Faces In The News Faces In The News: Jan. 25, 2002 ,
Forbes.com,
01.25.02,
12:10 PM ET
Doers and doings in business, entertainment and technology:
Ted Williams: If only he'd been a Yankee...
Boston Red Sox icon Ted Williams was in serious condition after being hospitalized with a high temperature and low blood pressure. According to a story in the Associated Press, the 83-year-old Hall of Famer was taken from his home by ambulance to Shands Hospital at the University of Florida, about 50 miles away. "Dad's doing all right," son John Henry Williams said. "He's got some sort of cold or flu or something. But he's far from dead." Known during his playing days as "The Splendid Splinter," Williams has lived in Florida since retiring from the Red Sox in 1960. The Beantown slugger played his entire 19-year career with Boston and was the last man to bat .400 for a season, hitting .406 in 1941. During that last peacetime year, his easy public manner and thundering bat helped create one of the top 25 seasons of all time; he was often compared to Bronx Bomber counterpart Joe DiMaggio, with whom he had a 1941 hitting-streak duel. "He is in serious but stable condition and is resting comfortably," a Shands spokeswoman said.
Tom Cruise: solitary man.
Tom Cruise and megadirector Steven Spielberg, who have just finished shooting the sci-fi thriller Minority Report, will regroup for the WWII picture Ghost Soldiers. Cruise and a production partner will develop the Hampton Sides bestseller about survivors of the Bataan death march, who endured a harrowing ordeal in a Japanese prison camp for three years until freed by Allied forces. The project would be a co-production between Universal Pictures and Spielberg's powerful DreamWorks Pictures. Not surprisingly--considering current events and Spielberg's Midas touch--similar projects based on the Big One are being developed elsewhere around town. The Great Raid, with TV favorite Law and Order's Benjamin Bratt playing Col. Henry Mucci, is being set up at Miramax Films; also in the works is Columbia Pictures' They Fought Alone, about Col. Wendell Fertig, a G.I. who formed a guerrilla movement in the Philippines with a team of Yanks. Worth noting: Minority Report is based on a story by Philip K. Dick, whose novels have been rich soil for big-ticket flicks; they've metamorphosed into Total Recall, Imposter and Ridley Scott's legendary Blade Runner.
Michael Dell: bullish on broadband?
A group of tech execs headed by Michael Dell, chairman and chief executive of Dell Computer
(nasdaq: DELL - news - people), asked top government officials to help beef up the nation's high-speed Internet infrastructure. The chief executives of Intel
(nasdaq: INTC - news - people), Motorola
(nyse: MOT - news - people) and NCR
(nyse: NCR - news - people) joined the meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and several other government figures, pitching a long-term plan to wire more homes with ultrafast Internet connections. The executives want the feds to help by easing regulations that slow broadband construction efforts, making more wavelength available for wireless Internet systems, and encouraging more research and development efforts. "We believe there is strong commitment at the highest levels of government," said Dell. "This is an attempt to declare a broad national policy that is large and challenging and visionary," said Motorola Chairman and CEO Christopher Galvin. More...
News items can be submitted to Todd Jatras attjatras@forbes.netor by calling him at (212) 366-8939.
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