Bette Helps Toast Jerry Weintraub And His New Book

Vanlty Fair
A Toast to Jerry Weintraub at the Monkey Bar
by Jessica Flint April 7, 2010, 12:48 PM

“I’m going into the big room,” TV host Jimmy Fallon was overheard saying to actor Matthew Broderick last night as the pair left the quaint bar area at the Monkey Bar, in New York City, and headed toward the restaurant’s dining room. But Fallon was likely referring less to square footage and more to star wattage; after all, among the many power players mingling there were broadcast journalist Barbara Walters, singer Bette Midler, CBS bigwig Les Moonves, NBC producer Lorne Michaels, business mogul Tom Freston, hair mogul Frédéric Fekkai, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, CNBC Money Honey Maria Bartiromo, fashion designers Tory Burch and Stacey Bendet, and New York Times columnist Frank Rich.

The roster of East Coast”“West Coast personalities at the Midtown haunt during the pre-dinner hour read like the extensive A-list acknowledgements section in Jerry Weintraub’s new memoir, When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man–no surprise, since the cause for celebration was, in fact, the publication of the 72-year-old Hollywood Ãœber-producer’s new memoir, which he wrote with Vanity Fair contributing editor Rich Cohen. The event was hosted by V.F. editor and Monkey Bar co-owner Graydon Carter and talent agent Bryan Lourd.

After the last of the champagne had been poured and the pigs-in-a-blanket (served on silver platters, naturally) were all eaten, many of the guests, including Weintraub, Lourd, and Carter, dispersed to tables and sat for dinner, treating lucky diners with reservations to a boldface spectacle. “All life was a theater and I wanted to put it up on a stage,” Weintraub writes in the book. “I wanted to set the world under a marquee that read: ”˜Jerry Weintraub Presents.’” And the beat goes on.