On “The Young and the Restless,” Katherine Chancellor has survived just about everything– a philandering husband, alcoholism, many kidnappings, business reversals, etc. But her portrayer, veteran actress Jeanne Cooper, sounds like she’s up against her toughest fight. The 84 year old has been playing Katherine Chancellor, the imperious formerly alcoholic matriarch of “The Young and the Restless,” since the show’s first year in 1973. Now word is out that Cooper is in serious but stable condition in a Los Angeles hospital. We’re sending her our prayers and good thoughts. Her son, actor Corbin Bernsen (of “L.A. Law” fame) has been sending out messages via Twitter and Facebook for a couple of days now. The situation sounds fairly serious. Bernsen wrote on Facebook:

“Somewhat of an exhausting day with not much change for my mom. Healing is happening but outward signs are small and only visible in numbers I still don’t fully understand. I prayed today with her, alone, vocally and assured her it was about recovery and not finality – so important. It seemed to genuinely lift her spirits or something energetic from a quiet place in her soul. Even got something of a smile when I asked for one but her brows suggested more of a “are you out of your ******* mind!” Had a laugh and cry over that. With so many ups and downs I also did some serious questioning about the bigger issues of God and faith, and why a younger fellow next door didn’t make it with so many grieving family and friends waiting nearby. Just so odd, so much life actually in full display. I left the place drained, yet assured we are headed in the proper direction. This is truly a time I’ll have to learn that we are indeed moving in a direction and there really is no map to guide, and I must put faith and trust in the journey that is an open road with bumps, curves, downhills, uphills and glorious views along the way. Left the hospital somewhat numb by the sheer volume of emotion experienced. For those who need a Cliff Note version of the above.. mom is steady, bumps in the road but heading in the right direction though still without guarantees and the absolutes I long for. Such is life, literally! God Bless all of you for your continued thoughts and prayers. They are the fuel right now and we’re tapping into every ounce of it.”

Somehow we have jumped from the last week of 1967 to the first week of May 1968 in the second episode of “Mad Men,” Season 6 called “The Collaborators.” How do we know? Pete and his neighbors are talking about the musical “Hair,” which opened on April 29, 1968. Hair is a good place to start because Pete’s is terrible, Harry’s is worse, although Don and Roger have not changed one bit into trendsetters. If anything, they have remained firmly ensconced in 1960.

Vietnam is playing in the background, and the USS Pueblo incident is going on with North Korea. Oh wait: that’s late January. So now I have no idea if it’s January or May. Hmmm. [I do think it’s January, and no one bothered to check about “Hair.” It completed its off Broadway run the last week of January 1968 and reopened on Broadway in March. By the way, did you know the Pueblo has been rusting in North Korea all this time?]

Anyway: Megan’s had a miscarriage and hasn’t told Don, but tells Sylvia, who’s having an affair with Don. It’s hard to say if Megan is living in a soap opera or working on one. Pete lures a neighbor’s wife to New York for sex, she tells her husband, who throws her out after beating her. The wife tells Pete’s wife, Trudy, which pretty much craters their marriage.

Advertising? Peggy learns a secret about former client Heinz Ketchup, spills it to her new boss and they go after the account. At Sterling Cooper, the Heinz beans guy has told Don et al that there’s competition with his company. And the Jaguar guy who slept with Joan his back, and he’s cheating on his British counterparts.

Meantime, we find out that young Don and his pregnant mother stayed in a brothel, where she had sex with the owner. While she was pregnant. And Don watched through a key hole.

These are all “The Collaborators.” And by the end of the episode, the weight of living a lie — or many– pushes Don down onto the mat outside his apartment, too enervated to open the door and walk in. An episode of no great consequence except that everyone in it is lying, or cheating.

“Motown: The Musical” was almost as good as Motown: The Dyfunctional Family Reunion last night as the living principals of the greatest record company in history gathered one more time–and maybe one last time. For the Broadway premiere of Berry Gordy’s musical–already a hit with a $16 million advance and lines around the block–last night’s audience at Lunt Fontanne Theater got more than we ever could have bargained for. True, Sting and Bono were each there with their respective wives, so that was very cool. And Clive Davis had an aisle seat up front, and there were plenty of luminaries from the record business including Doug Morris, L.A. Reid, and Sylvia Rhone.

But the real story was Motown. Stevie Wonder flew in from Las Vegas after playing at Quincy Jones and Michael Caine’s birthday party. Smokey Robinson was in from L.A. Gladys Knight had been recording a new album. Mary Wilson has been a rehearsing a new act for Las Vegas. And then there was the unexpected: Diana Ross, with several of her kids. They were all there to see themselves, and to see each other, and maybe talk to each other, and maybe not.

But when the show was done and the curtain calls came, Ross was first on stage after Berry Gordy, followed by Smokey, then Mary and Gladys followed. Last up was Stevie who literally rolled up onto the stage and was helped to the center. It was a magic moment. In the audience were plenty of people who also made Motown great including Valerie Simpson, who wrote four of the songs in the show with her late husband Nick Ashford; Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier, who wrote so many hits for the Supremes and the Four Tops with Eddie’s brother Brian; and Claudette Robinson, Smokey’s first wife, one of the original Miracles (who by the way looks amazing).

Also at “Motown”: Jane Fonda and Richard Perry, as well as Gayle King, Jesse Jackson, Hoda and Kathie Lee, David Geffen, Motown music publisher Marty Bandier, Linda Moran of the Songwriters Hall of Fame (they’re honoring Gordy on June 13th), Allen and Debbie Grubman, Mel Lewinter, Tom Corson, Les Moonves and Julie Chen, and Spike Lee in a kind of red-orange jumpsuit and hat, loving every minute.

And no, Mary and Diana still do not talk. Diana didn’t look too happy to see Gordy flanked by Wilson and Knight, but it was truce time. Diana, Smokey, Stevie, and Gordy all sat in a clump in the orchestra. At intermission, while everyone was busy meeting and greeting, Smokey sat in his seat with his wife, and cried. There were tears in his eyes. The show is as much about him as anyone else. And it’s full of his music, from the songs he wrote for himself and the Miracles to Mary Wells and of course the Temptations. Smokey wrote “My Guy” and “My Girl,” two staples of pop history.

I did ask Smokey, whom I’ve known a long time, how did he decide which group got which song. Like “My Guy” went to the Tempts: “I just wanted to write asong for Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin,” he said. “It was that simple. I almost didn’t write it.” Of all the in house Motown songs, apart from Ashford and Simpson’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “My Girl” is the jewel in the Motown song catalog.

Of course this audience loved the show, cheered the “Jackson 5” wildly, warmed to Jackie Wilson (who wasn’t on Motown) and thrilled to Rick James. The show is not historically accurate, and no one cares. “It’s Broadway,” Berry Gordy’s brother said to me. License is taken. It’s okay. The music, sets, performers, choreography far outweigh veracity. If anyone wants to know what really happened, you can read Gerri Hirshey’s definitive book, “Nowhere to Run” and Peter Guralnick’s “Sweet Soul Music.” Otherwise, “Motown: The Musical” is for dancing and singing along, and coming out of the theater with a big grin.

Justin Bieber, idiot teen idol, paid a visit to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam yesterday before a show. The Anne Frank House has a Facebook page, naturally, so they posed a notice of Bieber’s visit.

“Yesterday night Justin Bieber visited the Anne Frank House, together with his friends and guards. Fans were waiting outside to see a glimpse of him. He stayed more than an hour in the museum. In our guestbook he wrote: “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.”
Tonight Bieber will give a concert in Arnhem in the Netherlands.

By the way, he wore a hoodie.

It’s hard to imagine this person exists, is worth $100 million, and is a role model for teens around the world.

We can only wait for his visit to Dachau.

https://www.facebook.com/annefrankhouse

UPDATE WEDNESDAY: 111 million views “Gentleman” and I have no freaking idea why.

UPDATE TUESDAY 10:25 AM: Approaching 95 million views.

UPDATE MONDAY 2:38PM: 68 million views. Yowza.

UPDATE SUNDAY 10AM: 22 million views in 36 hours. And counting…

North Korea is threatening nuclear war and this may be why: Psy, the Elvis Presley-Michael Jackson of South Korea, just keeps getting more and more crazy popular. His new video, “Gentleman,” was posted to YouTube on Saturday. In 24 hours, give or take the international timeline, the video has garnered almost 11 million views. On Saturday in Seoul, Psy gave a stadium concert for 50,000 insane fans and live streamed it to YouTube where an undetermined gazillion more fans watched him around the world. You can see it here.

I have no idea what he’s saying, although Psy does speak perfect English. The concert was in Korean, however. Missiles are being aimed right now by Kim Jong Un since both “Gentleman” and “Gangnam Style” are incredibly annoying, mean nothing, and signify the end of the world. Psy is being managed in the US by Scooter Braun, the man who’s given us Justin Bieber and “Call Me Maybe.” (He is not on the Kennedy Center Honors list this year.)

Psy, by the way, is 35 years old and the son of a successful Korean businessman. His real name is Park Jae-Sang.  The DI Corporation, which makes semi-conductors, is a $100 million business according to reports.

Gentleman:

Today–Sunday, April 14, 2013– approximately would have been the 50th anniversary of Elaine’s. Pete Khoury reminded me of this when I ran into him on Friday night at Bar Centrale, owned by Elaine’s old pal Joe Allen. Bar Centrale is above Joe Allen’s on West 46th St. and it’s become in the last couple of years, a kind of Elaine’s, a smaller version, but a place where you can go late and know you’re going to run into some interesting people before the night ends.

But basically, since Elaine died on December 3, 2010 and the restaurant was shuttered on May 26, 2011, there has been no place to go at all. The old crowd drifts around. Neary’s has been very nice to anyone who stops in, and at Elio’s– run by a former Elaine’s waiter–they know we are the survivors. But Elaine would be so angry that we were there, or anywhere. “Where ya been?” is how 90% of all conversations began, even if it was just a week or a few days, or Tuesday since last Thursday. “Whaddaya mean? I was just here, Elaine,” I would plead.

Five years ago, on the Tuesday before the Sunday, Elaine said, “It’s the 45th anniversary this Sunday.” Pete Khoury and I looked at her a little surprised. She said, “Don’t do anything.” She was afraid some people wouldn’t find out in time, miss whatever event we planned, and be mad. She was right, because that’s what happened with a couple of friends.

But the place was jammed on that Sunday. Woody Allen came with his wife Soon Yi and one of their little girls. He arrived punctually at the stroke of eight, and stayed for quite a while. Elaine was beaming. We dressed the place up with balloons. Every table was taken. The old old timers met the new old timers. There were lots of toasts and Father Pete Colapietro sang. Jessica Burstein took pictures. We didn’t quite get it that the end was near. I know we thought 50 would be easy after that. So don’t take anything for granted.

You know, we do miss having a place to go at 11 o’clock at night. In the new Broadway play “Lucky Guy” there’s a scene set in Elaine’s, one with which I am quite familiar. Back around 1993-96 there was a surge at that hour. Mike McAlary, everyone from the papers, lots of police, some mob, a more colorful crowd you could not find anywhere else. It was a resurgence. There were no websites, and even if there were, Elaine had no idea what we were talking about. (Neither did we, really.) It was all about getting the papers after midnight, reading the papers, someone bringing in the Times front page right after it closed, checking bylines.

And it was all about Elaine Kaufman. Kids, we were not there just because the place was open late. We were there to brag and gossip and make some noise, and make sure Elaine knew how well everyone was going and what was going on. We were there to see her, and you waited — you waited– for her to get up from her chair at one table and saunter over to yours, plop down, and give your group ten, twenty minutes. The best thing was if she told Gianni to bring her some food at your table! Oh, fantastic, Elaine is going to eat with us. Now you know, she thinks we’re smart, she’s going to stay and talk and listen and nod and wave her arm from the elbow like the Pope.

Happy anniversary Elaine. I know you’re with Mr. Steinbrenner. The Yankees lost tonight, I’m sorry. But when the game was going badly. it always meant we were able to leave the Stadium early, drive down and eat dinner with you and watch the last inning on the TV in the bar. And the minute it was over, the tube was shut off, screen black, we’re not watching anything else. “Whaddaya gonna do?” Elaine would say, and a new topic of conversation would swallow the table whole.