Famous People I Never Knew

There is a famous Woody Allen film called "Zelig" which features this non-descript man showing up in photographs taken of famous people. He is always somewhere in the crowd, near enough to be recognized, but anonymous at best. In a way, I am like Zelig. I have lived next to, near or been around famous people, sometimes actually working with them before they became famous. But, alas, no fame ever rubbed off on me.

I was in grade school and Boy Scout Troop 80 in Indianapolis with a nice kid named Dick Lugar. I went on to public high school, he went to a private school and ended up in the U.S. Senate.

A friend of mine in our freshman year at Northwestern came from Wisconsin, and for a couple of semesters, shared a common goal of wanting to become actors. He was good looking and handsome and was soon picked as a rising potential by a talent agent. Hank McKinnies went on to Hollywood to b3come Jeffrey Hunter. We all laughed at seniors Paul Lynde and Charlotte Lubotzky (to become "Rae) in the annual vaudeville extravaganza at NU. Sheldon Harnick ("Fiddler on the Roof" among other B'way hits) was still noodling around in Music School, and in Speech School among my compatriots was George Schweinfurth (he dropped the "Schwein") to write Company, et al.

Senior year, I got a job at a small ad agency, at a time when TV was still black and white and off after the news at 11. Among my accomplishments was writing copy for a local beer, intoned by Myron Wallace.

I was drafted in 1952, and, after basic training, ended up at the Signal Corp Pictorial Center, involved in an experimental TV unit. One of my good friends there became a member of the production staff of the Mary Tyler Moore Show and with his boyhood friend from Detroit, Casey Kasem, created "America's Top Forty." On a vacation trip to LA, he and a fellow gofer at NBC told me "LA is the place to be!" This was James Brooks, ("The Simpsons"). By the way, the guy who replaced me in the TV unit when my two years was up was Ira Levin "(Rosemary's Baby").

I stayed in New York, waiting to get out of the mail room, because TV was emerging and they wanted (so I thought) people like me, with directing experience. I delivered mail th Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid and Charles Collingwood,among others. The powers that be took John Frankenheimer and Mary Chase's son Mike, instead. I eventually ended up as a l0wlevel gofer for the morning show with Jack Paar. I did meet famous guests like Salvador Dali, and had a good relationship with a new band singer named Merv Griffin, and a pantomime artist brought up as a possible replacement from Atlanta named Dick Van Dyke. Then, the network decided to go a different route with Walter Cronkite and a puppet dragon named Charlemayne. So, as I cleared out the tiny cubicle where I was ensconced in came my replacement- daughter of the owner of the Latin Quarter named Barbara Walters.

I was fired by CBS and ended up writing and directing a growing new show business novelty, called the Industrial show. I stilol lived in Manhattan in a furnished third-floor walk-up in a brownstone on West Seventieth. Next door lived Maureen Stapleton, and down the street were Geraldine Page and Rip Torn. Across the street was Anita Gillette.

When I did well enough to move into a brand new 37-floor apartment building next to the Dakota, I came with my St. Bernard, Philippe. Now, I could walk in what is now Strawberry Fields, and let Philippe play with dogs of Zero Mostel and Lauren Bacall and a big standard poodle of Cyril Ritchard's, and an old rheumatic dachshund belonging to another neighbor, Basil Rathbone. Shelley Winters and Farley Granger lived in my building, and next door were John Lennon and Yoko, Robert Ryan and Leonard Bernstein. An acquaintance of mine lived on the 33^rd floor and invited me up from time to time to play poker with his neighbor, Tennessee Williams, whom everyone was supposed to call "Tom." He would never come down to play in my place or anywhere else because he had this "thing" about getting on an elevator when someone else was in it.

On one of my business trip to LA, I met a charming and clever woman, Brett Somers, then the wife of Jack Klugman ("Quincy"), an actress who became widely popular as one of the panelists of "The Match Game." She hated LA, preferred New York and Connecticut, so whenever she was back East, we would hang out at Joe Allen's where she, of course, would be besieged by autograph hunters. I will never forget one time when I was in the company not only of Brett, but also Ethel Merman, and several other famous ladies, when a group of Southern girls, up in New York for their senior trip, came in. Soon, one by one, autograph booklets in hand, came over and asked these famous ladies for autographs, which they readily gave. To my dying day I shall never forget one girl, timidly coming up to me and asking "Are you anyone?"

That, I guess, will be my epitaph. I saw them all- I applauded stars that will live with their contributions for generations- Garland, Horne, Piaf, Pinza, Martin, Lawrence (Carol and Gertrude), Welles, Judith Anderson, Katherine Cornell, Shirley Booth--- I could go on and on, lucky to have lived at a time when stars were really talented performers worth our time....But, I saw or met or passed them by, yet never really knew them, because I wasn't anybody.