‘Performed Twice as Hard on that Stage’
Trouper’s final bow
Chita Rivera. Born 1933. Then on Broadway’s stages were Katharine Hepburn, George M. Cohan, Ethel Merman, Laurence Olivier, Bob Hope, Humphrey Bogart, Noel Coward.
In ’94 Chita wrote the gossip column “Chita Chatter.” Her kid Lisa was the assistant.
She wore a wig with nails in it for some Hall of Fame thing and a pink and silver caftan to “Night of 100 Stars.” Miss Chita was very dressy.
She once bought English muffins for luck. She’d remove her glasses in advance of any photo.
Before her 2002 Kennedy Center honor she told me: “I have so many awards that I don’t even bother dusting them.”
Hard worker, she and Liza Minnelli co-starred in B’way’s “The Rink.” 1984.
Its co-producer Jonathan Farkas says she not only never missed a performance but she “hustled on that stage double-time when Liza broke her leg.”
Following their own pierogitive
Besides the tipping/no tipping fuss, we mustn’t forget our great restaurants.
Little Ukraine eatery Veselka. Now a documentary — David Duchovny narrates — which talks up borscht bigtime. Good luck finding marquees big enough for the title “Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World.”
Eric Adams dines there — when cameras are rolling. Gov. Kathy Hochul drops by.
The doc talks about how the place kept from going broke and thrived when war broke out. All on the menu when the film opens Feb. 23.
Nat’l review
Lou Dobbs. Once a $75 a week police reporter. Now, TV and radio history.
He says: “This is an essential election. We can’t continue with a compromised cognitively impaired president, where others make his decisions and he can’t explain why we have a 2,000-mile border being run by Mexican cartels.
“Those aren’t migrants. They’re invaders. I’ve seen a line of young men file off a bus. No papers, IDs, numbers, no names of companies, no wives or children. They just got onto a waiting truck — and filed away. Besides sex trafficking running rampant, America’s letting millions of [people] in without knowing a thing about them. We’re geniuses!
“The Democrat party has become alien, malignant and operates against this country. They’re called progressives. Liberals. But it’s Marxism.
“We have a $34 trillion national debt. We spend $1 trillion just to service that debt. Madness. A speaker of the House with no idea who he is, what he’s doing, or how to do it. And he was elected! People say he’s betraying everything ever said about him, his background, his faith. And the alternative? Hakeem Jeffries. Please!”
He said much more. The trouble with Lou Dobbs, who’s on TV, radio, a podcast, is that he has difficulty expressing his feelings.
So, now, with New York’s new police edicts — come a killing, a fire, a robbery, a crime, crash or tragedy and a cop’s redirecting the ensuing traffic jungle, he’ll just stand there with his palm down.
Writing. Taking a journalism course. Rushing to your rescue will be an editor.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.
