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

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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."

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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."

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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."

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WESTSIDER HIMAN BROWN
Creator of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater

5-10-80