NEWLN: Compiled by VALERIE KUKLENSKI UPI Entertainment Editor
SENATOR WITH A HEART: Bill Frist has shifted his medical practice to the back burner to serve his first term in the U.S. Senate, but his years of training and experience as a heart and lung surgeon were put into practice unexpectedly Thursday when a 60-year-old man suffered a heart attack near Frist's Capitol Hill office. The Tennessee Republican used a defibrillator brought by paramedics to jump-start Graeme Sieber's heart. The stricken Sieber was initially found by aides who work for Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island. One began performing cardio-pulmonary resuscitation while the other alerted Frist, the Senate's first practicing physician since 1928. Chafee later praised his freshman colleague on the Senate floor. 'Sometimes we get deeply involved with $1 billion here, $1 billion there...But there are other things that are very, very important around here. And certainly Dr. Frist, Senator Frist, proved his mettle this afternoon,' Chafee said.
TO SUIT OR NOT TO SUIT: The debate about whether this year's Miss America contestants should be seen on television parading in their bathing suits Saturday night is going down to the wire. Talk show host Maury Povich brought together six former Miss Americas on Friday's show to discuss how they felt about the swimsuit competition, which in the pageant's early years was the most important element in the beauty contest. The six ex-queens -- Marian Bergeron-Setzer (1933), Lee Meriwether ('55), Marilyn Van Derbur-Atler ('58), Jacquelyn Mayer- Townsend ('63), Kellye Cash-Sheppard ('87) and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko- Wilson ('88) -- split on their opinions. Concerned pageant viewers can call in their yea or nay votes on the issue during the telecast. Van Derbur-Atler said she hopes viewers will vote against the swimsuit segment, saying the women should not be 'judged by the size of their waist or their breasts.' But Cash-Sheppard contended that the bathing suit parade is 'more relevant than ever' because it enables judges and viewers to evaluate the contestants' physical fitness. Where these women stood on the debate apparently had little if anything to do with how they fared in their own pageants. Swimsuit competition opponents Meriwether and Rafko-Wilson won their own swimsuit contests, while endorsers Bergeron-Setzer and Mayer-Townsend were also-rans in the bathing beauty part of their pageants.
EARTH, WIND AND PAVEMENT: R&B group Earth, Wind & Fire received a star Thursday on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, celebrating nearly 25 years of hit records, including 'Shining Star,' 'Got To Get You Into My Life' and 'After the Love Has Gone.' Actor and comedian Sinbad was there for the unveiling of the walk's 2,053rd star on Hollywood Boulevard near La Brea Avenue. The band was represented by founding singer and percussionist Maurice White, his brother, bassist Verdine White, and lead singer Philip Bailey. Earth, Wind & Fire recently completed its 50-city U.S. tour and is set to begin recording its latest album next week.
WHAT'S IN A NAME?: Actress Christine Baranski, a Broadway veteran who won her first Emmy Award last weekend for her supporting role on 'Cybill,' has been married to actor Matthew Cowles (a former bad guy on 'All My Children') for nearly 13 years, almost as long as she's been acting professionally. 'Baranski is my real name, and here I am married to this WASP,' she told Parade magazine. 'So I tell people, 'Yeah, my real name is Cowles. Baranski's my stage name.''
BEWARE OF MEN: Ivana Trump says that her current boyfriend and off- again, on-again fiance, Italian industrialist Riccardo Mazzucchelli, isn't like her former husband, real estate tycoon Donald Trump, because he doesn't have to be a star. 'He doesn't have a problem being Mr. Ivana because he's secure,' she observed in the October issue of McCall's magazine. Trump, 46, said she came extremely close to marrying Mazzucchelli, 51, earlier this summer but remains uncertain about saying 'I do.' 'You think this man is wonderful before you marry him, but is he going to be as wonderful afterward?' she mused. 'You can't rely on instinct. I said I'd be with Donald the rest of my life.' Trump says she has done better after her divorce than when she was married to the Donald. 'I couldn't have had all this (her new career as a fashion designer and author and an estimated net worth of $35 million) if I were married to Donald. He'd put me down, saying 'She really doesn't do anything. I pay Ivana a dollar a year and all the dresses she can buy.' Well, who needs that?'
HOMEOWNER: Pretty woman Julia Roberts has bought a pretty house for a pretty penny. The actress has purchased a 30-year-old four-bedroom adobe residence on 50 acres north of Taos, N.M., according to a report in the Albuquerque Journal. And of course it has the requisite swimming pool, this one indoors. The Journal said Roberts paid between $1.75 million and $2.2 million for the spread in an area where her nearest celebrity neighbor is actor Dennis Weaver.
