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Show by Joey Sasso CONFIDENTIAL REPORT: Superstar soap opera heartthrob heart-throb Nick Benedict is being written out of a job but he isn't complaining. On the contrary, the 29-year-old star of ABC-TV's top-rated 'All My Children' is quite happy about the decision. Now he can go back to Hollywood and try to make his mark in the movies and on prime-time TV. "I was told Nancy Franglone, who plays my wife Tara on the show, was leaving," Nick, who plays the lust-for-life cop Phil Brent on TV, told me. "That left the writers with nowhere to go with me in the storyline. I got a letter from our head story writer, Agnes Nixon the show's creator saying they didn't want to replace Nancy or split up Phil and Tara. So, they let me go. They conveniently wrote Phil out of the show by sending him to Washington. Agnes told me they'll never bring anyone else in to play Phil. Eventually they will either kill him off, which will be easy because he's in a dangerous job as an undercover cop, or they'll ask me to return." CELEBRITIES IN CANDID: Dick Clark, America's perpetual teenager, has a dark side that TV viewers have never seen, and probably never will. "I have a short attention span and a violent temper," the 49-year-old Clark told me. "I mean bad! When things go wrong I scream, yell and curse. I hate stupidity. I can't tolerate it in people, especially those I don't expect to get it from. I go berserk. What also bothers me are people who don't work while others are killing themselves. I can't forgive anyone for doing this." . . . Joe Namath's career hasn't gone too well since his TV series flopped so badly. So the good-looking Broadway Joe is switching his efforts from television to the stage. He's touring this summer in the play 'Picnic' (remember the movie with Kim Novak and William Holden?) For this he gets a whopping $40,000 a week paycheck. Not bad . . . The course of true love is not running smoothly for Barbra Streisand and Jon Peters. It seems Jon likes another lady just now and then, mind you and Barbra has given him an ultimatum: "Get rid of her or get out." Wanna bet he gets rid of his other gal? After all, she's just a quiet waitress who lives down the beach from Barbra and Jon at Malibu . . . What's gorgeous Jaclyn Smith really like off camera when she's not shooting ABC-TV's 'Charlie's Angels'? Even more beautiful and more vulnerable, one of her closest confidantes told me. "Jackie, is really breathtaking without her makeup. It's a shame she has to wear it for the cameras." BEHIND THE TUBE: Donna Pescow is a star on ABC-TV's 'Angie,' but to get there she had to start as a singer in bowling alleys. "You've never really lived until you've sung at Gil Hodges' Bowling Alley Lounge on league night," said Donna, 25. "There I came to the realization that there's no way you can sing with everyone arguing about a game." Her big chance came with 'Saturday Night Fever.' "I hadn't intended to go any one way after the film," she said. "I was afraid of TV. Nothing interested me until 'Angie.' :'... Could it be that love really is better the second time around at least that seems to be the case with John Travolta and Marllu Henner. The ex-Kotterite and the 'Taxi' star were apartment mates back in their pre-stardom days in New York. It broke up when John moved to Hollywood. For the past year, though, they've been escorting each other to public events claiming they're just two old friends who enjoy each other's company. But now it's moved beyond that, reveals a source close to John. "Marilu has always been very dear to John," the friend said. "He's happy again now that they are back together. In fact, she is the only girl he is seeing." , |