“Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste,” Mick Jagger began the Rolling Stones’ classic Sympathy for the Devil. “I’ve been around for a long, long year… Hope you guess my name.”
Not likely, since I began CELEBRITY SLEUTH magazine 25 years ago– when many of you now of legal drinking age weren’t even born!– as a “mild-mannered Government speechwriter by night, and Famous Shamus by night.” As a modern-day Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, I “sleuthed out” all the facts (and figures) regarding the Rich and Shameless– pioneering a genre that spawned such Internet icons as Mr. Skin and Uncle Scoopy. And now it’s my turn to boldly trek (with a mission) into cyperspace– where “no man had gone before” me.
First, a brief background: I am a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of The Johns Hopkins University and former “Outstanding Teenager of America” (selected by Ronald Reagan), who used his “quiz kid” knowledge and photographic memory to memorize photographs of stars before they became famous… and could afford clothes. Because both my parents were as prominent as my political clients, I adopted the pseudonym “Celebrity Sleuth”– and it’s stuck: through more than two decades and 155 separate issues!
This blog will hopefully introduce a whole new generation of fans to what started as a hobby, while sharing with loyal lifetime readers rare “finds” from my unparalleled collection… from which I’ve still only revealed the nip of the iceberg.” But enough about Morgan Fairchild … our very first cover girl.
Amazing how similar the shot of our recent “frontasspiece,” Jessica Biel looks today! Each week on this newly launched web site, I’ll endeavor to bring you rare and never-seen-anywhere-else images of the hottest women in the news… and in the nude.
Future posts will focus more on the figures than the facts, but I’ll leave you with a treat from a bosomy bud who died two Januarys ago. Unlike any one else who has come after, I’ve managed to befriend many of the stars I uncovered (they didn’t usually mind), who thus gave me many private and personal photos of themselves that no one else has. And that’s what you can always expect from Sleuth: the rarest and the barest of the best.
Liz Renay, a Marilyn Monroe lookalike who became a cult legend in John Waters’ 1977 film Desperate Living, sadly died in Las Vegas at age 80 {her New York Times obituary is here}. But before she passed away she passed along this pair of rarities that defined her career: doing “my S&M whip act” Liz wrote on the back of the vintage burlesque promo pic from her heyday (she was in her forties at the time); a decade later, the foxy 50-year-old joined the streaking craze, while crashing San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto’s campaign rally. Talk about “getting (’em) out (for) the vote!”
Let’s leave off where I began: “Pleased to meet you,” the head Stone sang…and we’ve hardly gathered moss either: uncovering Jagger, his wives/mistresses and daughters TWENTY SIX times in our 25 years of publishing!
So save your Sympathy… for us, it’s been pure Satisfaction.