Liz Smith, 94; gossip columnist
Liz Smith started her gossip career in the early 1950s writing about Shelley Winters for a pulp movie magazine and ended it nearly seven decades later tweeting about actor Ryan Gosling. In between, she dished with and about pretty much every author, entertainer, business mogul and political eminence in the news.
Smith, 94, died Nov. 12 at in New York. Her literary agent, Joni Evans, confirmed the death to the Associated Press but did not disclose a cause.
A blue-eyed blonde from Texas with a disarmingly selfeffacing manner, Smith inserted herself into the peculiarly New York-Los Angeles orbit of celebrities, chronicling the mundane and significant events of their lives.
At her peak in the 1980s and 1990s, Smith's eponymous syndicated column ran in more than 70 newspapers. She publicly feuded with Donald Trump and Frank Sinatra, dropped acid with actress Holland Taylor, went ballooning in France with Malcolm Forbes and collected experiences as avidly as Elizabeth Taylor collected jewelry.
In her column and in her 2000 memoir, "Natural Blonde," she dashed off anecdotes in breathless fashion.
About the evening she spent with writer Truman Capote, she wrote in her book, "In came Truman carrying a large fishbowl full of white powder. He sat it down in front of us and announced, ' This is the world's purest, best cocaine. You have never had anything like this before.' Then, as suddenly as he'd offered it, Truman snatched it up and marched away with it, saying, 'No, it's too good for the likes of you.' "
Another time, she added, "Madonna did me the ultimate favor. From Budapest, she gave my column the exclusive on her pregnancy. I was sputtering in shock when Madonna's rep, Liz Rosenberg, called. ' But, she's just starting ‘Evita,’' I said. ' How can this be true?' Madonna herself picked up the phone. 'Liz, I'm pregnant,' she barked. I started writing."
Smith was the natural heir to Hollywood gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, whose viperish tidbits sowed fear and loathing among movie stars and studio heads. But Smith was different in one key aspect: She played nice.
A typical column mixed opinion with accounts of celebrity sightings, such as this one from April 2012: "The most dramatic entrance at this event came from the great opera star Jessye Norman, who arrived swathed in an enormous cloud of wild black hair, a glittering something or other and massive dangling earrings. No doubt about it, she's a star! 'What are you up to now?' asked one fan. ' What am I NOT up to, darling!' said Jessye, and then she was swept into the arms of another opera diva, the popular and serene Renee Fleming."
To maintain and expand her access to the gilded, Smith kept up an exhaustive, multiple-nights-a-week round of cocktail parties, book readings, dinners and lunches well into her 80s.
In 2000, she told the Houston Chronicle that she couldn't recall the last time she had cooked a meal and joked that "she should convert her kitchen into a closet because it is never used."
Always on the hunt for a fresh scoop, she once described herself as "an information magpie, a writer-collector" who can't let go "of a scrap of information, an interesting observation, or just a lone little fact in search of publication."
Mary Elizabeth Smith was born in Fort Worth on Feb. 2, 1923. Her father was a cotton broker and a gambler; her mother was homemaker.
Growing up among rich kids, she said she never pretended to have more than she did because she thought she would gain respect by admitting to her reduced circumstances.
"I was always a horrible little social climber in my way," she told the New York Times in 1998.