Here comes another wedding. Stephen Bogart’s parents, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, lived at The Dakota. So New York is where he’s marrying Carla Soviero.
Says Stephen: “It’s my third marriage, her second. We have children. I’m with a Boca Raton PBS station and have a Naples real estate license. She’s an executive with NewsBank.
“I knew Carla long ago, but we separated then reconnected. I’m 66, she’s 60. We’re together awhile but . . . everybody’s dying. Even our dog died. Look, mom was getting up there. Our November wedding was close — and she died. She wasn’t even sick. I’d spoken to her just before.
“My sister’s coming from LA. My brother’s arriving from Denmark. Friends are flying from Florida. I’m here selling mom’s apartment because Manhattan’s too expensive to live in.”
The ceremony’s 7:15. Mayor David Dinkins, who’ll officiate, is pre-sending a marital service for them to alter, personalize, whatever.
Stephen: “It’ll be a short ritual. Five minutes. It’s like ‘I do . . . I do.’ I’ll wear a suit, no tie. Small food plates, no sit-down. All over by 11.”
Involved are lawyer Linda Kenney Baden (Helen Mirren played her in HBO’s doc on Linda’s jailed client Phil Spector) and her forensic specialist husband Dr. Michael Baden, who just testified in the cop/chokehold case. Their friendship began when Stephen was a Court TV director and Linda on-air talent.
P.S. The Badens once nearly bought a Dakota co-op. Bacall recommended them. They were rejected. Word is they didn’t want a trial lawyer in the building.
Clooney setting, I knew it well
That other Venice wedding. I was the Aman Canal Grande’s first guest opening day June 2013. Its 24 suites house rich private plane owners like Nadja Swarovski and Miuccia Prada, who surged past me like I was leftover Orlon.
Did Clooney’s party planner mention the entry hall’s 20-foot lanterns lit Venetian navy warships at the Turks’ 1571 defeat? This once private Palazzo Papadopoli, with the Wedding in its 16th-century gilded ballroom, was the ancestral home of Count Giberto Arrivabene Valenti Gonzaga. Were Italy not run by the Marx Brothers, his House of Savoy missus might’ve been queen. Today the penthouse is theirs. They live above the store.
In the lobby, under Tiepolo ceilings, a Venetian told me: “Italians all want to be Americans. They just don’t want to pay the taxes.”
Odds & ends
Richard Cohen’s just-published “Israel: Is It Good for the Jews?” speaks of anti-Semitism rising anew. Isn’t it written in the Bible that God gave these people this land? He says: “Yes, but He didn’t have it notarized”…
Beautiful witty Alex Wentworth introduces herself as: “I’m George Stephanopoulos’ lovely wife”…
James Earl Jones and a cast of thousands are A-1 in the new “You Can’t Take It With You.” Among many opening-night laughs, an unexpected one came when a framed wall picture clattered from the set to the floor during Rose Byrne’s monologue.
Grandpa, from Spain, opened 34th and Fifth’s elegant handbag shop Suarez in 1938 when today’s $6,000 alligator bags cost $25. Today, third-generation brother and sister grandchildren — designer Matthew, manager Ramona — run this very handsome 5 W. 56th shop.
A lady just arrived bearing store credit from a 2003 “on sale” purchase. Explaining 11-year-old credit was too old to honor, they said they’d split the amount with her. The lady, livid, became so enraged she hit Ramona. Cops came.
The assault happened directly in front of a wall sign that reads: “No refunds in sale credits after 14 days.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.