Musician Dan Gilroy, who dated Madonna when she was 20, remembers their sexual chemistry as “wonderful,” he told me.
Gilroy, 77, was going to auction off the love letters she sent him, calling him “Big Noodle.” But her agent convinced him to return the potentially embarrassing notes in exchange for Madonna, 66, autographing a set of drums and two guitars she had learned to play.
“I wanted everyone to be happy,” Gilroy said from his home in Texas.
The signed instruments will be auctioned off by Guernsey’s on Sept. 25, along with items from Jean-Michel Basquiat, Patti Astor and Bob Dylan.
There will also be a live preview at The Chelsea Hotel on Sunday and Monday. The auction will be conducted online via LiveAuctioneers.com and Invaluable.com.
Gilroy met Madonna, an aspiring dancer, at a party in 1979. She quickly moved into the converted Corona, Queens synagogue Dan and his brother Ed were living in and using as a sound studio.
The brothers had a band named Breakfast Club (long before the movie), and wandered the streets playing.
“She loved performing. We were doing gigs. Madonna started playing keyboard and singing,” Gilroy said. “I remember the point where I realized she’d be big.”
Gilroy also remembers being awakened one night to Madonna crying. “She was far from home, worried about her future.”
The affair ended when Madonna formed her own band and moved out.
Gilroy was in a relationship with actress Shelley Duvall from 1989 until her death earlier this year.
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Former First Ladies Melania Trump and Hillary Clinton are out beating the drums for their dueling memoirs.
Melania, whose eponymously named book hits shelves on Oct. 8, promoted the tell-all on X and Instagram last week, asking, “Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modeling work? The more pressing question is: Why has the media chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot?”
In Clinton’s new book, “Something Lost, Something Gained,” the former Secretary of State snarks of seeing Melania at Rosalynn Carter’s funeral last November, writing that she reminded her of “the little kid at the birthday party who doesn’t know anyone and is waiting at the edge of the circle, hoping people are going to be nice.”
Clinton also confessed she only went to Donald Trump and Melania’s wedding out of “curiosity” in 2005, saying, “I was going to Florida anyway and thought it would be entertaining.”
Melania has been shuttling back and forth from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach to look after 18-year-old son Barron, who’s attending NYU.
Melania has made it clear to both staffers and some big donors that she’s ready and willing to resume her role as First Lady, but only on her terms. Said one source, “She lets Donald be Donald and that’s the secret of their marriage.”
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The ancient art of belly dancing was on display on West 30th Street last weekend to help stop plans to demolish the neighborhood to erect new skyscrapers.
One organizer of the Communities Together festival tried to ban the 20 dancers from Tandava Arts, but another, Ben Kreman, wouldn’t budge.
“Who in this wide world would find belly dancing in this day and age unacceptable to anyone with a progressive mentality?” Kreman wrote. “That’s for the Southern Baptists.”
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Simon Kirke of Bad Company drummed while his wife, actress Maria Angelica Figueroa, gyrated with the squad of torso-twisters.
Rocker Steve Marshall, who organized the concert, told me, “New York’s biggest asset is its out-of-work actresses. I put them to work. This is New York, where anything goes.”
Among the other musicians were saxophonist Arno Hecht, who played for The Rolling Stones, keyboardist Charles Roth (Ozzy Osbourne), drummer David Brakefield (Johnny Cash), guitarist Peter Baron (Mountain) and vocalist Mike Fornatele (The Left Banke).
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Actor Carroll O’Connor was almost as stubborn and opinionated as Archie Bunker, the character he played for nine seasons on the Norman Lear-created sitcom “All in the Family.”
Tripp Whetsell, author of “Norman Lear: His Life & Times,” reports O’Connor immediately took issue with the pilot script in 1971, which he called “terrible” and then rewrote in pencil.
“He had rewritten the entire first act! That was the first of endless confrontations. That was something that went on for all the years,” Lear recalled, according to Whetsell.
The sitcom drew as many as 120 million viewers a week, and made Lear the first behind-the-scenes TV figure to become as famous as the iconic shows he created — “Maude,” “Good Times,” “Sanford and Son,” “The Jeffersons,” “One Day at a Time” and “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.”
Whetsell’s book is now being shopped around by journalist/PR rep Jesse Nash as a potential TV miniseries or biopic.
Born in New Haven on July 27, 1922, Lear was just 9 years old when his father Herman — a nattily dressed, frequently unemployed traveling salesman — was arrested for selling fake securities and served three years in prison.
It was then that Lear’s lifelong political consciousness began to awaken as he became aware of the realities of being Jewish in 1930s America. The epiphany occurred when he stumbled upon Father Charles Coughlin, the infamously antisemitic, pro-fascist broadcaster considered to be the “Father of Hate Radio,” while listening to his Crystal radio set one afternoon.
Coughlin’s prejudice would linger in Lear’s psyche for the remainder of his life, right up until his death at the age of 101 last December.
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India Hicks has written a book about her mother, “Lady Pamela,” who served as a bridesmaid and lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II.
Hicks, who modeled for Ralph Lauren in the 1990s before moving from New York to the Bahamas, told me, “It was time to tell my mother’s story.”
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“She was with the Queen when she became a queen,” Hicks said of her mom, Elizabeth’s third cousin. That was in 1952, when Elizabeth was 25 and her father, King George VI, died from a coronary thrombosis.
“She climbed a tree as a princess, and came down a queen.”
Pamela Mountbatten also sat next to Mahatma Gandhi at a prayer meeting, and lost her father, Lord Mountbatten, in 1979 when his yacht was exploded by an IRA bomb.
“She was amazingly privileged but she often uses the words ‘duty’ and ‘service,’” Hicks said of her now-95-year-old mom.
Hicks will discuss the book at the Empire State Rare Book and Print Fair at The City College of New York on Sept. 28.
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Fashion oracle Dana Thomas opined in The Style Files on Substack: “Despite the handful of noise-making diversity C-suite hires here and there, luxury fashion is still predominantly owned and run by old White men. Modern, fashion is not.”
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Rapper Soulja Boy performed at Nebula’s Tuesday Baby Tuesday party in Midtown. He was joined onstage by rap legend Busta Rhymes, who had some motivational words for the crowd at almost 4 a.m.
Busta Rhymes performs at Coachella Stage during the 2024 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 14, 2024 in Indio, California. (Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Coachella)
“I work hard… I don’t miss a day in the studio,” the 52-year-old declared. “There’s no sick days, no off days, no vacation. Watch me work tonight, New York!”
The crowd busted out in a massive round of applause.
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Out & About: Whoopi Goldberg led the applause for Bruce Springsteen, Norah Jones and DJ Prince Hakim at the Sea.Hear.Now Festival in Asbury Park … Billie Eilish attended the Kamala HQ NY Fashion Week party catered by Andrea Correale of Elegant Affairs …. Fashionista Jean Shafiroff hosted the Times Square Fashion Week event and gave out citations to seven new designers on behalf of NY Assemblymember Rebecca Seawright … Actress Eugenia Kuzmina will take part in the Women’s Foreign Policy Group event at Sundaram Tagore Gallery on Sept. 24.
