Part 46

2-2-79

It was an unusual statement to come from a man who has made a career out of fearing nothing. "I'm scared to death every time I sit down at a typewriter," confessed George Plimpton, who, in his 20 years as America's foremost "participatory journalist," has played football with the Detroit Lions, fought the light heavyweight champion of the world, pitched to major league baseball players, raced cars internationally, and performed with the New York Philharmonic as a percussionist.

"Sometimes you can do it, and sometimes it's not there," continued Plimpton, leaning back in the desk chair at his Eastside apartment. "It's very hard to work alone. There's the television set, and all these books, and your son and daughter in the next room. Sometimes I have to get away. So I go to bars and I sit in a corner and write. You're trapped in there. There's nothing else to do but write."

As we sat talking, the telephone rang frequently, and Plimpton, apologizing for the interruption, spoke to the callers with widely varying degrees of enthusiasm, but was consistently polite, urbane and witty. I noticed a hint of an English accent in his voice -- the result of his early education at St. Bernard's School on the Upper East Side, followed much later by four years of study in England. It is easy to imagine him stepping into a boxing ring like an English gentleman, calmly lacing on his gloves for a friendly bout.

Which is precisely what he did in 1959 when, for the purpose of one of his countless stories for Sports Illustrated, he took on Archie Moore, then king of the light heavyweight division, for a three-round exhibition match in New York. Since that time, Plimpton has never lost his interest in boxing. A close friend of Muhammad Ali's who has followed the champion around the world, he made Ali the chief character of his book Shadow Box, which came out in paperback this month from Berkley. As with most of Plimpton's works, the story is told with an abundance of humor.

Currently at work on three new books, Plimpton emphasized that he writes on many subjects outside of sports. A lifelong friend of the Kennedy family, he has co-authored an oral history volume titled American Journey: The Times of Robert F. Kennedy. He is an associate editor of Harper's magazine and a regular contributor to the International Food & Wine Review. His first love, in fact, seems to be not sports at all, but the Paris Review, a magazine for up-and-coming serious writers that he has edited since its creation in 1953. One of the most important literary magazines in the English-speaking world, the Paris Review is published four times a year as a 175-page journal devoted almost exclusively to fiction and poetry.

His hair is mostly silver now, and there are creases starting to appear on his ruggedly handsome face, but Plimpton, at 52, is still the same larger than-life, charismatic figure he has been since he came to national attention in 1961 with the publication of Out of My League, a book about his foray into major league baseball. Paper Lion (1966), which told of his brief career as a quarterback with the Detroit Lions, cemented his reputation as the nation's most realistic sportswriter. His other books include The Bogey Man, One More July, and Mad Ducks and Bears. As a lecturer, he is in demand all over the country. He and his wife Freddy have been married for 11 years.

Born in New York City, he grew up around 98th Street and 5th Avenue, attended Harvard University (where he edited the Harvard Lampoon), and spent three years in the Army before heading for England to study at King's College, Cambridge. During an Easter vacation there, he joined some friends in Paris to discuss the launching of the literary magazine he has guided ever since.

In 1979, said Plimpton with a grin, "I'm supposed to manage the New York Yankees for a day, and go through the whole procedure of being fired by George Steinbrenner. I hope it's followed by a beer commercial with Billy Martin."

Asked about his attachment to the East Side, Plimpton stressed his fondness for the city as a whole. "In the last couple of years, there's been an enormous rebirth of excitement about living in the city. ... I think Mayor Koch has a lot to do with pulling it up. He seems to fit everywhere. If I saw him twirling up a pancake dough in a pizza shop on Broadway, or driving a 5th Avenue bus, or carrying a briefcase into 20 Exchange Place, I wouldn't be surprised. He's a quintessential New Yorker."

When my visit with Plimpton was about to end, I couldn't resist testing him with my favorite sports question: "Who was the only man to play for the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Patriots and the Boston Bruins?" He couldn't guess. The answer, I told him, was a guy named John Kiley, who played the national anthem on the organ.

But Plimpton got the last word in.

"Who was the only man to play for the Boston Bruins and the Boston Celtics?" he asked. I said I didn't know. He smiled and replied: "George Plimpton."

********

EASTSIDER OTTO PREMINGER Rebel filmmaker returns with The Human Factor

1-26-80

On the cover of his 1977 autobiography Preminger, he is described as "Hollywood's most tempestuous director" and "the screen's stormiest rebel." But today, at 73, the years appear to have caught up with Otto Preminger, the Austrian-born director and actor who came to the U.S. in 1935 and met success after success, both in movies and on Broadway.

He became the first producer/director to make major motion pictures independently of the giant studios, and with such films as Forever Amber, The Moon is Blue and The Man with the Golden Arm, won precedent-settling battles with censorship boards that established new artistic freedom for filmmakers.

Between 1959 and 1963 he produced and directed, in succession, Porgy and Bess, Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Advice and Consent, and The Cardinal. After that his career took a dip, and since 1971 he has released but a single movie, Rosebud (1975), which marked the screenwriting debut of his son Erik Lee Preminger and the acting debut of a New Yorker named John Lindsay, the city's former mayor.

In February, Preminger's 33rd film, The Human Factor, is scheduled to open in New York and across the country. Based on a best-selling novel by Graham Greene, The Human Factor is the suspenseful story of a black South African woman (played by fashion model Iman) who marries a white secret agent (Nicol Williamson). Filmed mainly in the English countryside, the movie deals with the agent's allegiance to the man who helps his wife to escape from South Africa. Persuaded to become a double agent, he ends up in Moscow, separated from the one person he loves. The novel's title underlines the fact that bureaucracy can never be all-powerful: there is always the human factor.

Preminger, seated at his huge palette-shaped desk of white marble in the lavishly furnished projection room on the uppermost floor of his Eastside town house, admits that he sank over $2 million of his own money into the picture when his signed backers failed to come through. "Everybody in Europe lies about money," says Preminger in his deep, German accented voice. "I originally wanted to sue them, but suing doesn't make sense unless you are sure they have money. So I inquired from my Swiss lawyer, and they didn't have money in Switzerland. You see, in Switzerland, the advantage of the Swiss law is that is you sue somebody, all his assets are frozen immediately. ... Luckily enough, I had two houses that I wanted to sell in the south of France. ... At least I own the whole film. The question is now only: Will the picture be a big success as I hope, or not? That is always the main thing."

The nattily dressed Preminger, a tall, large man whose distinguished features and totally bald head give the opposite impression of his slow movement and somewhat frail appearance, revealed that the film's African scenes had to be shot in Kenya rather than South Africa "because they said they must see what I am shooting, and if they don't like it, they will confiscate it. They said, 'People in bed you can't shoot.' Then I went to Kenya, where there is a black government, and they didn't even ask for the script. They said I could have anything I want."

Asked whether any memorable events took place during the filming, Preminger snaps, "Even if there were, I don't remember. After I have made a picture and I have seen it maybe two, three times with an audience, I deliberately detach myself, because I don't want it to influence my next picture. As a matter of fact, a few months ago, my wife was dressing to go out, and I turned on the television and saw one of my old pictures. I recognized it, but we had to leave before it was finished. I still don't know how it ends."

As for Preminger's love life, he writes in his autobiography: "I have a reputation with women which is not entirely deserved, though it is true that I had my share of them, some of them stars."

In 1944 he had a three-week love affair with Gypsy Rose Lee that resulted in the birth of his son Erik Lee Preminger. The boy didn't find out the identity of his real father until the age of 18. They were reunited four years later, and liked each other immediately. Preminger legally adopted Erik, who is currently in Los Angeles writing a biography of his late mother.

Preminger and his third wife, a former costume designer named Hope Bryce, to whom he has been married since 1959, are the parents of 19 year-old twins, Victoria and Mark. An Upper Eastsider for two decades, Preminger includes among his favorite restaurants Caravelle, Le Cirque and 21, where agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar once broke a glass over his head that took 51 stitches to close.

An unabashed admirer of luxury, Preminger remains unruffled when questioned about how his fancy Eastside pad is in line with the philosophy stated in his autobiography that "my real reward is my work itself. Success matters only because without it, one cannot continue to work."

"I could live without it," he says with a shrug. "I like to give my family luxuries, but I could easily live in one furnished room and be also happy."