Back in 2013, Vanity Fair published a lengthy interview with Mia Farrow and some of her children. The VF story caused a stir for many different reasons, but let’s just focus on the part about Ronan Farrow’s paternity. Ronan apparently believed that Woody Allen was his biological father for much of his life. But! Mia told VF that at the time she conceived Ronan, she was not just sleeping with Woody, but she was also fooling around with her ex-husband Frank Sinatra. As in, Ol’ Blue Eyes could have been Ronan’s biological father.
Frank’s widow said it was a bunch of crap and Ronan barely talked about it beyond saying it was a “ridiculous situation.” It doesn’t seem like Ronan ever got a paternity test or anything, so we really don’t know. But now Roger Friedman of Showbiz 411 spoke to Frank’s daughter Tina Sinatra and Tina says that Frank could not have fathered any child at that point because Frank had a vasectomy. Huh.
Ronan Farrow isn’t Frank Sinatra’s son. Tina Sinatra laughed when I asked if Mia Farrow’s son Ronan (with Woody Allen) was her brother. Mia let that slip in November 2013 and the rumor caught fire.
“Couldn’t be,” Tina told me. “Frank had a vasectomy before that. I don’t know whose son Ronan is.”
Mia Farrow had been invited to the dinner but was a no-show. Tina added that Ronan looks “just like Mia’s late brother.”
[From Showbiz 411]
I think Ronan does look a lot like the Farrow side of the family no matter what. I’ve always been doubtful of his alleged biological connection to Woody Allen because even with those strong Farrow genes, you would expect to see something of Woody Allen’s genes in there, but there’s nothing. Does it follow that Ronan is Frank Sinatra’s son, come hell or high water? Eh. There could be a mystery third potential baby-daddy in the mix too. Maybe Mia was banging her other ex-husband, André Previn? Why not?
Photos courtesy of WENN, Getty.
Source Cele Bitchy
I’m posing the question in the title “How did a Duggar pregnancy score a People Magazine cover over Lauren Bacall passing?,” which someone brought up in the comments yesterday, but I know the answer already. Look at Bedhead’s post for screen legend Lauren Bacall’s passing last week. It received a respectable 89 comments, but it didn’t blow up like the two Duggar threads did yesterday. Bacall was a class act her entire life. She had a successful career and a quiet retirement. She passed away at 89, an age many people would be happy to live to. Hollywood was able to give her accolades while she was living. Plus People just ran an in memorial cover, for Robin Williams, last week. They probably didn’t want to have two in a row.
The Duggars are controversial and they have a current reality show. While they might not have as many fans as Bacall, they get more attention. That’s just the way it is, but it can be infuriating if you think about it too hard. So let’s give some more attention to Bacall while we can.
I had the chance to read People’s story on Bacall, and it’s a nice tribute to an early screen star who lived out her years quietly in New York, not shying from the spotlight but not seeking it out either. The one detail I got from this story was that Bacall lived in the same apartment in NY, in the historic Dakota building, for 50 years. She also was active in the Democratic party, and often attended fundraisers. Bacall was one of a kind, and she will be missed.
During her six decades in the spotlight, the bold beauty seamlessly transitioned from model to movie star to a real-life love story so spellbinding that even today, “Bogie and Bacall” remains shorthand for grand romance. At 89, the screen legend known as “Betty” to friends and family apparently suffered a fatal stroke on August 12 in the New York City apartment she had called home for more than 50 years…
Though she would eventually amass an impressive collection of accolades, Bacall was the first to admit,”I put my career in second place throughout both my marriages.” The How to Marry a Millionaire actress web Bogart in 1945 but raised their son Stephen, 65, and daughter Leslie, 62, on her own after Bogart died of esophageal cancer in 1957. She was briefly engaged to Frank Sinatra (“He behaved like a complete s*,” she later said) before marrying actor Jason Robards. They had a son, Sam, 52, but the tempestuous marriage ended in 1969 amid Robard’s alcoholism and infidelity. “They are all off-center people – trouble and troubled,” Bacall said of the men in her life. “I suppose I must like all of that. No one simple ever thought I was great.”
Bacall spent her final years with her papillon Sophie (“my partner”), attending parties and Democratic fund-raisers held in the historic Dakota, a building with as storied a past as the actress her lived there. “This bygone place has the same view it did [in the 1900s],” says Bacall’s longtime neighbor Jane Rosenthall. “It’s a very special place. And now a gaslight has burned out.”
[From People Magazine, print edition]
See that was nice, People Magazine kept the tribute simple and fitting. Bacall was an incredible presence on screen, did her thing in her last decades and she remained elegant and non-controversial. She wasn’t worth gossiping about, because there was nothing negative to say. When she passed, all people could say about her was what they’d been saying her whole life: she was a pro on so many levels.
Photo credit: WENN.com
Source Cele Bitchy
We have two new chapters in the Woody Allen-Dylan Farrow saga. Both are very “TL;DR” except I did sit here and read both articles, as I’m sure many of you will too. First, late Friday evening (I think it actually dropped in the middle of the American airing of the Olympics Opening Ceremony), the NY Times published Woody Allen’s rebuttal op-ed online. This was expected – there was widespread reporting that Woody had approached the NYT about his response and they agreed to publish it.
As for what Woody actually has to say… well, it’s very long. I’m not going to cut-and-paste it. You can read the whole thing here at the NYT. By now, you’re probably pretty familiar with Woody’s argument, because he makes a lot of the same points that his lawyer made on the Today Show earlier last week. The basic gist: he never molested Dylan, this is all some huge plot cooked up by Mia Farrow many years ago and Mia is still pulling Dylan’s strings even today. Woody says that Mia is consumed with jealousy and vindictiveness about all things – about Woody still winning awards, about his relationship with Soon Yi, etc. Woody also slams Mia for hypocrisy because Mia got with Frank Sinatra when she was 19 and then Mia got so judgy (I’m paraphrasing) about Woody’s relationship with Soon Yi. Woody also goes hard after Mia’s current claims that Ronan Farrow is really Frank’s son, and Woody points out that he paid child support for Ronan for years too. You get the idea: Saint Woody thinks he’s better than Psycho Slut Mia.
Dylan responded to Woody’s op-ed within hours in a statement to THR – you can read the statement here. She basically says that Woody is made of lies and perversions and she makes bullet points to refute some of Woody’s claims. She again claims that her goal is to encourage other victims to speak out, and she reiterates the fact that she “won’t let the truth be buried and I won’t be silenced.” My interpretation of the point-counterpoint… Woody focuses his anger squarely on Mia and dismisses Dylan out of hand, as if she is still a “confused” child. The level of vitriol Woody still has for Mia is interesting. If we weren’t talking about child molestation, this would be a ridiculous story about how Woody and Mia still have a lot of unresolved hatred for each other and how they’re still capable of getting under each other’s skin.
As this splintered family continues to duke it out in the public sphere, I do wonder how much more we’re going to hear from Dylan, from Woody and even from Mia, Moses and Ronan. Will we hear from some of the other Farrow children as well? There are a lot of them. A lot of versions yet to come. If this goes on another week like it has… I might need to start drinking again. I’ve been off liquor for a while, but I could really go for, like, a really strong mojito right now. I kind of think Cate Blanchett could use a stiff drink too.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Thanks to Cele Bitchy
Ronan Farrow, Mia Farrow‘s son (and perhaps Sinatra’s as well, though Woody Allen raised him), has been very vocal about his distaste for Woody Allen, citing the abuse of his sister, Dylan, as reason. It’s a good reason. In 1993, when Dylan was 7, she and mom Mia Farrow alleged that dad Woody Allen sexually abused her. Their claims were largely ignored by everyone from law enforcement to Hollywood celebrities. A doctor even accused Dylan of making it up. She’s never told, at length, her detailed account of what happened.
But that’s all changed. Now she’s come forward with an article she wrote for The New York Times detailing her abuse. It’s chilling. Here are some excerpts:
What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should know: when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.
[…]
What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis CK? Alec Baldwin? What if it had been you, Emma Stone? Or you, Scarlett Johansson? You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?
Woody Allen is a living testament to the way our society fails the survivors of sexual assault and abuse.
I recommend that you read the whole thing here. I will never look at Woody Allen the same way again.
More at E Beet Gossip
In an earlier post, I linked to Ronan Farrow’s awesome Twitter, but he has an awesome Instagram too – go here to see. He loves Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jemima Khan and Oprah and he shades Kardashians. Anyway, as we discussed a few days ago, Ronan’s mom Mia Farrow was all, “Yeah, maybe Frank Sinatra is Ronan’s dad, I don’t know.” To Vanity Fair. Hours after the VF piece came out (and Mia appeared on the Today Show), Ronan tweeted this:
[From Ronan’s Twitter]
I like that he’s not engaging in melodrama about this stuff. I’m assuming his mom told him a while ago that yeah, Woody might not have been his dad after all and maybe it was Frank Sinatra. Page Six did the math they figured that Frank would have been 71 years old at the time that Ronan was conceived in 1987. Frank didn’t pass away until 1998 – maybe that’s when Mia said something? While the VF piece includes quotes from Nancy Sinatra – Frank’s daughter and possibly Ronan’s half-sister? – it seems that Frank’s last wife (and widow) has some thoughts about Mia’s claims:
Mia Farrow has gotten under the skin of Frank Sinatra’s fourth and final wife. Barbara Sinatra angrily discounted reports that Ol’ Blue Eyes fathered a child out of wedlock with the “Rosemary’s Baby” actress.
The last Mrs. Sinatra, who married The Chairman of the Board in 1976 and stayed hitched until his 1998 death, called revelations about Ronan Farrow “a bunch of junk.”
“I can’t hardly believe that. It’s just a bunch of junk,” Barbara Sinatra told The Desert Sun newspaper. “There’s always junk written — lies that aren’t true.”
Mia Farrow told Vanity Fair magazine that her son by Ronan is “possibly” Frank Sinatra’s kid. The crooner and Mia Farrow were married for two years between 1966 and 1968, but remained close — perhaps really close — after their split. Sinatra would have been about 71 if he had fathered Ronan Farrow in early 1987.
Ronan, 25, has long been described as the only biological child of Mia Farrow and scandalous moviemaker Woody Allen. Mia Farrow, Ronan Farrow and Frank Sinatra all have blue eyes. Allen has brown eyes.
Barbara Sinatra, who lives near Palm Springs, Calif., appears to be at odds with one of Francis Albert’s kids, Nancy Sinatra. The singer of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ ” — and fellow Palm Springs resident — stopped just short of calling Ronan a blood relative, but told Vanity Fair that he “is a big part of us, and we are blessed to have him in our lives.”
Still, 85-year-old widow Barbara Sinatra said she doesn’t believe a word of the Ronan-Frank talk.
She bluntly told the newspaper, “It sounds like a phony to me.”
A rep for Allen also dismissed the magazine story.
“The article is so fictitious and extravagantly absurd that he is not going to comment,” the rep said of the 77-year-old filmmaker, who infamously married Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn.
[From Page Six]
I can understand that Barbara doesn’t want a lot of fuss and drama either, but what’s the big deal? Sinatra has been gone for 15 years. And it’s not like Ronan is some no-account, newly-discovered “heir” who is trying to get a slice of Sinatra fortune. Ronan is a Rhodes scholar, a lawyer, an activist and a genius. He’s got his own sh-t going on.
Last thing: Ronan is in talks to get his own MSNBC weekend show!! OMG. I would watch that. I want to watch him talk politics. I also kind of want to watch him eat. THOSE LIPS.
Photos courtesy of Ronan’s Twitter, WENN.
Source Cele Bitchy
Mia Farrow dropped a bombshell when she casually revealed in Vanity Fair that her son Ronan, could actually be the son of Frank Sinatra, and not Woody Allen. Ronan does resemble Sinatra a lot more than Allen, and he seems okay with the the idea of Frank being his dad, tweeting,
Listen, we’re all *possibly* Frank Sinatra’s son.
Goddamn he is awesome. He also burned Woody hard when last year he tweeted,
Happy father’s day — or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law’s day.
I really want to hang out with this dude.
Here’s what Ms. Farrow told Vanity Fair, via E Online:
Farrow admitted Sinatra was the great love of her life and “we never really split up.” […] When asked if Ronan could be Sinatra’s biological child, Farrow simply replied, “Possibly.”
Nancy Sinatra is totally cool with this, saying, “He [Ronan] is a big part of us, and we are blessed to have him in our lives.” Well that was fast.
Don’t you just love old school Frank Sinatra gossip?
Special thanks to Evill Beet Gossip