Anderson brings on mom -- what's left?

September 19, 2011 at 6:12PM
On his new talk show, Anderson Cooper has gotten personal very quickly, except about his love life.
On his new talk show, Anderson Cooper has gotten personal very quickly, except about his love life. (Warner Brothers via New York Times/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

"Anderson," a new syndicated daytime talk show, has been on only a week, and viewers already know more about Anderson Cooper than they've learned in the decade he has spent as a CNN anchor and correspondent.

Cooper is opening up about everything, almost.

On Monday he plans to show an interview with his famous mother, the exquisitely preserved Gloria Vanderbilt, 87. In it, they go over her tragedy-filled youth, and his. Cooper chokes up as they discuss his brother's suicide in 1988. He and his mother hold hands while a family friend, Judy Collins, takes the stage to sing "Amazing Grace."

In past shows, Cooper got a spray tan with Snooki of "Jersey Shore," mugged side by side with his wax likeness from Madame Tussauds, and compared childhoods with Sarah Jessica Parker. (When he was 11 his mother took him to Studio 54 -- with Michael Jackson.)

He invited comedian Kathy Griffin and a camera crew for a weekend at his summer house in the Hamptons. He and his high-maintenance guest romped in his bed and poolside; she complained that he didn't have servants.

The one thing he hasn't done yet -- and the lacuna grows more obvious and awkward with each show -- is talk about his love life. It's hard to see how he can continue to leave that out selectively and preserve one particular zone of privacy while building a confessional talk show wrapped around his good looks, high spirits and glamorous adventures.

Help is available if you ask, says LovatoSinger Demi Lovato thanked her fans at a concert for supporting her after she entered rehab last year and encouraged young girls to seek help if they are dealing with similar problems. "A year ago today ... I was not in a good place," the 19-year-old said at her concert Saturday night at New York's Hammerstein ballroom. "I needed help, and I want anybody in this audience to know that if you're struggling with one of the issues that I dealt with or a different issue, that you can get help, that you can recover and it's possible if you just tell someone." Lovato spent three months in rehab for "emotional and physical issues." She said as an 8-year-old who faced bullying she had an eating disorder and later started cutting her wrists.

PIPPA'S WEDDING ALBUM

It was her fifth wedding this year, so maybe Pippa Middleton should be given some slack. At Saturday's wedding of college friend Humphrey Bowles to Hattie Dawson in rustic Lythe, England, Middleton -- the fashion-foward sister of Kate Middleton -- wore a green dress made of clingy silk, along with strappy high heels. Several reports remarked on the color (unlucky at weddings) and styles out of step with a country wedding.

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