On interviewing Kirk Douglas. the movie star, CBS’s Mike Wallace of "60 minutes" asked in his mea culpa frame of mind "Why are you known as a horse’s ass?"
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The Brooklyn born actor and college wrestler, the Bryna four floor apartment house two blocks down from the Park Slope Pavilion theater, had its corner stone named for his Russian born mother.
He attended the Academy of theater&film while sweating a role of a Scrraft’s waiter.
The solicitous haunts gave his psyche&upper body confidence to emerge as Stanley Kramer’s "Champion"
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Michael Douglas,, the volleyball player, who distinguished himself at Oona Chaplin’s t father Eugene’s estate in New London playing "the game". Eugene’s home away from home in the Big Apple, on off Broadway’s stages...."The hairy ape" "The iceman cometh".....
Ill
Aided and abetted by a columnist from Berlin, Germany. A screenwriter turned director, Billy Wilder, who gave him a break as "Ace in the hole".......a scenario breaking a disaster in rthe
mines.
"Spartacus" "20 thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne, the mesmerizing "Paths of glory" with Adolph Menjou. MGM’s "The bad and the beautiful" "Gunfight at the OK corral" co starring the trrapeze gymnast Burt Lancaster., and a Ann Southern flick ("Maisie) and one with Raymond Burr ("Perry Mason") and Elizabeth Scott.
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The studio castre system- theaters distribution contractual role players- was under seige by the Justice department, the scenario smacking of anti trust monopolies
Doulas cast his Bryna lot, above the William Morris flesh peddlers, sharing floor space with a sci-fi scribe who had an office on the floor.
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Meantime a gangster named Mickey Cohen, once the preoprietor of a candy store in Brentwood named Mickey cohen ,was indicted and found guilty of using the maltedmilk licorice stick seltzer water of not playing a sintinlating role behind the fcandy store’s soda fountain.
Locked up, Mike Wallace found his way to his cell. The putting words in Cohen’s mouth, Mike found his acidic touch, squeezing the reality out of Cohen’s sinful misgivings.
Cohen himself out of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles’s barrio, may have needed an agent as he made his way to Brentwood and the "candy store"
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Cavorting as a movie actor, Douglas met Irene Wrightsman, a scion to her father’s Texas oil fortune. Their tennis rapport and chemistry was but an Edgar Alan Poe’s "Raven", where we and
"Mr.Ed" Alan Young’s kibbitzing with a talking horse was wanting.
Playing out his sombrero, Mr. Ed reminised about how we interviewed him for his summer impasse, a replacement for Jack Benny during his summer hiatus. About how Henry Fuchs, Midwood High School’s journalsim advisor and senior English maestro, and Judy Hershcopf, m an Argus feature editor, to go out and profile an engaging young comic from Canada.
Not withstanding a hurricane, Judy and ourselves, subwayed to Jack Benny’s summer replacement.
The young couple served us hot chnocolate and cookies, telling us the break he hoped the radio show could offer more lucrative scenarios as television was taking roots at Hollywood&Vine..
"It sure was a wet night," he scribbled on his glossy, the weight of the furies smashing against the Park Avenue windows., "Mr. Ed" and his first wife, showing us to the elevator.
Judy and ourselves dodging fallen trees and branches as we entrained back to Flabush and the Argus offices of Bedford Avenue’s Midwood High School the following morning..
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Meanwhile Jack Benny playing out his parsimonious role, placed an on line ad in the Hollywood Reporter beseeching the readers for a chauffeur and multidimensional funny man named Rochester..
Driving him and Mary Livingstone to their North Rodeo Drive rounds and and the William Morris Agency. south of Wilshire.
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We will miss Mike Wallace’s cantankerous invasion pf the Mickey Cohen’s he interrogated behind bars that startling Sunday on ABC’s Mike Wallace ‘s "60 minute" audition.
He metmorphosed with Don Hewitt , Mike’s sighting at the U.S. Open, the television catching his dapper well groomed persona, his shades concealing and protecting those eyes as he followed the tennmis balls at the Artur Asche stadium at Flushing Meadows.
His black hair combed back with a respected 60 minute I.Q.. It had a CBS Ed Murrow Walter Cronkite touch.
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Mike Wallace and ourselves exchanged two interpretations about General Westmoreland’s self serving "take" on intensifying the South Vietnamese invasion of South East Asia.
Wallace and 60 minutes chilled Westmoreland’s argument before a Joint Congressional hearing was self serving, Robert McNamara and LBJ believing the Sluth Vietnamese invasion was clearly justified.
In the meantime we passed Senator Kennedy on his way to hear the General, while we were on our way tro Senator Pastore’s sub committee on commerce, Senator Moss hearing the words and passion (Senator Pastore excusing himself to hear the General,) for Congress passing the Public Television Act of 1967.******
Mike Wallace passing yesterday at 93.The city that never sleeps, April 8, 2012
