ShareThisBy ALISON apROBERTS
The Suri with the adorable fringe on top has finally arrived.
There she is looking bright-eyed at the world from the cover of Vanity Fair magazine, snuggled inside her father's jacket as her parents, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, gaze at her. Holmes, 27, and Cruise, 44, were photographed at Cruise's spread in Telluride, Colo.
Below the family is the headline: "Yes, Suri, She's Our Baby!" and more words touting the "world exclusive" of the 22-page "family album," photographed by Annie Leibovitz with the story by editor Jane Sarkin.
Little Suri made her actual debut April 18 at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif.
But this is the glossy public unveiling that finally puts the great baby mystery down for a nap. She does not appear to be imaginary, or an alien, or some Scientology experiment (Dad, after all, is an outspoken Scientologist) _ all stories that swirled around her previous invisibility. All of which set up this debut for play beyond the usual celeb magazine and blog circuit.
Suri's first photographs made the news hour, becoming the scoop of the day on Katie Couric's "CBS Evening News" anchor debut Tuesday.
On Wednesday, the magazine hit newsstands in New York, where it was selling out, according to a Vanity Fair spokeswoman. It'll cost you $4.50 to pick it up.
Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak, by e-mail, verified that the magazine paid no money for the photo op.
The spread is boosted by the resume and talent of its photographer, Leibovitz, who brought us such iconic images as the photo of John Lennon, naked, embracing his wife Yoko Ono. (It was the last photo before his murder in 1980 and was taken for Rolling Stone.) She also snapped the image of a naked, pregnant Demi Moore for the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991. (Those photos took the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, respectively, as best magazine covers in the United States in the past 40 years at an October 2005 meeting of the American Society of Magazine Editors.)
Vanity Fair isn't your usual celebrity magazine, covering the deadly serious and the stars of the day in a sophisticated mix. Other victories on the more substantive front include revealing the identity of Deep Throat and an exclusive interview with lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
But the Beautiful People move the magazine off the shelves like nothing else. Its best-selling issue featured Jennifer Aniston on the cover in 2005. No. 2 was Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in 1999.
According to the Media Industry Newsletter of Aug. 28, the circulation of Vanity Fair during the first half of this year was 1.2 million, up 7 percent from the year before; and newsstand sales reached an average of 421,095 a month, up 17.2 percent from the year before.
The super-selling of Suri's big cover story is the offspring of our love affair with the private lives of celebrities.
Irving Rein, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University who studies popular culture, says that once upon a time, we didn't have much media celebrity. Celebrity news even made people uncomfortable in 1987, when he wrote the first of three editions of "High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Professionals Into Celebrities" (co-written with Philip Kotler and Martin R. Stoller). The most recent edition was published this year (McGraw-Hill, $27.95, 240 pages).
"People thought it was really rotten and manipulative to sell people as products _ that people aren't products; they have souls," Rein says. "Twenty years later, it's not an issue."
Now, we don't choke on our appetite for celebrity news, especially when it's whetted by someone like Tom Cruise, whose behavior suggests so much, uh, personality.
People want to know about you when you jump on Oprah's couch, denounce psychiatry and get dumped by a movie studio. Add to that the divorce of Nicole Kidman and the acquisition of a much-younger fiancee, Holmes, and there's even more attention.
"Celebrity is about personality and it's about feeling and emotion," Rein says.
So the stage was set for public interest, and now there's a baby to clinch the deal.
"The baby is a commodity; it's something to be merchandised," Rein says. "What does Cruise get off this? I think it's probably a bounce for him."
And then we'll move on to the next celebrity news.
"You know this story isn't going to have legs," Rein says.
Well, Suri can't even walk yet, but she definitely has crawled onto the stage.
(Alison apRoberts can be reached at aaproberts(at)sacbee.com)
