Jimmy Fallon

There were no surprises at 30 Rock today as NBC announced the new host of Late Night when current host Conan O'Brien decamps to 11:30 PM sometime in 2009. As far back as February 2007, Bill Carter, The New York Times' veteran TV reporter and de facto historian of late night, had been reporting that Saturday Night Live alum Jimmy Fallon would be tapped to host the show. As reporters and film crews assembled on the 67th floor to take their lucite seats in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows dramatically framing a rainy, overcast day, Fallon's name was openly bandied about.  read more »

It's official! On May 12, NBC will finally officially announce that Saturday Night Live's Jimmy Fallon will take over next year for Conan O'Brien, who will dethrone Jay Leno on the Tonight Show gig. "Jimmy's a smart pick," one network executive told Entertainment Weekly. ''He's a young, cute guy that will draw women in.'' Um, we don't think women are all that into a giggly dude who lives in a kind of perpetual post-college adolescence, but maybe that's just us. And what about Jay?  read more »

Rumor has it that fashion label, Heatherette, is no more as Richie Rich may start his own line or move out to Los Angeles (gasp!) to pursue music and television projects. [N.Y. Daily News]

For John Varvatos, the real challenge of opening a store in the CBGB space was not crossing picket lines but getting the stench of punk out of the space.  read more »

It seems that most urban sophisticates these days, from politicians and celebrities to coworkers, have a profile on Facebook, the social networking Web site. The C.I.A., I.R.S., Time Inc., even MySpace, Facebook’s ostensible competition, have job networks there. To the site’s enthusiasts—and there are many; the site has 60 million users so far, with 200 million projected by the end of the year—there is no reason not to partake.  read more »

In Sunday's New York Times, Willie Neumann is reporting that Saturday Night Live comic Jimmy Fallon is marketing two apartments at 34 Gramercy Park. (Personal information alert: It caught my eye especially because one of us lived briefly in the building in the 1990's and because it's my favorite building on the park.) Here's the listing.

He bought the first of the two apartments in the terra-cotta-brick building--it's the one on the southeast corner facing the park--in 2002 for $850,000. When his neighbor died, he bought the next-door apartment,a three-bedroom, for $1.5 million. But he never carried out plans to combine the two and now the two are selling together for $3.75 million, Neumann reports in Sunday's Big Deal column.

That latter one, the three-bedroom, is well known to us, and stretches across the back of the building, facing Third Avenue. It's enormous.

The smaller one is in the front but doesn't have much space.

Also: Margaret ("I'm melting!") Hamilton once lived in the building.

Also in Big Deal:  read more »

THE actress Angela Lansbury has signed a contract to buy a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony at the Windsor Park, a former hotel being converted into condos with interiors designed by the architect Charles Gwathmey. Ms. Lansbury agreed to pay close to $2 million for the apartment, which is at 58th Street and Avenue of the Americas.

- Tom McGeveran

Dear Hilly,    read more »

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Toward the end of her big night as both the host and musical guest of the Feb.  read more »