“The Queen of Versailles” is a 100-minute documentary about the Siegels nobody knows, who’ve built this cockamamie largest in captivity 90,000-square-foot house but ran poor with our economy, but now, cobbling together a few billion more, they’re back building so Magnolia Pictures immortalized this 22-carat rhinestone-in-the-rough and invited a VIP crateload to view it.
Mrs. Siegel was once crowned Mrs. Florida. First name, Jackie. Hair blond blond blond; long long long. Neckline low low low. Boobs large large large. Dress tight tight tight. Stomach and rear both protruding like question marks. Her house throw is the real skin of a real dog. OK? In a Sarasota luncheonette, she requested Ossetra caviar. OK? Oy, is she to the manor born.
She smiled: “My husband might sell for $100 million, but for that I’d come with it.” I joked that’s maybe a realty ploy to knock down the price. She stared.
Nouveau who knows Jackie, 30 years younger, is Mr. Siegel’s second wife. They have seven children, an eighth is his. She says: “We had eight nannies but had to cut down to one. With nine nannies again, I’ll have another child.”
Paris Hilton’s parents Kathy and Rick: “It’s living within your means.”
GARY Oldman likes the Lowell because the hotel has working fireplaces. In summer? Seems even in 97 degrees they regularly restock the fireplaces with wood . . . The 24th, 4 p.m., 82nd and Madison’s Crawford Doyle Booksellers, Ward Morehouse reads from his “Inside the Plaza” book . . . “Dan’s Papers” founder Dan Rattiner published his third book “Still in the Hamptons.”
CRIME specialist for AP and New York Magazine Nick Pileggi wrote “Goodfellas,” “Wiseguys,” “Casino.” The late Nora Ephron’s husband of 20 years, his “Vegas” series starts on CBS.
“It stars Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis,” he told me. “Director’s Jim Mangold, who did the Johnny Cash film, ‘Walk the Line,’ which won Reese Witherspoon’s Oscar and ‘3:10 to Yuma’ with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.
“I created the show. Wrote it, did the screenplay, and I’m its showrunner. We filmed in Santa Clarita, Calif. It’s a Western. Classic Wild West hombres. Shoot-’em-up cowboys, gambling, criminals, tough gangsters who work in all cash, prostitution, which then was legal in Vegas. This is set in its early days.
“It’s about when guys like Bugsy Siegel reigned and the mob built what that one-horse town became. Quaid, who can ride a horse, plays Sheriff Ralph Lamb, a fourth-generation ranger who ruled southern Nevada then. Now 85, he’s still around. It’s about warrants, arrests, lines like ‘I’m the law’ and ‘Get outta my casino’ and then in moves this Chicago mobster.”
“Vegas” airs in September.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.
