Marlene Dietrich had her smoky le smokings. Joan Crawford, her padded linebacker shoulders. But as for their contemporary Bette Davis, who would have celebrated her centenary on April 5, fashion was hardly at the forefront. In fact, she's quite famously known for shunning that whole Hollywood glamour-gal persona. The actress frequently kicked vanity to the curb to bravely play an assortment of ghastly looking characters, from a dying syphilis-stricken moll (Of Human Bondage) to a cake-faced vaudeville has-been (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane). Nevertheless, Ms. Davis still managed a fair share of sartorial moments on the silver screen. Take, for instance, Fashions of 1934, in which she's a platinum-blonde glamazon á la Jean Harlow while embroiled in a counterfeit couture conspiracy creating knockoffs of the latest Parisian fashions. Several years later, Davis won her second Oscar for her role in 1938's Jezebel; its plot is based around a red gown she rebelliously wears to the Olympus Ball. Then there's that cocktail dress in All About Eve (1950) which Davis made famous while uttering the oft-quoted line, "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night." As it turns out, the Edith Head gown proved Davis's impromptu styling prowess: It was too big when she first tried it on, so the actress simply tugged the whole thing down a bit, transforming its roomy bodice with a square-shaped neckline into a sexy off-the-shoulder number. Now, Davis is about to make a posthumous fashion turn when, in September, the U.S. Postal Service releases a commemorative 2008 stamp in her honor. The image, of Davis dolled up in diamonds and a lush fur coat, was painted by Brooklyn artist Michael Deas and is based on a photograph taken during the filming of All About Eve.

© 2007 USPS. All Rights Reserved

Thursday in Los Angeles was a miserable day for a pool party—overcast and chilly—but the poolside patio at Robert Evans's legendary Beverly Hills estate, Woodland, was packed nonetheless. Evans, the producer behind Chinatown, Marathon Man and The Two Jakes, has now produced a signature line of eyeglasses for Oliver Peoples, and the outdoor lunch gave the company a chance to trumpet its relationship with Hollywood's most famous four-eyes.

The crowd included many types who would never otherwise be invited to Woodland: reporters, for instance, and guys like the one who wore lime-green pants and a yellow rain hat. There were also a few friends of Evans on hand, such as director Brett Ratner, who used to live in Evans's guesthouse.

Ratner bragged that he's making a biopic about Helmut Newton—the late photographer was perhaps Evans's closest friend—if, that is, he can secure the rights from Newton's indomitable widow, June. "I'm wresting with June," said Ratner, adding that he also wants to do a sequel to the documentary Helmut by June, which aired on HBO last year.

Then Ratner was peeled away by Lady Victoria White, who cut a rather chic figure as Evans's seventh wife, and the two joined a knot of conversation around Evans's longtime English butler, Alan Selka.

"Bob," as most people called him, was nowhere to be seen.

Turns out he was in his bedroom, the inner sanctum from which he often conducts business, and select guests were escorted in, either singly or in small groups, for a private audience. Behind a set of heavy wooden doors, Evans was perched on his velvet-upholstered bed like a pasha upon a pillow. He wore one pair of Oliver Peoples glasses and held a second in his left hand; occasionally he switched for effect.

"When I was growing up, glasses were medicinal," he said. "Now they're cosmetical."

Evans seemed to enjoy his visitors, especially the female ones, and he was attentive to them. His talk was very subtly funny, and he turned several phrases to particular effect, as if dialing down his humor to the lowest pitch at which it could still be perceived.

"Everyone should wear glasses," he said. "You'll see people you've never seen before."

Soon, a group of young men came in for their chance to kiss the ring, and they fell agog before a huge black-and-white Helmut Newton photograph on the wall. It showed two nude women sprawled under a sycamore tree at Woodland, not a stone's throw from where they stood that moment.

Evans noticed their gaze.

"They're not here," he said to the lads.

Or was the old rake speaking to himself, remembering happy days long gone?

Ah, Bob! Sic transit gloria mundi.

Schnabel and Gagosian

Julian Schnabel was feeling overwhelmed. He had just arrived at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills for the opening reception for a show of his paintings and had been instantly swarmed by well-wishers. Fresh off an Oscar nomination for directing The Diving Bell and  the Butterfly, Schnabel has attracted an A-List crowd including actors Tilda Swinton, James Franco, John Waters, Werner Herzog, Disney chief Bob Iger with wife Willow Bay, Cynthia Rowley, Casey Johnson and Minnie Mortimer.

He asks, to no one in particular, for a cigarette, and for the first time in my life I was genuinely glad to be a smoker. I hand one over. "You can ask me a question," he says. And then motions for me to  follow him outside.

But each time Schnabel walks a few feet, he is asked to pose for a picture, autograph one of his books, pose for another picture. And another. Whenever there's a pause, he turns to me—"You ready?"—but he stops yet again near the exit to talk with Larry Gagosian, and, city smoking ordinances be damned, lights up the cigarette, which they share.

"You ready?" he asks me again after their chat, and moves to the sidewalk, where there is a long line of people waiting to get in. And whatever I had  first intended to ask Schnabel, it has slipped my mind over the course of our 15-minute, 15-yard trek. So I open lamely with, "How long have you been in L.A.?"
"I came here from Rome on Monday," he says. His iPhone rings and he chats for a few minutes.

I ask him if there is a connection between the film and his paintings. "I found the X-rays in a house near a location for the film," he explains, with the cigarette nearly done.

"What does a Oscar nominee do the week before the Oscars?"

"I'm having an art show."

Another man with a long beard comes up and tells Schnabel that they once surfed together. In L.A., the conditions have been particularly good lately, he explains. "There's a huge swell on," the man tells Schnabel.

Then Schnabel looks at me and says, "I didn't get to go surfing this week."

Another guy stops to tell Schnabel about another art show a few blocks away. Schnabel says he won't be going.

"Are we done?" Schnabel asks me as he throws the butt away. Yes we are. On his way back in he adds, "You should come back and see the paintings when there's not so many people." The Schnabel show will remain on display at Gagosian through March 22.

Photo by Jeff Vespa/WireImage

This weekend, I went to see A Walk To Beautiful, a heartbreaking and gorgeously constructed documentary about women in Ethiopia whose devastating injuries after childbirth have rendered them incontinent and, in turn, ostracized by their communities. It was perhaps the best documentary I'd seen in years.

On my way out of the theater (I saw it at the Quad Cinema), I encountered a middle-aged, bespectacled man hyperactively schmoozing with the dozen or so audience members. Turned out he was the executive producer, Steven Engel, who for the last couple weeks has been spending five or more hours a day at the Quad chatting up viewers and answering questions between showings. He told me that the crew was composed entirely of women—the Ethiopian subjects were mortified enough without having to describe their ordeal to men—and said that he would be distributing the film for free all over Africa.

Getting the film out hasn't been quite so easy in America, though. Engel explained that how well A Walk to Beautiful does in the next week at the Quad will determine whether theaters in D.C., Chicago, and other major cities will pick it up. (It's already scheduled to open in LA on February 29.) The film wasn't eligible for this year's Oscars, but it will be next year, and it has already beat out three of this year's Academy nominees (Sicko, No End in Sight and Operation Homecoming) to receive the International Documentary Association's top award. It'd be a safe bet in your 2009 Oscar pool.

Hollywood legend Robert Evans is known for many things—his career highs and lows, his seven marriages, his suave yet gravely voice and even his signature oversized eyewear . So it's only fitting that his latest endeavor involves a line of eyeglasses, which he's designed with Oliver Peoples.  The first pair of frames is called, simply, The Robert Evans, and you can see the great man himself sporting them in this promotional video, which is styled as a film trailer for a faux film entitled Mind Games. The noirish saga, steeped with Old Hollywood glamour, was actually shot in Evans' Beverly Hills home.

When I reached Evans on the phone and asked him what the film would be, his response was characteristically cryptic. "I don't know. It is called Mind Games!"

See the clip on OliverPeoples.com.

Once dubbed "box office poison," Katharine Hepburn proved her critics dead wrong, ultimately charming audiences—then and now—with her feisty, film characters as well as her no-nonsense style and her famous New England lilt. This month, the Smithsonian celebrates all things Hepburn with an exhibit at its National Portrait Gallery—with everything from images and clips to her record-setting four Oscar statuettes. "Kate: A Centennial" will be on view through June 1, 2008.

Katharine Hepburn By Edward Jean Steichen, Gelatin silver print, 1933
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, © 1982 Joanna T. Steichen

Rumors abound that James McAvoy, whom W profiled in its December issue, will play Nirvana rocker Kurt Cobain in a upcoming biopic.

Read W's article here: Scottish Reel

Photo by Ari Marcopoulos

A recent interview with Jeffrey Lyons on NBC's Lyons and Bailes' Reel Talk, the Saturday morning show about current movies, is damning evidence that Jude Law is, in fact, going bald. He's long had those deep coves of naked skull flanking the corners of his forehead, but they are now deeper than ever. Plus, he's sporting the telltale close crop of a man who has gracefully come to terms with his destiny.

O'Neill/White/INFphoto.com