After a book is published, a writer gets immediate feedback from reviews, which is important for sales and not much else. However, if one is lucky (as I have been), and reviews come in from regular folk — some by letter in the mail (handwritten!), that’s where the real treasures lie. When someone writes that the book was a pleasurable experience for them, it means the world as that was my sole intention in writing it. It makes me feel (as the great Lina Lamont once said) my h

Sidney Poiter, born February 20, 1927, was one of the most important film actors of the twentieth century. Not only did he deliver memorable performances, breaking wide open opportunities for other actors of color, he also brought an expansion of people’s conception of what African-Americans could accomplish. That he was also at the forefront of the civil rights movement only makes him a role model for anyone in society, let alone in the arts. Here’s just a touch of his backs

Harold Arlen, honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 1996 as part of the Great American Composers series. Called “the most original of all of us’’ by George Gershwin, composer Harold Arlen was a master of the blues and jazzy rhythms of Harlem and the south. Songs like “Blues in the Night,” “Stormy Weather,” “That Old Black Magic,’ “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive’’ and ‘’The Man that Got Away,” are only five of the five hundred to which he is credited. So how did Hyman Arluck, th

Humphrey Bogart, pre-movie stardom, circa the 1920s. Possessing one of the most indelible personas marking Hollywood’s Golden Age, Humphrey Bogart’s unique charisma continues to persist in our collective conscience as many as sixty-four years after his death. While smoking an endless chain of cigarettes, he effortlessly romanced the likes of Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall, whom he starred opposite when she was nineteen and would marry a year later. Movie star that he was, l

Joe Allen was a unique and indelible part of the Broadway theatre community by way of the restaurants he owned and the people he served for more than fifty years, many of whom were devoted to the oasis his watering holes provided. This tribute is direct from the chapter in my book Up in the Cheap Seats about a 1972 musical called Dude, and titled “The Bomb.” This had to do with the coincidence that Joe Allen could easily have pulled off the moniker of “the Dude ” (he was very