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Goofy? Hep. One day in 1933 Silverman called Abel Green up to the dais, told him: "Abel, you sit here." That made Green editor. Silverman died that year, left the business to son Sid, now an ailing absentee.
Editor Green broke in on Variety as an 18-year-old collegian. Today, like all the muggs, he lives partly in a nostalgic past, haunted by Silverman's wise-guy gentleness, his scoops, his Hispano-Suizas. Variety labors to be in the know about the future of television and 16-mm.-film theaters, so that if radio or the movies go the way of vaudeville, it will still be the journalistic handmaiden of entertainment.
Like most experts, Variety's muggs find it difficult to explain themselves. (A mugg, reviewing a picture, must report whether 1) it will sell; 2) it is worth seeing—with the accent on the former.) Sime tried to define the requirements 15 years ago: "To be a mugg you've got to fit. ... A mugg can be practical and idealistic at the same time. Maybe you got to be a little bit goofy to be that way. . . ."
Abel Green puts it more curtly, and with a considerable amount of accuracy: "Our muggs are hep."