100 New Yorkers of the 1970s | Page 8

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