100 New Yorkers of the 1970s
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Title: 100 New Yorkers of the 1970s
Author: Max Millard
Release date: December 24, 2005 [eBook #17385]
Most recently updated: December 13, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 100 NEW YORKERS OF THE 1970S ***
Copyright (C) 2005 by Max Millard
100 New Yorkers of the 1970s
By Max Millard
Dedication: to Bruce Logan, who made this book possible.
Copyright 2005 by Max Millard
-------
INTRODUCTION
The interviews for this book were conducted from May 1977 to December
1979. They appeared as cover stories for the __TV Shopper__, a free
weekly paper that was distributed to homes and businesses in New York
City. Founded by Bruce Logan in the mid-1970s as the __West Side TV
Shopper__, it consisted of TV listings, advertisements, and two full-page
stories per issue. One was a "friendly" restaurant review of an advertiser;
the other was a profile of a prominent resident of the Upper West Side of
Manhattan. The honoree's face appeared on the cover, framed by a TV
screen.
The formula was successful enough so that in 1978, Bruce began
publishing the __East Side TV Shopper__ as well. My job was to track
down the biggest names I could find for both papers, interview them, and
write a 900-word story. Most interviewees were in the arts and
entertainment industry -- actors, singers, dancers, writers, musicians,
news broadcasters and radio personalities. Bruce quickly recruited me to
write the restaurant reviews as well. During my two and a half years at
the paper, I wrote about 210 interviews. These are my 100 favorites of the
ones that survive.
These stories represent my first professional work as a journalist. I arrived
in New York City in November 1976 at age 26, hungry for an opportunity
to write full-time after spending six years practicing my craft at college
and community newspapers in New England. I had just started to sell a
few stories in Maine, but realized I would have to move to a big city if
I was serious about switching careers from social worker to journalist.
My gigs as an unpaid writer for small local papers included a music
column for the __East Boston Community News__ and a theater column
for the _Wise Guide_ in Portland, Maine. I had learned the two most
important rules of journalism -- get your facts straight and meet your
deadlines. I had taught myself Pitman's shorthand and could take notes at
100 words a minute. So I felt ready to make the leap if someone gave me
a chance.
Full of hope, I quit my job in rural Maine as a senior citizens' aide, drove
to New York, sold my car, moved into an Upper West Side apartment
with two aspiring opera singers, and began to look for work.
One aspect of the New York personality, I soon observed, was that the
great often mingled freely with the ordinary. At the Alpen Pantry Cafe in
Lincoln Center, where I worked briefly, David Hartman, host of _Good
Morning America_, came in for his coffee every morning and waited in
line like everyone else. John Lennon was said to walk his Westside
neighborhood alone, and largely undisturbed.
The other side of the New York mentality was shown by nightclubs
surrounded by velvet ropes, where uniformed doormen stood guard like
army sentries. Disdaining the riffraff, they picked out certain attractive
individuals milling outside and beckoned them to cut through the crowd,
pay their admission and enter. The appearance of status counted for much,
and many people who lived on 58th Street, one block from Central Park,
got their mail through the back entrance so they could claim the higher
class address of Central Park West.
In early 1977 my shorthand skills got me a part-time job at the home of
Linda Grover, a scriptwriter for the TV soap opera _The Doctors_. On
the day I met her, she dictated a half-hour script to me, winging it while
glancing at an outline. My trial of fire was to transcribe it, type it up that
night and turn it in the next morning for revisions. I got little sleep, but
completed the job. After that I became her secretary.
Linda's soap work was unsteady, and to supplement her income she wrote
all the cover stories for _TV Shopper_. After I'd been helping her for a
few months, she accepted a full-time job as headwriter for a new soap. I
had told her of my ambition and shown her some of my writing, so she
recommended me to Bruce as her replacement.
For my first assignment, Bruce sent me to interview Delores Hall, star of
a Broadway musical with an all-black cast, _Your Arms Too Short to Box
With God_. I went to the theater, watched the show, then met Delores
backstage. The first question I asked her was: "Is that your real hair?" She
smiled good-naturedly at my lack of diplomacy and didn't answer, but
made me feel completely at ease. She led me outside the theater, and
without embarrassment, asked me to hail the taxi for us. Then she directed
the driver to a favorite soul food restaurant, where she stuffed herself
while I conducted the interview. She was as gracious in my company as
she had been on the stage while bowing to a standing ovation. Later, her
role in the show won her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a
Musical.
After completing my Delores Hall story, I was kept constantly busy at the
_TV Shopper_ for as long as I stayed in New York. At first Bruce gave
me all the leads, many of whom were people who had requested to be on
the cover. But soon I was after bigger game, and began to systematically
hunt down people whom I had grown up admiring. I scanned _People_
magazine each week to find out which celebrities were New Yorkers.
When I landed an important interview, I often visited the New York
Public Library of Performing Arts in Lincoln Center to study the clipping
files and prepare my questions.
A few interviewees were distant and arrogant, making it clear that they
wouldn't be wasting their time with me if not for the insistence of their
agent. A cover story in the _TV Shopper_ could possibly extend a
Broadway run for a few days or sell another $10,000 worth of tickets to
the ballet or opera. But the vast majority of my interview subjects were
friendly, respectful, and even a little flattered by the thought of being on
the cover. In general, the biggest people were most likely to be
unpretentious and generous of spirit.
It was thrilling experience to meet and interview the people who had been
my idols only a few years before. When we were alone together in a
room, I felt that -- if only for that brief period -- I were the equal of
someone who had achieved greatness. I had grown up reading Superman
comics, and one day it flashed on me: this is Metropolis and I'm Clark
Kent!
My subjects probably found me somewhat of a rube. I didn't dress well,
I had little knowledge of New York, I asked some very simplistic
questions, and until 1979 I didn't use a tape recorder. So perhaps some
of the stars were put off their guard and revealed more of themselves than
they would have to a more professional interviewer. I was struck by how
single-minded they were for success. Probing their brains was like getting
a second college education. Their main message was: Don't waste your
life and don't do anything just for money.
Of course, many people declined my request for an interview. Among
those I fished for, but failed to reel in, were Richard Chamberlain, Isaac
Bashevis Singer, Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo), Rex Reed, Halston,
Carrie Fisher, Russell Baker, Ted Sorensen, Joseph Heller, Margaret
Meade, Helen Gurley Brown and Ira Gershwin. Then there were the
Eastsiders and Westsiders too famous to even approach, such as Woody
Allen, Bob Hope and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
The person who did more than anyone else to secure first-rank interviews
for me was Anna Sosenko, a woman in her late 60s who owned an
autograph collectors' shop on West 62th Street filled with elegantly
framed letters, manuscripts and autographed photos of some of the
greatest names in the history of entertainment. Despite her treasures, she
always talked with one hand over her mouth to hide the fact that she had
practically no teeth.
For 23 years Anna had managed the career of cabaret superstar
Hildegarde Sell, and had penned Hildegarde's theme song, "Darling, Je
Vous Aime Beaucoup." Anna was still a formidable figure in showbiz;
every year she produced a spectacular fund-raising all-star show in a
Broadway theater that paid tribute to Broadway legends. Her 1979 show,
which I attended, included live performances by Julie Andrews, Agnes
DeMille, Placido Domingo, Alfred Drake, Tovah Feldshuh, Hermione
Gingold and Rex Harrison.
I met Anna through her friendship with Bruce Logan, and she became my
direct link to many stars of the older generation, including Douglas
Fairbanks Jr., Lillian Gish, Ann Miller, Maureen O'Sullivan and Sammy
Cahn. One phone call from Anna was enough to get me an appointment.
The _TV Shopper_ interviews and restaurant reviews -- a total of four
stories per week -- became my whole life, and I had little time for
friendships, hobbies or anything else. By late 1979, I realized that New
York City wasn't my natural element. It was too dog-eat-dog, too
overwhelming, too impersonal. I had grown dissatisfied with working for
the _TV Shopper_, and felt that I had squeezed the juice from the orange;
I had interviewed everyone I wanted to meet who was willing to sit down
with me. After interviewing my fifth or sixth broadcaster or dancer, things
began to feel repetitive. I pondered what Tom Smothers had told me when
I'd asked why the Smothers Brothers had split up as an act: "First you just
do it, then you do it for fun, then you do it seriously, and then you're
done."
About this time I got an invitation from a friend in the San Francisco Bay
Area to move out West and give it a try. I told Bruce I was quitting.
When I gave the news to Anna, she said: "You might never come back."
She was right.
In my last couple of months as a New Yorker, I did as many interviews
as I could fit it. I left for Maine on Christmas Eve of 1979, taking all my
_TV Shopper_ stories with me, and flew to San Francisco on New Year's
Day of 1980. Using my notes, I wrote up my final interviews during my
early months on the West Coast, which accounts for some of the 1980
publication dates. Other stories dated 1980 were published first in 1979,
then reused; I have no record of their original dates.
When my parents moved in 1988, they threw away my entire _TV
Shopper_ archive. Fortunately, Bruce Logan had saved copies of most of
the stories, and at my request, he photocopied them and sent them to in
1990. About 10 stories were missing from his collection, and therefore
cannot be included here. Among the lost interviews I remember are Soupy
Sales, Dave Marash, Gael Greene, Janis Ian, Joe Franklin and Barnard
Hughes.
After 9/11, I began thinking a lot about New York, and started rereading
some of my old stories. My eye caught this statement by Paul Goldberger,
then the architecture critic for the _New York Times_: "This is probably
the safest environment in the world to build a skyscraper." I realized that
the New York of today is quite differently from that of the late 1970s, and
thought that a collection of my interviews might be of interest to a new
generation of readers.
In the summer of 2005 I finished retyping, correcting, and fact-checking
the 100 stories. Three of my interviews -- Isaac Asimov, Alan Lomax and
Tom Wolfe -- were originally published in two different versions, one for
the _TV Shopper_ and a longer one for the _Westsider_, a weekly
community newspaper. I have included both versions here. Also, my
interview with Leonard Maltin was not a cover story, but a half-page
"Westside profile." It appears here because of Maltin's huge future
success as a writer, editor and TV personality.
In the course of my research, I uncovered a lot of information about what
happened to my interviewees after 1980. Many have died, some have
grown in fame, and some have virtually disappeared from public records.
In a future edition of this book, I hope to include that information in a
postscript at the end of each story. In the meantime, I invite readers to
send me any information they have about these personalities by emailing
me at sunreport@aol.com.
Max Millard
San Francisco, California
November 2005
********
TABLE OF CONTENTS
WESTSIDER CLEVELAND AMORY
Author, radio humorist, and president of the Fund for Animals
EASTSIDER MAXENE ANDREWS
An Andrews Sister finds stardom as a solo
WESTSIDER LUCIE ARNAZ
To star in Neil Simon's new musical
EASTSIDER ADRIEN ARPEL
America's best-selling beauty author
WESTSIDER ISAAC ASIMOV
Author of 188 books
WESTSIDER GEORGE BALANCHINE
Artistic director of the New York City Ballet
WESTSIDER CLIVE BARNES
Drama and dance critic
WESTSIDER FRANZ BECKENBAUER
North America's most valuable soccer player
WESTSIDER HIMAN BROWN
Creator of the _CBS Radio Mystery Theater_
FERRIS BUTLER
Creator, writer and producer of _Waste Meat News_
EASTSIDER SAMMY CAHN
Oscar-winning lyricist
WESTSIDER HUGH CAREY
Governor of New York state
WESTSIDER CRAIG CLAIBORNE
Food editor of the _New York Times_
WESTSIDER MARC CONNELLY
Actor, director, producer, novelist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist
EASTSIDER TONY CRAIG
Star of _The Edge of Night_
EASTSIDER RODNEY DANGERFIELD
The comedian and the man
WESTSIDER JAN DE RUTH
Partner of nudes and _Time_ covers
WESTSIDER MIGNON DUNN
The Met's super mezzo
EASTSIDER DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR.
A man for all seasons
WESTSIDER LEE FALK
Creator of The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician
WESTSIDER BARRY FARBER
Radio talkmaster and linguist
WESTSIDER SUZANNE FARRELL
Star of the New York City Ballet
WESTSIDER JULES FEIFFER
Screenwriter for _Popeye the Sailor_
EASTSIDER GERALDINE FITZGERALD
Actress, director and singer
EASTSIDER JOAN FONTAINE
Actress turns author with _No Bed of Roses_
WESTSIDER BETTY FRIEDAN
Founder of the women's liberation movement
WESTSIDER ARTHUR FROMMER
Author of _Europe on $10 a Day_
EASTSIDER WILLIAM GAINES
Publisher and founder of _Mad_ magazine
WESTSIDER RALPH GINZBURG
Publisher of _Moneysworth_
EASTSIDER LILLIAN GISH
78 years in show business
WESTSIDER MILTON GLASER
Design director of the new _Esquire_
WESTSIDER PAUL GOLDBERGER
Architecture critic for the _New York Times_
EASTSIDER MILTON GOLDMAN
Broadway's super agent
EASTSIDER TAMMY GRIMES
Star of _Father's Day_ at the American Place Theatre
WESTSIDER DELORES HALL
Star of _Your Arms Too Short to Box with God_
WESTSIDER LIONEL HAMPTON
King of the Newport Jazz Festival
WESTSIDER DAVID HAWK
Executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A.
EASTSIDER WALTER HOVING
Chairman of Tiffany & Company
EASTSIDER JAY JACOBS
Restaurant critic for _Gourmet_ magazine
WESTSIDER RAUL JULIA
Star of _Dracula_ on Broadway
EASTSIDER BOB KANE
Creator of Batman and Robin
WESTSIDER LENORE KASDORF
Star of _The Guiding Light_
EASTSIDER BRIAN KEITH
Back on Broadway after 27 years
WESTSIDER HAROLD KENNEDY
Author of _No Pickle, No Performance_
WESTSIDER ANNA KISSELGOFF
Dance critic for the _New York Times_
WESTSIDER GEORGE LANG
Owner of the Cafe des Artistes
WESTSIDER RUTH LAREDO
Leading American pianist
EASTSIDER STAN LEE
Creator of Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk
EASTSIDER JOHN LEONARD
Book critic for the _New York Times_
WESTSIDER JOHN LINDSAY
International lawyer
WESTSIDER ALAN LOMAX
Sending songs into outer space
EASTSIDER PETER MAAS
Author of _Serpico_ and _Made in America_
WESTSIDER LEONARD MALTIN
Film historian and critic
EASTSIDER JEAN MARSH
Creator and star of _Upstairs, Downstairs_
EASTSIDER JACKIE MASON
Co-starring with Steve Martin in _The Jerk_
WESTSIDER MALACHY McCOURT
Actor and social critic
WESTSIDER MEAT LOAF
Hottest rock act in town
WESTSIDER ANN MILLER
Co-star of _Sugar Babies_
WESTSIDER SHERRILL MILNES
Opera superstar
WESTSIDER CARLOS MONTOYA
Master of the flamenco guitar
WESTSIDER MELBA MOORE
Broadway star releases ninth album
WESTSIDER MICHAEL MORIARTY
Star of _Holocaust_ returns to Broadway in _G.R. Point_
WESTSIDER LeROY NEIMAN
America's greatest popular artist
WESTSIDER ARNOLD NEWMAN
Great portrait photographer
EASTSIDER EDWIN NEWMAN
Journalist and first-time novelist
EASTSIDER LARRY O'BRIEN
Commissioner of the National Basketball Association
WESTSIDER MAUREEN O'SULLIVAN
Great lady of the movie screen
WESTSIDER BETSY PALMER
Star of _Same Time, Next Year_
WESTSIDER JAN PEERCE
The man with the golden voice
EASTSIDER GEORGE PLIMPTON
Author, editor and adventurer
EASTSIDER OTTO PREMINGER
Rebel filmmaker returns with _The Human Factor_
WESTSIDER CHARLES RANGEL
Congressman of the 19th District
WESTSIDER JOE RAPOSO
Golden boy of American composers
WESTSIDER MASON REESE
Not just another kid
WESTSIDER MARTY REISMAN
America's best-loved ping-pong player
WESTSIDER RUGGIERO RICCI
World's most-recorded violinist
WESTSIDER BUDDY RICH
Monarch of the drums
WESTSIDER GERALDO RIVERA
Broadcaster, author and humanitarian
WESTSIDER NED ROREM
Author and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer
WESTSIDER JULIUS RUDEL
Director of the New York City Opera
EASTSIDER DR. LEE SALK
America's foremost child psychologist
EASTSIDER FRANCESCO SCAVULLO
Photographer of the world's most beautiful women
WESTSIDER ROGER SESSIONS
Composer of the future
EASTSIDER DICK SHAWN
Veteran comic talks about _Love at First Bite_
EASTSIDER GEORGE SHEARING
Famed jazz pianist returns to New York
WESTSIDER REID SHELTON
The big-hearted billionaire of _Annie_
WESTSIDER BOBBY SHORT
Mr. New York to perform in Newport Jazz Festival
WESTSIDER BEVERLY SILLS
Opera superstar
GEORGE SINGER
46 years a doorman on the West Side
WESTSIDER GREGG SMITH
Founder and conductor of the Gregg Smith Singers
EASTSIDER LIZ SMITH
Queen of gossip
EASTSIDERS TOM & DICK SMOTHERS
Stars of _I Love My Wife_ on Broadway
WESTSIDER VICTOR TEMKIN
Publisher of Berkley and Jove Books
WESTSIDER JOHN TESH
Anchorman for WCBS Channel 2 News
WESTSIDER RICHARD THOMAS
John-Boy teams up with Henry Fonda in _Roots II_
EASTSIDER ANDY WARHOL
Pop artist and publisher of _Interview_ magazine
EASTSIDER ARNOLD WEISSBERGER
Theatrical attorney for superstars
EASTSIDER TOM WICKER
Author and columnist for the _New York Times_
EASTSIDER TOM WOLFE
Avant-garde author talks about _The Right Stuff_
WESTSIDER PINCHAS ZUKERMAN
Violinist and conductor
********
WESTSIDER CLEVELAND AMORY
Author, radio humorist, and president of the Fund for Animals
12-9-78
It's impossible to mistake the voice if you've heard it once -- the tone of
mock annoyance, the twangy, almost whiny drawl that rings musically in
the ear. It could easily belong to a cartoon character or a top TV
pitchman, but it doesn't. It belongs to Cleveland Amory, an affable and
rugged individualist who has been a celebrated writer for more than half
of his 61 years. Amory is also a highly regarded lecturer and radio
essayist: his one-minute humor spot, _Curmudgeon at Large_, is heard
daily from Maine to California. His latest novel, nearing completion, is
due to be published next fall.
_TV Guide_ perhaps brought Amory his widest fame. He was the
magazine's star columnist from 1963 to 1976, when he gave it up in order
to devote his time to other projects, especially the Fund for Animals, a
non-profit humane organization that he founded in 1967. He has served as
the group's president since the beginning; now it has 150,000 members
across the United States. Amory receives no pay for his involvement with
the organization.
The national headquarters of the Fund for Animals is a suite of rooms in
an apartment building near Carnegie Hall. The central room is lined with
bookshelves, and everywhere on the 25-foot walls are pictures and statues
of animals. Amory enters the room looking utterly exhausted. He is a tall,
powerful-looking man with a shock of greyish brown hair that springs
from his head like sparks from an electrode. As we sit back to talk and his
two pet cats walk about the office, his energy seems to recharge itself.
Amory's quest to protect animals from needless cruelty began several
decades ago when, as a young reporter in Arizona, he wandered across
the border into Mexico and witnessed a bullfight. Shocked that people
could applaud the death agony of "a fellow creature of this earth," he
began to join various humane societies. Today he is probably the best
known animal expert in America. His 1974 best-seller, _Man Kind? Our
Incredible War On Wildlife_, was one of only three books in recent years
to be the subject of an editorial in the _New York Times_ -- the others
being Rachel Carson's _Silent Spring_ and Ralph Nader's _Unsafe at Any
Speed_.
"A lot of people ask me, 'Why not do something about children, or old
people, or minorities?'" he begins, lighting a cigarette and propping one
foot on the desk. "My feeling is that there's enough misery out there for
anybody to work at whatever he wants to. I think the mark of a civilized
person is how you treat what's beneath you. Most people do care about
animals. But you have to translate their feelings into action. ... We're
fighting a lot of things -- the clubbing of the baby seals, the killing of
dolphins by the tuna fishermen, the poisoning of animals. The leghold trap
is illegal in 14 countries of the world, but only in five states in the U.S.
"The reason this fight is so hard is that man has an incredible ability to
rationalize his cruelty. When they kill the seals, they say it's a humane
way of doing it. But I don't see anything humane about clubbing a baby
seal to death while his mother is watching, helpless.
"One of our biggest fights right now is to make the wolf our national
mammal. There's only about 400 of them left in the continental United
States. The wolf is a very brave animal. It's monogamous, and it has great
sensitivity."
One of his chief reasons for dropping his _TV Guide_ column, says
Amory, was because "after 15 years of trying to decide whether the Fonz
is a threat to Shakespeare, I wanted to write about things that are more
important than that." His latest novel, a satirical work that he considers
the finest piece of writing he has ever done, "is basically a satire of club
life in America. ... I sent it down to a typist here, and it came back with
a note from the typist saying, 'I love it!' In all my years of writing, I
don't think I've ever had a compliment like that. So I sent the note to my
editor along with the manuscript."
An expert chess player, he was long ranked number one at Manhattan's
Harvard Club until his recent dethronement at the hands of a young
woman. "I play Russians whenever I get a chance," he confides. "I always
love to beat Russians. I want to beat them all." Once he played against
Viktor Korchnoi, the defected Soviet who narrowly lost to world
champion Anatoly Karpov this fall.
"I think he threw that final game," says Amory of Korchnoi's loss. "He
didn't make a single threatening move. I think he was offered a deal to get
the kid and wife out. It was all set up from the beginning. I hate facts, so
I don't want any facts to interfere with my thesis."
Born outside of Boston, he showed his writing talent early, becoming the
youngest editor ever at the _Saturday Evening Post_. His first book, _The
Proper Bostonians_, was published in 1947. "Then I moved to New
York," he muses, "because whenever I write about a place, I have to
leave it." Nineteen years ago, he took on as his assistant a remarkable
woman named Marian Probst, who has worked with him ever since. Says
Amory: "She knows more about every project I've been involved with
than I know myself."
A longtime Westsider, he enjoys dining at the Russian Tea Room (150 W.
57th St.).
There are so many facets to Cleveland Amory's career and character that
he defies classification. In large doses, he can be extremely persuasive. In
smaller doses, he comes across as a sort of boon companion for
everyman, who provides an escape from the woes of modern society
through his devastating humor. For example, his off-the-cuff remark about
President Carter:
"Here we have a fellow who doesn't know any more than you or I about
how to run the country. I'm surprised he did so well in the peanut
business."
********
EASTSIDER MAXENE ANDREWS
An Andrews Sister finds stardom as a solo
2-2-80
Maxene Andrews, riding high on the wave of her triumphant solo act that
opened at the Reno Sweeney cabaret last November, is sitting in her dimly
lit, antique-lined Eastside living room, talking about the foibles of show
business. As one of the Andrews Sisters, America's most popular vocal
trio of the 1940s, she made 19 gold records in the space of 20 years. But
as a solo performer, she more or less failed in two previous attempts --
first in the early 1950s, when her younger sister Patty temporarily left the
group, and again in 1975, after her hit Broadway show _Over Here_
closed amid controversy. Not until 1979 did Miss Andrews bring together
all the elements of success -- good choice of songs, interesting patter
between numbers, and a first-rate accompanist. The result is an act that
is nostalgic, moving, and musically powerful.
"For years, our career was so different than so many, because our fans
never forgot us," she recalls, beaming with matronly delight. "I could
walk in anyplace in the years I wasn't working, and they'd say, 'Maxene
Andrews -- the Andrews Sisters?' Everybody was sort of in awe. So I was
always treated like a star of some kind. But it's nice to work; it's a
wonderful feeling to be in demand."
She is a bubbly, husky, larger-than-life character of 61 with ruddy cheeks
and a firm handshake. Deeply religious, sincere, and outspoken as always,
she remains first and foremost an entertainer.
"I stick to the older, standard songs by great composers," says Maxene of
her act. "You know -- Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin. ... My partner is
Phil Campanella, an extremely talented young man who plays the piano
and sings harmony. ... All the talking I do between the songs is ad
libbing. I have never been successful at trying to do material that was
written for me."
She's returning to Reno Sweeney on February 6 for a two-week
engagement, then filming a TV show titled _G.I. Jive_ before taking her
act to Miami and Key West. Nightclub work, she says in her high, bell
clear voice, "is not my future. I would like to get into concerts and I think
that's a possibility -- probably a year from now."
LaVerne, the eldest of the sisters, died in 1967. Patty stopped speaking to
Maxene five years ago because of salary disagreements for _Over Here_.
The contracts were negotiated separately, and when Maxene balked at
accepting $1000 a week less than her sister, the national tour was abruptly
canceled.
"I never in my wildest dreams thought that we would separate, because
we've always been very close," says Maxene sadly. "When people say,
'You're feuding with your sister,' I say that's not the truth. Because it
takes two people to fight, and I'm not fighting anyone. She's just not
talking to me.
"It took me a long time to be able to handle the separation. I used to wake
up every morning and say, 'What have I done?' But now I just throw it
up to Jesus, and I leave it there. I hope and pray that one of these days we
can bring everything out in the open, and clear it up. I love Patty very
much, and I'm very surprised that she's not out doing her act, because
she's very very talented. She's been doing the _Gong Show_, which I --
it's none of my business, but I would highly disapprove of. I think it's
such a terrible show."
Maxene owns a house outside of Los Angeles, and was "born again" a
couple of years ago at the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California.
When she's on Manhattan's East Side, which is often, she shares the
apartment of Dr. Louis Parrish, an M.D. and psychiatrist whom she
describes as "a true Southern gentleman."
The Andrews Sisters, who recorded such hits as "Bei Mir Bist Du
Schoen," "Rum and Coca Cola," "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree,"
"Apple Blossom Time," and "Hold Tight," arrived in New York from
Minneapolis in 1937 and took the city by storm with their wholesome,
sugar-sweet harmonies and innovative arrangements. Soon they were
making movies as well. _Buck Privates_ (1940, which featured Abbott and
Costello and the song "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," was Universal's
biggest moneymaker until _Jaws_ came along in 1975. "I didn't
particularly care for making movies," comments Maxene. "I found it very
boring and very repetitious, and certainly not very creative. But working
with Bud and Lou was a lot of fun."
Now divorced, Maxene has a 33-year-old daughter named Aleda and a 31
year-old son, Peter, who live in Utah. She has written her autobiography,
but it hasn't been sold to a publisher "because I refuse to write the kind
of books that they want written today. Ever since the Christina Crawford
book came out, that's all the publishers want. ... I think the trend will
pass, because we're really getting saturated in cruelty and lust and
whatever else you want to call it."
Asked about the changes in her life since her religious reawakening,
Maxene says, "Darling, everything has improved. My disposition has
improved. I used to be impossible for anybody to work with. ... I'm now
reconciled to the feeling that I am never alone, and that in Him I have a
partner, and that if I run into a problem that I can't solve, then I'm not
supposed to solve it -- because we're just mere mortals."
********
WESTSIDER LUCIE ARNAZ
To star in Neil Simon's new musical
9-9-78
Bad timing. That's what had plagued me ever since I had tried to get an
interview with Lucie Arnaz last June. Back then, I was supposed to get
together with her downtown, but our meeting was canceled at the last
minute. My second appointment, set for August 31 in her dressing room
just before a performance of _Annie Get Your Gun_ at the Jones Beach
Theatre in Wantagh, Long Island, now seemed in jeopardy as well. I was
kept waiting nervously outside while the house manager insisted that Lucie
was engaged in "a very important telephone call."
But when the young star finally emerged, her face beaming with delight,
I found that my timing could not have been better. Lucie had just received
official word that a major new Broadway role was hers. As we sat down
to talk, Lucie was in one of those radiant moods that come only in times
of triumph. She had been chosen for the female lead in a new musical,
_They're Playing My Song_, which is scheduled to open in Los Angeles
in December and on Broadway in February. The show has music by
Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager. The book is written
by Neil Simon.
"I'm a lousy auditioner -- at least, I thought I was," grinned Lucie. "This
new musical will be probably the pinnacle of what I've been aiming for.
... It's about a fairly successful lyricist who's not nearly as successful as
the composer she's going to work with. Neil Simon has always wanted to
do a play about songwriters. It's a very hip, pop musical. It doesn't have
regular Broadway-type tunes."
She flopped back on the sofa touching my arm from time to time for
emphasis, and chatted on in her mildly raspy voice. Finally she moved to
a seat in front of the mirror and invited me to keep talking while she put
on her makeup. There is a quality about her that suggests toughness, but
this impression melts away under her girlish charm. At 27, Lucie is
already an 11-year veteran of professional acting and singing. When she
performed at Jones Beach this summer, up to 8,000 people per night came
to see her.
Lucie first transplanted herself from the West Coast to the West Side on
a full-time basis last winter, although, she admitted, "I had a New York
apartment for four years which I would visit every couple of months. For
some sick reason, I really like New York. There's a lot of crazy people
doing strange things on the streets, but there's also a lot of creative forces
here.
"I went to do an interview this morning for my radio show and it started
raining. By the time I had walked six blocks I was looking terrible, and
it suddenly occurred to me that I would never present myself like that in
California. In New York, who gives a damn if you've got water on you
when you come to work? On the West Coast, the things that aren't
important they seem to put on pedestals." Her radio show, which she
started this year, is a nationally syndicated five-minute interview spot
called _Tune In With Lucie_.
>From 1967 to 1972 she was a regular on her mother's TV show, _Here's
Lucy_. She has made countless guest appearances on other shows, and
performed lead roles in numerous musicals. Her parents, Lucille Ball and
Desi Arnaz Sr., were divorced more than a decade ago and have both
remarried.
"My mother was here for opening night, then she stayed a couple of days
in New York. But she gets too lonely when my brother Desi and I go
away for too long. He was here for most of the summer. He was doing
a movie called _How To Pick Up Girls_. He played the guy who
supposedly knew all about it -- one of the two stars. He said, "It's funny,
I meet girls on the street, and New York has the most beautiful girls in
the world, and when they ask me what I'm doing here and I tell them the
name of the movie, they walk away and say, 'You dirty toad!'" Desi also
plays the groom in the new Robert Altman film, _A Wedding_.
"My father is now putting an album together of the music that was
recorded for the old _Lucy Show_. Salsa music is coming back now, so
he's been asked to make an album of those tapes."
Speaking of her hobbies, Lucie noted that "recently I started to build a
darkroom in my house. The key word is started. It's hard to get the time.
... And I have been writing songs for the last couple of years. I'm a
lyricist. I've sung them on things like _Mike Douglas_ and _Dinah_."
She enjoys all of New York, though at one time "the East Side gave me
the ooga boogas. Then I found a couple of places there that were nice."
On the West Side, she likes to dine at La Cantina, Victor's Cafe, and
Ying, all on Columbus Avenue near 71st and 72nd Streets.
When the five-minute warning sounded in her dressing room, Lucie had
to turn me out, but not before she divulged her philosophy about show
business. "Am I ambitious?" she echoed. "I don't know. There are people
who are willing to really knock the doors down and do just about anything
to get there. I'm not like that. Even now, when I go to the market, people
come up to me and say, 'Aren't you. ... ?' So I can imagine what it
would be like to be a superstar. No, I'm not really looking forward to
that."
********
EASTSIDER ADRIEN ARPEL
America's best-selling beauty author
3-29-80
As a young girl in Englewood, New Jersey, Adrien Arpel was determined
that one day she would transform herself into a beautiful woman. After
having her nose bobbed, she began to pester the ladies behind every
cosmetic counter she could reach, and by the time she graduated from
high school at 17, she knew more than they did. That same year she
opened a small cosmetics shop in her hometown with $400 earned from
baby-sitting. Today, at 38, she is the president of a $12 million-a-year
company selling more than 100 beauty products throughout the U.S. and
Europe.
Not content with mere business success, she recently turned her talent to
writing her first book, Adrien Arpel's Three-Week Crash
Makeover/Shapeover Beauty Program (1977). It was on the _New York
Times'_ best-seller list for six months, and is still selling briskly in
paperback. Miss Arpel received $275,000 from Pocket Books for the
reprint rights -- the most ever for a beauty book.
"I have always been a rebel," she proclaims regally, dressed in a stylish
Edwardian outfit with padded shoulders at her midtown office. Quite
heavily made up, with hot pink lipstick and a Cleopatra hairdo, she looks
considerably younger than her age. The strident quality of her voice is
reminiscent of a Broadway chorus girl's, yet is delivered in a crisp,
businesslike manner. During the interview she rarely smiles or strays from
the question being asked. For some reason, she declines to say much
about her new book, _How to Look 10 Years Younger_, which is
scheduled for publication in April. Instead, she stresses the simple,
common-sense rules about beauty that have guided her career from the
beginning.
Probably her two most important innovations are her exclusive use of
nature-based, chemical-free products (chosen from leading European
health spas) and her policy of try-before-you-buy makeup. Complimentary
makeup is offered every time a customer gets a facial at one of the
hundreds of Adrien Arpel salons, such as those on the first floor of
Bloomingdale's and Saks Fifth Avenue.
Whenever she opens a new salon, Adrien spends the entire day on her
feet, doing upwards of 35 facials with her own pale, delicate hands.
Upon being complimented for her attire, Miss Arpel gasps, "Thank you!"
with schoolgirlish delight. There is something almost surreal in her
creamy white complexion. "I think sunbathing is absolutely deadly, and
that there is no reason in the world for a woman to sunbathe," she says.
Moments later, she admits that "high heel shoes are not very good for
you," but that she wears them anyway, "because they're very fashionable.
They are something that really can be a problem -- if they're pitched
wrong. If you have a good shoe and it's pitched well, you shouldn't have
a problem"
Does she think it would be a good idea for women to give up high heels
altogether? "No, no. I don't think you'll ever get women to give up
fashion. So we can tell what's problems, what's really hazardous, what's
going to be injurious to your health, and what's going to just hurt a little
bit."
She never thought of writing a book until about four years ago, says
Arpel, because "every second when I was away from my business, I spent
with my daughter. Now my daughter's 16 and a half, and has a boyfriend,
and goes out, and doesn't want to spend every minute with me. This all
started when she was about 13." Adrien and her husband, manufacturer
Ronald Newman, moved to the New York metropolitan area right after
they were married in 1961, and acquired an Upper East Side apartment
last summer.
For her own health and beauty regimen, Adrien begins her typical day
with jumping rope. She thinks weight training for women is "terrific," but
considers jogging the best all-around exercise. "Now, jogging has its
negatives. I get up very early in the morning, and if you jog while it's still
dark out, it can be dangerous. I also have long hair, and you have to wash
your hair after you jog. So for someone that works, I find that I can only
do it three days a week."
She has a facial twice weekly. "Facials are not luxuries. They are
necessities to peel off dead surface skin. ... Air pollution is the reason. If
it wears away stone on buildings, think what it can do to the skin." A
facial, she explains, consists of "all different sorts of hand massages to
deep-cleanse the skin with coconut-like milk, or some sort of sea kelp
cleanser. Then there's a skin vacuum which takes blackheads out --
electric brushes with honey and almond scrubs which clean out the pores.
And at the end, a mask. Nature-based again -- orange jelly, sea mud, or
spearmint."
Arpel believes that a woman's makeup should be largely determined by
her profession. She reveals a humorous side when asked whether a woman
stockbroker, for example, should always dress conservatively. "Well, if
she was wearing a see-through blouse and no bra in her office, I'd
certainly think she had poor taste," she laughs.
A nonsmoker who consumes little alcohol, she confesses to at least one
vice: "I drink two cups of coffee in the morning, sometimes more. Also
not wonderfully good for you -- but I never said I was a hundred percent
good."
********
WESTSIDER ISAAC ASIMOV
Author of 188 books
10-29-77
In 1965, when the Science Fiction Writers of America held a national
convention to vote on the best science fiction ever published in this
country, they sifted through hundreds of nominations dating back to the
1920s before coming up with the winners. _Nightfall_ (1941) received the
most votes for a short story and the _Foundation_ trilogy won for the best
series of novels. The author of both works: Westsider Isaac Asimov.
Had Asimov died 25 years ago, his fame would still be secure. But he
remains more active than ever. He is, among other things, one of the most
prolific authors in the world, publishing an average of one book and three
or four magazine articles per month.
He is sitting at an electric typewriter in his West 66th Street penthouse
when the doorman informs him that two visitors have arrived. Asimov is
expecting a single reporter; but he says OK, so my roommate John
Cimino and I get on the elevator. We stop at the 33rd floor. Asimov, clad
in his undershirt, meets us at the door, hangs up our coats, and takes us
into the living room adjacent to his working area. Along one wall is a
glass-enclosed bookcase containing the 188 books Asimov has written in
his 40-year literary career.
"This is my section of the apartment," he says. "The blinds are down
because I always work by artificial light." I tell him that John has come
along to ask questions about science -- Asimov is an expert in more than
20 scientific disciplines -- while I will be asking about science fiction
Asimov complies, and after about 10 minutes, he opens us completely and
gives each answer with enthusiasm.
He has lost a little weight recently, and in fact had a mild heart attack
earlier this year, but Dr. Asimov is as creative as ever -- perhaps more
so. One of his latest projects is _Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction
Magazine_. It first appeared on the newsstands early in 1977 and has
since built up a broad readership throughout the U.S., Canada and Great
Britain.
"It was the idea of Joel Davis of Davis Publications," says Asimov. "He
publishes _Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine_, _Alfred Hitchcock's
Mystery Magazine_, and many others. He decided that science fiction was
doing well and that he wanted a science fiction magazine -- something
with the name of someone, like Ellery Queen. ... He asked me if I was
interested. ... I wasn't really, because I had neither the time nor the
inclination to edit the magazine."
Asimov found the time. He and Davis worked out a formula for the
author to lend his name and picture to the magazine cover and to become
the editorial director. Asimov writes the editorials and some of the fiction,
answers readers' letters and helps with the story selection. George
Scithers, the editor, has a major role in deciding the magazine's contents.
_Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine_ began as a quarterly and if all
goes well, will soon become a monthly. Some of its contributors are
writers in their 20s who are publishing their first stories. Containing many
illustrations and almost no advertising, the 200-page magazine is available
at numerous Westside newsstands for $1.
Born in Russia and raised in Brooklyn, Asimov graduated from college
and published his first short story while in his teens. For many years, he
taught biochemistry at Boston University. In 1970, he returned to New
York and settled on the West Side. He is married to a psychiatrist and
psychoanalyst who practices under her maiden name of Dr. Janet Jeppson;
her office is on the opposite end of the apartment. She too is a writer,
having published a science fiction novel and some stories.
"The West Side, as far as I'm concerned, has more good restaurants than
any other place on earth, though I have not been to Paris," says Asimov,
who hates flying. He made a trip to Europe last year on the Queen
Elizabeth II -- and came back on the return voyage. "It wasn't a
vacation," he says. "I gave two talks each way and I wrote a book."
The IRS, he says, cannot believe that he doesn't take vacations. "In the
last seven years," he testifies, there has been only one time -- two days in
June of 1975 -- that I went on a trip and didn't do a talk. And even then,
I took some paper with me and worked on a murder mystery. You see,
a vacation is doing what you want to do and to stop doing what you have
to do. .. But I like what I, so I'm on vacation 365 days a year."
Asimov's biggest writing project these days is his massive autobiography,
which he expects to finish by the end of the year. "It will probably be in
two volumes," says Asimov, grinning, "which is unreasonable,
considering that I have led a very quiet life and not much has happened
to me."
* * *
ISAAC ASIMOV: LITERARY WORKAHOLIC
from _The Westsider_, 12-1-77
Morning has come to the West side. In a penthouse high above 66th
Street, a middle-aged man enters his study, pulled down the shades and
fills the room with artificial light. Reference books at his elbow, he sits
down at his electric typewriter and begins to tap out sentences at the rate
of 90 words per minute. Fourteen hours later, his day's work complete,
Dr. Isaac Asimov turns off the machine.
In such a way has Asimov spent most of the past seven years, ever since
he moved to the West Side from Boston. In a 40-year literary career
stretching back to his teens, he has written and published 188 books,
including science fiction, science fact, history, mystery, and even guides
to Shakespeare and the Bible. Asimov has also written more than 1,000
magazine and newspaper articles, book introductions and speeches.
Though his pen has never been silent since he sold his first piece of fiction
to Amazing Stories in 1939, Asimov is now enjoying the most productive
period of his career. Since 1970 he has written 85 books -- an average of
one per month. He does not dictate his books; nor does he have a
secretary. Asimov personally answers some 70 fan letters per week, and
he gives speeches frequently. He also finds time for the press.
The following interview took place on a morning late in October in the
sitting room adjoining his study. Along one wall was a bookcase
approximately 6 by 8 feet containing Asimov's collected works.
Question: Dr. Asimov, have you set any goals for yourself for the next 10
years or so?
Asimov: I'm afraid I don't generally look ahead. Right now my
autobiography is the big project ... . I have no ambition whatsoever
outside of my writing. I expect to write as long as I stay alive.
Q: Could you say something about your autobiography?
A: It's longer than I thought it would be. As soon as I get you out I'm
going to deliver pages 1374 to 1500 to Doubleday. I'm hoping to get it
finished by the end of the year ... . It will probably be in two volumes --
which is unreasonable, considering that I've led a very quiet life and not
much has happened to me. I guess the only thing is that I tend to go on
and on when I'm on my favorite subject.
Q: What made you choose the West Side to live?
A: I can't honestly say I chose the West Side. When I came to New
York in 1970, I lived where I could, which happened to be the West Side.
But now that I'm here, I like it. I was brought up in New York and went
to Columbia ... . I've always identified myself with Manhattan. My
publishers -- almost all of them are in Manhattan. Taxis are available at
any time. I West Side, as far as I'm concerned, has more good restaurants
within walked distance than any other place on earth, though I have not
been to Paris. I have learned to tolerate the traffic and the pollution and
the litter. When I go to the East Side it looks dull by comparison.
Q: I see that your science fiction story "Nightfall" has been made into
a record Albert. And I also remember the movie version of your
_Fantastic Voyage_. Do you have plans for making movies or recordings
out of your other science fiction works -- for example, the _Foundation_
series?
A: Fantastic Voyage was the other way around; my book was made from
the picture ... . The Foundation series has been turned into a radio show
in Great Britain. There have been other stories of mine which were turned
into radio shows in the 1950s. I have expensive pictures under option.
Whether anything will turn up in the future I don't know, and to be
perfectly honest, I don't care. I am perfectly happy with my writing career
as it is. I have complete control over my books. When something is put
into the movies it can be changed, often for the worse. I might get nothing
out of it both money, and I have enough money to get by.
Q: How to did the new Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine get
started?
A: It was the idea of Joel Davis of Davis Publications. He publishes
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,
and many others. He decided that science fiction was doing well and he
wanted a science fiction magazine -- something with the name of someone.
He had seen me, because I had brought in some stories for Ellery Queen.
He asked me if I was interested ... . I wasn't really, because I had neither
the time nor the inclination to edit the magazine. So he hired George
Scithers to be the editor and made me the editorial director ... . It's been
a quarterly to begin with. The fifth issue, which will go on sale in
December, will be the first of the bimonthly issues. After the second year
it will be a monthly if all things go well.
Q: Could you tell me something about your family life?
A: My wife is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and she has her office
in the other end of this apartment. She's the director of training at the
William Alanson White Institute on West 74th Street. The name she
practices under is Dr. Janet O. Jeppson -- that's her maiden name. It's
Mrs. Asimov but Dr. Jeppson. She's also a writer. She's published a
science fiction novel and a few short stories and has a mystery novel she's
trying to sell.
Q: Do you stimulate her writing by your own work?
A: If anything, I inhibit it. She was a writer for years before she met
me. If she weren't married to me, she would probably write more. In fact,
I encourage her. But it's hard when your husband writes as fast as he can
type and publishes everything he writes.
Q: Do you have any children?
A: Yes, I have two children by my first marriage -- a boy 26 and a girl
22. He's working at a gas station and the girl is a senior at Boston College
... . When she left home at 15, I said the only thing I ask of her was not
to smoke. So she's done that. What else she does, I don't know, but she
doesn't smoke.
Q: I realize that you are considered an authority in at least 20 branches
of science. Have you ever done in original scientific research?
Q: I am still assistant professor of biochemistry at Boston University,
though I no longer teach. Yes, I did original research from 1946 to 1958
... . I could not with honesty say I accomplished anything of importance.
I am not a first-rank researcher -- perhaps not even a second-rank
researcher. It surprised me too. I found that my heart was in writing.
Q: Where do you go for vacation?
A: I don't go on vacation really. I sometimes go off to do a talk and I
try to make that a little vacation. I work. In the last seven years there has
been only one time -- two days in June of 1975 -- that I didn't do a talk.
And even then I took some paper with me and worked on a murder
mystery. You see, a vacation is doing what you want to do and to stop
doing what you have to do ... . But I like what I do, so I'm on vacation
365 days a year. If I had to play volleyball, fish, etcetera, that would be
real work. In fact, the IRS can't believe I don't take vacations. If they can
figure out how to write one book a month and still take vacations ... . I
do travel, although I never fly. Last year I crossed the ocean on the QEII
without stopping. But, I gave two talks each way and I wrote a book.
Q: Since you live week three blocks of Lincoln Center, do you attend the
performing arts?
A: I am a very ill-rounded person. I am fascinated by what I do. And
what I have done is to try to take all knowledge for my province, but I
have tended to concentrate on science, mathematics and history. In regard
to art, I can't even say I know what I like.
Q: What do you think of abolishing mandatory retirement, as Congress
is considering? What will it like when people keep working indefinitely?
A: That was the condition until the 1930s. This forced retirement is a
product of the Great Depression. We're moving back to situation that has
always existed for mankind, which is to let people work as long as they
can. If the birthrate continues to go down the percentage of young people
will be smaller. I think that computerization and automation will alter
completely the concept of what is work. We're not going to think of jobs
the same way as we used to.
Q: Do you think you could ever retire?
A: There might well come a time, if I live long enough, when I can no
longer write publishable material. Then I will have to write for my own
amusement. Rex Stout's last book was written when he was 88 years old.
P.G. Wodehouse was writing pretty well in his early 90s. Agatha Christie
was falling off in her 80s ... . I had a heart attack this year. I might keep
writing for another 30 years. But if for some reason I am no longer able
to write, then it will certainly take all the terrors of dying away, so there
will be that silver lining ... . So far, I detect no falling off of my abilities.
In fact, this year my story "The Bicentennial Man" won all the awards.
"Is there anything also you'd like to ask me?" Said Asimov when I had
run out of questions. At that moment the telephone rang: he told his caller
that no, he would, regrettably, be unable to accept an invitation to speak
at Virginia because it was too far to go by grain. "It's more my loss than
yours," he said.
When I assured Asimov that there were no more questions, he disappeared
into his study and emerged with a copy of his latest science fiction book,
The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories. He signed it and presented it to
me. As he walked me to the elevator he took a peek at his watch. His
parting comment was: Let's see, I have to be downtown at 11:30. That
gives me 1:30 minutes to dress and 10 minutes to write."
********
WESTSIDER GEORGE BALANCHINE
Artistic director of the New York City Ballet
11-26-77
To some people he is known as the Shakespeare of dance -- a title that he
probably deserves more than anyone else now living. But to his friends
and colleagues, he is simply "Mr. B" -- George Balanchine, the ageless
Russian-born and trained choreographic genius whose zest for living is
matched only by his humility and his sense of humor.
Balanchine has almost single-handedly transplanted ballet to American soil
and made it flourish. What's more, he has played the central role in
making New York the dance capital of the world, which it undeniably is
today for both classical and modern dance.
Now in his 30th consecutive year as artistic director of the New York City
Ballet, Mr. B. shows no signs of slowing down. He continues to direct
most of the dances for his 92-member company and to create new
choreographic works of daring originality. He continues to teach at the
School of American Ballet, which he cofounded in 1934 with Lincoln
Kirstein. And Balanchine can still, when he chooses, write out the parts
for all the instruments of the orchestra. Yet he thinks of himself more as
a craftsman than a creator, and often compares his work to that of a cook
or cabinetmaker -- two crafts, by the way, in which he is rather skilled.
I meet George Balanchine backstage at the New York State Theatre during
an intermission of one of the season's first ballets. It's not hard to guess
which man is Balanchine from a distance because, as usual, he is
surrounded by young dancers. When he turns to face me, I see that he is
dressed simply but with a touch of European elegance. The man is small
of stature and quite frail in appearance. His English is strongly accented
yet easy to understand. A smile seems to be forever playing on his lips,
and when he converses with someone, he gives that person his full,
undivided attention.
"Why has dance become so popular in New York?" He gazes at me from
the depths of his eyes."I don't know why. People get used to us. It took
30 years to train New York," he says with feeling. "Maybe you can train
Los Angeles. You cannot train Boston. You cannot train Philadelphia --
there are too many big men with big cigars."
Soon he is improvising on the theme. "Certainly New York is
representative of America. All America should pay taxes in New York to
make it beautiful. Because in Europe, everybody wants to be in New York
to show off. ... I think that I will suggest to senators and presidents and
everybody to pay taxes to New York."
Mr. B, who left his native St. Petersburg in 1924 and spent the next nine
years working as a ballet master throughout Europe, was persuaded by the
American dance connoisseur Lincoln Kirstein to come to the U.S. in
1933. Since then, Balanchine has toured the world with the New York
City Ballet. He finds the home crowd, however, to be the most
appreciative.
"We are here 25 weeks," he explains. "It's always packed. In Paris, you
cannot last two weeks. In Los Angeles, in London, they do not like the
dance so much as here. In San Francisco, there were five people in the
audience. We showed them everything. They don't care. They're snobs.
They only want a name. In New York, it's different. In New York, they
like the thing for itself."
Balanchine does not write down his dances. How, then, does he remember
such works as _Prodigal Son_, which he created almost 50 years ago and
revived this season for the New York City Ballet? "How do you
remember prayers?" he says in response. "You just remember. Like
Pepperidge Farm. I know Pepperidge Farm. I remember everything."
He dislikes excessive terminology. "I used to be a dance director," he says
in mock lament. "Now I have become a choreographer. Choreographer is
the wrong title. Because dance is like poetry, see?"
_Prodigal Son_, in which the biblical story is danced out dramatically, is
an example of a ballet with a plot. But the majority of Balanchine's works
are based purely on music and movement. "The literary thing does not
always work," he says. "You cannot move. There's very few stories you
can do."
Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky are the composers he most likes to use for
new dance works. The late Igor Stravinsky, a fellow Russian expatriate
who was his longtime friend and collaborator, once described Balanchine's
choreography as "a series of dialogues perfectly complimentary to and
coordinated with the dialogues of the music."
In spite of his fondness for Russian composers, Balanchine has no
hesitation in naming Fred Astaire as his favorite dancer. "No, I don't use
his ideas because he's an individual." says Balanchine. "You cannot use
his ideas because only he can dance them. There is nobody like that.
People are not like that anymore."
A resident of West 67th Street, Balanchine shows even more than his
usual exuberance when speaking of the West Side. "It's the best side. It's
like the Rive Gauche (in Paris). We have the best hotels, like the Empire,
the best restaurants -- Le Poulailler (W. 65th St.) has such good French
cooking."
"We have no strikes here, nothing," he continues, grinning widely.
"Everybody's very nice, friendly. They help each other. I invite
everybody on the East Side to come here. They don't come because
they're snobs. The West Side? It's the cleanest side. Also there is no
crime here. There's no police here."
died 4-30-83, born 1-22-04.
********
WESTSIDER CLIVE BARNES
Drama and dance critic
10-1-77
He's still the most famous drama critic in America, if not the world.
His name has not yet disappeared from the subway walls or from the signs
in front of the theatres along Broadway. And even though Clive Barnes
was recently replaced as the _New York Times'_ drama critic, he remains
the most-quoted authority in the newspaper ads. He is still the _Times'_
dance critic. He still does his daily radio spot on theatre for WQXR
Radio. He still lectures around the country and writes a column for the
_London Times_. At 50, Barnes does not mind the slightly calmer pace
his life has taken.
"I don't know why I was replaced," he says. "Papers have these policy
decisions. I suppose they wanted a change. They wanted to split the two
desks, dance and drama."
A refined, affable Englishman, Clive Barnes welcomes me into his West
End Avenue home and invites me to sit down and have some coffee for
five minutes while he puts the finishing touches on an article. His slim,
attractive wife Trish and his 15-year-old son Christopher talk to him while
he works. Soon the article is finished and he is relaxed in an armchair,
ready to answer questions. He holds a pen in his lap and occasionally
clicks it as we talk.
"Really, I much prefer New York to London," says Barnes, who spent the
first 38 years of his life in the British capital. "I'll never leave New York,
ever. When I first came here visiting before I came here to live, I adored
it. It's just been a very long love affair between myself and the city."
Born the son of a London ambulance driver, Barnes won a scholarship to
Oxford University, and while a student there began to write reviews on
theatre and dance. Following graduation, he worked in city planning for
10 years while moonlighting as a critic of theatre, dance, films and music.
Thus he built up a reservoir of knowledge in all the major performing
arts. In 1965, several years after Barnes got into full-time journalism, he
was doing such an impressive job as dance critic for the _London Times_
that the _New York Times_ made him a handsome salary offer to fill the
same role for them. Two years later the _Times_ offered him the post of
drama critic as well. Barnes kept the dual role until this year, when the
"new" _New York Times_ asked him to concentrate strictly on dance.
"Certainly American dance is the most important in the world, and has
been for at least 25 years," he says. "The reason for this is that you have
a very strong classical tradition, as well as a very strong modern dance
tradition. This is the only country in the world that has these two
traditions, and they intermesh, so that you have George Balanchine on one
side and Martha Graham on the other. This means that American dance
is astonishingly rich."
Barnes feels that Americans' television-viewing habits have made them
more appreciative of the subtleties of dance movement: "That same kind
of visual orientation that has made spectator sports what they are spins
off, and spreads over to things like dance." He notes that dance in New
York appeals more to the young -- to people who have been reared on
television. Broadway audiences, on the other hand, "tend to be
menopausal, and opera audiences to be geriatric."
Barnes finds the West Side the ideal place to live because of its proximity
to his work. Trish, herself an expert on dance, usually accompanies him
to opening-night performances. "We can get to any Broadway theatre in
10 minutes," he says, "or walk to Lincoln Center. I can get to the paper
in about 10 minutes. The West Side has changed a little over the years.
I think it's gotten rather nice."
On nights off, Barnes enjoys going to the Metropolitan Opera or to a
movie. His son Christopher loves rock music and hates drama. He also
has a 14-year-old daughter, Maya. The family enjoys dining at many
restaurants in the Lincoln Center area, including Le Poulailler on 65th
Street near Columbus.
I ask Barnes if he can think of any plays that have been forced to close
because of unkind reviews. "That would presume it was an important play
which the critics misunderstood and killed," he says. "I don't think this
has actually happened. A play that gets awful notices by everyone is not
the victim of a vast critical conspiracy. It's usually a bad play. Harold
Pinter's _The Birthday Party_ got bad notices in London but it recovered
and went on and became successful."
For those who miss Barnes' views on theatre in the _Times_, his radio
broadcast can be heard on WQXR (1560 AM and 96.3 FM) Monday
through Friday, right after the 11 p.m. news.
Trish, Clive's biggest supporter, has no complaints about being the wife
of a celebrity. "It's very enjoyable, actually," she says with a wide smile.
"You meet fascinating people and see all the best things there are to see."
********
WESTSIDER FRANZ BECKENBAUER
North America's most valuable soccer player
8-5-78
Last October, when Brazilian soccer virtuoso Pel played his final game
as a professional, nearly 76,000 fans filed into Giant Stadium in East
Rutherford, New Jersey to bid farewell to the man who had almost single
handedly transformed soccer into a major American sport. It was a fitting
cap to Pel's career that his team, the Cosmos, won the North American
Soccer League championship last season over 23 other teams.
But while the Brazilian superstar was reaping most of the publicity, one
of his teammates, Franz Beckenbauer, was quietly getting things done. It
was probably he, more than anyone else, who won the title for the
Cosmos -- not by scoring goals, but by controlling the midfield with his
pinpoint touch passes and setting up the offense to go in for the shot.
In May, 1977, he shocked the sports world by quitting his West German
team, Bayern Munich, and signing a $2.8 million contract to play with the
Cosmos for four years. And though he missed one-third of the 1977
season, Franz still received last year's Most Valuable Player award for a
league encompassing 600 players from around the world. This season
again, thanks largely to his efforts, the Cosmos clinched their division title
and are a heavy favorite to repeat their victory in the Soccer Bowl -- the
Super Bowl of soccer. This year the Soccer Bowl will be held in Giant
Stadium on August 27. To be in that game, the Cosmos must first win in
the playoffs, which begin on August 8.
Beckenbauer is so famous in Germany that he finds it impossible to lead
a private life there. His fame is well deserved: Franz starred for the West
German national team in the 1966 World Cup finals and the 1970
semifinals, and captained the team when it won the World Cup in 1974.
During his 12 seasons with Bayern Munich of the German Soccer League,
he was named German Footballer of the Year four times and European
Footballer of the Year twice, and was runner-up on two other occasions.
But Franz is somewhat of a quiet, shy man, who does not like the
limelight. In New York he can be himself, and walk the streets
undisturbed, thinking about his wife and three children in Switzerland,
who will be joining him this month for a long visit.
I meet Franz on a July afternoon after a practice at Giant Stadium. As we
sit talking in the locker room, many of his teammates walk by and wave
to him or call his name. He is an extremely popular fellow both on and
off the field -- which explains why 72,000 people showed up for a game
last May commemorating Franz Beckenbauer Day. With his courtly
manners, he has rightfully earned the nickname "Kaiser Franz."
He could speak almost no English when he arrived in New York less than
two years ago at the age of 31, but has learned remarkably quickly. "My
mind was, soccer in the United States, it's easier to play. But it's not so
easy as I expect," he says, in his slightly hesitant but perfectly
understandable speech. "You have so different things, like Astroturf. You
have to play in the summertime. It's so hot. You have to make big trips,
like to Los Angeles. Sometimes it's more difficult to play here than in
Europe."
When asked to compare soccer with American football, he says, "You
can't compare. It's a much different sport. As an American footballer,
you must be not a normal man. You must be maybe 200 pounds, and 6
foot 3, 6 foot 4 or 5. Everybody can play soccer -- big, tall, small -- if he
is skilled enough, if he has the brain to play.
"I started when I was 3, 4, 5 years old. I don't know exactly. But you
know, after the war, nobody has money. Soccer is the cheapest sport. No
courts, nothing. So we all start to play soccer, and after I was 10 years
old, I went to a little club in Munich. When I was 13 years old, I moved
to Bayern, Munich, and when I was 18, I was a professional."
Franz smiles at the mention of Manhattan. "When I signed the contract,
they asked me where I wanted to stay. In the suburbs? I said no, I want
to stay in the city. A friend of mine knows a businessman who lives
beside the Central Park. He is most of the year outside the country. The
apartment was free, and he let me have it for six months. I was very
lucky. I like to walk around the park to watch the people. I have been to
Lincoln Center a few times, and of course different shows on Broadway.
But I never saw a city like New York. You have so many good
restaurants. It's unbelievable."
During the off-season, Franz does some promotional work for both
Mercedes-Benz and Adidas, the sporting goods company that
manufactures, among other things, a Franz Beckenbauer soccer shoe. As
a result, Franz, who will be 33 next month, is not at all worried about his
future.
"You know, when I started with soccer as a professional," he explains, "I
had an aim. I said when I'm finished with soccer, my life will be
different. I can say, 'I want to do this and this,' and not 'I must do this.'
When I finish my career, I would like to go through the United States in
a mobile with my family, to see all the states. That's for sure."
********
WESTSIDER HIMAN BROWN
Creator of the _CBS Radio Mystery Theater_
5-10-80
During the 1930s, a comedy called _The Rise of the Goldbergs_ was
second only to _Amos & Andy_ as the most popular radio show in
America. Its success was due largely to the efforts of a young man from
Brooklyn named Himan Brown, who co-produced the series, sold it to
NBC and did the voice of Mr. Goldberg. He had started in radio drama
while in his teens, and soon after graduating from Brooklyn Law School
as valedictorian, decided to make radio, not law, his career.
During the next three decades, as producer of _Inner Sanctum Mysteries_,
_The Thin Man_, _Grand Central Station_, _Nero Wolfe_ and other
series, Brown became the Norman Lear of radio. But by 1959, it was all
over: the last network radio drama was forced off the air by the onslaught
of television. Brown, however, kept up a personal crusade for radio,
pounding on the desks of every broadcast executive he could reach.
Fourteen years later, in January 1974, his dream was realized, and radio
drama was reborn with the _CBS Radio Mystery Theater_.
The 52-minute show, it turned out, was long overdue. Within weeks, CBS
received 200,000 fan letters from listeners. Currently the _Radio Mystery
Theater_ can be heard in New York on Monday through Friday at 7:07
p.m. on station WMCA (570 AM). It is heard seven nights a week on
approximately 250 other stations across the country. Brown, the
producer/director, oversees every phase of the operation, from hiring the
writers and actors to directing and recording sessions from a control booth
at the CBS studios.
"I have never stopped believing," he says, "that the spoken word and the
imagination of the listener are infinitely stronger and more dramatic than
anything television can offer." He is a silvery-haired, distinguished
looking gentleman with a mischievous twinkle in hie eye and an endless
capacity for humor. Ruddy-complexioned and vigorous, dressed in a gray
pinstripe suit and a crimson tie, he approaches his work with an infectious
enthusiasm.
On a typical weekday, Brown arrives at the sound studio at 9 a.m. with
a batch of scripts under his arm, which he hands out to a group of actors
assembled around a table. Many are stars of the stage or screen -- Tammy
Grimes, Julie Harris, Tony Roberts, Fred Gwynn, Bobby Morse, Roberta
Maxwell, Joan Hackett. "I get the best actors in the world, right here in
New York," he notes with pride. "They work for me in the daytime and
on Broadway at night."
As the cast members go through a cold reading. Brown interjects his
comments: "Do a little more with that. ... Don't swallow your words
there. ... Cross out that line." The actors laugh and joke their way
through the session; Brown is the biggest jokester of all. Finally everyone
takes a break before doing the actual taping. Brown calls his 91-year-old
mother on the telephone and speaks to her in Yiddish for some time. Then
he answers a questions about his discoveries in sound effects.
"In the 1930s I was doing _Dick Tracy_, a very popular show. For sound
effects we had several doors. One of them screaked, no matter what we
did to it. I like to think that door was talking to us, saying, 'Make me a
star,'" he says with a smile.
The creaking door later became the signature for _Inner Sanctum
Mysteries_, and is now employed as the introductory note for the _Radio
Mystery Theater_, along with host E.G. Marshall's compelling greeting:
"Come _in_." Himan Brown also created the sound of London's foghorns
and Big Ben for _Bulldog Drummond_, the laugh of the fat Nero Wolfe,
and the never-to-be-forgotten train that roared under Park Avenue into
Grand Central Station.
When the recording session get underway, Brown observes the performers
through the thick glass of the control booth as they stand around a
microphone, reading their line with animation. From time to time he stops
the action and repeats parts of a scene. "It's all spliced together
afterwards," he explains.
In the late 1940s, Brown began to produce television dramas, such as
_Lights Out_ and the _Chevy Mystery Show_. He built a large TV studio
on West 26th Street for that purpose, which for many years he has leased
to CBS for filming the soap opera _The Guiding Light_.
For most of his career, Brown has been a resident of the Upper West
Side. The father of two, he is married to Shirley Goodman, executive vice
president of the Fashion Institute of Technology. He has long been
involved in community affairs and charitable organizations, including the
Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the National Urban League and the
National Conference of Social Work. Brown is constantly in demand as
a public speaker, a fund-raiser, and a creator of multimedia presentations.
His plans for 1980 include reviving the _Adventure Theater_, a children's
radio with that he last did in 1977. "The best thing about radio drama,"
he joyfully concludes, "is that we can take you anywhere, unhampered by
sets, production costs, locations, makeup, costumes, or memorizing lines,
and make you believe everything we put on the air. ... The screen in your
head is much bigger than the biggest giant screen ever made. It gives you
an experience no other form of theatre can duplicate. It's the theatre of the
mind."
********
FERRIS BUTLER
Creator, writer and producer of _Waste Meat News_
4-7-79
Every Saturday at 11:30 p.m., millions of Americans tune in to what is
indisputably the boldest, the most innovative, and frequently the most
tasteless comedy show on television -- NBC's _Saturday Night Live_. But
for the 400,000 residents of Manhattan who have cable TV, there is
another program -- also aired at 11:30, but on Sunday evening -- that is,
in its own way, even more offbeat.
Known as _Waste Meat News_, the half-hour satiric revue has been a
regular feature of Channel D since April, 1976, when a young Westsider
named Ferris Butler decided that he had the talent to write, direct, and
produce his own comedy series, even without money and film equipment.
Time has proven him right: last year, _TV World_ magazine discovered,
in a poll of viewers, that _Waste Meat News_ is the most popular comedy
program on cable, out of 150 public access shows.
A tall, willowy, 27-year-old with a quizzical expression permanently fixed
on his face, Ferris once worked as a part-time office boy at Channel 7's
_Eyewitness News_, and there he came to the conclusion that "TV news
is nothing but throwaway scraps, like sausages or hot dogs. ... Very little
protein, like waste meat."
Many of the skits he conceives have the same format as "straight" news
items, but have been twisted by his imagination into something
outrageous. In place of the standard weather reports, for example, there
is Ferris' "Leather Weather Girl," in which a girl is tied to a table, her
body representing a map of the world.
The weather reporter, while telling about an impending onslaught of rain
and snow, dramatizes his points by pouring a pitcher of water over the
girl, smothering her with shaving cream, and finally applying a blow
dryer to evaporate the messes while explaining that a warm air front will
follow. Other skits include "Swedish Grease," "Music to Eat Rice By,"
and "The Adversaries," in which two actors wearing grotesque masks
debate the question: should monsters be allowed to kill people, or just
frighten them?
Ideas for skits, says Ferris, come to him any time of night or day, now
that he has "stopped working at any legitimate job. I watch a lot of
television. But most of the time, I meander around the streets and just
think.
"I remember when I got the idea for the foreign language cursing
detector. I was sitting on a bench in the park, smoking grass, when some
foreign tourists came and sat down, and started talking about me in
German like I was a bum. And I thought, why not have a portable siren
that goes off whenever a swear word is spoken in any language?"
He describes himself as "a very unregimented person who can't jive with
the mainstream industry." This accounts for much of the spontaneity in
_Waste Meat News_. The performers sometimes don't see the scripts until
the taping session. Each segment requires several run-throughs before it
is smooth enough to be filmed. Frequently the filming goes on far into the
night. Although the show is done with a single camera and half-inch
videotape, the final result makes up in charm what it lacks in professional
gloss.
"Maybe I'm a little rough in the way I produce it," says Ferris, "but I'm
being a pioneer and I'm not worried about perfection as long as the
audience has a positive reaction."
His cast is an irregular group of about 15 unpaid actors and actresses,
most of them young. Two current stars of _Waste Meat News_ are Pat
Profito, a master of comedy who injects an infectious vitality into all of
his performances, and Laura Suarez, a Strassberg-trained actress and
former Playboy Bunny who frequently portrays the naive sexpot who
crops up in many of Ferris' sketches.
Most of the filming is done on the Upper West Side -- usually on the
street or in someone's apartment, but also in such diverse places as stores,
restaurants, the waterfront, boiler rooms and lobbies. A recent skit was
shot at a Westside swimming pool; it features Pat Profito as a swimming
instructor who teaches three bikini-clad beauties his "jump-in-and-swim"
method, in which he pushes them into the pool and expects them to swim
instinctively, or drown.
Ferris, who grew up in Queens and Brooklyn "and departed as soon as
was possible," studied filmmaking at New York University under Martin
Scorsese and was encouraged to pursue comedy writing. For the past five
years he has been married to Beverly Ross, a composer with many hits to
her credit including "Lollipop."
It's 10 seconds before midnight on Sunday evening. Time once again for
Ferris to bid his viewers goodnight. "And remember: stay alienated, stay
wiped out, and stay wasted."
********
EASTSIDER SAMMY CAHN
Oscar-winning lyricist
3-10-79
"I've never written a song that didn't almost write itself," says Sammy
Cahn, one of the world's most successful lyricists of popular songs. "I'm
like the catalyst. It's like I start the boulder down the hill, but after that,
there's only one place it can go. I'm always thrilled by the adventure of
finding the lyric and leading it to a happy conclusion. If I come to the
slightest impasse, I've learned to stop, and look around and see what
needs to be done around the house. Then I come back, and it's so easy.
You can't go into combat with a lyric."
Over the past four decades, his songs have received four Oscars and more
than 30 Oscar nominations. Among his numerous hits, written in
collaboration with six different melodists, are "Three Coins in a
Fountain," "Love and Marriage," "Call Me Irresponsible" and "Let It
Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!" His musicals include _Anchors
Aweigh_ and _High Button Shoes_. As a performer, he has the distinction
of making his Broadway debut in 1974 at the age of 60, in a one-man
show with backup musicians titled _Words and Music_, in which he sang
his own material and told colorful stories about his life and career. For his
performance, Sammy won the Outer Circle Critic's Award for Best New
Talent on Broadway, as well as a Theatre World Award. Since then, he
has been in great demand all over the country as an entertainer.
Small, wiry and energetic -- he describes himself as "all glasses and
mustache" -- he is utterly without pretension, and seems as much at home
with strangers on the street as he is with royalty (last year he sang for
England's Prince Charles). He manages to embrace both worlds by
involving himself in many projects simultaneously.
Born on "the lowest part of the Lower East Side," he now has an
apartment in the East 60s with his wife Tita, a fashion designer. He has
another residence in Los Angeles, and spends about the same number of
days each year in the two homes.
Recently Sammy completed the songs for a new cartoon film of _Heidi_
and a series of songs for _Sesame Street_. He also works as a consultant
for Faberge, and has a large office in the company's East Side
headquarters. As president of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Sammy
devotes much of his time to publicizing the non-profit organization's
museum on the eighth floor of One Times Square. It is open Monday
through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and admission is free. He
recently met with the producer of the Broadway musical _Annie_ to
discuss writing a new musical. He gives generously to many charitable
causes.
But the majority of his time these days goes to writing and performing
special lyrics for special occasions -- usually parodies of his own hit
songs. Sometimes he does this for profit, and sometimes for love. He was
paid handsomely to prepare a birthday celebration for Ray Kroc, the head
of Mcdonald's. But a couple of weeks ago, when a man wrote to Sammy
telling him how much his songs had meant to him and his wife over the
years, and asking him to please write some personalized lyrics for their
18th wedding anniversary, Sammy was "just enough of an idiot to sit
down and do it."
He works exclusively at the typewriter. "I have become almost audacious.
When I put a piece of paper in the typewriter, I know that the completed
song will be on that page. I'm very grateful to the man who invented
Correctotype and liquid paper. I start to type as soon as I get up, and I
think about songs all day long. When I sleep at night, I sleep with an
earplug in my ear, tuned to WCBS or WINS radio. They're both news
stations. The radio distracts me: it stops me from thinking about lyrics."
As we are talking, Sammy keeps remembering telephone calls he needs
to make, but he keeps them brief and to the point. As soon as he hangs
up, our conversation jumps immediately back to the previous subject, as
if there had been no interruption. He is extremely quick-minded -- to the
extent that his thoughts sometimes race ahead of him, and his sentences
lose their structure. In speaking of his son, a very successful jazz guitarist
who performs under the name Steve Khan, Sammy comments: "Now, my
son -- brace yourself -- my son -- this is one of my great, great
achievements -- my fame is coming from a very curious source. People
come up to me and say, 'You're Steve Kahn's father?'"
Asked about the satisfaction he has gotten from songwriting, Sammy
insists that he can't imagine a more rewarding career. "I once told that to
a college audience and a boy said, 'I'm studying to be a lawyer. What's
wrong with that?' I said, 'Nothing, but who walks down the street
humming a lawsuit?'"
********
WESTSIDER HUGH CAREY
Governor of New York state
9-16-78
It was 5 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day. Governor Hugh Carey sat
alone in his office on West 55th Street, rubbing his forehead wearily with
both hands when his assistant press secretary, Judy Deich, ushered me in.
The introductions were brief, and the governor spoke very rapidly,
keeping is eyes on the table in front of him, where he was scrawling
pencil lines in geometric patterns on a piece of blank paper, as if to
maintain his concentration.
The Governor had been up for 12 hours, and his voice occasionally faded
to a whisper, but he answered all the questions with a flair and displayed
a sincere manner throughout. Sitting kitty-corner to me at a conference
table, he looked smaller and thinner than his photographs. He also looked
like one of the tiredest, most overworked men I had ever met.
"I have been staying on the West Side a lot since last September," he said.
"That's when my sons Donald and Michael got an apartment near Central
Park. They're kind enough to put me up there. We have the usual tenants'
complaints about the leaky ceilings and peeling paint. All in all, it's a
good building. I find more and more advantages to living on the West
Side. I like it because of the accessibility to work and because I jog in
Central Park.
"One of my headaches is Central Park. Some of my colleagues would like
to make it a national park. It's the city's biggest showplace. ... I want to
get the automobiles out of there more and more. In the morning, I see all
the New Jersey cars coming through. That's why I want Westway below
42d Street -- so it will take more pressure off the city. ... I wish everyone
would realize that Westway is not a road. It's a recessed highway -- more
of a tunnel."
Speaking frankly of the problem of ex-mental patients in parts of the West
Side, Carey said that "we have indexed all the SRO's. That was never
done before. ... The homeless people who live on the street are not the
wards of the state. We can't just go out and pick them up. ... If they need
some kind of health care, they should be taken to a shelter and given
health care. If they resist, we will have peace officers to take care of
them. That's something I'm doing with Mayor Koch."
Ever since he defeated Nelson Rockefeller's appointed successor, Malcolm
Wilson, in 1974, Hugh Carey has become well known for both his
conservative moral code and his unswerving fiscal restraint. Born on April
11, 1919, to an Irish Catholic family in Brooklyn, Carey grew up with
five brothers believing in certain principles that he has never abandoned.
These moral principles have become the foundation of his controversial
stands on the death penalty and abortion.
"I am against the death penalty," said Carey, "because the government can
make a mistake. A sentence of life without parole is better. There are six
people now walking around the state who were condemned to death and
later proven innocent. One is named Zimmy and he works on the West
Side in a garment factory. Somebody should ask him what he thinks about
the death penalty. He's alive because somebody confessed.
"I oppose abortion personally. But the Supreme Court upheld that it's the
choice of a woman of her own free will, and I support that ruling. In New
York, the state pays for it if it's a matter of medical necessity. Otherwise,
there might be a mangled body in a back alley. ... I'm also advocating an
alternative -- a teenage pregnancy bill, where girls can have a baby
without shame and go back to school. It's the most common reason for
dropouts among teenagers."
During World War II, Hugh Carey fought in France, Belgium, Holland
and Germany, and attained the rank of major. After the service, he
worked for many years as an executive in his brother Edward's Peerless
Oil and Chemical Corporation. Not until 1960, when he was 41 years old,
did Carey decide to run for political office. He won his first congressional
race and during the 1960s developed a national reputation for his liberal
attitude on education, and programs for the elderly and handicapped.
His life has twice been touched by deep personal tragedy in recent years.
An automobile accident in 1969 took the lives of his two eldest sons, and
cancer claimed his wife Helen in 1974. A man who loves the company of
other people, Carey enjoys such simple pleasures as cooking with friends
and singing with his children.
Asked about the chief difference between himself and Republican
challenger Perry Duryea, the governor replied with obvious glee: "I can't
think of anything we have in common. ... I'll knock the Y right out of his
name before I'm finished."
Generally known to be at his best in times of crisis, Carey said that
whenever the pressures of his office become too great for him to handle
alone, he drops into the chapel and asks for help. "It's a matter of privacy
to me; I go where I'm not seen," he said. "I need help quite a lot. Also,
I believe that New York is a very special place, with a resourcefulness
that can't be matched anywhere in the world. When people have come
together as New Yorkers, they have done amazing things."
********
WESTSIDER CRAIG CLAIBORNE
Food editor of the _New York Times_
3-10-79
"To be a good restaurant critic, you shouldn't have a conscience," says
Craig Claiborne, food editor of the _New York Times_. "I used to visit
restaurants twice a day, frequently seven days a week, and lie awake
brooding about whether my reviews were honest -- whether I was hurting
somebody who didn't deserve to be hurt."
Recognized throughout the United States as the father of modern
restaurant criticism, Claiborne joined the _Times_ in 1957, and shortly
thereafter was given the go-ahead to write reviews based on a four-star
system. "The _New York Times_ made the decision. I was the
instrument. It was the first newspaper that allowed a restaurant critic to
say anything he wanted. It took a lot of guts, when a newspaper depends
on advertising."
A 58-year-old bachelor whose soft voice still carries strong traces of his
native Mississippi, Claiborne has few of the characteristics generally
imagined of a Timesman. He is a true bon vivant, and does not appear to
take himself or his work too seriously. He prefers to be called by his first
name, is not a particularly fashionable dresser, and spends as little time
as possible in Manhattan. In his lighter moods, such as that in which I
find him on the day of our interview, he delights in telling jokes that are
classics of schoolyard humor. The punch line, more often than not, is
drowned by his own uproarious laughter.
Although he has maintained a Westside apartment for the past nine years,
Claiborne spends most of his time at his house in East Hampton, Long
Island, next door to Pierre Franey, one of the greatest French chefs in
America, who, since 1974, has co-authored Claiborne's food articles for
the _New York Times_ Sunday magazine. Recently he purchased a larger,
more modern house about 15 minutes from Franey, which he plans to
occupy shortly. The pair cook together about five times a week. Claiborne
calls the house "my Taj Mahal -- my Xanadu."
He explains his jovial mood by saying that the night before, he attended
a big dinner party for restaurateur Joe Baum at the Four Seasons. "It was
an everybody-bring-something dinner. Jim Beard brought bread. I brought
saviche (marinated raw fish), and Gael Greene brought some chocolate
dessert. I got roaring drunk."
In spite of his earthiness, Claiborne unquestionably ranks as one of the
leading food authorities of his time. His articles, which appear in the
_Times_ each Monday, Wednesday and Sunday, cover every subject from
the particulars of a dinner for Chinese Vice-Premier Teng Hsiao-ping in
Washington (where Claiborne saw a rock group he had never heard of
called the Osmonds) to the six most creative ways of preparing scallops.
He has written numerous best-selling cookbooks, and he often travels
around the world on fact-finding missions.
Claiborne's rise from obscurity to the most prestigious food job in
America astonished no one more than himself, since his principal
qualifications were a B.A. in journalism and one year's training at a hotel
and restaurant school in Switzerland. However, the _Times_ knew exactly
what they were looking for when Jane Nickerson retired in 1957, and
Claiborne quickly proved to be the man of the hour. He threw himself
into his work with boundless energy, writing no less than five columns a
week, but his relationship with the newspaper eventually became a love
hate affair. "Things came to the point where I couldn't go to a restaurant
at night unless I came home here and had at least four Scotch and sodas
and four martinis. And at this point, I took myself off to Africa. I stayed
at the Stanley Hotel in Kenya, and I came back and said, 'Give me my
benefits. I'm quitting this place.' They thought I was kidding."
He wasn't. Claiborne left the paper for almost two years. "Then the
_Times_ came to me and said, 'Would you come back under any
circumstances?' And I must confess that I felt a great emotional relief."
He agreed to return if the paper would have someone else do the local
restaurant reviews; he also requested that his neighbor and cooking partner
Pierre Franey share the Sunday byline. The conditions were immediately
met.
Claiborne's Westside apartment is painted green from floor to ceiling --
thus fulfilling an old fantasy of his. He describes the apartment itself as
"gently shabby," but says that the building, constructed in 1883, is "the
greatest residency in the entire island of Manhattan. You're catty-corner
from Carnegie Hall, you're six minutes by foot from Lincoln Center, you
can walk to any place on Broadway within seconds, and there are very
few restaurants you couldn't get to within five minutes of this place." His
favorite restaurant in all of Manhattan is the Shun Lee Palace (155 E. 55th
St.), while two other favorites on the West Side are the Russian Tea
Room and the Fuji Restaurant (238 W. 56th).
Asked about other interests or hobbies, Claiborne smiles mischievously
and replies: "I'm having a $6000 Bolton stereo system put into my new
Xanadu. You can clap your hands and change the tapes or records. I love
music and sex and food, and outside of that, forget it!"
********
WESTSIDER MARC CONNELLY
Actor, director, producer, novelist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist
1-7-78
Eleven years ago, during my senior year in high school, I saw a movie
just before Christmas that made a deep impression. It was a film of a
stage play called _The Green Pastures_ -- a fascinating look at life in
biblical times, performed by an all-black cast.
The memory of that film remained in my consciousness like a religious
experience, although I never knew who wrote the play or when it was
written. So it was a welcome surprise to learn that this week's interview
would be with the play's author, Marc Connelly.
Connelly was born in a small Pennsylvania town in 1890, the son of a pair
of travelling actors. He wrote _The Green Pastures_ in 1930; it won that
year's Pulitzer Prize for drama. In his 70-year career Connelly has written
dozens of plays. One of the most versatile talents in the American theatre,
he has excelled as an actor, director, producer, playwriting professor at
Yale, and popular lecturer. He has written musicals, stage plays, movie
scripts and radio plays.
He was one of the original staff members of the _New Yorker_ magazine,
and became part of the famous round table at the Algonquin Hotel. One
of his short stories won an O. Henry award. His first novel was published
when he was 74 years old. Today, still an active playwright, he lives
peacefully at Central Park West, comfortable in his role as an elder
statesman of American letters.
I feel a certain freedom about repeating the comments Connelly made
during our interview because the first thing he said at the door was "I
never read anything about myself. ... It's not modesty; it's more terror --
for fear that some dark secret will emerge."
Yes, he said, he's very busy these days. "I've just completed a comedy
which I'm waiting to have done. I'd rather not mention the title before it
comes out. It's a comic fantasy."
He recently taped an appearance on the _Dick Cavett Show_, which will
be aired sometime this month. And he's working on a musical version of
_Farmer Takes A Wife_, a Broadway play that he co-authored in 1934.
It became a successful film the next year, with Henry Fonda's screen
premiere.
"They're always reviving my plays. Last summer they did _Merton of the
Movies_ (which he wrote with George F. Kaufman in 1922) in that big
theatre complex in Los Angeles. It was quite successful. The boy that
plays John-Boy on the Waltons played Merton. It was quite good; I went
to see it."
Much as Connelly dislikes certain TV shows, he thinks very highly of TV
as a medium: "It's good, it's good. I like three or four shows. _Mash_ is
wonderful. I like _Maude_ every now and then. And Carol Burnett. I
might like _Kojak_ if it didn't run every five minutes. Three times a night
is too much for any TV show."
Any anecdotes about the "Vicious Circle" of the Algonquin Hotel -- whose
members included Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber,
Alexander Woollcott and George Kaufman? "Oh, I don't want to talk
about the round table," he said. "Every time you turn around there's a
new book about the round table. ... I've written about George Kaufman
and so have a hundred other people. It might be that he might get out of
his grave and club us all for writing about him."
Although _The Green Pastures_ is considered an American classic, it is
now performed only by school and amateur companies. Its depiction of
plantation life has become offensive to socially conscious blacks. "There
are Negro snobs," explained Connelly, "just like there are Irish snobs and
Jewish snobs. As soon as people get in a position of economic power,
they become sensitive about the way they are shown on the stage. It's a
very human, inevitable reaction."
However, he thinks that his masterwork is as valid today as ever. "It's a
statement about the fact that man has been hunting the divine in himself
ever since he became a conscious animal. And this is the story of one
aspect of his search for the divine in himself."
Connelly attends Broadway "when there's something I feel I want to see.
I walk out on quite a few. Theatre is just as strong today. A seasonal crop
may be poor, but theatre itself is healthy. It's probably the greatest social
instrument man ever invented. All religions have sprung from the
theatre."
A Westsider since about 1920, Marc Connelly named Schwartz's Candy
Store on West 72nd as one of his favorite neighborhood businesses. "It's
one of the finest candy shops in New York," he said. "You can see my
portrait there. And the A&P at 68th and Broadway. There's a checkout
girl there named Noreen who's one of the best checkout girls in
America."
The interview came to an end when I again asked Connelly about
television. Does he approve of it? "Of course," he said. "Any new public
addition is going to be condemned. They used to say, 'Don't go to the
movies. ... You'll go blind.' We're not blind and we still watch them."
********
EASTSIDER TONY CRAIG
Star of _The Edge of Night_
1-26-79
Although Los Angeles has long since taken over prime-time TV
programming, New York is still the headquarters for daytime drama --
also known as soap opera. Of the 13 "soaps," 10 are filmed in New York,
and of these 10, five have been on the small screen since the 1950s,
including _The Edge of Night_, which debuted in 1956.
The show's crime/mystery format has not changed much over the years,
but one thing that has changed, of course, is the cast of characters. Tony
Craig, who plays attorney Draper Scott, joined the show in November,
1975, and since then he has become one of the most popular male stars
in daytime television.
Tony owes his success not only to his good looks and his acting ability,
but also to his likable off-camera personality. Upon meeting Tony on the
set of _The Edge of Night_ during a busy shooting session, I cannot help
noticing the affection that the other cast members display toward him. His
ability to get along with everyone involved with the show -- especially
producer Nick Nicholson, and headwriter Henry Slesar -- has enabled
Tony to develop the role of Draper Scott into one of the four leading
characters.
"I was given a piece of advice when I started," says Tony. "One: keep to
your business and do what you're told, and two, answer your fan mail. I
answer all my fan mail with a very personal response. ... In the _National
Star_, I once said I was looking for Miss Right, and I got inundated with
letters. Some people sent plane ticket, asking me to come and see them."
As we sit down to talk in one of the dressing rooms, Tony puts on a tie
and jacket for an upcoming bar scene, but because only his top half will
be shown on camera, he does not bother to change out of his blue jeans
and running shoes. Tall, athletically built and boyish in appearance, he
discusses his work with an infectious enthusiasm.
"The closer I get to the character, the more I see that he and I are very
much alike," says Tony in his rapid speech. "It's funny, the way I've
assimilated him and he's assimilated me. It's like the dummy in _Magic_.
The character has gone from a very impetuous, aggressive, almost nasty
young man to a very quiet, strong, very reserved lawyer. It's changed to
the point where I'm a pillar of the community. Whenever there's a
problem, call Draper.
"I think I allow Tony a little more anger, a little more frustration, than
Draper allows himself. ... I'm very normal, I'm very average, I'm very
aggressive. Some people would say pushy. But I do what I have to."
Approximately 260 half-hour shows are filmed each year for _The Edge
of Night_, and Tony appears in most of them. He starts his day by
studying lines -- "we have about a week ahead to go over the script" --
and then goes to the studio on East 44th Street, where each scene gets just
one run-through before the final taping. A quick learner, Tony finds that
"I have plenty of time to do what I want." Last year he launched a
successful musical nightclub act and performed in two stage plays by Neil
Simon -- _Barefoot in the Park_ with Maureen O'Sullivan and _The Star
Spangled Girl_.
Another important aspect of Tony's life is sports. When growing up in
Pittsburgh, he says, "all I ever wanted was to be an athlete. My whole life
was baseball. But I just wasn't good enough." Now he works out three
times a week at the 21st Century Health Club on East 57th Street, jogs,
plays tennis and racquetball, and is on the softball and basketball teams of
both _The Edge of Night_ and the _ABC Eyewitness News_. Says Tony:
"The _Eyewitness News_ team plays all over the tri-state area and gives
the proceeds to charity."
Unlike his TV character, who recently brought up the ratings by marrying
the beautiful April Cavanaugh (played by Terry Davis), Tony lives alone
in an Upper East Side apartment. "How can I put this without sounding
full of beans and self-pity?" He remarks. "I find that life is a lot more
exciting when you share it with somebody. ... The girl I'm dating now is
a news reporter in Baltimore, Jeanne Downey. Long distance isn't the
next best thing to being there, believe me."
When Tony won the part of Draper Scott over 200 other actors, he was
working part-time as a bartender at Joe Allen's in the theatre district. "I
was doing commercials and a lot of modeling -- nothing significant.
Before this show, I'd never made more than $1,200 a year from acting.
I didn't expect to get the part, because they wanted someone in his mid
40s. They rewrote the script for a younger attorney. My agent signed me
up on a lark. That just goes to show: when it happens, it happens."
Tony hates to cook -- which is fine with the restaurateurs in his area. His
favorite dining spot is La Bonne Soupe (3rd Ave., 57th-58th St.): they
have the prettiest waitresses and most pleasant food."
Asked about the lasting value of soap opera, he quickly replies: "I believe
television has an obligation to do nothing but entertain. Everything on
television, even news, is show business. If it weren't, they wouldn't have
ratings and handsome newsmen."
Anyone wishing to hear from Tony should write to him at ABC, 1330
Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019.
********
EASTSIDER RODNEY DANGERFIELD
The comedian and the man
1-6-79
He was 43 years old when the big break came. Jack Roy, a paint salesman
from Queens who did comedy in his spare time, stood before the cameras
of the _Ed Sullivan Show_ and delivered a routine that soon had the
audience helpless with laughter. Whether they realized they were
witnessing the birth of one of comedy's brightest stars is uncertain. But
for Jack Roy -- better known as Rodney Dangerfield -- the long wait was
over.
His unique brand of humor caught on immediately. Within a year he was
able to quit the paint business -- "it was a colorless job" -- and give his
full time to comedy. After 10 appearances with Sullivan he went on _The
Tonight Show_, and established such a smooth rapport with Johnny
Carson that he has so far been invited back about 60 times. With Carson
acting as "straight man," Dangerfield tosses off a string of outrageous
anecdotes that are in keeping with his image as a man who seems to have
the whole world against him.
The afternoon I meet Rodney Dangerfield at his spacious modern East
Side apartment is like a day straight out of his monologue. Coming to the
door dressed in a polka dot robe and looking quite exhausted, he
apologizes by saying that he has been up since 8 in the morning -- early
for someone who is accustomed to working past 4 a.m. As we sit down
to talk, he answers most of my questions with an unexpected seriousness.
Still, the humor creeps in around the edges.
"I have an image to feed. Most comedians don't," he says with a yawn,
sprawled out on the sofa like a bear prematurely woken from hibernation.
"If I see something or read something that starts me thinking, I try to turn
it around, and ask myself: How can it go wrong for me now? What can
happen here? For example, you're watching something on television. You
see Lindbergh on the screen. Your mind is on that TV. ... You get no
respect at all. You see the paper flying all over the place. You say, I get
no respect at all. I got arrested for littering at a ticker tape parade.
"Rickles has an image. Steve Martin has an image. But most don't. A lot
of comedians buy their material. Others take someone else's material and
steal it. We don't go into that, though."
Being a professional funny man, says Rodney, "is a completely total
sacrifice. It's like dope: you have to do it. ... The curse is to be a
perfectionist."
He writes at least 90 percent of his act. Whenever an original joke flashes
into his mind, he drops whatever he's doing and jots it down. ("I get no
respect. On my wedding night I got arrested for having a girl in my
room.") Before a new gag can be thought worthy of _The Tonight Show_,
it must be tested and retested before a live audience. This is no problem,
for Rodney is constantly in demand all over the North American
continent, not only as a nightclub performer but also as a lecturer at
colleges. Last June he was invited to give the commencement address at
Harvard. "It's a strange thing," he remarks. "Kids are into me."
One probable reason for his appeal with the young is that Rodney has two
children of his own, an 18-year-old son in college and a 14-year-old
daughter who lives at home. It was mainly to lighten his travel schedule
and enable him to spend more time with his children that Rodney opened
his own nightclub nine years ago. Known simply as Dangerfield's, it is
located on First Avenue between 61st and 62nd Streets. Dangerfield's is
especially popular with out-of-town visitors. Among the celebrities who
have been spotted there: Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Joe Namath, Telly
Savalas and Led Zeppelin. The entertainment usually consists of both
music and comedy -- Jackie Mason, singers Gene Barry and Carmen
MacRae, and America's foremost political impressionist, David Frye.
But the biggest attraction, of course, is Rodney himself. He will be
playing the club from January 5 until February 4, seven nights a week.
There is an $8 cover charge and a $7 minimum on food and/or drink.
Rodney has lived on the East Side since 1969. Born as Jacob Cohen 57
years ago in Babylon, Long Island, he spent most of his boyhood and his
early career in Queens. After graduating from Richmond Hill High
School, he changed his legal name to Jack Roy "because my father used
'Roy' in vaudeville." For years he worked small nightclubs for little or no
pay. Then at 28 he married. "My wife was a singer. So we decided to
both quit show business and lead a normal life. That doesn't always work
out."
The first "no respect" joke he ever wrote, says Rodney, was: "I played
hide and seek. They wouldn't even look for me." The same basic gag has
since reappeared in a thousand variations. ("My twin brother forgot my
birthday.")
Rodney now earns a substantial part of his income by making
commercials, the best known of which are for Mobil and Miller Lite beer.
He has cut two comedy albums and written a pair of books, _I Don't Get
No Respect_ and _I Couldn't Stand My Wife's Cooking So I Opened a
Restaurant._
For the moment, Rodney has no plans for other books or albums.
"Perhaps I'm not ambitious enough to pursue different things the way I
should," he confesses."I'd rather spend my free time at the health club.
The idea in life is not to see how much money you can die with."
Copyright 2004 The Associated Pr
ess.
WESTSIDER JAN DE RUTH
Partner of nudes and _Time_ covers
9-24-77
In 1955, when Jan De Ruth's painting reached the point where he could
support himself entirely by his brush and palette, he used to take singing
lessons at 8 o'clock in the morning to make himself get up early. Today
he gets up strictly to paint, and does so with such skill and efficiency that
he maintains a reputation as one of America's foremost painters of nudes,
while still managing to turn out five or six commissioned portraits a
month.
At 55 and in the zenith of his career, De Ruth is a mellow, dignified
Westsider whose lively eyes reflect the deep intellect within. His
achievements in the past two decades are enormous. His works have
graced nearly 70 one-man shows. His portraits of former First Lady Pat
Nixon and other celebrity wives have appeared on the cover of _Time_
magazine. He has written two widely popular books -- _Portrait Painting_
and _Painting the Nude_. As we relax in the workroom of his West 67th
Street apartment, I begin by asking how he came to specialize in nudes.
"I always knew I would paint women," he says in a soft voice shaded with
tones of his native Czechoslovakia. "In 1948, when I came to the United
States, I started to paint nudes."
Is his choice of subject matter motivated by something other than art's
sake?" "The only person I think who may have these thoughts in mind is
myself," he answers, smiling frankly, "because I always ask myself
whether these reasons are purely artistic or do they come from the gut?
I don't think there can be art unless it comes from the gut."
De Ruth's painting used to occupy him eight to 15 hours a day. Now he
is down to about seven hours. He works very rapidly, with intense
concentration. "I don't paint after the afternoon," he explains, "except
sometimes sketching at night. You exhaust your juices by the time evening
comes along."
One person he used to sketch after hours was actress Karen Black, who
lived in West 68th Street just across from his apartment. Says De Ruth:
"she would sit in the in the windowsill in her bra and slip. Then one day
I called over to her, 'Would you like to get paid for this?' She rushed
inside to get her glasses, and looked over at me, very surprised. She
became my model for some time."
For a woman to be an ideal nude model, said De Ruth, "she should be
gentle, as intelligent as possible, considerate, and somebody in the arts,
or with the sensitivity of an artist. And she must be physically attractive."
How do the women who pose fully dressed for commissioned portraits
compare to the professional nude models? "They work better than my
models usually," says the artist, who has painted Ethel Kennedy, Eleanor
McGovern, and the late Martha Mitchell for _Time_. "They're much
more concerned to participate. I don't think it's necessarily something to
do with vanity. It's much more curiosity. Because we never really know
until the day we die what we look like. Because we vary so much from
one time to another."
Ironically, Martha Mitchell -- wife of President Nixon's infamous attorney
general, John Mitchell -- posed for De Ruth inside the Watergate Building
during the height of her fame. "She had a certain peasant charm -- a
charm of her own," he recalls.
A man who craves variety, De Ruth has for many years spent his
summers at a studio in Massachusetts. This past summer he began to teach
painting in New Mexico -- something he has wanted to try for a long
time. A passionate skier, he travels to Austria each winter to pursue the
sport that he learned as a child, then gave up until his mid-40s.
His other after-work activities? "I love to be in the company of women,"
says the artist with a radiant smile, adding that he prefers their company
when he's not painting them.
The East Side, according to the artist, is "a city in itself. There's a
sterility over there, at least for me. I just can't see myself without this
mixture that the West Side is." De Ruth has been going to the same
Chinese laundry for 28 years -- Jack's on Columbus Avenue. Another
business he has patronized all that time is Schneider's Art Supplies at 75th
Street and Columbus.
As the interview comes to a close, I ask De Ruth what advice he would
give to an aspiring young artist. "Never be discouraged by anyone or
anything," he says. Then, to balance his remarks, he relates an anecdote
about an art student who asked Degas what he could do to help the world
of art. Replied Degas: "Stop painting."
********
WESTSIDER MIGNON DUNN
The Met's super mezzo
3-8-80
Don't look for opera posters, photographs or reviews on the walls of
Mignon Dunn's Westside apartment. The Tennessee-born Metropolitan
Opera star, one of the world's most sought-after mezzo-sopranos since the
early 1970s, prefers to keep her two lives separate. She has no scrapbooks
and saves no clippings. "I look forward to what I'm doing tomorrow," she
explains.
"I don't like those stand-up-and-sing roles. I loves to play wicked women.
But you have to make them just as human as possible," she continues, her
gold jewelry jingling as she settles onto the sofa. Tall and attractive, with
large, expressive features, Miss Dunn is hospitality personified as she
talks about her life and career over a glass of wine.
This season at the Met she starred in both _Lohengrin_ and _Elektra_. In
the spring she will appear in _Aida_ on the Met tour, and perform the
role of Kundry in _Parsifal_ with Germany's Hamburg Opera. After that
she plans some orchestral and opera concerts across the country. Long
praised for her dramatic talents as well as her vocal skills, Miss Dunn has
already signed contracts for performances into 1984.
Although a few noted operas, such as _Carmen_, _Samson et Dalila_, and
_Joan of Arc_, have a mezzo in the title role, most operas feature the
higher-voiced soprano in the lead and a mezzo in a character role. "We
may not have the main roles, but we have some of the best parts in
_opera_," she says in her rich Southern accent, shouting the last word as
if from an overflow of energy. "Not many of the roles I get today are
angelic. It's often the 'other woman,' or the woman who causes the
trouble."
Married since 1972 to Kurt Klippstatter, a conductor and music director
from Austria, Miss Dunn has never had any children of her own,
somewhat to her regret. But she and her husband frequently have their
nephews and nieces staying for extended periods. "Our niece Evi, from
Austria, is living with us now. She's like a little daughter, and I adore
her. She's 18, and she's going to go to nursing school." Mignon and Kurt
are a very gregarious couple who enjoy throwing huge dinner parties.
Mignon's cooking, like her singing, is international.
"I cook Austrian. I cook New Orleans. I cook some nice Italian and
French things. I'm going to be in Paris later this year for six weeks, and
I really seriously want to go to the Cordon Bleu Cooking School, and take
at least a three-week course."
Around the late 1960s she was based in Germany for several years. There,
says Dunn, many new operas are premiered each year, while in the U.S.
they are a rarity. "It all comes back to the fact that we don't have
government subsidy. We have to worry about selling tickets. Opera is an
expensive thing, and until we get this government support -- which people
for some reason are afraid of -- we cannot be as experimental as we
would like to be."
Brought up on a cotton plantation in Memphis, she entered her first
singing contest at the age of 9 and spent most Saturday afternoons in her
girlhood listening with rapt attention to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast
on the radio. Immediately following her high school graduation, she was
auditioned by Met scouts and encouraged to go to New York. There, after
several years of study, she won a national competition that launched her
career.
Dunn spent part of three seasons with the New York City Opera before
joining the Met. It was many years, however, before her talents were fully
appreciated there. "It only took me 11 auditions to get into the New York
City Opera, and at least that many at the Met. So take heart, everybody,"
she says, laughing merrily.
She has made numerous opera recordings, including the role of Susan B.
Anthony in Virgil Thompson's _The Mother of Us All_ and Maddalena
in _Rigoletto_. "I don't ever listen to my recordings," she says when
asked to name her favorite. "I listen to the playbacks, when I can do
something about it. But I don't listen to recordings afterwards because
there's nothing that I can do about it, and I know I'm going to find a
million things that I don't like."
Mignon and her husband recently bought a house in Connecticut, but they
will keep their Westside apartment. "We have three acres," she says
proudly. "I hope we'll get a couple of horses and I would love a goat. I
love goats. They're so cute. I love animals -- we have a Great Dane and
a Labrador -- and I'm very much into the business with the Animal
Protection Institute. Most of the experiments that are done with animals
today: there's just no reason for it. ... I mean, I don't think we need
another shampoo on the market, really."
Her voice rises with feeling as she pursues the subject. "It is really the
slavery of today. People don't have any feelings for animals, and I'm just
rabid. I really am. It is so _disgraceful_. Anytime anybody wants me to
do a benefit for animals, just call me and I'll do it any day I've got free.
I would like to do more benefits. Actually, I'm hardly ever asked to, but
if I were asked, I would do it."
********
EASTSIDER DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR.
A man for all seasons
7-14-79
Six times he has received an advance to write his autobiography, and six
times he has returned the money because of the enormity of the task. The
life of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is too rich and varied to be condensed into
a one-volume narrative.
The only child of Douglas Fairbanks Sr., America's first great matinee
idol, he has acted in more than 75 feature films, produced 160 television
plays and a dozen movies, performed in countless stage plays and
musicals, made numerous recordings, written screenplays, published his
articles and drawings in many of the nation's leading magazines, and
given his time freely to at least 50 public service organizations. Ten
countries on four continents have presented him with major awards for his
diplomatic and philanthropic activities.
"One morning I woke up and said, 'I suppose I must have retired,'" notes
the tanned, vigorous 69-year-old at his Madison Avenue office, from
behind his huge antique desk with brass lions' heads for drawer pulls. But
in our long discussion, it becomes obvious that he has never actually
retired, either as an entertainer or as a force in public affairs. His office
is fairly cluttered with mementoes of his world travels -- swords,
statuettes, novelty lamps, old photographs, oversized travel books. The
white-haired, melodious-voiced actor sits looking very comfortable as he
tells about his ongoing stage career.
"My favorite type of work right now is doing plays for limited periods.
In 1940 I gave up stage acting, but in 1968 I did the first big revival of
_My Fair Lady_, and since then I have been in several other plays. This
summer I'm doing _My Fair Lady_ again in Reno for eight to 10 weeks.
... I didn't want to copy Rex Harrison, but I was prevailed upon by
Lerner and Loewe to do this. I've known them since before they knew
each other. They're going to make a number of adjustments for me. My
other project, which is still in the planning stages, is a new Broadway
show. But it's really too soon to talk about it."
On August 13, the classic 1939 film _Gunga Din_, in which Fairbanks co
stars with Cary Grant, will be shown at 9 p.m. on Channel 9 with a single
commercial-interruption. His other hit films include _Sinbad the Sailor_
and _The Prisoner of Zenda._ He acted in his first movie in 1923 while
barely in his teens, and in 1932 he was designated a star. He continued to
make films until 1941, when he joined the U.S. armed forces and served
for more than five years. Then he resumed his film career with much
success before turning his hand to producing in 1952.
"Everybody misuses the word 'star' today," he explains. "Legally, it only
means having your name above the title. There's no such thing as a
superstar. That's a term we have let creep into the language. Actually
Charlie Chaplin may have been a superstar, but he's one of the very few."
He laughs and tells about another aspect of modern-day moviemaking that
amuses him. "Very few of the great producers in the past paid any
attention to credits at all. Now, they all like to get their names in the
billing and in the ads, as big as the stars' names -- as if anybody cares
who made the film!"
Asked whether his career was helped by having a famous father in the
movie business, he replies that "the advantages were ephemeral. They
were limited to people being polite and nice, but that wouldn't necessarily
lead to any jobs. It usually meant that I would be underpaid rather than
overpaid, and they would expect more of me. By the time I became a star,
my father had already retired."
His stepmother Mary Pickford, "America's sweetheart," who died in May
at the age of 86, joined with Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Charlie Chaplin and
D.W. Griffith in 1919 to found United Artists. The following year she
married Fairbanks, and together they virtually ruled Hollywood. Douglas
Junior, who became close to his father only in his late teens, grew up in
New York, Hollywood, London and Paris -- which helps to explain his
love for travel and his endless quest for variety.
As the creative force behind the acclaimed TV series _Douglas Fairbanks
Presents_, he produced an average of 32 one-hour films a year from 1952
and 1957. "My studio manager had a heart attack and my story editor had
a nervous breakdown, just from the pressure of getting out these films. I
thought I would be next, so I decided to quit," he says. "They were very
elaborate productions. We used to have the scripts six months in advance.
Now, if you start shooting on Tuesday, you'll get the script on Monday."
Today, with his multiple business interests and philanthropic pursuits, he
maintains a house in Florida, an office in London, and, since 1956, an
apartment on the Upper East Side. He and his wife Mary have been
married for 40 years and have three daughters, two of whom live in
England.
His overall career, concludes Fairbanks, "does not have a single theme,
because it's been so diversified. It's been a series of themes. Maybe it's
cacophonous. The things I find most interesting don't pay a penny. But
possibly all my activities blended together have something to do with a
person who's got a lot of curiosity and energy and capacity to enjoy and
appreciate life."
********
WESTSIDER LEE FALK
Creator of The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician
5-27-78
Who is the most widely read author in the world today?
Not counting Chairman Mao, whose quotations are required reading for
one-fourth of the earth's population, the honor probably belongs to a
dapper, soft-spoken man in his early 60s who could walk from his
Westside apartment all the way to Times Square without being recognized.
He is not a familiar figure on book jackets or talk shows because Lee Falk
happens to be a comic strip writer. His two creations, The Phantom and
Mandrake the Magician, are published in more than 500 newspapers in 40
countries. His daily readership: close to 100 million.
"One of the few places in the world where my strips don't run is in New
York City," says Falk, leaning gently forward in his chair. "They ran in
the _New York Journal American_ for 25 years. That was the biggest
afternoon paper in America until the newspaper strike, about 10 years
ago. Then it folded, as did most of New York's papers; we were left with
the _Times_, the _Post_, and the _Daily News_. But my strips do run in
_El Diario_, the Spanish-language newspaper, and in the _New York
News World_."
He arrived in New York from Missouri during the Great Depression,
while still in his teens, carrying a sample strip he had written and drawn.
King Features bought Mandrake the Magician and two years later added
The Phantom to their syndicate.
In the beginning, Falk did both the drawing and the writing himself.
"Then for a long time I used to make rough sketches and give them to my
artists," he recalls. "Now I just give a description of each panel. I might
say 'close-up' or 'long shot' like you do in a film. Then I put in the
dialogue. ... Some of my early artists are dead. They've gone on to their
reward -- to that big bar up in the sky, where all artists go. ... Now
there's one group drawing my strips on Long Island, and another one on
Cape Cod. Very often I don't see them from one year to the next.
Collaboration works best that way."
Since giving up his drawing pad, Falk has increased his literary output
many times over. Besides doing all the writing for his strips for the past
40-odd years -- which now takes up but a small part of his time -- he has
written five novels and a dozen plays. He owns five theatres; he has
directed about 100 plays and produced 300. None of his own dramatic
works has been a big commercial success, although one is currently doing
well in Paris. Then there was the comedy that he co-authored with a
young American he met in Rome just before World War II. "It almost
made it to Broadway," says Falk. "It was redone about two years ago on
the West Coast. My collaborator was there to see it too; we've remained
friends to this day. You may have heard of the man. He's a senator from
California, the senate majority whip. His name is Alan Cranston. ... You
see, it's best to save the punch line for the end."
Another of Falk's main pastimes is travel. He has visited enough islands,
jungles, and out-of-the-way places to keep the story ideas flowing for
years to come, but his appetite is still unwhetted. Early this year he toured
Scandinavia, when "they were making a big fuss about the Phantom's
marriage. There were so many press conferences to attend. One guy made
me wear a mask, and the next day as I got on the plane, there was my
picture on the front page. I said, 'But your paper doesn't even run The
Phantom.' He said, 'The Phantom belongs to all of Norway.'"
In April of this year, Lee and his wife Elizabeth, a cosmetics executive
turned mystery writer, spent three weeks in the People's Republic of
China. Ironically, although that is one of the few places in the world
where Falk's name is completely unknown, neither he nor anyone else in
his touring group could escape the public eye. "They were fascinated by
seeing us, because for a whole generation the Chinese have been shut off
from foreign visitors. They crowded around us 10 deep, and held up their
babies."
An action-oriented man who loves to play tennis, ride his bicycle, and go
swimming, Falk has lived on the West Side for over 20 years because "I
find the East Side a little too chichi for my tastes." Another Westside
characteristic he likes is the abundance of Puerto Rican residents:
"They're very sweet, gentle people. ... [Deputy Mayor] Herman Badillo
is an old friend of mine. He knew my comic strips from Puerto Rico."
Lee Falk estimates that "over a period of 40 years I must have written
about 800 to 1,000 stories. They would fill this whole room." Where does
he get his inspiration? "A lot of it comes from my travels. It's all grist for
the mill. Now and then I see something in the news and adapt it to my
features. For example, once I saw a story in _Life_ magazine about a
Swiss scientist who was experimenting with back-breeding. He managed
to breed some European cattle back to the original aurochs, which has
been extinct for several hundred years. ... I put his idea into Mandrake.
A scientist started with a lizard and ended up with a dinosaur."
The veteran storyteller never gets tired of spinning his yarns. "I enjoy it.
It's something I can do. ... Both The Phantom and Mandrake are
translated into about 20 languages. After all these years, they're bigger
than ever -- except in this country, because we've lost so many papers."
********
WESTSIDER BARRY FARBER
Radio talkmaster and linguist
8-12-78
"Dull" is a word that could never be used to describe Barry Farber. He
is a totally unique individual with so many far-reaching ideas that his
conservative label seems to fit him poorly, even though it was as a
conservative that he ran for mayor of New York last year and garnered
almost as many votes as his Republican opponent Roy Goodman.
During that campaign, Barry quit the syndicated talk show on WOR Radio
that he had hosted for 16 years. In March of this year his mesmerizing
Southern drawl took over the 4 to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday time slot on
WMCA (570 AM). The ratings have gone up at least 50% since he joined
the station.
I meet Barry for an interview one August afternoon at a Chinese
restaurant near the studio. To my amazement he orders the meal entirely
in Cantonese. Then he withdraws a stack of index cards from his pocket
on which are printed vocabulary words in Finnish, Italian, and Mandarin
chinese -- a few of the 14 languages that he studies during spare moments
in his hectic work week.
The lank 48-year-old, neatly garbed in a pin-stripe suit, is surprisingly
low-keyed in our hour-long conversation. Yet the verbal gems still trip as
neatly off his tongue as they do when he's putting an irate telephone caller
in his place, to the delight of radio listeners. Never hesitant to voice his
opinion on any topic, Barry pounces on my questions with an eagerness
that belies his calm exterior.
New York's reputation outside the city limits, says the widely travelled
Farber, has gone way downhill in recent decades. "It used to be, where
I grew up, that people would brag about coming to New York four times
a year. Today they brag about never coming here. The large companies
send their salesmen to Manhattan for a 45-minute conference like an
Entebbe raid. ... New York needs not a slow, gradual, ho-hum comeback.
It needs a dramatic voice who is going to say that the city's priorities for
the last 40 years have been wrong. New York is a sexy woman who's
been running around in the mud. Turn the hose on her and she's going to
regain her allure."
The tax revolt, he believes, "should definitely come to New York. You
cannot expect to live as sinfully economically as we've lived, and avoid
a rampage. The politicians have brought this upon themselves. And don't
let them get away with telling us that they have to cut police, firemen, and
sanitation before they cut themselves, because they don't.
"When John Lindsay was mayor, he flung back his head and inhaled the
vapors of the 1960s. And it was left, baby, left. He bet his presidential
hopes on that. But in the last mayoral election, it was the conservatives
who did the best. Koch was the most conservative Democrat running."
His anticommunist sentiments come to the surface when the subject turns
to the 1980 Olympics. "I think we should have never allowed it in
Moscow on the grounds that we have never had the Olympics in a
dictatorship in the modern era. I'd like to see the athletes of the world
say, 'We're not going to Moscow to play sportive games by rules when
the Russians live in violation of the rules of civilization itself.' Russia is
guilty of the world's worst cast of unsportsmanlike conduct. ... Yes, we
should pull out. But the Olympics is small potatoes. I say, start a new
United Nations for the free countries of the world -- a UFN, a United
Free Nations, which shall be an association of all nations governed by
law, of all free democracies that want to remain free. In 1945, we did not
seek to build a fraternity of dictatorships where tinhorn tyrants would
outvote democracies 10 to one."
Barry has lived on the West Side ever since he came to the city from
Greensboro, North Carolina 21 years ago, and now occupies a 17-room
penthouse overlooking the Hudson River. "The West Side and the East
Side are like East Berlin and West Berlin in terms of the rigidity of
lifestyle," he says. "There's a feeling on the West Side that we don't have
to impress each other. We know where it's at."
Recently divorced from his Swedish wife, Barry makes frequent overnight
trips to Sweden to see his children. He has to be back at the WMCA
studio on Sunday at 11 a.m. for his four-hour live show with guests. Two
weeks ago, he asked Robert Violante, who was shot and partially blinded
by Son of Sam, what it felt like to be shot in the head. Questions like this
tend to provoke as many listeners as they fascinate, and that is why Barry
prefers not to be too specific about his address.
"I don't do a Merry Mailman kind of show," he says with a half-smile.
"One of my fantasies is to have a hit man from the Communist Party, the
Nazi Party, the PLO, and the Black Panthers approach me from four
different directions and fire all at once -- and I duck."
********
WESTSIDER SUZANNE FARRELL
Star of the New York City Ballet
5-19-79
She arrived in New York like a fairy princess -- a wondrous creation
whose beauty and talent left audiences gaping in astonishment. At 16, she
became the youngest person ever to join George Balanchine's New York
City Ballet, and at 19, she was promoted to the rank of principal dancer.
Since that time, 14 seasons have come and gone, but Suzanne Farrell, the
girl from Cincinnati, is still the darling of America's foremost ballet
company.
In a dressing room interview last week at the New York State Theatre, the
slender, angelic-looking Miss Farrell spoke at length about her public and
private life, quickly revealing the two qualities that have enabled her to
remain one of the world's top ballerinas for so long. First is her boundless
energy; second is her genuine love for people and the world of ballet.
Warm, funny, and articulate about her art, she discussed with enthusiasm
the upcoming television special, _Choreography by Balanchine, Part
One_, which will be aired May 23 on Channel 13.
"This is one of four programs we taped in Nashville," she said, in a voice
as clear and melodic as an actress's. "The name of the ballet I'm in is
_Tzigane_; the music is by Ravel. We did the finale before the beginning
because they wanted to let go the four extra couples that were needed for
that part. It was very strange -- like having dessert before the meal." She
laughed lightly, tossing back her long, silky brown hair. "The TV studio
is very small, and the camera sees things differently than the audience sees
when you're on stage. Things that are done in a circle look like an oval.
And diagonal movement has to be done in a straight line."
Suzanne's brightest moment in the program is a solo at the beginning,
which she performs to the music of a solo violin. "One of the things I like
about doing ballet on television is that you can reach many people who
have never seen live dance before. About two years ago I got a beautiful
letter from an older man in Oklahoma who was certainly not in the habit
of writing fan letters. Now, every time I tape a new program, I think of
that man.
"_Tzigane_ is one of my favorite ballets, because it was the first one that
Balanchine choreographed for me after I returned to the company in
1974."
In 1969, Suzanne left the New York City Ballet and spent the next four
seasons with Maurice Bejart's Ballet of the 20th Century in Brussels,
Belgium. When she finally wrote to Balanchine to find out the chances of
dancing with him again, he simply asked when she could start.
"In Brussels, the type of ballet they're used to is different, so they react
differently. If you were to give them a beautiful, wonderfully stark ballet,
with little costume and scenery, they might not take to it as much. ... But
it was a good thing to have in my career. I demand that I get something
constructive out of any situation. Because life is so short that you can't
afford to not give everything, every time you go out there."
For the past 10 years she has been married to Paul Mejia, a former dancer
who is today the artistic director and choreographer for the Ballet de
Guatemala, one of Latin America's major companies. Although the couple
must undergo some long separations, their marriage is a happy one.
Spending time alone at her Lincoln Center area apartment does not bother
Suzanne. With a steady diet of exercise classes, rehearsals and
performances, and her nine pets (eight cats and a dog), Suzanne has little
time to be lonely.
"When I have a free night, it's terrible," she lamented, "because every
time the phone rings, I think, 'Oh no, they want me for a performance.'
I dance just about every night. By the time I go to bed, it's about 2
o'clock. I happen to get up about 6. ... On Monday, my free day, I teach
at the American School of Ballet. It's such a shock to do two
performances on Saturday and Sunday, and none on Monday. It's hardly
worth it, because the body can't adjust. ... I have always thought that
actors have it easier than dancers, because it doesn't matter so much how
tired your body is: all you need is your mouth."
A Westsider for most of her career, Suzanne lists reading and cooking as
her preferred pastimes: "I'm a great short-order cook. I think if I weren't
a dancer, I'd be a waitress." Two local restaurants she likes to frequent
are Rikyu (210 Columbus Ave.) and Victor's Cafe (240 Columbus).
Asked about her salary, Suzanne admitted that "you'll never make a lot
of money in ballet. It's something we do because we love it, and we have
to do it to be happy. ... The sole attraction is working for Balanchine and
the New York City Ballet: that's something you can't put down in dollars
and cents. I just assume that the company is paying us as much as they
can." She smiled radiantly and added: "Most dancers wouldn't know what
to do with a lot of money anyway, because they wouldn't have time to
spend it."
********
WESTSIDER JULES FEIFFER
Screenwriter for _Popeye the Sailor_
11-5-77
Imagine a movie starring Dustin Hoffman as Popeye the Sailor and Lily
Tomlin as his girlfriend Olive Oyl.
Anyone who has seen the old Popeye cartoons, or the new computer
animated ones, might think that the fighting mariner does not have the
dramatic qualities needed for a full-length film. But according to
Westsider Jules Feiffer, who is now writing the script for _Popeye the
Sailor_, the original comic strip in the daily newspapers was the work of
"an unrecognized genius." E.C. Segar created Popeye and drew him from
1924 to 1938. After that the character changed. Feiffer finds the original
strip to be his biggest source of inspiration.
"The cartoons," says Feiffer, sitting on one arm of a chair in his Riverside
Drive apartment, "exploit the violence between Popeye and Bluto. That
was never part of the strip. It's more along the lines of the traditional
cartoon of the 1940s, which could find nothing more interesting than one
character dismembering another. I didn't find that funny when I was a kid
and I don't now."
Feiffer developed his unique style of humor long before he sold his first
cartoon. Today, though still perhaps best known as a cartoonist, he has
gained a reputation as a playwright for both the stage (_Knock, Knock_
and _Little Murders_) and the screen (_Carnal Knowledge_). He is also
a respected prose writer, having recently published his second novel,
_Ackroyd_.
A product of the Bronx, Feiffer recalls that after graduating from high
school he went through "a series of schlock jobs to buy food and drawing
materials. And long periods of unemployment." He planned all along to
become a cartoonist. "I was prepared," he says, "for the eventual success
which I was certain was going to happen if my work remained true to
myself."
Feiffer spent several years as an assistant to other cartoonists and attended
two art schools. Still, no one would publish his work until a day in 1956
when Feiffer, age 27, took a batch of his best 'toons to the office of a
new, relatively unknown weekly called _The Village Voice_. They loved
his work, and he became a regular contributor.
"All other publications at that time had their own idea of their readership.
And editors insisted on tailoring stories to their own taste. The _Voice_,"
says Feiffer, "existed for the artist's taste and the writer's taste. It was a
time when McCarthyism and the blacklist were rampant through every
strata of society."
The _Voice_ was then the only publication of its kind. It wrote about
dissent; it was considered revolutionary, and Feiffer's weekly cartoons
helped it to maintain that image.
Success came quickly to Feiffer after he joined the _Village Voice_: "It
happened faster than I thought. It was only about three months or so
before my work came to be talked about, and publishers began to offer
book contracts." Syndication took place a few years later. Now the
cartoon is carried by somewhat over 100 publications in every country of
the western world and several in the Far East.
Feiffer's cartoon takes him one day a week to conceive and draw. During
the other six days he works on his latest writing project. For three years
-- until it was published this past summer -- that project was _Ackroyd_,
an unconventional detective-type novel in which the characters are too
human to keep their traditional roles as props for the detective's
cleverness. The book is less suspenseful than a standard detective novel,
but more revealing of human nature.
One of the things that has been in my work for many years," says Feiffer,
"is people's need to communicate with each other not directly, but in
code. ... Coded language is used to guide our lives, to frame our
relationships with people." Feiffer's main character takes the name Roger
Ackroyd and tries to become a private detective. Instead he gets "so
intertwined with the coded life of his clients that he works on that for the
rest of his career."
_Ackroyd_ got extremely mixed reviews. "It's what I'm used to," notes
the author. "Some reviews have been glowing. Others wondered what the
hell the book was about and why I bothered to write it." Feiffer takes the
good and the bad in stride, remembering what happened when his first
play, _Little Murders_, opened on Broadway in 1967.
"It got all negative reviews and closed in a week," he recalls. "It was
immediately done in London after that, which started the revival, because
it was done very successfully. Then it was brought back to New York the
following year and it won all the awards." In 1971 it was made into a
successful film starring Elliott Gould and Marcia Rodd.
An occasional theatregoer, Feiffer ends the interview on a customary
depressing note, saying that he is generally disappointed by even the
biggest hits in town.
"I don't think of myself as a Broadway playwright," he says. "I'd be
ashamed of that title. I don't think the Broadway theatre is very interesting
or has been for the last 20 years."
********
EASTSIDER GERALDINE FITZGERALD
Actress, director and singer
3-15-80
Anyone hearing her rasping, throaty, Irish-accented voice for the first time
might think she were suffering from laryngitis. But those who have come
to love and admire Geraldine Fitzgerald over the past 40 years hear
nothing but earthy humanity in the voice. One of the most versatile
actresses in America, as unorthodox as she is gifted, Miss Fitzgerald at
66 remains at the height of her career, constantly juggling a variety of
projects, as she says, "like somebody cooking a meal with many courses."
We're sitting in her Upper East Side living room, which is decorated in
white from floor to ceiling -- carpet, chairs, tables, sofa, and even the
television. The only picture is a childhood portrait of her daughter Susan
Scheftel, now a 27-year-old graduate student.
"I like light unimpeded," explains Geraldine, her rosy face breaking into
its customary smile. "And if everything is white, it's different in the
morning and it's different in the middle of the day, and it's different all
the time."
A slender, handsome woman with a penchant for long flowing skirts and
bright lipstick, whose straight gray hair descends halfway down her back,
Geraldine is soon talking about _Mass Appeal_, the two-character play
that she is directing at the Manhattan Theatre Club; it will open in mid
May. "It's by a very young author called Bill Davis. We did it last
October at the Circle Rep Lab, and it was very successful, but it needed
strengthening points. So Bill has just completed the ninth draft. ... Milo
O'Shea is going to star in it. He's Ireland's premier comedian and a
magnificent dramatic actor too."
Miss Fitzgerald's next acting role will be in a play titled _Eve._ "It's
about a woman who runs away from home to seek her own internal
freedom, like Nora in _A Doll's House_. The only difference is, she's my
age. So of course her options are few. And she goes right down to the
bottom: she becomes a derelict. And then slowly, slowly, slowly she
comes up to find some kind of strength and independence. It's a drama,
but a very comedic drama."
Her third major project at the moment is to prepare her acclaimed one
woman show, _Street Songs_, for a small Broadway house such as the
Rialto.
She started to take singing lessons about 10 years ago, and introduced her
one-woman nightclub act in 1975, employing her remarkable acting
technique to make the songs personal and moving. She has performed the
act at Reno Sweeney, at Lincoln Center, in a one-hour special for public
television, and at the White House for President and Mrs. Carter.
"I don't sing what's called 'folk songs.' People think I do. I sing songs
that are very -- winning. Because the songs that people sing when they're
on their own -- whether singing in the streets, singing in the shower,
singing in the car -- they do not sing losing songs. We didn't know that
for a long time. 'We' is Richard Maltby Jr., who did _Ain't
Misbehavin'_. He's my colleague and partner and he directed it.
"At first we couldn't understand why a marvelous song like 'Loch
Lomond' was sort of rejected by the audience, and then a song like
'Danny Boy', that you'd think everybody's sick of, was acceptable. Well,
'Danny Boy,' believe it or not, is a winning song. At the end of it, the
girl says, 'Even if I'm dead, if you come back and you whisper that you
love me still, I'll hear you in my grave.' And then I'll know that you'll
be beside me for eternity. Whereas 'Loch Lomond' starts off so well, but
each verse says 'But me and my true love will never meet again ... "
She began her acting career at the Gate Theatre in Dublin while in her
teens, came to the U.S. in 1937, and acted with Orson Welles' Mercury
Theatre on the Air before heading for Hollywood, where she made such
classic films as _Dark Victory, Watch on the Rhine_, and _Wuthering
Heights_, for which she received an Oscar nomination. In 1946 she settled
on Manhattan's East Side, and has been based there ever since, although
she frequently returns to Hollywood to act in movies.
Perhaps even better known for her stage roles, she names Eugene
O'Neill's poignant, autobiographical _Long Day's Journey Into Night_ as
her favorite play. When it was revived Off Broadway in 1971, her
portrayal of the morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone became the biggest hit
of her stage career. Miss Fitzgerald has recorded this play and others for
Caedmon Records.
Married to Stuart Scheftel, a wealthy executive and producer, she has one
son from a previous marriage, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the hugely
successful young director who was nominated for a Tony Award for
_Whose Life is this Anyway?_ Miss Fitzgerald is the first actress ever to
receive the Handel Medallion, New York's highest cultural award.
If Geraldine has one regret about her career, it is that it took her "so
many decades to get up the courage to sing. Everybody told me not to,
because I have such a funny voice. ... Then I realized that I needed a
vehicle for expressing what I feel about the world and about people that
was very flexible, and was mine. And if the audience would put up with
the harsh sounds, then I could use it. And evidently they can, so if they
can now, I guess they always could."
********
EASTSIDER JOAN FONTAINE
Actress turns author with _No Bed of Roses_
12-30-78
The Oscar statuette stands on the end of a shelf about eight feet off the
floor, partially obscured by a row of books, its gold surface gleaming
dully in the subdued light of the room. Below, in one of the apartment's
four fireplaces, a small log is softly burning. This room, like the rest of
the large, immaculate home, is furnished in the style of an early 20th
century country manor. Here, in the heart of the Upper East Side, Joan
Fontaine has spent 15 years of an immensely productive life. I take a seat
on one side of the fire, and Miss Fontaine faces me from the opposite side
of the room, her slender, regal form resting comfortably in an antique
chair, to talk about her best-selling autobiography, _No Bed Of Roses_
(Morrow, $9.95). Published in September, the book has already sold more
than 75,000 copies in hardcover.
As the title implies, Miss Fontaine's life has been one long roller coaster
ride of triumph and tragedy. During the 1940s she received three Oscar
nominations for Best Actress in the space of four years, and won the
award for _Suspicion_ (1941). She had the joy of raising two children --
one of them adopted -- but the disappointment of four divorces. Her
mother, who died in 1975, was the best friend she has ever known, yet
both her father and her stepfather gave her nothing but unhappiness, and
she never had a close relationship with her famous older sister, Olivia de
Havilland. In fact, the pair have not spoken in years -- for reasons clearly
explained in Fontaine's book.
A fiercely independent woman who has flown her own airplane and taken
part in international ballooning competition, she has suffered through
numerous illnesses and injuries that brought her close to permanent
disability or death. These are the elements of _No Bed Of Roses_, a
disarmingly frank memoir that is frequently unsettling but never boring.
"The fan mail for this book is getting to be enormous," says Fontaine, still
radiant at 61. "A lot of people identify with the illnesses, or with trying
to bring up children alone. Some people empathize because they had harsh
relations with their siblings. A lot of men have told me they cried at the
end, in my epitaph to my mother. And then of course, I have heard from
a lot of people who wanted to be actresses, or actors."
Did she write the entire book herself? "Every single word. I wouldn't let
them touch one of them. ... It's not a sordid book; it's not tacky. One
reviewer said it was immoral. I don't think I can figure that out. If you
ask me, it's rather religious."
The words come out like perfect silver beads. She has always been a
formidable presence on the screen, and is no less so in person, as she
gives her unrestrained opinions on every topic introduced.
Marriage, says Fontaine, is "waiting on -- or waiting for somebody."
Asked whether she believes two average people can remain happily
married for a lifetime, she replies: "It depends how hypocritical they are,
and how much lying they want to do. ... I think the word 'love' means an
entirely different thing to a woman than it does to a man."
Her classic movies, including _Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Suspicion_, and _This
Above All_, are frequently seen on television now, but Fontaine has little
respect for television as a medium: "I consider it nothing more than B
pictures. I think we took a little more care with B pictures; the actors and
actresses got a chance. In a television film, if the actor slips on a word,
to hell with it. We'll cut around it."
Earlier this year, Fontaine appeared in the made-for-television movie _The
Users_, starring Jaclyn Smith. She could do many others, but prefers to
be choosy. "The quality of the scripts is so poor. I think it's the taste of
the times. It's a brutal world; it's a vulgar world. ... It's quite different
from the romance of Jane Eyre. I don't think I could act those roles. I'd
rather sit in my library in front of the fire."
In truth, she has little time for sitting around: her acting talents are too
much in demand, in dinner theatres and in college auditoriums around the
country. Recently she returned from a three-month working trip. In
February she'll be opening in Dallas. "I haven't decided on the play yet,"
she says.
In spite of her words, she somehow comes off as being thoroughly
charming. A highly sociable woman who loves to attend cocktail parties
and make new acquaintances, Fontaine is also a gourmet cook. "At
Christmas I cook for about 75 people. No one married can come. I'm
thrilled that one of my friends has just gotten divorced. Now she can
come." Among the Eastside restaurants that Fontaine visits frequently are
21 and the Four Seasons.
When she has time to herself, Fontaine enjoys reading literature and
adapting it for her lectures. "I lecture on many subjects," she says. "I do
the entire Jane Eyre -- all the roles. It takes about an hour and a half. It's
more like a film reading than a lecture. I do one on American poets, and
one on Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning -- all their own words.
Then a new one has crept up -- if I may say so, by popular demand --
called 'The Golden Years.' I tell how to do it -- how to make these years
the best. I've never felt so happy or so free or so contented as I am now."
born 10-22-17
********
WESTSIDER BETTY FRIEDAN
Founder of the women's liberation movement
7-14-79
One of the most-discussed nonfiction works published in 1978 was _The
100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History_ by
astrophysicist Michael H. Hart. He writes: "My criterion was neither fame
nor talent nor nobility of character, but actual personal influence on the
course of human history and on the everyday lives of individuals." Seven
native-born Americans were included in the 100, and when _People_
magazine requested Hart to expand his list of Americans to 25, the first
name he added was that of Betty Friedan, who, he said, "through
women's liberation, has already had a greater impact than most
presidents."
The book that did most to trigger the women's movement was Friedan's
_The Feminine Mystique_ (1963), a brilliant analysis of the postwar "back
to the home" movement, when women were led to believe that they could
find fulfillment only through childbearing and housework. That myth, said
Friedan, resulted in a sense of emptiness and loss of identity for millions
of American women. Her book became an international best-seller, and
has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
But _The Feminine Mystique_ was only the first of many contributions
that Friedan has made to the women's movement. In 1966 she founded the
National Organization for Women (NOW), which today has more than
70,000 members and is by far the most effective feminist group in the
world. She has written a second book, _It Changed My Life_, made
countless appearances on radio and television, and become one of the most
sought-after lecturers in the country. Despite her public image as a hard
core activist, Betty Friedan at 58 is a charming, decidedly feminine
woman who enjoys wearing makeup and colorful dresses. In an interview
at her brightly decorated apartment high above Lincoln Center, she reveals
that these two aspects of her personality are not at all contradictory.
"The women's movement had to come. It was an evolutionary thing," she
says, in robust, throaty, rapid-fire bursts of speech interspersed with long
pauses. "If I had not articulated these ideas in 1963, by '66 somebody else
would have. I think that it's good that I did, because what I had to say
somehow got to the essence of it, which is the personhood of woman, and
not what later obscured it, with a woman-against-man kind of thing."
It was largely through the lobbying efforts of NOW that the U.S. Senate
last October approved a three-year extension of the deadline for ratifying
the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). So far, 35 of the required 38 states
have voted for the amendment. The new deadline is June 30, 1982.
"There's no question that three more states will pass it by that time," says
Friedan. "But it's not going to be easy, because there are these well
financed right-wing campaigns trying to block it. They understand that the
ERA is not only the symbol but the substance of what women have won
-- that it will give them constitutional underpinning forevermore, so that
they can't push women back to the second-class status of the cheap labor
pool.
"The ERA will not do anything dramatic -- like change the bathrooms --
but it will ensure, for example, that women have their own right for social
security, which they don't have now. You have to realize that the
reactionary forces in this country are using the sexual issue as a kind of
smoke screen, to create a hate movement. They're the same forces that
tried to prevent labor from organizing, that burnt crosses on lawns in the
South, that painted swastikas on synagogues. ... NOW has made it _the_
priority, because if the ERA is blocked, it will be the signal to take back
everything."
A woman who smiles and laughs easily in spite of her intensity, Friedan
prefers to be called not Miss, Ms., or Mrs., but simply Betty. Born in
Peoria, Illinois, she majored in psychology at Smith College and
graduated summa cum laude. In June, 1947, after moving to New York
City, she married Carl Friedan, then a theatrical producer. Three children
later, the Friedans moved to the suburbs, and it was there that she
formulated the ideas for _The Feminine Mystique._
Divorced since 1969, Friedan maintains a very close relationship with her
children, who are at Columbia University, the University of California,
Berkeley graduate school, and Harvard Medical School. A Westsider since
1964, she runs in Central Park for an hour each day.
Of the half dozen major projects she's involved in at the moment, the
most significant is her new book, _The Fountain of Age._ "It's about the
last third of life," she explains. "I call it the new third of life, because
many women have only begun to discover that it exists."
Asked about her chief pleasures in life, she replies with obvious
satisfaction, "I like parties, I like my friends, I like talking, I like dancing.
... One thing I've discovered is that the stronger you get, the more you
_can_ be soft and gentle and tender, and also have fun. I _demand_ my
right to be funny and to have fun, and not just to always be deadly
serious."
********
WESTSIDER ARTHUR FROMMER
Author of _Europe on $10 a Day_
10-8-78
His name rhymes with "roamer" and that's an accurate description of
Westsider Arthur Frommer, author of _Europe on $10 a Day_.
In 1957, when he wrote the first edition, _Europe On $5 a Day_, Arthur
was a dedicated New York lawyer. But the book became so popular that
he finally decided, after much agonizing, to leave his law firm and
become a full-time travel writer. Every year in the past two decades,
Arthur and his wife Hope have revisited the 17 European cities covered
in the book; they have distilled the wisdom from thousands of letters
received from readers; and they have revised and updated the famous
travel book for the new edition each spring. It is still the world's best
selling guide to Europe.
"This is not necessarily the glamorous occupation that some people
imagine it to be," says Arthur, biting into a sandwich as he, Hope and
their daughter Pauline invite me to join them at the dinner table at their
Central Park West home. "One of the hazards of being a travel writer is
that when you're on vacation, you're always checking to see where the
bargains are, or whether the restaurants are worth their reputation. I've
visited so many exotic cities of the world that for me, the best way to
relax is to stay home."
Due to a miscommunication on my part, I arrive on an evening exactly
one week later than the Frommers have expected me, yet they manage
such a warm welcome that I end up staying three hours. They seem to
have plenty of time to talk. Still, there is a reminder throughout the
evening that they lead very busy lives -- the constantly ringing telephone.
One reason for my lengthy visit is that it takes place on the same night as
the second heavyweight championship boxing match between Muhammad
Ali and Leon Spinks. Arthur and I sit on his living room couch, watching
the fight live on TV with great interest, rooting for Ali and resuming our
interview between the rounds. Ali, who had lost the first fight with Spinks
the previous February, beats him handily this time.
"I'm a workaholic," confesses Arthur, excusing himself while he gets up
to answer another call from overseas. An energetic, detail-oriented man,
Arthur once worked 12 hours a day writing legal briefs and eight hours
a day on his book. Today he is the head of Arthur Frommer Enterprises,
an international corporation that includes a publishing company, a charter
service and four hotels -- two in the Caribbean and two in Europe.
Publishing remains his biggest enterprise. He publishes 30 to 40 travel
guides each year, ranging in subject matter from the Far East to New
York City. _Europe On $10 A Day_ has for many years been co-authored
by his wife Hope. "While Arthur is on the streets grubbing for bargains,"
she says, "I'm in the museums."
With her own career as an actress and director, Hope does not fly the
Atlantic quite as often as her husband. Says Arthur: "I go to Europe like
other people commute to Long Island. Sometimes I go without even a
change of clothes."
Twelve-year-old Pauline Frommer made her first trip to Europe at the age
of two and a half months. Bright and precocious, she seems a natural to
succeed her father in the business one day.
Arthur Frommer's success story began shortly after he graduated from
Yale Law School in 1953. While serving in the Army in Europe, he used
every weekend to travel. "At the end of my stay in the Army," he recalls,
"having nothing to do, I sat down and wrote a little volume called _The
GI Guide to Europe_. It was written strictly from memory; it had no
prices or phone numbers. I went home and started practicing law. Then
I got a cable saying that all 50,000 copies had sold out immediately."
Arthur used his first summer vacation from the law firm to go back to
Europe and rewrite his travel guide, for civilian readers. It became "a
monster which ate up my life." But he has never regretted his choice of
careers.
"The book coincided with a revolution of American travel habits," says
Arthur, not giving himself credit for being a prime force behind this
revolution. "When I was in college, it was unheard of for young people
to go off to Europe. It was too far, too expensive. The students of the
early 1960s became the first students in history to travel in great numbers
to Europe. Many people think the country was greatly changed by this
massive travel."
Arthur and Hope moved to the West Side in 1965, just after their daughter
was born. Among their favorite neighborhood businesses: DelPino Shoes,
which has some of the lowest prices in the city for quality Italian
footwear, and the Jean Warehouse, where Pauline buys many of her
clothes.
These days, while Hope is busy directing a play by Pamela O'Neill,
Arthur is working on several new projects. One is a course he will be
teaching at the New School starting in February. Titled "Great Cities of
Western Europe," the course will concentrate on urban problems and their
political and social solutions.
But Arthur's biggest ambition these days is to expand his company's
week-long chartered tour of Jerusalem into a two-week package for
Jerusalem and Cairo. Such a tour, he believes, would help create a bond
of understanding in the Middle East.
"It's a dream of mine," says Arthur, "that we might be a force for peace
sometime. It may not happen overnight, but I'm sure it will come."
********
EASTSIDER WILLIAM GAINES
Publisher and founder of _Mad_ magazine
9-15-79
_Mad_ magazine, an institution in American humor ever since it first
appeared in 1955, is one of the few publications on the newsstand that
carries no advertising. In the past few years, rising costs and changing
tastes have driven Mad's circulation slightly below two million, but
publisher William Gaines has no plans of giving in to commercialism.
"I was brought up on a newspaper called _PM_," recalls Gaines, an
instantly likable native New Yorker who looks like a cross between Santa
Claus and a middle-aged hippie. "It sold for a nickel while everything else
was two cents. Its policy was to take no ads, and I was kind of brought
up on the idea that it's dirty to take advertising." His face breaks out in
merriment, and he laughs the first of many deep, rich, belly laughs that
I am to hear that afternoon.
"I don't think your publication's going to want to print that, so you'd
better leave it out. Um, so I, I. ... I mean, it's not --" he sputters, before
quickly recovering and driving the point home with his customary
journalistic finesse. "As a matter of fact, if you're going to take ads, I
think the way your people do it is the way to do it. If you're _going_ to
take ads, give the publication away. But if somebody's putting out money,
it's not right. It's like going to the movies and seeing a commercial.
Television, fine: you're getting it free."
We're sitting in his somewhat disorderly Madison Avenue office, which
is decorated with paintings of monsters, huge models of King Kong, and
a collection of toy zeppelins suspended from the ceiling. When Gaines is
asked about lawsuits, his eyes sparkle with glee.
"We have been sued many times. We've never been beaten. We had two
cases that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The first was on Alfred E.
Newman (the gap-toothed, moronic-looking character who appears on the
magazine cover). Two different people claimed it was theirs -- a woman
by the name of Stuff and a man by the name of Schmeck. Neither one
knew about the other one, and we didn't tell them. It was pretty fun when
they all got to court and found that both of them were claiming to own
Alfred. Through a series of decisions, the Supreme Court decided that
neither one of them owned Alfred, and we were free to use him.
"The other case was when Irving Berlin and a number of other
songwriters sued _Mad_, because we used to publish a lot of articles of
song parodies which we'd say were sung to the tune of so-and-so. And
they took umbrage to that. They said that when people would read the
words, they were singing their music in their heads. The judge ruled that
Irving Berlin did not own iambic pentameter."
The son of a prominent comic book publisher named M.C. Gaines,
William planned to become a chemistry teacher when he returned to
college after World War II. Then his father was killed in an accident, and
Gaines decided to enter the comic business himself. "I started putting out
some very undistinguished, dreadful stuff, because I didn't know where
I was going. After three years, Albert Feldstein (_Mad's_ editor) joined
me, and we just had a rapport right away. We started putting out stuff that
we had a feeling for -- science fiction, horror, crime."
These comics, known as E.C. Publications, are today worth up to $200
each. Classics of their genre, they became the target of a Senate
subcommittee on juvenile delinquency. Largely because of public pressure,
Gaines dropped all of them except _Mad_, which he changed from a 10
cent comic into a 25-cent, more adult magazine. The complete E.C. works
have recently been reprinted in bound volumes.
A divorced father of three, Bill Gaines hates exercise, and drives the 18
blocks each day from his Eastside apartment to the _Mad_ office. His
favorite hobbies are attending wine and food tastings, and visiting Haiti.
"I've been there about 20 times. It's a wild, untamed place. Something in
my nature is appealed to by that kind of thing. ... They have no
maliciousness toward tourists. I was almost shot there twice, but it was by
mistake."
Things are so relaxed around the _Mad_ headquarters that eight out of the
nine full-time staffers have been with the publication for more than 20
years. "Our writers and artists are free-lancers," says Gaines. "Most of
them have been with us 20 years also. ... We get quite a few unsolicited
manuscripts, but most of them, unfortunately, are not usable. Every once
in a while we'll get one, and then we've got a big day of rejoicing. ...
We're always looking for writers. We don't need artists, but you _never_
have enough writers. And we firmly believe that the writer is God,
because if you don't have a writer, you don't have movies, you don't have
television, you don't have books, you don't have plays, you don't have
magazines, you don't have comics -- you don't have anything!
"We don't assign articles. The writers come to us with what they want to
write, and as long as it's funny, we'll buy it. And we don't care what
point of view, because _Mad_ has no editorial point of view. We're not
left, and we're not right. We're all mixed up. And our writers are all
mixed up -- in more ways than one."
died 6-3-92. born 3-1-22.
********
WESTSIDER RALPH GINZBURG
Publisher of _Moneysworth_
7-8-78
Less than two months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court passed an edict
allowing the police to raid the files of newspaper offices in search of
information relating to a crime. "If they came here, I'd stand at the
entrance and block their way," says Ralph Ginzburg, gazing out the
window at his suite of offices near Columbus Circle. "I don't care if they
arrest me," he adds in his thick Brooklyn accent.
The owlish-looking Ginzburg means what he says. He's the publisher of
_Moneysworth_, which is mailed each month to 1.2 million subscribers.
It is the most successful item he has ever published, but there is no doubt
that he would risk losing it and going to jail, because Ginzburg has done
so already. In a flamboyant career marked by much notoriety, he has
emerged as one of the most important figures of his generation in
expanding the freedom of the press.
Of the six magazines and newspapers that Ginzburg has founded, none has
caused such a stir as his first one, _Eros_, which lasted from 1962 to
1963. "It was the first really classy magazine on love and sex in American
history," he says. "I signed up 100,000 subscribers right away, at $50 a
year. Many leading American artists contributed to it. The big difference
is that it was sold entirely through the mails. Our promotion of
subscriptions through the mail got a lot of complaints."
About 35,000 complaints, in fact -- more than the U.S. Post Office had
ever received up to that time. Ralph Ginzburg was charged with sending
obscene material through the mails, and _Eros_ was forced to suspend
publication while the debate went on. Most Washington lawyers, after
examining the magazine, concluded that it was not obscene. But the case
became a political issue, and in 1972, 10 years after the so-called crime
had taken place, Ginzburg was ordered to serve an eight-month term at
the federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania. His imprisonment led to
a nationwide outcry by intellectuals and public officials.
Not long after the demise of _Eros_, Ginzburg started another magazine
called _Fact_. It, too, ended over a lawsuit. This time the plaintiff was
U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater. He sued the magazine for $2 million on
the charge of libel, and was awarded $65,000 in damages. "It was a
compromise, as jury decisions frequently are," remarks Ginzburg.
"Unfortunately I didn't have very much money back then, and it wiped us
out."
Describing the case, he said: "In 1964, when Goldwater was running for
president, he advocated the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam. I thought
the guy was out of his mind and I wondered if anyone else had the same
suspicion. ... We polled all the members of the American Medical
Association who were listed as psychiatrists and asked them if they
thought Goldwater was fit to be president. We printed their replies and
their long-distance diagnoses ... "
Both the _Eros_ case and the Goldwater case made the American public
examine some far-reaching questions: What is obscene? What is libelous?
Ginzburg helped to establish new definitions for these terms, and in so
doing, widened the power of the press.
_Avant-Garde_, his third publication, existed from 1967 to 1970. "It was
born during the Vietnam uprising in this country," he explains. "It was a
magazine of art and politics, and had no ad revenue."
In the same year that _Avant-Garde_ folded, he began a newsletter called
_Moneysworth_. Soon it expanded into a full-sized newspaper. "It was
launched," says Ginzburg, "because we felt that the only existing
periodical in the area of consumer interest -- _Consumer Reports_ --
wasn't broad enough. Spending money is more than buying appliances."
While _Moneysworth_ does carry many valuable tips on personal finance,
it also has a considerable amount of sensationalism that would seem at
home in the _National Enquirer_. Even so, Ginzburg's managerial skills,
his nonstop working habits, and his literary expertise -- he has written
several books -- have made _Moneysworth_ a winner. Using the same
staff of 40, along with many free-lance writers, he now publishes two
other monthly newspapers as well, _American Business_ and Extra!
He has been a Westsider for 15 years, and his publishing company,
Avant-Garde Media, is located on West 57th Street.
If Ginzburg has a single goal right now, it's "to saved up enough money
to enable me to put out a periodical exactly like _Avant-Garde_ was. It
was pure pleasure for me: there was no commercial compromise. But
even though this is a multimillion-dollar corporation here, I can't afford
it at the moment. ... Money is important in publishing. I have to spend 99
percent of my time and effort chasing the buck. I guess I'm lucky. Most
people spend 100 percent of their time that way."
********
EASTSIDER LILLIAN GISH
78 years in show business
1-5-80
D.W. Griffith, the father of motion pictures, used to say there were only
two people who outworked him -- Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish.
Pickford, who died last May, made her final film in 1933. But Lillian
Gish never got around to retiring. At 83, she is perhaps the most active
living legend in America.
Sipping tea at her Eastside apartment, which is decorated like a Victorian
drawing room, Gish appears to have defeated time. Her clear blue eyes,
porcelain-smooth complexion, and slender, girlish figure have not changed
all that much since she rose to international stardom in Griffith's
controversial 1915 classic, _The Birth of a Nation_. She also starred in his
1916 film _Intolerance_, a box office failure when released, but later
recognized as a masterpiece.
An animated speaker who makes sweeping gestures, she still has the
crystalline voice and flawless enunciation that enabled her to make the
transition from silent films to talkies and Broadway shows in the early
1930s. The 1978 Robert Altman film _A Wedding_ marked her 100th
screen appearance.
"I've never worked harder in my life than I have in the last three or four
years," says Miss Gish, who, during that period has made her singing and
dancing debut in Washington's Kennedy Center, hosted a 13-week series
for public television, _The Silent Years_, appeared in an ABC-TV movie
of the week, and toured the world three times to present a one-woman
show that combines film clips with narration. Her autobiography, _The
Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me_, has been translated into 13 languages.
"I dedicated the book to my mother, who gave me love; to my sister, who
taught me to laugh; to my father, who gave me insecurity; and to Mr.
Griffith, who taught me that it was more fun to work than to play," she
recalls with merriment, describing how her mother wound up in the
theatre around 1901 due to financial need. Five-year-old Lillian and her
4-year-old sister Dorothy soon followed in the business. "We didn't use
our real names because we didn't want to disgrace the family. ... They
used to have signs on hotels: 'No actors or dogs allowed.'"
She never got a chance to attend school. "I loved the book _Black
Beauty_, and everybody would read it to me on the train or waiting for
the train. Well, I finally had it read to me so much, I knew it by heart.
And that's how I learned to read. When we were travelling around,
mother would always take her history book. When we were in historical
places, she'd take us to where history happened."
At the height of her silent film career, Lillian received 15,000 fan letters
a week, many from overseas. "Silent films are the universal language that
the Bible predicted would bring about the millennium. ... When Mr.
Griffith made his first talking picture in 1921, he said, 'This is committing
suicide. My pictures play to the world. Five percent of them speak
English. Why should I lose 95 percent of my audience?'
"One of the things I'm trying to do now is to bring back silent films and
beautiful music. I'm doing it with my film _La Boheme_, which was
made in 1926. I've done it in the opera house in Chicago with an organist,
and at Town Hall here. Harold Schonberg of the _New York Times_ gave
it the most ecstatic review."
Her credits include an honorary Oscar award, dozens of major stage roles,
and a movie that she co-wrote and directed. But Miss Gish, with
characteristic modesty, prefers to talk about her friends and family.
Bitterness and complaint are alien to her nature, although life has not
always been easy. She never married, and her mother, to whom she was
highly devoted, spent the last 25 years of her life as an invalid. "But she
was never unhappy," testifies Lillian. "She was always the first to laugh,
and the gayest."
Following her mother's death in 1948, the apartment was given to Dokey,
her nurse, who died the following year. Then Lillian and Dorothy Gish
shared the apartment until Dorothy's death in 1968. Although Lillian now
lives alone, she has no opportunity to be lonely. Besides work, travel, and
reading -- her favorite activities -- she has 13 godchildren.
One thing that helps keep her young, says Miss Gish, is her intense
curiosity. "I was born with it, thank heavens. I feel sorry for people who
say they're bored. How in the world can anyone be bored in the world
today? How can fiction complete with what's going on?"
A few of her films, have been lost forever, since no original prints exist
in good condition. Most, however, are still shown around the globe,
which explains why her autobiography is available in such languages as
Burmese and East Malaysian. The Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd
Street has one of the country's finest collections of vintage Gish films.
One of her upcoming projects is a movie based on a story by the Danish
writer Isak Dinesen, scheduled to begin shooting in Europe this winter.
Another is a television pilot to be shot in California for Julius Evans.
Asked to name some of the things she is most curious about today, Miss
Gish quickly replies, "Naturally what's happening in Cambodia -- how
they're going to solve that problem. Those poor children. It breaks my
heart. ... And who's going to be our next president. We've come to the
point where we should have two presidents, I think -- someone to look
after the world and somebody to look after us."
died of natural causes 2-27-93.
born 10-14-1893
WESTSIDER MILTON GLASER
Design director of the new _Esquire_
2-11-78
Two decades before _Playboy_ first hit the newsstands, there was only
one men's magazine in America. A generation of schoolchildren grew up
speaking its name in hushed whispers, though anyone reexamining those
early issues today could hardly understand why. The magazine was
_Esquire_.
Its popularity has dipped somewhat in recent years, but _Esquire_ still
sells one million copies per month. And it still has the reputation of being
the most tasteful, literary, and sophisticated publication for the American
male. If some people have complained that it has not kept up with the
times, they won't be able to say that any longer -- not since _Esquire_
became the property of Clay Felker and Milton Glaser, the publishing
team who made _New York_ magazine into one of the best-selling
weeklies in the city.
With Felker as editor and Glaser as design director, _Esquire_ will have
a totally new look starting with the February 14 issue. It will have a
different size, binding, shape, length, and contents. It will also change its
name to _Esquire Fortnightly_ and appear 26 times a year instead of 12.
"The new _Esquire_ will be ungimmicky, easy to understand," says
Milton Glaser, taking a half-hour break from his numerous artistic
projects. He is as animated as his enlarged signature, which glows from
a custom-made neon lamp on the wall beside a Renaissance Madonna and
a framed Islamic drawing.
The first thing you notice about Glaser is the colored handkerchief
adorning his jacket pocket. Then you notice how relaxed he is, and how
easily he smiles.
"The name of the game is to get an audience that identifies with the
magazine and feels it's on their side. People buy a magazine because it's
of considerable interest to them, not because they get a deal on the
subscription. ... What you want to do is to find the right-size audience,
made up of people who believe in the values that the magazine reflects."
The original _Esquire_, Glaser points out, helped to glamorize the rich,
privileged man of the world -- the man who had arrived, who knew his
place in the world, and whose greatest desire was to surround himself
with the symbols of wealth, such as fancy cars and beautiful women.
Today, says Glaser, the American male no longer measures success by
symbols alone. Rather, he aims for self-development, for the richness of
life itself -- professional, personal, physical, intellectual and spiritual.
Clay Felker writes, in a yet-unreleased editorial in _Esquire_: "We will
explore how a man can develop a more rewarding life with the women
and children in his life. ... I see _Esquire_ magazine as a cheery, book
filled, comfortable den, a place of wit and sparkling conversation, of
goodwill and genial intelligence, where thoughtful discussions take place
and wise conclusions are reached."
Milton Glaser is probably the best-qualified artist in America to redesign
_Esquire_. Besides his success with _New York_ magazine, which began
as a Sunday supplement to the old _New York Herald Tribune_, Glaser
has designed _The Village Voice_, _Circus_ magazine, _New West_ and
two of France's leading publications, _L'Express_ and _Paris-Match_.
Glaser's posters have sold in the millions. He has put on one-man
exhibitions in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. (He believes, in fact,
that his work is more appreciated abroad than at home). He has designed
everything from stores to toys to new typefaces.
He is a faculty member at both Cooper Union and the School of Visual
Arts. He is responsible for all the graphic design and decorative programs
at the World Trade Center. Two volumes of his works have been
published -- _Milton Glaser: Graphic Arts_ and _The Milton Glaser Poster
Book_.
In addition, he is a noted food critic. For the past 10 years he has co
authored and constantly updated the best-selling Manhattan restaurant
guide, _The Underground Gourmet_.
A native New Yorker, Milton Glaser has fond memories of his boyhood
in the Bronx. He especially likes recalling an event that took place in 1933
-- the year that _Esquire_ was founded.
"When I was 4 years old, a cousin of mine said, 'Would you like to see
a pigeon?' He had a paper bag with him and I thought he meant there was
a pigeon in it. But then he took out a pencil and drew a picture of a bird.
I was so astonished that you could invent reality that I never recovered
from it. The only thing I wanted to do in my life was to make images."
Milton and his wife, Shirley, moved to the West Side last August. "I
guess it was the opportunity to find the right physical space. I like the
neighborhood because of the mix of working class, middle class, and
upper class. ... That really is the richest thing the urban scene offers."
The number of Westside restaurants listed in _The Underground Gourmet_
has sharply increased over the years. Among his favorite dining spots of
all price ranges are Ying's on Columbus Avenue (at 70th St.), the Cafe
des Artistes (1 West 67th St.), and the Harbin Inn (2637 Broadway).
Look in any New York subway station and you'll see a poster advertising
the School of Visual Arts. It shows two identical men in a room. One is
lying on a bed and the other is floating in the air. The caption reads:
"Having a talent isn't worth much unless you know what to do with it."
Milton Glaser, the designer of that poster, is a supreme example of a man
with many talents who knows what to do with all of them.
********
WESTSIDER PAUL GOLDBERGER
Architecture critic for the _New York Times_
12-3-77
"What is architecture? It's the whole built environment. It's the outside of
a building, the inside, the function; it serves social needs, physical needs.
... And a building has an obligation to work well with the buildings
around it -- at least in the city."
The speaker is Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for the _New York
Times_. His immaculate suit and tie, refined manners, dry wit, and
somewhat formal way of speaking seem to mark him a Timesman even
more than the carefully researched, colorfully written articles that have
poured out of his pen in the last four years.
As a critic, Goldberger is accustomed to vocalizing opinions and facts in
equal measure. His open-mindedness on architectural styles is
demonstrated by his apartment, a lavish, ultramodernized suite of high
ceilinged rooms inside one of the oldest buildings on Central Park West.
The interview begins with a trick question: "What is the third tallest
building in New York?" (Answer: the Empire State Building.) He fields
it without cracking a smile.
"I guess the question is, do you consider the World Trade Center two
buildings?" he says. "I guess it's like asking whether Grover Cleveland
was two presidents or one because he served two non-consecutive terms.
... The World Trade Center was not necessary built functionally or very
pleasing aesthetically. It was built as a kind of symbol of power by the
Port Authority. I'm used to it now; human beings can adapt to anything.
I even like going to the restaurant at the top and the restaurant at the
bottom. It's the floors in the middle I don't like."
He points to the new Citicorp Center on East 53rd Street as an example
of modern architecture at its best, and the mosquelike Cultural Center at
Columbus Circle as an example of the opposite. "It's pretty horrible,"
says the critic, agreeing with a newspaper writer who recently labeled the
Cultural Center one of the 12 ugliest buildings in Manhattan. "It's a very
silly building; it's so obviously dumb. But it doesn't particularly bother
me. It's almost innocent, it's so silly."
Lincoln Center, too, draws his barbs. "I find it very pretentious. Rather
boring, really. It's a set of imitations of classical themes. The buildings
are an unfortunate compromise because the builders were afraid to build
something really modern, or to design something that really looked like
a classical building. ... There's a feeling that they sort of want to be
modern and sort of want to be classical and end up being a very
unsatisfying compromise."
A New Jersey native who developed a passion for architecture in his
earliest years, Paul Goldberger attended Yale University and then worked
as a general reporter for another newspaper. Several years later he became
an editorial assistant for the _Times_. In 1973 there came an opening for
an architectural writer, and because the _Times_ knew of his background,
Goldberger was given the first shot at the job. "It was fabulous," he
recalls, because it was what I always wanted to do. And it was very much
a matter of luck -- of being at the right place at the right time." His
articles appear most often in the daily _Times_; Louise Huxtable remains
the chief architectural writer for the Sunday paper.
Why would a sophisticated Timesman choose the West Side over the East?
"There are many more wonderful buildings on the West Side," says
Goldberger. Unfortunately not many of the buildings on the West Side
have been kept up as well as the East Side. ... In terms of apartment
house architecture, Central Park West is probably the best street in New
York. It has all the grandeur and beauty and monumentality of Fifth
Avenue and it also has the relaxed atmosphere."
There's not one West Side," he continues. "There's at least 10. Around
here is one neighborhood. Riverside Drive is another. Up by Columbia is
another. ... One of the reasons I like my own neighborhood is because
though it is very much West Side, it's handy to the East Side and
midtown. I walk through the park all the time."
Any chance that Manhattan's skyscrapers will eventually weigh down the
island? "No," replies the critic emphatically. "First, the island is very,
very solid rock and nothing could cause it to sink. The other factor,
especially today, is that buildings are not all that heavy, because they're
being built with lighter materials and more modern engineering methods.
So a huge new building like the Citicorp, which is 900 feet high, is not
any heavier than a building 500 feet high built 30 years ago. And since we
don't have earthquakes, this is probably the safest environment in the
world to build a skyscraper."
Although studying and writing about architecture is "more than a full-time
job," Goldberger manages to keep abreast of the legal aspects of buildings
as well, including tenants' rights, rent control, zoning laws and redlining.
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission is another of his
interests. "I think landmarking is crucial to the city," he testifies. "A city
exists in time as much as space. It's the mixture of new and old buildings
that gives the city life and vitality."
********
EASTSIDER MILTON GOLDMAN
Broadway's super agent
4-14-79
"Pardon me -- just one more call to make," said Milton Goldman, pushing
the buttons on his nearest desk phone. "Go on, you can ask me questions
at the same time," he added, holding the receiver to his ear.
"Are you the biggest theatrical agent in the world?" I said. He returned
my gaze evenly.
"Others have said it. It would be immodest for me to say it -- but I
probably am," said Goldman, who by this time had reached his party and
was inviting the young actress on the other end to a Broadway opening
that night. He chatted with her for several minutes, his Jack Bennyish
voice breaking occasionally into rich laughter.
Sitting upright behind a desk-sized table covered with papers, folders,
notebooks and play scripts, the ruddy-complexioned, jacketless Goldman
looked far more relaxed that I had expected of a man who, in his 32 years
as an agent, has handled the careers of close to 5,000 actors and actresses.
Among those he has helped "discover" are Jack Lemmon, Walter
Matthau, Grace Kelly, Lee Marvin, Charlton Heston and Faye Dunaway.
And though Goldman has become a celebrity in his own right, he still
exudes the low-keyed charm of a friendly neighbor talking over a fence.
The appearance is no deception: he owes his success not to high-pressure
tactics, but to an encyclopedic knowledge of the theatre on both sides of
the Atlantic, a keen judgment of which shows are best for his clients, and
a long-proven record for trustworthiness. By title, he is vice president in
charge of the theatrical division of International Creative Management,
which is matched in size only by the William Morris Agency.
Unofficially, he serves as father confessor, rabbi, psychiatrist, and best
friend to many of the top stars he represents. Attending the theatre up to
five times a week, he is always on the lookout for new clients. His
weekends are devoted to reading and casting new plays.
"I can't resist talent, and when I see a talented young actor or actress, I
want very much to help realize their potential by opening as many doors
as I can for them," he explained, gripping the arms of his chair. "I don't
think of my job as work. For me, it's fun. And I never know where the
one begins and the other ends. Because I'm that lucky individual whose
private life and public life are one and the same thing."
Every year he takes a vacation to Europe on the Queen Elizabeth II. "I'm
in Paris for a week and London for about three weeks." In slow, carefully
chosen sentences, he stated, "I represent many English clients because my
knowledge of the English theatre is probably better than anyone else in the
American theatre. Every year in London, I get the same suite in the Savoy
Hotel and give great parties. I go to at least eight plays a week --
sometimes as many as 10. So I get to see all the plays in London. And I
know all the English actors and they know me." Among his British
clients: Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Ralph Richardson and Sir John Gielgud.
"American performers excel in the musical comedy theatre, where dancers
and singers also very often are fine actors. This is not true in England.
Dancers are especially hard to cast in London, though I think that is
changing now. ... It's sad that the American theatre can't support serious
plays. They're either musicals or they're comedies. I think a healthy
theatre should be able to support the works of serious playwrights. This
season, we happen to have on Broadway an important play by an
American playwright -- Arthur Kopit's _Wings_, which stars our client
Constance Cummings, who is an American actress who went to England
and made her reputation abroad, and has now returned here to great
acclaim."
A native of New Brunswick, New Jersey, Goldman witnessed his first
Broadway show in the summer of 1929, and from that day forward, the
theatre was his passion. For 10 years he worked as a tire salesman at a
family-owned business. Then, through his friend Arnold Weissberger, a
noted lawyer, Goldman was offered a job as a theatrical agent at no base
salary, but with a $25 weekly expense account and a 25 percent interest
in any clients he signed up. Success came to him almost at once.
A lifelong bachelor, Goldman today shares an apartment with Weissberger
on the Upper East Side. His favorite local restaurant is the Four Seasons.
"I go there all the time for lunch; that's my main meal of the day. I think
it's the best restaurant in the world."
The actor's life, he believes, "is a sad and a difficult one. Every time you
get a good part, the next part has to be bigger -- more money. As you
reach the top, it becomes tougher and tougher to get those parts."
Nevertheless, Goldman does not find his own job at all frustrating.
"Pressures? Yes, there are many pressures. But I have said this before:
there are so many rewards for me when I see a client in whom I believe
get a great break in the theatre or films of television. It's a source of great
satisfaction. And with the number of clients I represent, each day brings
some rewards. That's why I've often said to clients: 'I have many lives
to live.'"
********
EASTSIDER TAMMY GRIMES
Star of _Father's Day_ at the American Place Theatre
6-23-79
Tammy Grimes is one of the few Broadway stars to have received Tony
Awards in two categories -- for best Musical Comedy Actress in _The
Unsinkable Molly Brown_ (1961), and for Best Dramatic Actress in Noel
Coward's _Private Lives_ (1969). In a sense, she is Molly Brown
personified -- a powerful stage presence whose charm, beauty, and pure
talent make her shine in every production she takes part in, regardless of
the overall merit of the show itself.
Her disappointments have been, at times, as spectacular as her triumphs.
For example, there was her shot at network television in the early 1960s,
_The Tammy Grimes Show_, which lasted only 11 episodes because, she
says, "the writing, the concept, and the talent never really got together.
And I bl
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