by Lillian Ross
Movie talk ensued. We told Les we loved Ann Miller, and he told us she had made a Second World War movie called “Reveille with Beverly.” We asked him to try to find a movie whose name we can’t remember but that costars—we think—John Barrymore and the Ritz Brothers. He told us he had for sale the only copies of the record of the original Judy Garland sound track of “Annie Get Your Gun.”
“Nostalgia!” said Les. “Unh, how I hate that word! I just want to show people things they don’t know and want to know. Look at my partner, Larry.”
A guy came out of the ticket booth and we looked at him. It was Larry. “Larry has an M.A. in meteorology,” said Les. “It wasn’t until tonight that he realized there was a difference between William Powell and Dick Powell. And look what it’s done for him! He just had a brilliant idea. We put a big sign out front that says, ‘40° WARMER INSIDE.’ ”
Then we took in the midnight show of “Wonder Bar.”
1974
DYLAN — Hendrik Hertzberg and George Trow
WE had breakfast Thursday morning with two friends (one blond, the other dark-haired, both recently turned thirty) who had been to the Bob Dylan concert at Madison Square Garden the night before. “I’ll tell you some people who were there,” our blond friend said. “Yoko Ono was there. Her seat was two rows in front of Dick Cavett’s. Pete Hamill and Shirley MacLaine were there and had seats four rows ahead of Yoko Ono’s. That’s six ahead of Dick Cavett. James Taylor and Carly Simon were in the vicinity, and I want to tell you that this is only the back part of the front section of the orchestra I’m talking about. I couldn’t see the front part of the front section, where one assumes the real heavies, Yeats and so forth, were sitting. I’ll tell you some people who weren’t there. There were no blacks there, and no transvestites, and there were very few people in embroidered jeans. Instead, there were extraordinary numbers of people who seemed to have come directly from registration at the New School. A very earnest group. One of my problems with old Dylan has to do with humor, you see. I don’t think he has any. Which is why the blacks and the transvestites stay away. I personally don’t trust any rock-and-roll concert without a single transvestite, but never mind. The point is that Dylan has irony—I mean, he knows how to milk a juxtaposition—but no humor. He reminds me of a guy I went to school with who was very bright and very ambitious and who just missed starring in ‘Zabriskie Point.’ My schoolmate sang songs about Franco in the offices of our school newspaper in 1957, but luckily he was completely tone-deaf and had to go into the social sciences.”
“What’s that all about?” our dark-haired friend said. “We’re talking about a Bob Dylan concert. Look at it from the Dylan-can-do-no-wrong angle, which is how I look at it. All through his career, Dylan has been a highly elusive figure. He always manages to free himself from the expectations of his audience. When they were expecting folk songs about the struggles of the thirties, he gave them folk songs about the struggles of the sixties. When they were expecting a revolutionary anthem with all the answers, he gave them a revolutionary anthem that was all questions. ‘The answer is blowin’ in the wind’—was there ever a better summing up of the intuitive, improvisatory, unreflective approach of what we used to call ‘the Movement’? When people expected acoustic, he gave them electric. When they expected funk, he gave them mysticism. When they expected psychedelia, he gave them simple country love tunes. When they finally learned not to expect anything in particular except genius, he gave them mediocrity. So. The first half of the concert felt strange—a little disappointing, a little disorienting. Dylan sang too fast, in a sort of strong, high chant, and he virtually obliterated the melodies—to no purpose. Or so I thought at intermission time. But in light of what happened in the second half of the concert, I look upon the whole first half as a necessary softening-up process for both Dylan and the audience. The room was full of complicated yearnings, after all. He was singing his old songs, and he had to avoid the dangers of a ‘Dylan’s Greatest Hits’ atmosphere, so he recast them in such a way that you had a hard time recognizing them and a rather hard time enjoying them. He was nervous but not hostile. He had to establish the right mixture of friendliness and distance. He had to make it plain that he goes his way and others, including the audience, go theirs.”
“And the second half of the concert?” we asked.
“Ah,” our dark-haired friend went on. “Dylan came out all alone, small and brave, with just his harmonica and his acoustic guitar. I was too far away to see the details of his face, but I could see his hair, curly and mousy, and that tense, crabbed stance. He sang ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ ’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ and ‘Gates of Eden’—still too fast, still in that almost strangled high chant. Then, halfway through ‘Just Like a Woman,’ it started to get magical, and when he sang ‘It’s All Right, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ it all fell into place. He was still fooling with the melody, but with a purpose. I felt I was hearing that song for the first time instead of the thousandth. When he sang the line about ‘But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked,’ everyone cheered, of course, but they cheered even louder for the line ‘And it’s all right, Ma, I can make it.’ After The Band came back on again, he sang a couple of very pretty new songs, and then ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ People began streaming down the aisles, and everyone stood up—there was no particular cue; we just all stood up at once. Dylan’s accompaniment for the chorus was the whole audience—twenty thousand people singing ‘HOW DOES IT FEEL?’ at the top of their lungs. The houselights were turned on, so we could all see each other, and four huge klieg lights went on behind Dylan, making everything—Dylan, us, the music—seem half again as big. He did two encores: a reprise of ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine),’ much more melodic and accessible this time, and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ I’d never heard him sing it quite that way before. He never does anything the same way twice. His voice was clear, strong, and true. He pulled it off—he kept the myth intact.”
“Personally,” our blond friend said, “when it comes to mythic figures I prefer the ones like Elvis Presley, who stay mythic in spite of themselves. Dylan was never really a successful archetype, if you know what I mean. He was only someone who seemed to be somewhere we thought we ought to be. That’s why people worried so much about his changes of style. People worried about where Dylan was and what he was doing because they wanted to know where they should be and what they should be doing. The style changes prophesied— falsely, perhaps—some kind of movement, and that mercurial quality of his appealed to our generation’s love of novelty. But now, you see, he has run out of ways to seem some distance ahead, and has fallen back on devices that will allow him to seem (at all but a few carefully chosen moments) some distance away. It’s a little sad to fight so hard for Mythic Distance.”
“But that’s precisely what I like about him,” said our dark-haired friend. “He lives by his wits.”
1974
NEW BOY — Hendrik Hertzberg
Whatever your interest, it is catered for in these compact, fun-packed, fact-packed IMPACT pages.—The National Star, Volume I, No. 1.
THE word “exclusive” appears five times on the front page of the first issue of the National Star. The word “win” appears four times. “Super” turns up twice. Other words and phrases that occur on that same page include “top pop,” “top heart throb,” “top beauty,” “craze sweeping the world,” “Prince Charming,” “tot tycoons,” “personality parade,” “zinging showbiz,” and “a newspaper for all the family.” Inside, the self-promotion is maintained at a level that calls up a mental picture of an over-stimulated newsstand operator, eyes bulging, screaming his pitch at a startled pedestrian an inch or two away: “WATCH THE SUPER SHOOTING STAR EVERY WEEK. . . . AMERICA’S LIVELIEST NEWSPAPER. . . . ALWAYS . . . IN THE STAR. THE PICK OF THE PIX. . . . LET THE STAR LOOK AFTER YOU AND YOUR FAMILY—IT’S THE PAPER THAT CARES. . . . KEEP AHEAD OF THE TREND
S WITH THE STAR. . . . CATCH THE SWINGING STAR. . . . SUPER . . . SUPER . . . SUPER . . .”
Rupert Murdoch, who publishes the Star, and Larry Lamb, who edits it, are very good at selling newspapers. Mr. Murdoch, who is forty-two years old, Australian, and dynamic, has spent the past nineteen years building up the third-largest newspaper-publishing business in the world. Except for the San Antonio Express and News, both of which he bought in December (and the Star, of course), his newspapers (seventy-nine, all told) are in Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain. His Fleet Street Sunday paper, the legendary News of the World, sells over six million copies a week, giving it the largest circulation of any English-language newspaper on Earth. His greatest success, though, is the London morning tabloid the Sun. When Mr. Murdoch bought the Sun, in 1968, it was a journalistic zombie with a circulation of “only” eight hundred thousand. He installed Larry Lamb as his editor, and together they refashioned the Sun according to a formula that relies heavily on short sentences, a simple vocabulary, melodramatic headlines, the hard sell, and (this was the distinctive Murdoch-Lamb contribution to British daily journalism) big pictures of pretty girls wearing nothing from the waist up. The Sun now sells over three million copies a day and is inching up on its archrival, the Daily Mirror.
The Star is apparently an attempt to transplant the Sun ’s style of British pop journalism to the United States. The Star is wordier than the Sun, and the topless pinups have been omitted, but the similarities are more striking than the differences. Like its British cousin, the Star has a flashy, busy layout, with the punchy headlines (“I’VE LET HUNDREDS DIE SAYS MERCY DOCTOR”) interwoven among the blocks of text instead of perched primly above, as is the American custom. The Star has a column called “Liveliest Letters,” consisting of banal anecdotes purportedly sent in by readers, and so does the Sun. Most of the Star’s copy editors are British, and a few examples of British English slipped into the first couple of issues. We noticed, among others, “switched on” for “turned on,” “whisky and soda” for “Scotch-and-soda,” “post your coupon” for “mail your coupon,” “motoring” for “driving,” “Willy Mays” for “Willie Mays,” “sport” for “sports,” “in hospital” for “in the hospital,” and “slimming” for “reducing.” Several years ago, someone bought London Bridge, took it apart, and reassembled it in the middle of a desert in Arizona. London Bridge is now one of Arizona’s chief tourist attractions. As for the Star, its first issue sold more than a million copies.
Larry Lamb went home to England last week to oversee the Sun ’s coverage of the British general election, but before he left we dropped by for a word with him in the National Star’s offices, at 730 Third Avenue. Mr. Lamb is a tall, rugged-looking Yorkshireman of forty-four. “Why are you putting out this paper?” we asked him.
“We are in the publishing business, so we publish,” he said. “We enjoy new experiences, and this—America—is the biggest English-speaking audience in the world. We feel American publishers have got away from readers. They’re going after the top-twenty-per-cent income group. They’re trying to please advertisers and win Pulitzer Prizes. We’re not. We’re trying to please readers. Journalists and advertisers tell us the Star is awful, so we know we’ve got it right.” Mr. Lamb told us that Mr. Murdoch, whom he calls “the Chairman,” is prepared to spend five or six million dollars promoting the Star on television, and that the Star will make its money through circulation, not through advertising. “If one regards the promotion as a long-term investment, we are very close to the break-even point already,” he said. “We have funds available. We are not accustomed to failure.”
“How come there’s no cheesecake in the Star?” we asked. “Do you think Americans are more straitlaced than the English?”
“Let’s say Americans are less permissive,” he said. “The Sun’s kind of sauciness is not appropriate to the market here. There’s a market for a very hard-core, clinical kind of sex but not for the light, bubbly eroticism that’s part of the Sun.”
“How about politics? Do you have any?”
“Yes. In the last election, our Australian papers supported the Labor opposition, because we thought it was time for a change, but that wouldn’t stop us backing the other side next time. Both the Chairman and myself are, I suppose, slightly left of center. We try to judge political issues as they arise rather than in a political-party context, but we think it’s cowardice to sit on the fence.”
“Does that mean that the Star will support particular Presidential candidates?”
“Yes,” Mr. Lamb said.
On our way out, we stopped off in the newsroom to say hello to Stan Mieses. Like a half-dozen others on the Star’s editorial staff of twenty-eight, Mr. Mieses was recruited from the New York News, where he wrote a Sunday column on pop music. The Star bills him as “the rock jock who knows where it’s at.” Mr. Mieses, who is twenty-one, said he was enjoying his new job.
“There’s nothing negative in this paper,” he said. “I’ve got stories back for rewrite with a little note saying ‘Not sufficiently optimistic.’ If you want to be bummed out, you can pick up the Times, the Post, or the News. I look at this paper as an AM paper. Not as opposed to P.M.—as opposed to FM. The Star is like Top Forty radio. It comes at you like Murray the K.”
1974
FANCY — Lillian Ross
WE breezed through the Twentieth Annual National Fancy Food and Confection Show the other day, trying a cheese here and a nut there, a cookie, a glass of wine, a pickle, a cup of soup, a candy, a chocolate, a slice of salami—all of which added up to the ruination of our summer diet. As we were going into the Coliseum, where the show was held, we ran into Peter C. Simon, Sr., the slim, high-keyed, suntanned, elegant owner of Ellens, a gourmet shop on Madison Avenue near Eighty-sixth Street. Mr. Simon told us he was appalled by the mob of noshers and grabbers he had seen at the show. “The management is letting in all kinds of outsiders, and they’re eating themselves sick,” he said. “With the cost of eating now, these people stay all day, making three, four, five meals of it. Last year, the show was held in Chicago, and nobody unofficial was allowed in. There was only tasting—not eating. ”
“Have you tasted anything here that impressed you?” we asked, sampling some Hawaiian Macadamia Nut Banana Crunch and washing it down with a Hawaiian Sun Guava Drink.
“Filets of smoked rainbow trout!” Mr. Simon called out. “Divine! Succulent! Smoked turkey out of this world! Personally, I hate smoked turkey. It’s always dry. But I can’t stay away from this turkey. Juicy. Moist. Marvellous. Don’t miss it! Or the trout! Booth 15. High Valley Farm, from Colorado Springs.” Mr. Simon turned away as we offered him a bit of Banana Crunch. “Please! I’ve got to stay alive to do my ordering here. I’m getting barley-sugar reindeer and tiny, tiny gingerbread houses. For Christmas.”
We made a beeline for Booth 15, sampled the turkey (Mr. Simon had not given us a bum steer), sampled the trout, and then moved along to other booths, having some Souper Noodles, shrimp-flavored (manufactured by the Sammen Shokuhin Company, Ltd., of Amagasaki, Hyogo, Japan). After that, we stayed for a long time, in a trance, munching jumbo colossal natural pistachios from Iran and colossal Brazilian cashews from Brazil. Then, all perspective in a mishmash, we ate the old triangular Toblerone chocolate in a white-chocolate version. After that, dying of thirst, we went back to the Hawaiians and gulped a few paper cupfuls of Kona coffee—black. Slowing down, we headed for the exhibits from the Netherlands and listened carefully to a very nice woman named Margot de Hartog, who explained to us the nature of Jos. Poell’s pastry shells.
“They are crispy, flaky, paper-thin,” she told us. “You make a filling of veal and bouillon, and you stuff it into them. Are you Dutch?”
“No,” we said.
“You sound Dutch,” said Miss de Hartog. “Did you know that Hollanders have the longest longevity, and the lowest death rate at childbirth? We all eat a lot of sweets. Every second shop is a sweetshop.”
“How are Dutch teeth?” we asked.
“No trouble. Teeth good. Cholesterol good. We do a lot of bicycling. We are great swimmers. Great skaters. We work it off. We live long. Take this package of chocolade hagel. Everybody in Holland has this in the house. Put it on the children’s breakfast, the way we do in Holland. It makes them eat.”
“Chocolate sprinkles?” we asked. “On bacon? On eggs?”
“On anything,” Miss de Hartog said. “Here. Try this Dutch Dandy cheese. It’s new. It’s different. A very mild, semisoft cheese. Something that everybody else does not have. Do you like it?”
“Delish,” we said, sprinkling some chocolade hagel on it. “Double delish.”
“That is correct,” Miss de Hartog said. “Now, you skate, and you live long.”
We went back to the U.S.A.—Booth 1212, the Dickinson Family, from Port-land, Oregon, presided over by Bob Brown, a hearty laugher. “We’ve always made a very fine line of Northwestern preserves,” he told us. “Every one of our preserves is hand-poured. They are made in three-and-a-half-gallon batches. Wild-mountain-blackberry preserves. Golden-peach preserves. Apricot-pineapple preserves. Boysenberry jelly. Do you know what street we’re on? Wild Blackberry Square!” Mr. Brown gave us his hearty laugh. He was chewing, and we asked him what.
“Look,” he said. “This is what a can of our salmon looks like.” He opened a can of Dickinson Family smoked salmon. “Pacific silver salmon. Caught off the mouth of the Columbia River, before they start up the river, which means the meat is firm. This fish is smoked over alder wood for seventy-two hours, and then the drippings are poured back into the can. Have some. . . . Well?”