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THE ODD COUPLE
Show Biz
By: Neil Simon
Starring: Jimmy launce and Mike Evans
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56 Friday, December 26, 1986 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
can tell you some fascinating
tale, or impart some intriguing
bit of information about each
one. Not surprising, really,
since she's been reporting on
the entertainment scene now
for more than 40 years, start-
ing out with a women's pro-
gram on New York radio sta-
tion WINS when she was 17
years old.
"I always wanted to be an ac-
tress," says Eder. "I was
stage-struck and show-biz
crazy from the time I was a lit-
tle kid."
The only child of a mother
who also dreamed of acting,
and a father who was a New
York State Supreme Court
Justice, Eder grew up in a
Manhattan home that was vis-
ited frequently by statesmen
and political figures (including
Franklin Roosevelt), but
rarely, if ever, by entertainers.
"My father looked down his
nose at all of (show business),"
she says.
Despite her father's disap-
proval, Eder, just out of high
school, set out to make a name
for herself in show business,
and did manage to soon land a
role or two in small area
playhouses. Nothing onstage
really clicked, though, and
eventually she ended up at
WINS, doing everything from
reading recipes made with er-
satz ingredients (it was war-
time), to interviewing show
business personalities.
By the time she wed 1st Lt.
Edward Slotkin, son of Hyg-
rade Corp.'s founder, Samuel
Slotkin, in 1944, she had begun
to pen a number of entertain-
ment columns for several New
York weeklies, also. A few
years later, she would become
affiliated with NBC Monitor.
When, in 1956, Hygrade re-
located to the Motor City, Eder
made the move with great re-
luctance.
"I really thought that any-
thing outside New York was
absolutely nowhere," she says.
"I can remember sitting at the
Sheraton Cadillac and just
watching the people go by. I'm
not a card player and I'm not a
ladies-who-lunch. I had a lot of
energy, but I didn't know what
to do with all that energy. I was
a stringer for Monitor, but I
had no local media affiliations.
"Then somebody suggested I
go see this man at a paper on
the west side — or was it the
east side? Anyway, I had a talk
with the man, and I started
working there. It was a weekly,
and they paid me $1 a week to
write about Broadway and
Hollywood. I didn't care what
they paid me. I just needed to
be in print."
A few months later,
superstar Joan Crawford came
to the Motor City to plug her
new movie, Queen Bee. As it
happened, her visit would pro-
vide a much-needed boost to
Eder's career.
Being relatively new in
town, and having very little
clout or visibility in the Detroit
media scene in those days,
Eder claims she was surprised
Staying in touch with Hollywood is Shirley Eder's job.
to have even received an invi-
tation to Crawford's press
luncheon at the Sheraton
Cadillac Hotel that day. She
had met Crawford only once
before, on the set of another
movie, Sudden Fear, and had
no idea Crawford would even
remember who she was.
But not only did Crawford
remember who she was, she in-
sisted that Eder sit next to her
during the luncheon, instead of
at her pre-designated place at
the far end of the table. (To
facilitate this seating re-
arrangement, Crawford, wear-
ing a disarming smile, asked a
senior member of the local
press if she would mind trading
places with Eder, so that the
two "old friends" could visit
during the luncheon.) After-
wards, Eder was invited to
visit the star in her President-
ial Suite at the hotel.
Because of Crawford's visit,
Eder claims she gained consid-
erable new respect from local
media types. Doors were
opened, invitations were ex-
tended, and seating ar-
rangements definitely took a
turn for the best, she says.
Some years later, her career
would be given yet another and
more important boost, with a
visit to Detroit by another
superstar, actress Barbara
Stanwyck. The momentous
event would occur in the midst
of a hotel workers' strike and
the lengthy, 1967-1968 news-
paper strike.
"Barbara Stanwyck came
into town and, because of the
hotel strike, stayed at our
house," 'recalls Eder. "I was
writing at the time for an al-
ternative 'strike newspaper.'
"One day, Mort Persky, a
Free Press senior editor, calls
me up and, in this very quiet,
Southern voice, tells me that
he's been reading my stories,
and that he sees Stanwyck has
been staying at my house. He's
wondering could I write a story
for the Free Press when the
strike comes to an end, about
what it's like to have Stanwyck
at your house!
"Well, I could and I did. And
then he later asked me to write
other columns, although he
was a little skeptical at first
about my being really able to
write about Hollywood if I
lived in Detroit. I just kept tel-
ling him, 'I can do it. I can do
it.' "
And she did.
Since then, she's penned
thousands of words for that
column, traveled thousands of
miles on press junkets all over
the world, made thousands of
telephone calls to stay on top of
the latest happenings in Hol-
lywood, branched out into tele-
vision, continued to work in
radio, written a book about her
experiences (Not This Time,
Cary Grant!, published in
1973), raised a family (son,
John, is a New York business-
man; daughter, Toni, a director
at, ABC Sports), and even
briefly appeared in a couple of
movies
(Palm Springs
Weekend, in 1962 with Troy
Donahue, and C. C. and Com-
pany, in 1970, with Ann-
Margaret).
She's been scolded by Milton
Berle and Harry Truman,
snubbed by Raquel Welch ("the
one person I cannot abide"),
and, as his arm moved around
her shoulder, has heard hand-
some singer Vic Damone de-
clare, 'I've always admired
older women."
And she's been criticized for
forming close, personal rela-,
tionships with many of the
people she writes abort.
"The people I write about
trust me," says Eder. "That's
why I have the close relation-
ships with so many of them.
That's why they feel comforta-
ble with me. That has never
hurt my credibility in the col-
umn, because I will say what
Continued on Page 61