GIFTED AND TALENTED The best Girl Scout cookie salesgirl in the world is probably 8-year-old Tallulah Belle Willis, who sold 12,000 boxes of cookies to her dad, Bruce Willis. He's not eating them all himself, though. In fact, he's donating all $36,000 worth of cookies to U.S. troops stationed in and near Afghanistan. There were so many cookies involved that the Scouts had to reopen a bakery (cookie season having already ended) and get special permission from the Defense Department to make the shipment. Tallulah's troop will donate the mint she earned to animal shelters....
DreamWorks had lucrative year, thanks in no small part to a certain green ogre, so what is studio cofounder David Geffen doing with his ''Shrek''-tacular take? He's donating $200 million to UCLA's medical school, the largest single donation ever given to an American medical school. Geffen has given seven-figure donations to AIDS charities in the past, but certainly nothing on this scale. He's also given to UCLA before; a $5 million gift to the school's theater led to the renaming of what is now the Geffen Playhouse. The med school will be renamed the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and will be free to use the money as it sees fit. As a bonus, the donation allows Geffen to one-up struggling Hollywood power player Michael Ovitz, who raised $150 million for the school, $25 million of it his own money.
PASSING NOTES Otis Blackwell, the R&B songwriter who helped put Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis on the map, died Monday in Nashville of an apparent heart attack at age 70. Blackwell wrote or cowrote such Elvis hits as ''Don't Be Cruel,'' ''All Shook Up,'' and ''Return to Sender,'' and such Killer tunes as ''Great Balls of Fire'' and ''Breathless.'' All told, he was credited with composing more than 1,000 songs, including such durable, much-covered hits as ''Handy Man'' and ''Fever.''...
Make-up artist to the stars Kevyn Aucoin died Tuesday at a hospital north of New York City. He was 40 and died of complications from a pituitary brain tumor. Aucoin, known for his magazine-cover transformations of such celebs as Gwyneth Paltrow, Janet Jackson, Julia Roberts, and Sharon Stone, wrote three books, notably, the best-selling ''Making Faces,'' in which he used his cosmetic gifts to turn contemporary stars into screen legends of the past.
