Bow Down

By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader I’ve never read Conversations with Wilder, the hell is wrong with me? Man, I need to correct that. I’m  grateful that I tuned in to Alec Baldwin’s Here’s The Thing interview with Cameron Crowe, who put the book together, and has some...

The Gookie

By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader The origins of “The Gookie,” from one of the great showbiz memoirs, Harpo Speaks! The man who first inspired me to become an actor was a guy called Gookie. Gookie had nothing to do with the theatre. He rolled cigars in the window of a...

What’s Old is New

By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader Here is something I have noticed about reprinting material that was previously published but not available to us online—it ain’t for everyone. Why? Well, say I reprint a story that was published 40 years ago. Some folks will be turned...

Sugar Ray

By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader Ray Robinson died last November at the age of 96. He was born and raised in New York, spent pretty much his whole life here and he died here. Ray wrote about sports and worked as an editor for magazines like Pageant, Good Housekeeping...

Hunting for Treasure (and Bringing ’Em to You)

By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader Welcome to The Stacks Reader, an online trove of classic journalism and writing about the arts and culture that began innocently enough fifteen years ago in the microfilm room of the New York Public Library. I was there doing some...