Priestley's Progress

Vanities

Fans of Beverly Hills, 90210 should know that JASON PRIESTLEY'S extra-Brandon oeuvre begins in earnest this summer with Calendar Girl (Columbia), in which three 18-year-olds drive to Hollywood to ask Marilyn Monroe for a date. They're love-struck, not addled. The film is set in 1962; she was still alive. And how exactly does Priestley hope to win Marilyn looking like this? Not to worry— whisker ensemble has been sprouted for his next feature, a Western called Tombstone. Maybe the outfit has something to do with his well-known Tom Jones fixation.

This new career pleases him.

"90210 became such a big thing so quickly, the fear is that it becomes a fad," he says. "And as we all know, fads die. And when a fad dies, do we die with it? Do / die with it?"

Steady. Meantime, Priestley

enjoys the publicity the show engenders: "It's indicative of what kind of person you are; if you take it all too seriously or if you get the joke. 1 think I've been fortunate enough to get the joke. Thank God! I'd be in a warm bath with a bottle of Cabernet and my wrists slit." Steady.

GEORGE KALOGERAKIS