More than half the concerts, appropriately enough, will take place on the

West Side, in Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall. And just as

appropriately, this year's festival will be dedicated to a Westsider whose

life has been an inspiration to millions of people, not only for the great

music he has created, but for a heart as large as the Grand Canyon. To

call him merely a giant of jazz could be an understatement, because they

don't come any bigger than Lionel Hampton.

Ask a dozen people what the name Lionel Hampton means to them and

you're likely to get a dozen answers -- all of them correct. In his 50 years

as a professional musician, "Hamp" has used his remarkable gifts humbly,

wisely, and unselfishly.

Music historians will always remember him as the man who introduced

the vibraphone into jazz. This he accomplished in 1930, while playing

with Louis Armstrong. Ever since, Hampton has been known as the

world's foremost master of the instrument. He is also a leading drummer,

pianist, singer, arranger, bandleader and composer. At 69, he continues

to work nearly 50 weeks out of the year, taking his band to every corner

of the U.S. and Europe. But whether he's making a live recording in a

nightclub or performing his own symphonic works with the Boston

Symphony Orchestra, Lionel Hampton glows with a spiritual energy that

extends far beyond his music.

It's 2 o'clock in the afternoon when I arrive at Hampton's neat, modern

apartment overlooking Lincoln Center. I sit on the sofa talking with Chuck

Jones, his public relations man, and a few minutes later Hampton emerges

from the bedroom and plops down on the sofa beside me, wearing a

dressing gown, slippers, and the famous smile that no one can imitate.

After the introductions, I ask about his most recent concerts.

"I'm still trying to get myself together," he says almost apologetically in

his rich Southern drawl. "We just got back from a six-week tour in

Europe. We played all over Scandinavia, Germany, Southern France.

"When I was in Chicago this week, at the Playboy Cub, they gave me a

new set of drums, with lights inside. I push a button and the whole drum

lights up. I'm going to use them for Newport. This is the latest thing. It

will blow their minds. We open on July first in Carnegie Hall and I'm

bringing back a lot of veterans from my band."

He grew up in Chicago, but because of the gang fights in his

neighborhood, Lionel's grandmother sent him to a Catholic school in

Wisconsin. There a nun taught him to play the drums. The youngster

learned fast; when he was 15, he made up his mind to head for the West

Coast on his own, to pursue a jazz career. At the train station, he

promised his grandmother that he would say his prayers and read the Bible

every day.

Some 15 years later, Hampton was invited to join the Benny Goodman

band in New York. His acceptance of the offer had great social

significance, for it was the first time that blacks and whites played

together in a major musical group.

>From 1937 to 1971 he lived in central Harlem. Then, after moving to the

West Side, Hampton decided that he wanted to help upgrade his old

neighborhood, so, on the advice of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, he

raised $1 million in seed money and filed an application with the Urban

Development Corporation for some new housing. Today there are 355

families living in the Lionel Hampton Houses at 130th Street and 8th

Avenue." I was just designated the land right next to it," he says proudly.

"We're going to break ground next year. It will be 250 family units,

dedicated to my late wife Gladys. The Gladys Hampton Building."

A friend of many important public figures, Hampton has never lost his

affection for Richard Nixon: "When I was a kid in California, President

Nixon was our congressman. Then he became our senator. He was a good

man and a good politician. He helped the blacks a lot; he helped the

Spanish. I campaigned for him when he ran for president. ... What

happened with Watergate, I don't know. That's high politics. But I know

I always had high esteem for him."

In a political campaign last year, Hampton threw his support behind

Ernest Morial, a black man who was running for mayor of New Orleans.

Before Hampton stepped in, Morial was sixth in the polls. "I sent my P.R.

man Chuck Jones down there to put some life into his campaign. Chuck

put a thousand placards all over town and went on all the radio stations,

and I played at a Morial for Mayor music festival. He came in first in the

primary and then he won the election."

My questions are finished. I get up and shake Lionel's hand, telling him

that I've always loved his music. He dashes into his bedroom, bringing

out four records for me to take home. He shakes my hand twice more.

On my way to the door, I ask him one last question: Does he still have

time to read the Bible every day?

"Yes," he replies, grinning, "That's what I was doing when you came

here and that's what I'm going to do after you leave."

********

WESTSIDER DAVID HAWK

Executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A.

3-11-78

During the final days of World War II, a captured resistance member sat

alone in a black prison cell, tired, hungry, tortured, and convinced of

approaching death. After weeks of torment, the prisoner was sure that

there was no hope, that no one knew or cared. But in the middle of the

night, the door of the cell opened, and the jailer, shouting abuse into the

darkness, threw a loaf of bread onto the dirt floor. The prisoner, by this

time ravenous, tore open the loaf.

Inside was a matchbox. Inside the matchbox were matches and a scrap of

paper. The prisoner lit a match. On the paper was a single word:

"Coraggio!" Courage. Take courage. Don't give up, don't give in. We are

trying to help you. "Coraggio!"

The prisoner never did find out who wrote the one-word message, but the

spark of hope it provided may well have saved his life. The story is told

in _Matchbox_, the newspaper of Amnesty International U.S.A., one of

the largest branches of the worldwide human rights organization that

received the Nobel Peace Prize for 1977.

David Hawk, executive director of Amnesty international U.S.A., sits

behind his desk on a weekday morning talking about how the group

originated and what it has done to earn the prize.

"It was started in Britain in 1961 by a lawyer named Peter Benenson,"

says Hawk, whose name belies the fact that he has been involved in civil

rights for nearly half of his 34 years. "It started over a trial that was going

on in Portugal." Benenson launched a one-year campaign to call attention

to the Portuguese prisoners.

Soon the idea became so popular that a permanent organization was

created. Chapters sprang up in other countries, and members began to

work toward freeing "prisoners of conscience" on every continent. In the

past 17 years, Amnesty International -- or "Amnesty" for short -- has

aided in securing the release of nearly 13,000 individuals who were

imprisoned not for crimes, but for personal beliefs that went against their

governments' official policies.

"We're a nuisance factor," says Hawk. "We organize letter-writing and

publicity campaigns on behalf of individual victims of human rights

violations. It's the letters and the publicity that are Amnesty's tools for

securing their release or bettering their conditions while they're in. At

first it sounds strange to think that people sitting in living rooms in the

United States can help someone in a fortress prison on an island in

Indonesia, or in Siberia. ... You deluge certain people with so many

letters that eventually it becomes an issue. Then the government asks, 'Is

holding this person worth the trouble?' And on occasion, the answer is

no."

The secret of Amnesty's success is its huge number of volunteers --

170,000 in 78 countries -- who work on the case of a particular prisoner

for years if necessary. They send letters and telegrams not only to

government officials, but also to the prisoner himself. At times they send

packages, or give financial aid to his family, or arrange for legal aid.

A 100-member research team in London makes sure that every new case

is thoroughly documented before assigning it to an "adoption group" of 12

to 20 people. This group generally receives the names of three prisoners

from three different political systems, and meets once a month to work on

the cases until a result is obtained.

The Riverside adoption group, dating back to 1966, was the first one

established in the U.S. Today there are more than 100 in 32 states. All of

these are monitored by David Hawk and his staff of 20 full-time workers

at their Westside office. The $750,000 annual U.S. budget comes from

members' contributions, foundations, and church agencies.

Hawk assumed the leadership of A.I.-U.S.A. in 1974. "In the early '60s

I worked in the civil rights movement in the Deep South," he recalls.

"From 1967 to 1972 I was one of the organizers of the Moratorium

Against the War. Then I worked in the McGovern campaign."

At about the same time he graduated from Union Theological Seminary,

and from there went to Oxford University in England, where he found out

about Amnesty International. Returning to the U.S., he applied for the

vacant post of executive director and was accepted. Ever since then he has

been a resident of the West Side. David's wife Joan, a potter, is the editor

of _Matchbox_.

Hawk's biggest concern these days is to focus attention on the human

rights covenants that President Carter has signed and is planning to send

to the U.S. Senate for ratification. The covenants are worded almost the

same as the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

signed in December, 1948. "Put into treaty form," explains Hawk, "the

articles will carry more weight. It's very important for governments to

agree among themselves that they shouldn't torture their citizens, and

should give them fair trials, and should provide food and housing and

education for their citizens. Amnesty wants all governments to ratify the

treaty."

Anyone interest in volunteering some time to this worthy organization

should write to: Amnesty International, 2112 Broadway, Room 309, New

York, NY 10023.

********

EASTSIDER WALTER HOVING

Chairman of Tiffany & Company

12-22-79

When Walter Hoving took over as chairman of Tiffany and Company in

1955, he gave his designers one simple rule: "Design what you think is

beautiful and don't worry about selling it." The rule applies as much to

store's eye-catching Christmas display windows as to the three floors of

jewelry, silver, china, and crystal at the corner of 5th Avenue and 57th

Street. Hoving's unique combination of business wizardry and impeccable

taste has paid off dramatically: since he joined the company, Tiffany's

annual sales haver gone from $7 million to $73 million.

A tall, soft-spoken, former Brown University football star whose unlined

forehead and vigorous appearance belie his 82 years, Hoving has a voice

like Jimmy Stewart's and kindly yet authoritative manner. On his

conservative gray suit is a tiny silver pin with the words "Try God."

Leaning back in the comfortable desk chair at his vast, teakwood-paneled

office at Tiffany's on a recent afternoon, he answers all questions

thoroughly and unhesitatingly.

"We don't think in terms of price at all. Whatever we sell has got to be

up to our standard in quality material, quality workmanship, and quality

of design. ... You see, you've got to have a point of view in this thing.

That's all we've got is a point of view, and we stick to it."

What he calls a "point of view" others would simply define as "taste."

And Hoving is well qualified to have strong opinions in this area. At the

age of 30, three years after joining R.H. Macy and Company, he was

already a vice president and merchandising director. At that point, says

Hoving, "I realized that design was going to be a coming thing, and I

really didn't know much about it. So I matriculated at New York

University in their arts department, and I took courses on period furniture,

old silver, historic textiles, color and design. It took me three years, twice

a week at night. ... Then, of course, I could learn by going into people's

homes that were beautiful, in England and France, at museums --

wherever I was. You learn if you have a basis. And so I advise anybody

who comes into this business to get knowledgeable about decorative arts."

After leaving Macy's, he climbed steadily, becoming vice president of

Montgomery Ward, president of Lord & Taylor, and president of Bonwit

Teller. Upon arriving at Tiffany's, one of the first things he did was to

discontinue selling anything that didn't conform to his esthetic standards,

regardless of profit.

The current 180-page catalogue lists almost 100 items under $25, along

with such unabashed luxuries as a porcelain dessert service for six priced

at $4,200 and an unpriced "seashell" necklace of 18-carat gold with

diamonds set in platinum. Tiffany's carries no synthetic gems because,

according to Hoving, "everything here is real," and no men's diamond

rings because "we think they're vulgar." He adds: "I dropped antique

silver. I saw no reason why Tiffany should carry it. You can get antiques

anyplace. Our job is to make antiques for the future."

Since 1963, Tiffany has opened branch stores in five other cities. Several

floors in the Fifth Avenue headquarters house artists, engravers,

clockmakers and jewelry craftsmen. There is also a Tiffany factory in

New Jersey.

The author of two best-selling books, _Your Career in Business_ and

_Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers_, Hoving is a deeply religious

man who has long been actively involved in charitable work. He is a co

founder of the Salvation Army Association of New York, and gives his

time to the United Negro College Fund, the United Service Organizations,

and, most recently, a home for heroin-addicted girls in Garrison, New

York, which has been named in his honor.

When a friend at St. Bartholomew's Church asked Hoving to make her a

pin reading "Try God," he got the idea of selling the pin at Tiffany's and

giving the proceeds to the Walter Hoving Home. So far, 600,000 have

been sold.

Jane Pickens Hoving, his wife since 1977, is the founder and chairman of

an organization known as Tune in New York, which matches volunteers

to jobs best suited for their talents and interests. It is about to open a

headquarters at 730 Fifth Avenue, across from Tiffany's.

His son Thomas Hoving served as commissioner of parks for New York

City and for many years was director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He recently wrote a book on Tutankhamen and has another book in the

works.

An Eastsider for over 50 years, Walter Hoving walks more than three

miles a day between his home and office. He frequently mixes with

customers in the store, and one of his favorite anecdotes is about the time

he spoke with a woman who was registering her daughter for wedding

presents. "The woman said that she and her husband wanted everything

to come from Tiffany's because they were sure if it was from Tiffany's

it would be all right," relates Hoving. "I said, 'What does your husband

do?' She said, 'He is a letter carrier.' Well, I felt better than if I had sold

Mrs. Astorbilt a million-dollar diamond ring."

********

EASTSIDER JAY JACOBS

Restaurant critic for _Gourmet_ magazine

2-9-80

It is a familiar scene to New York restaurateurs: an out-of-town visitor

arrives clutching a magazine, turns to an article, and orders the items that

have been underlined. Whether the magazine is current or several years

old, the chances are that it is _Gourmet_ and that the article is a review

by Jay Jacobs, _Gourmet's_ New York restaurant critic since 1972.

Its monthly circulation of 600,000 makes _Gourmet_ the most widely read

food publication in the English-speaking world. But Jacobs, who is

responsible for writing three lengthy reviews per issue, is quick to point

out that, in spite of his knowledge of the business and his love of cooking,

he would never consider opening a restaurant himself.

"I think everybody born in this century has fantasized about a restaurant,

but I think it would be insane," he says in a voice as rich and mellow as

vintage port. "One of the great tragedies of the restaurant business is that

people who cook well at home often think that's all it takes. ... If you've

got any interest in food and the least bit of talent, you can probably cook

a better meal for four people than you'll ever get in any restaurant in the

world -- if you want to invest that kind of labor and time, and

concentration. But there's a huge gap between doing that and serving

anywhere from 70 to 130 people at night, all wanting different dishes. It

becomes a tremendous problem of strategy and logistics."

Affable, low-keyed, and very small of stature, Jacob displays a wry wit

while telling how he began his career as a painter, cartoonist and

illustrator before turning to full-time writing in 1956. For years he worked

mainly for art publications, and he still writes a bimonthly column for

_theArtgallery_ magazine. His first book, a quickie titled _RFK: His Life

and Death_, came out in 1968. He is also the author of _A History of

Gastronomy_, _New York a la Carte_, and _Winning the Restaurant

Game_ (McGraw-Hill, 1980).

_Winning the Restaurant Game_ is an extremely humorous and

entertaining volume that is notable for its exotic vocabulary. However, the

book's message is not to be taken lightly -- that restaurant dining is a

complex game in which the best players can expect better service, better

food, and the lasting affection of the owner. All the conventions of dining

out, including who to tip and how much, are discussed in depth. Among

the subchapters are "Humbling the Opposition," "The Uselessness of

Menus," "Addressing Flunkies," and "Securing Advantageous Tables."

His next book, _Winning the Kitchen Game_, is due from McGraw-Hill

next winter.

Jacobs dines out at least once a day while in the city. He visits restaurants

several times before doing a review -- always anonymously, and generally

accompanied by others. "My job," he says, "is to find worthwhile places

that our readers will want to go to. The magazine's policy is not to do

unfavorable reviews. If I think a place stinks, I don't go back and I don't

review it. ... Most of our readers are knowledgeable about food,

somewhat self-indulgent, affluent, and well-travelled. When they come

into New York, they don't want to find some cut-rate taco house, and they

don't want to know about the bad places. They're only in for a few days,

and they want to hit the high spots.

"The daily press have a different readership and a different function. ...

When they do a favorable review, it can damage a restaurant in that it

generates a sudden spurt of interest that the restaurant can't handle."

The father of four boys, Jacobs is a very sociable person who enjoys

throwing parties for 50 to 60. To prepare the food, he says, "I lock

myself in the kitchen for three or four days."

His _Gourmet_ reviews are so detailed that Jacobs gets letters from

readers across the country who tell how they have recreated a night at the

Four Seasons or 21 "by analyzing what I have written, and approximating

the dishes." But what makes his job particularly gratifying is the restaurant

people themselves.

"I'm very impressed by these restaurant guys. If you travel in Europe you

see them when they're 13 years old, schlepping suitcases in some motel

and dreaming of the day when they open their own restaurant. They

usually come out of small towns or even villages, and don't have the

benefit of birth or upbringing or schooling. And the next thing you know,

it's 30 years later and they can converse very adequately with Henry

Kissinger or Jackie Onassis or anyone else, and maintain a business and

make it work."

********

WESTSIDER RAUL JULIA

Star of _Dracula_ on Broadway

5-26-79

"It's nice to be a vampire eight times a week," says Raul Julia, the star

of _Dracula_ at the Martin Beck Theatre. Last October he took over the

role made famous by Frank Langella, and now Julia -- pronounced "Hoo

lia" by his Puerto Rican countrymen -- has developed a cult following of

his own, in this classic remake of the 1927 Broadway hit.

Some critics have said that the sets and costumes by Edward Gorey are

the centerpieces of the show, more so than any of the performers. But

Raul Julia is rapidly becoming a local matinee idol, drawing fan mail by

the bagful and constantly meeting crowds of autograph seekers outside the

stage door.

In his portrayal of Count Dracula, Raul takes on many characteristics of

a bat. He hangs over the mantlepiece at strange angles and whips his dark

cloak through the air like a bat's wings. When entrapped by three

desperate men holding protective crosses and religious relics in front of

them, he changes into a bat and flies out the window at the stroke of

dawn.

In the dressing room prior to a performance, without his makeup, he looks

neither sinister nor magnetically attractive, but seems almost boyish. His

wit is matched by his humility: Raul is aware that his name is not yet a

household word. Not many people realize, for example, that his natural

speaking voice has the same lilting Puerto Rican accent heard everywhere

in the streets and subways of New York. When asked how he accounts for

his flawless onstage pronunciation, Raul shrugs and says with a grin,

"Well, that's acting."

Like Richard Chamberlain, who in 1970 played Hamlet with great success

on the British stage, Julia is equally at home in British and American

plays. He has starred in many of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare

Festival productions, and has received three Tony nominations for his

dramatic and musical roles on Broadway.

He sips a glass of apricot juice while a makeup artist brushes his jet black

hair straight back and starts to darken his eyes. Removing his shoes, Raul

tells all sorts of little anecdotes about his life as the famous Count.

"I usually eat very little during the day. I go to sleep at about five,

sometimes six. Maybe I'm getting a Dracula schedule," he says with a

laugh. "Some people who see the show write and say they're going to

keep their windows open at night.

"Dracula is a myth, although some people think there actually are

vampires. Bram Stoker really created the character of Dracula, taking

legends from different parts of the world, like the stories of sailors who

had been stricken by bats, appearing on deck the next morning, all pale,

without blood in them.

"I hear that Bela Lugosi was buried in a Dracula costume. I also hear that

Boris Karloff came to the funeral home to visit him and looked down at

the coffin and said, 'You're not kidding are you sweetie?'"

Dracula the character is more than 500 years old; Julia the actor declines

to give his age. "Actors should be ageless," he says. "You see, what age

does, it limits you to a certain category." He doesn't mind telling his

height, however. "Eight foot four," he quips. "No, six two."

He was, in fact, born 30-odd years ago in San Juan. In 1964, after

graduating from the university there, he was performing in a local

nightclub revue, and comedian Orson Bean happened to be in the

audience. Bean urged him to come to New York, and introduced him to

Wynn Handman of the American Place Theatre. Although he had not

studied acting formally, Raul's natural ability and his versatility soon

began to pay off. Within two years he was playing lead roles for Joseph

Papp.

Married for the past three years to dancer/actress Merel Poloway, Raul

devotes a great deal of his spare time to a charitable organization called

the Hunger Project. "The purpose of the group is to support anything that

will help bring an end to hunger by 1997. Our goal is to transform the

atmosphere that exists now,. That says that hunger is inevitable. All the

experts and scientists agree that we have the means right now to end the

starvation on the planet."

A resident of the Upper West Side for the past 10 years, Raul has two

major projects coming up -- the title role of Othello for Shakespeare-in

the-Park this summer and a movie called _Isabel_, which he will film in

Puerto Rico this spring: "I wanted to be in it because it's a totally Puerto

Rican venture, and I want to encourage the beginning of a quality movie

industry."

Raul appears to be utterly at ease as he prepares to make his stage

entrance in the middle of the first act of _Dracula_. I have time for one

more question: "Is the acting life everything you hoped it would be?"

Raul wraps the cloak around himself and heads out of the dressing room.

He looks back at me and smiles. "Yes," he replies. "_Now_ it is."

********

EASTSIDER BOB KANE

Creator of Batman and Robin

3-24-79

At the 1939 World's Fair in New York, a time capsule was filled with

memorabilia thought to be representative of 20th-century American

culture, and scheduled to be opened by historians 5,000 years later.

Among the objects chosen was a comic magazine that had appeared for

the first time that year, the creation of an 18-year-old artist and writer

named Bob Kane. Whoever chose the contents of the time capsule must

have been prophetic, because today, 40 years later, few characters in

American fantasy or fiction are so well known as Kane's pulp hero --

Batman.

"It was a big success from the very beginning," says the cartoonist, a tall,

wiry, powerful-looking man of 58 whose tanned, leathery features bear a

striking resemblance to those of Bruce Wayne, Batman's secret identity.

"Superman started in 1938, and the same company, D.C. Comics, was

looking for another superhero. I happened to be in the right place at the

right time.

"The first year, Batman was more evil, more sinister. My concept was for

him to scare the hell out of the denizens of the underworld. And then the

second year, I introduced Robin, because I realized he would appeal to the

children's audience. That's when the strip really took hold."

The walls of his Eastside apartment are covered with vintage hand-drawn

panels by America's most famous cartoonists, and Kane, with his casual

attire, his broad New York accent, and his habit of twirling his glasses

around while slumped far down in his easy chair, would not seem out of

place as a character in Maggie and Jiggs. Yet he likes to consider himself

a serious artist, and has, in fact, had some notable achievements in his

"second career," which began in 1966 when he resigned from D.C.

Comics, on the heels of the successful _Batman_ TV series.

"I got tired of working over the drawing board after 30 years. I wanted

to be an entrepreneur -- painter, screenplay writer, and producer." Since

that time, he has built up a large body of work -- oil paintings,

watercolors, pen and ink sketches and lithographs, most of them depicting

characters from Batman. They have been purchased by leading

universities, famous private collectors, and New York's Museum of

Modern Art.

As a writer, Kane has created four animated cartoon series for television,

has penned a screenplay for Paramount Pictures, _The Silent Gun_, has

written an autobiography titled _Batman and Me_ (due to be published

next year), and has completed a screenplay for a full-length Batman

movie. Recently, he has also emerged as an active participant in charitable

causes, such as UNICEF, Cerebral Palsy and the American Cancer

Society.

>From March 16 to April 8, the Circle Gallery at 435 West Broadway in

SoHo will exhibit a one-man show of about 40 Kane originals. Says Kane

with his typical immodesty: "I'm probably the first cartoonist to make the

transition to fine art. When you do hand-signed, limited editions of

lithographs, you are definitely entering the world of Lautrec and Picasso

and Chagall."

Kane has lived on the East Side for the past 15 years and has no plans to

leave. Asked about his early years, he tells of growing up poor in the

Bronx. "I used to draw on all the sidewalks, and black out the teeth of the

girls on the subway posters. I used to copy all the comics as a kid, too.

That was my school of learning. ... My greatest influence in creating

Batman was a sketch by Leonardo da Vinci of a flying machine, which I

saw when I was 13 years old. It showed a man on a sled with huge bat

wings attached to it. To me, it looked like a bat man. And that same year,

I saw a movie called _The Mark of Zorro_, with Douglas Fairbanks

Senior. Zorro fought for the downtrodden and he had a cave in the

mountainside, and wore a mask, which gave me the idea for Batman's

dual identity and the Batmobile."

As might be expected, Kane takes much pride in his lifelong success.

"Batman has influenced four decades of children," he declares. "It has

influenced the language. ... It has influenced people's lives whereby it

gives them a sense of hope that the good guy usually wins in the end. And

mainly, the influence has been one of sheer entertainment. I feel that most

people would like to be a Batman-type superhero, to take them out of their

dull, mundane routine of everyday living. ... My greatest thrill comes

from my 5-year-old grandson. Little did I know when I was 18 that one

day I would see my grandson wearing a little Batman costume, driving

around in a miniature Batmobile and yelling 'Batman!'"

********

WESTSIDER LENORE KASDORF

Star of _The Guiding Light_

1-20-79

For the pat few months at least, the hottest soap opera on television has

been CBS' _The Guiding Light_, which reaches approximately 10 million

viewers nationwide. The show has 22 regular characters, and right now

the one who is getting the most attention is Rita Stapleton, a beautiful but

deceitful nurse who recently brought up the ratings for the week when she

was raped by her ex-lover on the night before her engagement to another

man. It was all in a day's work for Westsider Lenore Kasdorf, who

portrays the popular villainess.

"This is definitely a job, and you get the feeling of a schedule, of

punching in and punching out, of rolling it off the presses. But you put in

your creative element too," says Miss Kasdorf, taking a break between

scenes at the studio. With her soft hazel eyes, pearly teeth, finely chiseled

features, and billowing brown hair, she is nothing short of stunning -- an

impression that is heightened by her throaty voice and by the red sweater

that covers her ample figure.

Being the star of an hour-long "soap" means that Lenore often has to work

from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. inside the mazelike studio, so that in winter, an

entire week may go by when she doesn't see sunlight. Although she

receives a tremendous number of fan letters, Lenore does not have time

to answer most of them.

"I'm not a letter writer anyway," she explains. "There are times when

someone is so sincere that you feel you really want to respond. I have had

people send me a dollar check for postage. My heart goes out sometimes;

I get guilty when I read my mail. This audience is very responsive. They

love to comment about the show. I get a lot of identifying mail. Some

people say, 'You're like the sister I wish I had.' Sometimes there's

strange mail. Sometimes there's lewd mail, which is removed before I can

read it." She laughs vigorously. "That's fine with me, because then I can

enjoy all my mail."

Asked about which part of the Upper West Side she lives in, Lenore

declines to say. "I have some fans who would follow my footprints in the

snow. You have to be careful. My husband and I tend to stay in the

neighborhood a lot, and I'd hate to ruin our indiscreet little way of getting

around. ... In New York people are used to seeing Al Pacino walking

down the street, or Jackie O. shopping at the corner. But out of town --

at first they're not sure if it's you. A lot of people come up to me and

say, 'Do you ever watch _The Guiding Light_? You look so much like

that girl.' I usually tell them who I am. I can't see any point in lying.

Face it, that's part of the reason we're doing this. I'm sure there's a ham

in every actor, whether they're shy about it or not."

Her husband, actor Phil Peters, recently won the part of Dr. Steven

Farrell on _As The World Turns_, another CBS soap opera. Within a few

weeks, however, there was a change of writers. "The new writers wanted

to bring in their own characters," says Lenore, "so on the show, Phil just

disappeared in the night. He never showed up for his wedding. All the

other characters were saying, 'Where could he be?'" She laughs at the

recollection of what happened soon afterward when she and her husband

were visiting Fredericksburg, Virginia: "A woman came up behind Phil

while we were eating dinner, and said, 'Shame on you! How could you

run off on that pretty little thing?'"

Born 30 years ago on Long Island, the daughter of an Army officer,

Lenore grew up in such diverse places as Tennessee, Indiana, Virginia,

Germany and Thailand. After graduating from the International School in

Bangkok, she "got out of the Army" and returned to the U.S. to attend

college in Indiana. There she began to do local TV commercials, and was

so successful that she decided to try her luck in California. Quickly she

became an established television actress, winning roles in many prime

time series, including _Starsky and Hutch_, _Barnaby Jones_, and

_Ironside_. While performing for a small theatre company she met Phil

Peters. Phil wanted to come to New York to work in the theatre, and,

with some reservations, Lenore came with him. Although Phil does not

have a regular acting assignment at present, Lenore points out that "actors

are never out of work. They're just between jobs."

_The Guiding Light_, says Lenore, "was originally a religious program

on the radio, where the moral of the story was an enlightening lesson for

everybody." Since moving to television in 1952, the show has changed

considerably in content, but, according to Lenore, it still contains many

lessons that are relevant to modern living.

"You can tell from mail that you do help people, whether you mean to or

not," says the actress with obvious satisfaction. "I've gotten letters saying,

'Seeing Rita through that difficulty has enlightened me about my own

situation.' She has not helped by example, because Rita doesn't always do

things right. But she shows how much trouble you can get into by

behaving the way she does, and in that way I think she helps people avoid

the same mistakes."

********

EASTSIDER BRIAN KEITH

Back on Broadway after 27 years

12-29-79

On January 1, 1980, the curtain will finally ring down on _Da_, Hugh

Leonard's strikingly original and poignant drama about a man's fond

memories of his working-class Irish father. _Da_ won four Tony Awards

in 1978, including Best Play. Since July 30, the title role has been ably

filled by Brian Keith, an actor perhaps best known for playing "Uncle

Bill" in the situation comedy _Family Affair_, one of television's most

popular shows from 1966 to 1971. Recently he has been seen in the TV

specials _Centennial, The Chisholms_ and _The Seekers_. In his long,

illustrious career, the 57-year-old actor has starred in four other TV series

and appeared in more than 60 motion pictures.

During the late 1940s, when he worked primarily on Broadway, Keith

rented an apartment on East 66th Street with a fireplace and kitchen for

$70 a month. Leaving for Hollywood in 1952, he eventually married a

Hawaiian actress, and nine years ago became a full-time resident of

Hawaii.

"I hadn't been to New York for years and years and years, and when we

came here for a vacation last winter, I saw a play every night for a couple

of weeks," says Keith. "_Da_ was the only one I thought I'd really like

to do sometime." Not long afterward, Barnard Hughes, the Tony Award

winning star of _Da_, decided to tour with the show, and Keith was

offered a five-month contract to replace him. Delighted with the chance

to return to Broadway in such a compelling role after a 27-year absence,

Keith quickly said yes. Bringing his wife and children to New York for

an extended visit, he again chose the Upper East Side as a place to live.

A big, brawny 6-footer whose deep, gravelly voice and slothful

mannerisms somehow bring to mind a friendly trained bear, Keith

normally spends the time between his matinee and evening performances

sleeping on an Army cot in his dressing room. On this particular day, he

is sitting in the sparsely furnished room with his shirt off, smoking a

cigarette and answering questions about his career. His initially gruff

demeanor soon gives way to laughter, sentiment, hopefulness and

cynicism in equal measure. A no-holds-barred conversationalist, he talks

about the acting life with a rare frankness.

Taking over the role of Da with only about 20 hours of rehearsal, says

Keith, was "just a matter of trouping it." He didn't find the task too

difficult, partly because of his Irish background. Asked how far back his

ancestry goes, Keith laughs and says, "How far back? If you go back far

enough, you never stop. I'm Irish on both sides. On my father's side they

came over in Revolutionary days. On my mother's side, five or six

generations. It stays, though. The first time I went to Ireland, I felt the

whole deja vu thing. I knew what I'd see around the next corner when I

walked."

He was born in the backstage of a theatre in Bayonne, New Jersey. "I was

there about a week. I'm always getting letter from people saying: 'I'm

from Bayonne too!' My parents were actors, so we went everywhere. ...

I went to high school in Long Island. Very ... very nothing. And I didn't

care a damn thing about acting."

>From 1945 to 1955 he served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a sergeant in

the Pacific campaign. "When I got out of the service, I was just banging

around, looking for a job. I didn't have an education or anything. A guy

offered me a part in a play and I didn't know whether I'd ever get another

one. But I did, so it's been very nice. Very lucky. It's unlike the usual

struggle that people go through."

When the conversation lands on _Meteor_, his latest movie, Keith declines

comment, choosing to speak instead of _The Last of the Mountain Men_,

a feature film that was completed in July and is scheduled for a Easter

release. "Charlton Heston and I co-star. It's about two trappers in the

West in 1830, and what happens to them when the beaver period comes

to a close. The two guys are like Sundance and Butch. But damn well

written. It's one of the best scripts I ever read. Heston's kid wrote it. He

worked for a couple of years up around Idaho and Montana as a river

guide. There's not a wasted word in the script."

Many of his films and TV shows Keith has never seen. "If it's some piece

of junk, I don't see why I should bother. It's bad enough you did it. But

to live through it again!. ... You can't sit around and wait for something

you think is _worthy_ of you."

Brian and his wife Victoria have two children. Mimi, his daughter from

a previous marriage, is a member of the Pennsylvania Ballet Company.

Between acting assignments, says Keith with affection, he spends most of

his time "raising the damn kids. It's a 24-hour job. We do a lot of outdoor

stuff, because in Hawaii you can, all year round. We go on the beach and

camp out and all that crap."

He finds that being based in Hawaii causes no problems with his career.

"It doesn't make any difference where you live," Keith growls softly.

"People live in London, in Spain, in Switzerland. You don't go around

looking for jobs. You wait till your agent calls you and you get on a plane

and go. You can be halfway around the world overnight, from anywhere.

It beats Bayonne."

********

WESTSIDER HAROLD KENNEDY

Author of _No Pickle, No Performance_

7-22-78

In the early days of Harold Kennedy's theatrical career, he was involved

in a play written by Sinclair Lewis, who may have been a great novelist

but was no playwright. Kennedy was talking with Lewis one evening

before the play opened when a young student approached the famous

author and politely asked for an autograph. Lewis took the piece of paper

the boy offered him and wrote on it: "Why don't you find a hobby that

isn't a nuisance to other people?" He handed it back unsigned.

But the boy got even. The play opened a few nights later and was a total

disaster. Lewis was sitting gloomily in the dressing room after the final

curtain when a note was hand-delivered to him by an usher. He opened it

and read, in his own handwriting: "Why don't you find a hobby that isn't

a nuisance to other people?"

The story is one of dozens told in Harold Kennedy's book, _No Pickle,

No Performance_, published this month by Doubleday. The book is a

fascinating collection of true-life anecdotes stored up by Kennedy during

his four decades in the theatre as a director, actor, and playwright on

Broadway and across the country. The subtitle of his book is "An

Irreverent Theatrical Excursion from Tallulah to Travolta," and he has

written chapters about his experiences with both of these stars, in addition

to Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Thornton Wilder, Gloria Swanson,

Steve Allen, and others who are less well known today but were legends

in their time.

Its book is dedicated to actress Renee Taylor, who refused to come on

stage during a play's opening night until she got a pickle with her

sandwich, as she had during the previews. The coffee shop that had

provided those sandwiches was closed, and the curtain was held while a

prop man got in his car and went searching for the holy pickle. It arrived

seven minutes after the advertised curtain time, and the show went on.

Unknown to Taylor, the stage crew was so enraged by her antics that they

performed "a little ceremony" with the pickle before giving it to her.

Gloria Swanson later said: "Poor Miss Taylor. Can't you see her shopping

around to every delicatessen in New York complaining that she can never

find a pickle to match the caliber of the one she had in New Jersey."

I meet the author on a recent evening at Backstage on West 45th Street.

"The thing about this book," he says, "is that whether people know the

actors or not, they find the stories amusing. You know, I never thought

of writing these stories down. I used to tell them to other members of the

company over drinks after the show, and everyone loved them. But I'm

an actor, and I thought what made them funny was the way I told them.

I didn't know how they'd look in print. A good friend of mine finally

convinced me to write about a hundred pages, and I said, "If anyone

wants it, I'll write the whole thing." The first publisher I sent it to --

Doubleday -- accepted it."

Those who have seen portions of the Ginger Rogers chapter in a recent

issue of _New York_ magazine might think the book is malicious, but this

is not the case. Says Kennedy: "It just tells what happened, and some

people come out better than others."

The chapter begins: "It seems that Ginger Rogers never smiles. It may be

that someone has told her it would crack her face. It may be more likely

that she's a lady devoid of one smidgin of one inch of a sense of humor."

The author describes her as "colder than anyone else I had met. Totally

unlike her screen self -- which only goes to prove what a good actress she

is."

He reveals Rogers at her worst when she attempts to make an actor out

of her no-talent fifth husband, G. William Marshall, at the expense of

Kennedy and everyone else in the cast. The couple were still on their

honeymoon, and Rogers demanded that Bill be given the role of her

leading man in _Bell, Book and Candle_. The results were disastrous.

Detroit's leading critic wrote after the opening: "The program lists Mr.

Marshall as having been acquainted with many phases of show business.

Last night he showed not even a nodding acquaintance with any of them."

Kennedy writes at the chapter's end: "Hopefully Ginger will find another

husband. As it turned out, the last one apparently worked out worse for

her than it did for me." Rogers is apparently considering a lawsuit against

the author.

Still very active in the theatre at 64, Kennedy is undertaking three

productions this summer -- _Barefoot In the Park_ with Maureen

O'Sullivan and Donny Most, _The Marriage-Go-Round_ with Kitty

Carlisle, and _Bell, Book and Candle_ with Lana Turner. He is directing

all three and acting in two of them.

Two years ago he directed John Travolta for a summer stock company

that opened to hordes of screaming teenagers in Skowhegan, Maine.

Whenever Travolta made in entrance or an exit, Kennedy tells in the

chapter titled "John Who?", he caused such a commotion that the play

virtually came to a halt. "John is a darling. He's such a lovely boy," says

the author. "He'd kiss me full on the lips when we met and parted. And

I say that with no sense of implication. In the theatre, we've always been

relaxed about an expression of affection. ... I thought in _Saturday Night

Fever_ he was a star in the old tradition -- in the tradition of Tyrone

Power. ... I couldn't call John intelligent, but he'll own the movie

industry in two years. And he has things in his contract that no other stars

have had, like approval of the final cut of the movie."

A native of Holyoke, Massachusetts, Kennedy worked his way through

Dartmouth College and the Yale School of Drama "and came out with a

profit." In 1937 he moved to New York; he has lived on the West Side

ever since. Among his close friends are some of the merchants and

artisans in his area. "They care about theatre and they know we have

special problems," he says. "There's Mal the Tailor on West 72nd Street,

for example. If I'm doing a play and need something right away, he'll

drop everything and take care of me."

_No Pickle, No Performance_ has already received many favorable

reviews and has been partially reprinted in the _New York Post_.

Kennedy is planning to hit the talk shows soon with some of his leading

ladies. What seems to be uppermost in his mind at the moment, however,

is whether Ginger Rogers will sue for libel.

"I kind of wish she would, just to get some publicity for the book," he

muses. "Of course, she's a fool if she does, because she'd never win, and

the people who haven't heard of the book will rush out and get it. ... But

I can say one thing: if there's a package from Ginger waiting for me in

my dressing room, I'm going to have it dumped in water."

********

WESTSIDER ANNA KISSELGOFF

Dance critic for the _New York Times_

6-9-79

It was 3 p.m., and as usual, Anna Kisselgoff was sitting before the

computer-typewriter at the _New York Times'_ newsroom, putting the

finishing touches on her latest dance review. She had spent the morning

doing research, and had arrived at the _Times_ building around noon to

begin writing the article directly on the computer terminal, using her notes

taken the night before at a dance performance. At 8 o'clock that evening,

she would be attending yet another performance, but for the moment at

least, Miss Kisselgoff had a little time to herself, and when we sat down

to talk in her three-walled cubicle office facing the relatively quiet

newsroom, she seemed noticeably relaxed and cheerful, notwithstanding

the pile of opened and unopened mail piled high on her desk.

"We get no help: that's the problem," she said, in a clear, even voice with

a tone that recalled Mary Tyler Moore. "We have one secretary for nine

people in the arts and architecture department. She's terribly

overworked," Anne went on, sweeping her hands like an orchestra

conductor toward the stack of mail. "You're looking at what's left after

I've thrown away half of it. I make up the review schedule for the week

based on these releases."

Petite, attractive, and looking somewhat younger than her 41 years, the

effervescent Miss Kisselgoff soon got to the root of her problem.

"This time of year, everybody wants to be reviewed. The tragedy is that

dancers _do_ wait until the spring, and then they give their one-shot

concert that they have been preparing all year, and it's on the same night

that 17 other dancers are giving theirs. I think it's suicidal. ... We have

three dance critics at the _Times_ -- Jack Anderson and Jennifer Dunning

besides myself -- and in the spring, all three of us are working every day,

and we still can't keep up."

Anna herself attends up to nine performances a week during the busy

season. Besides her regular pieces in the daily _Times_, she is responsible

for a long, comprehensive article in the Sunday edition. "There has been

a tremendous increase in dance activity in the past 10 years," she

explained. "In 1969, the year after I joined the paper, I was asked to do

a rundown of dance events, and I found there was not a single week in the

year that was free from dance. That was the first time it happened.

"I think the decade of the 1960s had something to do with it. That was

when choreographers like Balanchine and Merce Cunningham, who used

pure movement, became most popular. The audience that came to see

them was a new audience that was already comfortable with abstraction.

They didn't require story ballets. One of the problems with dance in the

past was the people thought they wouldn't be able to understand it. But if

you like plotless ballet, you don't have to understand any more than what

you see. I think Marshall McLuhan was right: this is the age of television.

This generation is used to watching images without getting bored."

She has no favorite dancers, but her favorite choreographers come down

to two -- George Balanchine and Martha Graham. "You don't have any

young choreographers now who are really the stature of the old ones. I

can't give a reason why, except that it happened historically that the 1930s

turned out to be the most creative period in dance -- not just in the United

States, but in most parts of the world. That's when the modern dance

pioneers became active. People like Martha Graham are revolutionaries,

and you just don't get them in every generation. ... This applies to the

other arts as well. Who are the great opera composers of today? And

frankly, are there any Tolstoys?"

Born in Paris, Anna arrived on the Upper West Side at the age of one.

She attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and later spent four

years in Paris as a general reporter for several English-language

newspapers, but otherwise she has been a lifelong Westsider. Dance has

always been one of her prime interests: she studied ballet for 10 years

while a child, and remained an avid fan long after realizing she would not

become a professional dancer.

In the mid-1960s, Anna wrote an article on a major dance festival for the

international edition of the _New York Times_ in Paris. This led to

similar assignments. In October 1968, shortly after she returned to

Manhattan, the _Times_ hired her to assist chief dance critic Clive Barnes.

She quickly found herself writing many first-string reviews, and when

Barnes resigned almost two years ago, Kisselgoff was named to replace

him.

One of the disadvantages of her job, Anna pointed out, is that she is

frequently approached by strangers at intermission. "I feel that everybody

who agrees or disagrees with me can do so by mail. I don't want to have

long discussions with people I don't know, because I think it's an invasion

of my privacy as a person."

The advantages, however, far outweigh the inconveniences. "I can even

enjoy bad dance," she quickly added. "That's why I'm very happy doing

this job. The day that I'll no longer be interested in watching a dance

performance, I think I should quit and go on to something else."

********

WESTSIDER GEORGE LANG

Owner of the Cafe des Artistes

8-4-79

George Lang, artist and perfectionist, could have become a success in any

of a hundred professions. In 1946, when he arrived in the U.S. from his

native Hungary, he got a job as violinist with the Dallas Symphony. But

Lang soon discovered that the orchestra pit was too confining for a man

of his vision. He might have turned to composition or conducting; instead

he decided to switch to a different field entirely -- cooking. Today, at 54,

he is the George Balanchine of the food world -- a "culinary

choreographer" with an international reputation for knowing virtually

everything relevant that is to be known about food preparation and

restaurants.

Lang's imagination, _Gourmet_ magazine once wrote, "is as fertile as the

Indus Valley." This imagination, combined with his keen intelligence, his

concern for details, his natural versatility, and his seemingly endless

capacity for work, have enabled him to rewrite the definition of the term

"restaurant consultant."

As head of the George Lang Corporation, a loosely structured group of

associates that he founded in 1971, he commands $2,500 a day plus

expenses for jetting around the world, giving advice on restaurant and

kitchen design, menu planning, and every other aspect of a restaurant

from the lighting to the color of the napkins.

His large-scale projects in the past few years include food consulting and

design for Marriot Motor Hotels, Holiday Inn, the Cunard Lines, and

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. He was the chief planner for The

Market, a three-level, 20-shop marketplace in the East Side's Citicorp

Center. In 1975, when he took over the West Side's famous Cafe des

Artistes, the business quadrupled within weeks.

A prolific author as well, Lang has written several books and hundreds of

articles for leading publications, including the _Encyclopedia Britannica_.

His column, "Table for One," is a regular feature of _Travel & Leisure_

magazine. He has bottled burgundy under his own label, arranged parties

for the rich and famous, and served as consultant for _Time-Life's_ series

on international cookery.

His office has a miniature garden in the middle; the wall are lined with

5,000 catalogued cookbooks. He comes sailing into the room and takes a

seat at his semicircular desk, which all but engulfs him. Short in stature,

bald as a gourd, he moves with a darting energy that sees him through 20

hour workdays with as many as 30 food tastings. His softly accented

speech is the only thing about him that is slow, because Lang chooses his

words carefully, aiming for the same perfection in English as in

everything else. Although modesty is not one of his characteristics, he

gives full credit to his staff for being equal partners in his corporation's

success. There is a feeling of camaraderie in the air, as if all are members

of a single family.

The Cafe des Artistes, he admits, was a moderately successful French

restaurant for 60 years before he took it over. "But it needed spiritual

changes as well as physical changes. And -- let me underline this and

triple-space it -- excellent food. You cannot chew scenery. We maintain

a certain kind of formal informality, which simply means that anyone can

come, dressed any way they want, as long as their behavior will justify

their white tie or dungarees. I could raise the prices by 50 to 100 percent

overnight, and I wouldn't lose a single customer. But feel an obligation

to New York City and the restaurant industry to maintain what I call

reasonable prices."

His corporation also owns the Hungaria Restaurant at Citicorp, which has

a gypsy orchestra from Budapest, and Small Pleasures, a pastry shop in

the same building. However, Lang stresses that "98 percent of our

business comes from consulting. I always think in terms of problems and

solutions, because every restaurant must be designed to suit the needs of

a particular market. At Alexander's, for example, we came up with a

restaurant where you could have a reasonably pleasant luncheon for two

to four dollars."

Still an ardent music lover, George Lang plays the violin whenever time

permits. He recently acquired a Stradivarius and says with a laugh, "I'm

threatening to get back completely to shape and play a concert."

Lang enjoys the European atmosphere of the West Side, where he has

lived for the past 30 years. Among his favorite Westside restaurants: the

Moon Palace on Broadway, Sakura Chaya on Columbus, and Le Poulailler

on 65th Street.

His latest endeavor is a 4-to-6-minute TV spot titled _Lang at Large_,

which is broadcast twice a month on the CBS network show _Sunday

Morning_. "It's part of my new career," he announces joyfully.

Asked about which aspect of his work gives him the most satisfaction,

Lang ponders for a moment and concludes: "It would be easiest for me to

say that my biggest thrill is to see an idea of mine become a three

dimensional reality, especially if it may be a $50 million project. But

actually, an even bigger thrill for me is to go to an obscure place in the

world, and see a bit of improvement in people's lives through the effort

of someone who was my former disciple."

********

WESTSIDER RUTH LAREDO

Leading American pianist

12-30-78

She has frequently been called America's greatest female pianist -- a title

which, as recently as the 1960s, almost any woman would have coveted.

But when the year is 1978 and the musician is Ruth Laredo, this

"compliment" brings a different response.

"I have mixed feelings about it," says Miss Laredo, sitting back on the

couch of her West Side living room. "I would really rather be known as

an American pianist. Being female doesn't preclude playing some of the

most powerful sounds on the piano."

Her words are backed by accomplishments. In October, Ruth came to the

end of a four-year project to record the complete works for solo piano by

Sergei Rachmaninoff, the late Russian-born composer who emigrated to

the U.S. after the Revolution of 1917. Almost all of his piano works were

composed before 1910, and they rank among the most technically difficult

pieces ever written for the instrument. Laredo is the first person in history

to record the piano solos in their entirety. Columbia Records will release

the final three discs of the seven-album set in early 1979.

Slender, graceful, and radiantly attractive, Laredo is still adjusting to her

recently acquired status as a major international artist. For 14 years she

was married to the acclaimed Bolivian-born violinist, Jaime Laredo, and

during most of that time she was known primarily as his accompanist.

Shortly after their marriage broke up in 1974, her career began to soar.

That year the first of her Rachmaninoff recordings was made, and it won

rave reviews. Her Lincoln Center debut with the New York Philharmonic

Orchestra in December 1974 caused such a sensation that she was quickly

signed up to perform with the Boston, Philadelphia, National Symphony,

Cleveland, and Detroit orchestras. "After 15 years," recalls Ruth, "I was

an overnight success."

Now, at 41 -- but looking considerably younger -- she can look back on

four years of unbroken triumph. Following a recital at Alice Tully Hall

in 1976, the _New York Times_ reported that she "operated within a

relatively narrow range -- from first-rate to superb." Her talents have been

constantly in demand ever since across the U.S. and Canada. During the

1976-77 season she had over 40 concerts, including tours of Europe and

Japan. This season she will perform in Japan and Hong Kong.

Although her repertoire includes piano works spanning the last 250 years,

Ruth has concentrated largely on Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, a Russian

composer of the same era. She has recorded five albums of Scriabin's

piano solos. "It's such strange music if you haven't heard it before," she

says. "I gave some concerts of Scriabin at Hunter College, and talked

about each piece before playing it. I was kind of a crusader at the time for

his music. It was very rewarding for me. I think people are much more

familiar with Scriabin today than they were 10 years ago.

"One thing I love to do is to talk to the audience after a concert. There's

a certain feeling of distance sometimes between the audience and classical

musicians, which need not happen."

On most days, Ruth practices at one of her twin grand pianos from about

10:30 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon, when her 9-year-old

daughter Jennifer gets home from school. The walls of the Laredos' living

room are covered with neatly framed fingerpaintings that Jennifer created.

"She's intellectually brilliant and lots of fun. I take her to concerts with

me when it's possible. When I gave a talk on Rachmaninoff to the cadets

at West Point, they all called her 'ma'am.'"

A native of Detroit, Ruth began studying piano at the age of 2, performed

with the Detroit Symphony at 11, and entered the Curtis Institute of Music

in Philadelphia at 16. There she met her future husband. During their

years together, Ruth longed for a solo career, but it somehow eluded her.

"I played with Leopold Stokowski and the American Symphony in the

1960s," she says. "There was a major concert I did at Carnegie Hall then,

but nobody heard about it. I think that women are being accepted on their

own merits today. They weren't given a chance until recently."

Ruth keeps fit by riding her bicycle almost every day. She is a fan of the

New York Yankees -- "I saw all the World Series games" -- and likes to

do photography when she has the time. A Westsider ever since she moved

to New York in 1960, Ruth lists Fiorello's (on Broadway across from

Lincoln Center) as her favorite restaurant. When she needs music supplies

of any kind, she goes to Patelson's (56th Street and 7th Avenue). Says

Ruth: "It's a gathering place for musicians. The people who sell music

there are very friendly and very knowledgeable. ... They sell records

there. They sell my records."

Asked whether men might have an inborn advantage at the piano, Ruth

denies the suggestion vigorously. "Of course not," she replies. "I can't

imagine why a man should play the piano better than a woman. At West

Point, the women do everything the same as the male cadets except boxing

and wrestling. Women might have smaller fingers on the average, but as

far as strength, speed, and dexterity are concerned, it's impossible to

listen to a recording and guess whether it was played by a man or a

woman."

********

EASTSIDER STAN LEE

Creator of Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk

1-13-79

With the current rage over Superman due to last year's hit movie, many

people will purchase a copy of the comic for the first time in years, and

may be disappointed to see how much it has changed. Once the largest

selling comic book hero on the market, Superman was knocked out of first

place long ago by Spiderman, the creation of a 56-year-old native New

Yorker named Stan Lee. Besides selling about one million Marvel comics

each month, Spiderman appears as a daily strip in some 500 newspapers

around the world.

But even without this giant success, Stan Lee would be rich and famous.

His fertile mind has also given birth to the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic

Four, Captain America, Doctor Strange, and a host of other modern-day

mythological figures. As publisher of Marvel Comics, he rules over an

empire that branches out into dozens of areas -- prime-time television

drama, animated cartoons, hardbound and paperback collections of comic

reprints, novels about Marvel characters, toys, games, posters, clothing

and much more. Most of these spin-off products are the work of other

companies that have bought the rights, but Stan Lee remains the creative

force behind the whole operation, as I discover during a meeting with Lee

at the Marvel headquarters on Madison Avenue.

"I think the title of publisher is just given to me so I can have more

prestige when I'm dealing with people," says Lee in his clipped, precise

voice, as he stretches his feet onto the coffee table of his brightly

decorated office. "I'm a salaried employee of Marvel -- your average

humble little guy trying to stay afloat in the stormy sea of culture. The

company owns the properties, of course, but I have no complaints. I don't

think I could have as much anywhere else. ... My main interest is to see

that the company itself does well and makes as much money as possible."

He is an intense, energetic man of wiry build who dresses in a casual yet

elegant manner. As he shifts the position of his arms and legs on the

couch, there is something unmistakably spiderlike in the movements. For

all his politeness, he cannot mask the impression that his mind is racing

far ahead of his rapidly spoken words.

"My involvement with this company goes back to about 1939," says Lee.

"I was always the editor, the art director, the head writer, and the creative

director [from the age of 17]. In the early 1960s I was thinking of

quitting. I thought I wasn't really getting anywhere. My wife said, 'Why

not give it one last fling and do the kind of stories you want to do?' So I

started bringing out the offbeat heroes. I never dreamt that they would

catch on the way they did."

He emphasizes that he did not create the characters alone, but co-created

them with the help of an artist. Nevertheless, it was Lee who

revolutionized the comic book industry by introducing the concept of what

has been termed the "hung-up hero" -- the superhero whose powers do not

preclude him from having the same emotional troubles as the average

mortal. This is what makes Lee's characters so believable and so

irresistibly entertaining on television. It explains why CBS' _The

Incredible Hulk_ is a hit, and why the same network has filmed eight

episodes of _The Amazing Spiderman_. On January 19 from 8 to 10 p.m.,

CBS will broadcast the pilot for a new Marvel-based series, _Captain

America_.

"Dr. Strange may come back again," says Lee. "It was made into a two

hour television movie." His old Spiderman cartoons, too, are still in

syndication.

He claims to work "about 28 hours a day," and a look at his dizzying list

of activities supports this claim. Besides running the Marvel headquarters,

Lee makes frequent trips to the West Coast to develop shows for ABC and

CBS, writes some cartoons for NBC, acts as consultant to the Spiderman

and Hulk programs, writes an introduction to each of the dozens of

Marvel books published each year, writes occasional books and

screenplays of his own, gives lectures all over the country, and -- what to

some would be a full-time job in itself -- writes the plot and dialogue not

only for the Spiderman newspaper strip, but also, since November, for a

Hulk newspaper strip that already appears in more than 200 daily papers

worldwide.

Few people know Manhattan as well as Stan Lee. Born the son of a dress

cutter in Washington Heights, he has made the Upper East Side his home

for the past 15 years. "I'm a big walker," he explains. "I'm a fast walker:

I can easily average a block a minute. So if I want to walk to Greenwich

Village, I give myself an hour -- 60 blocks. I wouldn't know what time

to leave if I took a cab."

Asked about new projects in the works, Lee mentions that Marvel is

planning to produce some motion pictures that will be filmed in Japan.

"And I have a contract to write my autobiography," he adds. "I was

surprised and delighted that they gave me five years to do it. So I presume

I'll wait four years; maybe in that period, something interesting will

happen to me."

********

EASTSIDER JOHN LEONARD

Book critic for the _New York Times_

3-22-80

"It's as if the job I have were designed for me," says bearded,

bespectacled John Leonard, lighting his fifth cigarette of the early

afternoon as he sits relaxed at his Eastside brownstone, talking about the

pleasures and perils of being one of the _New York Times'_ three daily

book critics. Like his colleagues Christopher Lehmann-Haupt and Anatole

Broyard, Leonard writes two book reviews for the _Times_ each week,

and is syndicated nationally. An avid reader since childhood, he now gets

to read anything and everything he desires.

That's the advantage. The disadvantage, explains Leonard, is that "there

are 50 thousand books published every year in this country. You can

never even pretend to be comprehensive. You can't even pretend to be

adequate in your coverage, whereas the _Times_ will review almost any

play that opens, on or Off Broadway, and almost every concert and

movie. We'll review maybe 400 books a year in the daily paper."

A smallish, balding man of 41 who dresses purely for comfort and has a

calm, refined speaking manner, Leonard looks precisely like the

bookworm he is. "I'll get here, in this house, probably 5,000 or 6,000

books a year, mailed to me, or brought by messenger. The luxury of this

job is that there's so much to choose from that any mood or interest or

compulsion or desire to educate oneself or amuse oneself can be matched

by some book that has come in."

New books by well-known authors, he says, are the first priority because

"they've earned reviews, for service to the literary culture over the

years." He and his two fellow critics "divide up the plums and divide up

the dogs. Since I did Kissinger's memoirs, the next huge, endless book

that has to be reviewed, whether anybody wants to review it or not, will

not be reviewed by me."

Somewhere between 100 and 140 serious first novels are published in the

U.S. each year, according to Leonard. "This is not pulp paperback

westerns. It doesn't even count science fiction or gothic or all that. I think

a special effort is made by all of us in the reviewing racket to review first

novels."

He reads many authors' first books on the recommendation of trusted

agents and publishers. "Over the years you decide who isn't lying to you.

... Christopher Lehmann-Haupt was telling someone about that the other

day. He said, 'Sure, you can call me as often as you want. But I'll say

that you begin with a hundred dollars in you bank account, and if it turns

out that you are begging me to review a book that has no other redeeming

virtues but the fact that you have invested 50 or 80 thousand dollars'

worth of advertising in it and you've got too many copies out in the

bookstores that aren't moving, that bank account goes down. When you

give me a real surprise and a pleasure which is what makes this job

worthwhile, the bank account goes up. But if the bank account goes down

to zero, it's closed.'

"And that's right. There are people in this town who I won't take a

telephone call from. But that's the exception."

Apart from reading, writing and travel, Leonard has few interests. "By

May, I can even look healthy, because I just sit out in the garden, getting

paid to read," he says with a grin. He and his wife Sue, a schoolteacher,

have three children from previous marriages. His son Andrew will be

starting college in the fall.

A book reviewer since 1967, including a five-year stint as editor of the

_Sunday Times Book Review_, Leonard also write a warmly personal,

frequently humorous column in the Wednesday _Times_ titled "Private

Lives." A collection of 69 of the columns appeared in book form last year

under the title _Private Lives in the Imperial City_ (Knopf, $8.95). In

addition, he has published four novels and hundreds of free-lance articles

for magazines ranging from _Playboy_ to the _New Republic_. For years

he wrote TV reviews for _Life_ magazine under the pseudonym

"Cyclops." Recalls Leonard: "It was a good way to turn your brain to

Spam."

Born in Washington, D.C., he grew up reading the _Congressional

Record_ instead of comics, and initially planned a career in law. Booted

out of Harvard for neglecting his studies in favor of the campus

newspaper, he sharpened his journalistic skills under William F. Buckley

Jr. at the _National Review_ before completing college at the University

of California's Berkeley campus. Following graduation, he became the

program director of a radio station, wrote his first two novels, and worked

in an anti-poverty program in Boston. Then he was invited to join the

_Times_. "I did my Westside and Village stuff when I was first here and

broke," comments Leonard. He has owned his four-story Eastside house

since 1971.

Among the most memorable books that Leonard has helped to "discover"

are Joseph Heller's _Catch-22_ and Gunter Grass's _The Tin Drum_. "To

be able to sit down one night, as I did, and to realize you're in the

presence of an extraordinary talent, with no advance publicity, to be able

to have a hole to fill in the paper two days later, to sit down and pull out

all your adjectives and get people to buy the book: this is what you live

for," he sighs happily. "You only need two or three of those to last a

lifetime."

********

WESTSIDER JOHN LINDSAY

International lawyer

7-1-78

It was said of John Kennedy that he was too young and too active a man

to retire immediately after the presidency. Had he lived to serve two full

terms, he would have been 51 upon leaving office. How he might have

spent the remainder of his career is difficult to guess, but it's likely that

he would have ended up doing work very similar to what John Lindsay

does today.

A comparison between the two men is hard to escape. Both were war

heroes. Both rose to power aided by their personal magnetism -- Kennedy

to the nation's highest office at 43, Lindsay to the nation's second

toughest job at 44. Both gave eloquent speeches, aimed for high ideals,

and made controversial decisions that brought plenty of criticism from

within their own ranks.

Lindsay, now an international lawyer, has changed little in appearance

since he stepped down in 1974 after eight years in City Hall. The brown

hair has turned mostly grey, and the lines in the face are slightly more

pronounced, but when he's behind the desk of his Rockefeller Plaza

office, his lean, immaculately dressed, 6-foot-3-inch frame resting

comfortably in a huge leather swivel chair, he still looks like a man who

is very much in charge.

He is a partner in the corporate law firm of Webster and Sheffield, which

he first joined in 1948. "This is a firm of about 75 lawyers," he says in

a soft, lyrical voice. "We're general practice. ... I'm back into corporate

law, and there's a fair amount of international work which takes me

abroad quite a bit -- largely representing American businesses overseas.

A lot of my work is done in French. I'm handling a complicated matter

involving imports to this country, and a complex arrangement involving

offshore oil exploration and drilling. Real estate transactions. The

purchase of oil. A matter in Australia. Municipal counseling for a city in

Colorado ... "

The international situation is beneficial to New York these days, says

Lindsay, because "parts of the Western free world have a bad case of the

jitters. Europeans particularly, and also many people in the Middle East,

feel that this is a more stable place to invest their capital."

Leaning back, with his feet propped up on another chair, he elaborates on

foreign affairs: "I think Carter's plane deal in the Middle East escalated

tensions rather than reduced them. It's not a foreign policy to sell arms in

the Middle East. I think Americans have an obligation to spell out what

our foreign policy is."

Except for a few public speaking engagements, Lindsay has devoted

nearly all his attention this year to the practice of law. "I used to spend

a little time with _Good Morning America_ on ABC, but I dropped it in

January because of the pressures of this office," he says. "Recently I did

a pilot for public television. It's a small documentary that shows

cataclysmic events in world history -- mostly from World War II -- and

at the same time, shows what was going on in America. ... It might be

turned into a series of documentaries."

Because he served four terms as congressman for Manhattan's Silk

Stocking district, Lindsay is generally associated with the East Side, but

actually he was born on the West Side's Riverside Drive in 1921. One

month after graduating from Yale in 1943, he enlisted in the Navy and

served for the next three years, taking part in the Sicily landing and the

invasion of the Philippines on his way to earning five battle stars.

Two years after leaving the service, he received his law degree, and seven

years after that, in 1955, his abilities impressed U.S. Attorney General

Herbert Brownell so much that he made Lindsay his executive assistant.

In 1958, Lindsay ran for Congress and won, quickly establishing himself

as a tireless worker for the rights of refugees. Lindsay was an early

supporter of the Peace Corps and a prominent member of the Council on

Foreign Relations.

Soon after leaving Gracie Mansion, John and his wife Mary and their

children settled down on the West Side near Central Park. "I feel very

strongly that the park is for people, and not for special interest groups,"

he says. "We introduced bicycling on weekends, and when I retired from

government we had a major plan to restore all of Central Park."

The reason he first got involved in politics, says Lindsay, was because

"out in the Pacific on lonely nights, after hearing the news of the death of

good friends, I made a determination that one day I was going to try to do

something. I was determined that we weren't going to have war again."

In regard to his years as mayor, Lindsay makes the simple statement that

"I did my best of a very tough job and I have no regrets about it. I look

ahead to the future."

But what will the future bring? Would he consider running for office

again?

"That's a tough question, Max," he replies. "I know there's a lot of talk

with some of my friends about the Senate in 1980. I don't take that

lightly. ... Right now I'm not making any plans to run. ... But you just

don't know, because life does funny things, and I also think there's a big

vacuum out there now -- second-rate politics everywhere.

********

WESTSIDER ALAN LOMAX

Sending songs into outer space

9-17-77

On August 20, when the Voyager 2 spacecraft blasted off for a trip

beyond the solar system, it carried on its side a unique record player and

a single phonograph record. Included on that record are 27 musical

selections that the _New York Times_ has called "Earth's Greatest Hits."

If, someday, extraterrestrial creatures play the record and enjoy it, they

will be most indebted to the man who chose 13 of the songs -- Westsider

Alan Lomax.

That Alan's advice should be so highly respected by a committee that

spent eight weeks choosing the other 14 songs is a testimonial to his

musical reputation. Ever since he became head of the Folk Music

Archives of the Library of Congress at age 20, Alan has devoted his life

to the preservation and study of international folk music. Following the

footsteps of his late father, musicologist John Lomax, Alan has taken his

recording equipment to six continents in search of the rapidly disappearing

musical treasures of the world.

I finally caught up with Alan and met him for an interview on a Friday

evening at his office/apartment on West 98th Street. One room, I

observed, was lined wall to wall with tapes and record albums. Another

was filled with music books, a third with computer readouts, and a fourth

with movie films.

Alan's foremost interest right now is cantometrics -- the science of song

as a measure of culture. Recently he published a book titled

_Cantometrics: A Method in Musical Anthropology_. Accompanying the

volume are seven cassette tapes. The songs are arranged in an order that

will teach the student to interpret their general meaning without knowing

the language.

"When you learn the system, you can understand any music," said Alan.

"We analyzed 4000 songs from 400 societies around the world. Out of

that study has come a map of world music." He then showed me a

musical chart of Europe, the Far East, and Indian North America. Thirty

seven aspects of the music, including rhythm, volume and repetition, had

been analyzed by a computer to make a graph.

"Each aspect of the music," said Alan, "stands for a different social style.

It's like the guy who says, 'I don't know anything about music, but I

know what I like.' It means that kind of music stands for his background

and what he believes in."

Alan played a tape for me containing a Spanish folk song, an Irish jig and

a song from Nepal, explaining some of the elements as the music was

playing. "By the time you've heard two or three tapes," he said, "you get

used to the world standards of music. In primitive societies, he added,

"everybody knows the same things about everything, so being specific is

a bore, and repetition is what they like. You don't impose your boring

accuracy on everyone. By the same token, primitive people find it much

easier to sing together than, for example, New Yorkers of different

backgrounds. In the latter case," said Alan, "everybody starts singing at

a different tempo, like six cats in a bag. But if you take people who live

together and work together, it's like clouds rolling out of the sea."

Alan was not impressed with the 1976 movie _Bound for Glory_, about

the life of American folk singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie during the

Great Depression. The movie ends with Woody leaving Hollywood for

New York to perform in a coast-to-coast radio show. The man who hosted

that show was Alan Lomax.

"We collaborated on a number of things," recalled Alan. "It was an

enormous pleasure. He was the funniest man that ever talked. And he was

so quick. That's what was wrong with the movie. Talking with Woody

was like playing a game of jai alai. He was a deeply passionate person,

and tremendously gifted. He got up in the morning and wrote 25 pages

before breakfast just to warm up."

Though Alan can sing and play the guitar, he does not regard himself as

a performer but rather as a "funnel" for other musicians. During the 1940s

he helped launch the careers of people like Burl Ives and Pete Seeger by

providing them with songs and putting them on the radio. "We set out to

revive the American folk music in 1938, and by God we did it," said

Alan. "By 1950 it was a national movement."

Alan spent the next 10 years of his life in Europe, where he produced a

definitive 14-album collection of international folk music. Then he moved

back to the U.S. and settled on the Upper West Side, where he has lived

for the past 15 years. His residential apartment is located two blocks from

his office.

Besides his research in cantometrics, done in cooperation with Columbia

University, Alan is now preparing for publication a study on international

dance movement and its relations to society. Energetic, jovial, and looking

considerably younger than his years, Alan has no doubts about the lasting

value of his work.

"I make my living as a very hard-working scientist," he said. "By using

scientific methods, I can absolutely refute the ideas of those who say that

Oklahoma doesn't matter, or that the Pygmies might as well be

exterminated. Each of these people, we have found, has something for the

human future, for the human destiny."

* * *