I ADORE him," declares Melina Mercouri. "He knows how to cry." Says Angela Lansbury: "He has antennae most people haven't even heard of." Others are more to the point. "If I had an affair with Jack the Ripper," sighs Valley of the Dolls Novelist Jacqueline Susann, "the offspring would be Rex Reed."
Rex Reed? Yes indeed. The young man who wrote all those scandalous things in Esquire, the New York Times and elsewhere about Ava Gardner, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, Sandy Dennis and Lester Maddox is the Now Kid, the jet set's latest instant celebrity —seen at the poshest places, invited to the nicest parties, cajoled by the sweetest people.
Rex à la Mode. At 28, Reed is both the most entertaining new journalist in America since Tom Wolfe and the most unprincipled knave to turn name dropping and voyeurism into a joyous, journalistic living. His detractors appear to be in the minority, however, and to the 30,000 readers who have thus far bought his recent book, Do You Sleep in the Nude?, he is a fascinating gossip who has recast the interview format in his own bitchy image. Son of a Texas oil-company supervisor, Reed spent his formative years in the South traveling from oil boom to oil boom (13 schools, straight A's, a degree in journalism from Louisiana State). He dabbled in acting before he broke into print three years ago with a brace of unsolicited interviews in the New York Times and the late Herald Tribune's New York Magazine. Now the assignments threaten to inundate him: last week a treatment of Jean Seberg in the Times; next month interviews with Jane Wyman, Katharine Ross, Harper's Bazaar Editor China Machado; a reminiscence on Carson McCullers (an old personal friend); a film for Melina Mercouri (a new personal friend); reviews and TV appearances; and, on the side, two novels abuilding. Thus it was only by dint of diligent spadework and interminable waiting that TIME Reporter Carey Winfrey cornered the famed interviewer for the following exchange à la mode du Rex:
SCENE: Eleven a.m. in front of one of those ultrachic, applesauce-green beach houses that line the Pacific Coast Highway at Malibu. The sun is so bright that I'm convinced it's bleaching the blue right out of the new pullover I'd bought only that morning to distract California eyes from a bad case of East Coast pallor.
I'm in no mood for broken doorbells and locked gates, having suffered through the last hour or more guarding the only pay phone within miles at the Malibu sheriff's office, trying vainly to break the Rex Reed busy-signal barrier. Suddenly, like Ray Bolger bouncing onstage for a final bow, he is there before me, has waved hello, left three sentences hanging on the air like a vapor trail from a Boeing 707, and is breezing back inside before I even hear him : "It's-just-frantic-around-here-I've-been -on -the -phone - all-morning—now -I'm-talking-to-Melina-Mercouri."
I dodge the swinging gate, and catch up just in time to see him put the dangling receiver to his ear.
"So Melina, my love, when can I see you?" he intones. We're off and running, as we say.