C2 Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger


THISJUSTIN. . . l AnN.Y.C. weather forecaster occasionally seen on “GoodMorning America” was suspended from her job and chargedWednesday with filing a false police report. Heidi Jones of WABC-TV told police last month that a man tried to rape her as she ran in Central Park in October, then showed up again at her home a fewdays before she filed the report. Police said Jones later confessed she made up the story in a bid for sympathy, theNewYork DailyNews reported.Her lawyer told the Associated Press that she would plead not guilty. l DMX, the rapper now better known for his rap sheet, has been sent to prison for one year for violating probation by driving on a suspended license and failing to submit to drug tests, reports AP.


EZ SU


KLMNO THE RELIABLE SOURCE MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST WilliamKennedy Smith is engaged. VIA THE NATIONALS BASEBALL CLUB


Owen Wilson plays a pitcher in “How Do You Know.”He lives inD.C., has a 94-mph fastball and plays for a Nats team that wins. So really, it’s as much a baseball movie as “Casablanca” is a movie about restaurants.


Three strikes T MCMULLAN CO/SIPA VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS


NewYork weather forecasterHeidi Jones filed a false police report.


HEY, ISN’T THAT...?


l JaysonWerth celebrating at J&G Steakhouse onWednesday night. The new$126 millionWashingtonNationals slugger (handsome, casually dressed) was introduced by the teamWednesday; his party of four toasted with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne at a late dinner. l Bobby Flay making theD.C. restaurant roundsWednesday. The celebrity chef had lunch (green chili chicken) at the Bombay Club with CNN’s Ed Henry, then shared cocktails and oysters with his actress wife at J&G Steakhouse’s downstairs wine bar that night.


he cast and crew of the movie “How Do You Know” spent the better part of a


month filming in D.C. last year — and it shows. Our critic colleague Ann Hornaday declares (see Page A1) that director James L. Brooks truly getsWashington. But does he get baseball? For


that, we asked a baseball writer. “How Do You Know,” after all,


is the firstmajormotion picture to feature yourWashington Nationals in a big way, starring OwenWilson as a Nats pitcher. The organization welcomed the attention, granting Brooks permission to filmat the ballpark and use the teamlogo. On Wednesday night, front-office brass hosted a screening and cocktail reception at E Street Cinema to benefit the team’s charitable foundation — and we sent The Post’sWashington Nationals beat reporter, Adam


Kilgore, to check it out. He proved to be a tough critic. Here are his notes: l Themovie’s firstmention of


the Nationals comes during an ESPN “SportsCenter” highlight of a Nats victory, reports Kilgore, “which lets the viewer know it’s a work of fiction.” l The onemain shot of


Nationals Park, however, shows it to be empty, “which leads the viewer to believe thismight not be fiction.” l As forWilson as “Matty


Reynolds,” we’re told he “throws 94 andmakes $14 million.” Notes Kilgore: “Only one reliever in baseball history — New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera — has earned $14 million in one season, and that came 13 years into a career that established himas the best closer the game has known. Rivera achieved his status with a wicked, unrivaled


cutter, not some 94-mph heater.” Oh, andWilson “looks less like a ballplayer than a kid dressed up as one for Halloween.” l Also,Matty lives “in a


preposterously nice apartment on 15th and I,” whereas real-life Nats live in Northern Virginia, Kilgore says. Nats relief pitcher Drew


Storen, who caught themovie at its L.A. premiere, agreed with our colleague that the flick was “full of exaggerated baseball stereotypes.” (So the bit about Matty stockpiling pink Nationals sweat suits with his name and number to hand out to his conquests — not true to life?) Kilgore says he found some


laughs in it, but that it’s just not a baseballmovie. “ ‘How Do You Know’ is about baseball,” he says, “like ‘Casablanca’ is about restaurants.”


LOVE,ETC. l Engaged:William Kennedy Smith and Anne Henry, who are planning an April wedding, we’ve learned. Smith, 50, is the son of Jean Kennedy Smith (the last surviving sibling of JFK, RFK and Ted), a Georgetown-trained doctor specializing in prosthetics and amputee care. At the center of a headline- grabbing 1991 rape case, Smith was acquitted in that matter.He’s spent much of his career in Chicago (where five years ago, he was hit with harassment claims from two employees at a philanthropic foundation he started; one dismissed and one settled) but appears to have recently moved his medical-technology firm toD.C.Henry, who has worked as an arts fundraiser, was the attractive early-30s brunette on his arm at the Kennedy CenterHonors this month. Smith did not return calls.


whole life about.”


“I’m at that age I’ve been warned my


—Winona Ryder, 39, to GQ, on playing a washed-up ballerina to Natalie Portman’s ingenue in “Black Swan.” (Unrelated: She says that Mel Gibson told her homophobic and anti-Semitic jokes—a crack about “oven dodgers”—15 years ago, but “no one believed me!”)


G O T A T I P ? E - M A I L U S A T R E L I A B L E S O U R C E@WA S H P O S T . C O M . F O R T H E L A T E S T S C O O P S , V I S I T WA S H I N G T O N P O S T . C O M / R E L I A B L E S O U R C E BOOKWORLD A marital alliance that proved most formidable


‘Franklin and Eleanor’ is history that reads


like a wonderful novel BY CAROLYN SEE


Here’s some old-time Republi-


canhumor:Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt are sitting in theWhite House living room during World War II. “Do you notice anything different about me, dear?” Elea- nor asks. “No, dear, I don’t,” Franklin answers. “What can it be?” “I’m wearing my gas mask,” Eleanor responds. Ha, ha, ha. Women all over America – if


they were a certain type – could take comfort in the fact that even if they were poor, uneducated and stupid, therewas one person more homely than they were. Eleanor was the proverbial mud fence, and because she believed in good causes, social justice and the essential humanity of Ne- groes, she also got to be the national pill. Put another way, in their 40-year marriage, Franklin Roosevelt was the hipster, Elea- nor the square. They were both of New York


aristocracy, of Dutch heritage. They were fifth cousins, once removed. Eleanor’s unclewas the beloved president Theodore Roosevelt. They were rich, and had — theoretically — every ad- vantage. Franklin, in fact, did. His father was an invalid, but his mother, who was immensely wealthy,made Franklin the apple of her eye. He was handsome,


sunny-tempered, perhaps a little slick. Things were different for Eleanor. Her mother, a great beauty, was disappointed in her girl’s looks; her father was a classic sociopathic charmer — extremely kind and solicitous when it occurred to him, absent the rest of the time. Once “her father asked her to wait for him in the lobby of theKnickerbocker Club, and shewaited, holding his three fox-terriers on their leash- es, until six hours later the door- man sent her home in a carriage.” Plainly speaking, she was never loved. Then, when she was


ASSOCIATED PRESS


WINNERS: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt with a congratulatory telegramon his 1932 presidential election victory.


DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau


a young woman fresh from boarding school and Roosevelt was still an undergraduate at Harvard, the pair rec- ognized each other on a tram. One of Franklin’s relatives had justmade a scandalous and sor- did marriage, and per- haps it was this that convinced Franklin she would be goodwifema- terial. There was a courtship, the young couple married, and Uncle Teddy came to the wedding and stole the show: “My father,” Alice Roosevelt Longworth wrote, “lived up to his reputation of being the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral and hogged the limelight un- ashamedly.” Afterward, they went to live inNewYork City in a home that opened directly on Eleanor’s mother-in-law’s home.


Sara Delano Roosevelt proved to be a classic gorgon, holding on to the purse strings, criticizing her daughter-in-law at every turn. Eleanor gave birth to six chil- dren; five survived. If I’ve spent a long time on the


early stages of the Roosevelt marriage, so does Hazel Rowley, the author of this enticing new biography. Her research, both meticulous and extensive, does not bloat the book into a door- stop. “Franklin and Eleanor” is less about history than about relationships, and it reads like a wonderful novel at times, giving us a vision of what parts of American life were like then.Nomatter howrich you were, life was hard. Illness bedeviled Elea-


FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR An Extraordinary Marriage By Hazel Rowley Farrar Straus Giroux. 345 pp. $27


nor and Franklin. They managed to have ty- phoid fever at the same time. When she discov- ered Lucy Mercer’s love letters, he was down with double pneumonia. That mother-in-law nev- er stopped interfering. But—the author implic- itly suggests — it was all this, along with Frank- lin’s natural ebullience


and Eleanor’s implacable desire to do good, that gave them the strength to cope with Franklin’s polio (described here in appall- ing detail), to survive election after election after election. (His mother opposed his political ca- reer with all hermight.) Their personal lives turned radical and subversive. After his


CUL DE SAC by Richard Thompson


affair with Mercer, Franklin had a series of adoring females around him, and for the most part Eleanor never objected. She herself had some form of ro- mance with her bodyguard- chauffeur; he was a handsome chap and plainly devoted. And just about the time of her hus- band’s first presidential inaugu- ration, she embarked on a pas- sionate affair with Lorena Hick- ok, at that time the foremost femalenewspaper reporter inthe land. A blend of characteristics —


Franklin’s flamboyant confi- dence, Eleanor’s passion for so- cial justice — generated the ex- ceptional energy it took for the pair to change the world. Their ability, so well captured in these pages, to gather friends and fol- lowers into a coherent and pow- erful community and their will- ingness to exchange affection until the very end remain awe- some. This is much more than a book about politics. bookworld@washpost.com


See reviews books every Friday for The Post.


Sunday in Outlook


l The incomparable life and voice of Frank Sinatra. l The killing fields of Hitler and Stalin. l Leslie Marmon Silko’s newmemoir. l The history-making friendship of Madison and Jefferson. l And the gradual path to creative breakthroughs.


FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2010


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