Chapter 16

Neiman's eye-catching style is admired everywhere. His posters and calendars are best-sellers in Japan; several of his painting are on permanent display at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. He was the official United States artist-in-residence for the last two Olympics and will be for the 1980 Games as well. Although best known for his sports pictures, Neiman is also a renowned portraitist who specializes in famous faces. He is attracted by drama and excitement of any kind, whether found in a tavern inhabited by the Beautiful People, in a heavyweight fight, in a world chess championship, or, as television viewers witnessed last January, in a Super Bowl. Neiman sat on the sidelines of that contest drawing pictures of the game in progress, using a computer-controlled electronic pen and palette. The pictures were then flashed onto the television screen.

"It's painting with light," explains Neiman one morning in his studio, taking a break from the half-dozen oils and acrylics he is working on. "It gives you the same sense of creation as any other art medium. You're building and creating an image of your own that wasn't there when you started. The only limitation you ever have in doing a work of art is yourself."

Starting this month, Neiman's work has become a regular feature of _CBS Sports Spectacular_. At the beginning and end of each program, Neiman's paintings are interspersed with photographs of athletes to form a moving collage of colors and shapes. The artist has been contracted to make six or seven personal appearances on the program over the next year, in which he will demonstrate the art of drawing sports in action.

Neiman is a suave, sophisticated man who loves his work and loves to talk about it. Dressed in a fancy denim-style suit, with a long, thin cigar protruding from under his handlebar moustache, he expounds on a score of subjects as if he had all the time in the world. In the adjacent room, the telephone rings almost unceasingly. It is answered by his assistant, who calls out the message to him. More likely than not, it is a request for Neiman's artistic services.

"I sketch all the time," he says. "A sketch is not necessarily a study to me. It's a record -- something to consult with. I sketch an awful lot in public. Because when I go someplace and I get bored, I sketch. Everybody forgives me for it. They think I have an uncontrollable desire to draw."

His style, says Neiman, "came out of nowhere. It happened very suddenly, about 1954, just before I started with _Playboy_." That magazine recently honored him with an award for being one of the five most important contributors in its 25-year history.

During his childhood in Minnesota, recalls Neiman, "I was always drawing pictures and getting special treatment at school -- showing off, copping out of other things. ... I lived a couple of years in England and France." since moving to New York, he has been a constant Westsider. Central Park, says Neiman, "is the West Side's front yard, but the East Side's back yard."

Neiman's latest one-man show is an exhibit of approximately 50 serigraphs, etching, and drawings at Hammer Graphics on East 57th Street. Part of the proceeds from sales will go to the U.S. Olympic Committee.

"I turn most things down, because they're not stimulating and inspiring," says Neiman matter-of-factly. "Money isn't enough stimulus to do something I don't like. ... I work very hard. I fool around a lot too, but I don't go on vacations. I don't have hobbies. I put my vices within my craft."

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WESTSIDER ARNOLD NEWMAN Great portrait photographer

12-1-79

When the _Sunday Times_ of London decided to hire someone to photograph 50 leading British citizens for a show at England's National Portrait Gallery, the venerable newspaper caused something of an uproar by choosing an American for the job -- Arnold Newman, one of the world's most important portrait photographers for the past 30 years.

The 50 portraits, whose subjects include Sir Lawrence Oliver, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness, Henry Moore, Lord Mountbatten and Harold Pinter, were exhibited last month at the Light Gallery on Fifth Avenue, and have just opened in London. Meanwhile, the book version of the prints, with extensive commentary, has been published this month as _The Great British_ (New York Graphic Society, Boston, $14.95). The photographs, like those found in Newman's three previous books and in his hundreds of assignments for _Life_, _Look_, _Newsweek_ and other publications, are far more than mere portraits. Rather, they are profound artistic statements, in which the background of the picture often symbolizes the person's achievement.

"I don't use props: I use reality," explains Newman, taking a break at the West 57th Street studio he has occupied since 1948. On the wall are pictures -- he prefers that word to "photographs" -- of Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Eugene O'Neill and four American presidents; Newman has photographed every president since Truman.

Big, burly, mellow-voiced and casually dressed, Arnold Newman at 61 looks like an aging beatnik. His quick wit and ready laugh mask a perfectionism that has characterized his work ever since he turned to photography in 1938. His ability "to make the camera see what I saw" showed itself almost at once. In 1941 he held his first exhibition and sold his first print to the Museum of Modern Art.

"I could have made, over the years, a hell of a lot more money than I have, simply by doing more commercial work and cashing in on my reputation. But that doesn't interest me," he reflects, puffing on his ever present cigar. "I mean, money interests me, but I'd just see my life being wasted."

Specializing in portraits of artists, he studies the work of each subject intensely beforehand so that the essence of the artist will be distilled into the photograph, by subconscious as well as conscious effort. On the side, he does enough commercial work to support his own artistic efforts. But over the years, the two have somehow merged: "I'm forever being commissioned for things I'd give my eye teeth to do, and paid very well for it. Recently I went out to do a photograph strictly on my own of somebody I admired, and I hate the picture. Yet the day before I did a picture for money which I think is one of my best pictures in the last three years."

In 1953, he went to Washington to photograph 15 U.S. senators for _Holiday_ magazine, including John F. Kennedy -- then a political unknown who was sometimes labeled the Playboy senator. "Years later," recalls Newman, "I was photographing President Kennedy on the White House lawn. He turned to me and said, 'Arnold, whatever happened to that first picture you took of me?'

"I said, 'Well, Mr. President, we did 15 senators, and they found out they had one too many for the layout, so they dropped the one least likely to succeed.'

"And you have to understand: we were surrounded by secret servicemen, and Pierre Salinger, his press secretary, was there. Well I thought I'd get a big yack, because Kennedy had a marvelous sense of humor. But instead, his face went rigid. And I -- I absolutely turned ice cold. The Secret Service men turned around and gave me a 'How stupid can you be?' look.

"A bit later I managed to get into Pierre's office and started stammering and apologizing. Suddenly Pierre started breaking out in laughter. I said, 'What the hell's so funny?' He said, 'He was pulling your leg! He's been walking all around the White House for the last 30 minutes, telling that story on himself.'"

After the assassination, Newman was called to the White House again to photograph the official portrait of Lyndon Johnson. "He could give an angel an ulcer. ... I didn't get paid for the picture, not even my expenses. It cost me a fortune."

Arnold and his wife Augusta have been married for 31 years; she runs the studio and works closely with him. Their two sons, Eric and David, are professionals in neurology and architecture, respectively. The Newmans' favorite neighborhood restaurants include Rikyu and Genghiz Khan's Bicycle on Columbus Avenue, and the Cafe des Artistes on their own block.

Asked whether he eventually plans to pursue other areas of photography besides portraits, Newman shakes his head. "The whole history of painting was changed by a man who used the same materials as everybody else did -- the same brushes, paints, canvas, and subject matter," he explains. "So why do we say that Cezanne revolutionized painting? It's his ideas. I deal with ideas too."

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EASTSIDER EDWIN NEWMAN Journalist and first-time novelist

8-11-79

"When you achieve a certain prominence on television," says NBC's Edwin Newman, "publishers come to you and ask you to write books. Then you go round in circles for a while, and finally say, 'Gee, I'd like to write a book, but I don't have the time.'"

Six years ago, the award-winning broadcast journalist decided to find out if he was bluffing himself. He spent seven months of his spare time writing a book called _Strictly Speaking: Will America be the Death of English?_ Published in 1974 when Newman was 55 years old, it became the nation's number one best-seller for non-fiction. His follow-up book, _A Civil Tongue_ (1976), was another best-seller.

Now Edwin newman has written his first novel, _Sunday Punch_ (Houghton Mifflin, $9.95). Published in June, it has already gone through two printings in hardcover, totaling 60,000 copies. The _Atlantic_ has described the book as "a Wodehousian excursion that is lighter than air and twice as much fun as laughing gas."

In a leisurely interview at his Rockefeller Plaza office, the author comes across very much as he does on television. His leathery features expand easily into a smile as he delivers, in his slow, concise, foghorn voice, comments that are as thought-provoking as they are witty.

_Sunday Punch_, he says, "is the story of an extremely thin, tall, British prizefighter named Aubrey Philpott-Grimes who comes to the U.S. to fight because he can make more money here than in Britain. The more money he makes, the higher taxes he can pay, and Aubrey is a great believer in paying taxes. He is tremendously interested in economics, so that if he is brought to the microphone after a fight, he'll probably start talking about structural unemployment and floating exchange rates, rather than talking about fighting. ... The book allows me to comment on the United States from the view of an outsider."

His fascination with the cultural and linguistic differences of the U.S. and England dates back to the late 1940s, when Newman left his job with the Washington-based International News Service and moved to London. There, he found work as a "stringer" for the NBC network, and when he was invited to join the full-time staff in 1952, he remained at the British capital for five more years. In 1961, after serving as NBC bureau chief in both Paris and Rome, he returned to his native Manhattan and settled into his present Eastside apartment with his English wife, Rigel. The Newmans' daughter Nancy was educated entirely in England.

A harsh critic of the state of the language in America today, Newman is the head of the Usage Panel for the American Heritage Dictionary. He is always being sent examples of poor English. "Do you want to know what accountability is?" he says, his eyes crinkling with amusement as he takes a letter from his desk. "This is from a teachers' committee in Kalamazoo, Michigan. 'Accountability is a concept that, when operationalized, finds the interrelatedness and parameters of responsibility shaped by individuals within the system.'

"It seems to me there are two movements going on that affect language in the United States, and it's curious that they would be going on at the same time, because in a way they conflict with each other. One is the increasing use of jargon and pomposity, which can partly traced to the size of the government. As the government grows, this kind of language grows. ... The more technical they make the language sound, the more money they're likely to earn.

"Then you have the influence of the social sciences, where exactly the same thing goes on. People attempt to take familiar ideas, small ideas, and in some cases no ideas, and make them sound large by wrapping them up in grandiose language.

"The other movement that is going on is based on the notion that correct, specific, concrete language doesn't matter very much. What matters is that your heart be in the right place. ... This idea was thoroughly welcome to many people in education. For one thing, it means that you have less written work to correct. And also, of course, if you don't have to teach correct English, you don't have to know it."

During his 28 years as an NBC news correspondent, Edwin Newman has excelled in so many areas that he has become known as the network's "Renaissance man." One of the most quick-thinking ad-libbers on the air, he is frequently called upon to do live "instant specials" of breaking news. He moderated the first Ford-Carter debate in 1976, has hosted the _Today Show_ numerous times, has covered six national political conventions and reported from 35 foreign countries. Each Monday through Friday, he is heard on both radio and television across the U.S. in a series of news briefs.

His biggest project at the moment is a two-hour, prime-time documentary on U.S. foreign policy, which is scheduled to be aired early in September.

"I think in some way," concludes Newman, "I fell into the right profession. Somebody said -- I think it was H.L. Mencken -- that you go into the news business because it gives you a front-row seat. And he might have added that not only does it give you a front row seat, but you get the seat free."

born 1-15-19

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EASTSIDER LARRY O'BRIEN Commissioner of the National Basketball Association

2-16-80

Fame rests lightly on the shoulders of Larry O'Brien, who was raised on politics in his hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts and never sought elective office for himself, yet became one of the Democratic Party's most influential spokesmen for nearly two decades.

As a campaign manager, he propelled John F. Kennedy into the Senate and then into the White House. He served as postmaster general under President Johnson from 1965 to 1968, and was twice named chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a post traditionally given to the party's foremost political strategist. His name loomed large in the Watergate hearings, for it was O'Brien whose office was broken into by the original Watergate burglars.

He was in the news again in 1974, when, having retired from politics, he published his autobiography, _No Final Victories_. Expecting to be out of the public eye after that, O'Brien was astonished to be offered the job of commissioner of the National Basketball Association. Now midway through his fifth season, he has not only resolved the major disputes that threatened the future of professional basketball, but has brought a new vitality to the sport.

The NBA's headquarters, a plush suite of office high above Fifth Avenue, is silent and practically empty on the afternoon of my appointment with the commissioner. A gregarious host, he talks about basketball and politics for nearly two hours in his effusive manner, while chain-smoking low-tar cigarettes. He is a hearty, husky man with a basso voice that rarely alters in pitch, and is as casual as a bartender.

Brought up in the town where basketball was invented, the son of Irish immigrants, he worked his way through law school by tending bar in his father's cafe in the daytime and taking classes at night. One of the most trusted of politicians, known for his uncommon organizational abilities and his gift for compromise, O'Brien is a fascinatingly long-winded conversationalist who speaks with many digressions.

"The sports commissioner is somewhat unique. First of all, you are paid by the owners, and you are expected to be as responsive as you can to the fans -- to do everything possible to ensure that the game is presented in the best conceivable way to the fans, and the most exciting and interesting manner, because after all, this is business."

During the Kennedy and Johnson White House years, he served as presidential liaison to Congress and helped win passage of the Peace Corps, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As commissioner, his authority is all-powerful. "It goes to supervision of every aspect of the game, on and off the court," he explains. "It goes to determining even what time games are played and who plays them."

Attendance in the NBA has risen considerably this year; O'Brien cheerfully attributes it to the resurgence of the Boston Celtics and the improvement of the New York Knicks.

Recently Dallas was granted a franchise to create a new NBA team, the 23rd in the U.S. "If there were further expansion beyond 24 teams," O'Brien predicts, "I think it would take on an international flavor. ... There are a number of countries in Europe that are playing quality basketball at the professional level. I envision that by the mid-80s, you would find countries in Europe that could be competitive with us. Probably the first step would be only exhibitions, but I can see it reaching a point where you could give serious thought to establishing another conference perhaps."

Larry and his wife Elva have been married since 1944; their son Laurence III is a Washington-based lawyer. An Eastside resident during most of the last seven years, O'Brien recalls the Watergate break-in with grim humor. "We didn't have anything in the office anyway. We were practically bankrupt. I thought, maybe there's a typewriter missing. ... I was a disbeliever. It took a long time for it to penetrate that this was real. ... My best recollection of that period is that I was very depressed, in the sense of what effects it was having on our system of government.

"When I was on my book promotion tour, people would ask, 'How does it feel to be a politician?' as if it was a dirty word. I have always been proud of being a politician, and I've never felt otherwise. But I found that all of us involved in politics were painted with the same brush."

His mood brightens when the subject returns to basketball. Speaking of the recent backboard-shattering antics of "Chocolate Thunder" Darryl Dawkins, O'Brien reports that the star "said that he certainly could adjust his dunk shot to prevent further incidents."

The most difficult aspect of his job so far, says O'Brien, has been to enforce the compensation agreement that players and owners signed four years ago. "Compensation means that when a player has terminated his contractual obligations to a club, the new club that acquires him must make compensation to the other team, and work that out between them. And then if the two teams fail to reach an agreement, the case comes to me and I determine what compensation is appropriate. In making the losing club whole, I can assign draft choices, players, money, or any combination thereof. It's extremely difficult -- weighing players against players, and deciding how much money is valid compensation. There's no sure way of doing it, unless you were Solomon or you had a crystal ball as to how it would turn out."

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WESTSIDER MAUREEN O'SULLIVAN Great lady of the movie screen

3-4-78

As recently as 10 years ago, most of the motion pictures filmed in this country had a single run at the theatres, and then were seldom seen or heard from again.

Television has changed that. Now, with longer broadcasting hours and the abundance of new channels, vintage movies are enjoying a second life, often with a bigger audience than the first time. Maybe that's why the name Maureen O'Sullivan is practically a household word even today. Between 1930 and 1965 she made dozens of films, ranging from Marx Brothers comedy (_A Day At The Races_) to classics of English literature (_David Copperfield_, _Pride and Prejudice_) to Tarzan films, in which she played Jane.

But unlike so many of her contemporaries, Maureen is neither dead nor retired. She maintains a busy schedule of acting, writing, traveling, and enjoying her status as a mother of five and a grandmother of many.

Maureen shows me around her large, beautiful apartment facing Central Park, right across the hallway from Basil Rathbone's last home. "I keep this part for the children," she says, indicating a section of several rooms. There are photos of her children everywhere, including a good number of her actress daughters Mia and Tisa Farrow. Mia lives in England and Tisa is in California, but they still get together frequently.

"I'm doing an autobiography now. It's about halfway done. My agent has the manuscript. But I'm not writing any more until I see if there's any interest in it. ... I started it two years ago, then put it away. I wasn't even interested in it myself. Then a friend of mine, John Springer, had me to lunch. He said, 'You ought to do an autobiography.' I said I had already started one. ... So I went back and worked on it some more, and condensed it into 10 pages. I had to do it myself -- every word, syllable, comma."

She recently spent five weeks in upstate New York playing one of the leads in _The Glass Menagerie_ by Tennessee Williams. The critics had nothing but praise for her portrayal of the ambitious mother, and one described Maureen's acting as "genius."

The stage is not the only place where Maureen employs her dramatic talents. Shortly after completing the Williams play, she went to Albany, New York to do a reading from _The Wayward Bus_ for the state legislature. "They're trying to get a new bill through Congress to get money for a program for more halfway houses for women alcoholics," she explains. "I believe in that kind of thing."

One of the last plays she did in New York City was _No Sex Please -- We're British_. It was a hit in London, and the preview performances were doing well enough in New York to call for an official Broadway opening. "Then [drama critic] Clive Barnes came to the producer and said, 'If you have an opening you'll have a disaster, because the critics won't like it.' And he was right. As soon as the reviews came out, the theatre emptied. In the previews, the audiences loved it. The critics made a big thing out of opening night. In London, I don't think the public pays that much attention to the critics. The average person there doesn't read the reviews."

Perhaps it's the singing lessons she has never stopped taking that account for her pure lyrical speaking voice, which is still as sweet as it was when she made her first film, _Song of My Heart_, nearly 50 years ago. Though Maureen's soft British accent gives no hint of it, she was brought up in Dublin, Ireland. While working as a young actress in England she was discovered by an American producer and brought to the U.S. to do her first movie with famed tenor John McCormack. After that her career blossomed.

Any comment on the Tarzan films for which she became famous? "I made five. They have been remembered. I'm glad to be remembered for something. Let's leave it at that."

These days, while Maureen is waiting to hear about her autobiography, she is working on some short stories. Two have appeared in the _Ladies' Home Journal_. "I have no special goals," she says. "One thing leads to another. Supposing my theatrical career came to an end, I'd like to open an antique shop in Vermont, and write, and paint -- I always have -- and sew. If you can do one art, you can do them all. It's different ways of saying the same thing.

"I'm a special type of grandmother. At the theatre, I like to take the children backstage. And in New York, I take them in a horse and buggy around the park, or for tea at the Plaza. In that way, I can bring color into their lives."