Arts si Entertainment

On The Bookshelf

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Studs & The Stars

In his newest book, cultural historian Studs Terkel
offers a firsthand look at the luminaries who
created the dramatic arts of the 20th century.

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SEAN NOBLE
Copley News Service

anon Brando's career was
between On the
Waterfront and The
Godfather when he leaned
into Studs Terkel's microphone.
The actor was also smack-dab in
the middle of a growing reputation for
being difficult on stage and preten-
tious off of it. But his radio-show host
was gracious.
"Yesterday, while listening to you fac-
ing some 300 high-school students, I
heard someone who seemed without
pretense facing his peers," Terkel offered.
Brando brushed the overture aside.
He launched into an existential argu-
ment about society's pretentiousness. He
challenged Terkel's questions and even
Terkel's place in asking them.
"What kind of contribution does
interviewing make to you?" Brando
finally demanded.
In a very literal sense, the 1963
exchange has contributed to Terkel's lat-
est book, The Spectator: Talk About

cabbies and cops and con men alike.
"I'm celebrated for having celebrat-
ed the uncelebrated," Terkel joked
during a conversation at his modest
Chicago home — a morning conver-
sation, not coincidentally, devoid of
pretense: The author was clad in paja-
mas and bathrobe, eyeglasses perched
on the end of his nose.
Still, during a four-decade stint
with WFMT radio in Chicago, Terkel
also talked with plenty of the world's
more heralded people. He thought it
would be interesting to glean the gems
from those interviews for a show-biz
book.
And who better for such a project
than Studs? He's played gangsters on
daytime radio programs. He's shared the
stage with Buster Keaton, as well as the
movie camera in bit roles with the likes
of Jane Fonda (The Dollmaker) and John
Cusack (Eight Men Out).
Despite such glory-tinged work,
Terkel insists he's enjoyed the view from
the theater seats even more.
"I'm a buff in that sense, an aficiona-
do," he said, repeating the final word
slowly and with delicious emphasis.

Movies and Plays With Those Who
Make Them (The New Press; $26.95). For "The Spectator," Studs Terkel gathered
So, too, have dozens of other inter-
his never-before-published interviews with
views the author has conducted with
dozens of stars of the stage and screen.
actors, actresses, movie directors and
MAKI r;*'M
TALK AZTOLI: MOv1:::: AND PLAYS V•siTfi
playwrights — names ranging from
Arthur Miller to Carol Channing to
James Cagney.
In a broader sense, such discussions
added to Terkel's enjoyment and
understanding of what he calls "the
lively arts." The 87-year-old author
hopes his new book will serve the
•
same purpose for others.
Terkel has made a career out of
relating the tales of society's more
rank-and-file members. His eight
oral-history books include Division
Street America (1966); Hard Times: An
Oral History of the Great Depression
(1970); Working (1974); The Good
War: An Oral History of World War II
(1984), for which he won the Pulitzer
Prize; Race: How Blacks and Whites
Feel about the American Obsession
(1992) and Coming of Age: The Story
of Our Century by Those Who Lived It
(1995). They have told the stories of

THE SPECTATOR
STUDS TERKEL

