New York Diary

Spiderman bites Parish-Hadley; Jim Lehrer's Federalist capers; Madeline and her Manolos

The breakup of Ronald Perelman and Claudia Cohen has to be one of the most civilized on record. Ronald took Claudia to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards on his plane. Once there, they stayed at his-andher hotels—the Peninsula for him, the Regent Beverly Wilshire for her. They showed up in tandem at Terry and Jane Semel's party for Clint Eastwood on Friday night, for dinner at Spago with Woody and Sale Johnson on Sunday, and for Swifty Lazar's Oscar party Monday. Back in New York, the couple hosted two dinners for Passover at their East Side town house. They weren't like the Celebrity Seders of years past, when Paul Schaffer, Ron Silver, and Perelman would read the Haggadah in Hebrew while younger guests collected $20 bills after finding the afikomen. This year, the guest list was restricted to family, and everyone fit around the dining-room table, which seats 14.

THE PRINCE

Director Hal Prince was recently reminded how difficult it is to spin the perfect web. Prince and his wife, Judy, hired esteemed decorators Parish-Hadley to fix up their new Manhattan apartment while they were in London for Kiss of the Spider Woman, with the hope that the work would be completed by the time they returned to New York. But when rehearsals began for the musical's Broadway opening, the Princes were forced to camp out at the Carlyle. Before leaving for a Florida vacation, Prince walked through the still-empty apartment and complimented his decorator on the restoration work and the paint job. Then the couple came home to a furnished apartment, and they were not happy. "As Hal said to me, even in show business not every show is a hit," says Albert Hadley. "Whatever we can do to make it right, we wish to do, as we would on any job." They didn't getthe chance: evidently, the Princes hired another decorator immediately.

AND...

. . .Shoes are important to the Sisters Rosensweig. Madeline Kahn's character dreams of Ferragamo, Manolo Blahnik, and Chanel throughout Wendy Wasserstein's play. When the show opened at Lincoln Center, Massimo Ferragamo sent shoes to the playwright and the star. Manolo Blahnik upstaged his competitor when the show opened on Broadway, sending shoes to all four actresses. "Manolo himself showed up two weeks later," says Wasserstein. "I'm wearing my Ferragamo flats as I speak. But I'm waiting for my Chanel suit."

. . .Mariel Hemingway was still waiting to see if Civil Wars would be picked up for another season when her husband, Stephen Crisman, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for Sam's on West 52nd Street. The restaurant owes 118 creditors some $1.9 million; cash reserves are only $2,500, with another $23,712 in the bank. Among the largest creditors are partner Sam Waksal ($772,000), the I.R.S. ($236,691), and the landlord ($131,695). In court documents, Crisman blames the problems on internal theft, poor management, and "tough breaks with economic trends," by which he means that the "client base is suffering the riggers [J7C] of the Country's economic recession."

. . . Doyenne of fashion publicists Eleanor Lambert is facing a birthday this summer that might be her 90th, and her friends want to salute it. Bill Chaney had a cocktail party in her honor at Tiffany's, which led to talk of a big dinner at the Metropolitan Museum. But the birthday girl put the kibosh on the plans. "Iam not Brooke Astor," says Lambert. "As Iphigene Sulzberger said when she was 90, it's very annoying that when you're older and can walk across the room and finish a sentence, people think you're a phenomenon." . . . Historical rather than political correctness guided Jim Lehrer through a recent dinner. George Washington is said to have supped 222 years ago at the West Virginia home now owned by the MacNeillLehrer anchor. To commemorate the date, Lehrer hired a caterer to cook a "Federalist" meal, which included trout stuffed with crabmeat and shiitake mushrooms. ("No comment," replied Lehrer when asked if Washington actually ate shiitake mushrooms.) William Safire got into the spirit of the evening by donning a wig, "but I didn't powder it," he says. Helene Safire wore a full Colonial outfit with her wig "and looked far better than Martha Washington ever did," adds her loyal husband. "Then we all talked about George Washington," says Lehrer. "Nobody was allowed to talk about economic-stimulus packages." Book talk, though, was permitted: both Lehrer and his wife, Kate, have novels out this June. His is Blue Hearts (Random House); hers is When They Took Away the Man in the Moon (Crown).

. . .CNN was on all afternoon, but Kip and Astrid Forbes's guests were a beat ahead of the news. Margaret Thatcher came to lunch at Timberfield, the Forbeses' New Jersey estate, along with 20 other guests, including Carroll Petrie, Jerry Zipkin, Peggy Noonan, and realtor A. Laurance Kaiser IV. The former prime minister told the Society Summit that Raisa Gorbachev had just suffered a severe stroke, news that didn't hit the papers for several weeks.

DEBORAH MITCHELL