As he talks on in his breezy New York accent, fidgeting with a gold matchbox on the antique table beside him, Maas seems barely able to restrain himself from getting up and pacing the room. Quite striking in appearance, he is a tall, stocky man with a Brillo-pad thatch of silvery hair and eyebrows like cotton batting. A native Manhattanite, he was one of the country's top investigative reporters for many years before writing his first book, The Rescuer, in 1967.
The reason for the title Made In America, says Maas is that "the events in the novel could only happen in America. … One of the themes is that nobody in the book, including the football player and the federal prosecutor, thinks that he's doing anything wrong. So that's a very profound kind of corruption."
Like his previous books, Made in America took two years to write. "The biggest difference that I found," he points out, "was that in nonfiction, all the discoveries and surprises are in the research, and in fiction, they're all in the writing. When I write nonfiction, about two thirds of the time is spent in research. I didn't do any research for this. It was much harder. And it was the only time I had to rewrite the whole book."
Although Maas claims that his own life has never been in imminent danger, he was touched by deep personal tragedy in 1975 when his wife, a highly talented writer/producer named Audrey Gellen, was killed in an automobile accident. Their only child, John Michael, is a skilled pianist.
Puffing on an imported little cigar, Maas speaks with pride of some of his most important stories in the past. An article he wrote in 1960 led to the release of Edgar Labat, a black convict in Louisiana who had been on death row for 11 years. An article about columnist Igor Cassini in 1963 resulted in Cassini's arrest and conviction as a secret agent for Dominican strongman Trujillo. The biggest story Maas never wrote was a book about the shah of Iran; several years ago he turned down an offer of $1 million for the project in order to concentrate on his novel.
"I've always had trouble writing about women," he confesses when asked about future books. "So the main character of my next work will be a woman. It was going to be another novel, but now I've run across what I think is a fantastic nonfiction project, which I'm mostly interested in because the subject matter is a woman. So I think I'll do that first and the novel afterward. At least I know what my next two will be, and that's comforting."
died 8-23-01. born 6-27-29. Auth or of Serpico and The Terrible Hours.
WESTSIDER LEONARD MALTIN
Film historian and critic
9-2-78
Most people who opt for a writing career do not expect to accomplish much before the age of 30. But Leonard Maltin, a 27-year-old Westsider, breaks all the rules. His book The Great Movie Comedians: From Charlie Chaplin to Woody Allen, published in June by Crown Press, is the 30th volume to bear his name on the jacket. One of America's foremost film historians, he has written nine books and edited 21 others, while contributing articles to such publications as TV Guide, Esquire and the New York Times.