Winter, 1970. Another week in Manhattan.
While I was still occupied every day with the NBC FALL TELEVISION newspaper campaign there were still a lot of social and cultural events available. At the George Abbott Theater there was some noise around the opening of Gantry, starring Robert Shaw and Rita Moreno.
My best friend from UCLA, fraternity brother Bob Stone photographed Rita Moreno for HARPER‘S BAZAAR and was afterwords photographed with her by his assistant!=========>
Paul Bartel, Alice Turner and I went to the opening. Alice was an actress and Paul had used her in a short promotional film he’d made for Celanese, one of his father’s advertising agency’s clients. Later on she’d go on to become the fiction editor of Playboy magazine.
Afterward we went to the 54th Street Stage Door Deli-Restaurant. I didn’t get to finish drawing Alice as our food arrived!
Earlier Paul and I’d been to the Elgin Theater to see the independent film, Dynamite Chicken, starring Richard Pryor.
The next weekend I was invited by my friend Claire Burns to a black tie party in Princeton at the Nassau Club. Claire was a very friendly, outgoing person whom I’d met through friends living in Princeton!
We’d become fast friends and Claire frequently included me at events and parties. She appeared to know everyone in New Jersey and there were a lot of parties; many of her friends became true friends of mine!
Petie Duncan and her husband Stu (Stuart) became particularly good friends.
Stu, an heir to Lea & Perrins, was interested in theater and with Edgar Lansbury had become one of the backers of GODSPELL, the successful “rock opera.”
That weekend I stayed in their beautiful house, which Mario Buatta had decorated. Mario dropped by the following Sunday to bring them a small 18th-century Chinese painting. When Stu saw it he smiled, saying it was now an old family heirloom! After a leisurely afternoon Mario drove me back home to Manhattan.
That Sunday evening I was invited to a dance concert by Joel Benjamin for whose new dance company I had drawn a promotional graphic.
The musical pieces used for the dance were the Ruckert-lieder (Songs) by Gustav Mahler sung by an enthusiastic soprano.
An ambitious project for a young dance company.
In general, just a typical week in and around Manhattan!
