After reading each other’s work, Hurston/Wright Foundation founder Marita Golden and gossip columnist Liz Smith have declared each other to be "soulmates."
Smith, who read Golden’s short story “My Own Happy Ending” in an advance copy of “It’s All Love: Black Writers on Soul Mates, Family and Friends,” (Broadway Books, January 2009 $15.95) called the story of how Marita met her husband-to-be Joe at age 44 and found love at first sight “inspirational” and “life-affirming.”
Golden in turn says she thoroughly enjoyed reading Smith’s memoir “Dishing: Great Dish – and Dishes – from America’s Most Beloved Gossip Columnist.” (Simon and Schuster $25.)
“I particularly enjoyed reading on pages 108 to about page 120 or so about Liz’s hardscrabble childhood and how she had to fight for every chicken wing or ‘Pope’s nose’ at every Sunday dinner, as well as her funny story about how she blew the finger bowl test while lunching with Mrs. Vincent Astor, leading her to take an etiquette course at the Plaza that was meant for young children.”
“It’s All Love” is being published as a benefit for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, a nationwide resource center for writers, readers, and supporters of Black literature and the only organization of its kind that provides culturally sensitive services and guidance for Black writers at every stage of their development.
Founded in 1990 by Golden and bibliophile Clyde McElvene, the foundation’s mission is to discover, develop, and honor Black writers and preserve the legacy and ensure the future of Black writers and the literature they produce.
Among the Foundatin’s advisory board members are Professor Chinua Achebe; Derrick Bell; Michele Andrea Bowen; Anthony Browder; Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; Monique Greenwood; E. Lynn Harris; Lucy Hurston; Frank Matthews; Terry McMillan; E. Ethelbert Miller; Toni Morrison; Gloria Naylor, and John Edgar Wideman.
Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Smith is an American gossip columnist. Liz Smith is known as The Grand Dame of Dish.
Smith married her high school sweetheart, George Edward Beeman -- a World War II Bombardier -- in 1944. But she left him to enroll in college and they were divorced several years later.
Smith graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Journalism in 1949, where she wrote for The Daily Texan, then moved to New York where she worked as a typist, a proofreader and a reporter before she broke into the media world as a news producer for Mike Wallace at CBS Radio. She spent five years as a News producer for NBC-TV.
In the late 1950's Smith worked as a ghostwriter for the popular Cholly Knickerbocker gossip column that appeared in the Hearst newspapers. After leaving that column in the early 1960's she went to work for Helen Gurley Brown as the entertainment editor for the American version of Cosmopolitan magazine, later working simultaneously as Sports Illustrated entertainment editor as well.
On February 16, 1976, Smith began a self-titled gossip column for the New York Daily News. During a 1979 newspaper strike, her Daily News editors asked her to appear daily on WNBC-TV's Live at Five, and she stayed with the program for eleven years. Her exposure on television made Smith a popular figure on the Manhattan social scene and provided fodder for her column which had, by then, been syndicated to nearly seventy newspapers. She won an Emmy for her reporting on the hot hit "Live at Five" for WNBC in 1985.
Smith was hired by Fox Broadcasting Company heads Barry Diller and Rupert Murdoch to develop a talk show with Roger Ailes as her producer.
In 1991 Smith, hot off her exclusive interviews with Ivana Trump during her divorce from real estate tycoon Donald Trump, moved to Newsday, where she stayed until 1995. Smith then signed on to the Murdoch-owned New York Post. She worked for Fox News for 7 years and is today on "Fox and Friends."
In April 2005, Smith left Newsday, over a contract dispute. The official discontinuation of her column came after several months of dispute among Smith, her lawyer David Blasband, and Newsday management. Lawyers for Newsday focused on a misstep and refused to renew her contract, the highest-paid in newspaper history. Blasband says, "Yes, Liz missed the date, but Newsday still had four months before the contract ran out." The matter was settled out of court and Smith continued at the New York Post where her column still appears. It also appears two days a week in Variety and in many other newspapers.
In March 2008, Smith co-founded www.wowowow.com, Women on the Web, with several other society women in New York, such as Lily Tomlin, Candice Bergen, and Barbara Walters.
Her 2000 memoir “Natural Blonde” made New York Times Best Seller list. In 2005, Smith published “Dishing: Great Dish – And Dishes – From America's Most Beloved Gossip Columnist.”
Smith acknowledged her bisexuality (or as she refers to it, 'gender neutrality') in her memoirs. She is twice-divorced and currently resides alone in an apartment in Manhattan's Murray Hill neighborhood.
Quotes:
* On reputation building: "You can't build a reputation on what you intend to do."
* On weddings: "All weddings, except those with shotguns in evidence, are wonderful."
* On decision making: "The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can."
* On gossip: "Gossip is just news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress."
