The Ali-Smith Bout

The charismatic Muhammad Ali flirted with the female reporters and bragged about his “pretty face” at the Wednesday night premiere of director Michael Mann’s film on 10 critical years in the fighter’s life. True to Will Smith’s portrayal, Ali told reporters that Smith is good, “but he’s not as pretty as me.”

On the red carpet, Smith described the first time Ali visited him on the set while the actor was still in character.

“I saw him and I just thought, ‘All right, I’m going to let him have it,”’ Smith told reporters. “I just started saying, ‘Who let this bum in my training camp? Get that bum out of my training camp!’” At that, Smith said, Ali turned to a friend and said: “Man! How come you all never told me I was so crazy?”

At the premiere, hundreds of people, including several of Ali’s athlete friends, packed Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Jon Voight gave us a preview of his portrayal of ABC newscaster Howard Cosell, minus the toupee, pot belly and slouch. But Voight worried that Billy Crystal, who also attended the premiere, could outdo him. “Everybody can imitate Howard Cosell,” he said. “I’m just adding my little imitation to the bunch of them.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson made his way to a seat in the second row. Russell Crowe was there with his bodyguard. Eddie Murphy apparently skipped a special viewing of his upcoming movie “Showtime,” to attend the premiere--leaving his co-star Robert De Niro to view their film. At the party in the Hollywood & Highland ballroom, one member of the Hollywood Foreign Press complained that the film--with a running time of well over two hours--was too long to hold her attention until the end. But most others couldn’t stop talking about Smith’s work, a part the actor called “the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

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Out of the Woodwork

Where George Harrison died is still a mystery. The address listed on his death certificate doesn’t seem to exist. However, we got some leads from callers and e-mail writers this week.

Celebrity psychic Kenny Kingston believes that Harrison died in a home on Laurel Canyon in Studio City. He couldn’t give us an address, but gave us directions. “In the middle of the block, up Laurel Canyon on the left,” he told us. “It sits behind gates. It’s a compound.”

Kingston also wanted to pass along assorted information from the other side: Former President Harry Truman wants the world to know that he would have cast his vote for Donald Trump as president. And Greta Garbo insisted at a recent seance that Michelle Pfeiffer portray her in the yet-to-be-made movie about her life.

Another caller, Lawrence Barba, connected us with Pedro Ferre, who claimed that he helped Harrison establish a record label in the ‘70s, and called the musician “one of the most spiritual guys I’ve ever met in my life.” “George always spoke very calmly,” he said. “There was never a rush in his life. He took everything very slowly.”

Asked if he had any ideas where the former Beatle died, Ferre suggested we contact Ringo Starr on the matter.

If someone did indeed throw a smoke screen to conceal Harrison’s place of death, it wouldn’t be the first time that happened in connection with the Beatles.

When Linda McCartney died in 1998 after battling cancer, a McCartney family spokesman told the press she died in Santa Barbara. When no death certificate was filed with the coroner’s office, local authorities began an investigation. It turned out McCartney had died in Arizona.

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Mating Game

Tom Wolfe weighs in on the dating game in a New York Observer essay this week. In the piece, he also writes about how New York was changing well before the terrorist attacks.

“At least three years before 9-11, the mating game in New York got turned on its head.... By this past summer, the ratio of girls to boys in Manhattan was so girl-heavy ... that boys no longer even bothered expending the time and energy required to chat girls up in bars. They just handed every likely lovely their business card and waited for the calls, which they got with an almost lust-busting inevitability,” writes Wolfe. “The changes to look for next? It’s hard not to see them coming. The girls will either read ‘The Rules,’ which say that girls must never ring up boys, or else move to Boston and Cambridge, where, for some reason, when Cupid strikes, the targets stay struck and get married.”

We can’t wait for him to dissect the L.A. singles scene.