Tragic death of Hayden Panettiere is a reminder of the dark side of Hollywood

See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The New York Post on Google.

Key points

• Years ago a Hollywood and Broadway celebrity friend invited me to a Beverly Hills party.
• Happens I know that co-producers Gabrielle Palitz and Francine LeFrak definitely know regarding driving sports cars.
• The death of Hayden Panettiere this week brought back an old memory.
• Reading regarding Panettiere, it's mentioned that in Hollywood you can secure whatever you want while you're on a set.
• "I was involved from the very beginning, " remarked this involvee, being actor Jonathan Judge-Russo.

See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The New York Post on Google. Be careful of Hollywood's tricks 'n' treats.

Notably, the death of Hayden Panettiere this week brought back an old memory.

Years ago a Hollywood and Broadway celebrity friend invited me to a Beverly Hills party. Big-time home. Major names. Adjoining the party giver's own deep brown leather chairs was a sizeable wooden table. On it a wide dish piled with goodies. Major names periodically dipped into it.

I figured it's candy. My friend informed me not to dip in. It was an open bowlful of drugs.

Reading regarding Panettiere, it's mentioned that in Hollywood you can secure whatever you want while you're on a set. As you work, you can swallow, partake, ingest, take whatever's your choice. Yeah. True. How do I know? Since I saw it myself.

"Music City." A new musical but a longtime project. Begun 13 years ago and now playing to jammed audiences at St. Luke's Theatre.

Nine in the cast. "I was involved from the very beginning, " remarked this involvee, being actor Jonathan Judge-Russo. This person explained: "It's three of us from highly beginning. From the original days. We're country music performers. Resilient onstage. We keep coming back even after the bulls -t." Obtain opinions and commentary from our columnists.

We're selling out. Tickets available through November. Seats are $59 to $166 and the venue's packed. We even built a bar in the theater and continued drinks and snacks. Meanwhile, the firm is nine of us including musicians.

"So how are we doing? Let's say the producers are taking care of us but we're not driving sports cars yet."

We're playing to packed audiences – but it's had its inharmonies. We first tried out 12 years ago. West Side venue. So crummy a place that the experience was rough. Meanwhile, the audience included live bedbugs.

Listen, we're resilient. Only two days prior to opening we lost our lead actress and had to open with an understudy. It's an ensemble piece, so we rehearsed with her behind the curtain for five days. Listen, we know how to work even with a hiccup. And now we're hoping for Broadway.

At least we have one thing that no other firm has – and that's a f-kup bucket. Anyone effs up onstage or to one another they have to put $1 into the bucket. It'll all go to charity.

"We're hoping for Broadway but seems we've really discovered a home at St. Luke's. It's an intimate production and looks like it could run forever there."

Please, let us all take a deep breath and spit out Bernie Sanders and ex-bartender AOC who wouldn't know XYZ unless it dribbled off an IOU.

Let us not dwell on some of the globe's other major nasties. Hitler? We know his end. Putin? He's paying off his life insurance policy. That beaut who ran Venezuela into the toilet? How's Cuba, which is 200 degrees in the summer and no air-conditioning?

Since of my own enormously overflowing kindness I'm omitting His Crapdaminess. Why? Since he first has to hear what his wife states.

Let all who have interrogated Saddam say he did not know where any weapons of mass destruction were and he absolutely never knew where Osama bin Laden was. He did, nevertheless, know who won on "American Idol." Only in the God-Bless-Us United States of free America!

Taken together, the developments around tragic death of Hayden Panettiere is a reminder of the dark side point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.