100 New Yorkers of the 1970s

100 New Yorkers of the 1970s

The Project Gutenberg eBook, 100 New Yorkers of the 1970s, by Max
Millard
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below
** ** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. **

Title: 100 New Yorkers of the 1970s
Author: Max Millard

Release Date: December 24, 2005 [eBook #17385]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***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