Part 11

For those who miss Barnes' views on theatre in the Times, his radio broadcast can be heard on WQXR (1560 AM and 96.3 FM) Monday through Friday, right after the 11 p.m. news.

Trish, Clive's biggest supporter, has no complaints about being the wife of a celebrity. "It's very enjoyable, actually," she says with a wide smile. "You meet fascinating people and see all the best things there are to see."

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WESTSIDER FRANZ BECKENBAUER North America's most valuable soccer player

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Last October, when Brazilian soccer virtuoso Pel‚ played his final game as a professional, nearly 76,000 fans filed into Giant Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey to bid farewell to the man who had almost single handedly transformed soccer into a major American sport. It was a fitting cap to Pel‚'s career that his team, the Cosmos, won the North American Soccer League championship last season over 23 other teams.

But while the Brazilian superstar was reaping most of the publicity, one of his teammates, Franz Beckenbauer, was quietly getting things done. It was probably he, more than anyone else, who won the title for the Cosmos -- not by scoring goals, but by controlling the midfield with his pinpoint touch passes and setting up the offense to go in for the shot.

In May, 1977, he shocked the sports world by quitting his West German team, Bayern Munich, and signing a $2.8 million contract to play with the Cosmos for four years. And though he missed one-third of the 1977 season, Franz still received last year's Most Valuable Player award for a league encompassing 600 players from around the world. This season again, thanks largely to his efforts, the Cosmos clinched their division title and are a heavy favorite to repeat their victory in the Soccer Bowl -- the Super Bowl of soccer. This year the Soccer Bowl will be held in Giant Stadium on August 27. To be in that game, the Cosmos must first win in the playoffs, which begin on August 8.

Beckenbauer is so famous in Germany that he finds it impossible to lead a private life there. His fame is well deserved: Franz starred for the West German national team in the 1966 World Cup finals and the 1970 semifinals, and captained the team when it won the World Cup in 1974. During his 12 seasons with Bayern Munich of the German Soccer League, he was named German Footballer of the Year four times and European Footballer of the Year twice, and was runner-up on two other occasions.

But Franz is somewhat of a quiet, shy man, who does not like the limelight. In New York he can be himself, and walk the streets undisturbed, thinking about his wife and three children in Switzerland, who will be joining him this month for a long visit.

I meet Franz on a July afternoon after a practice at Giant Stadium. As we sit talking in the locker room, many of his teammates walk by and wave to him or call his name. He is an extremely popular fellow both on and off the field -- which explains why 72,000 people showed up for a game last May commemorating Franz Beckenbauer Day. With his courtly manners, he has rightfully earned the nickname "Kaiser Franz."

He could speak almost no English when he arrived in New York less than two years ago at the age of 31, but has learned remarkably quickly. "My mind was, soccer in the United States, it's easier to play. But it's not so easy as I expect," he says, in his slightly hesitant but perfectly understandable speech. "You have so different things, like Astroturf. You have to play in the summertime. It's so hot. You have to make big trips, like to Los Angeles. Sometimes it's more difficult to play here than in Europe."

When asked to compare soccer with American football, he says, "You can't compare. It's a much different sport. As an American footballer, you must be not a normal man. You must be maybe 200 pounds, and 6 foot 3, 6 foot 4 or 5. Everybody can play soccer -- big, tall, small -- if he is skilled enough, if he has the brain to play.

"I started when I was 3, 4, 5 years old. I don't know exactly. But you know, after the war, nobody has money. Soccer is the cheapest sport. No courts, nothing. So we all start to play soccer, and after I was 10 years old, I went to a little club in Munich. When I was 13 years old, I moved to Bayern, Munich, and when I was 18, I was a professional."

Franz smiles at the mention of Manhattan. "When I signed the contract, they asked me where I wanted to stay. In the suburbs? I said no, I want to stay in the city. A friend of mine knows a businessman who lives beside the Central Park. He is most of the year outside the country. The apartment was free, and he let me have it for six months. I was very lucky. I like to walk around the park to watch the people. I have been to Lincoln Center a few times, and of course different shows on Broadway. But I never saw a city like New York. You have so many good restaurants. It's unbelievable."

During the off-season, Franz does some promotional work for both Mercedes-Benz and Adidas, the sporting goods company that manufactures, among other things, a Franz Beckenbauer soccer shoe. As a result, Franz, who will be 33 next month, is not at all worried about his future.

"You know, when I started with soccer as a professional," he explains, "I had an aim. I said when I'm finished with soccer, my life will be different. I can say, 'I want to do this and this,' and not 'I must do this.' When I finish my career, I would like to go through the United States in a mobile with my family, to see all the states. That's for sure."

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WESTSIDER HIMAN BROWN Creator of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater

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During the 1930s, a comedy called The Rise of the Goldbergs was second only to Amos & Andy as the most popular radio show in America. Its success was due largely to the efforts of a young man from Brooklyn named Himan Brown, who co-produced the series, sold it to NBC and did the voice of Mr. Goldberg. He had started in radio drama while in his teens, and soon after graduating from Brooklyn Law School as valedictorian, decided to make radio, not law, his career.

During the next three decades, as producer of Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Thin Man, Grand Central Station, Nero Wolfe and other series, Brown became the Norman Lear of radio. But by 1959, it was all over: the last network radio drama was forced off the air by the onslaught of television. Brown, however, kept up a personal crusade for radio, pounding on the desks of every broadcast executive he could reach. Fourteen years later, in January 1974, his dream was realized, and radio drama was reborn with the CBS Radio Mystery Theater.

The 52-minute show, it turned out, was long overdue. Within weeks, CBS received 200,000 fan letters from listeners. Currently the Radio Mystery Theater can be heard in New York on Monday through Friday at 7:07 p.m. on station WMCA (570 AM). It is heard seven nights a week on approximately 250 other stations across the country. Brown, the producer/director, oversees every phase of the operation, from hiring the writers and actors to directing and recording sessions from a control booth at the CBS studios.

"I have never stopped believing," he says, "that the spoken word and the imagination of the listener are infinitely stronger and more dramatic than anything television can offer." He is a silvery-haired, distinguished looking gentleman with a mischievous twinkle in hie eye and an endless capacity for humor. Ruddy-complexioned and vigorous, dressed in a gray pinstripe suit and a crimson tie, he approaches his work with an infectious enthusiasm.

On a typical weekday, Brown arrives at the sound studio at 9 a.m. with a batch of scripts under his arm, which he hands out to a group of actors assembled around a table. Many are stars of the stage or screen -- Tammy Grimes, Julie Harris, Tony Roberts, Fred Gwynn, Bobby Morse, Roberta Maxwell, Joan Hackett. "I get the best actors in the world, right here in New York," he notes with pride. "They work for me in the daytime and on Broadway at night."

As the cast members go through a cold reading. Brown interjects his comments: "Do a little more with that. ... Don't swallow your words there. ... Cross out that line." The actors laugh and joke their way through the session; Brown is the biggest jokester of all. Finally everyone takes a break before doing the actual taping. Brown calls his 91-year-old mother on the telephone and speaks to her in Yiddish for some time. Then he answers a questions about his discoveries in sound effects.

"In the 1930s I was doing Dick Tracy, a very popular show. For sound effects we had several doors. One of them screaked, no matter what we did to it. I like to think that door was talking to us, saying, 'Make me a star,'" he says with a smile.

The creaking door later became the signature for Inner Sanctum Mysteries, and is now employed as the introductory note for the Radio Mystery Theater, along with host E.G. Marshall's compelling greeting: "Come in." Himan Brown also created the sound of London's foghorns and Big Ben for Bulldog Drummond, the laugh of the fat Nero Wolfe, and the never-to-be-forgotten train that roared under Park Avenue into Grand Central Station.