He was a David among Goliaths-yet he could be the most philistine of men. He called himself "a grain of sand in the public's eye," and he could be just as irritating. His friend Ben Hecht called him "a kind of slum poet and Jack the Ripper rolled into one." To Showman Billy Rose, compliments and catcalls were one and the same. Every knock was a boost, every insult a reminder that at least people were talking about him-as they had from the time he was a boy on Manhattan's Lower East Side...
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