel on the plane with him from rally to rally“—where she marched by his side while wife Jackie stayed away. “Any work that I have done is now destroyed,” snapped a miffed Margot. “It becomes the bimbo actress fucking the cute politician. And sure she’s committed, ha, ha, ha.” It was no laughing matter, however, when Kidder next encountered the ABC reporter who had revealed the tryst: “I grabbed her,” the actress admits, “threw her up against the bus and went, ‘Look, you stupid cunt.’ I said, ‘This is the most sleazy thing I’ve ever heard of.”

Until April 20, 1996, that is…when Margot went missing for three days, threw away her purse because “I thought there was a bomb in it,” then took off running, slept in yards and on porches in a state of fear,” until she was found by police behind a stranger’s house in Glendale, California–cowering in this rotted woodpile. “You shouldn’t be back here,” homeowner Elaine Lamb told the intruder. “There are black widow spiders.” To which the “dazed and disheveled” drifter replied: “What’s chasing me is a whole lot worse than black widow spiders. You may not believe me,” she whispered, “but I’m Margot Kidder.” Said one of the cops who took her away, “It was a classic case of paranoia {say it ain’t so, Lo’}. The woman we saw {crazed and missing two teeth} was in obvious mental distress.”

What triggered it was a computer virus that wiped out 3 years’ of work on her memoirs, aptly titled Calamities. “That’s when I went from really distressed to absolute delusion,” the actress recalls, becoming convinced that first husband Thomas McGuane {her hot tub honey above} “was trying to kill me.” {What the buck?!}. Living off the streets—a far cry for help from the days she hosted Saturday Night Live—Margot was nearly “raped by a homeless man” but reasoned with him: “You’re a good person. You don’t want to do this.” Thankfully, “he backed off.”

“We were sure that she would turn up dead,” sighed an eyewitness who saw the actress wandering in L.A. airport at 3 a.m., and was later “surprised to learn she is safe” {since crazed Kidder had slipped him a note that read: “I am DEAD”}. But others had faith: “Margot is incredibly strong,” her brother John said at the time. “She’s a survivor.” Indeed, she’s proved to be a real Superwoman, facing her demons and examining her past: “I’d been insane for many years,” Kidder confesses {her shaky signature might have provided a clue}, “probably from age twelve when I first contemplated suicide. If I felt myself starting to go manic, I’d get drunk. Better drunk than crazy.” In the swinging Seventies, the high-spirited hippie recalls: “I love men and sex {in her Wilder days}. I was a binge drinker. In another era, I probably would have been called a party girl.”

Now realizing that the answer to her “totally empty life” couldn’t be found in the bottom of a shot glass, the “addled actress” has cleaned up her act: “I’d had episodes before, but I swept them under the carpet. This time, I couldn’t do that because everyone knew. Coming out of the closet as bi-polar was not my idea,” Kidder laughs. “I mean it was all over the news. What happened to me—the biggest nervous breakdown in history—is not so uncommon. It’s just that mine was public. If you’re gonna fall apart, do it in your own bedroom.” Speaking of which, Margot once ironically mused: “Nudity in the flesh doesn’t bother me. But having my mind uncovered–that scares the hell out of me.”

To recover, she returned to her roots: “I owe it all to my family,” Kidder crowed just 3 months after her famous “freak-out.” She stayed at younger sister Annie’s home in Canada—”where they spent weeks discussing Margot’s problems and sorting out her priorities.” Activist Annie–who now looks remarkably like big Sis—was recently honored for founding “People for Education”…but Sleuth recalls her playing the victim in 1987’s Deadly Deception. Margot also got help from actress niece Janet Kidder who got Auntie a comeback role playing an older version of herself in the 1999 Canadian series La Femme Nikita. We, however, prefer this version of niece Janet the next year in the  film XChange. Admits Margot: “I was really fucked up at the time.” Ditto for naughty niece Janet …

“I’ve always played either bad girls or whores or psychos,” Margot mused {ass-uming Janet’s pole position},  “and I’ve always enjoyed doing it. But I guess I got tired of kissing ass to get parts I thought were stupid.” She hit bottom a year later in 1985’s Little Treasure … and also hit her legendary co-star! “There is a report out of Cuernavaca, Mexico that veteran actor Burt Lancaster and actress Margot Kidder got into a slapping, punching brawl on the set in March 1984″—a fight Esquire dubbed “The Shocka in Cuernavaca!” According to Sleuth’s hometown Washington Post: “Kidder, showing the 70-year-old star how she wanted the scene played, shoved him. He smacked her twice across the face {how’s this for a Sleuthian “find”?}. They then were in a free-for-all battle, tumbling onto the floor. Kidder was bleeding from the back of her head and Lancaster had a cut lip by the time the fight was broken up.” Even today, Margot gets her shots in: “Yeah, he beat me up! I virtually whacked him back and said, “You washed-up old fag!” or something horrible. Well, then I got a reputation for being sort of nuts and difficult, because I was at that point, so I wasn’t much in demand.”

Happily, she is again—reuniting with Superman’s Lana Lang, Annette O’Toole, on two episodes of Smallville and landing a recurring role as Sally Field’s bosom buddy in the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters.”There aren’t a lot of parts,” Kidder concedes, “when you get to be my age {60} if you refuse to have face-lifts” {chin up old girl!}. Though there was a time when Margot mused: “I’m thinking of getting my tits lifted“—recalling her teens when “I spent hours trying to figure out how I could get my breasts to shoot skyward like Miss January when I lay on my back instead of having them fall down on either side of my armpits.”

Instead, she lifted her spirits…and now proudly proclaims, “My career virtually ended after the breakdown, but I plowed through, which I consider a triumph. I went to work and did a lot of homework about what was wrong with me.  Now it’s just part of my story {she’s working on an autobiography entitled I Slept With Everyone on Television}. It’s been almost 14 years now since that happened. No, 13 years, without an episode of bi-polar or depression or mania, so I can safely say I’m cured.” And thus finally free to hit the convention circuit, along with other familiar faces from her past!

Speaking of which, they’ve named the road that Margaret Ruth Kidder was born on in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada Lois Lane. There’s even a new street sign that bears her name … and a makeshift sculpture that recalls her bare frame. “I’ll have ‘Lois Lane’ inscribed on my damn grave,” Margot sighed just last month. A quarter century earlier, when reduced to a walk-on in Superman III for calling its producers “beneath contempt as human beings,” Kidder concluded: “I love Lois Lane. I could play her till I die, but I’m not going to die if I don’t play her.” Because of some super powers she’s survived…and today has the last word: “You know, I’ve had a colorful life, and I have to live with that. But right now things are pretty darn good.” And looking pretty darn good too!

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feMail Request: Margot Kidder is a post from: The SleuthSayer

“I’m pretty much settled now,” Janine Lindemulder reports via her prison blog on www.FreeJanine.com {ironically the title of an early film back when she was “Getting Away with Everything”}. “My days are very structured. I wake up about 5:30 a.m. {and she’s hardly a morning person}, get dressed in my work uniform, wash face, brush, teeth, hair back in ponytail {back in the day}, head off to the cafeteria, little oatmeal, little coffee {she’s accustomed to a full cup, and an apple {hardly her preferred dish of ‘Fried Chicken & Mashed Potatoes’} … and I’m off and running”—a watered down Sponge Bob Hot Pants!

“Yesterday,” Janine tells us, “I did weeding on the compound.” Hardly your garden variety female inmate, we’re reminded of her hopeful Howard Stern interview on the morning she reported to prison: “I’m hoping to be pulling weeds,” she told Stern. “Well, I know you’re good at ‘pulling weeds,’” Howard horned in, “because I’ve seen you give hand jobs.” “Yep,” Janine shot back, “I’m good. If I was outside, I’d be pulling weeds all fucking day!”

And, as she made clear as the sun rose on the day she went in: “Believe it or not, I am a little excited — while promising to give juicy details on “my cell, cell-mate, other inmates, showers, sex and MORE SEX!. I truly believe something pretty bad ass will come from this journey. But one thing’s for certain: I am not at all scared {hardly a little girl lost}.” In fact, when Stern warned that “you may have to fight,” the comely con countered: “I’m a lover, not a fighter. But if I have to, I’m not gonna let somebody push me around” {shiv-her me timbers!}. Not to contradict Kelis, but her “milkshake will bring all the girls to the yard!” No wonder that on her last night of freedom, Janine signed off: “I am about to pass out early because of my 4 a.m. early Howard Stern wake up call. It’s all good.”

Good for her … but Sleuth has something to get off his chest {I know, hardly your top choice}.  Since Janine was sentenced on December 30th, four major administration appointees have admitted they failed to pay their taxes! First was Commerce Secretary nominee Bill Richardson, who actually “was under investigation by a grand jury for pay-to-play kickback schemes” … and we doubt he declared that income! His punishment?  Fading away back to being the Governor of New Mexico {the Guv with Luv Handles}.  Next, Treasury designate Tim Geithner—the “brilliant” banker asked to ease our economic crisis had to repay $64,849 to the Internal Revenue Service for a six-year period from 2001-2006, but somehow “was not fined for late payment.” He was then easily confirmed to oversee the I.R.S.!! Third, former Finance and Ethics Committee scion of the Senate, Tom Daschle, left a well-paid position at the Center for American Progress {and wishful thinking} to accept a job as Secretary of Health and Human Services…only to withdraw “after having failed to pay $140,167 for three years of owed taxes and interest,” though not as yet “thousands of dollars in additional unpaid taxes” for the use of a lobbyist’s private car and driver. As the tax auditors might say: “Paying back’s a bitch!” Which brings us to notable Nancy Killefer, tapped to be the nation’s first Chief Performance Officer in the new administration…until that little matter of a 2005 tax lien placed on her home for failure to pay unemployment taxes on household help. Maybe the erstwhile “Efficiency Czar” can now return to her recent 3-year gig as Chairperson of the IRS Oversight Board!

Compared to these savvy sophisticates, the missteps of a high school-educated, single mother of two might seem like Peanuts. As one industry insider quipped: “At about $80 grand delinquent {the original charging document}, this puts Janine somewhere at the low end of the scale between Tom Daschle’s approximately $140,000 tax thievery and current U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner’s $64,000 shortcoming.” Which brings up the $64,000 Question: “How does Tim Geitner not pay his taxes for years, gets to apologize and run the I.R.S.?” asks legendary lensman Earl Miller—the caring collaborator who has created FreeJanine.com to, as she puts it, “Save my ass” while she’s incarcerated. “Yet a single mom who happens to be a porn star ends up in shackles? Guilty of a misdemeanor,” Earl emphasizes, “why did they prosecute, try, and then put her in jail, while Bernie Madoff was sitting in his plush Penthouse {and you thought Janine was the Pet} after stealing $60 BILLION from his innocent investors? It is truly staggering to me that this woman is having to go to prison while the CEOs who bankrupted America are collecting their bailouts!” Why, it’s a wonder they didn’t string her up ….

And while laid back Lindemulder has every right to be Tee’d off about Madoff, one of the things we love most is her amazing attitude: “Yeah well,” she sighed when I asked her about the clear double standard. “Bottom line: Life ain’t fair. I’m not going to play the pity party.” So as these corporate clowns get off, maybe they should tip their hat to the cat that crossed (un)Lucky Linde …

Janine just wrote to confirm that “the major shocker to the other inmates was that I was doing time for a misdemeanor. They didn’t think it was possible. I am the only misdemeanor in here.” Ironic then, that her 1993 starring vehicle was entitled Blonde Justice 2 … and if you crop in on the part of her name above the title, you get this! Gosh, do ya think the bottom line, as she put it, might have something to do with her line of work?

So we leave you with this reversal of the age-old tax code motto in answer to that earlier $64,000 {or in janine’s case $79,136} Question: “With the I.R.S., don’t fuck.”

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JANINE in Jail: DOZEN Get Much Better! is a post from: The SleuthSayer

“Liam and I believe we are going to be together for the rest of our lives,” Natasha gushed just after her 1994 marriage to Irish heartthorb  Liam Neeson, whom she met playing lovers in the play Anna Christie: “The two were thought to be courting right on stage,” noted the New York Times. “I didn’t feel these different kinds of love and intensity before. This, this is…um, as deep as it goes” (deeper even than her considerable cleavage). Ominously, Natasha’s horoscope—she was born at 5 p.m. London time on May 11, 1963—begins with a warning: “Fire is the dominant in your natal chart and endows you with courage, self-confidence and enthusiasm! You move forward, come hell or high water. The relative weakness of this element is the difficulty to step back, or a kind of boldness that may prompt you to do foolish things.”

A novice on the slopes, Natasha was a self-proclaimed “klutz” in most things athletic, but also espoused the exuberance of her Tony Award-winning character in Cabaret—many called her the “finest Sally Bowles since Liza Minnelli.” As Sally states in the title song: “Put down the knitting/The book and the broom/Time for a holiday…”—the “life enthusiast” loved to travel and was on holiday till the end. “On opening night,” Ms. Richardson recalled of the musical, “I’m wearing just a tiny corset and I look down from the front of the stage and there’s this guy there {in the front row} just staring up between my legs. And I missed three dance steps because I was thinking, ‘Now, when did I get that bikini wax?’”

A ‘Brazilian’ would also have come in handy before Natasha’s infamous entrance last May at, of all things, the Costume Institute Gala at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art: “The 44-year-old cut an elegant figure when she arrived on the red carpet,” wrote one reporter, “but as she gathered up the hem of her pale pink evening gown to negotiate the steps, she unwittingly flashed her flesh-colored underwear at the assembled photographers. The embarrassing wardrobe malfunction appeared to go unnoticed by Natasha, who was accompanied by former Gucci creative director Tom Ford, despite the fact that her “nude look” lingerie was clearly on display. Thankfully, Natasha has not fallen victim to the trend for ‘going commando’—wearing no underwear—and her tiny thong just barely spared her.” Alas, nothing could just 10 months later…

“Start by admitting/From cradle to tomb,” she sang as Sally, “It isn’t that long a stay/Life is a Cabaret, old chum/Only a Cabaret, old chum/And I love a Cabaret!” We—and many others—loved Natasha … and should celebrate her oft-overlooked sensuality {in early 1999} … which had only increased a decade later at age 45! “It really messes with your head {we won’t go there}…to do that stuff,”  the actress admitted after filming “very explicit love scenes”–in which her lovemaking was never less than luminous. “I mean, it is all well and good between two people—consenting adults—in a closed room. But to do it with a bunch of other people there, to really let yourself go {her final sex scene, in 2005’s Asylum} feels a bit defiling. But I don’t want to sound like, ‘Oh yes, poor little me.’”

Indeed, Natasha was never one to feel sorry for herself {though we can’t even imagine how her beloved family is feeling}, and said of living in mother Vanessa Redgrave’s shadow: “You want to quietly work away and make your own name and place for yourself…but that time has passed. My mom’s just totally inspiring because she’s one of the greatest actresses that’s ever lived. I owe her an enormous amount”—the feeling was obviously mutual. As it was with bisexual director dad Tony Richardson, who won an Oscar for helming 1963’s Tom Jones, before succumbing to AIDS in 1991: “When I asked him what he was writing,” Natasha recalled of Richardson’s posthumously published autobiography, “he said, ‘Oh, just memoirs. Nobody will give a shit and they’ll never get published.’ And then, of course,” she gulped, “the book ends with this message to his daughters to carry through  life. I get choked up even talking about it now, actually.” We know the feeling…

We close this ebullient eulogy—”No use permitting/Some prophet of doom/To wipe every smile away,” she sang in “Life Is A Cabaret”—with my favorite photo of the ravishing Richardson, seemingly sensing that all might not end well: “I’d like a blockbuster paycheck!” Natasha mused two years before her death.  “But I don’t think they’ll give me that. You feel a burning passion to play something, but nothing has been presented to me, and I don’t really feel inspired at the moment. I just give a lot of myself to what I’m doing and I don’t think I can do that unless I feel I’ve really got something special.”  That she had…
With sadness,

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GONE TOO SOON: Natasha Richardson is a post from: The SleuthSayer

Just two weeks ago, Marie announced she’s launching a new talk show this Fall, so it’s time we had a “talk”: She famously fainted on Dancing with the Stars in October 2007…but she should really be in for a shock when Sleuth opens his VAULT (accessible on the Home Page) for the first time…and Marie’s only topless pose ever pops out! The mother of eight quickly recovered from her Dancing swoon—her first words after coming to were “Oh, crap!”–but her bountiful bosom gasping for air as she rose gave a clue as what she’d look like without clothes!

Well, now we KNOW...and now we SHOW !!

Evidently, Marie’s first husband, Mormon Steve Craig had a “Big Love” all right…for multiple partners)…and reportedly placed an anonymous ad in a national swinger’s magazine—without his wife’s permission—to solicit “other couples and versatile single girls” to the newlyweds’ marriage bed! Sample the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Craig with those of the “Foxy couple” living in Tennessee {where Marie was recording an album at the time} and decide for yourself … whether to keep reading, that is, or SUBSCRIBE immediately to peek inside the Vault {and the 15,000 pages of issues and hundreds of thousands of images inside the site!}

For unlike Geraldo Riviera’s ballyhooed boondoggle with Al Capone’s Vault in which he left empty handed, or the Titanic vault failure depicted in James Cameron’s epic movie–which is still spoofed today–there truly are HIDDEN TREASURES waiting for you in every conceivable combination !

And we’re not just talking about what resides in the Osmonds’ fan favorite footlockers.

Why, even Marie herself might SIGN UP TODAY !!

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The VAULT: A Little Bit Rack ‘n’ Roll is a post from: The SleuthSayer