September 5, 2000

Weddings that aren't: Douglas, Zeta-Jones, Madonna, Ritchie

By ROGER ANDERSON Scripps Howard News Service

WEDDING BELLS? British tabloids are saying that Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, the mother of Michael's latest child, are going to get married at a new resort in Santa Barbara on Sept. 30, but American rags are just as adamant that this actually is not the case.

"There are plans for a wedding," Cece York, a spokeswoman of Catherine's, tells USA Today, “but it’s not in Santa Barbara, and it’s not on the 30th."

A Michael "rep" named Alan Burry plays a similar tune on his ukulele. "Isn't it ironic," he observes to the New York Daily News, "that that hotel is opening next week? ... They (that is, Michael and Catherine) would love to tell the world when it’s all sorted out. They just had a baby. Give them a breather." Yet another attempt to infringe the First Amendment!

ACTUAL NUPTIALS: And yet Patrick Stewart of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" really did go and get married recently to some woman named Wendy Neuss, who was a co-producer on “Next.”

MORE MURK: Matters become ambiguous again, however, as word that Madonna is going to get married to Guy Ritchie, the father of her latest bambino, and has a ring to prove it, gets spiked by Madonna herself in the form of an official statement:

“The ring is a token of Guy's love," the statement reads, "and the fact that we have just had a baby." After all, it's right there in Emily Post: Give your girlfriend a ring when she has your child out of wedlock.

EVEN MURKIER: Thank your stars you're not Tommy Mottola, the record exec who used to be married to Mariah Carey, because Tommy can't even make a stop at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral to say hi to his buddy, Archbishop Egan, without every gossip on both coasts saying he was there to plan getting married to his latest girlfriend, a Mexican television star known simply as Thalia.                                                          

ANOTHER KIND OF NONMARRIAGE: Did you know that Geraldo Rivera, latter-day successor to Edward R. Murrow, is mulling a run for mayor of New York City? This is an idea of which the current hizzoner, Rudolph Giuliani, thinks very little, and says so. Geraldo insists that he is a viable candidate.

"I'm not asking the people of New York to marry me," he tells Howard Stern. "I want to work for New York." And then later they can get married in Santa Barbara.

TROUBLED ROMANCE: You know quite well that Mariah Carey is supposedly involved with Latino crooner Luis Miguel, so it may come as a shock to learn of rumors that the romance isn't going too well, with one New York Post "snitch" saying that Luis isn't happy about how busy Mariah is lately shooting her movie, "All That Glitters."

"She's stuck up there for three months," this person says, with reference to the film's Toronto location, "and when he comes to visit, there are so many hangers-on and the entourage is so big they can never be alone?

A "rep" of Mariah's, however, characterizes the above as so much piffle. "They go out alone in Toronto," the flack maintains, "and Mariah just met him in Mexico for a weekend." Did she fly or take the bus?

WHERE'S JOLTIN' JOE WHEN YOU NEED HIM? It's no secret that Jerry Hall's turn as Mrs. Robinson in the London stage version of "The Graduate" hasn't gone over too well, with critics there deeming her performance "amateurish" and "wooden." Accordingly, it should come as a shock to no one's system that the show apparently will close as of Oct. 21.

Yet the producers still say Jerry is on board till "the end of October." What gives?

"The reason we are saying Jerry will star until the end of October," producer Alan Hatton explains to a London tab, "is because we don't know if the show will continue longer. We know her availability, and are currently talking to her agents about the possibility of her continuing."

LABOR DAY AFTERMATH: The nation's scribes are beside themselves with news that Jennifer Lopez didn't show up for boyfriend Puff Daddy's big Labor Day bash this year, even though last year's do marked the occasion when the celebrity pair came out in the open with their relationship.

Yet insiders claim that her nonappearance at Puff's mansion in East Hampton is not in the least significant, that she was in fact garnering some much-needed downtime at a resort in Mexico.

"She was exhausted after promoting her movie," a "pal" tells a reporter, referring to Jennifer's big pic, "The Cell." "Puffy didn't want to make her fly all the way up here for the party. She needed a break." And everyone knows flying is hard on the arms.

Roger Anderson is arts and entertainment editor at Scripps Howard News Service.

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