September Celebrity Edge

944 Magazine

Marc Mezvinsky and Chelsea Clinton

Parents, Pre-Nups, & Panties

If Chelsea Clinton’s wedding cost anywhere near the rumored $5 million, then it’s still a bargain compared to the $10 million her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, will allegedly have to pay if he cheats on her, according to a pre-nuptial agreement leaked to the press earlier this year.

“Chelsea’s … father has always been the person she most admired, and the fact that he cheated on her mom not once, but many times, made her very gun-shy about trusting the guys she dated,” a close family has been quoted.

But in this relationship, Chelsea’s not the only one with Daddy issues.

Marc’s father, Ed Mezvinsky, a former democratic congressman, served five years in federal prison for bilking his associates, friends and family members — some say even his own late mother-in-law — out of millions of dollars.

So perhaps the young couple should consider expanding the definition of “cheating” in their pre-nup: “If either party can be proven to have screwed anyone else, either literally or figuratively…” Or, “due to the sheer amount of information we have on both fathers, the agreement could be more specific, ruling out things like cigars and women named Monica…”

I certainly don’t mean to make light of prenuptial agreements. But, I can think of so many examples where a carefully chosen word or two could have been added to the pre-wedding vows for clarification.

I was talking to a man recently who says that when he helped pack his wife up after their divorce, he found more than a thousand pairs of shoes, most of them un-worn, stacked neatly in her closet. Subsequent review of their shared credit card revealed that he had paid for most of them.

Instead of a credit card with a set limit, maybe his pre-nup should have specified a smaller closet? In an effort to convince you that the girl I’m referring to is not me, (it’s not), I’ll share my most sordid post-relationship revelation.

After dating my ex-boyfriend for just over a year, we broke up for good.

It wasn’t until years later, when his next serious girlfriend moved in, that it was discovered that he kept files on all of his girlfriends – including, get this, a pair of panties belonging to each woman.

I can’t help but wonder which ones he kept of mine. It gives a new credence to your mother’s advice to always wear clean underwear, lest you get hit by a bus and are forced to show your dirty laundry to the world.

Which brings me back Chelsea and her pre-nup. While an ironclad pre-nuptial agreement may protect Chelsea’s financial well being, it can’t do a thing to protect her heart.

Instead, it’ll be those past experiences that she’ll need to draw on to face the inevitable bad that is bound to come with the good.

That’s an example we can all learn from as we all face tough times of our own.

So let’s all raise a glass and toast Chelsea Clinton and her new husband.

L’chaim!

May Celebrity Edge: Blindsided

944 Magazine

Written by: Corinna Allen

After taking home the Oscar for her movie, The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock learned that her husband of five years had been cheating on her. So much has been made of the fact that she, like so many other leading ladies, has fallen victim to the “Oscar Curse” of losing a relationship after winning the Academy Award for Best Actress.

But I believe what happened to Sandra, and the women before her, is still of valid concern to the rest of us, who wonder: “How much is too much to sacrifice for love?”

Sandra Bullock waited to get married. She met Jesse James in her 30s, but it wasn’t until 40 that she tied the knot, because, as she told Barbara Walters, she believed “if you got married, that was the end of who you were,” and until she met Jesse, she’d “never met anyone who was bigger than me.”

After getting married, she not only helped raise his baby daughter, but entered what would become a four-year adoption process to grow a family with the man she planned to spend the rest of her life with. Instead, she’s now filed for a divorce and filed to become the single parent of her adopted child, Louis Bardo Bullock – news which became public late last month.

When award season rolled around this year, Jesse played the part of dutiful husband on the red carpet.

But, apparently, not without complaint.

In one of her acceptance speeches, she thanked him for “dressing up in a monkey suit” to sit with people he didn’t know. Does that sound like something he might have said to her?

I think she might have been quoting him again later, when she told Walters, “he’s not out in bars. He words hard.” Who was she trying to convince?

It’s a perilous thing to sacrifice so much for a man, and I think she’d begun to realize her mistake.

She’s far from alone.

I once came close to quitting my job and moving out of state to be a suburban stepmother. They only thing that stopped me was his refusal to let me have kids of my own.

Even when kids aren’t a factor, women are still willing to sacrifice for men who don’t deserve it.

A beautiful, thirtysomthing friend of mine owns a chain of successful businesses. But the man she dated was unhappy with his job, so she offered to give him her tax refund, plus free room and board, to get him started in a business of his own. He promptly broke up with her.

Another beautful friend, in her early 40s, was driving hours roundtrip to see her man, and was on the verge of quitting her job and giving up her apartment to be closer to him. She was about to co-sign for the loan on his car when he broke up with her.

Oh, if only Jesse would have done Sandra the favor of breaking up with her early on, instead of hanging on to humiliate her the way he did! But he didn’t, and it leaves the rest of us to wonder, how much is too much to give?

And is there any way to see it coming before we do? Or do we have to be blindsided to see the truth?

Corinna Allen is the entertainment reporter on CBS Better Mornings Atlanta, airing daily from 5 to 7 a.m.

March Celebrity Edge: Diana: A Defense of Divorce

***Editor’s note: some of you have asked for me to post my earlier columns from 944 Magazine. Here you go! Enjoy. c

Divorce was the best thing to ever happen to Princess Diana.It wasn’t until recently, walking through the new Atlanta Civic Center exhibit, Diana: A Celebration, that I realized the truth: It was the divorce, not the marriage, that truly defined who Diana was to become.

As a little girl, I was one of more than a billion people who watched as Lady Diana Spencer walked down the aisle. Seeing her fairy tale wedding, it was easy to accept the Disney-induced delusion of happily ever after. I believed that marrying a prince was the best thing that could ever happen to a girl.

Containing 150 personal items from her life, both before and after the palace, the moving exhibit also includes video clips from the princess’ life, including a standout shot of her crying in a red coat, after kissing Prince Charles goodbye. Years later, she revealed those tears weren’t a result of him leaving, but were because she felt so lonely even when he was home.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you I’ve never been married, so I don’t know what it feels like to be divorced. But, I have endured countless break-ups and one thing I definitely know for sure: Whether you want him back or not, the best thing you can do is pull yourself together and concentrate on being your best self — that person you were when he fell in love with you in the first place.
Remember when Nicole Kidman, in the wake of her divorce from Tom Cruise, remarked to an interviewer that it was nice to wear heels again? It’s a trite example, but I think it represents a larger exploration of her independence, and a revival of parts of her personality that were dormant during her marriage.

I’d assert that what all three women have in common is that they didn’t take separation and divorce lying down. Instead they showed courage, and used it to embrace their unexpected solitude. I once heard divorce compared to a series of sequential car accidents slamming into you over and over again.

In my case, after breaking up with the man I expected to marry, I didn’t tell my mother for a week. I was too embarrassed to say it out loud. I remember feeling like people on the street could somehow see that I’d been demoted, reduced to being just half a couple.
I think we all go through something similar. But then, like Nicole, we pull our high heels out of the closet and start living again. In Diana’s case, she dropped her affiliation with 95 percent of her charities and chose instead to focus on the handful of organizations most meaningful to her.
Much is made in the exhibit — on display through June 13 — of how her fashion sense matured in the wake of severing her obligation to palace protocol. But I find it more remarkable that she raised 7 million dollars for charity by selling a collection of her dresses at a New York auction.

Could she have done these things as a married woman? Of course. But, in defense of Diana’s divorce, it wasn’t until afterward that we finally saw the woman she was truly meant to become. 

Corinna Allen is the entertainment reporter for Better Mornings Atlanta, airing daily from 5 – 7 a.m. on CBS 46.

“Celebrity Edge” for 944 Magazine

Is Brad Pitt secretly seeing his ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston?

Rumors started swirling last summer when he was rumored to have visited the New York set of her movie, The Switch, while his current live-in girlfriend, Angelina Jolie filmed her movie, Salt, just miles away.

Now, more than a year later, the tabloids insist that the former couple have maintained contact, and that Aniston would like Pitt to father her child.

There is no concrete evidence to support any of these rumors, but it’s easy to understand why they persist. Jolie is the exotic “other woman” who stole a married man from Aniston, the all-American “girl next door.” And no amount of good-will ambassadorship or third-world adoptions can change that perception. 

I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Just months after the divorce, Pitt’s parents were rumored to have celebrated Thanksgiving with their former daughter-in-law in California, while their son explored the wilds of India with his new, illicit love. Since then, many of us have secretly hoped that one day he would forgo the seductive scent of the unknown in favor of the domestic security of home.

Don’t count on it.

Richard Burton was married to his hometown sweetheart when he fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra. The two carried on an infamously adulterous affair before ultimately marrying, then divorcing not once, but twice. He is said to have written her a love letter on the day he died, despite being married to someone else.

To be fair, Burton never did go back to his first wife, but I’m betting that if Pitt ever left Jolie for “the one who got away,” he’d be back, time and again.

I think we all have that “one that got away.” The one that makes us ask, “what if?”

I know I do.

In October of 2002, the country was gripped in fear as the infamous D.C. sniper terrorized innocent people as they pumped gas in the nation’s capital. We were across the country in Portland, Ore., but it was our former police chief, Charles Moose, who oversaw the investigation. So, as a city, we watched and cringed as he was humiliated by the mad man’s whim.

My could-have-been husband was tall, dark and handsome, but not the least bit dangerous. He was a banker who lived in the same city where he’d graduated from high school and who took me to church with his mother. But I was a young reporter who saw horrible things on a daily basis, and — oh! — the security of his arms felt good.

He woke me up one morning to tell me he’d had a sniper-fueled nightmare where he had to protect me from harm. I was sold. But ultimately, I didn’t stay.

Years later, when I prepared to move across the country to Atlanta, he brought his new wife to my going-away party. “You always said you’d leave,” he said with a smile. I choked up, but didn’t regret my decision to reject the security of domestic bliss. I knew I had more adventure in store.

So when I hear rumors about Brad Pitt considering a reunion with his “girl next door,” I understand. She’s the one that got away. But while he may visit, I don’t expect him to stay.

944 Magazine: Celebrity Edge July 2010

 

Celebrity Edge: Lady Gaga

“Heaven Has No Rage Like Love to Hatred Turned, Nor Hell a Fury Like a Woman Scorned.”

This quote from William Congreve’s tragic play The Mourning Bride is the opening to a lawsuit demanding $30.5 million from singer Lady Gaga.

The fact that the suit was filed by her producer turned boyfriend, Rob Fusari, leaves us to surmise the same afterlife-inspired wrath can also come from a man.

Fusari says he’s due the money from Gaga, (Stefani Germanotta), because he’s the one who conceived the “Lady Gaga” iconic name and persona, then helped shape the music into the commercial powerhouse it is today.

The validity of his claim is supported by the fact that, while she was a mousy 20-year-old when they met, he’d already amassed an impressive body of work that included big name hits like Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West” and “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child.

But what I thought was interesting is that some reports suggest that Fusari didn’t file the suit until Germanotta stopped taking his calls.
It all reminds me of another celebrity break-up — from another decade.

Cherilyn La-Pierre was a 16-year-old runaway when she met the man who would create the persona that catapulted her into the elite sorority of women known by just one iconic name. 

They started out as Sonny and Cher.

But while Cher went on to attain a solo career spanning four decades — including an Oscar win — Sonny Bono became a small town mayor.
If you look back at their much-touted “reunion” on Late Night with David Letterman back in 1987, it’s obvious that Sonny was the one with something to gain. He was married at the time; however, he made a show of “lovingly” holding the hand of his rockstar ex-wife. And when it came time to “ambush” the couple into performing their signature song, “I Got You Babe,” Letterman admitted that he and Bono had “talked about it earlier.”

Bono would go on to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but not before publishing a book that portrayed Cher as an “insecure but ambitious ingrate” who would practice signing autographs in front of a mirror.

Men can resent a woman’s success, but they can be equally disdainful of women who sacrifice too much.

I once dated a super successful man who owned a NASCAR team and would fly me to the races in a private helicopter. He lived out of state and didn’t have much respect for my job in local television. But I was only too happy to invest my time and effort into our relationship. He was Cuban, so I bought tapes to learn Spanish. And I completely understood when he told me he needed to spend New Years “with his family.”
So, I was heartbroken when a mutual friend told me he had another girl with him on the family yacht. My one consolation: I hadn’t sacrificed my career yet, so I was able to throw myself into my work and become more of the independent woman he fell for in the first place.

The reality is that in any relationship, celebrity or not, one career inevitably takes a back seat to the other. Unfortunately, when that career belongs to a man, the woman, more often than not, ends up alone. But rather than unleashing a hell like fury, I say, channel that energy into your own success.

Then rock your career for four decades and beyond.

Corinna Allen is the entertainment reporter on CBS Better Mornings Atlanta, airing daily from 5 to 7 a.m.

Party to launch my new column!

Corinna with the March Cover of 944 Magazine

To celebrate the launch of my new column, I got to host 944 Magazine’s party for their March Issue!

Photos by Chieu Lee

What better excuse to kick up our (high) heels?!?

Designer Reco Chappele was kind enough to provide my gorgeous one shoulder flapper dress.

See that cuff on my right writst?

He made that for me — out of a zipper!

Stylist Provi lent her finishing touches.

Halo Lounge in Midtown partnered with Korbel champagne to let the bubbles flow…

And I’ll tell you it was a good thing, as everyone started reading about my love life in the magazine!

My new column is called “Celebrity Edge with Corinna Allen”.

So the focus is on celebs and their relationship issues.

But I also bring in experiences from my own life — yikes!

It can get very — personal.

It’s a new experience for me to share that much with all of you.

So I really appreciate the support — and the bubbles!

You can check out the video in my “Celebrity Edge” segment!