GORGEOUS Gina Lollobrigida went to her pal Liza Minnelli‘s wedding, but that wasn’t the main purpose of her visit to the city.
I understand Gina will be meeting with Mayor Mike Bloomberg – that’ll be more fun for Hizzoner than arguing across the desk with Harold Levy – and Rudy Giuliani to discuss her desire to erect a memorial to the children who lost parents in the World Trade Center outrage.
Gina had dinner at Nicola’s the other night with her chum Bill Fugazy and several of his Forum Club members. Bill told her the mayoral meeting was all set, and she showed around photographs of the 16-foot bronze sculpture she hopes will find a permanent home near Ground Zero.
(Lollobrigida has found a second career as a sculptor, and her works are displayed throughout Europe. Many of them, like the one she wants to give to the city, depict children and the perilous world they occupy.)
Fugazy promised to help find sponsors to cover the cost of installing the statue, and will probably put the arm on some potential donors at tonight’s Coalition of Italo-American Associations dinner, which Gina is attending.
Datin’ Alec & Tatum
THE affair between Alec Baldwin and Tatum O’Neal (right) continues to flourish. I understand Tatum advised the Motion Pictures Academy of Arts and Sciences that she’ll be attending the New York Oscar dinner at Le Cirque Sunday with Baldwin as her partner. I think the pair are also planning to sneak uptown during the evening for the Entertainment Weekly bash at Elaine’s.
Beauty and the biz
I’VE been hearing more gossip about the fate of Tova Borgnine‘s booming beauty business. It’s said that Ernie Borgnine‘s wife was making more than $20 million a year in sales at QVC but somehow ended up owing the cable shop a bundle. So QVC has bought the Tova name and products, and is now employing her on salary, thus getting to keep for themselves the lion’s share of the fortune her line generates. So how did she lose control of the company? Tova’s a brilliant woman, but she’s very high maintenance. She always traveled with an entourage (I hear there was an astrologer on staff), maintained a huge suite at the Waldorf Towers and spent money faster than even she was making it. We all hope this new arrangement will work out OK for her.
Ensler ‘Targets’ Kabul
FIRST they liberate you from the brutal and sexist rule of the Taliban, then the Americans send “The Vagina Monologues” playwright Eve Ensler to conduct women’s workshops. Eve dined with friends at Cafe DeVille the other night and was very excited about her upcoming trip to Kabul, saying she might even just get another play out of the experience. (If they just started blaring the best bits of “Vagina Monologues” into the Afghanistan caves, they’d flush out Osama bin Laden in no time.) Eve’s new work, “Necessary Targets,” about the suffering women in Bosnia, is at the Variety Arts Theater.
Raunchy Rockettes?
YOU don’t think sexy when you think the Rockettes, but the famed high-kicking troupe got very down and dirty (at least for them) at Monday night’s Phyllis Newman-organized benefit for the Women’s Health Initiative. Just about every star on Broadway appeared for the show at the St. James Theatre, but it was the sizzling bump-and-grind Rockettes that had them all talking. It looked like a Bob Fosse routine but in fact was choreographed by troupe member Kerri Quinn. Maybe Radio City should think about putting on an adults-only late-night cabaret at the famed hall.
Winning Trump
IT must be awfully galling to the old-line WASPs-only Palm Beach clubs to have brash upstart Donald Trump come to town and win all the awards. The Donald is still beaming about his Mar-a-Lago being named “best private club in the world” by no lesser authority than Joe Cinque, director of the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences. The club celebrated the award by staging a Wayne Newton concert. Hey, this is Palm Beach. You were expecting maybe Eminem?
Cheery note for Julio
THESE are bittersweet times for lusty Latin crooner Julio Iglesias, whose 80-something mother died in Miami late last week. Even as the family gathered to mourn, Julio learned that his first grandson, tiny 3-month-old Alejandro Altabo Iglesias, is going to survive and will be home from the hospital any day now. Julio’s daughter Chabell went into labor three months prematurely at Julio’s estate in the Dominican Republic. Dad sent his private jet own to get her, and she delivered the baby, weighing less than 2 pounds, the next day at a leading Miami hospital.
Woody shirks shrinks
VERY bad news for the “Tell me what you think it means” profession today. Woody Allen, the angst-ridden director who used to keep four shrinks on retainer at the same time, says he’s stopped seeing psychiatrists. “I am very happily married (to Soon-Yi) and that has been a wonderful thing for me, and I’ve got great kids,” the Woodsman tells Britain’s Daily Telegraph.