During Richard Johnson's tenure as editor of the Page Six column in The New York Post, lots of people had to endure being written up for unpaid bills, excessive partying, and messy divorces. Witness Alec Baldwin, whose nasty breakup with Kim Basinger was chronicled religiously in Page Six. It only got worse when Baldwin went on a TV show and said there was more news in a bubble-gum wrapper than in the pages of the Post, and added that the paper's best use was for picking up after his dog. Soon after, Baldwin had been tagged with a new tabloid name: The Bloviator. It stuck for many years, until Baldwin and Johnson buried the hatchet. "Look out Hollywood," Baldwin said Thursday. "Richard Johnson is coming. To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, in his own inimitable way."
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In 1981, Paul Newman starred in Absence of Malice, about a man whose life falls apart as a result of a smear campaign. In an interview a few years later, Newman said the movie was a "direct attack on the Post." From then on, he was unofficially banned from the paper. That is, until 1986, when a short sportswriter (about 5 foot 6, according to an interview Johnson gave to Vanity Fair in 2004), encountered Newman at a show and took issue with a New York Times piece alleging that the actor was a "lean" 5'11. After Page Six ran an item alleging that Newman was full of it, it was war. Johnson even offered $1,000 for every inch over 5'8 that Newman actually was. Newman's response? "Make it a hundred thousand." Then, the paper backed down. "I think we would have won anyway, but even if we'd have to pay a couple hundred thousand, think of the publicity," Johnson later told Vanity Fair.
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Mickey Rouke was another fellow with whom Page Six gleefully went to war. According to Vanity Fair, it began in October 1988, when the column ran a photo of the star holding hands with a model who wasn't his wife. In short order, Rourke was calling the Post, delivering messages to staffers that he was going to "kick [Richard's] ass." When Rourke became a pro boxer, Johnson challenged him to a fight in the ring, though it never actually took place.
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Nothing says party quite like a fight breaking out. In 2003, Johnson headed to the Vanity Fair Oscar party, and ended the night soaking wet, after power-agent Ed Limato tossed a drink in his face. It was easy to see why Limato was feeling resentful. An item in the column had described him as the "second most unpopular man in Hollywood, next to his client Mel Gibson." The column also went out of its way to remind everyone that Jennifer Lopez, then still a star, had recently fired Limato as her agent. Further, Page Six even blamed Limato for helping to make the deal for The Passion of The Christ. Hollywood was "not amused." After the drink went in his face, Johnson only got more pugnacious, poking fun at everything from his client stable to his close relationship with his mom. "It's creepy," a rival agent was quoted as saying. "[Limato] is like 67 and still lives with his mother."
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Perhaps no one has felt the sting of Page Six quite like Ron Burkle. The "grocery billionaire" made his formidable debut in the column back in 2002, in an item that noted his close relationship to Bill Clinton and a possible interest in buying a modeling agency. Page Six asked whether the former president was about to "get his hands on a harem of fashion models." Burkle's reps complained that he had no such intentions toward the agency, but Johnson and his minions weren't finished. Over the next few years, Page Six was peppered with items involving the "babe loving billionaire." This feud didn't end so well for the Post. In 2006, a freelancer for the column, Jared Paul Stern, went to meet with Burkle, and was videotaped trying to get some money for his clothing line in exchange for what appeared to be protection from the column. Criminal charges were never filed, but the paper cut him loose. As ever, Johnson walked away from the whole thing in one piece.
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Page Six seemed to possess a special dislike for Keith Olbermann. Johnson and company pummeled him constantly, taking aim at him for his "hateful histrionics," his alleged "freaking out" at network bosses, and his various internecine battles with colleagues. Like Baldwin, he got a name: Uber-dork. Eventually, a rep for him just said, "Since whatever you're going to print is an outright lie, you can go ahead and write whatever you want. That's on the record and applies to all future items you might make up." Ouch.
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You pretty much know a gossip column doesn't like you when it makes fun of the end of your marriage. Witness longtime Page Six fixture Sean Penn. Last year, when his marriage to Robin Wright Penn broke up, the column ran an item with the headline: "Robin Does the Wright Thing." Even before the marriage was over, Page Six ran various items about him and various women in the entertainment business, one of whom sent a blistering email to Page Six about it. In it, Helena Christensen complained that this was only the latest time the column had linked her to someone with whom she wasn't involved. "I'm quite honestly getting seriously fed up," she said, pointing out that she also had met Wright Penn several times, respected her immensely and saw her as one of her favorite actresses.
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Woe to the singer and actress who uses her concerts to support liberal causes and has a slight penchant for the sanctimonious. During Johnson's 25 years in charge, almost no one endured more sniping from Page Six than Barbra Streisand. In an item called "The Weight She Is," we learned that Babs was "letting herself go" and that ticket sales to her concert gigs were "lagging." Later, the column sent a memo to the suits at The Kennedy Center called "Gala Suits, Brace for Barbra." It catalogued her "insane" demands at other gigs. Then, last year, Page Six got wind that fans of Streisand were seeing red after they entered a "cute pet competition," to win a free pair of tickets to her 123-seat show at the Village Vanguard, and awarded the prize to none other than Streisand's real-life dog breeder. "We had no idea the winner was Sammy's breeder until it was pointed out to us by fans," said a spokesman from the singer's record company. "Barbra had absolutely nothing to do with this." Maybe so, but Page Six ran the item anyway.
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Not all of Page Six's big targets are power-players. Pity the loose women who prey on married men and leaders of the free world. Monica Lewinsky was a target of Page Six for years, and got her own name, too: portly pepperpot. (Johnson later said that a colleague in the sports department was the one who first used that little sobriquet. "I guess I kind of stole it from him," Johnson said). Eventually, Lewinsky called Johnson and begged him to stop being so mean to her. That worked better than throwing a drink in his face. Sources say he got much nicer after that.
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