100 New Yorkers of the 1970s | Page 3

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 [email protected].
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