Kentucky's Undefeated (But Not Championship) Team

Fifty weeks ago, and two weeks into the 2014 NCAA basketball tournament, Kentucky knocked off Wichita State, which had won all 35 of its games and had hoped to become the first undefeated college basketball champion since Indiana in 1976. In the history of NCAA basketball, there have been just three other schools (San Francisco, 1956; North Carolina, 1957; and UCLA, 1964, ’67, ’72, and ’73) to go through the season and tournament without a single loss.

Kentucky’s total of seven national championships is second only to UCLA’s 11. (Louisville has two). Sixty-one years ago, Kentucky went 25-0 but did not win an NCAA title. Here is the background—and my story from Street & Smith’s 100 Greatest College Basketball Players—on that season for the Wildcats and their leader, Cliff Hagan.

High in the firmament of Kentucky basketball stars is Cliff Hagan, one of just three Wildcats in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. (The others are Frank Ramsey and Dan Issel.) Hagan was inducted in 1978 after a stellar amateur and professional career.

Born Dec. 9, 1931, in Owensboro, Ky., Hagan was a three-time all-state player at Owensboro Senior High, which he led to a state title in 1949 after scoring a then-record 41 points in the championship game.

“Cliff had probably the greatest hook shot that the good Lord ever saw,” said Ralph Beard, who preceded Hagan at the university. “He was only 6-4 ½ at most, but he’d take the big dudes in and his extension of his arms would prevent any of them from blocking his shots. He could lay it on the floor and he could score on anybody. Obviously he carried that into college.”

Happily for UK fans and coach Adolph Rupp, the college Hagan carried his game into was Kentucky. He led the Wildcats to 86 victories in 91 games, which included a 32-2 mark in his 1951 sophomore year, an eighth straight Southeastern Conference crown for UK, and the school’s third NCAA championship in four years (68-58 over Kansas State).

A year later, Hagan earned the first of his two consensus All-America honors. The Wildcats went 29-3 but were denied the opportunity to defend their title when they lost in the regional final.

In 1953 the NCAA imposed the death penalty on the school, banning it from competition for recruiting violations. Kentucky returned to the court the following season in a memorable game that saw Hagan score 51 points in a blowout win over Temple. He averaged 24 points and 13.5 rebounds, and again was named a consensus All-America, leading the Wildcats to a 25-0 record. Kentucky elected not to participate in the NCAA tournament after the NCAA ruled that Hagan and teammates Ramsey and Lou Tsioropoulos, as graduate students, were ineligible.

In 1974, Hagan was named to the Southeastern Conference all-time team and enshrined in the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame. In 2002, in recognition of 100 years of Kentucky basketball, the Lexington Herald-Journal polled a panel of writers, broadcasters, and former university coaches and personnel to determine the top players in school history. Only Issel and Beard received more votes than Hagan.

Memories of New York Magazine (Part 5)

Perks of the Job

In addition to the priceless education I was getting back in the 1970s and a sneak peek of cultural events about to take place in the city, my job at New York magazine had other perks. There were reviewer’s copies of soon-to-be-released books and musical recordings. I left any books or record albums I did not want on a table in the back of the office. One day in 1978, Ellen Aronoff, the classified ads manager, approached with one of my discards. 

“Are you sure you don’t want this record?” she asked. 

It was Darkness on the Edge of Town. At the time, I was not familiar with Bruce Springsteen.

We also had access to film screenings, concert, ballet, and sports tickets, invitations to gallery and restaurant openings and newly staged museum exhibits. The staff attended an exclusive preview of the magnificent King Tut exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in late 1976. I had the great fortune to attend performances of the opera Hansel and Gretel and the ballet Sleeping Beauty during Christmas week at the Metropolitan Opera House.  

I witnessed the Metropolitan Opera debut of soprano Catherine Malfitano in the role of Mimi in La Bohème and the first run of the opera Miss Havisham’s Fire and the final run of Beverly Sills in The Merry Widow. I saw Mirella Freni in Faust and La Bohème. And my soon-to-be wife and I were at Avery Fisher Hall to hear Boz Scaggs on a sweltering night in July when the lights went out all over the city. It was the blackout of 1977. With an open night on his tour schedule, Boz invited everyone back two nights later for an encore performance after the power was restored. 

That October, I had a press credential for the World Series and witnessed Reggie Jackson’s three-homer game against the Los Angeles Dodgers for the victorious New York Yankees. I appeared on the cover of New York (with other staff members) in 1976 for Tom Wolfe’s “The Me Decade” story.

Cloned Nazis

There was a screening one night in early fall of 1978 at the Loew’s State Theatre in Times Square of the film The Boys From Brazil that the editorial staff was invited to.

  
“Are you going with us?” Ruth asked me. 

 “Who wants to see a movie about cloned Nazis?” I said dismissively.

The next morning, Ruth arrived in a bad mood, vociferously regretting having gone to the wretched film. She loudly informed everyone in the office that I was the only one on staff with the sense to have declined the invitation. I didn’t have the nerve to correct her, having decided at the last minute to attend.

On another night, in 1976, we saw Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver with a raucous crowd at a theater in Times Square. It felt like we were all characters in the film we were watching. There were other screenings in private rooms and large theaters (Robin and Marian—at Radio City Music Hall—The Omen, Murder by Death, King Kong, Silent Movie, The Bad News Bears, Marathon Man) and Broadway and Off Broadway plays (Godspell, Shenandoah, Uncle Vanya, Annie, Apple Pie, Hair, Richard III, Equus) that were more fun than edifying.

Even the daily life at the magazine brought wonderful and unpredictable fun. There were wordplay and ridiculously silly and hilarious over-the-top attempts to come up with puns for different pieces in the magazine. The most outrageous and scatological suggestions never had a chance to seeing the light of print. 

I remember Alan Rich suggesting "Port Noise Complaint" as a hed for a non-existent story on the deafening din in the New York harbor. In the May 10, 1976 issue of New York, Alan reviewed both the Royal Shakespeare Company's marvelous production of Shakespeare's Henry V (with Alan Howard in the title role) and the underwhelming Harold Prince/Richard Rodgers collaboration of Rex, a version of Shakespeare's Henry VIII (with Nicole Williamson in the title role and Glenn Close as Princess Mary). Rex was the rare Rodgers flop. It would close its Broadway run after just 49 performances. I wish I still had the LP of the production. The hed I wrote and which ran for Alan's review was "Hank Cinq and Hank Sunk."

I cannot hear a Johnny Mathis Christmas song without thinking of my former colleague Merry Clark, who once ruefully told me about the moment she realized that Johnny was not singing to her. When I reminded her of that not too long ago, she said, “He’s still not singing to me!” 

Close-up With the Copy Machine 
And in the course of a late-night Christmas party in the office, one booze-fueled contributing writer had a memorable close-up encounter with the magazine’s copy machine. I wasn’t an eyewitness but I did see the evidence in the form of a stack of black-and-white reproductions that Ruth Gilbert kept in the bottom drawer of her desk. As it turned out, it wasn't all that memorable for the writer, who had a hazy recollection of the scene. Days later, his anxiety was not assuaged by reassurances from Ruth and Merry that nothing had happened. The incident would later be rewritten by Tom Wolfe in his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities.

I loved getting up in the morning for my job at New York magazine. New York set the tone—and the bar high—for every other city and regional magazine that followed. I’ve tried to describe how exciting the challenge was, how stimulating it was to be a part of the creative team that worked so hard and took such pride in producing consistently outstanding journalism. The days were long and sometimes exhausting, but what an exhilarating time it was.

            

Still, for as rewarding as the work was, the compensation was not reflected in the salary. Mine was a job that paid just $12,000 annually. Even in 1979, that was not a reassuring figure on which to start a family. So, I began to think about looking for a new job. Elizabeth Crowe, a senior editor, had left New York to become editor-in-chief at Parents magazine. She offered me a position as assistant editor. I thanked her for the opportunity but declined. If I was going to make a move, it would be vertical, not lateral, I told her.

Condé Nast

Another former colleague, Kevin Madden, had left New York as advertising manager to join Condé Nast Publications’ newest start-up, Self magazine, in January of 1979. He told me that Condé Nast was looking for a new editor for its sports division. (Wait, Condé Nast published sports magazines?) It was not a well-publicized property among the company’s more glamorous titles: Vogue, House & Garden, Mademoiselle, Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour, Allure, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Self. 

Kevin’s tip led to a first interview at CNP, which went well enough that corporate secretary and Vice President of Personnel Pam Van Zandt called me back for a second interview. I was offered, and accepted, the job as editor-in-chief at Street & Smith’s Sports Group.

To be continued

Memories of New York Magazine (Part 4)

Critical Care

As assistant arts editor at New York magazine in the second half of the 1970s, I enjoyed my relationship with all of the critics. Reading their copy and working and collaborating with them daily on the edits was an invaluable supplement to my more formal education. I was being paid (although not handsomely) to read superb critical thinkers, surely the smartest formula for any aspiring writer. Before and after work, I was enjoying some of the greatest fiction ever written. Between the required reading for my classes and whatever other literature I had on hand, John Simon would always take note of the novels that accompanied me during my daily commute to and from the office

I remember some of the titles: The Old Curiosity Shop (which edition he reverentially paged through), A Hero of Our Time and Les Liaisons Dangereuses (which he deemed two of the great works of world literature), Anna Karenina, Far From the Madding Crowd, Oblomov, The Trial, The Pastoral Symphony, and The Heart of the Matter. One day he noticed Francois Mauriac’s Le Noeud de Vipères (The Vipers’ Tangle) on the side of my desk. “Yes,” he noted. “That is the correct [English] translation.” 

John Simon

John passed away at age 94 in November of 2019. A brilliant littérateur, a critic of steadfast standards and ideals, John was the smartest, most erudite and well-read man I ever knew. He was never dull, and he took pains to ensure that his copy never was. I learned early on from him how playful language could be in the hands of a linguist. John was born in Yugoslavia in 1925 and was fluent in Serbo-Croatian, German, and Hungarian by age 5. He later learned English, French, and Italian. I had my American Heritage dictionary close at hand—and increased my vocabulary—while reading his copy as he hovered nearby. If I chuckled over a passage, John was delighted. “Yes, yes. That was good, wasn’t it?” he’d say. 

John would very neatly write out his first drafts in a tiny longhand on yellow legal pads, editing as he wrote and later transcribing the essay onto a triple-carbon set character by character on a manual typewriter. It was that version that I first read, from which he made additional revisions and corrections.
    

There were editorial disagreements with John over his physical descriptions of Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand, and Sammy Davis Jr. in the original drafts of his reviews of performances by those actors. He had his favorites—in film (Bergman, von Sydow, Bujold, Wertmuller, Malick), in theater (Shakespeare, Buchner, Wilson, Shanley), in criticism (Agee, Macdonald, Warshow, Tynan, Samuels), in music (Britten, Janacek, Satie), and in literature (Voltaire, Graves, Wilbur, Auden)—and anyone who read John regularly knew he could be as effusive in his praise as he was devastating in his condemnation. For example: 

Effusive Praise

Of Richard Wilbur’s translation of Molière’s The School for Wives, John wrote, “Wilbur makes Molière into as great an English verse playwright as he was a French one.” 

He called Beth Henley “a new playwright of charm, warmth, style, unpretentiousness, and authentically individual wisdom.” Of her play Crimes of the Heart, he wrote, “[It] bursts with energy, merriment, sagacity, and, best of all, a generosity toward people and life that many good writers achieve only in their most mature offerings, if at all.”    

He called René Clément's film Forbidden Games “a masterpiece,” citing the acting: “Even the smallest part is letter-perfect...and that of Paulette, by Brigitte Fossey, incomparable.” 

John said Debussy's opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, was “one of the flawless diamonds of the repertory, and certainly one of the most beautiful and influential.”   

        
He said “technical expertise and profound artistic and intellectual integrity make the films of Ingmar Bergman works of art.” 

Of the sublime Max von Sydow's performance in Bille August's “very good film” adaptation of Martin Anderson Nexo's Pelle the Conqueror, John wrote, “But the concluding words of praise must go to Max von Sydow. There is a scene near the end where his misery is shot almost entirely from the back, his face only briefly,  partially visible. Yet there is more ineffable wretchedness in that rear view, as [his character] Lasse weeps in terminal defeat, than other actors could give us in full frontal closeup and twice the amount of time.”

His fellow critic Charles Thomas Samuels wrote, “Simon shows himself a powerful demolition machine for a culture besieged on all sides.” 

The composer Ned Rorem, in his introduction to Simon's On Music, called John “among our country's leading artists.” 

And the filmmaker Bruce Beresford wrote, “[Simon] seemed to me to have more knowledge than it was possible to acquire in a lifetime, yet he was no pedant... I find John's critical writing immensely entertaining even when I'm not in agreement... More importantly, I find his reviews full of insights and perceptions that make reading a collection [of his reviews] as exciting as reading a gripping novel.”

"Not Without Merit"

When John would return to the office after a screening, Ruth or I would always ask him, “How was the movie, John?” More often than not he would wrinkle up his nose and curl his lips in distaste and denounce the film in strong language to describe his revulsion for the plot and/or the performances. Occasionally he would throw a small crumb of praise to the filmmaker and respond in his thick Serbo-Croatian accent, “It was not without merit.” To which Ruth would exclaim, “A rave!” Childish? Silly? To be sure, but entertaining nonetheless, and unforgettable. Good training, too, for dealing later with juvenile behavior by real juveniles.

I left New York in 1979 to become editor-in-chief of Condé Nast’s Street & Smith’s Sports Group. “I never even knew you liked sports that much,” said John, an avid tennis fan. We kept in touch intermittently over the years, chatting over the phone or meeting for lunch in midtown. I reminded him of his comments about my past reading choices, and always asked him for recommended books. Among those he chose were The Cloister and the Hearth, a historical novel about Erasmus, by Charles Reade; The Woodlanders, a Wessex novel by Thomas Hardy; and Evan Harrington and Diana of the Crossways, by George Meredith. 

During one lunch at an eastside restaurant in the summer of 1986, a persistent fly could not be shooed away from our table.

"Did you write something nasty about Jeff Goldblum (the star of the then-current film The Fly)?" I asked him.

"Have you seen that? said John, who proceeded to slam the work.

"No, I have not," I told him. "You might have to see it, but I do not."

When John was fired by New York after 37 years, I wrote to him to express my sympathies. He was touched, and responded so warmly that his critics undoubtedly would not have recognized the heartfelt sentiments he expressed in appreciation. I cherish that letter. Some time after that, I accompanied him, at his invitation, to an Off Broadway production of New Girl in Town. During lunch before the matinee, we talked about our career paths and families. Some time after that he called to invite me to another play. But because that date was just two nights before my daughter’s wedding, I had to decline. Alas, we never did reschedule. Rest in peace, John.

To be continued

          

Memories of New York Magazine (Part 3)

Passages

Gail Sheehy’s non-fiction book Passages, written in 1976, was published in part in New York magazine. Sheehy’s latest book, a memoir, Daring: My Passages, published in the fall of 2014, is a chronicle of her work as a journalist, biographer, and lecturer and includes her time from 1968 to 1977 at New York (and other publications) and of her initial relationship with and later marriage to Felker. As one of the original contributing editors to New York she describes the start-up of the magazine and the build-up to and hostile takeover of it by Rupert Murdoch. Reading it recently rekindled memories of my own days at New York, which overlapped with Gail’s. I recall just one major head-to-head personal interaction with the tempestuous Felker.

During the September 1976 New York Film Festival, The New Yorker’s film critic Pauline Kael jumped the gun to gush over a film (I can't remember the title) that had its premiere during the Festival but had not yet opened—nor was scheduled to open—to the public. The unwritten courtesy about reviewing a film was that a pan could not be published before the film opened. A positive review was allowed more leeway in that it could appear in print a few days prior to the film's release. 

           

Clay was angry when he read the Kael review and realized that New York had nothing to say about the film. He roared that we (the critic John Simon, really) needed to change gears and replace at the last minute the scheduled piece by Simon of another film with his take on the film that Kael reviewed. I forget what evidence or source I had at the time (maybe it was John himself or P.R. man Bill Kenly of Paramount), but I nervously marched up to Clay at the front of the office to tell him it would be a mistake to follow The New Yorker’s lead and review the film since it had no distributor and, according to sources, was unlikely to find one. There was no storm, no cavalier dismissal of an assistant editor. He listened quietly and agreed. I can't remember another conversation I ever had with him.     

           

John Simon vs. The Broadway League

I do, however, remember a separate and more incendiary incident that led to a different type of confrontation I had with another New York editor-in-chief, John Berendt. He had been brought in by the magazine’s publisher Joe Armstrong to replace Jim Brady, who had been installed temporarily by Murdoch to replace the deposed Felker. John Simon had just appeared on the Stanley Siegal morning TV show in the spring of 1977. When the host asked John what he thought of the new play The Shadow Box, by Michael Cristofer, John said it was "a piece of shit." The one-sentence denunciation went out over the airways uncensored. 

            

What an outcry after that! The Broadway League, which represented New York theater owners and producers, was furious. Its principals took this as the final straw in their dealings with Simon, whose often scathing theater reviews they were frustrated by, seeing in Simon an adversary to their promotional and commercial efforts and, ultimately, their bottom line. The League decided from then on to withhold John's opening-night seats. (Each of the city’s drama critics always received a pair of opening-night tickets to the latest Broadway productions.) Because I regularly requisitioned those seats for John from each production's P.R. people, I was involved in the dispute.

            

Armstrong and Berendt and Murdoch's lawyer, Howard Squadron, naturally were brought in on the case. As I recall, the argument went something like this: The League could not legally withhold Simon’s first-night tickets and thus compel him to purchase them while it provided the complimentary tickets to his theater critic colleagues. It was discrimination in that it unfairly denied only Simon access to do his job.

             

After whatever backstage wrangling took place to restore Simon’s seats, Squadron called to advise me of the settlement and to relay the message to Simon that the League, as a symbolic way of showing its disapproval of him, would henceforth hold the seats not in Simon's name but in the magazine's. Squadron then told me parenthetically, "You know, he [Simon ] just brings this on himself." 

            

"That's not for you to say," I replied.

            

I'm still somewhat amazed that the 24-year-old me had the sang-froid and the political uncorrectness to say that to him, but in my naiveté I was defending my colleague. And then Squadron started yelling at me. How dare I speak to him like that! Who did I think I was? Did I know who I was talking to...? In his agitated state, he hung up and immediately called Berendt to complain about me. Berendt, somewhat awkwardly, then came down to my desk to offer a half-hearted chastisement. Order was quickly restored but the incident gave new meaning at the time to the Lively Arts department and it cemented my relationship with Simon.

To be continued

Memories of New York Magazine (Part 2)

One of the pleasures of working at New York magazine in the 1970s (and there were many) was the annual Christmas party, held in the editorial offices on the third floor at 755 Second Avenue. That was a comfortable setup for the edit and art departments. New York published weekly, except for a double issue the last two weeks in December. That week without a press deadline was liberating, and the staff reveled in the temporary stress-free period. We could work ahead to prepare for the new year, and then willingly stay late to enjoy the party in New York's city room layout. One year, the art department was turned into a disco, with music, strobe lights, and dry ice that created a fog. There was even a roller-skating monkey. I don't remember whose guest he was.

In the festive spirit of the season, we even tolerated the presence in our midst of the Mad Men and Mad Women of the advertising sales offices from the second floor. You see, a few of them would have sold out the editorial in a New York minute for a sales commission. I remember one rep who brashly and unashamedly offered to write capsule restaurant reviews (for publication!) for potential clients she was soliciting. She saw no conflict of interest there, only a fatter paycheck for herself.

What a rollicking and enervating environment and collegial atmosphere we enjoyed at New York, the prototype (and the best) of all the city magazines. My colleagues were the smartest, wittiest, most original and creative personalities I had ever met. 

So many of New York’s editors later moved on to top editorial positions at other publications: Shelley Zelaznick and Fred Allen to Forbes, Jack Nessel to Psychology Today, Ellen Stern to GQ, Peter Devine to Vanity Fair, Laurie Jones to Vogue, Dorothy Seiberling, Nancy Newhouse, Joan Kron, and Suzanne Slesin to the New York Times, David Owen to The New Yorker, Elizabeth Crowe to Parents, Corky Pollan to Gourmet, George Gendron to Boston Magazine, Quita McMath to Texas Monthly, Rhoda Koenig to Harper’s, and assistant art director Tom Bentkowski to Life.

            
A Who’s Who in Magazine Journalism

The contributing writers and illustrators included a Who’s Who in magazine journalism: Tom Wolfe, Nick Pileggi, Nora Ephron, Mimi Sheraton, Julian Allen, Gloria Steinem, Ed Sorel, Richard Reeves, Mario Puzo, Gail Sheehy, John Bryson, Robert Grossman, Steven Brill, Dan Dorfman, James McMullan, Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill, David Levine, Gael Greene, Anthony Haden-Guest, and others. The design director and art director were, respectively, the inimitable Milton Glaser and Walter Bernard.

The star power was not limited to the masthead. It was not uncommon for the mayor of New York, Ed Koch at the time, U.S. Representative Bella Abzug, or other local politicians to visit our office. Paul Newman stopped by our Christmas party one year. Joel Grey, a good friend of Best Bets editor Ellen Stern, occasionally popped in. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger Comes to New York

During the course of a publicity tour in April 1976, a fresh-faced body builder and would-be actor newly arrived from Austria came by to introduce himself after New York ran a story on the documentary Pumping Iron and the feature film Stay Hungry he appeared in. Arnold Schwarzenegger charmed Ruth Gilbert, an original New York staffer and the editor of the Around Town listings, and she in turn charmed him right back. After he gave her a black-and-white publicity glossy from Pumping Iron of himself, she did an impromptu photoshop (before there was Photoshop) by attaching a head shot of drama critic John Simon onto the shot of Arnold’s pumped-up physique.  
            
For New York’s fall preview issue in 1975, there was a feature on Barry Lyndon that I edited. What I remember most about the assignment was the near impossibility of verifying some of the facts in that story (including the statement that Kubrick had used 10,000 candles to illuminate one scene in the film). The reclusive and secretive Kubrick simply could not, or would not, be reached. 

“The Soon-to-Be-Ubiquitous” Meryl Streep

Exactly one year later I got my first professional byline in a short piece about the city’s professional sports teams. In the two subsequent years I wrote capsule previews of the new fall theater offerings in New York City, including my line in the 1978 edition about a promising new actress, “the soon-to-be-ubiquitous” Meryl Streep, who would be appearing in the title role in Elizabeth Swados’s production of Alice in Wonderland at the Public Theater.

The magazine closed on Thursday night, meaning the final pages were sent to the printer in Buffalo via courier. On Fridays, Ruth and I compiled the listings of the entertainment events that would take place two weeks later in New York City. There was never enough space in our pages to accommodate the many events and cultural sites in the city. The cuts usually came at the expense of the commercial art emporiums that sold artifacts of no appreciable value. 

I never admitted that to the proprietors of those establishments, who after receiving their copies of the magazine on Monday would telephone indignantly to ask why their business was omitted from our pages. It was a free listing, I explained. We couldn’t very well cut the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, MOMA, the Museum of Natural History, or the major galleries. “You are free to take out an ad,” I reminded them. 

Alias John Milton

Not surprisingly, that never mollified their rage. Whenever they were rude or abusive and demanded to know my supervisor, I gave them Ruth’s name. (She, in turn, referred her own complainers to me.) When they asked me to whom they were speaking, I always gave them the name of an English poet or novelist. “My name is John Milton,” or “My name is Thomas Hardy,” I told them. “Well, Mr. Milton (or Mr. Hardy),” they said, “you will be hearing again from me.” 

Between Ruth's desk and mine there was a constant ebb and flow of press releases, invitations, announcements, memos, and office detritus that reached a high tide by Thursday afternoon's press deadline only to recede by Friday after we had a chance to file or toss the flotsam.
     
The New York staff rubbed elbows after work at the New York Film Critics Circle awards with the year’s leading actors and directors and at private parties in Tavern on the Green with the original casts from both Saturday Night Live in 1975, after the magazine ran a story on the new show, and the Broadway hit Annie in 1977. A bowtie-wearing Sandy, the canine cast member, sat politely at a table with young Andrea McArdle, the original Broadway Annie, during dinner. Before that, Jim Kamish, a member of the New York staff, stood in line outside the restaurant with Paul Simon, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, and others. He was directly behind Farrah Fawcett and leaned forward to sniff her hair. “What conditioner do you use?” he asked her.

Alex Trebek and Me

It was also around that time, in the mid-1970s, that I met Alex Trebek, about 10 years before he started his long-running gig as the host of Jeopardy. We at New York received word (maybe from Best Bets editor Ellen Stern, who seemed to know everyone and everything in New York City) that a new game show was in pre-production and looking for contestants. There was a local (that is, Manhattan) phone number to call about trying out for the show. At the other end of the line was a staffer who administered a quick general-interest quiz. Anyone who answered the questions correctly was invited to a makeshift studio (on the west side, I think) for an interview and a second round of questions. 

Many of us on staff enthusiastically took up the challenge. Alan Rich, much to his dismay, did not make the cut. He got the sports question wrong. It was unfair. Alan was more worldly and much more knowledgeable than any of us in every category except sports. 

Things were moving fast. We were advised that we needed to get to the studio that afternoon for the second stage of our tryout. I don’t remember a single question from either quiz, but somehow, I was still standing, along with assistant copy editor Quita McMath, after the second round. We were then escorted into another part of the studio and, with one other contestant, positioned behind separate counters or podiums (with game-show buzzers), much like those in use today on Jeopardy.

 
A producer explained that we would now take part in a pair of mock shows, to be played straight, including banter with the host and appropriate breaks for what in a real show would be commercials. As we were ready to begin, Trebek materialized from offstage. After a few quick preliminaries, the show began. I wish I could recall any part of the conversation with Alex, any of the questions, or even the name of the show. I do remember that Alex, a professional and a gentleman, played it like the real thing. Watching him on Jeopardy years later, I saw the same personality he showed in that mocked-up show. Oh, and I remember that I won both games, each worth $10,000. Alas, it was play money. The show, for whatever reason, never made it past that stage.
            
Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night

New York published a story in 1976 by British writer Nik Cohn, Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night (on which I had first read), about a group of young people in a Brooklyn disco. The story was the basis for the film Saturday Night Fever. I was Nik’s editor. When he arrived at the office one morning, he asked me what I was reading.

“The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” I replied.

Nik smirked, and then called across the room to where contributing writer Jon Bradshaw (Debbie referred to the two men as “the scornful Brits”) sat: “The heart is indeed a lonely hunter, Jon.” 

The staff later attended the premiere of Saturday Night Fever, after which we all went once again to Tavern on the Green to celebrate with the cast and the Bee Gees, whose music enlivened the soundtrack. The after-parties were always better and far more entertaining than the films.

To be continued