Diana Barrymore wrote in her autobiography ("Too Much, Too Soon") about her half-brother Robin Thomas bringing home a photograph of his then unknown friend, Tyrone Power, who was to spend the holidays with them in the 1930s:

"I looked at it. It seemed all eyes at first. Then I saw a beautiful young man with enormous black eyes and incredibly long lashes that actually cast shadows on his cheeks gazing dreamily at me. I knew of whom he reminded me — Mother had a bust of Apollo in the sitting room. This was it come to life."

When Diana actually met Power, she blurted out, "You’re even more beautiful than your picture."

The ad line for Garbo’s "Anna Christie" was actually, "Garbo Talks!" which became the title of a star-studded, bittersweet  1984 Sidney Lumet-directed movie about a guy played by Ron Silver, whose dying mother Anne Bancroft (both of whom left us too soon), wants one thing before she goes — to meet Greta Garbo.

I rememberf Our Liz Smith writing about this film in  her column and La Liz can be glimpsed in a party scene with other New York notables. Betty Comden (gone, too!) played Garbo in the glimpses we got of the character, and in a beautiful grace note at the end in Central Park.

David Cuthbert, New Orleans.

Gwyneth Paltrow, in my estimation, has always been overrated. She isn’t a patch on her radiant mother, Blythe Danner, a true class act.

And as for the glorious Miss Doris Day, whom my father (Phil D’Rey) worked with in her Les Brown days, you are again expressing what millions of DD fans have said for years. Within my memory, I can recall the Academy going to the homes of Myrna Loy and Mary Pickford to award them long-deserved Oscars. Why not present it to "Clara Bixby" (Billy DeWolfe’s affectionate name for Ms. Day)  in Carmel, surrounded by her "four-footer" friends?

David Cuthbert, New Orleans

The Misses Walters and Adams are survivoirs. Tough, smart women (although delaying a doctor visit wasn’t the brightest move on La Adams’ part, "religion," or no.)

As for Gibson, his bonkerdom was proven long ago.

And Cruise — why waste all that energy on goofball action movies? He’s rich enough and talented enough to spend his time doing real acting roles. When he was a very young man, it was his acting that got him noticed. He has excercised those muscles all too rarely since, and usually in short, fairly astonishing supporting roles ("Tropic Thunder," for instance). Tom, get out of the action rut and into the acting groove again and watch things improve for you.

Don’t look for "blockbuster" roles, but GOOD PARTS.

Marian Seldes always has been, always will be, a class act.

—David Cuthbert

Liz, what about Michael Riedel at The New York Post, who gets all the dish on Broadway shows and showfolk before anyone else and more often than not gets it right?

Producers huff denials, which is as good as confirming what he writes!

David Cuthbert/New Orleans

You can hear Marilyn slip into her real voice on Richard Meryman’s tapes from his famous last interview with Marilyn in LIFE Magazine. Also, she uses it in "The Misfits" on occasion. Early in her career, in Fritz Lang’s "Clash by Night," she gives a very natural performance without the speech affectations. Every actress who has attempted to play Marilyn — and there have been many — have failed. Why can’t we admit that there are some performers who are absolutely unique? There’s a little-known movie written by Arthur Miller called "Everybody Wins" that stars Nick Nolte as a grizzled detective and Debra Winger as an irresistable, disturbed girl who ostensibly wants to do good, but keeps us guessing all the time about what is real about her and what is not. Is she telling the truth? Does she ever tell the truth? At the end, it seems she’s been making everything up as she goes along. And maybe that’s the way she’s lived all her life. But we never know. Winger isn’t playing Marilyn, uses no Monroe mannerisms, but may get closer to what Marilyn was like than anyone else has.

Liz’s friend Patricia Newcomb, who was Marilyn’s friend and publicist for several years, is likely the most reliable source we have on Marilyn. What she tells Liz, I believe. But Newcomb appears to be that rarity, a principled person who won’t stoop to making money off Marilyn as almost everyone else has — even people who didn’t know her at all, such as Norman Mailer.

Playwright Mart Crowley, undoubtedly Natalie Wood’s best friend, is another such person. He will talk about her, but there’s a point beyond which he will not go.

David Cuthbert/New Orleans

Whatever Nora Ephron has forgotten is better than what most people remember … And Barbara Walters must know that there are more good thoughts and prayers going out to her than any patient in the world. Like you, Liz, she is someone who never refused a fellow ink-stained wretch her time once she knew she wasn’t wasting hers.

David Cuthbert/New Orleans

Baldwin has visited the Tennessee Williams Festival in New Orleans at least twice, once for a reading with Elizabeth Ashley and Stephanie Zimbalist of "Night of the Iguana" (all three should do this play together) and another time for a reading of Tennessee Williams essays and poems I had put together and he approved it all and brought down the house, staying to chat and sign autographs and pose for photos. He is VERY attuned to the moods of individual writers, I have noticed.

As to Michael Selsman, his story about Marilyn banishing pregnant Carol Lynley to the car is already in Randy Taraborelli’s book.

Selsman was also privy to the final goodbye of Marilyn and Yves Montand  as he was catching a plane back to France.

Anyone who was on the Fox lot at that turbulent ("Cleopatra") time has plenty to tell , so I zoomed over to amazon.com and ordered the book.

A NICE Marilyn story: When she was making "Let’s Make Love" for Fox, Claude Rains, Michael Rennie., Jill St. John and Ray Stricklyn were making "The Lost World" on an adjacent sound stage. Marilyn was a friend of Rennie’s and used to come over and have coffee and donuts with the "Lost World" cast. One day, she arrived to find no coffee, no donuts. A Fox "cost-cutting" device. Marilyn said, "You’ll get it back tomorrow." Rennie asked how? And MM  said sweetly, "Because I won’t show up until you do."

Story told to me by Ray Stricklyn, promising juvenile actor, then a publicist for John Springer, later a FABULOUS older actor who played Tennessee Williams all around the world in "Confessions of a Nightingale."

A great essay on a great subject.

I like Carrie Fisher’s story that, when  dying of pneumonia, about to be carried out on a stretcher before the London paparazzi, Elizabeth asked Eddie Fisher for her lip gloss!

Is that a star or what?

As Fisher wrote about herself and her mother Debbie Reynolds, "We’re built more for public than  for private."

Just think of the generosity of the Redgrave family: Michael Redgrave, his wife Rachel Kempson, their children Vanessa, Lynn and Colin and their grandchildren, in particular the luminiscent Natasha, in sharing their abundant talents with their audiences.

Are you sure the "lost" Dorothy Parker poem isn’t another fabrication from fabulous forger (and great biographer) Lee Israel?

As she proved in her recent book, she could replicate anyone’s style!

C’mon, EVERYBODY understands "Shitkicker"!

My nomination for Movie Liz: Jodie Foster.

The main quality for playing Liz Smith is a sense of capability and determination, that she can do anything and that nothing stops her. To me that says Jodie.

Christine Lahti fits right in on "Law & Order." She’s in the great tradition of some of the multi-franchise series’ best guest stars: Elaine Stritch as a tough, fashionista attorney; Fran Lebowitz in a recurring role as a curt, funny judge; "Take Me Out" co-stars Fred Weller and Daniel Sunjata, each playing multiple roles; Mariette Hartley and Shirley Jones as attorneys going at each other hammer and tongs; Richard Thomas as a demented killer.

Lahti’s assistant DA is ballsy, belligerant and — as we just saw —  vulnerable; she and Chris Meloni are already setting off sparks.

And Mariska Hargitay as Meloni’s partner is quite simply the best actress on TV. Period. Her gaze holds the camera and draws us to her in the manner of the greatest film actresses.

Has anyone seen Falconetti in Dreyer’s silent "Passion of Joan of Arc"? That’s the kind of simple, unadorned, hypnotic acting I’m talking about.

When I was a "cub reporter" in New Orleans too many years ago, Ann Landers spoke to a meeting of doctors at Ochnser Foundation Hospital here. Afterward, she was MOBBED by doctors, who all had Ann Landers columns folded in their wallets. I got in my few minutes with that delightful lady and two days later, my editor received a glowing letter from "Eppie" about what an accurate reporter I was, with "an ear like a phonograph needle." With just a note she upped my stock at the paper considerably. Incidentally, she was beautiful, in a black chiffon dress and a string of pearls.

But as Michael Musto pointed out in his blog, why no memorial  nod to Paul Burke, who starred in the TV series versions of "Naked Citry" and "Twelve O’Clock High"?

He was a New Orleans boy, who, when he walked onscreen, you could hear them clankin’!