Mary Hart: Still cheerful after all these years...
Mary Hart is such a sunny presence on television that it was wise of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to have her be among those reading Golden Globe Award winners on Sunday at an otherwise dull press conference that replaced the usually glitzy affair.
As a co-host of "Entertainment Tonight" for more than 25 years, Mary hasn't lost any enthusiasm for the job.
"Even on those days when I get up kind of on the wrong side of the bed, I am so fortunate," she told me recently. "I put a lot of energy into what I do. If I woke up one morning, or on a series of mornings and said, `This is just not what I want to do anymore,' I'd probably do something about that. But I still love it, there are so many great stories, great people in the business."
When she started out on the show, there were only three television networks and the Internet boom had not yet begun. I wondered how much the advances in technology have affected what Mary does.
"What I see is the pressure on our staff to cover the news 24/7," she said. "Things break overnight that we have to be covering - they always did - but not to the extent that it is now. You are chasing down real stories and unreal stories so you have to be real careful to weed out and find out what's true. ...
"It's a little tougher when the news is bad, or sad," she admitted. "There are a lot of troubled people. But you know, by and large, it's a great job."
Greg Hernandez craves a daily fix of celebrity news the way some
people need their daily cup of joe. He's made it his mission to show
up to as many Tinseltown events as he's allowed into, to talk to any
famous faces that don't run from him, and to give readers several
daily shots of the day's breaking news.