A designer sued Melanie Griffith for allegedly refusing to pay nearly $26,000 for dressing the actress and her daughters for the Golden Globes Awards and reneging on a promise to mention his name on the red carpet. In the lawsuit filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Niklas J. Palm claimed he designed dresses for Griffith and her daughters Dakota Johnson and Stella Banderas to wear to the January event. Palm said he submitted a $25,960 bill Jan. 16 and Griffith was overdue in making any payments. He also claimed Griffith and her daughters backed out of their promise to mention his name to reporters.
Griffith promised “that he will receive publicity that money could not buy, then conveniently forgot his name when reporters on the red carpet specifically asked who designed her beautiful gown – taking credit for the gown herself,” the lawsuit said.
Edward Albee will teach at Princeton University and write a new play for a local theater as the first person named to a new playwriting fellowship. Funded by the Ford Foundation, the Princeton University/McCarter Theatre Playwriting Fellowship program will bring Albee to Princeton for several months in the fall of 2007. Albee, 78, is the winner of three Pulitzer Prizes. He first gained notice with his play “The Zoo Story” in 1959. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” won a Tony Award, as did “A Delicate Balance” and “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?”
Parkinson’s disease has diminished his voice and slowed his body, but Muhammad Ali, 64, still exercises regularly in a gym at his home, punching a heavy bag and sometimes sparring playfully in a boxing ring, his wife says.
He hasn’t driven a car in 15 years and “he’s no longer the type to pick up the phone and call friends the way he used to, but we converse,” his wife, Lonnie, said in an interview in the March-April issue of Neurology Now, an American Academy of Neurology magazine for patients, their families and caregivers.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like he’s sitting there espousing rhetoric, but his words still carry impact, they’re still very important,” she told the magazine. “You absolutely can understand what he wants, what he says, what he’s thinking.”
Now that a copyright-infringement claim against his publisher has been dismissed, Dan Brown can get on with his private life – or at least, try to. Brown, best-selling author of “The Da Vinci Code,” is working to put up a wrought-iron fence around his home in Rye, N.H., to keep out uninvited guests. “It sits right out there,” Police Chief Alan Gould said of Brown’s home. “It’s a pretty open area.”
Gould said Brown was concerned that the heightened attention brought on by a lawsuit claiming he stole ideas from a nonfiction book might create security concerns and could possibly lead to trespassers approaching his home. A judge in London ruled Friday in Brown’s favor.
