A man conspicuously given to excess, Marlon Brando, has asked the medical profession for help losing weight. Well, sort of. According to columnist Liz Smith, the portly semiactor has gone to a Tahitian witch doctor who-after chanting and burning leaves-concocted a potion made from seaweed, papaya juice and fish. Hey, he`ll swallow anything.
ELVIS NEVER SLEPT ALONE Elvis Presley`s hit song, ”Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear,” takes on a reverse meaning after revelations about his bedtime phobias. Stepbrother Rick Stanley, who joined Presley`s entourage at age 17 and acted as an after-hours talent scout, tells People magazine that human contact often was more important than cavorting between the sheets. ”Girls were always available . . . and he wanted one every night,” Stanley said. ”He had to have somebody in bed with him. I don`t think sex was even involved lots of times. He hated to be alone. If there wasn`t a girl there, I`d sometimes sleep at the foot of his bed.” Mindful of Elvis` cleanliness fetish, though, Stanley always asked female teddy bears to shower thoroughly before donning Elvis` pajama tops.
THE DEVIL IN GORDON LIDDY Watergate probably sealed his fate, but ex-burglar and loyal stonewaller G. Gordon Liddy isn`t complaining. ”If you are seen . . . as a credible villain, you`re fortunate indeed, because we waste a villain a week on every show,” said Liddy, who left prison in 1977 and went on to become typecast as an evil-doer in ”Miami Vice.” Now, in ”Street Asylum,” an as-yet-unreleased movie, he is a corrupt ex-cop and sex pervert. In ”Nowhere Man,” which he is filming in Tacoma, Wash., the onetime CIA spook returns to a familiar role-as a drug dealer. ”It`s a big market for villains, a far bigger market than for the guy with the capped teeth who gets the girl,” said Liddy, 58, adding that his wife is supportive. Indeed, she tells him, ”You don`t have to act. . . . Be yourself; you`re the perfect villain.”
WOODSTOCK`S DARK SIDE William Bennett remembers Woodstock. Indeed, he played a guitar, loved rock `n` roll and once had a blind date with Janis Joplin. Now the nation`s drug czar, Bennett says ”memory distortion” on Woodstock`s 20th anniversary is creating unwarranted nostalgia. ”Part of the legacy of Woodstock was tolerance of drugs,” said Bennett, 45. ”The next time you hear somebody gushing about Woodstock . . . remind them of the casualty list. . . . Janis Joplin, who died in 1970 of a drug overdose; Jimi Hendrix, dead, 1970 drug overdose; Keith Moon of the Who, dead of a drug overdose in `78; Paul Butterfield, died of a drug overdose in `87.” That remarkable lovefest of
`69, observed Bennett, also was ”a time of a great deal of death.”
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(Postscript: When Bennett concluded, a reporter asked, ”What are you trying to say?”)
THRELKELD REJOINS CBS A lineup change for TV fans: After seven years with rival ABC, newsman Richard Threlkeld is returning to CBS. Threlkeld, 51, first joined CBS in 1966, covered the Vietnam War and afterwards served as a network morning anchor. He will be a national correspondent based in New York.