100 New Yorkers of the 1970s | Page 7

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."
********
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