But “Inside Edition” may have missed the real story. It’s another relationship, described in the transcripts, that could cause Cisneros real trouble. That is his friendship with Morris Jaffe, a wealthy oil and real-estate entrepreneur with a long history as a source of money and favors for Texas politicians from Lyndon Johnson to Jim Wright. (In 1989 Jaffe came under scrutiny from House investigators for inviting Speaker Wright into an extremely profitable oil-well venture at little risk.) Jaffe, 71, a schoolmate of Cisneros’s mother, was one of his earliest business supporters. Medlar alleges in one call that Cisneros accepted $10,000 in cash from Jaffe while he was mayor, a charge Cisneros strongly denied to Newsweek.
But Cisneros told Newsweek that last year he did turn to Jaffe for at least one favor: he asked if Jaffe could help find Medlar a job so she could support herself. According to Cisneros, Jaffe made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to line up a position. Finally, he made Medlar a loan of an undisclosed amount. Cisneros says he never discussed a loan with Jaffe. According to the transcript of a phone call in the fall of 1993, Cisneros was surprised and delighted. “I don’t need anything, quite frankly, because [Jaffe] sent me a check,” says Medlar. “Jesus,” says Cisneros, who laughed and praised Jaffe as “a savior.” Jaffe, who declined to speak to Newsweek, confirmed through his secretary that he sent “checks” to Medlar at the request of a “friend” and that he expects to be repaid. Cisneros says that Jaffe, despite his considerable land holdings, has done no business with HUD and that there is nothing improper about his attempt to arrange help for Medlar.
Jaffe’s gesture didn’t head off what promises to be a messy lawsuit. Medlar, still jobless and living in Lubbock, told Newsweek that she was not out to destroy him. “I’m not trying to do Henry in. I just want to get my daughter through school,” Medlar says. There is, as yet, no evidence of illegality on Cisneros’s part. But asking a rich and influential friend for help in extricating him from an affair gone sour has given new life to an episode that once nearly derailed his career.
title: “An Affair To Forget” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-23” author: “David Corbin”
How bad could a movie with that east be? Pretty bad. It was muddled, and Bogart was miscast. (Wilder had wanted Cary Grant.) Pollack sticks to the plot, though he turns the Paris sequence into a weird homage to “Funny Face.” Most of the ancient troubles return from the dead. Today, the Larrabees’ black-tie life – the Lear-jet, the clamoring servants, the lawn parties with a swing band – sticks in your throat. But Pollack’s three stars are more problematic. Let’s look at the Bermuda Triangle and see why this cruise ship goes down.
Harrison Ford (Linus) thought too hard about his role. He should have dashed Linus off, playing up his wicked streak and oozing the charm he used in “Working Girl.” But Linus is a grim, ashen man who knows he’s wasted his life. He and Sabrina (Julia Ormond) have zero chemistry – they fall in love during a musical montage, a dead give – away and the message is pat. Make love, not paperwork. Come on, Harrison, you learned this stuff in “Regarding Henry.”
Ormond is a promising actress, but even in a plunging party dress she’s too remote to dazzle the way Sabrina should. She also seems too smart to let herself be jerked around by the Larrabee boys. (Nineties woman and all that.) A lesser actress might have played this Cinderella role better. Paging Sandra Bullock.
Greg Kinnear (David) is terrific. He’s the only pure pleasure in “Sabrina,” apart from great one-liners and snappy minor characters (Nancy Marehand as Mrs. Larrabee, Dana Ivey as Linus’s secretary). Kinnear’s a sweet and funny playboy in a camel-hair coat and tennis shorts. He deepens the cad role so much he hurts the climax: we’re rooting for the wrong guy.
In struggling to make something better than a generic romantic comedy, Pollack has made something worse. “Sabrina” doesn’t have nearly enough light or air. It’s too bad the director cut Sabrina’s French cooking classes, but then he seems to have forgotten how to make a souffle.
