Hilton said to secretly resent success of her protege, Kim Kardashian
WITH BILL ZWECKER December 22, 2010 7:36PM
Updated: September 24, 2012 6:25AM
While the official word from Paris Hilton’s camp denies she has anything but admiration for former BFF Kim Kardashian’s meteoric rise into the popular culture stratosphere, I’m hearing the hotel heiress is envious of her pal’s amazing financial success.
“It was Paris who really showed Kim the ropes,” said a longtime observer and acquaintance of both women. “Thanks to Paris, Kim learned how to work a red carpet, develop a reality TV show and — most important — turn herself and her entire family into a major marketing brand, now worth millions.”
According to the source, Hilton is somewhat irked that Kardashian is paid far more than she is for special appearances and overall makes more now from her various endorsement deals and the Kardashians’ multiple reality shows.
† Meanwhile, Hilton continues to work on the reality series she is hoping to launch with Charlie Sheen’s estranged wife, Brooke Mueller.
OH, BABY! Congrats to part-time Chicagoan and Lookingglass Theatre co-founder David Schwimmer and his new wife, Zoe Buckman. The ex-“Friends” star and his bride confirmed to EW.com they are expecting their first child.
Schwimmer, 44, met his 26-year-old photographer wife in her native Britain while he was directing “Run Fatboy Run” in 2007. They quietly married last June but didn’t confirm that until this fall.
Schwimmer’s latest directorial effort, “Trust,” a film about a teen targeted by an online sexual predator, starring Clive Owen and Catherine Keener, is set for release in April.
† Since this column broke the news of the birth of Ali Larter and Hayes MacArthur’s baby boy, the couple decided on a name: Theodore Hayes MacArthur, happily not bowing to that frequent Hollywood trend of giving kids unique — but often bizarre — monikers.
FACING UP: While the noted Hollywood plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Ryan was still alive, reality TV phenom Heidi Montag raved about what a great job he did for her.
Now that he’s dead — tragically killed in a car crash in Malibu, Calif., earlier this year — Montag is dissing Ryan big time. In a Life & Style cover story, she blames Ryan for scarring and lays other surgery mishaps at his door.
Friends of Ryan — noting the dead can’t sue for libel or slander — are furious with Montag, believing this is yet another example of her lame attempts to keep her name in the news.
BOOK IT: Fans of Spike Lee will want to know the filmmaker will be in Our Town on Christmas Eve for a 4 to 6 p.m. book signing at Barbara’s Bookstore at the University of Illinois-Chicago, 1218 S. Halsted.
The N’Digo-sponsored event is for Do The Right Thing, an insider’s look at Lee’s iconic film of the same name. A groundbreaking event when it was released, the movie garnered an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay in 1989.
LOHAN LATEST: Now that Betty Ford Clinic staffer Dawn Holland has been fired for openly talking to the TMZ gossip site, I’m hearing Holland is talking to several major lawyers about bringing suit against Lindsay Lohan (with whom she tangled) and the famed rehab facility itself.
Lohan — now caught between yet another public spat with her parents, Dina and Michael Lohan — continues to say she is innocent and that Holland started it all.
SEEN ON THE SCENE: Oscar winner and Chicago native Jennifer Hudson, who recently relocated back home, was seen dining with husband David Otunga at David Burke’s Primehouse at the James Hotel. The Weight Watchers spokeswoman mostly ate healthy — roasted chicken, garlic spinach and asparagus — but did give in to the holiday spirit to sample a bit of Primehouse’s signature dessert, a cheesecake lollipop.
FITTING HONOR: Tim Russert, the late moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” will be honored posthumously with the Lincoln Leadership Prize by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation — right here in the “Land of Lincoln” — at a Four Seasons Hotel benefit dinner Feb. 10, just two days before the 202nd anniversary of our 16th president’s birth.
Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw will present the prestigious honor to Russert’s widow, noted author Maureen Orth, and the couple’s son, Luke Russert, a congressional correspondent for NBC News.
Bill Zwecker reports regularly on “Good Day Chicago” and “Fox Chicago News at 9” on WFLD-Channel 32.
