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Marilyn Monroe's lips get top bid in Andy Warhol online auction

Marilyn Monroe's lips get top bid in Andy Warhol Auction
L.A. Times
By Mike Boehm March 6, 2013, 8:00 a.m. Marilyn Monroe, one of America’s most beloved pop cultural icons, and New Coke, one of its most despised, commanded the biggest bids in the first in a series of online Christie’s auctions of Andy Warhol artworks that ended Tuesday.
The winning bids totaled $1.84 million for 124 auction lots. It was the second round of all-Warhol sales in a multi-year effort by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to liquidate its holdings to boost its grantmaking endowment. Winning bidders also must pay a 25% buyer's premium.
The first sale, a regular auction in November at Christie's in New York City, reaped $17 million.

“I Love Your Kiss Forever Forever,” a 1964 lithograph on two sheets of paper showing five different-colored pairs of Monroe’s lips, attracted 50 bids in the online auction and fetched $90,000 -- 16 times higher than the pre-sale top estimate of $5,000.
“New Coke,”  a colored screen print on two sheets of paper dated around 1985, the year Coca Cola changed its soda’s formula to the general distaste of the guzzling public, went for $75,000, more than doubling the $35,000 top estimate.
The auction's bestselling celebrity image was Warhol’s own: He appeared in a dozen pieces (11 of them photographs) that collectively brought in $116,200, including $38,000 for a T-shirt with his fright-wigged visage.

Only one of the show’s 125 auction lots failed to attract any bids: “Madonna and Child,” a 1981 graphite drawing on paper that showed a baby suckling its mother’s breast, had been expected to sell for $30,000 to $40

PETER LAWFORD AND PRESIDENT KENNEDY COMPETE FOR WOMEN

AS HE COULD IN SO MANY other areas, President Kennedy was able to steal his brother-in-law Peter Lawford’s thunder with women as no one else ever had. If Peter’s friends had discovered that no girl of theirs was safe around him, Peter quickly learned the same thing about Jack.
Peter's friend Bob Neal, widely renowned as a playboy, was happy to be third Musketeer when he was with Jack and Peter. He recalled a cocktail party at the Manhattan apartment of Earl E. T. Smith, who had been President Eisenhower’s ambassador to Cuba.
       Peter brought Neal and Peter's manager Milt Ebbins to the party, which included many of thePresident’s closest associates, among them his aide Dave Powers and his brother-in-law Steve Smith. Neal saw the President sitting on a couch flanked by two young women. Peter greeted Jack and shook his hand; Ebbins and Neal followed suit. As hepumped Bob’s hand Kennedy said to him, “My God, Bob Neal. That’s the man we’d all like to be.” A few minutes later Peter pulled Neal aside and they went out on a balcony overlooking Central Park. “What was he talking about, you’re the man everybody wants to be?”
“I don’t know,” Neal replied. “Why don’t you ask him?” Ebbins overheard the question and answered it for Peter. “Jack’s heard about all the great-looking girls Bob’s been dating lately.” “Oh,” Peter said. “I get it.”
A few minutes later, Peter walked up to Neal and whispered, “You see that guy over there? He’s with a beautiful girl from South America.” Neal had indeed seen her.
Peter’s voice turned conspiratorial. “He’s had about twelve drinks too many. Why don’t we separate them?”
“Good idea,” Neal replied. “How do we do that?”

“Let’s get them into the elevator first, and we’ll figure it out once we get down on the ground.”
Within minutes, Peter and Bob were in Ambassador Smith’s private elevator with the hapless man and the girl from South America. Just as the elevator operator started to close the doors, they heard a commanding voice — “Hold the elevator!”
         “The operator stuck his head out of the door and here came the President,” Neal recalled. “He strode into the elevator and he said, ‘where do you two fellows think you’re going?’ Peter looked at me and then said, ‘Well, sir, it’s past our bedtime and we thought we would go back to our hotel.’
           “Jack replied, ‘You’re exactly correct.’ Then he turned to the gorgeous girl and said,‘Young lady, would you join me for a drink at the bar?’ She said, ‘I’d be delighted to, Mr. President,’ and offthey went. We two jerks wound up on Fifth Avenue with a guy who couldn’t find the floor with his hat. ThePresident knew what we were doing.” And the President always made sure that nothing similar happened to him. During a visit to the Lawfords’ in Santa Monica, Kennedy discovered that a certain friend of Peter’s was in the house. “Either he goes or I go,” he told Peter.
“But Jack,” Peter pleaded, “he’s one of my best friends! What am I going to say to him?”
“I don’t care, just get rid of him.” The President started to change out of his bathing suit and back into street clothes, prepared to leave. Peter grabbed Milt Ebbins, who’d been watching all this, and pulled him into an adjoining room. “What am I going to do, Milt?”
       “You’ve got to tell the guy to leave. Make up some excuse. You can’t let the President of the United States leave here because you don’t want to insult your friend.” Peter made an excuse about security considerations, and his friend left.What had the man done to so offend the leader of the free world? During Kennedy’s last visit to California, the hapless fellow had made a pass at one of Jack’s girls.

GREAT INTERVIEW WITH BARBRA FROM LONDON

London's Independent ran the following interview with Barbra recently: "Holy cow," whispers Barbra Streisand as she struggles to  explain how she’s managed to remain relevant for more than half a century. “I don’t make that many  movies and I don’t make many appearances, maybe that’s it?” offers the superstar who has two Oscars, eight Grammys, five Emmys and a Special Tony award; one of few entertainers to boast this quadruple achievement.“Less is more and maybe that keeps a little mystery or something, I don’t know? I like to stay home a lot. I like to do other things too, like decorate or build,” says Streisand, suddenly back in the spotlight, starring in The Guilt Trip, her first leading movie role in 16 years, as well as returning to the Oscars last weekend performing “The Way We Were”, the Oscar-winning theme song from her 1974 movie of the same name, co-starring Robert Redford. Dedicated to her late dear friend, Marvin Hamlisch, the song’s composer, it was her first time singing on the Oscar stage in 36 years, and her performance predictably drew a standing ovation, with everyone from Oprah to Jennifer Lopez tweeting and gushing afterwards.
It’s not as if she’s exactly been quiet since her last major film outing, starring, singing, producing and directing 1996’s The Mirror Has Two Faces. There’s been a recurring role in the Fockers comedies as well as the sell-out concert tours, auctions, politics, philanthropy, books and almost annual CD releases.
But, more than anything, she’s been enjoying married life. Wed almost 15 years to actor James Brolin, their unexpected romance came after she’d practically given up on finding lasting love.
Thus the notion of stumbling upon love, is actually one of the themes that resonated most deeply when comic actor Seth Rogen first approached her to play his mother in The Guilt Trip, a bawdy road-trip comedy.
As Rogen’s neurotic widowed mother, she gamely attends singles soirées,  although Streisand herself doesn’t  advocate dating clubs in real life: “They [women] shouldn’t look. I wasn’t looking when I first met my now husband,” she confesses when we meet in a romantically themed Beverly Hills hotel room filled with flickering perfumed candles, pink and cream roses tastefully arranged in silver vases.
“Sometimes love comes when you don’t try so hard. I think that’s what happened with us too. I was editing my last movie [Mirror Has Two Faces] when I was supposed to meet Jim on a blind-date thing. I had a night shift because I like to work into the wee small hours of the night, and I said to my editors, ‘Stay here. I’m just going into town for a dinner party and then I’ll come back and work.’
“I think Jim had the same feeling before he met me like, oh my God, what am I doing? But we got along great and talked about architecture and relationships. He said I’m going to take you home. I said, I have to go back to work. No, he says, I’m going to take you home. And that was it. I wasn’t looking for a man. It’s too hard to date and see if you have chemistry. But then it all fell into place.”
Just 20 years old when she wed Elliott Gould, their marriage lasted eight years before Streisand famously went on to date Ryan O’Neal, Don Johnson, tennis player Andre Agassi, former hair- stylist Jon Peters, Liam Neeson, Kris Kristofferson and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Throughout those turbulent years, the one constant man in her life has  always been her son Jason Gould, now 46. If most people are terrified to voice their real opinions to the legendary diva, then her son is unafraid: “Actually, he was very important in my decision to make The Guilt Trip because he was in bed recovering from back surgery when I brought the script over. It was interesting because actually his father was in the room too,” she says, offering a rare glimpse into her private world. “Isn’t that funny? So we were both there,  coddling our son, and Jason said, ‘I think you should do it, Mom.’ I really trust his integrity and his opinion. He has great taste, and whatever he chooses to do, it’s amazing, so he clinched the deal.”
At 70 years old, it turns out that Streisand is more clued in than most septuagenarians, mercilessly teasing her “movie son” Seth Rogen throughout the process of making The Guilt Trip.
Briefly joining us, Rogen verifies, “She cracked me up quite a bit”, to which Streisand instantly rejoins: “Because it’s more unexpected from me probably? I’m the more serious person.” Nodding earnestly, Rogen says: “The way we talk in real life is not  entirely different than our rapport in the movie. It’s a lot of me trying to  explain things to her about modern times and her trying to feed me stuff  I don’t want to eat,” he laughs.
Streisand is having none of it: “And yet he copied my iPhone. I was the one with the iPhone,” she says forcing Rogen to defend himself. “It’s true. I had a BlackBerry while she was always playing games on her iPhone and I thought, ‘I‘ve gotta get one of these. If Barbra can work an iPhone then it’s gotta be fun’.”
When Rogen departs the room, she continues: “Seth, it turns out, sussed me out, and called people from the Focker movies. Me? I don’t know any of those people from his movies so what was I going to do?” she asks, seemingly oblivious to Rogen’s status as spokesman for today’s slacker generation. “I thought he was adorable. I also thought this is interesting, and unlikely. And yet we’re both Jewish so I could be his mother.”
Returning to The Guilt Trip’s mother-and-son themes, Streisand confesses to her own guilt: “Sometimes you  resent the people you love and need the most. Love is so fascinating in all its forms, and I think everyone who has ever been a mother will relate to this.
“And mothers do develop guilt trips. When I was working a lot, I felt guilty as a parent. I couldn’t pick up my son every day from school, bake him cookies and that kind of thing. So I know that feeling a lot, where you try to compensate and everything they do is great, but children sense that guilt, and they’re going through their own  rebellious times or whatever. Having a famous parent is an odd thing, so I thought it was interesting to investigate this; trying to be my son’s friend versus a mother and when it comes time to really say, ‘You abuse me, you disrespect me; you talk back to me; you don’t honour what I say, you won’t take my advice’, that kind of thing, in terms of this movie it hit on all those things that I thought I could explore.
“And it also just felt like it was meant for me to come back to work as a star; as a starring role, rather than six days on a movie,” she says in reference to her Fockers roles.
“It was time to challenge myself again. Of course, I made it very difficult for them to hire me because I just kept wanting an out some way so I made it really hard. And I would never do this normally, right? I really don’t want to schlep to Paramount – it’s two hours each way – so would you rent a warehouse and build the sets in the valley, no more than 45 minutes from my house? And they said yes. So then I asked, ‘Can you pick me up at 8.30am because that’s a normal time to get up for me?’ I love the night. My husband and I stay up till 2 or 3 in the morning, so we don’t function that well at 6am, and they said ‘OK’. And Seth agreed that it’s very hard to be funny at 7am,” says Streisand who earned the Best Actress Oscar for Funny Girl in 1969.
If The Guilt Trip is essentially a road-trip comedy, then it seems ridiculous to quiz her about any real-life parallels, assuming she only travels by private jet. Not so, apparently. “I love road trips!” she exclaims. “My husband and I love that. We bought a truck with a bench seat so we could put the dog in the middle. I have a coton. She’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. She’s like the daughter I never had. She speaks English. She understands English I swear to God. She’ll come up to me and go ‘mmm’ it sounds like a baby. That means she wants water. Or she’ll just look at me with those eyes and then she wants a treat. She always comes with us. I would never leave her.
“We love to take long trips and stay in all these interesting places and B&Bs. They have great breakfasts, biscuits and homemade hash browns. “One time we went to Mendocino and we couldn’t find a hotel room at all. We knocked on somebody’s door and they said, ‘Come and we’ll give you our bedroom.’ Can you imagine? I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ But they insisted: ‘Oh yeah, we’d love to have you stay in our bedroom. We’ll sleep in the other bedroom.’
“But I love the spontaneity. You go away and just get in the car. As a matter of fact, when we were coming home from my concert in San Jose, there was something wrong with the plane. Rather than wait for them to fix this plane at midnight, we just got in the car and drove home. I got food in the car, water, and my dog, and my husband loves to drive.”However, she refuses to entertain Brolin by singing in the car: “Oh no. I don’t sing in cars and I don’t sing in showers. I sing when I have to. I sing in recording studios. I don’t like public performances because that is hard for me. You have to put on make-up. You have to wear heels. You have to dress up. That’s why I like directing and recording, private things.”
Ask how her son feels about her being labelled as a ‘gay icon’, she says: “He doesn’t see me as an icon. He sees me as his mother who touches his hair too much. I love being an icon to anybody. Equal rights!”
Meeting with Streisand, up close and personal, she’s everything you might imagine, the perfectly coiffed hair, pearly glossed lips and long,  manicured nails. Dressed in an off-the-shoulder black silken top, she wears skin-tight tight black pants, knee-high black suede Stuart Weitzman boots with a black glittery choker around her neck. A perfectionist to a fault, she admits she still can’t help herself: “I’ll be in somebody’s house and just move something an inch because it’s off. That’s the way I see things. It’s a blessing and a curse. It just bothers me. I feel it viscerally if something is out of balance.”
If The Guilt Trip failed to ignite the US box office, then Streisand continues to trust her nearest and dearest in terms of quality control: “I trust my manager of 50 years,” she says. “Other than that, it’s hard to choose between my husband and my son. I don’t like to be ‘schmuckled’. Do you know what that means? Schmuckled is a great Yiddish expression which means smeared. I prefer the truth.”

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FOUR GREAT BARBRA STREISAND FILMS JUST OUT ON BLU-RAY

Matt Howe of  http://barbra-archives.com/ brings us the following information:

Amazon is listing the Funny Girl Blu-ray as being released April 30, 2013 from Sony. I haven't seen an official announcement on this yet, but I'll put up the link to pre-order just in case you want to proceed. [Looks like they've posted temporary cover art, as well.]
Turner Classic Movies is debuting a brand new restoration of Funny Girl —restored in 4K from the original camera negative—on April 25 in Los Angeles. I read that Sony had considered a limited theatrical release of the restored Funny Girl, but this Blu-ray release date seems to indicate the disc will be out shortly after the TCM debut.
Below is a list of the several Streisand Blu-rays coming out in the next few months:

April 2 — Hello, Dolly! [pre-order from Amazon]April 30 — Funny Girl [ pre-order from Amazon]April 30 — The Guilt Trip [ pre-order from Amazon ] Of course, this month, Warner Home Video released A Star is Born on Blu-ray—and it looks gorgeous!

TFOUR GREAT BARBRA STREISAND FILMS JUST OUT ON BLU-RAY

Matt Howe of  http://barbra-archives.com/ brings us the following information:

Amazon is listing the Funny Girl Blu-ray as being released April 30, 2013 from Sony. I haven't seen an official announcement on this yet, but I'll put up the link to pre-order just in case you want to proceed. [Looks like they've posted temporary cover art, as well.]
Turner Classic Movies is debuting a brand new restoration of Funny Girl —restored in 4K from the original camera negative—on April 25 in Los Angeles. I read that Sony had considered a limited theatrical release of the restored Funny Girl, but this Blu-ray release date seems to indicate the disc will be out shortly after the TCM debut.
Below is a list of the several Streisand Blu-rays coming out in the next few months:
April 2 — Hello, Dolly! [pre-order from Amazon]April 30 — Funny Girl [ pre-order from Amazon]April 30 — The Guilt Trip [ pre-order from Amazon ] Of course, this month, Warner Home Video released A Star is Born on Blu-ray—and it looks gorgeous!

PETER AND MARILYN AND HOWARD HUGHES, OH MY!

Peter Lawford met Marilyn in his agent’s office in 1951, when he was twenty-seven and she twenty-four. She was, he said, such an “alarmingly pretty” girl that “it really made me sit up.” They dated a few times that year, both alone and in foursomes. She was taken with him, but he proved less than interested in her. She thought he might be gay. But the truth was that Marilyn wasn’t Peter’s type. In an interview that same year, Peter said, “There are many girls with long blond hair and sexy figures whom men consider beautiful. But I don’t. To me a girl with a well-groomed look, not the flamboyant type, but a quiet beauty who radiates health and vitality is the greatest beauty of them all. I go for the typical college type, not movie sirens.”
Peter was initially attracted to Marilyn because at that time she did have a wholesome, down-to-earth side. But he was put off by the Marilyn Monroe persona that she adopted publicly. They did date a few more times, but a strange evening brought that chapter of their relationship to a close. On one occasion Peter would never forget, he went to pick Marilyn up and found two burly bodyguards standing on either side of her front door. They asked him what he wanted. “I have a date with Miss Monroe,” he told them warily.
“She’s not going out.”
“But I have a date with her!” Peter replied.
“Forget it. She’s staying here tonight.”
Peter sensed that he had better leave, but he called Marilyn the minute he got home. “What the hell’s going on?” he asked her.
“It’s Howard Hughes,” Marilyn whispered. “I went out with him and he’s so jealous that he won’t let me leave the house at night. I’m a prisoner in my own home.”
Luckily for Marilyn’s freedom, the eccentric billionaire’s attentions were soon diverted to other pretty starlets.

BARBRA LOOKING GORGEOUS AT THE OSCARS

The Donna Karan New York gown worn by Barbra Streisand in her performance at the 85th Annual Academy awards was designed by Ms. Karan, specifically for the artist. Entitled 'City Lights' the black asymmetrical, bias-cut dress is a waterfall of chiffon layers encrusted with matte gold sequins and beads. A long sleeve capelet adds the final layer of chiffon, its back dramatically falling to the floor.

"Everything I do with Barbra is a collaboration­ born of our artistry, our friendship and our love for one another. We're sisters." -- Donna Karan

Photo by Kevin Mazur/Wireimage.

OSCARS INCREASE STREISAND RECORD SALES

Oscars Impact: Streisand Spikes, 'Les Miserables' Album DropsBy Keith Caulfield, Los Angeles | February 27, 2013 2:30 PM EST
Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images 99 143 0 11 Final numbers: Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger" jumps 310% for the week; Adele's "Skyfall" nets 56% gain The week's official sales figures are in, and, as previously forecasted, a lot of songs see gains thanks to exposure on Sunday's Academy Awards broadcast (Feb. 24).
The show, which occurred on the final day of the Nielsen SoundScan sales tracking week, featured a bevy of performances from the likes of Adele, Dame Shirley Bassey and Barbra Streisand.
OSCARS 2013:
Adele's "Skyfall," which earned her and co-writer Paul Epworth the Oscar for best original song, sees a 56% gain in sales for the week ending Feb. 24 according to Nielsen SoundScan. The tune sold 56,000 downloads -- up from 36,000 the week previous.
The song has now sold 1.6 million in the U.S. It's the first song from a James Bond film to win an Academy Award. "Skyfall" is expected to rise on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, from No. 83, when the chart is released tomorrow (Feb. 28).
Dame Shirley Bassey, who performed the Bond song "Goldfinger" during a tribute to the film series, also posts a gain. Her rendition of the tune gains by 310% to sell 1,000 downloads for the week. Bassey likely profited a bit more from the social exposure she earned from the show. On the day of the Oscars, according to Topsy analytics, Bassey was mentioned 36,000 times on Twitter -- up from just 150 mentions a day earlier.
Traffic to Bassey's Wikipedia page also soared by 30% on Feb. 24, receiving 6,600 views.
Another performer on the show was Barbra Streisand, who sang her 1974 No. 1 Hot 100 hit "The Way We Were" during a tribute to the late Marvin Hamlisch. The composer, who died last August, won one of his three Oscars for co-writing "The Way We Were" (with Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman).
Sales of "The Way We Were" gained by 209%, selling 2,000 downloads for the week.

GRACE KELLY BIOPIC DUE IN DECEMBER

OSCARS: Winners By Studio Oscars In Memoriam: Who Was Snubbed? OSCARS: How Michelle Obama’s Surprise Appearance Came … OSCARS: Who Was Worst-Dressed? [image error] Fox, Ridley Scott Set Scribe Kieran Fitzgerald For Pic … Daily Variety Dead: Names 3 Editors-In-Chief And Turns … TBS Greenlights Conan O’Brien-Produced Late-Night … [image error] RATINGS RAT RACE: ’2 Broke Girls’, ‘Mike … Cablevision Charges Viacom With Antitrust Violation For … AMC Networks Misses Q4 Earnings Estimates Following Dish … Documents Shed Light On Peter Jackson’s 2010 … Cast For BBC ‘The Musketeers’: Peter Capaldi, … Alicia Silverstone To Topline Lifetime Pilot … UPDATE: Seth MacFarlane-Hosted Oscars Watched By 40.3M, Up … CAA Signs ‘Rush’ Scribe Peter Morgan ‘House Of Cards’ Was “A Great … [image error] Studios & Networks Pursue Maya Rudolph For Variety TLC Bringing ‘Breaking Amish’ Back For Season 2 Marion Cotillard Books Dardenne Brothers’ ‘Deux … Barnes & Noble Founder Wants To Buy Its Bookstore … OSCARS: Analysis By Pete Hammond OSCARS: Winners By Studio Oscars In Memoriam: Who Was Snubbed? OSCARS: How Michelle Obama’s Surprise Appearance Came … OSCARS: Who Was Worst-Dressed? [image error] Fox, Ridley Scott Set Scribe Kieran Fitzgerald For Pic … Daily Variety Dead: Names 3 Editors-In-Chief And Turns … TBS Greenlights Conan O’Brien-Produced Late-Night … [image error] RATINGS RAT RACE: ’2 Broke Girls’, ‘Mike … E-mail Address: mike@deadline.comHollywoodNew YorkLondonParisMike Fleming: EditorToo Early To Talk 2014 Oscars? Harvey Weinstein Buying ‘Grace Of Monaco’ With Nicole Kidman As Grace KellyBy MIKE FLEMING JR | Sunday February 24, 2013 @ 4:25pm ESTTags: Grace Kelly, Grace Of Monaco, Nicole Kidman, The Weinstein Company inShare1 Comments (13) EXCLUSIVE: With two Best Picture candidates in the hunt, Harvey Weinstein has begun putting together the Oscar season slate for next year. I’m told that The Weinstein Company is wrapping up a deal to acquire domestic rights to Grace Of Monaco , the Olivier Dahan-directed drama that stars Nicole Kidman as actress-turned-princess Grace Kelly, Tim Roth as Monaco’s Prince Rainier III. I’m hearing that TWC has made a big bet, paying a $5 million minimum guarantee and a P&A commitment around $10 million for a minimum 800 screen run. I was unable to get comment from TWC or CAA, which shopped the domestic rights and established the film as a hot buzz title by showing a sizzle reel footage at Berlin. TWC’s Weinstein and David Glasser made the deal Friday night here in Hollywood with CAA on behalf of Pierre-Ange Le Pogam, who produced the film with Uday Chopra and Arash Amel. Amel wrote the script. The film will be released in December, smack in the middle of next awards season, a release pattern that will be similar to the one TWC used for The Iron Lady. Inferno and Silver Reel were also in the deal. A $2 million deal for Canada is also in the offing. 
The drama chronicles how Princess Grace made the transition from star of films like Dial M For Murder and Rear Window to her role as princess by playing a major role in helping her husband settle a dispute between her country and France’s Charles De Gaulle over tax laws in the 1960s.

Barbra Streisand--National Treasure

There's an arc for those in public life, created mostly by the media: An artist (or athlete or politician) is heaped with praise as they ascend, become subject to nit-picking criticism as they work at the height of their powers, praised again if they make a comeback, and then--if they have been around long enough and been successful enough--deified as a "living legend" or a "national treasure."
       The root of this phenomenon is in the ego of reporters and reviewers. They want to be seen as discerning and hip enough to discover a great new talent. Then they want to be seen as discerning and hip enough to criticize the same performer if he or she doesn't live up to the writer's exalted expectations in every way and at all times. And finally the performer, by sheer dint of staying power, wins over (most) critics, who come to realize that they are in fact among the greats of all time.
       No one of her generation illustrates this phenomenon better than Barbra Streisand. Has anyone ever been praised by the press so highly early in her career or criticized so viciously by many of the same men and women later on? It's hard to think of one. Barbra got through all the harping, all the sexist Oscar snubs, and continued to work at an almost preternatural level of excellence.
       And now she is at the National Treasure stage. Never was this more apparent than during her appearance at the Academy Awards last night. No introduction was necessary. She walked out in shadow humming the opening bars of "The Way We Were," the audience clapping and abuzz because they all knew exactly who it was. Looking lovely for any age, she gave unquestionably the most emotional rendition of the title song from one of her most popular movies. For the first time ever, after the lyrics, "If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me would we?," Barbra interjected "of course we would," a poignant sentiment anyone over fifty could understand.
       The appearance was a highlight of an uneven Oscar show. But then, all of Barbra's public appearances have been  highlights, have they not?