Show Me a Hero and Other Media Notes

They never called me back for my star turn as an extra on Show Me a Hero, and now the six-part HBO movie will begin Sunday night without me (http://nyti.ms/1Pa4ITu).

You may recall I attended an open casting call for extras at Manhattanville College last summer. About two months later I was contacted to show up in Yonkers for what normally is a 10-12 hour shoot for the princely sum of $100. That would be for the whole day, not an hourly rate.

Trouble was the day conflicted with the first day of Succoth. I opted for cries of hosanna instead calls for “action,” confident the producers would reconnect with me for another day as they indicated they would if I could not make the first day’s production. They never called.

So as I sit at home tonight and watch the depiction of the tumultuous time in Yonkers when the city underwent court ordered housing desegregation I will wonder in which scenes would I have been cast, and would I possibly have garnered a speaking part, even if it were only to shout verbal abuse at the mayor who reversed his election campaign position attacking the court ordered mandate only to later push for integration.

Ah well, a lost opportunity.

Woodstock Nation: Here’s another lost opportunity, this time Gilda’s, not mine. This weekend marks the 46th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival in Bethel, NY. 

Gilda had tickets to attend but chose to spend the weekend in Brooklyn with her boyfriend, another one of my ultimately less-than-worthy predecessors. She gave her tickets to friends, but they, too, did not make it to Yasgur’s Farm as Route 17 did not live up to its nickname as the Quickway to the Catskills, but rather became an impassable parking lot.

By the time the film Woodstock came out in 1970 Gilda and I were dating. When she saw conditions at the festival, the mud from torrential storms and the mass of people, Gilda had no regrets she passed on the opportunity to be part of counter-culture history. 

By the way, if you haven’t seen Taking Woodstock, a memoir-based 2009 film by Ang Lee on how the festival came to Yasgur’s Farm, it’s worth viewing.

The Man Behind Sears: For many years I thought of Sears, Roebuck & Co. as the prototypical WASP, or at the very least Christian, company. Nary an executive had even the slightest Jewish-sounding name.

The truth, however, was much different during the early years of the enterprise, as I learned when editor of Chain Store Age. The company became successful after Julius Rosenwald joined as part-owner. Rosenwald’s success allowed him to set up a philanthropic fund in 1917 for “the well-being of mankind.” Chief among the beneficiaries of his charity were Afro-American communities. A new documentary, Rosenwald, provides a picture of his commitment to the less fortunate but equally deserving (http://nyti.ms/1IPG3jh).

My Wife Wants to Sleep with a TV Star

My wife wants to sleep with a TV star. 

Me.

Last week Gilda saw an article about an open casting call for extras for two television shows to be filmed in Westchester in the fall. After not acting like a stage mother with our daughter when Ellie was a teenager, despite Ellie clearly having more talent and stage presence than I, Gilda encouraged me to strut my stuff at the “auditions” that would be held August 26 at Manhattanville College in Purchase.

Now, I am very comfortable delivering speeches even to an audience of a thousand or more. But the last time I performed on stage was 1962, when I was 13 and cast as Rusty Charlie in a summer camp production of Guys and Dolls. I was one of a trio singing the opening "Fugue for Tinhorns." I didn’t have a single piece of spoken dialogue. But this open casting call was for extras, and extras rarely have speaking parts, so the idea of being on TV intrigued me.

The casting call was scheduled for 1 to 4 pm. As I had to be in Manhattan to pick up Gilda at work at 4, I arrived at the college around 12:15 to be part of the first wave of wannabes. The guard at the entrance gave me a sardonic smile when I asked where the auditions were being held. It was a smile you see in all those old Dick Powell-Ruby Keeler 1930s movies about stage door hopefuls trying to bluster their way past the guard onto a Broadway stage.

If my time at the auditions was typical, hundreds, make that thousands, of would-be stars showed up, most of them not yet possessed of a college degree. Which was okay, since the casting agents described not two but three shows they were seeking to populate. 

For CBS’s Members Only, they needed extras to play the staff and members of a private country club. HBO had them looking for background actors to be “working and middle class types of all ethnicities” in Show Me a Hero, a six-hour mini-series about the court-ordered construction of low income housing in Yonkers in the late 1980s. The cast includes Oscar Isaac, Winona Ryder, Alfred Molina and Catherine Keener. The third project is an Amazon pilot, Mozart in the Jungle, based on a memoir of the same name by Blair Tindall.

In groups of around 200, we were ushered into and seated in a large hall where we were told about the three shows, asked to fill out a one-page questionnaire, and had two digital pictures taken. They did not interview anyone. 

The form included some basic questions such as height and weight. Asked for my age within a five year range, I did what many actors do. I lied. I opted to shave three years off my 65. 

They wanted to know what type of car we drove and if we had any skills, such as playing golf and tennis. I wrote I was a slightly above average tennis player (which only my winter tennis buddies may dispute). They also wanted to know about our wardrobe at home, especially if we had any clothing typical of the 1980s. As most of the candidates were barely in their twenties it was doubtful any of them had such outfits, but I still have some suits from that era hanging in my closet. 

Most everyone in my group of 200 came dressed casually. It was, after all, in the mid 80s Tuesday. But one twenty-something girl stood out. Above her high heels, she wore a short, tight fitting, plunging neckline black dress enhanced by a severe push-up bra that revealed, depending on your point of view, either healthy genes or great plastic surgery. Either way, two middle-aged women sitting behind me couldn’t stop talking about her as she posed for her pictures.

“Oh, she’s bending over and they’re popping out,” said one, to which the other replied, “She’s actually pushing them out.”

To hear veteran extras talk about the work, it’s a day-long drag waiting around hours for a few minutes of being background scenery. We were told it’s a full day’s work, usually about 11 hours. And you won’t know if you’re needed until the day before shooting.

I left the “audition” at 1:35, time enough to easily get back to my temporary day job chauffering Gilda to and from work. 

Bizarre and Bazaar Turn of Events

I made Gilda promise me that when the time came, and I’ll explain shortly why that time seems to be rapidly approaching, she’ll place me in a nice, nearby facility for the memory challenged, one that she’ll visit at least weekly, a home with good looking attendants, for after all, I might become forgetful but I would hope I would retain my appreciation of the finer things of life. 

I told her Sunday morning I had found the missing white sheet. 

“Where was it?, she asked. 

“On the bed,” I sheepishly replied.

“You mean we were sleeping on it all this time?”

“Yes, and no.” Thinking the white sheet was a cover for the new Sleep Number mattress, I had somehow placed the next sheet set on top of it. It was only when I went to plug in our heated mattress pad that I discovered my mistake. 

Now, if I could only find that missing dryer ball ...

My initial optimism about a negotiated settlement for the removal and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stash has dissipated. We've now entered what may be called the “Arab suk” phase, and the bizarre twists and turns Assad has begun to play would make any bazaar merchant proud. He's trying to impose conditions on President Obama, not the reverse, despite the deal the U.S. and Russia seemingly reached. 

So let’s just employ the age-old tactic of walking away. If Assad doesn't capitulate and live up to the schedule in the Russo-American deal, strike. Don't wait for Congress or the United Nations to act. The “consequences” Secretary of State John Kerry said would rain down on Syria will never force Assad’s hand. Only action will. 

I'm reminded of when I sold one of my cars, a Buick, to a young man in Yonkers back in 1982. Not in any way comparable in importance to negotiations on chemical weapons, but instructive, nevertheless, on the give and take (mostly take) tactics of the Middle Eastern mind. 

The young man in question was a Palestinian student. I met him in Yonkers. His uncle represented him. He told me how much he liked Buicks. Solid, reliable cars. Still, his nephew was not rich. He couldn’t afford the $2,000 price tag. We haggled. The give and take was fun, but we reached an impasse. I wanted $1,600. He was stuck at $1,550. We didn’t split the difference. I said I was going home. 

Would I mind driving his nephew home as it was on my way to the parkway? No problem. When we arrived in front of his building, he asked if I would like to come up for tea. Recognizing this as a further attempt to negotiate the price down, I declined. Twenty minutes later I walked into our home. Just as I finished telling Gilda I should have accepted the lower price as the $50 difference would be eaten up by another newspaper ad (yes, these were pre-Craig’s List days; newspapers actually carried classified ads), the phone rang. The uncle called to say they’d pay $1,600.  

I don’t normally advocate military action. But this is an exceptional situation, one that Assad will play out. In the end, I doubt he will comply with any of the deadlines set in the agreement. We must be prepared to act. And act quickly.

Is It Safe?

Spoken by Dr. Christian Szell in the book and movie Marathon Man, the three most chilling words of dialogue are, “Is It Safe?”. He would ask that question of Thomas “Babe” Levy in his quest to determine if it was safe to recover stolen diamonds he had hidden. To secure the answer he desired, Szell would probe Levy’s teeth with all the sadistic, excruciating skills he practiced as a Nazi dentist at Auschwitz.

With my wisdom tooth extraction Monday, I’m reminded of my own hair-raising dental experience some 20 years ago. My dentist at the time was located in Yonkers, on North Broadway not far from the Executive Boulevard exit of the Saw Mill River Parkway. When my early morning appointment to replace a filling ended, I drove back to White Plains to park in the commuter garage and board the 10:05 train to Grand Central Terminal. In Manhattan I started walking up Park Avenue to my office, but before I even exited the east walkway of the Helmsley Building I felt a twinge where the Novocain had started to wear off. Not a good sign, so I did a quick about-face and caught the first train back to White Plains, which, fortuitously, left within five minutes. 

By the time I arrived in White Plains 35 minutes later all the Novocain had worn off, leaving me in piercing pain. I hot-rodded it down the parkway, alternating between singing at the top of my lungs and screaming. I extended my left leg as far as I could, lifting my buttocks out of the seat. I howled my distress. It took about 12 minutes to get from White Plains to North Broadway in Yonkers. Like a madman I ran into the dentist’s office, demanding IMMEDIATE attention. The other patients must have thought I was crazed, and indeed I was. But the dentist quickly shot me up again and did some more work on my tooth. 

It was now too late to go to work, so I drove back to White Plains and decided to do some shopping in a Pergament Home Center. As I bent down to reach an item on the bottom shelf, I felt another twinge. I knew right away what that meant, but I wasn’t fast enough. I was howling again down the Saw Mill River Parkway. Once more I appeared in front of a different set of startled patients as crazed. 

The net result was the start of a root canal procedure. Since that time I am always alert to the slightest twinge whenever I visit the dentist. I haven’t had another such excruciating experience, other than the dry socket for the wisdom tooth extraction I described in my last post. You might be wondering if I stayed with that dentist. I did, until his untimely death from cancer. He was a good dentist, as well as a friend. 

Summer of '77

News stories have a way of intertwining events. And, as has been evident to loyal readers of this blog, often my life has a strand woven into the fabric of a story.

George Steinbrenner died last week. His first championship season as owner of the New York Yankees came In 1977. That season coincided with the Summer of Sam, the months David Berkowitz, the self-proclaimed Son of Sam, terrorized New York with random shootings. On the day Steinbrenner died, The NY Times ran a profile of Berkowitz’s life behind bars, his born-again Christian status and the efforts of his “admirers” to make over his image (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/nyregion/13berkowitz.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=david%20berkowitz&st=cse).

Gilda and I returned to New York in mid-1977 after spending four-plus years in Connecticut. Not wanting too long a commute into the city, we looked at communities within a 30-35 minute train ride into Grand Central Terminal, a short walk from my office at Park Avenue and E. 55th St. We visited apartments along the Hudson, along the Sound but finally settled on a two-bedroom unit on Lake Street in White Plains. At the last moment, before signing the lease, I saw an ad for a two-bedroom co-op in Yonkers.

We drove down from New Haven. The building on North Broadway was a magnificent Tudor-style structure. The apartment was beautiful. Oak floors. Window views of the Hudson. Modern kitchen. A garbage shoot to the incinerator off the kitchen. Fireplace in the living room. Priced within our budget. Impulsively, we committed to buy the co-op. We left a deposit. Within a day, buyers’ remorse set in. Did we really want to live in Yonkers? Though the seller wanted to hold us to the contract, a firm letter under my brother’s legal stationery resolved the conflict. We took the Lake Street apartment and have lived in White Plains, happily, ever since.

When they finally caught David Berkowitz in August 1977, turned out he, too, was a commuter. During his 13-month reign of terror, he drove from his Westchester home to New York City to kill six people and wound seven others. Berkowitz commuted from his apartment on Pine Street in Yonkers, around the corner from the co-op Gilda and I almost bought. It still gives Gilda and me chills to think we almost had Son of Sam as a neighbor.