VANITY FAIR

October

Contents

Volume 47

Number 10

1984

Features

Gross Buster: He writes! He directs! He acts! New Wave comedian Harold Ramis has Hollywood by the box office. David Rensin counts his stripes 42

The Death-Wish Kids: What drove two California sixteen-year-olds over the edge at Dead Man's Curve? Joe Morgenstem tells the tragic tale of a teenage suicide pact 46

Shake, Raquel, and Roll: Author of a new fitness tome, the well-toned Ms. Welch pumps gold with some of the boys of the U.S. Olympic swim team. Photographs by Bill King and fashion by Michael Roberts 52

Literary Tuscany: Is it the dark, steep hills, the aromatic pinewoods, the broad valleys? William Weaver asks what draws writers there 56

Movin' On Up: Ronald Steel assesses Jesse Jackson's run for president and finds it somewhere over the "rainbow coalition'' 64

Paulie Goes to Hollywood: McCartney tackles Tinseltown with Give My Regards to Broad Street. Photographs by Annie Leibovitz 68

Getting Into the Set: John Updike on the upwardly mobile—a new short story 70

Earth Angel: Exclusive photographs by Bruce Weber of the elusive Jessica Lange, with and without Sam Shepard. Plus an appreciation by John Heilpem 72

A Powerful Dragonfly: Another in our series of writers' reflections on art—V. S. Pritchett ponders a provocative Chagall 80

Voices of Houston: Bob Colacello gathers the glub, glub, glub from Boomtown's well-oiled gentry 82

The Beryl Markham Mystery: James Fox tracks a fascinating literary enigma to Nairobi and beyond 88

Out to Lunch: John Heilpem joins choreographer Paul Taylor for a pas de peanut-butter sandwich 126

Vanities

Fritz and Joan and Ron and Nancy and political coupling. . . Libra's balancing act. . .Anna Maria's Rio grandeur. . .Ballooning chez Forbes. . . No condo. . . Kitchen Fink. . . Eating around with Mimi Sheraton in California. . . The dolorous dollar. . . The nattiest nerds. . .Holy Smokey and the Bandits. . .Taki on prep school. . . Jean-Paul Gaultier's madcap millinery. . .Piggy paddling. . . Zinfandelity. . . Fishers of businessmen. . . Flashback to Fred 15

Arts Fair

Hirschfeld on Covarrubias... Up close with Meredith Monk. . . Stephens on Portman. . .Schiff on teenage lust. . .Young on Tomlin. . .Spotlight on Akhnaten and Francis Albert. . .Wolcott on Heller. . . Studs on Studs. .. Mitford on Roosevelt (Eleanor). . . Wills on Vietnam. . .Night-table reading with Daniel Boorstin, Calvin Klein, and Walter Cronkite 94