Inqlings: Kerri-Lee Halkett, crime-fighter

Fox29 anchor Kerri-Lee Halkett says she stared down a masked intruder who broke into the hotel room in Bar Harbor, Maine, she was sharing with her friend Jodi Applegate, a New York TV anchor.

The women, visiting the resort town for a weekend wedding, were asleep at 4 a.m. Friday when they heard the door creak open and Applegate's golden retriever, Willow, growl. "I hopped out of bed thinking someone had the wrong room, and when I saw his masked face and gloved hands, I realized we were in trouble," Halkett says.

And the man held a crowbar. Halkett says she demanded that he leave. "Finally, I got in his face. . . . He backed off and took off running."

She says the hotel manager surmised that he had picked the lock after having tried to get into another room.

"Who says crime only happens in big cities," she wrote, breaking the story on her Facebook page.

Bar Harbor police said an investigation was under way.

It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Even on national television.

Rittenhouse Square real estate agent Reid Rosenthal, denied the hand of Jillian Harris on the ABC series The Bachelorette, says he'd do it again.

In the season finale Monday, Rosenthal, rebuffed by Harris two weeks before, showed up in Hawaii, bearing a ring and his heart. No go. Harris opted to accept the engagement of Chicago computer consultant Ed Swiderski.

"Everything happens for a reason," Rosenthal told me the other day in the office of his attorney, Christopher J. Cabott.

Rosenthal, 30, says he is now armed with valuable knowledge: "The show forces you to get in touch with your emotions. Girls want to know how you feel." Harris had chided him for his reticence.

Fame has been "insane," he says. "I thought it was a local thing where I'd be known. But I was in Beverly Hills sitting at a pool, and then a bachelorette party" - for Jill Latiano, fiancee of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia costar Glenn Howerton - "came in, and they all wanted pictures."

Locally, "I'm trying to work and people come up and say, 'What's up?' I say, 'I'm working!' "

His real estate business might be busy, but given comments on the fan sites, Rosenthal seems in line to star as The Bachelor. He's not talking.

The august Toronto International Film Festival is expected to announce that The Art of the Steal, a documentary about the controversy over the art collection of Albert Barnes, produced by Sheena Joyce and directed by Don Argott, will be screened. Joyce and Argott previously shot Rock School, the documentary on rock educator Paul Green, and Two Days in April, a piece on the NFL draft.

There's a move afoot to get a special Philly screening of Law Abiding Citizen, F. Gary Gray's locally shot drama starring Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx. Its release date, which last week was moved up to Oct. 16, will coincide with the Philadelphia Film Society's so-called 181/2 Philadelphia Film Festival, being curated by Harlan Jacobson.

Merle Ginsberg, formerly of Atlantic City, will be a contestant on the fashion-creative competition series Launch My Line, premiering on Bravo on Sept. 16 as a successor to the now-on-Lifetime series Project Runway.

Nathan Galui, a 2007 interior-design grad of Drexel, is competing on HGTV's Sunday night series Design Star, which awards a TV show to the winner.

Comcast SportsNet has picked up The Pen, the MLB Network-produced reality series about life in the Phillies bullpen. The six episodes will premiere at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow.

Deen Kogan and her late husband, Jay, founders of the Society Hill Playhouse, will be recognized tomorrow by the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia for the playhouse's 50th-anniversary season.

Random backstage visitors at Thursday's Elton John-Billy Joel show at Citizens Bank Park included Alexa Ray (Joel's daughter) and John Cronan (whose ship, the Maersk Alabama, was captured by pirates).

Actor Jeremy Piven (Entourage), visiting Friday to talk up his comedy The Goods, requested raw foods for lunch - perhaps a reaction to his recent bout with mercury poisoning - but agreed to salad, hummus, and pita from the Israeli restaurant Zahav. After a nighttime screening at the Prince Music Theater, he spent a few hours at the Old City club 32° before returning to the Sofitel with an entourage of one: a blond woman.