100 New Yorkers of the 1970s Part 5

But the majority of his time these days goes to writing and performing special lyrics for special occasions -- usually parodies of his own hit songs. Sometimes he does this for profit, and sometimes for love. He was paid handsomely to prepare a birthday celebration for Ray Kroc, the head of Mcdonald's. But a couple of weeks ago, when a man wrote to Sammy telling him how much his songs had meant to him and his wife over the years, and asking him to please write some personalized lyrics for their 18th wedding anniversary, Sammy was "just enough of an idiot to sit down and do it."

He works exclusively at the typewriter. "I have become almost audacious.

When I put a piece of paper in the typewriter, I know that the completed song will be on that page. I'm very grateful to the man who invented Correctotype and liquid paper. I start to type as soon as I get up, and I think about songs all day long. When I sleep at night, I sleep with an earplug in my ear, tuned to WCBS or WINS radio. They're both news stations. The radio distracts me: it stops me from thinking about lyrics."

As we are talking, Sammy keeps remembering telephone calls he needs to make, but he keeps them brief and to the point. As soon as he hangs up, our conversation jumps immediately back to the previous subject, as if there had been no interruption. He is extremely quick-minded -- to the extent that his thoughts sometimes race ahead of him, and his sentences lose their structure. In speaking of his son, a very successful jazz guitarist who performs under the name Steve Khan, Sammy comments: "Now, my son -- brace yourself -- my son -- this is one of my great, great achievements -- my fame is coming from a very curious source. People come up to me and say, 'You're Steve Kahn's father?'"

Asked about the satisfaction he has gotten from songwriting, Sammy insists that he can't imagine a more rewarding career. "I once told that to a college audience and a boy said, 'I'm studying to be a lawyer. What's wrong with that?' I said, 'Nothing, but who walks down the street humming a lawsuit?'"

WESTSIDER HUGH CAREY Governor of New York state

9-16-78

It was 5 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day. Governor Hugh Carey sat alone in his office on West 55th Street, rubbing his forehead wearily with both hands when his a.s.sistant press secretary, Judy Deich, ushered me in.

The introductions were brief, and the governor spoke very rapidly, keeping is eyes on the table in front of him, where he was scrawling pencil lines in geometric patterns on a piece of blank paper, as if to maintain his concentration.

The Governor had been up for 12 hours, and his voice occasionally faded to a whisper, but he answered all the questions with a flair and displayed a sincere manner throughout. Sitting kitty-corner to me at a conference table, he looked smaller and thinner than his photographs. He also looked like one of the tiredest, most overworked men I had ever met.

"I have been staying on the West Side a lot since last September," he said.

"That's when my sons Donald and Michael got an apartment near Central Park. They're kind enough to put me up there. We have the usual tenants'

complaints about the leaky ceilings and peeling paint. All in all, it's a good building. I find more and more advantages to living on the West Side. I like it because of the accessibility to work and because I jog in Central Park.

"One of my headaches is Central Park. Some of my colleagues would like to make it a national park. It's the city's biggest showplace. ... I want to get the automobiles out of there more and more. In the morning, I see all the New Jersey cars coming through. That's why I want Westway below 42d Street -- so it will take more pressure off the city. ... I wish everyone would realize that Westway is not a road. It's a recessed highway -- more of a tunnel."

Speaking frankly of the problem of ex-mental patients in parts of the West Side, Carey said that "we have indexed all the SRO's. That was never done before. ... The homeless people who live on the street are not the wards of the state. We can't just go out and pick them up. ... If they need some kind of health care, they should be taken to a shelter and given health care. If they resist, we will have peace officers to take care of them. That's something I'm doing with Mayor Koch."

Ever since he defeated Nelson Rockefeller's appointed successor, Malcolm Wilson, in 1974, Hugh Carey has become well known for both his conservative moral code and his unswerving fiscal restraint. Born on April 11, 1919, to an Irish Catholic family in Brooklyn, Carey grew up with five brothers believing in certain principles that he has never abandoned.

These moral principles have become the foundation of his controversial stands on the death penalty and abortion.

"I am against the death penalty," said Carey, "because the government can make a mistake. A sentence of life without parole is better. There are six people now walking around the state who were condemned to death and later proven innocent. One is named Zimmy and he works on the West Side in a garment factory. Somebody should ask him what he thinks about the death penalty. He's alive because somebody confessed.

"I oppose abortion personally. But the Supreme Court upheld that it's the choice of a woman of her own free will, and I support that ruling. In New York, the state pays for it if it's a matter of medical necessity. Otherwise, there might be a mangled body in a back alley. ... I'm also advocating an alternative -- a teenage pregnancy bill, where girls can have a baby without shame and go back to school. It's the most common reason for dropouts among teenagers."

During World War II, Hugh Carey fought in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, and attained the rank of major. After the service, he worked for many years as an executive in his brother Edward's Peerless Oil and Chemical Corporation. Not until 1960, when he was 41 years old, did Carey decide to run for political office. He won his first congressional race and during the 1960s developed a national reputation for his liberal att.i.tude on education, and programs for the elderly and handicapped.

His life has twice been touched by deep personal tragedy in recent years.

An automobile accident in 1969 took the lives of his two eldest sons, and cancer claimed his wife Helen in 1974. A man who loves the company of other people, Carey enjoys such simple pleasures as cooking with friends and singing with his children.

Asked about the chief difference between himself and Republican challenger Perry Duryea, the governor replied with obvious glee: "I can't think of anything we have in common. ... I'll knock the Y right out of his name before I'm finished."

Generally known to be at his best in times of crisis, Carey said that whenever the pressures of his office become too great for him to handle alone, he drops into the chapel and asks for help. "It's a matter of privacy to me; I go where I'm not seen," he said. "I need help quite a lot. Also, I believe that New York is a very special place, with a resourcefulness that can't be matched anywhere in the world. When people have come together as New Yorkers, they have done amazing things."

WESTSIDER CRAIG CLAIBORNE Food editor of the _New York Times_

3-10-79

"To be a good restaurant critic, you shouldn't have a conscience," says Craig Claiborne, food editor of the _New York Times_. "I used to visit restaurants twice a day, frequently seven days a week, and lie awake brooding about whether my reviews were honest -- whether I was hurting somebody who didn't deserve to be hurt."

Recognized throughout the United States as the father of modern restaurant criticism, Claiborne joined the _Times_ in 1957, and shortly thereafter was given the go-ahead to write reviews based on a four-star system. "The _New York Times_ made the decision. I was the instrument. It was the first newspaper that allowed a restaurant critic to say anything he wanted. It took a lot of guts, when a newspaper depends on advertising."

A 58-year-old bachelor whose soft voice still carries strong traces of his native Mississippi, Claiborne has few of the characteristics generally imagined of a Timesman. He is a true bon vivant, and does not appear to take himself or his work too seriously. He prefers to be called by his first name, is not a particularly fashionable dresser, and spends as little time as possible in Manhattan. In his lighter moods, such as that in which I find him on the day of our interview, he delights in telling jokes that are cla.s.sics of schoolyard humor. The punch line, more often than not, is drowned by his own uproarious laughter.

Although he has maintained a Westside apartment for the past nine years, Claiborne spends most of his time at his house in East Hampton, Long Island, next door to Pierre Franey, one of the greatest French chefs in America, who, since 1974, has co-auth.o.r.ed Claiborne's food articles for the _New York Times_ Sunday magazine. Recently he purchased a larger, more modern house about 15 minutes from Franey, which he plans to occupy shortly. The pair cook together about five times a week. Claiborne calls the house "my Taj Mahal -- my Xanadu."

He explains his jovial mood by saying that the night before, he attended a big dinner party for restaurateur Joe Baum at the Four Seasons. "It was an everybody-bring-something dinner. Jim Beard brought bread. I brought saviche (marinated raw fish), and Gael Greene brought some chocolate dessert. I got roaring drunk."

In spite of his earthiness, Claiborne unquestionably ranks as one of the leading food authorities of his time. His articles, which appear in the _Times_ each Monday, Wednesday and Sunday, cover every subject from the particulars of a dinner for Chinese Vice-Premier Teng Hsiao-ping in Washington (where Claiborne saw a rock group he had never heard of called the Osmonds) to the six most creative ways of preparing scallops.

He has written numerous best-selling cookbooks, and he often travels around the world on fact-finding missions.

Claiborne's rise from obscurity to the most prestigious food job in America astonished no one more than himself, since his princ.i.p.al qualifications were a B.A. in journalism and one year's training at a hotel and restaurant school in Switzerland. However, the _Times_ knew exactly what they were looking for when Jane Nickerson retired in 1957, and Claiborne quickly proved to be the man of the hour. He threw himself into his work with boundless energy, writing no less than five columns a week, but his relationship with the newspaper eventually became a love hate affair. "Things came to the point where I couldn't go to a restaurant at night unless I came home here and had at least four Scotch and sodas and four martinis. And at this point, I took myself off to Africa. I stayed at the Stanley Hotel in Kenya, and I came back and said, 'Give me my benefits. I'm quitting this place.' They thought I was kidding."

He wasn't. Claiborne left the paper for almost two years. "Then the _Times_ came to me and said, 'Would you come back under any circ.u.mstances?' And I must confess that I felt a great emotional relief."

He agreed to return if the paper would have someone else do the local restaurant reviews; he also requested that his neighbor and cooking partner Pierre Franey share the Sunday byline. The conditions were immediately met.

Claiborne's Westside apartment is painted green from floor to ceiling -- thus fulfilling an old fantasy of his. He describes the apartment itself as "gently shabby," but says that the building, constructed in 1883, is "the greatest residency in the entire island of Manhattan. You're catty-corner from Carnegie Hall, you're six minutes by foot from Lincoln Center, you can walk to any place on Broadway within seconds, and there are very few restaurants you couldn't get to within five minutes of this place." His favorite restaurant in all of Manhattan is the Shun Lee Palace (155 E. 55th St.), while two other favorites on the West Side are the Russian Tea Room and the Fuji Restaurant (238 W. 56th).

Asked about other interests or hobbies, Claiborne smiles mischievously and replies: "I'm having a $6000 Bolton stereo system put into my new Xanadu. You can clap your hands and change the tapes or records. I love music and s.e.x and food, and outside of that, forget it!"

WESTSIDER MARC CONNELLY Actor, director, producer, novelist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist

1-7-78

Eleven years ago, during my senior year in high school, I saw a movie just before Christmas that made a deep impression. It was a film of a stage play called _The Green Pastures_ -- a fascinating look at life in biblical times, performed by an all-black cast.

The memory of that film remained in my consciousness like a religious experience, although I never knew who wrote the play or when it was written. So it was a welcome surprise to learn that this week's interview would be with the play's author, Marc Connelly.

Connelly was born in a small Pennsylvania town in 1890, the son of a pair of travelling actors. He wrote _The Green Pastures_ in 1930; it won that year's Pulitzer Prize for drama. In his 70-year career Connelly has written dozens of plays. One of the most versatile talents in the American theatre, he has excelled as an actor, director, producer, playwriting professor at Yale, and popular lecturer. He has written musicals, stage plays, movie scripts and radio plays.

He was one of the original staff members of the _New Yorker_ magazine, and became part of the famous round table at the Algonquin Hotel. One of his short stories won an O. Henry award. His first novel was published when he was 74 years old. Today, still an active playwright, he lives peacefully at Central Park West, comfortable in his role as an elder statesman of American letters.

I feel a certain freedom about repeating the comments Connelly made during our interview because the first thing he said at the door was "I never read anything about myself. ... It's not modesty; it's more terror -- for fear that some dark secret will emerge."

Yes, he said, he's very busy these days. "I've just completed a comedy which I'm waiting to have done. I'd rather not mention the t.i.tle before it comes out. It's a comic fantasy."

He recently taped an appearance on the _d.i.c.k Cavett Show_, which will be aired sometime this month. And he's working on a musical version of _Farmer Takes A Wife_, a Broadway play that he co-auth.o.r.ed in 1934.

It became a successful film the next year, with Henry Fonda's screen premiere.

"They're always reviving my plays. Last summer they did _Merton of the Movies_ (which he wrote with George F. Kaufman in 1922) in that big theatre complex in Los Angeles. It was quite successful. The boy that plays John-Boy on the Waltons played Merton. It was quite good; I went to see it."

Much as Connelly dislikes certain TV shows, he thinks very highly of TV as a medium: "It's good, it's good. I like three or four shows. _Mash_ is wonderful. I like _Maude_ every now and then. And Carol Burnett. I might like _Kojak_ if it didn't run every five minutes. Three times a night is too much for any TV show."

Any anecdotes about the "Vicious Circle" of the Algonquin Hotel -- whose members included Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Alexander Woollcott and George Kaufman? "Oh, I don't want to talk about the round table," he said. "Every time you turn around there's a new book about the round table. ... I've written about George Kaufman and so have a hundred other people. It might be that he might get out of his grave and club us all for writing about him."

Although _The Green Pastures_ is considered an American cla.s.sic, it is now performed only by school and amateur companies. Its depiction of plantation life has become offensive to socially conscious blacks. "There are Negro sn.o.bs," explained Connelly, "just like there are Irish sn.o.bs and Jewish sn.o.bs. As soon as people get in a position of economic power, they become sensitive about the way they are shown on the stage. It's a very human, inevitable reaction."