WASHINGTON - It was the only story that could compete with Anna Nicole Smith on U.S. cable news shows this week.
And the nasty spat between the rival presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over Hollywood's millions was a harbinger of looming battles.
Almost a year before the first voting contests, the Democratic nomination race is fierce, evidence of what's at stake in a party with high hopes of finally taking back the White House as George W. Bush bows out.
And with not one, but two, star candidates, it may be anything but pretty.
"Democrats will have to watch a liberal woman beat up a very saleable black politician and vice versa,'' said political analyst Patrick Basham.
"Both are loaded with cash. This isn't going away.''
It was the Hollywood cash, US$1.3 million raised by movie mogul David Geffen for Obama at a star-studded event this week, that started the fireworks.
That crowd was always the preserve of the Clintons. But the likes of actors like Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Aniston shelled out $2,300 a ticket at the first showbiz fundraiser Tuesday to hear Obama speak at the plush Beverly Hilton.
Once a top donor to former president Bill Clinton and a favoured guest in the Lincoln bedroom, Geffen then trashed the couple in a New York Times newspaper interview, branding the former president "reckless'' and calling the senator dishonest and "an incredibly polarizing figure.''
And while the candidates tried to stay above the fray, their campaigns were throwing grenades in news releases reported extensively by the networks.
Clinton's camp demanded Obama disavow Geffen's comments and return his donation.
For their part, Obama's staff reminded everyone Geffen had raised US$18 million for Clinton in the 1990s.
And they attacked Clinton for accepting support from a South Carolina state senator who said Obama would ruin the party's chances because he's black.
By late in the week, Obama, who has campaigned as a Washington outsider who eschews negative campaigning, was saying it's time to end "divisive politics and tit-for-tat.''
Clinton, meanwhile, criticized the "politics of personal destruction'' after her camp engaged Obama in a slugfest.
By week's end, the damage was done. And the news media were offering scorecards of the Hollywood bout.
The winners of the depressing brawl, said some columnists, were all the other Democratic candidates and the Republicans too.
Perhaps it's a particular boost for John Edwards, who's running in third place behind Clinton and Obama.
But for many analysts, it was sadly reminiscent of the kind of internal warfare that's long plagued the party and sometimes ruined its electoral chances.
And the kind of testy exchanges that erupted this week can become self-perpetuating, said Democratic adviser Joe Trippi, with each camp trying to have the last work.
"When it does something you may not want, or you want to break the embrace, you can't,'' Trippi told the New York Sun newspaper.
Clinton, scheduled to attend her own gala in March, will still accumulate a large share of Hollywood money.
"We have a high-quality problem,'' said Sherry Lansing, the former head of Paramount Pictures.
"There are many good potential candidates and we want to give them all an opportunity to give their message.
Still, the fact Clinton voted in 2002 to authorize war in Iraq and hasn't apologized irks many luminaries, as well as less-famous Americans. She's been challenged on that issue at nearly every campaign stop so far.
Meantime, the film industry's courtship of the two top Democrats is as fraught with trouble as the Christian right's relationship with Republicans, said Basham.
"Democrats have to have the Hollywood money but Hollywood scares Middle America.''
And with the iconic status of the front-runners, the race is threatening to turn into a spectacle.
The rich and famous can't resist the idea of propelling the first woman or first black into the Oval Office, he said.
"It's the idea of not just watching but starring in this historic movie. They get to play themselves.''
