July 17, 1999

REAL ESTATE BEAT, STARRING WOODY ALLEN AND DONALD TRUMP

By ROGER ANDERSON Scripps Howard News Service

CELEBRITY HOUSING NEWS: Word is circulating that Woody and Soon-Yi Allen are (a) planning on putting their fancy-schmancy Manhattan duplex penthouse on the market and (b) trying to get someone to pay them $15 million for it. Some experts apparently regard this as unrealistic.

"That price range is what a five-or six-bedroom pre-war grand space is selling for on Fifth Avenue in an A-plus building," an anonymous real estate broker sniffs to the New York Post. "And this is a B building."

What else?

"This building was built in 1940," she continues (for apparently we do know the broker's sex). "It's not pre-war, it's late Art Deco, which means lower ceilings, smaller rooms and maybe five or six apartments on the average floor."

In other words, $15 million may be a bit steep?

"It's his apartment," the broker admits, "and that will be a calling card for a lot of people who care. Perhaps someone who is star-struck will come up with that kind of money. It will make someone feel close to the star himself." Quite a selling point.

CELEBRITY HOUSING NEWS, PART 2: Meantime, Donald Trump made the egregious tactical error of inviting the Post to come into HIS palatial lodgings and snap a mess of pix of its grandiloquent interior. Then the editors asked a psychotherapist to take a look at the images and offer her impressions.

"He wants people to see him as an emperor," observes Sheenah Hankin (for such is the therapist's name). “The painted ceilings and glided furniture invoke Versailles, while the pillars add a Greco-Roman edge - as if Trump himself were as powerful as Julius Caesar."

"But I think this man deep down is insecure - otherwise why would he need an apartment so opulent?" As a tax write-off?

NEWS FLASHETTE: Speaking of alpha males in luxury surroundings, one print report says that Boris Yeltsin has himself a villa in Cap d'Antibes in the south of France.

ANOTHER NEWS FLASHETTE: Xavarian High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., is very pleased to announce that its first annual Joseph P. DiMaggio Award will go to Henry Kissinger.

SECRETS OF THE ACTING TRADE: Here's the very lovely Courtney Thorne-Smith telling Parade mag's James Brady about life on the "Ally McBeal" set.

"We work about eight days per episode," Courtney explains. "David (Kelly, the series' creator, who also helms "The Practice" and is married to Michelle Pfeiffer) will write an eighth of a page, something like, 'Girls have a cat fight,' and we work out what that means and how to do it."

So basically Courtney doesn't do any work at all, to speak of.

"It's a long day for the crew and Calista (Flockhart, the title woman, who has been roundly harried in the press with allegations that she's too skinny). But some days I don't have to be there at all. Which is great."

And, really, isn't not having to be there what it’s all about?

SECRETS OF THE ACTING TRADE, PART 2: The New York Daily News wants you to know that a movie titled "15 Minutes" is currently lensing in downtown Gotham, with Kelsey Grammer of "Frasier" in one leading role and Robert De Niro in another. Worth noting is the irony that Bobby, notoriously anti-media himself, plays a guy who loves nothing better than talking to reporters.

"Bob is a very private person," John Herzfeld, the pic's writer/director, explains. "But he separates himself from his character. That's why he's a great actor."

ANOTHER BIG STAR, BUT NOT NEARLY AS BIG AS DE NIRO: Taye Diggs, who played opposite Angela Basset in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," is quite forthcoming about telling USA Weekend that he doesn't mind it a bit that some persons of the female persuasion regard him as physically attractive.

"I'm not saying, 'Don't just see me for my body,'" Taye says. "Brad Pitt should be thankful if people like to look at him." We're not sure how Brad got into this, but OK.

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

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