Liz Smith cont.

JJ: Yeah, that's really true. But every time I see them together Frank always seems to have a guilty look.
LS: I think he is pretty guilty. He's a nice guy. He got caught in a really nasty situation. It ruined his life. Why did she make him go on television and do mea culpa with Diane Sawyer? I don't believe he'd have agreed to do that in a million years, and it didn't do any good—it was bad! They should have just left it alone.

JJ: As an observer, what's gossip taught you about human nature?
LS: That it's always the same. People are obsessed with sex, and power, and greed, and being somebody, and that never changes. So the nature of things people gossip about is still the same.


"People are obsessed with sex, power, greed, and being somebody."

JJ: You say in your book you hate the idea of public humiliation and someone being angry with you. How can you be a gossip columnist and avoid it?
LS: Well, you can't avoid it, but I still hate it! [laughs] I don't like it when people are mad at me or when I've made a big mistake or a fool of myself. Nobody does. I suffer a lot over it. I'm a devout coward most of the time.

JJ: What's your biggest scoop?
LS: I guess it was the Trump divorce, but I didn't think that was a very important story.

JJ: But you were the first to break it.
LS: Right. And it went on for three months, that's why it became so big. And it caused New York Newsday to hire me and pay me more money than anybody's ever been paid, so that was great.

JJ: What's the difference between your mentor Walter Winchell and yourself?
LS: He finally went power-mad and began to believe his own PR that he was the most powerful person in the world. And he was really powerful and popular, hell sure. But he began to believe it and lost his moral compass so to speak. He didn't have any brakes on himself.

JJ: What do you want people to remember most about you?
LS: That I tried to be fair and give everybody a fair shake. And I tried to be entertaining at the same time.

JJ: A true art. And not piss too many people off!
LS: I don't care if I piss people off if they deserve it, but it's still an unpleasant experience you have to go through. Because people react in a much more irritated and upset way to an item in a column than they would to a whole story about them embezzling in The New York Times! They overreact incredibly to everything that's said in the column, I don't know why. It's particularly painful to them.

JJ: You wrote in your book that you had a Southern Baptist mother, and after your first affair with a woman you were never able to say a frank word to her again. What happens to a relationship without open communication?
LS: We managed to stumble along and I think that was the way my family wanted it, so you know it was sort of: "Don't ask, don't tell." It wasn't just that it was an affair with a woman—I could never talk to her about any of the affairs I had with men either. I mean she was just very straight-laced. And my father was even worse. They were not modern people.

Vernon Jordan

Lauren Bacall, Liz, Barbara Walters

Prince Edward

photos taken by Joan Jedell at Liz Smith's book party for Natural Blonde at Le Cirque

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