Monday, Mar. 11, 1996

BELINDA LUSCOMBE

SECRETS OF PERPETUAL YOUTH

Don't fret if you don't recognize all of the gentlemen photographed by Annie Leibovitz above. According to Vanity Fair, you will. Of all the young males walking around movie sets, the magazine thinks TIM ROTH, LEONARDO DICAPRIO, MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, BENICIO DEL TORO, MICHAEL RAPAPORT, STEPHEN DORFF, JOHNATHON SCHAECH, DAVID ARQUETTE, WILL SMITH and SKEET ULRICH will become the hot male stars of next year or so. Either that or these are the ones with the best publicists. And in case tomorrow's men aren't as interesting to you as yesterday's boys, photographer Herb Ritts gives JACKIE COOPER and MICKEY ROONEY the old second-childhood makeover. "That photo should have been the cover," says Rooney, who at 75 is working and eager for more. "When you're working, you're a child." Well, anyone can see that.

SEEN & HEARD

For Tammy Faye Messner, it seems, TV isn't the same if you don't ask for money. After six weeks on a regular show, God's gift to the mascara industry has quit. The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show, airing in almost half the country, proved to be too much for the former wife of disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, especially while husband Roe Messner faces fraud charges.

Kurt Cobain is gone, but nobody is forgetting him. Cobain posthumously won his only Grammy last week, when Nirvana's last album, MTV Unplugged in New York, won for Best Alternative Music. Covers of Cobain's songs by other artists are also beginning to surface. The latest: a recording of All Apologies by jazz great Herbie Hancock.

IT'S BRUCE WAYNE JR.

What does a man who has a flourishing career, untold millions and one of the world's most lusted-after fiances need? How about the Batmobile? Illusionist DAVID COPPERFIELD bought the vehicle anonymously at auction for $189,599. So eager was Claudia Schiffer's betrothed to purchase the hot wheels from 1989's Batman that he paused during a show in Raleigh, North Carolina, and bid from the stage. Why? Surely not because of its alleged female-magnetic properties. "I live in a bat cave right now," says Copperfield, whose taste runs to the gothic. "So I might as well have a Batmobile." Plus, it may well go unnoticed in the town that loves him best, Las Vegas.

CASTING THE FIRST STONE

In the 1955 French classic Diabolique, a man's spouse and lover hatch an elaborate plot to murder him. Now two women may kill the remake of that film, due out in the U.S. this month. Ines Clouzot, the eccentric widow of the film's original director, Henri-Georges Clouzot, is threatening to block the movie's release, claiming she never sold remake rights. "I first learned about the project from reading a newspaper at my hairdresser's," says Clouzot. "I can't let a pirate film come out." Production company Morgan Creek insists it bought all rights, but one of the movie's stars, SHARON STONE, has sided with Clouzot. (Stone had her own fights with the producers over whether she was contractually obliged to do a nude scene.) "I'm ashamed to be involved in a production that apparently acted improperly," she said on French TV. Vive la difference legale.