(4 of 5)
"Surprisingly few. Oh, some things backfire. Like reviews. I feel in a review I have a right to be as brutal as I want to, especially with television because it's such a crappy medium. So I did a review of a Nancy Sinatra television special and I said no matter how much of her father's money she spends on herself she still looks like a pizza waitress. Well, Nancy Sinatra has a lot of friends out here. I've gotten some nasty phone calls and a few letters.
"Yeah, little things keep cropping back. Like an onion, you know, two days later. Warren Beatty. I shouldn't tell you this but I will—Warren Beatty had his lawyers draft a letter to Esquire, not threatening libel or anything, but asking for a correction. It had eleven points—eleven things he objected to. But the funny part is they were all stupid things, like he didn't really eat as many hot dogs as I said he did."
I ask him if he minds his reputation as the nation's sharpest hatchet man. "In four out of five pieces," he answers, "I bend over backwards to be nice to the subject. But life just isn't apple pie and Mother's Day seven days a week, and if you're going to write something that isn't going to be thrown out with, the coffee grounds, you have to tell it like it is. Look, I'm a very people-oriented person. I grew up without any unhappiness. And I just love people. But if some jackass picks his nose, I'm going to write it."
Fan Letters. Then he's up off the chaise and inside the house. In another moment he's joined me at the umbrella-covered picnic table, a thick folder filled with newspaper clippings in his hand.
"Did you see this in yesterday's L.A. Times? It's Rex Reed talking about women. Which, quite surprisingly, I find I'm a sudden authority on—according to some people." He shows me the clipping, which contains the information that "his mere presence in an Edwardian coat and ruffled Palacio shirt" assures "A" status to any party. And just what is a Palacio shirt? "It's a store in New York," he informs me. "Actually I have most of my shirts made at Fisher's, in London."
He thumbs through the folder and suddenly suggests: "This might be fun—nobody's done this. You could just do a paragraph on what this week's mail has brought."
He begins:
"Fan letter from Harold Arlen. Fan letter from Bette Davis. Fan letter from Carol Burnett. Fan letter from Henry Mancini. Just listen to what he says: 'You not only write the melody line but also the second, third and fourth harmony parts.' Isn't that wonderful?
"Offer for $25,000 for a book on Peter Fonda. That's $25,000 advance. Offer to do a syndicated column for Newsday—here and abroad. A funny letter from a girl who says she just read the Peter Fonda one and who is Holden Caulfield? Is it somebody she should know?
"An invitation to an all-day luau with David Susskind in Pound Ridge, New York. Five letters this week from personal managers wanting to manage my career. Three marriage proposals. Plus about 20 invitations to parties."