Michael Douglas, the defiant one

Michael Douglas, shown this morning in New York City, is said to responding well to chemotherapy and radiation treatment for his Stage 4 throat cancer. The Oscar® winning actor has roles in two movies released this year that will surely vie for Best Actor Academy Award® nominations. We expect to see him at the ceremony after he beats this.

Video: Michael Douglas reveals he has stage four throat cancer; blames cigarettes, alcohol and stress

Love means never having to say Erich Segal is dead

The spirit of Erich Segal hung over our coverage of the events surrounding the final days and cancer death of Farrah Fawcett. After all, he wrote the book and then the film that gave Farrah's on-again, off-again contentious lover Ryan O'Neal his defining role. Along with Love Story, Segal also co-wrote the screenplay to The Beatles' Yellow Submarine animated film, which is getting a remake this year and has figured into our coverage of all the Beatle Fan Fest activity. And of course, he is another, along with novelist Robert B. Parker, person of note who would figure into our Death of The Day category today, were it not so crowded. Erich Segal wqs 72. he suffered from Parkinson's Disease for the past 25 years. Parker, who wrote the Spenser crime novels, was 77. Robert Urich, who played Spenser in the TV series, died of cancer, too. And Tabloid Obits is what we have become...

Brett Hudson talks cancer on Internet radio

Brett Hudson, one of our pals at Frozen Pictures, is on the radio with quite an amazing story. Brett's entertained us as one of the Hudson Brothers, and behind the scenes with this television and film work, and over the past two years, inspired and illuminated us since he went public with his successful fight against two formidable foes: throat cancer and the American medical establishment. While he's kept us updated with his blog on the website for his documentary project, The Klinik, you can catch up as he talks about his experience and philosophy with Louis Velazquez online at the UCW Magazine Radio Show.

Click hear to listen to the entire ninety-minute interview with Brett Hudson.


And while you're at it, click here to listen to Lou's talk with Tabloid Baby pal Michael Lohan, star of Brett and Frozen Picture's legendary reality show pilot you can see on the right hand side of this page --->

(And Tabloid Baby pal Chris DeRose, too. That Lou is everywhere.)

Patrick Swayze is looking a lot better

With the Die in Threes celebrity death calculator thrown askew by the sheer number of clogs-popping stars from a variety of fields of fame (see Frank McCourt), it wasn't much of a leap to anticipate Patrick Swayze would be losing his battle against pancreatic cancer in the dead of summer. Happy to see in the Daily Mail, then, that the actor, dancer, and real-life tough guy is looking a hell of a lot healthier than he did back in April, when the effects of the disease and the chemotherapy used to fight it left him looking a step from the grave. Swayze's survival and odds-defiance can be credited in part to by treatment by the CyberKnife, a cutting-edge radiation device that blasts tumours with a high-powered laser, reaches tumours that conventional radiation cannot, and does its work in hours, as opposed to several punishing months.


The CyberKnife was brought to the world's attention by Tabloid Baby pal Brett Hudson and Frozen Pictures in their The Klinik documentary project, and has been getting a lot of attention in the UK becaue England now has its very first CyberKnife at Harley Street in London.

Click here to read Brett Hudson's blog at The Klinik movie website.

EXCLUSIVE: Farrah Fawcett's friends say Ryan O'Neal won't let her see the German doctor who treated her cancer and extended her life

Farrah Fawcett’s Hollywood friends say Ryan O’Neal is stopping the iconic actress’s German doctor from treating or visiting her in what appears to be the final stages of her battle with cancer, and denying the Hollywood legend one last chance at survival.

Dr. Ursula Jacob took over Farrah’s anal and liver cancer treatment in 2007, after doctors in the United States said they could not help her. She arrived in Los Angeles from Germany last month with more experimental therapies that she said could extend the actress’ life or put the cancer in remission.

“Dr. Jacob was out here and told Farrah there was experimental treatment that she should try because at this point there’s nothing anyone else can do for her,” says producer Brett Hudson, who was treated with Farrah at the various kliniks in Germany.


“From what I’m told, Farrah tried the treatment for four days, but stopped because it made her feel sick. I know how sick she was. I was that sick, too. But that’s part of the process. Farrah stopped, and Ryan, who is now the gatekeeper, stopped all communication with Dr. Jacob.

“Dr. Jacob has tried to get in touch with Farrah. From what I’ve been told, Ryan shut her out. What do Farrah’s Hollywood friends think? The people you guys call ‘Farrah’s Hollywood friends’ are appalled! Dr. Jacob took on Farrah’s case after doctors here said there was nothing they could do for her. She did everything here, radiation and chemotherapy and it didn’t work. Only then did the doctors say, ‘You might as well try Germany.’

“That was almost two years ago. Dr. Jacob extended Farrah’s life. Now the doctor says she has nothing to lose. And after four days she stopped.

The latest outcry follows accusations from Greg Lott, Farrahs’ college beau and business partner that O’Neal suddenly cut off his access to his dear friend since the actor took over Farrah’s affairs on Easter.

O’Neal also took over control of the personal cancer documentary Farrah and her producing partner Craig Nevius had been preparing for two years. Nevius is suing, claiming the takeover was unlawful and that the final product, drastically reshot and re-edited by NBC News personnel, did not reflect Farrah’s visions and hopes for the documentary.

The documentary, which was turned into the NBC entertaiment special “Farrah’s Story,” a maudlin feature focusing on Farrah’s “love story" with O’Neal (star of the movie “Love Story”), was edited to diminish the credibility of Dr. Jacob and her colleagues, who use cutting edge, state-of-the-art treatment that is either not approved or used widely in the States.

In publicizing the TV product in which he played a big role, O'Neal said that Farrah's cancer treatment "had pretty much ended."


Hudson says his own cancer documentary project, Frozen Pictures’ The Klinik, will hit many of the tough issues removed from Farrah’s documentary.

He adds: “She’s in and out. She’s nearing the end.

“Ryan has shut Farrah off from everyone except for her American doctor and Alana Stewart. As far as we know, they’ve stopped all treatment. It’s pretty f---ing scary.”

UPDATE: Texas newspaper picks up our Farrah fan mail exclusive

Visit The Klinik website here

Farrah Fawcett's business partner and college beau fights visit ban by inundating Ryan O'Neal with Farrah fans' cards and letters

As the Farrah Fawcett cancer plays out behind closed doors in a Beverly Hills area high-rise, one of her lifelong friends who’ve been denied access to her is striking back at her caretakers in a most unusual way.

In an action that brings to mind the scene in Miracle on 34th Street in which a judge is buried beneath sacks of letters to Kris Kringle, Greg Lott (above, with Farrah in 1999, below with Farrah at a Houston wedding in 2001) is directing Farrah fans’ cards, letters and packages to be sent to her apartment, so her longtime, on-again-off-again lover Ryan O’Neal can be “up to his neck” in them.

We’ve written about Greg Lott. He was Farrah’s football hero sweetheart in college forty-four years ago, gone down in tabloid legend as the man who lost her to Hollywood and Lee Majors, but who re-entered life in 1997 after she announced her split from lover Ryan O’Neal.

Lott is partners with Farrah in a company called Relentless, which runs her official website and the merchandising that goes along with it. Lott says the site has been getting thousands of letters that are stacking up in plastic boxes at the Relentless post office box in Lubbock, Texas, so he's having the mail forwarded to Farrah's home.


Lott, who claims that he his regular access to Farrah has been cut off since Ryan O’Neal moved in around Easter, has also posted Farrahs’ home address on the website and asked fans from around the world to send their cards, letters and packages to her very unit.

“All the fans know Farrah’s address,” Lott said this afternoon. “TVLand put the address on the air and on their website when they ran the Chasing Farrah show. A lot of her mail is already going there. You know Ryan O’Neal is already going through it, He’s looking for the letters addresed to him and the ones postmarked Texas, which he knows are from me.

“I just thought, 'Why not put it all the way up to his neck?'”

O’Neal, his business manager and Farrah’s friend Alana Stewart are being sued by Farrah’s documentary filmmaking partner. Craig Nevius claims the trio unlawfully took control of the cancer documentary project he and Farrah were producing, turning it into a morbid soap opera, assembled with NBC News, called “Farrah’s Story.”

TabloidBaby.com has learned that key evidence in the suit will be a contested signature on the document Farrah supposedly signed in giving control to O’Neal.

Lott, a Texas businessman, has been in Los Angeles since Easter, holding a vigil of sorts, waiting out his ban on seeing his true love and vowing to remain in town as long as Farrah is alive.

“She’s relentless all right,” he said. "She's a fighter. I have three friends from the University of Texas football team. They called this weekend to cheer me up, and they said, ‘Don’t you remember, if she was a man she'd have made our team!?'

"I’m telling you man: she’s tough. She’s not ready to go."

EXCLUSIVE: Signature scandal in Farrah Fawcett cancer documentary lawsuit leads to new questions for Ryan O'Neal

The issue of a disputed signature in the lawsuit over Farrah Fawcett's cancer documentary has led to new questions that go beyond Ryan O'Neal's control over the project to his control over Farrah Fawcett's final days.

Craig Nevius, the producer who's suing Ryan O'Neal, Alana Stewart and O'Neal's business manager for allegedly unlawfully hijacking Farrah Fawcett's cancer documentary project, confirmed our report that the signature on the document transferring creative control to O'Neal and company could be a explosive evidence against the defendants. He also revealed that the issue goes far beyond the television special.

April 2008

April 2009

"It wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on matters of which I don't have firsthand knowledge," Nevius told Tabloid Baby this afternoon. "But I will acknowledge that you have raised some questions that need answers in terms of the disparity between those two signatures, especially when you take into account the various public statements about Farrah's lucidity, or lack thereof, that have come from Ryan O'Neal and others over the past six weeks or so.

"I wish I had the answers but I don't. I have not been allowed access to Farrah, not even the briefest of phone calls, by others whom I have never had to go through before."


The questions of access and Farrah's condition was also raised over the weekend in a message on her official website, FarrahFawcett.us:

"To add to this on going upsetting situation with Farrah. Now I have been denied access to my business partner (Farrah) by phone, email and in-person. Farrah and I have been in partnership with FarrahFawcett.us since the conception in Sept. 2006. Please keep her in your thoughts. ~Greg Lott"

Greg Lott is Farrah's partner in website and has long been part of Farrah Fawcett lore, with a relationship that goes back at least 43 years when he was her boyfriend at the University of Texas at Austin (People magazine: "The Delta Delta Delta sorority sister was going steady with Greg Lott, the Longhorns' star quarterback...") and who rekindled his relationship with the beauty in 1997, after she and O'Neal announced their breakup.


Sources tell Tabloid Baby that the native Texan is in Los Angeles, and is very concerned about Farrah's condition, now that O'Neal has announced that her treatment has pretty much ended, and that he controls her medication.

The document at the center of this sad chapter bears Farrah's signature and hands over "full power and authority" in the production company she started with Nevius a year earlier to business manager Richard B. Francis and "full artistic and creative control" of her cancer journal documentary to O'Neal. The document is dated April 20, four days after Farrah's son Redmond said in open court that her condition had deteriorated and she was down to 86 pounds.

Nevius (below) and other sources (including Tabloid Baby pal Brett Hudson, who was treated in Germany with Farrah and is working on his own doco project, Frozen Pictures' The Klinik) tell us that Farrah intended the documentary to explore why alternative treatments were not available in the United States. It wound up as a morbid, exploitative tabloid television entertainment special produced under the auspices of NBC News and the supervision of O'Neal, who played a major part onscreen and in its promotion.

"Farrah and I have always had a direct and open line of communication-- professionally and personally, in sickness or in health, no matter what time of the day or night, regardless of country she was in." Nevius insists. "Her condition, by all accounts, seems to have gotten worse over the last two months, yet Ryan and Alana Stewart's spokesperson has said that Farrah is still seeing friends. So why haven't Ryan and his business manager allowed me to see her? And why was I threatened--physically and professionally)-- if I even tried?

"Like Farrah said in our documentary about her cancer, 'I don't have all the answers. But I do have some questions.'"

( Click here to visit The Klinik website)

Exclusive: Bombshell evidence against Ryan O'Neal and collaborators in lawsuit over NBC News' Farrah Fawcett special

“This is not about money.
This is not about ego.
This is not about anything but Farrah.
I was entrusted with overseeing
this very personal project.
I want her vision to be seen
and her voice to be heard.
I won't speak about her in the past tense.
She’s not in the past tense."

--Craig J. Nevius, Farrah Fawcett’s documentary partner,
kicked to the curb by Ryan O’Neal

With Tabloid Baby pal Brett Hudson appearing on syndicated television this week (video here) talking about Farrah Fawcett's thwarted intentions with the cancer documentary that was hijacked and turned into a maudlin, morbid celebrity soap by NBC News (well, she did sell them the footage), new attention is being focused on the lawsuit that's hanging over the heads of the imitation tabloid producers and Ryan O'Neal, Farrah's on-again off-again drug- and anger-troubled lover who took the helm of the project and kicked the original producer to the curb.

Craig J. Nevius is suing O'Neal, Farrah's friend and companion in German cancer clinics Alana Stewart, among others, for pushing him out of the project after two years of work and pursuing "their own individual interests contrary to Ms. Fawcett's stated desires."

(Click here to visit TheKlinikMovie.com)

Bottom line: Farrah wanted to produce a special that tackled the issue of why alternative, and often inexpensive, cancer treatments that work are available in countries like Germany but not in the United States. She and Nevius formed a company to make a film about her journey that was to be based on her home movies and called "A Wing And A Prayer.”

Love Story?

Then, as Farrah’s condition took a turn for the worse late last year, Ryan O'Neal allegedly moved in, started calling the shots, knocked Nevius out of the picture and collaborated with NBC News in cooking up “Farrah’s Story,” which featured the original Charlie’s Angels and O’Neal in the role of crying Charlie and—

Hold on a minute! Why haven’t we haven’t seen any mention of the fact that the title, “Farrah’s Story,” is very reminiscent of O’Neal’s hit film Love Story-- the one from forty years ago, about the Yalie who loses his love to cancer-- which he made reference to specifically in the special, as well as referring to the project as “a love story” in interviews?

O’Neal has taken over Farrah’s affairs and is already helming a sequel, because the NBC special did so well last Friday night, and it would seem that Nevius’ lawsuit is beside the point beyond a payoff.

But there are a couple of surprises here.

"Not about money"

First, Craig Nevius tells Tabloid Baby that he doesn’t want money.

“My motivation? This is not about money. This is not about ego," he insisted today. "This is not about anything but Farrah. I was entrusted with overseeing this very personal project. I want her vision to be seen and her voice to be heard.


“I'm not saying there wasn't anything positive in the program that aired; there was. To a certain extent Farrah has already succeeded in doing what she set out to do: promote a national dialogue about issues related to cancer--even if they weren't all addressed in the program-- and address the privacy issues.

“But Farrah's Story should be just that: Farrah's story.

“I hope Farrah will rally. That’s what motivates everything I say and do with respect to her. I have to operate under the assumption that I still work for— and with-- her. Look, I'm still accountable to her today as if she’s a hundred percent healthy and will be calling me up tomorrow with questions or new ideas. I can't-- and I won't speak about her in the past tense. Because she’s not in the past tense."

Bombshell evidence

There’s some bombshell evidence in this case that could turn this love story into one of the biggest Hollywood Babylon scandals since, well, since Tatum O’Neal accused her father of physical and emotional abuse and claimed she was molested by one of his buddies… since Griffin O’Neal’s father punched out his two front teeth… since Redmond O’Neal was busted with his father for drug possession…

We've got the evidence.

We’ll post it after the holiday weekend, so the story doesn't get lost when no one's paying attention...

UPDATE HERE: The evidence revealed...

Video: Brett Hudson on the TV show Extra, talking about Farrah Fawcett, cancer, alternative answers and The Klinik movie

Smoking kills The Winston Man

We've heard of The Marlboro Man and Joe Camel, but never The Winston Man. But Alan Landers was apparently him, a male model who was the face of Winston cigarettes, appearing in magazine ads and on billboards in the Sixties and Seventies.

Alan Landers wound up leading a multi-million dollar crusade against the tobacco industry and was set to testify against cigarette manufacturer RJ Reynolds (a suit that was brought in 1995 and is only now going to trial).

But Alan Landers, who helped make smoking "cool," also wound up with lung cancer and throat cancer. And he won't testify next month because he died of cancer Friday at 68.


Read about Brett Hudson's winning battle against cancer and the American medical establishment here.