100 New Yorkers of the 1970s | Page 3

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 JR. A man for all seasons
WESTSIDER LEE FALK Creator of The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician
WESTSIDER BARRY FARBER Radio talkmaster and linguist
WESTSIDER SUZANNE FARRELL Star of the New York City Ballet
WESTSIDER JULES FEIFFER Screenwriter for Popeye the Sailor
EASTSIDER GERALDINE FITZGERALD Actress, director and singer
EASTSIDER JOAN FONTAINE Actress turns author with No Bed of Roses
WESTSIDER BETTY FRIEDAN Founder of