A native of Detroit, Ruth began studying piano at the age of 2, performed with the Detroit Symphony at 11, and entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at 16. There she met her future husband. During their years together, Ruth longed for a solo career, but it somehow eluded her. "I played with Leopold Stokowski and the American Symphony in the 1960s," she says. "There was a major concert I did at Carnegie Hall then, but nobody heard about it. I think that women are being accepted on their own merits today. They weren't given a chance until recently."
Ruth keeps fit by riding her bicycle almost every day. She is a fan of the New York Yankees — "I saw all the World Series games" — and likes to do photography when she has the time. A Westsider ever since she moved to New York in 1960, Ruth lists Fiorello's (on Broadway across from Lincoln Center) as her favorite restaurant. When she needs music supplies of any kind, she goes to Patelson's (56th Street and 7th Avenue). Says Ruth: "It's a gathering place for musicians. The people who sell music there are very friendly and very knowledgeable. … They sell records there. They sell my records."
Asked whether men might have an inborn advantage at the piano, Ruth denies the suggestion vigorously. "Of course not," she replies. "I can't imagine why a man should play the piano better than a woman. At West Point, the women do everything the same as the male cadets except boxing and wrestling. Women might have smaller fingers on the average, but as far as strength, speed, and dexterity are concerned, it's impossible to listen to a recording and guess whether it was played by a man or a woman."
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EASTSIDER STAN LEE
Creator of Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk
1-13-79
With the current rage over Superman due to last year's hit movie, many people will purchase a copy of the comic for the first time in years, and may be disappointed to see how much it has changed. Once the largest selling comic book hero on the market, Superman was knocked out of first place long ago by Spiderman, the creation of a 56-year-old native New Yorker named Stan Lee. Besides selling about one million Marvel comics each month, Spiderman appears as a daily strip in some 500 newspapers around the world.
But even without this giant success, Stan Lee would be rich and famous. His fertile mind has also given birth to the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Doctor Strange, and a host of other modern-day mythological figures. As publisher of Marvel Comics, he rules over an empire that branches out into dozens of areas — prime-time television drama, animated cartoons, hardbound and paperback collections of comic reprints, novels about Marvel characters, toys, games, posters, clothing and much more. Most of these spin-off products are the work of other companies that have bought the rights, but Stan Lee remains the creative force behind the whole operation, as I discover during a meeting with Lee at the Marvel headquarters on Madison Avenue.
"I think the title of publisher is just given to me so I can have more prestige when I'm dealing with people," says Lee in his clipped, precise voice, as he stretches his feet onto the coffee table of his brightly decorated office. "I'm a salaried employee of Marvel — your average humble little guy trying to stay afloat in the stormy sea of culture. The company owns the properties, of course, but I have no complaints. I don't think I could have as much anywhere else. … My main interest is to see that the company itself does well and makes as much money as possible."
He is an intense, energetic man of wiry build who dresses in a casual yet elegant manner. As he shifts the position of his arms and legs on the couch, there is something unmistakably spiderlike in the movements. For all his politeness, he cannot mask the impression that his mind is racing far ahead of his rapidly spoken words.