Actresses Display Blond Ambitions

First it was Madonna, next mega-model Linda Evangelista, then Geena Davis and Julia Roberts showed up Oscar Night with the same look--blond. And not just any blond, but the buttery straight-out-of-the-bottle blond you’d find on a Malibu Barbie. According to her spokesperson, Davis made the plunge well after she wrapped her last film, so the reversal of color was entirely her own choice. Roberts, however, went blond to play Tinkerbell for Steven Spielberg’s film “Hook,” the Peter Pan story, which is just going in front of the cameras here in Los Angeles.

ESTATE SALE: Halston, a favorite designer of Liza Minnelli, Martha Graham and Bianca Jagger, died a year ago at age 57 after an 18-month battle with AIDS. This week, Butterfield & Butterfield held the first of several auctions in San Francisco and Los Angeles, selling items from the designer’s estate. In April, books inscribed by the likes of Andy Warhol and Truman Capote, prints, fine photos and fashion sketches by Halston will be auctioned. A Warhol silk-screen and paper collage of Halston’s mother is expected to fetch at least $20,000. Part of the proceeds will be given to the Halston Fund for AIDS Research at the Medical Research Institute in San Francisco.

FIT FOR THE FAST LANE: Leeza Gibbons, Marsha Mason and Susan Ruttan are the three female celebs scheduled to compete for the checkered flag on April 13 at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. Their track outfits are white, loose-fitting, zipper-front racing suits custom-made by Simpson Safety Equipment, a 24-year-old Torrance-based company. But a couple of the suits may not fit, says Nancy Hubbell, publicist for the event. “Some women, who shall remain nameless, lied about their measurements, and their suits came out way too tight.”

NICK OF TIME: Linda Silver, owner of the Los Angeles-based Roy Grooming Products, a line named for her Hollywood agent husband, reports that she received an emergency call this week from Jack Nicholson’s secretary saying the actor was out of shaving cream and needed a care package sent overnight to a secret Aspen address. Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, Meryl Streep stopped by the Fred Segal Man shop in Santa Monica and picked up shave cream, after-shave and collagen cream for her sculptor husband Donald Gummer, and out in Tarzana, director Sydney Pollack “bought a truckload” of Roy products at the Ron Ross store, Silver says.

CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE: It’s standard practice for a film’s director, screenwriter or producer to receive a credit on screen. But in the new Paul Schrader film “The Comfort of Strangers,” starring Christopher Walken, which opens today, Listen saw, in towering letters, the following solo credit: “Wardrobe Provided by Giorgio Armani.” This may seem like overkill until you see the movie. The wardrobe upstages the actors.

JUST DESSERTS: When her 5-foot-8 frame carries more than 130 pounds, Isabella Rossellini starts to diet, “but only because of my work--I’m not fat at 130,” explains the 38-year-old actress/single mother/model who has been the image of Lancome cosmetics for almost a decade. Although her round face gives the illusion of an equally voluptuous body, Rossellini is a lean and lithe Size 6 or 8 who usually weighs in at 124 pounds. “But I always allow myself a 6-pound spread,” says the daughter of the late actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini. In Los Angeles to promote Lancome’s new rose and lilac fragrance, Tresor, Rossellini drew crowds of more than 300 at Bullock’s Sherman Oaks and Costa Mesa stores.