Summer Notes: It wasn't exactly a critically acclaimed performance when Frank Sinatra appeared at Capital Centre with Sammy Davis Jr. last March, but the 72-year-old entertainer is a long time away from giving up the concert stage. He'll be back on the East Coast next month, teaming up this time with Tony Bennett, of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" fame. They will be in Atlantic City at Bally's Resort Casino on Sept. 3 and 4. doing separate segments and then several songs together. A Sinatra spokeswoman said yesterday that the famed saloon singers last sang together when Sinatra had a television show in the 1960s, some 25 years ago. Bennett, who has appeared here in recent years at Blues Alley, turned 62 yesterday ...
For all those couples who never know what to get a spouse on a wedding anniversary, Princess Diana came up with what has to be a unique idea. For this, the seven-year itch anniversary, she presented Prince Charles with a video of her current favorite musical, "The Phantom of the Opera," and in it she sings for him a song from the show, "All I Ask of You." And she did this simply by renting the show's set at the theater in London's West End where it is playing and having her movements directed by the show's choreographer, Gillian Lynne. Diana didn't settle for second best. The show's composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, was there to oversee her performance. On the other hand, such a video might not be a good idea for most couples. What if one or the other can't sing? ...
Hospital Report: Sportswriter Mo Siegel underwent surgery for stomach cancer yesterday in St. Joseph's Hospital in Atlanta. Siegel was born in Atlanta and has family there. The longtime Washington Star sportswriter personality has appeared over the years on television and in magazines, and could frequently be found telling stories in his gravelly voice at various Washington watering holes ... He's listed in good condition ...
Yesterday, nearly 20 years after her death, the body of Princess Andrew of Greece, Queen Elizabeth's mother-in-law, was buried in the Holy Land, fulfilling her dying wish. Her body had been at Windsor Castle since she died in 1969 at 84, having spent the last 20 years of her life as a nun. Political and religious barriers had prevented the burial of Prince Philip's mother from taking place until yesterday. Services were held on the Mount of Olives led by the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem and burial was near her aunt, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, in the Russian Orthodox church St. Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane ...
Songwriter Irving Berlin, who turned 100 this year and has been reclusive over the past 10 years, was not at Tuesday's funeral service for his wife Ellin, who died Friday at 85 after a series of strokes. The Catholic funeral mass as held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, bringing an end to the great Berlin romance story that scandalized Manhattan society in the '20s when Ellin Mackay, a wealthy Roman Catholic debutante who was considered one of the beauties of her day, married the uneducated son of an Orthodox Jewish family who had once been a singing waiter. They were married 62 years. Even presenting Ellin with the love song "Always" and all its royalties didn't bring her millionaire father around until five years after the wedding. The song made a fortune. She went on to become a successful novelist and short-story writer. Her family, in keeping with Berlin's wishes, declined to comment to the media after the funeral ...