My subjects probably found me somewhat of a rube. I didn't dress well, I had little knowledge of New York, I asked some very simplistic questions, and until 1979 I didn't use a tape recorder. So perhaps some of the stars were put off their guard and revealed more of themselves than they would have to a more professional interviewer. I was struck by how single-minded they were for success. Probing their brains was like getting a second college education. Their main message was: Don't waste your life and don't do anything just for money.
Of course, many people declined my request for an interview. Among
those I fished for, but failed to reel in, were Richard Chamberlain, Isaac
Bashevis Singer, Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo), Rex Reed, Halston,
Carrie Fisher, Russell Baker, Ted Sorensen, Joseph Heller, Margaret
Meade, Helen Gurley Brown and Ira Gershwin. Then there were the
Eastsiders and Westsiders too famous to even approach, such as Woody
Allen, Bob Hope and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
The person who did more than anyone else to secure first-rank interviews for me was Anna Sosenko, a woman in her late 60s who owned an autograph collectors' shop on West 62th Street filled with elegantly framed letters, manuscripts and autographed photos of some of the greatest names in the history of entertainment. Despite her treasures, she always talked with one hand over her mouth to hide the fact that she had practically no teeth.
For 23 years Anna had managed the career of cabaret superstar
Hildegarde Sell, and had penned Hildegarde's theme song, "Darling, Je
Vous Aime Beaucoup." Anna was still a formidable figure in showbiz;
every year she produced a spectacular fund-raising all-star show in a
Broadway theater that paid tribute to Broadway legends. Her 1979 show,
which I attended, included live performances by Julie Andrews, Agnes
DeMille, Placido Domingo, Alfred Drake, Tovah Feldshuh, Hermione
Gingold and Rex Harrison.
I met Anna through her friendship with Bruce Logan, and she became my
direct link to many stars of the older generation, including Douglas
Fairbanks Jr., Lillian Gish, 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.