The grave engraving of a name
A polite letter from Mrs. Arthur Sackler arrived. Earlier I’d reported on some wanting the name Sackler — which connects to the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma that produced OxyContin — removed from atop Israeli medical institutions. Jill Sackler’s letter says in part: “My husband had nothing to do with that. Arthur died 1987. OxyContin was released 1996. Purdue Pharma was founded 1991 by his brothers from whom he was virtually estranged since the ’60s. But that hasn’t stopped haters. They assert Arthur pioneered deceptive medical advertising — and these ridiculous calumnies are never proved, just repeated, often embellished.
“I have met with media executives, given interviews to reporters, sent innumerable letters to correct the record — but everyone pushes this false narrative.”
Also delivered was her late husband’s just released biography which “Ruth Bader Ginsburg called ‘this great work.’ ” Jill Sackler’s final line: “Scary that the USA has an untrustworthy media.”
His nods get noms
Critic Leonard Maltin’s reviewed every film filmed. Even oldie silent drek. At 12 years old he even wrote Dick Van Dyke because he heard they’re both fans of Laurel and Hardy. Comes now his book “Starstruck: My Unlikely Road to Hollywood.”
Age 71, he schleps to the Oscars but only when they’re over. “I covered them 30 years at ‘Entertainment Tonight.’ Watched since I was 11 but never attended. I put on my tux when the show’s over.”
OK. Wonderful. What’s he like this year?
“ ‘Nightmare Alley,’ ‘West Side Story,’ ‘Dune,’ ‘CODA,’ animated film ‘Luca’ and ‘Licorice Pizza.’”
If anyone saw any of these maybe we’d like them too.
The Method to his genius
Monday’s Post wrote about Isaac Butler’s new “The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act.” It’s about the Method, Actors Studio and Lee Strasberg coaching our most famous actors.
1980, Doubleday published “Lee Strasberg: The Imperfect Genius of the Actors Studio” by Cindy Adams. Its coverline read: “His relationships with Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, Paul Newman, Joan Crawford, Karl Malden, Beatrice Arthur, Barbara Bain, Carroll Baker, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Sally Field and others.”
We spent years together — in his home, studio, wherever. The biography was examined. Each page dissected with Lee and his wife, Anna. Presumably, others also read it.
Strasberg is now gone. Prep to pub date, this all-wise new volume not ever checked one line with me.
Dems do break
Obsessing about dilution of our blessed country’s values? Take heed:
George Washington’s farewell warned of demagogues “who agitate the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms” to foment and “riot an insurrection . . . disorders and miseries gradually incline the minds of men to seek security in the absolute power of an individual; sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, and on the ruins of public liberty.”
Our second president also worried about the rise of a demagogue. 1814, John Adams, responding to a letter which criticized his not applauding the virtues of democracy, then cautioned that “vanity, pride, avarice or ambition” were irresistible temptations to individuals which led to the subversion of democracy. “Remember, Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.”
Our new DA Braggart was told about a dream sequence wherein a Rolls-Royce’s wheels were stolen. In it BS Bragg bragged: “Crime is relative. The question is, who’s the bigger thief? The dude who steals them or Rolls-Royce who charges thousands a wheel for them?”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.