Dishing And Taking

When it comes to star gazing, no one does it better than Liz Smith, a celebrity among celebrities.

"You know, I've known most of these people either well or slightly. And I think they're pretty terrific. I, even I had good experiences with Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, who were, you know, talk about divas. They were divas," Smith says.

Smith serves up all kinds of spicy gossip. No one has been dishing longer than she has: more than 50 years, reports CBS Sunday Morning contributor Dan Rather.

"I was introduced to Sean Penn by a very famous Hollywood agent. He said, 'Sean, I'd like you to meet Liz Smith.' And Sean Penn looked at me, turned, ran down the hall and went -- left the building," Smith recalls.

Of course, most celebrities run to Smith, not away from her, simply because she's usually so nice to them.

As she sees it, Martin Sheen is "one of the most loved and respected actors in America."

Liza Minelli is "an inspiring tornado of energy, optimism and showbiz pizzazz." And -- full disclosure here -- she's also been nice in print to this reporter.

Yet, despite her propensity for niceties, Smith admits, "I made a lot of enemies anyway."

True enough. Smith dared to tell Ivana Trump's side against "The Donald's" in his first divorce.

"I had Donald Trump saying he was going to buy the New York Daily News in order to fire me," Smith recalls. "I mean I've made some remarkable enemies. Sean Connery, who told me he would like to stick this column up where the sun don't shine. And I've never seen him again.

"I don't make little enemies. They're always biggies."

The biggest of all: Frank Sinatra.

At the suggestion that Sinatra hated Smith, the columnist agreed.

"I got tired of seeing him picking on women so, I just got fed up, and I started saying he's a bully," Smith says. "He's always attacking women. I remember he said I was 'fat, old, ugly and a dyke.' Well, I'm no fatter, older, uglier, or dykier than he is.

"I mean he did this over and over again," Smith says. "He, he helped make me famous."

Smith says she started out hoping to turn her journalism degree from the University of Texas into a Pultizer Prize. But, she also dreamed of the glamorous life in New York.

"I thought Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were here dancing on black glass floors. And I thought everything was here. My idol, Walter Winchell was here," Smith says.

Smith's idol is credited for inventing celebrity journalism. But, unlike Smith, he spent as much time breaking careers as making them.

"He was powerful in a not particularly admirable way in the end, you know. One person went to his funeral. But, he had the ear of the President. And President Roosevelt leaked information to him to help influence Americans to go into WWII," Smith reports.

And J. Edgar Hoover used him as well.

"So, here you had these two faucets of information and gossip power. No wonder he became powerful. There's never been anything like him again. And, you know, he would have 1,000-1,500 newspapers. I'm lucky if I've got 70 today," Smith says of Winchell.

Smith grew up in Texas, a horse-loving tomboy.

She arrived in the Big Apple in 1949. For the next decade she paid her dues.

"I got a job as ghost-writing on an old society column called "Cholly Knickerbocker," which was the last gasp of café society in New York.

In 1976, Smith got a gossip column of her own at the New York Daily News.

Three decades later, at age 83, she's still at it -- six columns a week -- in the New York Post and 70 other newspapers. She's said to have made as much as $1 million a year, right up there with some of the celebrities she writes about.

In her time, Smith says the gossip business has become "watered down."

"There are too many people doing it," Smith says. "And now they do it on the Internet. And bloggers do it. And the bloggers don't have to be responsible. They can tell, say anything they want. They aren't substantiated for the most part. So I'm afraid to read them and believe I know something. And then I'll reiterate it maybe down the line and forgotten where I got it."

But she couldn't blame the bloggers when, five years ago, her own life became the stuff of gossip. In her memoir "Natural Blonde," Smith wrote not only about her two divorces, but also that her love life had included women as well as men.

Yet Smith has no regrets about revealing secrets of her romantic life, but says the book did have consequences.

"Because it involved sex, of course, it was the thing people seized on," Smith says, adding, "I think I paid a price for waiting so long. I mean it's not good to have secrets."

And yet, Smith says she's willing to keep other people's secrets.

"I would be reluctant to print husbands and wives being unfaithful to each other. It just seems as I got older, I didn't want to be the one to tell," Smith admits. "I don't like those stories about people misbehaving in bathrooms and doing vulgar things. I could just pass over that. Let somebody else do it."

Perhaps that's why in her recent book "Dishing," Smith's juiciest tidbits center on food. In it, she literally "dishes out" a lifetime of stories about celebrities and food, complete with recipes as proof.

"I liked it better than writing my memoir. In "Dishing" I didn't have to deal with my disappearing sex life," Smith quips.

Though Smith admits she is no master in the kitchen.

"I really can't cook. And I have a hard time following recipes. And it never turns out the way I like. But I sure like food. And I've eaten low on the hog and high on the hog," she says.

But more than that, says Smith, is how much you can learn about celebrities when the conversation turns to food.

For instance, how Georgia-born Julia Roberts craves biscuits and gravy. Or how Renée Zellweger wants everyone else to bulk up when she has to gain a few pounds for a role.

"I don't think Renée eats except for roles to make herself fat like when she played Bridget Jones. And then three week later she's slim as a snake," Smith says. "She always sent to me these fattening cookies. We don't get them all eaten when she sends another batch.

Then, there's Nicole Kidman.

"When I have had dinner with Nicole she eats everything on the table," Smith reports. Recalling their first dinner, Smith says of Kidman, "She ate