By Donald Hall From The Country of Baseball 1976 Dock Ellis is moderately famous for throwing at batters. On May 1, 1974, he tied a major league record by hitting three batters in a row. They were the first three batters up, in the first inning. They were Cincinnati...
By O’Connell Driscoll Rolling Stone August 11, 1977 One: A Backstage Party September 1976: The Performer’s Lounge, Backstage at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. A windowless basement room with concrete-block walls. The furniture consists of several couches, some...
By Nik Cohn New York March 6, 1978 “I have a problem,” I said. “How’s that?” Tu Sweet asked. “I’m about to be dead.” It was early in the morning. Tu Sweet, the self-styled “Black Fred Astaire and Nureyev of the Hustle,” was relaxing in my neighborhood bar, fresh from...
By Helen Dudar Writers Bloc June 1979 In this age of hard sell, when even the most reticent author can be coaxed into a half-hour on camera with Dick Cavett, J. D. Salinger obdurately remains publishing’s invisible man. This is, of course, hard on his admirers, who...
By O’Connell Driscoll Rolling Stone January 19, 1975 There were four old ladies sitting in the lobby of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. They were four of the oldest ladies to be found anywhere. They sat facing one another in a quartet of lackluster wing chairs, holding...
By Tom Burke The New York Times March 22, 1970 Detroit She isn’t even mildly fatigued. For eight nerve‐shredding weeks, Lauren Bacall has been trying out her first musical, Applause, nightly belting a dozen songs in her big applejack‐brandy alto And swooping through...
By O’Connell Driscoll Playboy September 1979 “It’s One-Fifteen,” the man in the green-corduroy jacket said. “He was supposed to be here at one. My appointment was for one o’clock.” The man said this to a middle-aged woman who was sitting at a desk on the other side of...
By Paul Hemphill From Too Old to Cry San Francisco It is probable that Frederick Exley was the best-known unknown novelist working in America during the seventies. Ever since the publication in the late sixties of A Fan’s Notes he has symbolized the enigmatic position...
By Helen Dudar Newsweek May 1, 1978 I am a connoisseur of the boring, a secret indulgence that, over the years, has proved to be more sustaining than praise and less fattening than chocolate. If I choose to go public now, it is out of a sincere feeling that boredom is...
By O’Connell Driscoll Playboy February 1977 It is the day before the Academy Awards. There is a small crowd of people standing in a light rain outside the stage door entrance to the Music Center, in downtown Los Angeles. The rain has been falling all day, and now, at...
By George Malko The Stacks Reader July 30, 2019 When I met George Malko a few years ago he told me about his friendship with Pauline Kael which began after he profiled her for Audience magazine in 1972. Kael was the one who invited George to a press screening of...
By Brock Brower The New York Times August 6, 1978 Meryl Streep and Raul Julia are rehearsing The Taming of the Shrew seated on two studio chairs in a rehearsal room at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater. Act II, Scene 1, when Kate and Petruchio meet and clash for the first...
