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More than any writer I’ve known, Clifford needed to be needed to write. He was like a high-powered automobile with an uncertain self-starter; our need turned him on. Luther and I began to hound him to write us a play, and we jibed at Harold, who, despite his sorry state at Wanger’s, seemed comforta…

READ this photograph with me. Here is a gathering of old friends who’ve been through a lot together and earned a rest. We’d just arrived at the Pinebrook Country Club, reassembled for another summer of work. Look closer: It’s probably hindsight, but I’d say that the passion that had once made us so…

My own opinion is that they do because the actors—whether by technique or by accident—gave you pieces of their lives, which is certainly the ultimate generosity of the artist, and they did it unabashed. You were the witness to a final intimacy. These artists spoke to your secret self, the one you h…

I made a point of catching the commercial. Orson offered the nation his assurance of the product’s worth with a voice as resonant as ever—a beautiful instrument indeed—and his presence was, in some grotesque way, still imposing. I couldn’t help wondering—as I do with any sponsoring of a product whe…

But the self-satisfied artist did not hear this talk and gloried in his universal fame, throwing his gold coins around and beginning to believe that everything on earth is ordinary and simple, that there is no such thing as a revelation from on high, and that everything must of necessity be subsume…