By Jennifer Allen New York Magazine January 24, 1983 Arthur Miller is slouched in the drafty rehearsal hall on the top door of the New Amsterdam Theatre, on 42nd Street. Miller is tired to his bones. He lifts his round, black-framed glasses and rubs his eyes with his...
By Jennifer Allen New York Magazine April 9, 1984 It is three days before the Broadway opening of David Mamet’s new play, Glengarry Glen Ross, one day before the critics—“crickets,” he calls them—start to come, and there is nothing for the playwright to do but wait...
By Nicholas Pileggi New York Magazine August 26, 1985 Shortly before nine in the morning last March 5, Detective Richard “Bo” Dietl walked into the shield room at Police Headquarters and turned his gold badge over to a young policewoman. She casually tossed it into a...
By Steve Oney New York July 29, 1996 The most telling news to come out of Atlanta during the days leading up to the opening ceremonies of the centennial Olympic Games had nothing to do with the erection of a 165-foot-tall statue of a Coca-Cola bottle—in a city of...
By Jon Bradshaw New York December 29, 1975/January 5, 1976 It was practically dawn and the weather, he noted with particular pique, was diabolic. On mornings like these, he preferred to rise late. He liked to walk down to the Yale Club and play a little squash. He...
By Jennifer Allen New York Magazine February 1, 1982 Cher had been careful to chew two of the quarter-size vitamin pills before swallowing them, she says, but they tasted so bitter that she decided to down the third one whole. It jammed, horizontally, in her windpipe,...
By Jennifer Allen New York Magazine July 18, 1983 The beautiful lady and the reporter sit facing each other on wicker sofas in the lady’s small but elegant Los Angeles office. They are silent, sheepish, like schoolgirls who have been collared in the hall by a teacher...
By Nicholas Pileggi New York/World Journal Tribune March 5, 1967 To many native New Yorkers seltzer is the wonderdrink of the Lower East Side and a source of gastronomic nostalgia comparable only to Marcel Proust’s chocolate madeleine. It is a carbonated gestalt, an...
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 Gail Sheehy New York Magazine December 10, 1973 Men of power sit at her feet. Mamelukes lift her chair from room to room while menservants trail her, carrying wine. The mayor seeks her ear to confess his wounds, the governor to confide his ambitions. When the seat...
By Ross Wetzsteon New York Magazine May 4, 1992 Michael David got the call in the middle of a meeting at the Dodger Productions office at 1501 Broadway. Delicate negotiations had been going on for months, the rights were notorious for being the most closely held in...
By Ross Wetzsteon New York Magazine March 14, 1988 Flying. He’d wanted to fly since he was 16. Sitting at his desk in high school in Greenwood, Mississippi, he fantasized that it was a P-51 Mustang, F-86 Sabre jet. He didn’t want to be a pilot, he wanted to be a...
