100 New Yorkers of the 1970s Part 34

Yet his voice changes to one of awed respect when he speaks of Henry Fonda: "The thing about working with someone like Fonda is that his presence is so strongly felt that you get caught up in watching him. It's really uncanny. I had to pinch myself to get back into the scene. And Olivia de Havilland, who plays my mother -- she's extraordinary, too. We got along great."

Earlier this year, Richard Performed in the Los Angeles production of _Streamers_, and also made a TV movie for CBS, _Getting Married_, which was broadcast last summer. In the late fall, during one of his frequent trips to the West Side, he donned ballet tights to play the character role of Hilarion in the U.S. Terpsich.o.r.e Company's production of _Giselle_, starring his 19-year-old sister Bronwyn Thomas, one of the most highly acclaimed young ballerinas in the city.

Richard's parents are both former princ.i.p.al dancers for the New York City Ballet. They were on tour in Cuba when he was born, and the first language he learned was Spanish. He began acting at the age of 7.

Growing up on West 96th Street, he attended McBurney High School and Columbia University.

Although he moved to Los Angeles in 1971, Richard still considers himself a Westsider. "I just know it like the back of my hand," he says.

"I'm not sure I could live without LA anymore, but whenever I'm here, I feel completely at home. There's a kind of underground chic on the Upper West Side that I kind of respond to. I'm very comfortable around Spanish-speaking people. I speak Spanish, and my wife is part Mexican.

I like the Latin flavor."

He and his wife Alma have been married since 1975; they have a 2-year old son, also named Richard Thomas. "He talks a blue streak," comments the proud father. "Sometimes he gets very blue. You have to watch what you say around him."

In 1994 the young actor published his first book of poetry. t.i.tled simply _Poems by Richard Thomas_, it won the California Robert Frost Award the following year. His second volume of poetry, _In The Moment_, is scheduled for publication by Avon early in 1979.

Another of his prime interests is music. "I'm a big operagoer," he says.

"I'm really partial to Verdi and Wagner, if you have to get it down to two." He also plays the dulcimer. "When I go to Kentucky this week, I'm going to call on a man who's one of the great dulcimer makers in the United States."

The three-stringed mountain instrument, an important component in the folk music of Appalachia, caught Richard's fancy long ago, during a visit to his grandfather's Kentucky farm, where he spent many summers as a boy. Both of his grandparents on his father's side are still living. Like an episode from _The Waltons_, the family often gathers at the farm on Thanksgiving Day.

The original _Roots_ was seen by more people than any other program in the history of television, but Richard does not dwell on his important role in _Roots II_. He prefers to talk about the fulfillment he has found in marriage.

"I can't imagine not being married at this point," he says, the thick gold band gleaming on his finger. "If my marriage weren't happy, I couldn't make the right kind of career decisions. One supports the other. They're part of the same package." Does he expect to have more children? Richard smiles broadly and replies: "That's really my wife's department."

EASTSIDER ANDY WARHOL Pop artist and publisher of _Interview_ magazine

4-7-79

He is the great enigma of American art. Some of his most famous paintings are exercises in monotony. His movies often put the viewer to sleep. As a conversationalist, he can be low-keyed to the point of dullness: speaking softly in a slow-paced, emotionless voice, he relies heavily on short sentences, long pauses, and an abundance of "ums" and "uhs."

However, he has one a.s.set that overshadows everything negative that might be said or written about him: his name happens to be Andy Warhol.

The only time I met Warhol in person was at a book publication party several months ago. He came by himself, spoke to hardly anyone, and spent most of his brief visit flitting quietly about the room, avoiding people's eyes and taking snapshots of the more celebrated guests. With his pale complexion, narrow frame, and hair like bleached straw, he looked not unlike a scarecrow. Everywhere he went, heads turned to catch a glimpse. That has been the story of Warhol's life ever since he rose to international prominence in the 1960s.

Although he did not feel like talking when I met him, Andy -- never publicity-shy -- agreed to a telephone interview at a later date. Reached at the offices of his _Interview_ magazine off Union Square, he answered all my questions briefly, and in a voice so low that he could barely be heard.

_Interview_, the monthly tabloid-shaped magazine that he publishes, is Warhol's most visible creative project at the moment. "It's been going for about seven or eight years," he said. "I started it for Brigid Berlin. Her father ran the Hearst Corporation. She didn't want to work on it." The person on the cover of each issue is identified only on the inside, and many of the faces are difficult to recognize. Some are genuine celebrities, such as Truman Capote, who has a regular column. Others are young unknowns who have caught Warhol's fancy. The ultramodern layout includes many full-page ads for some of the most expensive shops in Manhattan. The interviews, interspersed with many photos, lean heavily on show business personalities, models, artists, writers and fas.h.i.+on people. In most cases, the "interviews" are actually group discussions -- often with Andy himself taking part -- that are printed verbatim. Even the most mundane comments are not cut.

The reason? "I used to carry a tape recorder with me all the time, so this was a way to use it," said Warhol. But in truth, the literal transcriptions are another example of the naturalism that characterizes much of his work.

When he turned his attention from painting and drawing to filmmaking in 1963, he became notorious for such movies as _Sleep_, which showed a man sleeping for six hours, and _Empire_, which he made by aiming his camera at the Empire State Building and keeping the film running for eight straight hours.

According to Warhol, many people have turned down his request for interviews. "It's hard to get Robert Redford. ... We choose people who like to talk a lot." The type of reader he seeks to attract is "the rich audience. People who go to places like Christie's and Fiorucci's. ... It's fun to go to those places and get invited to parties. I love fas.h.i.+on parties.

Shoe parties are even better."

His affection for shoes dates back to 1949, when, in his first year in New York, he got a job in the art department of a shoe store. His designs and magazine ill.u.s.trations caught on so fast that within a year, he was able to purchase the town house on the Upper East Side, where he still lives with his mother. "But mostly I live with my two dachshunds. They've taken over."

Certain facts abut Andy Warhol's early life remain a mystery because he has always objected to questions that he considers irrelevant to an understanding of him as an artist. It is known that he was born somewhere in Pennsylvania, sometime between 1927 and 1931, to a family of immigrants from Czechoslovakia named Warhola.

By his mid-20s, Warhol was one of the most sought-after commercial artists in the field. His silk-screen prints of Campbell's soup cans made him famous with the general public, and by the mid-1960s he was clearly the most highly celebrated "plastic artist" -- a t.i.tle he relishes -- in the English-speaking world.

In recent years, his creative output has been reduced somewhat, as the result of the severe wounds he sustained in June, 1968, when a deranged woman shot him in his office. Nevertheless, he continues to mount gallery exhibitions, write books and paint portraits. The Whitney Museum (75th St. at Madison Ave.) will have a show of his portraits in December.

Asked about the East Side, Warhol said that one of his favorite activities is to go window shopping. "When you live on the East Side, you don't have to go far. Because usually everything happens here." When he goes to the West Side, it's often to visit Studio 54. "I only go there to see my friend Steve Rubell. Afterwards, we usually go to Cowboys and Cowgirls."

About the only medium that Warhol has not worked in is television. "Oh, I always wanted to, yeah," was his parting comment. "It just never happens. The stations think we're not Middle America."

EASTSIDER ARNOLD WEISSBERGER Theatrical attorney for superstars

9-29-79

What do Leonard Bernstein, Helen Hayes, Otto Preminger, Carol Channing, Truman Capote and George Balanchine have in common?

All are giants in the performing arts. And all are -- or have been -- clients of Arnold Weissberger, one of the world's foremost theatrical attorneys.

Now in his 50th year of practice, the Brooklyn-born, Westside-raised Weissberger has been representing stars ever since a chance encounter brought Orson Welles to his office in 1936.

"Most of my clients are involved in making contracts that have to do with plays or films or television," says Weissberger on a recent afternoon. The scene is his small, richly furnished law firm in the East 50s. Dressed in a dark suit, with a white carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole to match his white mustache, Weissberger looks very much like the stereotype of a business tyc.o.o.n. "Part of my job," he continues, "is to be familiar with the rules of guilds and unions. And I have to know about the treaties between countries that affect the payment of taxes."

Smiling benevolently, his hands folded in front of him, the gentlemanly lawyer quickly proves himself a gifted storyteller. In his upper-cla.s.s Boston accent, acquired during seven years at Harvard, he delights in telling anecdotes about his favorite performers. Not shy about dropping names, Weissberger drops only the biggest, such as Sir Laurence Olivier -- a client who had invited him to lunch the previous day -- and Martha Graham.

His work is so crowded that whenever he has to read anything that is longer than three pages, he puts it in his weekend bag. Yet Weissberger devotes an hour or two every day to one of several philanthropic organizations. At the top of his list is the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, of which he is co-chairman. "I consider her one of the three great seminal figures in the arts in the 20th century, and I prize her friends.h.i.+p enormously." The other two outstanding artistic figures of the century, he says, are "Stravinsky, who it was also my privilege to represent, and Pica.s.so, who I did not represent."

He serves as chairman of the New Dramatists, a group that nurtures young playwrights; he is a board member of Fountain House, a halfway house for ex-mental patients; and he is chairman of the Theatre and Music Collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

On Monday through Thursday, Weissberger lives in a luxurious Eastside apartment that he shares with his longtime friend, theatrical agent Milton Goldman. Each Friday after work, Weissberger departs for Seacliff, Long Island, where he owns a house overlooking the ocean. Goldman and Weissberger, whose careers have run a parallel course during the 35 years of their acquaintance, travel widely each summer, generally spending a month in London, where both have many clients.

"Our interests are very similar, except that I am an opera buff, and Milton is not. He's a realist. I started going to opera when I was 10 years old, so I don't mind if a 300-pound soprano dies of consumption in _Traviata_, as long as she sings beautifully."

An avid art collector, Weissberger buys only what he has room to display on the walls of his home and office. For the past 30 years his chief hobby has been photography. He has published two volumes of his work -- _Close Up_ (1967) and _Famous Faces_ (1971). Although he has never taken a photography course, and never uses flash, he captures the essence of his subjects through his rapport with them. "I have discussed the possibility of doing a photo book of children I've taken around the world," he notes. "And now, of course, I have enough photos for a second volume of famous faces."

His vigorous appearance to the contrary, Weissberger claims to get little exercise. "I have one of those stationary bicycles at home, but I've never gotten round to using it. And I've got to do so before I next see my doctor, or I won't be able to face him. ... It's interesting how doctorial advice changes. I remember several years ago, it was not considered a good idea for people who were no longer young to climb stairs, and now my doctor says that climbing stairs is the best thing I can do for my const.i.tution."

So closely connected are the various aspects of his life that Weissberger is able to say: "There's no demarcation between my workday and my play day. People ask me when I'm going to retire, and I say there's no need for me to retire, because I enjoy my work so much. I become part of people's lives. I become privy to their problems. It is, in many ways, an extension, an enhancement of my own life to be able to partic.i.p.ate in the lives of my clients. I remember a few months ago, when Lilli Palmer was sitting right there, and I said, 'Lilli, what a lucky person I am. I'm having to do a tax return and I'm doing it for Lilli Palmer.' Because there sat this beautiful, charming, intelligent, lovely lady, and I was representing her professionally. For me, I can't think of any profession that could possibly be more rewarding."

EASTSIDER TOM WICKER Author and columnist for the _New York Times_

6-2-79

Something unusual was happening up ahead: that much he was sure of, although no sound of gunshots reached Tom Wicker's ears as he rode in a press bus in the presidential motorcade through the streets of Dallas on November 22, 1963. Gazing out the window, he observed crowds of people running about in confusion. Shortly afterward, outside Parkland Hospital, the full extent of the tragedy was announced to the world, and Tom Wicker, the only reporter from the _New York Times_ who was present that day, rushed off to write the biggest story of his career.

Working feverishly through the afternoon, he came up with a 106 paragraph account of the day's events that dominated the _Times'_ front page the following morning. In decades to come, students and historians will turn to Wicker's story on microfilm with perhaps a sense of wonder that it omits no facts of major importance, and contains virtually no errors.

Tom Wicker was writing for history that day, and largely as a result of his masterful performance, he was elevated the following year to the position of the _Times_ bureau chief in Was.h.i.+ngton. In 1968, he was appointed a.s.sociate editor of the newspaper, and in 1971, he returned to New York in order to concentrate on his column, "In the Nation." For the past 13 years, the column has appeared three times weekly in the op-ed page of the _Times._

A tall, ruddy-complexioned, powerful-looking Southerner of 52 with a country-boy manner and a Carolina accent as thick as mola.s.ses, Wicker has managed to combine his lifelong career in journalism with an independent career as a book author. The most successful of his seven novels, _Facing the Lions_, was on the _New York Times_ best-seller list for 18 weeks in 1973, while his most recent nonfiction work, _On Press: A Top Reporter's Life in, and Reflections on, American Journalism_, was published last year by Viking and will soon be released as a paperback by Berkley.