Sleuth has been on a figure-finding mission to Europe over the past three weeks … it’s a tough job but someone—ME—has got to do it … and thus missed the death on Thursday of Farrah Fawcett. Alas, many seem to have missed it, since the demise of singer Michael Jackson just hours later seems to have overshadowed her  in the media {like this 10-year-old kiss-off}. Fitting then, that on the day she’s laid to rest in a private ceremony, we publicly note her brave battle and sad passing.

“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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“I’ve seen Spider-Man 3 twice,” a fan posted on the popular IMDb message boards in May 2007, “and I hope LUCY GORDON gets better roles after this, as she seems like a really talented young lady with a bright future.” Oh what a tangled web …

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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I’ve been of two minds whether to blog about the tragic death of elegant and alluring NATASHA RICHARDSON, who died suddenly yesterday after a ski accident on a beginner’s slope in Canada. But in the end, it seems she was so full of life that the proper mood should be celebratory rather than merely solemn.

“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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