100 New Yorkers of the 1970s Part 17

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-s.p.a.ce 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 t.i.tled _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

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She has frequently been called America's greatest female pianist -- a t.i.tle 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-alb.u.m 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 j.a.pan. This season she will perform in j.a.pan 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 alb.u.ms 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 cla.s.sical 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 Inst.i.tute 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 n.o.body 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

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With the current rage over Superman due to last year's. .h.i.t 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 t.i.tle 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 j.a.pan.

"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_

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"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.