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A VIEW FROM THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE (Part Three) Jerry starts getting really big interviews at last...
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After a shaky start, things
finally start to click in NYC
of TheColumnists.com
After The New York Post mercifully let me go, following a disastrous summer internship in 1963 when I tried to impersonate a news reporter, I spent that fall and winter, and my meager savings, hunting for jobs for which I was equally unqualified.
The few offers I got--to join the Associated Press in Detroit, to become a reporter at the New York World-Telegram--I quickly and blithely, if not arrogantly, declined, saving myself for a fantasy feature writing job while holed up in a one-room Greenwich Village apartment at 121 Washington Place, off Sheridan Square. The idea of covering Detroit for AP seemed absurd, far beneath a former TV columnist from San Jose.
My most vivid memory of that gray period is watching the Kennedy assassination play out on television that November as I sat in my little room glued to a portable TV set, with no job in prospect. I took meal breaks at Howard Johnson’s on Sixth Avenue or brought food in from Smiler’s Delicatessen during that strange, dark, apocalyptic week.
A former Post colleague down the hall, Don Kirk, informed me that Kennedy had been shot, but I figured it was one of his usual wise guy cracks. Kirk, a witty smart-aleck Princeton grad with a devilish smirk, was always barging in to talk, like the annoying hot-shot Stradladter character in “Catcher in the Rye.” Kirk was one of the few people I regularly saw during my six months looking for work, combing the Times classifieds on a bench in Washington Square Park I shared with guitar-strumming folksinger wannabes, Frisbee-tossing NYU students and besotted winos.
In January, my funds ran out and I scampered back to Oakland, not quite defeated but glad to be back on warm, familiar turf, living at home while I sent out resumes to newspapers up and down California applying for non-existent jobs as a columnist or feature writer. I figured three months working for a big New York paper would now surely make me a great catch to editors in California, but somehow it made not a dent.
My three years as a TV and humor columnist at The San Jose Mercury, and years before that writing a column on the campus daily, had spoiled me for anything less, but nary a newspaper in the entire state seemed impressed; a nibble from an editor in Santa Barbara failed to materialize after I drove down there, ready to become the talk of Santa Barbara. By now it was late spring, so, undaunted, I decided to re-apply to The New York Post for a second summer replacement slot. Much to my amazement, my old editor there, the ever-upbeat Al Davis, said, "Sure, come on back."
This time, it took. I was assigned to the daily and weekend magazine section and spent my days writing quarter-page “Closeups” of people in the news and full-page profiles on TV personalities in the entertainment section of the weekend edition. It turned out to be perfect casting. My boss, Joe Rabinovich, was a gentle soul with a defeated expression after too many years under the thumb of hard-nosed Post editors. Joe goaded me about my ignorance on matters cultural, historical and grammatical, but he was a nice guy who gave me free rein and seemed to appreciate my earnest efforts to make good.
This time, I was determined not to blow a second chance and labored over my thumbnail “close-ups.” A quarter of a tabloid page is about 10 inches of type, so boiling down the life of a major figure like Aaron Copland or even the founder of Fruit of the Loom underwear (a typical range of subjects) was like composing haiku. I’d love to say it taught me how to write concisely, but it didn’t. Because of The Post’s large Jewish readership, half my subjects were either Jewish or had a Jewish cause or connection.
Those weekend full-page Post profiles were prominently displayed and gave me entrée to every star at the time, the mid-1960s, a glittering gallery of celebrities with TV roots: Barbra Stresand, Merv Griffin, Jack Benny, Soupy Sales, Henry Morgan, Robert Vaughn, Jerry Lewis, Johnny Carson, Celeste Holm, Buddy Hackett, Godfrey Cambridge, Juliet Prowse--anyone who set foot on TV in those now gilded years.
I got flown to “The Coast” for interviews with Walt Disney, Donna Reed (at the Brown Derby!), Dick Van Dyke and Meredith Willson. I had done scads of celebrity interviews even in San Jose, but having your stuff displayed full page in a New York paper, even a grubby tabloid, is a huge kick if you’re still an Oakland greenhorn at heart.
When The Post kept me on after the summer. I became the regular profiler in the television magazine, a position of power in New York TV circles. When I called a network, the waters parted; everyone called back quickly. When network flacks pitched me a story, I could hear a desperate hope in their voices. Heads of network publicity departments all but saluted me when I arrived for interviews, hot little spiral notebook in hand.
I got to like the TV PR guys--Sid White
at CBS, Charlie Frank at ABC--who were suave, savvy New York
veterans. Still only a lad of 26, I didn’t pull rank or
make them sweat, so we got on easily. A PR guy at AT&T’s
“Long Lines Division” even took me to lunch at La
Grenouille (“The Frog Pond,” he called it), where
he had a regular table. The maitre d’ greeted us
like lifelong pals and the waiters danced nimbly about our table.
I eyed the menu, unable to translate anything beyond “salade.”
I tried not to knock over a water glass and behaved as if I dined
there weekly with Bill Paley.
The stars even treated me well, with only a couple of exceptions:
Robert Vaughn was an insufferable snob who castigated me for
not knowing that he had a Ph.D (“You’re ill-prepared”),
and Jerry Lewis was so full of himself that he kept his own photographer
employed throughout the interview taking photos of us while his
tape recorder captured every word for his personal vaults. Because
of a subway breakdown, I arrived 30 minutes late to an interview
with Henry Morgan, who couldn’t have cared less if I got
there at all, happily sipping gin and vermouth in the Burberry
Room; Morgan later sent a lovely note telling me it was the “best
interview of him (or anyone)” he’d ever read. Wow.
I accompanied Buddy Hackett while he picked up his dry cleaning in Ft. Lee, N.J., and was buttered up by Celeste Holm, who regarded interviewers as allies, clapping her hand on my forearm and whispering, imploringly, “We’re all in this together, dear, aren’t we?” (We are?) Robert Preston turned out to be as vital and fast-talking in person as he was playing Harold Hill, as dynamic and positive a presence as I’d ever met. I formed an instant crush on Juliet Prowse, but it went nowhere; Sinatra nosed me out.
I interviewed Streisand at the start of her colossal career, just after she had won raves playing Miss Marmelstein in “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” on Broadway, and I loved her frank, funny replies; but a year later, when she had been elevated to major movie star, she seemed reserved and programmed. I chatted with Mike Nichols on the threshold of his career, after he won a Tony and tons of adulation for staging “The Odd Couple.” I was soaked in sweat as we talked in his all-white penthouse in mid-August before a crackling fireplace, my hair plastered to my forehead as I tried to appear a cool and poised interviewer.
Those are all sweet, vivid memories, zipping about Manhattan on unreliable subways in freezing or sweltering weather, breaking bread with famous figures at fashionable restaurants and lounges, invading the inner sanctums of the great (Saul Bellow, Hoagy Carmichael, Edward Hopper, Zero Mostel) or soon to be great (Peter Falk, Barbara Walters, Johnny Carson), catching stars at the start or the crest or the close of their careers (George Jessel, Cab Calloway, Rise Stevens).
Speaking of which, 80-year-old Jack Benny
fell asleep on me in his final interview of the day, around 4
p.m., nodding off during a question before jolting himself back
to consciousness in time to answer. I decided to record the landmark
moment in the profile, which ended with a series of dots to indicate
Benny dozing off. It got a laugh.
My three year gig at The New York Post was as triumphant
as my three month trial the year before had been humiliating,
topped by winning a 1965 New York Newspaper Guild Page One Award
for a light piece I’d done on New York’s fervent search
for a state flower, cited “in the interest of future humor
in journalism.” I hoped I had one. I was stunned to win
an award, a big bronze five-pound trophy with a huge number “1,”
only a year after I’d stumbled so horribly in my first tryout
at The Post; Al Davis felt vindicated.
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DISCO SCENE never play 'Moonlight in Vermont' |
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A few of the veteran reporters now treated me as a near equal--writers like Helen Dudar, a whip-smart sophisticated profiler who could have cut it at The New Yorker, and Gene Grove, one of The Post’s most respected writers, a tall movie-star handsome guy who one day after work invited me to join him for a drink at The Front Page, an annex to the newsroom where I’d not yet set foot; I didn’t drink, something I tried to keep under my hat.
The suave Grove, hair slicked back rakishly, was a roistering drinker, chain-smoker and reputed ladies man about 20 years my senior, in every way. I was startled by his sudden invitation, since we’d barely chatted in the office, but I figured I was being initiated into the paper’s inner circle and met him at the Front Page--like most newspaper hangouts, a gloomy, smoky, shabby joint.
Gene ordered a double Scotch or bourbon, something grownup, and I mumbled that I’d have a ginger ale. He looked crestfallen, and the conversation quickly went downhill. That’s all I remember. I had failed my initiation rite and scuttled away as soon as I could, feeling I’d let him down miserably--insulted him even.
(We never talked much after that, but 10 years later, after I’d left New York and was writing a column for The San Francisco Chronicle, Grove--who I’d heard had dropped out of sight after leaving The Post--called me from New York and asked, hesitantly, if there might be an opening there for an experienced reporter. Such a nice, sad, charming guy, one of too many then who burned out on a lethal dose of booze and boredom.)
I was too busy trying to prove myself at The Post--laboring weekends at home on those full-page TV profiles--to pursue anything like a social life. I barely managed to ask out a pert young reporter named Marilyn Berger, who coolly declined. She wound up at The New York Times and eventually as the wife of Don Hewitt, the founder of “60 Minutes,” so at least I was aiming high--perhaps too high.
Between celebrity profiles, I met a dark, laughing teacher from Brooklyn named Elaine Levine (one of hundreds so-named in New York) who lived in an apartment across from the Museum of Natural History that had previously belonged to Mel Brooks in his swinging pre-Anne Bancroft days. Elaine said she was always getting calls from women (hookers, she claimed) asking if Mel was there.
In one of my hapless efforts to get with it during the happening Sixties, I took a date to a very hot discotheque, The Dome. Both of us were wildly out of our depth but we made a desperate, rather pathetic attempt to dance The Twist, or maybe by then it was The Frug or The Mashed Potato--something dopey. After that, we fled the dance floor and I retreated back into the 1950s, where I’ve lived happily ever after, awaiting a revival of slow dancing to “Moonlight in Vermont.” No writhing required, at least not clothed.
While dating Elaine, the first actual Brooklynite I’d ever known, an old high school pal, Marshall Jacobs, came to New York with the idea of becoming a comedian. He slept on my floor in the Village while searching for a club to try out his routines, pacing the Village all day and reading me his jokes when I got home. We talked about comedy over and between meals at places like the Ninth Circle (whispered to be heavily populated with…homosexuals) and The Cookery, a jazz haven, I much later discovered.
Missing the point utterly, as usual, I went to The Cookery for their food but one night I noticed a guy playing piano. I thought he was pretty good for a piano player in such a little nothing restaurant. On the way out, I spotted a sign that said, “This Week: Teddy Wilson.” What? Yes, THAT Teddy Wilson!, the legendary Benny Goodman Teddy Wilson, one of the most dazzling jazz pianists who ever lived. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been too busy eating my grilled cheese sandwich and reading the paper to notice him.
I hurried back that week to catch Wilson’s final sets, learning many years after that The Cookery was owned by the great jazz impresario Barney Josephson. Yet again, I had experienced a major only-in-New York moment, more proof that you had to keep alert at all times in this town lest you overlook a legend in your lap.
Though one of the brightest, wittiest guys I knew, Marsh’s comedy lines were too subtle for audiences (even at times for me) and read better than they played. His hero was Mort Sahl. Marsh was painfully uneasy on stage but wangled his way into a meeting with the great comedy king-maker Jack Rollins, who created Woody Allen and guided Allen, Nichols & May, Dick Cavett, Robert Klein and David Letterman to fame and fortune. Gently, and briefly, Rollins told Marsh he lacked a stage persona.
Somehow, Marsh got a shot to audition at a later legendary hole in the wall, Upstairs at the Duplex, where Cavett, Joan Rivers, JoAnne Worley, Lily Tomlin and countless other comics first got their comedy footing in Manhattan. It was a cubbyhole over a gay bar, and Marsh was given a 1 a.m. slot, which in nightclubs is about one level above homeless. Still, it was a shot--his first New York gig. He followed another unknown--a weathered older comic, the former Jack Roy, who was now calling himself Rodney Dangerfield.
I was in the audience as Marsh’s one-man support group, one of about five people, and held my breath as he tried to pry a titter out of the meager “crowd.” They laughed and listened politely, or maybe just curiously, and gave him the equivalent of the sound of one hand clapping. I ducked out but not before Dangerfield told Marsh, “Hey, kid, I liked some of yer stuff.”
Soon after his New York debut, Marsh abandoned his standup career but not before meeting a lively, pretty, young would-be performer named Mary and forming Marsh & Mary, which he foresaw as the next Nichols & May. It didn’t quite turn out that way, but it wasn’t a total disaster. After the act broke up, I called Mary for a date and a year later we married and formed a much better, and even funnier, twosome.
At the time, there were a few other unavailable young female reporters at The Post--a patrician beauty named Lael Scott, who looked like a Vogue model, and the semi-intimidating Nora Ephron, making her early mark as a droll profiler that catapulted her into a freelance career, a column at Esquire and then, inevitably, Hollywood. Her parents, Henry and Phoebe Ephron, were high-profile comedy screenwriters whose play, “Take Her, She’s Mine,” dealt with Nora’s independence, leaving home for Bryn Mawr.
Since then, I’ve carefully charted Ephron’s steady rise in publishing and then in movies, feeling moderate envy pangs. Her success was always taken for granted, at least by her and I suspect others. She deftly parlayed a privileged childhood, a natural talent and a lot of nerve into successful careers in writing and directing.
Even in those early days, Nora spoke with great authority and a built-in disdain for anyone who might disagree. I liked her, but I was also wary; there was something slightly brassy about her. I still hear her saying, “Oh, Jerry, how can you possibly say that?!” Once, in a nice backhanded compliment, she told me she’d figured out how I got stars to open up: “You look so innocent they must figure you’re not very bright.”
With Jerry Tallmer, the paper’s twitchy off-Broadway critic (married to Oscar Levant’s daughter), and Susan Szekely, its teen columnist, we often lunched at the greasy spoon restaurant in The Post lobby, where Nora held forth with unshakable confidence on all things, great and small. There was always a withering note in her voice and a deadpan look in her big dark eyes that she would blink to punctuate, and cue, a witticism. Like a skilled comedian, she knew she could be funny and nudge you into a chuckle.
Nora was funny, gifted, sexy and in charge. I admired the ease with which she bantered with editors twice her age, putting down even our hard-bitten managing editor, Paul Sann (“Oh, Paul, how can you possibly say that?!”). The girl was absolutely fearless and clearly bound for glory. Me? I was bound for nowhere in particular, just happy to be where I was, chatting with the likes of Soupy Sales as crowds gathered below his hotel window screaming,“Soup-y! Soup-y! Soup-y!” What more could a young reporter want?
©2007 by Gerald Nachman. The Nachman
caricature is ©2000 by Jim Hummel. The black and white drawing
of Nachman is by the author. All rights reserved. The photos
are courtesy of internet sources.
This special extract from a work in progress
is published by special arrangement with the author. All inquiries
about this work should be directed to the author by use of the
Talkback feature below. This excerpt first posted here March
12, 2007.
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