Best bet to fill CTA chairman Mike Cardilli`s shoes? INC. hears Mayor Harold Washington wants his new CTA board appointee, Walter Clark, to step into the top spot. P.S.: It`s no secret that House Speaker Mike Madigan battled to save Cardilli`s job, but INC. hears Cardilli decided to throw in the towel ”several weeks ago after getting mixed signals from various administration advisers,” an INC. source said. P.P.S.: INC. also hears several of Madigan`s precinct captains, who are city workers, had somehow surfaced on a list of those to be fired from Public Works–but were miraculously saved. Don`t you love miracles?
THE BIG SMOKER . . .
INC. hears Cook County Dem chief Ed Vrdolyak and political activist Slim Coleman got into a real smoker Thursday morn, when Eddie pulled next to a car emitting fumes and smoke from stem to stern at a Clark Street stoplight. ”The car was overheating and emitting heavy smoke through the tailpipe, when out from behind the smokescreen stepped Coleman, Ed`s old nemesis,” an INC. source said. Vrdolyak rolled down his window and asked if he could help. ”No way!” shouted Coleman, who was last spotted churning smoke and debris down Randolph Street.
WHOAAA!!!!
INC. hears that reports of overworked, underfed and abused horses in several livery stables adjacent to Cook County Forest Preserve property are being probed by the Hooved Animal Humane Society in Barrington. ”I`m getting tired of the runaround we are getting,” said Donna Ewing, a humane society spokesman. ”The stables are not on forest preserve property, but use the forest area to ply their trade. So we contacted the forest preserve people and they passed the buck. They say the Department of Agriculture people are responsible. Then the Ag people pass the buck and say the forest preserve people are responsible. This has been going on for a year and nothing is being done.” Ewing also claims forest preserve maintenance trucks have been spotted parking their equipment on some stable property and she wonders if they are in cahoots with each other. ”It`s disgusting,” she said. Helllllloooooo George Dunne, President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. What gives?
BRIT BABBLE . . .
— Lines from London: Alan Jay Lerner`s young widow, Liz Robertson, told a London newspaper that Lerner`s daughter, Susan, also died of cancer died two days after her father; the night before Lerner died the showman shouted,
”Let`s have a party” and spent the evening drinking champagne and singing
(but they didn`t sing any of his songs); that she plans to scatter his ashes on their fifth anniversary Aug. 13 in a ”special secret place that was dear to us.” She also claims to have had dealings with most of Lerner`s seven ex-wives. ”He had good taste,” she said. Amen.
— Chewton Glen: Chugging off to Chewton Glen hotel, one of the world`s finest country manors, INC. ran into Geoffrey Gates, the establishment`s tres popular chauffeur who drives a red Jaguar. Although Gates never tattles about clients, he did produce a dollop of info about the late, great Orson Welles, who loved staying at the hotel, located on the southern coast of England.
”Mr. Welles smoked a cigar that almost burned off the back of my head,”
quipped Gates, who claims he`d brandish one while shouting over and over again, ”Nothing is impossible. Difficult, maybe. But never impossible.”
Gates claimed Welles ”had a cadre of secretaries he worked to the bone, but they adored him.” Hard to imagine Welles fitting into the back seat of a Jaguar.
STAR TRACKS . . .
Julio Iglesias is hoping to snare a National Basketball Association franchise in Miami. His partners in the venture are promoter Zev Bufman and Billy Cunningham, former coach of the Philadelphia `76ers . . . Producers of Miami Vice asked for and got a pair of Black Ferrari Testarossas, which cost about $100,000 each, for filming upcoming episodes. But when they found out black didn`t film well at night, they changed their mind and requested white Testarossas. I mean, what else could they do? . . . Sting just bought a house near Barbra Streisand`s large Malibu compound . . . INC. is certainly disappointed to have missed a premiere party for the film, ”VAMP,” at which co-star Grace Jones splashed nude in a bath of 265 bottles of Dom Perignon. INC. calls that a real bubbly bath.
INC.LINGS . . .
Bobbie Goldblatt, one of Chicago`s premier society columnists who covers the social scene like gold on earring posts, has an upcoming feature on Princess Margaret in North Shore mag next month. One highlight: Maggie prefers coffee to tea. P.S.: Maggie will return to Chicago to attend the official completion of the English walled garden at the Botanic Gardens in Glencoe. Luv those Royals . . . Friday Birthdays: Mel Tillis, 54; Dustin Hoffman, 49; Keith Carradine, 37; Esther Williams, 63; Connie Stevens, 48; Dino de Laurentiis, 67; Rory Calhoun, 64. Saturday Birthdays: Bob Sirott, 37; David Steinberg, 44 . . . In an effort to outdo ChicagoFest, Mayor Tom Tarpey of River Grove is inviting all former residents of the city to participate in their River Front Fest on Aug. 15 through 17 . . . An armored truck will pull up on Oak Street beach on Saturday at 11 a.m. and hand out 200 Cole of California bikinis. It`s a stunt to promote the movie ”Armed and Dangerous.” P.S.: The movie`s title is on the rear-end of all the swimsuits . . .
