Tragic death of Hayden Panettiere is a reminder of the dark side of Hollywood

Be careful of Hollywood’s tricks ’n’ treats

The death of Hayden Panettiere this week brought back an old memory.

Years ago a Hollywood and Broadway celebrity friend invited me to a Beverly Hills party. Big-time home. Major names. Adjoining the party giver’s own deep brown leather chairs was a large wooden table. On it a wide dish piled with goodies. Major names periodically dipped into it.

I figured it’s candy. My friend told me not to dip in. It was an open bowlful of drugs.

Reading about Panettiere, it’s mentioned that in Hollywood you can get whatever you want while you’re on a set. As you work, you can swallow, partake, ingest, take whatever’s your choice.

Yeah. True. How do I know? Because I saw it myself.

‘Music’ finds its rhythm

“Music City.” A new musical but a longtime project. Begun 13 years ago and now playing to jammed audiences at St. Luke’s Theatre.

Nine in the cast. “I was involved from the very beginning,” said this involvee, being actor Jonathan Judge-Russo, who explained: “It’s three of us from very beginning. From the original days. We’re country music performers. Resilient onstage. We keep coming back even after the bulls —t.”

Is it doing well?

“We’re selling out. Tickets available through November. Seats are $59 to $166 and the venue’s packed. We even built a bar in the theater and added drinks and snacks. The company is nine of us including musicians.

“So how are we doing? Let’s say the producers are taking care of us but we’re not driving sports cars yet.”

Happens I know that co-producers Gabrielle Palitz and Francine LeFrak definitely know about driving sports cars.

“We’re playing to packed audiences — but it’s had its inharmonies. We first tried out 12 years ago. West Side venue. So crummy a place that the experience was rough. The audience included live bedbugs.

“Listen, we’re resilient. Only two days prior to opening we lost our lead actress and had to open with an understudy. It’s an ensemble piece, so we rehearsed with her behind the curtain for five days. Listen, we know how to work even with a hiccup. And now we’re hoping for Broadway.

“At least we have one thing that no other company has — and that’s a f—kup bucket. Anyone effs up onstage or to one another they have to put $1 into the bucket. It’ll all go to charity.

“We’re hoping for Broadway but seems we’ve really found a home at St. Luke’s. It’s an intimate production and looks like it could run forever there.”

Ungoverned

Please, let us all take a deep breath and spit out Bernie Sanders and ex-bartender AOC who wouldn’t know XYZ unless it dribbled off an IOU.

Let us not dwell on some of the globe’s other big nasties. Hitler? We know his end. Putin? He’s paying off his life insurance policy. That beaut who ran Venezuela into the toilet? How’s Cuba, which is 200 degrees in the summer and no air-conditioning?

Because of my own enormously overflowing kindness I’m omitting His Crapdaminess. Why? Because he first has to hear what his wife says.

Let all who have interrogated Saddam say he did not know where any weapons of mass destruction were and he absolutely never knew where Osama bin Laden was. He did, however, know who won on “American Idol.”

Only in the God-Bless-Us United States of free America!