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Inevitable, isn’t it, for our girl-on-the-go hairdresser Carrie White to write her memoir, which the local cosmetics grapevine is talking about.  If you’ve lived in Beverly Hills – or, for that matter, California – sooner or later you’ll have heard of Carrie’s high status in the beauty annals of the famous and the not-so-famous, having trimmed, invigorated and shaped their locks for Good Hair Days that Lotusland ladies and gents crave.   Always a gas, with energy to spare, a go-for-broke sense of humor, Carrie enjoys an elephant’s memory, reminding us recently of our boogie-dancing together during the hot reign of Tinsel Town’s disco days and nights.  We anticipate reading her whirligig remembrances of an extraordinary life.   

We discovered the news about Carrie’s memoir from DJ Cassidy’s blog, and that it’s tentatively titled Upper Cut, The Life of a Beverly Hills Hairdresser, scheduled for publication by Simon and Schuster next summer.  Author Michael Crichton sat for Carrie for nearly four decades, as has Iggy Pop, and she’s looked after politicos (Jerry Brown) socialites (Betsy Bloomingdale, Babe Paley) and models (Amber Valetta).   We’ve heard Carrie spent five years on the book, including having studied with creative writing teacher Jack Grates.

Carrie was born on Burton Way in Beverly Hills to artist parents, realized her talent with the shears early on, and, as years passed, the question became:  who hasn’t she attracted as a client.   From Sandra Bullock to Warren Beatty, who hired Carrie as a technical adviser on his now-classic film Shampoo, co-starring Warren (a co-writer with Robert Towne), Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn.  It goes without saying that Carrie snipped the locks of this glamorous cast.
   
We bonded with Valerie Harper during a Marjoe Gortner charity event in Mexico, with our fondly remembering Valerie as Rhoda Morgenstern from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  Last year, we were delighted to find her lauded with a following at the Pasadena Playhouse, starring as she was in Looped, the sassy play by Matthew Lombardo about boozy Tallulah Bankhead.  

This week, Valerie opened her one-woman show channeling Tallulah at the Lyceum Theater, with high-fives from the New York Times’ Charles Isherwood about “the fabulous monster as crackerjack comic … a pioneering drag queen who just happens to be born female.”   The New York Post’s Elisabeth Vincentelli nods to Tallulah’s “rapier wit, outlandish narcissist, and bon vivant who over-indulged in men, women, booze and drugs.”   And USA Today’s Elysa Gardner praises Valerie’s “exuberant performance that captures Bankhead’s cartoonish flamboyance, but also shows us the cunning, resilience and genius for irony behind it.”

A barrel-voiced diva from Alabama, Tallulah, was the toast of London, starred on Broadway as the bitchy manipulator Regina in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, also as Sabina in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, and as the predatory Flora Goforth in Tennessee Williams’ The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, along with other productions.  Fans vied for tickets to her opening nights.  Actually, vied is too pale a word; they killed for them.

Our memory bank will not forget witnessing Tallulah, blithely ordering a dry martini before breakfast when she watched her favorite soap operas “on the telly … I can’t stop crying over those pitiable folks’ plights.”   Come evening and as a Southerner, she favored “bourbon and branchwater.”
 
Over time, Tallulah surrounded herself with a young crowd, many of us meeting her in Manhattan while we were attending college, which she’d visit for her occasional lectures.  Unexpectedly and happily, we were graciously invited to “please come by, and play bridge.”  After her nightly card-playing binges of “to hell with it, I’ll have one more drink,” we collegians, more-often-than-not, had the task of tucking the pie-eyed Tallulah into bed in her Upper East Side townhouse.

“Dahhhling” was Tallulah’s signature greeting.   No one we knew or know could say “dahhhling” with the oomph that was in her voice, and her observations through the decades are richly memorable.  She was, as Lady Caroline Lamb once described Lord Byron, “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”

Among her quotes:  “If you want to help the American theater, don’t be an actress, darling; be an audience … Cocaine isn’t habit forming.  I should know.  I’ve been using it for years … I’ll come and make love to you at five o’clock, but if I’m late, start without me …  Here’s a rule I recommend:  Never practice two vices at once …  I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice.  That’s what I call a liberal education …They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze.   They should photograph me through linoleum.”

An anecdote about Tallulah’s appearing in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat surfaces from time to time.   Prude Alert:  Best stop reading these next several sentences now.  As Tallulah began descending into the lifeboat for a critical shot, the cinematographer turned off his camera and huddled with Mr. Hitchcock.  Apparently, there was a problem.  He couldn’t take the shot from the angle Mr. Hitchock requested.  Why?  Miss Bankhead was without underpants.  Reflecting for a moment, Mr. Hitchcock, with his usual quick wit, replied, “Who do we call?   The costume designer?  Makeup artist?  Or the hairdresser?”

Andrew Lloyd Webber began composing at age six, and published his first composition at age nine. In London this month, theatergoers are talking about his premiere of Love Never Dies, which arrives in New York in mid-November.  This is the $12 million sequel to Phantom of the Opera, which became the most successful musical in stage history and has been performed more than 10,000 times.  The Brit critic at The Independent hailed Love Never Dies as “phabulous.” Others noted that more work is needed.  In truth, he’d been working on the sequel since 1990, and lost the music in 2006 when his cat scampered onto his digital piano and erased his compositions, which he reconstructed from scratch.

The New York Times’ Ben Brantley slapped the plot as elaborate and confusing --“a poor sap of a show that feels as eager to be walloped as a clown in a carnival dunking booth.”   While The Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett found the sequel “as handsome as the original and filled with infectious melodies.” 

Set a decade after the original, the born-deformed Phantom has departed the catacombs of the Paris Opera House for the fairgrounds of Coney Island, and lures his beloved soprano Christine, played by Sierra Boggess of Colorado, to his musical revue.   Christine’s  wed to a Viscount, and has a 10-year-old son Gustave, whose paternity is questioned.  The Phantom is sung by Canada’s Ramin Krimloo.

Meanwhile, Phantom of the Opera has been playing for the last 24 years since its opening at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London.  Trust us: Love Never Dies is destined for blockbuster history.  Brooke Shields was among the first-nighters and never stopped applauding.