Elizabeth Taylor

When Elizabeth Taylor asks for something, she gets it. At least that’s the way things went for the septuagenarian actress today, when she announced that T.V. and film writers striking in front of the Paramount lot in L.A. have agreed to honor her request and cease their protest for one day only. Not just any day of the week, however. The brief ceasefire will commence on December 1st, World AIDS Day, when Ms. Taylor and James Earl Jones will perform A.R. Gurney’s play Love Letters at the studio. The actors’ one-night turn is expected to bank a cool million bucks for the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.

Elizabeth Taylor, for one, isn’t overly worried about a dearth of writers at next month’s AIDS benefit, to be held at the Paramount Pictures lot in L.A. On December 1, the bejeweled grand dame of Hollywood, 75, is slated to perform A.R. Gurney’s play Love Letters alongside venerable actor James Earl Jones, 76. If the strike continues into next month, Ms. Taylor is apparently optimistic that members of the W.G.A. will cross picket lines—for one day only—in the name of her charity, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, which hopes to raise $1 million that night, also World AIDS Day.  read more »

Sarah Jessica Parker, Marc Jacobs and Elizabeth Hurley all showed up to the Christie's auction last night, witnessing Andy Warhol's "Liz" painting sell for $23.5 million, according to The New York Times. The 40-inch-square painting, one from a series of 13, originally belonged to Hugh Grant, and will now be passed on to an anonymous bidder.  read more »

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed actress Elizabeth Taylor to keep a Vincent van Gogh painting this morning, rejecting an appeal by descendants of a Jewish woman who said she was forced to sell "View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy" before fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939, according to Reuters.

Four South African and Canadian descendants of Margarete Mauthner, a Jewish woman who fled Germany in 1939 for South Africa, sued Taylor in 2004 in federal court in California.

The lawsuit claimed the Nazis forced Mauthner to sell the painting under duress before fleeing Germany and that it should be returned to her descendants under the 1998 U.S. Holocaust Victims Redress Act.

Taylor said the record showed the painting was sold through two Jewish art dealers to a Jewish art collector, and that there was no evidence of any Nazi coercion or participation in the transactions.

A U.S. appeals court upheld the dismissal of the lawsuit.

 

The iconic jeweler Bulgari has found its new headquarters at 625 Madison Avenue. The luxury retailer has signed a 23,933-square-foot sublease at the corner of 59th Street.

The company--which was entrenched in contemporary culture after Richard Burton said of Elizabeth Taylor, "The only word Liz knows in Italian is Bulgari"--used to house its U.S. headquarters on two non-contiguous floors at 730 Fifth Avenue.

Studley brokers Michael Goldman and Kunihiko Otomo represented Bulgari.

- John Koblin

Hillary Clinton will drop in on her Hollywood friends next month to head off Barack Obama's courting of some of the town's most deep-pocketed stars and moguls. Elizabeth Taylor calls Hillary "savvy."

A bipartisan independent panel charged with recommending top candidates for the vacant comptroller position jilted the hard-lobbying Sheldon Silver by not including any of his picks. Silver promptly called the panel toothless and said he doesn't care what they suggest.

A poll shows that New Jersey likes Giuliani.

This other poll is good for Hillary.

The National Security Agency's super-classified domestic surveillance program may be too secret to be legal.

Anti-war activists are set to march on Washington.

But the Democrats are still divided.

A conservative candidate, California Representative Duncan Hunter, entered the race for president and started campaigning by driving around his state in a motor home. He's for the war and against abortion.

With a booming real estate market and tax revenues for the fiscal year $2 billion higher than estimated even a couple of months ago, Mayor Bloomberg forsees a $3.9 billion surplus in next years budget that will allow him to cut city taxes.

And finally, it's cold.

-- Jason Horowitz

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