Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by clarkjohnsen (R) on April 30, 2003 at 09:04:50

A local buddy of mine has discovered a talent. His. For example:

I saw Dustin Hoffman on a late night show recently. It was bizarre. He appeared inexplicably low in the guest chair. The camera panned back at one point and I could see that the cushion had been removed . I thought this guy must be really short and didn't want his legs dangling like a kid so out came the cushion .True.After the first interview segment, the show resumed showing a reinserted seat cushion and a small electrically powered footstool that moves on runners from under the chair to just in front of it to accommodate guest height.Hoffman,feet on the stool, was very ill at ease.He still looked tiny when the camera pulled back. He also, I don't want to be too hasty, appeared to be not very bright overall, an understandably height self-conscious actor who is good at his craft but lacking a broad aptitude. Interesting. Human talent is a remarkable thing. He said he is 65 now and there aren't many leading roles written for that age. He hopes to keep working in film by taking character parts. I'd rather see him on Broadway.

As you know , film can totally mislead an audience as to an actor's height.I saw Richard Pryor with a white woman,probably his wife , near the Museum on 5 th twenty five years ago.He was quite tall and good looking .So too Gig Young who took his own and his wife's lives a few months after I saw him outside a Broadway theatre.A note he left explained that there was nothing more to life that interested him .It was the worst review I ever read .Susan Anton and Dudley Moore were a comical sight when they were dating in the seventies .He had his arm around , not her waist , but her ass(she 's a tall girl; he was a midget with a club foot) when I passed them. Truth be told, he was a little tipsy like the character "Arthur".Frank Langella (he wore a cape) was really tall and a pompous ass in the company of Mel Brooks and Anne Bankroft at a German restaurant in Yorkville.He knew the lovely (and very likeable and beautiful Anne) from their Brooklyn youth.Where did his accent go?Ask Dracula.Jessica Lang was a lovely young woman of average height who waited in line with me outside our respective facilities at Sardis in NYC Her first hit ,King Kong, had just been released.I saw her recently on Charlie Rose and she seemed the same, a very nice woman. I had a knack for running into Roy Scheider of Jaws fame,He, on the short side, always had a tan ,custom styled haircut and ready smile.Appeared to be very American -wholesome but then again , he lived in the Village where he could be seen often in summertime , reclining in a beach chair on the sidewalk ,clad in a bathing suit and sunning himself with the aid of a big handheld reflector .People wondered,at least the ignorant among them.David Brinkley paraded in the Rockefeller Centre area .Now he had a Lincolnesque stature, a Big Sky way of strutting .Looked like he would have said something smartass to you if you dared to speak to him.Who knows?Sterling Haydn was a cane wielding pot head who towered over most.Gave up the booze with the help of the weed.Kinda like Willie Nelson.Not exactly the AA way but a man slays the demon rum anyway he can.Bobby Brown uses it to beat his jones and treat his bi-polar illness or so he says .Richard Dreyfus was a coke snorting wee little sort with a perpetually insincere smile on his mug.Sure it was the drugs.(The Education of Duddy Kravitz is a great movie , the real sequel to Exodus).And then there was Tiny Tim , of NBA verticality, who, I swear, was approached by a fan who called him "Mr TIm" .Only his out of tune ukelele remains.And probably Miss Vicky, wherever she is.(Do you think his uke is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?)But nobody topped Tony Randall for pure theatricality.He would appear in the winter wearing a Sherlock Holmes houndstooth hunting cap and coat , jauntily rushing about in his at least six foot, probably more, frame , and be seen to be thoroughly, completely enjoying his life.In fact, he seemed the happiest man in the city to me.I heard he is now eighty and is married to a younger woman and has some kids.I'm not surprised.He definitely decided long ago to suck the marrow out of life.

Afterward: My first gossip column on the real stature of the stars can't end without the mention of Liz Smith whom I saw on a couple of occasions going pole to pole (no cliche) in a stinkin drunk state.I was told she was an alcoholic lesbian who bedded lots of up and coming starlets , a tall dike pig with a bottomless sexual appetite And as luck would have it ,nobody ever wrote about in the papers.Funny how life turns out.

Hooray for Hollywood