Steel Pier Showplace of the Nation

 

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Steel Pier – Showplace of the Nation – Atlantic City by Steve Leibowitz (Down the Shore, 2009)

There’s a new and important book out on the history of the Steel Pier.

So many great things happened at the Steel Pier in Old Atlantic City you know there had to be a good book about it, and Steve Liebowitz has written it.

This new, coffee table book, chock with plenty of pictures, takes you back to the Glory Days of Atlantic City, a place that many people would prefer to go to than the glitzy casinos today.

As explained by Liebowitz, after the boardwalk lined the beach, they started extending it out over the ocean, creating piers, that competed with each other by offering entertainment rides and shows, but the Steel Pier stood out above the rest after Frank Gravatt bought it in 1925 and began to book vaudeville acts.

Gravatt was a local, who started out delivering newspapers and married a Somers, Flora Somers, from English Creek, and although uneducated, he had a savvy business sense. By the time he was through, Gravatt would own the local Buick dealership, Indian motorcycles franchise, the Golden Gate Motel, the Shelburne, Traymore and Lafayette Hotels, WFPG radio and was director of Chelsea Bank, as well as owning the Steel Pier. But he did it by working hard and even after successful he wasn’t above climbing a latter to replace a burnt out light bulb.

Besides Gravatt, the other big name behind the Steel Pier was Hamid, George Hamid, Sr. and George Hamid, Jr. who took over the Pier after the Storm of ’44, and brought the Showcase of the Nation into the modern era.

While Gravatt was an entrepreneur, Hamid was a showman, actually from a circus family from Lebanon, a troupe of tumblers and acrobats who traveled the world circuit with Buffalo Bill Cody.

The first time Hamid, Sr. came to Atlantic City he entertained on the beach for tips, doing acrobats and sleeping under the boardwalk.

After buying Million Dollar Pier and moving into John Young’s famous house #1 Atlantic Ocean, he worked with Gravatt at the Steel Pier but they had a falling out and after the Storm of ’44, Hamid had to get a straw buyer to purchase it because he didn’t think Gravatt would sell it to him at any price.

From Vaudeville to Hollywood, the diving horse to the diving bell and dolphins, from Big Bands to Rock & Roll, it’s all there, and while Liebowitz’s story is an easy read and full of historical tidbits, the pictures really make the book special. As Liebowitz notes, it wasn’t a matter of which photos to use, there were so many it was hard to pick the ones to leave out, and maybe someday they will put them all on a web site.

Although grandmom might be more interested in the exciting things that went on at Steel Pier in the 30s and 40s - the Glory Years, when the Steel Pier was the number one entertainment attraction on the East Coast, and really was the “Showplace of the Nation,” the Rock & Roll era has more appeal to younger readers, and me.

It doesn’t seem that long ago when the Rolling Stones came to Atlantic City for the second time, in the l980s, for their Steel Wheels Tour, and I went over to George Hamid’s office which was then on Tilton Road in Northfield.

Did he remember the Stone’s show at Steel Pier in the 60s? Sure, Hamid, Jr. said, digging into one of a dozen filing cabinets and coming out with a bill of acts for the day the Stones played Atlantic City, along with the McCoys and Rick Derringer.

Hamid, Jr. explained to me then that their family were circus people, who had also taken over the New Jersey State Fair and the Aquarium in Philadelphia and ran other major attractions around the country as well.

The Steel Pier always had good music as part of their entertainment package but when rock & roll came along, they booked Bill Haley & the Comets shortly after their hit “Rock Around the Clock” became an international sensation, and then had Ed Hurst and Dick Clark feature rock and roll acts all summer long throughout the late fifties and sixties.

Hamid said his biggest mistake wasn’t paying the $12, 500 Elvis wanted, after one hit song, so Elvis went on to forever bypass Atlantic City, never playing there in his entire career.

But practically everybody else played the Steel Pier, either on the way up or as super stars in their own time – with Ricky Nelson holding the one day records of over 44,000 paying customers in one day – August 31, 1958, said to be the first rock concert. It was also his debut solo show, and he was introduced by an opening act, the standup Henny Youngman, whose one-liners didn’t go over well with the young crowd, and was “a theatrical mismatch if there ever was one,” quipped Hamid.

Nelson’s record would have been surpassed by the Beatles, who were booked to play Steel Pier for $25,000, a new record pay out for any band, but Hamid realized that they were too big for even the pier’s biggest room, so they were moved down to the boardwalk to the old Convention Hall, just days after the Democratic National Convention in August, 1964.

Although the Beatles’ small sound equipment was drowned out by the huge hall and the screaming girls, so nobody could actually hear them, it was a cultural phenomenon that’s still being recycled.

The Beatles stayed at Gravatt’s Lafayette Hotel, which was surrounded by thousands of adoring fans, but John Lennon was intent on seeing Steel Pier, which he had heard so much about but didn’t get a chance to play, so he dressed in disguise, slipped out of the hotel through the kitchen and sneaked up to the boardwalk just to see the Steel Pier.

The British Invasion of the United States landed at Atlantic City first, with Herman’s Hermits, Dave Clark Five, Peter and Gordon, Freddie and the Dreamers and the Animals, all hitting the Atlantic City beach before they went anywhere else in the country.

Liebowitz was fortunate to get through to many important people who performed there, and got first hand quotes from most of them, recalling their time well spent there, including Frankie Valli, Smokey Robinson, Joey Bishop, Al Martino, Chubby Checker and Alan King.

While this book will be popular with those who collect Atlantic City memorabilia, those who like old photos and everything to do with show business, Hollywood, the Big Band era and rock & roll, it is also a new and important historical resource, and my only complaint is that it’s index is incomplete and such a book should have a good index.

If Atlantic is to look to its past in order to forge a new future, it would be good to start with this book, not only for the ideas and forces that once brought it out of the depression and the Storm of ’44 to make it the “Showplace of the Nation,” but to see the kind of men that it will take - like Gravatt and the Hamids, to turn things around.

From sleeping under the boardwalk to owning it, they showed how it can be done.

You can read other books of local interest by William Kelly at http://billsbooksblog.blogspot.com
He can be reached at billykelly3@yahoo.com

Photo:
http://billsbooksblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/steel-pier-showplace-of-nation.html

Murder at Mile Marker 36 - Thriller Novel

Murder at Mile Marker 36 - Another thriller novel based on the Garden State Parkway murders of Memorial Day weekend 1969.

This one is a conspiracy thriller, with a campaign strategy developed for a candidate for governor to blame the murders on Ted Bundy in order to get the law and order vote and win the election.

Can you stand it?

http://www.milemarker36.com/index.html

Vulnerability on the critical law and order issue is the main obstacle in the way of silver-tongued Matt Moran's quest to become governor of New Jersey. His campaign team attempts to solve the problem by blaming the infamous 1969 Coed murders on Ted Bundy.

Pursuit of closure and clues connecting Ted Bundy to the 32-year old cold case are chilling. A love affair involving protagonist Sebstian Kenyon, an ex-journalist, and hotshot political consultant Geena Fallon seasons the story without removing focus from the ghost of the notorious serial killer.

"Murder at Mile Marker 36," set mainly along the Jersey shore, including the famed Pine Barrens, and takes the reader to Wyoming, Arizona, Harrisburg, Newark and Alexandria, Virginia. It runs roughly 240 pages.

In addition to Bundy's ghostly presence, major characters include dashing Matt Moran; Matt's wife Maggie, using the family fortune to finance the gubernatorial campaign; Lucious Harvey, a New Jersey State Trooper on leave to help his friend and confidante with the election so he can become the first "real" African-American to lead the state police: Nick Mastricola, old school Atlantic City pol and Moran campaign advisor, and savvy pollster Jack Remington.

Also, Yocontalie Wolf, a sensual Native-American psychiatrist who heard the serial killer's confession years earlier; Melvin "Catfish" Sadler, burned-out black trooper who helps Kenyon connect the dots; Sandra Steele, now 42, kid sister of one of the 1969 murder victims; George Butler, greedy former FBI agent who helped pioneer the concept of criminal profiling, and Reyneso "Popo" Vasquez, the mysterious Miami detective who taped details of the killer's horrific confession of the Coed murders.

And of course, Kenyon and Geena and their black lab retriever "Killer".

Ken Shuttleworth is an award-winning journalist with several newspapers including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Cherry Hill based Courier Post, the leading newspaper in South Jersey. He has also been a street reporter for top ranked KYW News Radio in Philadelphia. He made a career switch from journalism in 1989 and became a political/public policy media tactician. He played a key role in shapiung the Camden County Democratic Committee into one of the best political organizaitons of its kind in the nation.

A life-long fan of mysteries, Ken Shuttleworth finally sat down to begin writing his first novel, "Murder at Mile Marker 36", at age 50. The native Philadelphian and 1965 graduate of Temple University has lived in New Jersey since 1971 and currently resides in Haddon Heights.

Ken Shuttleworth's work typiflies what critic/editor George Plimpton meant when he told a New York Times reporter that powerful forces cohere in New Jersey Literary history, adding: "Its habitues are so extraordnary - more than any other state in the East. The mob, great prizefighters, the prisons, the world of Far Hills, the gamblers, the shore, the corridor between Philadelphia and New York - there is the extraordinary framework that the state's writers have had throughout American history."

Parkway Murders - Cold Case Gets Hot?

After 40 Years the Parkway Murders Cold Case Gets Hot

By William Kelly

It was a cold case from the start when the bodies of Elizabeth Davis and Susan Perry were found three days after they were murdered over the Memorial Day weekend, 1969.

The college coeds had spent a few days in Ocean City before the holiday weekend and left their 9th street rooming house early on Friday morning, ate breakfast at the Point Diner and then disappeared down the Parkway north, heading home to Pennsylvania.

By Monday, when it was realized that an abandoned convertible towed off the Parkway Friday morning was the car belonging to the missing girls, the bodies were found in the woods nearby.

There were many leads followed and many suspects checked out over the years, including two mass murders in Florida prisons who confessed to having killed the girls, but closing the case remained elusive for the Atlantic County Prosecutor and the lead investigators – the New Jersey State Police.

Now, 40 years later, there’s a new book about the murders, a new State Police investigator has been assigned the case, and a new lead may develop additional suspects.

Christian Barth, a lawyer from Cherry Hill, N.J., has recently published a book, The Origins of Infamy, which describes how serial killer Ted Bundy may have committed the crime. The book, which is available on line at Amazon [http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Infamy-Christian-E-Barth/dp/1440138931], is also available at Sun Rose Books in Ocean City, where Barth will be selling and signing copies of his book on Wednesday, July 22, from 5 to 8 pm.

According to the publisher’s synopsis, “Based on a true story, The Origins of Infamy tells of Ted Bundy's alleged involvement in the murder of two coeds at the Jersey Shore on Memorial Day 1969.”

“Speaking to his biographer on the eve of his execution, Bundy is offered the chance of clemency in exchange for a confession to his involvement in the unsolved deaths. Before learning what transpired that weekend two decades earlier, journalist Richard Larsen, author of The Deliberate Stranger, is led on a psychological journey through the condemned murderer's past. From Bundy's own voice, Larsen learns the root causes motivating him to become America's most notorious serial killer. Beginning on Death Row at Florida State Penitentiary, then traveling back in time to Seattle, Philadelphia, New York City, and Ocean City, New Jersey, The Origins of Infamy vividly recreates a historical account of New Jersey's most famous cold case.”

Ocean City historian Fred Miller has said, "Barth's novel is a spellbinding reimagination of one of the more disturbing unsolved cold cases in local history. With hope, perhaps his work shall bring closure to this troubling mystery."
Drawing on details of the crime, Barth develops a plausible scenario as to what really happened.

But did Bundy do it?

The investigation never really tried to find out, as they never checked Bundy’s gas credit cards from when he was a student at Temple, or compared his fingerprints to the prints found on the car, or attended the Bund Conference at Quantico after he was executed to see if he could have been responsible for other crimes.

Now however, there is a new lead in the investigation, as a local insurance man has said that on the day before they were murdered the two girls were in a fender bender accident with two young men in a Volkswagen Van. The insurance man handled the claim and after the murders informed the New Jersey State Police about the incident, but was never contacted. Did that lead get lost in the shuffle of leads at the time of the murders?

With a new State Police investigator responsible for the case, both Bundy and the boys in the VW Van will probably be checked out, as well as other leads that failed to pan out before.

Two things are for certain however, whoever is responsible for the murders, committed other crimes, and may still be committing them, and the details make for stimulating reading on the beach this summer.

Bill Kelly can be reached at Billykelly3@yahoo.com

Bill Kelly One on One with Tom Doak

Interview with Tom Doak.

April 1, 2000

Bill Kelly: What sparked your interest in the game of golf, and when did you know that you wanted to be a golf course architect?

Tom Doak: I started playing golf when I was ten – my dad started taking us to his business conventions, which were often at golf resorts. Harbour Town, Pinehurst, and Pebble Beach were some of the first courses I saw, and they were so different than the little public courses near my home, that I became interested in why.

BK: You worked at St. Andrews. What did you learn there?

TD: I had a scholarship the year I graduated from Cornell to spend a year studying the golf courses in the British Isles, and spent the first two months of it in St. Andrews, caddying on the Old Course. I learned a ton there. The Old Course is the most interesting I’ve seen, probably because no one designed it.

You can’t just aim for the middle of the fairway – there’s a lot of short grass, but there are bunkers strewn all through it, so you have to learn the course and decide where it is best for you to aim. On some holes, your ideal spot will be totally different than your partner’s, who hits it 30 yards further.

BK: What is the basic difference between British Isle links courses and the basic American course?


TD: The main difference between British and American courses is attitude. British links are natural in origin, so their scruffiness is accepted as part of the game; if you get a bad bounce, you have to take it in stride. Most golf is played between friends or fellow club-members, in match play. Americans take their medal scores much more seriously – and, as a result, our golfers want their courses to be designed “fair” and maintained perfectly so they never get a bad break.

BK: When you came back you worked for Pete Dye; what did you learn then?

TD: I was lucky enough to hang around Pete Dye [note: not “Peter”; his actual name is Paul, but everyone calls him Pete] for three years after I got back from overseas, working on the construction of courses from Hilton Head to Palm Springs. Pete doesn’t just draw his courses and let someone else build them – he gets out there with the crew and redesigns them in the field. He spends a lot more time thinking about each contour and each bunker than most other architects do; and he can try our new ideas in the dirt, knowing that he can always soften them if he’s worried that they are too difficult. Most architects are afraid to take those sorts of chances, because they don’t know how their drawings will come out. That’s why Pete’s designs are more original, and more interesting.

BK: You seem to have some radical opinions on different aspects of the game. Could you comment briefly on what you think about a few of them?

TD: A lot of architects think I’m a radical, and yet Ben Crenshaw calls me a preservationist. Is it possible to be both?

I think it is, because golf architecture has changed so much over the past fifty years. It’s so competitive in the current boom, and it’s easy to move earth today, and the average client has so much ego tied up in his project, that it’s just very easy to get carried away with your design and bui9ld a course that’s too difficult and too expensive for the average golfer.

The old courses are much simpler – and they used what the land offered. That doesn’t mean they were easy; the great architects build challenge into their designs, because a course has to be challenging to be interesting.

But they did it by building three feet of slope into a green, not by building a three-acre lake in front of it.

BK: What makes a great course great?

TD: Great courses have a great variety of holes, a beautiful setting, and a style of their own.

BK: What about the restoration efforts on historic courses?

TD: I believe that the best courses of the master designers should be preserved; but I found out when traveling around this country that few are left intact. We have participated in the restoration of a few prominent courses, like Garden City and Pasatiempo. But restoration is a tricky thing – it’s still up to the present-day architect to determine what needs to be done, and different designers can produce very different results. I’m afraid the main reason for its current popularity is that it’s easier to sell the membershi8p on “restoration” than it would be to “change” their beloved old course.

BK: What is the role of the greens committee?

TD: The role of the greens committee should be to respond to the membership’s concerns about the course and to educate the membership on the design and maintenance of the course. Too many greens committee have it backwards – they’re so concerned with leaving the course better than they found it, that they try to tell the superintendent (and sometimes the architect) how to do their jobs.

BK: What is the biggest threat to the game of golf today?

TD: I think the biggest threat to the game is the rising cost of play. Of all the new courses being built, probably 90% are intended to be “high-end” courses with green fees between $50 and $100. That’s pretty steep for a beginning golfer, and it’s out of the question for juniors. When I started playing, it cost $1 per round for me to play our hometown municipal course, and $40 to play Pebble Beach. Most golf courses are too busy trying to make every last dollar to worry about who’s going to pay them ten years from now.

BK: Can groundskeepers succeed without using excessive chemicals?

TD: The best golf course superintendents keep their grass healthy. If they know how to do that, they won’t need much in the way of chemical input. The best managers will become ever more valuable as environmental regulations limit their alternatives.

BK: You call your company “Renaissance Golf.” Is there a real golf renaissance going on and what’s it all about, more money, or a return to the roots of the game?

TD: When I named the company ten years ago, I didn’t expect the boom that was coming. The name was more of a play on the “Renaissance man” ideal that we were involved in every aspect of the business, from designing new courses to restoring old ones, from project management to running the bulldozers, and even to golf writing and photography. There has unquestionably been a great boom of interest in golf course architecture in the past few years, and not just because there are so many Tour pros moonlighting as designers. There are a lot of talented people out there building courses in all sorts of different styles. If I’ve accomplished anything, it’s been to remind people that great courses are first and foremost a product of a great site. The most influential courses of this decade – Sand Hills and Bandon Dunes – weren’t built because of a market study; they were built because the land was ideally suited to golf, just like the original links of Scotland were.

BK: How did you hook up with the Atlantic City Country Club?

TD: We were one of several firms interviewed by Hilton after they acquired the course. I think we were on their list because of our reputation for restoration work in the New York area; but I think we got the job because we listened to what they wanted, and we understood that this was more than a simple restoration.

They wanted to make the course more secluded from the homes around it, but open up with the views to the marsh and to Atlantic City. They wanted to eliminate the road crossings in the old layout as much as possible, for privacy and safety concerns. And they wanted to preserve the history of a 100 year-old golf course, but do it while rebuilding the course from the ground up. Every sprinkler head, every bunker, pretty much every blade of grass out there today is new, in total. Atlantic City cost more to rebuild than any of the ten brand-new courses I’ve designed.

The challenge was in treading the line between restoration and new design. This project had elements of both, and the client wanted us to keep a perfect balance.

TD: The new course isn’t supposed to be a “Tom Doak design.” It borrows a lot of its style from past incarnations – from pictures taken in the 1920’s, when there was a lot of open sand between the holes down by the shore. Several great architects had worked there before us, from Willie Park to William Flynn, and we tried to preserve something from each of them – from Park’s small elevated greens to Flynn’s “white faced” bunkering.

BK: What attributes of the course were kept the same, preserved and/or restored?

TD: The general flow of the routing is the same, although many of the greens have been repositioned slightly. Four of the greens were rebuilt with the same contours as before – the third, eighth, and eleventh [which used to be #12]. And, as I described above, the seaside and “classic” character of the course has been preserved and expanded upon.

BK: What major changes were made and why?

TD: There are a host of changes: An irrigation pond had to be added on high ground, to prevent saltwater intrusion; it’s right up by the pro shop, at the foot of the first tee.

The second green was relocated north of the road, shortening that hole considerably, and the fifth hole was lengthened by moving the green back to where the old second green sat.

A large expanse of sand was restored between the third and fifth fairways.

The fourth green was relocated to bring the marsh into play on the right.

The sixth green was moved back about 40 yards, creating a very long three-shot par 5.

The seventh green was moved forward to make a very long par 4 into the wind.

The old eleventh hole was eliminated, and the holes on either side of it were lengthened. The tenth now plays as a dogleg par 5, with the green on the far side of the pond which used to be behind it; and the new eleventh is a very long par-4, with dramatic cross-bunkers about 100 yards short of the green.

The par-3 12th [formerly the 13th] green was elevated and the left side cut away, creating the deepest bunker on the course.

The par-5 13th was lengthened by moving the green back to the left.

The 14th and 15th are now new holes, built around a new section of tidal marsh which we created. This was our most significant change; previously, the 15th and 16th were both medium-short par-4s playing downwind, and neither made very dramatic use of the marsh. The new 14th starts from a tee out on a dramatic point in the marsh, heading to a narrow fairway which dog legs to the right – long hitters can try to cut the corner and drive the green, but it’s a big carry. Then, the par-3 15th plays back into the wind to a green on another point, with marsh around three sides.

The 16th and 17th holes are similar in length to what was there originally, but the greens on both holes are now guarded by large sand-dune features, to further the seaside character of the course.

The 18th has been reduced to a 400 yard par-4 by shifting the fairway to the right and shortening the tee. Before, most golfers were playing a half-blind lay-up second shot; now they’ll need a good drive to get to the corner, and then they’ll face a more challenging approach to the green with its great setting in front of the old clubhouse.

BK: What kinds of grass were used, and why?

TD: Tees, greens and fairways are all bentgrass; the mowed rough is bluegrass, but there are also several large areas of un-mowed fescue rough in the open spaces. A new bentgrass called A-4 has been used for the greens – it’s much finer and more dense than any variety I’ve seen before, and it was selected in hopes of keeping poa anue in check. They’ll have to keep the greens fast, or this grass will get too thick.

BK: What’s the new length, overall, and what’s the par for the course?

TD: You’ll have to check with the pro shop for the exact length; I think it’s slightly shorter than before, actually. But par has been reduced from 72 to 70 so it will play harder for low handicappers.

BK: What’s the new signature hole?

TD: The third hole was Leo Frazer’s favorite, and it might still be, since we preserved it intact. The short par-4 14th is the biggest change – the tee on the point is so dramatic, nobody would believe that it had always been there, overgrown with trees. It’s a gambler’s hole – you could make an eagle if you drive the green, but you could also lose a sleeve of balls trying to make the carry. But I think our biggest success is that we’ve made several holes more dramatic, so that different people will have different favorites. The seventh and eleventh are killer par-4’s: in the southeasterly summer winds, they’ll be two of the hardest holes in New Jersey. At the other end of the spectrum, the fourth, twelfth and seventeenth are all within the average golfer’s reach, but when you miss one of those greens, it’s going to get interesting.

BK: What are the short holes and the ones most likely for someone to ace?

TD: The fourth and twelfth are both under 150 yards – I think the fourth is a bit shoorter. But both are downwind, so you may need some help from the flagstick if you’re going to make a one. You might have more luck at the 17th – the cup will usually be hidden by the dune on the right, so your caddie might kick one in for you.

BK: Was the course designed for tournament play?

TD: We really didn’t think much about tournament play in the changes we made to the design. Obviously, it has been a popular sight for the U.S. Women’s Open, and the new course would be more challenging than ever for them – but I don’t know if that’s in the cards. The one drawback is the lack of acreage – for galleries, corporate tents, parking, and the circus that accompanies major tournaments nowadays.

BK: What are the prospects of encouraging players to walk the course and maintain the caddy tradition?

TD: Because play will be limited, we didn’t build any cart paths for the new course. Players will be able to take a caddie, or drive on the fairways if they choose a cart. The caddy experience is exactly the blend of personal service and golfing tradition which the new course is supposed to represent.

BK: In your book “Anatomy of a Golf Course” you mention “grow in” time as a factor. How long will the “grow in” time be at ACCC, and when do you anticipate the course being open for play?

TD: The eighteenth fairway was the last to be planted, just after Labor Day of 1999; but the last three or four holes were set back a bit by washouts at the start of the hurricane season. They’ll sill need a bit of growth this spring to mature. I’d be happy to play the course as it stands today, but the standard today is so much higher – everybody wants it to be perfect before they open the door. I suspect that will be sometime in May (2000).

BK: What were some of the special problems presented by the ACCC job and how did you overcome them?

TD: From a design standpoint, the challenge was keeping that balance between restoration and new design. Fortunately, my “signature” as a designer isn’t a particular style of bunkering or greens, but in making the most of the land with whatever style suites it best; so I inherited a lot from the old course, instead of butting heads with it.

From a logistical standpoint, it was just difficult to do that much construction on a tight acreage. The only place to stockpile topsoil or park equipment was on another fairway; it got to be like a big shell game. And the irrigation system is the most complicated I’ve ever seen, so after it was trenched in, we pretty much had to shape all the bunkers and greens over again to restore what we intended.

BK: What is the future of the clubhouse?

TD: As I understand it, the design of the clubhouse will be thoughtfully preserved; like the golf course, it will be refitted completely, but from the outside, it’s supposed to look the same as it does today.

BK: You are pretty young, and golf is pretty old. What do you see is the near future of the game, what role to you want to play, and what’s the future of the ACCC?

TD: As a student of architecture, I’ve seen first-hand how much the game has changed over the past 100 years, by seeing how courses have evolved. Every new generation of golf courses has been longer and harder than the last, to preserve the challenge of the game in response to improvements in equipment, in course conditioning, and in the general level of play.

The problem is, all of our best old courses are on limited acreage, and they were lengthened as much as they could be a generation ago. So we have to de-emphasize length as the benchmark of design, and re-emphasize all the other attributes of classic design – bunkers which force the golfer to choose his line of play carefully, greens with enough character to make the short game as challenging as the long game, and maximizing the natural beauty and vistas of each property.

We also have to recognize that the best players in the world will continue to improve, and if we don’t want the great courses of the past to become obsolete for championship play, sooner or later we will have to change the specifications of the golf ball to counteract all the other advances in golfing equipment.

Thirty or forty years down the road, Atlantic City Country Club will need work again, to upgrade its irrigation system if nothing else. But if my design work and my writings have made an impact, I hope that this course and many others like it will still be appreciated for what they are, a test of golf that is far more than a long-driving contest.

Interview with Gay Talese

 

Gay Talese Interview – August 1986

Thy Neighbor’s Life
From Books to Blue Laws
Gay Talese Explains It All

By William Kelly

Gay Talese is right at home in Ocean City. He’s just finished his last set of tennis for the day and now – to relax awhile – sits back in a white wicker coach on the big, breezy porch of his traditional Jersey Shore, cedar-shingle house.

Talese is the author of a half-dozen books, the last three of which were best sellers. He’s considered by some to be the archetypical “new journalist,” along with writers Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson.

Born in Ocean City, New Jersey in 1932, Talese started writing sports stories while still in high school. He later attended the University of Alabama, which he graduated from in 1953, then served two years in the Army before getting a job as a reporter for the New York Times.

He threw off the veil of objectivity journalism demanded in the Kingdom and the Power, exposed the real-life adventures of a Mafia don before The Godfather, and went on to study the sexual habits of Americans long before President Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Pornography made the subject newsworthy.

Now, after spending four years researching his family roots from Ocean City to Italy, Talese recently retired to his study once again for the arduous task of writing a new book. The first installment of this latest effort appears in the August issue of Esquire magazine.

After working at the typewriter every morning, Talese plays tennis for a few hours, then works some more. His wife, Nan, is a publisher in Boston. His daughters live out of town – one in New York City and the other in Paris. So, the writer has the house to himself a lot these days.

Dressed neat but casual, Talese takes time from his busy schedule to answer some questions about his life, Ocean City, the blue laws, the art of writing, his new book and why he’s returned home to write it.

William Kelly: The first installment of your new book appears in Esquire this month. Is it finished or is it still a work in progress?

Gay Talese: It’s still in progress, and will be in progress for probably another six months. But, the other installments will be published in Esquire’s next few issues.

WK: Does it have a title?

GT: No, the title of a book is the last thing you do. It’s the easy part.

WK: You have been researching and writing the book for the past four or five years?

GT: Yes. That’s not a long time for me to be working on a book. “They Neighbor’s Wife” took eight years. “The Kingdom and the Power,” my first book of any length took five years. “Honor Thy Father” took four. I do a lot of research, and the writing part is very difficult.

WK: In several of your books you sign off with the dateline, “Ocean City.” Do you do a lot of writing here?

GT: I think I’ve written parts of every book I’ve ever done right here in this very house. The first book I did on New York was done here. I think I usually start books here in the spring.

WK: You begin the first installment of the new book in Ocean City. Why?

GT: I ended my last boo, “They Neighbor’s Wife,” at the Mays Landing nudist camp with people on a boat from Ocean City looking through binoculars at the nudist camp, where I am. This book begins with me near the water, as a child, and picks up pretty much where the last one left off, except it’s more personal than the others, exploring the world that produced me, rather than the world outside of me. It’s something different. But every one of the books I’ve done is connected; every one of the books has something to do with me personally.

The New York Times book is about the only time I’ve had a job – it’s the story of my employment there. “Honor They Father” is the study of an archetypical American embarrassment, the Mafia. Italian-Americans from Mario Cuomo to Frank Sinatra to Lee Iacocca are, and have always been, particularly sensitive to that.

“Thy Neighbor’s Wife” explores the very rigid morality of my past – my family past, my Ocean City past, and exploring that which I am curious about.

WK: Did you get a lot of flack from your neighbors about that book?

GT: I got a lot of flack from every book, especially the last three best sellers in a row. Every one of them has caused me a lot of flack.

“The Kingdom and the Power,” for example, was attacked for exposing the New York Times, for exposing journalism as not being objective, but very subjective, very personal. Anyone who is an editor, publisher or reporter brings his own personal viewpoints into the way he reports, edits, what he chooses to report, what he chooses not to publish, how much space they give to something. That’s what “The Kingdom and the Power” is all about. It was very controversial when it came out but, of course, it was reviewed by newspapers.

My next book, “Honor Thy Father,” was attacked because they said I was glamorizing gangsters, getting too close to the Mafia. That’s a fair criticism because I was close to them. I was living with them.

“Thy Neighbor’s Wife” was criticized on many levels – for being scandalous and for humanizing merchants of sexual freedom, as in books, films and magazines.

But, what I like to do in my work, and I’m doing it now, too, is to explore what I think is relevant but hasn’t been explored fully before. I think of myself as a sort of social historian who deals with the history that historians and society have ignored or overlooked. I deal with people who are in the shadows, who are obscure.

There’s a scene in what I am working on now, during World War II, of myself helping my father in a tailor shop, when clothes hangers were impossible to get because of rationing. So now, I’m doing a history of clothes hangers. It’ll only be about a sentence in the book, maybe two, but I’m curious to find out who invented the first coat hanger. You won’t find it in the encyclopedia, and I’ve been calling all over the country to find out. And what’s it worth? But, it’s nice to try to get it right.

WK: Wouldn’t it be safer to write fiction?

GT: It would be safer to write fiction, in a way, but it wouldn’t be so adventuresome. You can get close to the truth – not that anybody can get to the truth. You see whatever your eyes allow you to see, and sometimes we have flawed vision. But, I’ve always been interested in exploring the world of literary realism. I think the reality of people’s lives is astounding, it’s fantastic, it’s unbelievable. I try to get close enough to people’s lives to describe them with certain fullness. It sounds like fiction, but it isn’t.

WK: You read a lot of fiction though?

GT: Yes. My wife, Nan, is publishing the book I’m reading right now, “The Prince of Tides,” by Pat Conroy.

WK: Is that to pick up on certain techniques you can use?

GT: No, it’s not the techniques, it’s just good writing. I read fiction just to get into the mood of the writing, because the best writing is done by fiction writers. They don’t let facts get into the way. What I try to do is to write well, and not let the facts get in the way, either. But I also want to be right, and accurate. That’s why I go through such detail.

WK: You read “Roots” by Alex Haley before starting your current research?

GT: “Roots” was a great idea, and the country was swept up by it. But my taste runs more along the lines of John Updike’s books. They have a great sense of history in the period after World War II – the time in which I’m alive.

WK: Was Ocean City a dreary place in the winter, when you lived here fulltime?

GT: Living in Ocean City was dreary, particularly in the past. Now, it’s not as lonely, there’s more people here.

I’m living in both Ocean City and New York now, but I’m not only here in the summertime. I come here in the winter a lot. I’m not a gambler, but I’m not one to say casinos did nothing for Atlantic City.

One thing they did is, they’ve made it easier to get from Ocean City to New York. It’s only 48 minutes by helicopter, so now I go back and forth a lot. I like to come down here in the winter. It’s dreary in a way, but it contrasts beautifully with New York, and what the city represents.

I have a big house in the center of New York City, surrounded by glamour, glitz, tension, terrorism, and the symbols of opulence – with limousines going around the block. It’s middle Manhattan. It’s very exciting to live in such an ambiance, but I find getting away from the place very beneficial.

Ocean City – its’ closer to what America is, right here. I think by keeping in touch with Ocean City, as I have throughout my life, and recognizing my roots here, I am more able to deal with the reality of other people’s lives. More so, than if I were just gauging my life, through New York, which doesn’t represent anything except New York. It’s a nice balance.

Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go home again” – he was half right. I’ve gone home again. I never left in a sense, though I’ve been all over the world.

WK: You’ve helped raise the level of money that a freelance writer can get for quality work. Do you feel you’ve brought it into the same realm as superstar athletes and network anchors?

GT: Well, you know writers, by and large, don’t make enough money considering the amount of difficulty there is in doing what they do.

I make a lot of money, that’s true enough, but I take an awful lot of time to do a book. Five or six years of my life somehow disappears almost every time.

WK: Are you working under any deadline pressure now?

GT: Oh, I have deadline pressure, but I think there’s a greater pressure, the pressure to do your work well. My last book was three or four years late.

WK: You were an average student who succeeded. What advice do you have for struggling students and journalists?

GT: I think it’s important for people who are struggling as students to realize whatever grade they are given in their schoolwork is not a continuing evaluation of their own worth as a person. I believe the educational system, in giving a grade to a student, is really giving grades for conformity.

Too often, an “A” student is one who conforms, memorizing a textbook or a lecture, and forgetting to incorporate the thought behind it into their own mind. A person who isn’t an excellent student could still be an explorer, a person who is learning what is not part of the curriculum. Who is growing, but not in the area limited to student activities.

As for writers, a writer has to be an explorer. You can’t teach writing in an English class because everyone has a different approach to writing. The only thing writers have in common is their curiosity. You can’t teach curiosity, people either are curious or they’re not. A writer must also have the patience to pursue the lives of other people.

WK: Let’s talk about Ocean City.

GT: I’m amazed at what’s going on. On the surface people think Ocean City is a quiet, plain, predictable community of people that do not have bizarre edges, but they do. Mayor Roy Gillian is a terrific character because he’s exposing the hypocrisy of the town.

Look at the drama on the boardwalk. You have the sense of the Sabbath, of going back to the Old Testament – Thou Shalt Not Do Certain Things On Sunday because it’s a day of rest, because God willed it.

One Sunday, I was on the boardwalk when the Ferris wheel lights were out, the ride was quiet, the electricity turned off. That’s the will of the administration, but Gillian is raising the issue of why are we closing this, and this, and this and not this and this. Why are the tennis courts closed? They’re not doing it now, but they closed them a couple of weeks ago.

I play tennis, and it certainly was not in my best interest to have them closed. On the one hand, I’m irritated, but on the other, I’m amused. I think it’s terrific Gillian is pointing fingers at the pious people around here.

Personally, I’m glad there is a blue law in this town. I don’t want bars. I don’t want to have “Joe’s Grill” across the street, and teenagers keeping me awake until five in the morning. I don’t mind them having bars in Somers Point, where they can stay up ‘till seven in the morning if they want to, and throw Molotov cocktails at someone else. Whatever they do over there is all right, but I don’t want to hear it in Ocean City.

Ever since the town was founded by the Lake Brothers, we in Ocean City have been re-examining the cravings of the flesh balanced against the will of the spirit.

WK: What else?

GT: I regret there’s not more restoration in Ocean City, so that it can capture the character Cape May has. Cape May is nice, but a little too far south or I’d spend more time there. Ocean City and Cape May were quite alike at one time, in the 1800s and early 1900s. I don’t know when Ocean City started to change while Cape May stayed pretty much the same as it was.

Ocean City has allowed some sloppy architecture to get mixed up with the Victorian qualities of the town. All across America we’ve seen the rise of the junk culture – shopping malls, where you can’t tell if you’re in San Jose, California or Tombstone, Arizona.

WK: Do you go to the beach?

GT: Infrequently. I go a few times a year, when my wife is down, and I want to read. I spend my days mostly on the tennis court, which is where I was today, where I was yesterday, and where I will be tomorrow.

WK: Do you set any particular time of the day to write?

GT: I work from about 8:30 a.m. ‘till about 1 o’clock, then I go back around 6 p.m. and work ‘till 8:30 p.m. I go out about 9, and get home around 12, even if I go out to dinner, whether I’m here or in New York. I drink wine, have a martini before dinner, but I don’t sit at the bar and listen to the piano player until 2 in the morning and get bombed. That’s not the way to get work done.

On the other hand, I’m not a rigid abstainer in any sense of the word. I love to eat and relax, but during the daytime, I don’t even have a beer for lunch. I usually smoke cigarettes when I’m working, and a cigar in the evening.

WK: As one who has dug into his roots, what have you found?

GT: Not just one thing. There is the recognition that you don’t have to take a boat to China. It’s very nice to have been to the Orient, and I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe these past few years. But, with that perspective, it’s nice to come back to a relatively tranquil town like Ocean City and find, easily, there is as much worth exploring here as there is in some of the great cities of the world.

Gay Talese Wins Polk Award

New York (AP) Author Gay Talese, who influenced a generation of writers with books such as "Thy Neighbor's Wife" and "Honor Thy Father," was named the winner of a George Polk Award for career achievement.

Other winners of the 2008 Polk Awards include New York Times reporters Barry Bearak and Celia Dugger, who risked their lives exposing violence in Zimbabwe, and Paul Salopek of the Chicago Tribune, who reported on pre-emptive U.S. tactics in combating terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

The Polk Awards, presented by Long Island University, are considered among the top prizes in U.S. journalism. They were created in 1949 in honor of CBS reporter George W. Polk, who was killed while covering the Greek civil war, and will be awarded at an April 16 luncheon oin Manhattan. The awards will be announced today. (Tuesday, February 17, 2009).

More to come on this


Technology killing journalism, says American author

Nonfiction author Gay Talese (Mainichi)American author Gay Talese has gained prominence throughout his journalistic writing career, winning the George Polk Career Award in 2008. In a recent interview with the Mainichi, Talese highlighted the importance of on-the-street reporting and the threat to journalism posed by technology.

Talese, who became a full-time reporter for the New York Times in the 1950s, agrees that the newspaper industry is facing difficulties as the skills of journalists decline.

"It started with technology," he says. "Technology is killing journalism. Journalism is not supposed to be technology. Journalism is supposed to be like a foot soldier. You're supposed to do it yourself. You're supposed to walk and talk to people, see faces, and examine these people who are giving you information.

"The journalists now -- they don't go outside, they stay inside. They look at a laptop ... They are living behind the laptop. "

Talese, who says he has an active social life, going out to restaurants every night, avoids certain forms of technology in journalism himself, saying he never uses the Internet.

"I type on the computer. That's it. I don't have a cell phone, I don't e-mail."

He says big newspapers make the mistake of competing with television or the Internet, wanting to be the first.

"The technology is the real toxic agent right now," he says. "Newspapers had the world to themselves as long as they did a good job. When you sell a newspaper, it should be selling the truth as best you can find the truth. You should be selling the honor, you should be selling integrity. You are not supposed to be selling being the first."

Talese, 77, says the worst journalism in his life came after 2001 -- the year of the World Trade Center attacks.

"Look at the way the government corrupted the newspapers in the Iraq War ... Three-hundred-thousand troops died in this war. Why? Because the newspapers have been lying to the public, lying to the politicians, and politicians lied, the president lied. The vice president lied.

"The problem was the journalists failed in Washington to challenge the government and these unacknowledged sources, these private sources, in the paper every day, these lies. The worst journalism in my lifetime was after 2001."

Talese says he writes real stories, using real names.

"I never change names. I put everybody's name in the book, even if it's a sex book. Everybody has a real name. It's very difficult to do that. That's why it takes me so long to get the people to trust me, to allow me, to put a real name in a book."

Talese's writings include "The Bridge," a book published in the 1960s about the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. He says that in 2005 and 2006 when he went back to interview the men who worked on the bridge, they told him they weren't surprised about what happened to the World Trade Center.

"They told me the engineers were terrible. The design was terrible. They said if the two terrorist planes had hit the Empire State Building, the building wouldn't be knocked down. If those planes hit the Verrazono Bridge, the planes would break up and nothing would happen because it's so strong."

Looking back on recent politics, Talese criticizes the previous administration of George W. Bush for trying to force its way upon the world.

"It didn't listen to other people. It believed that it had a right to impose upon other people what the American government thought was the best for other people. Absolutely wrong," he says. "I say the United States is filled with human rights violations -- the whole government -- I say it should be up for war crimes. The President, the Vice President, Secretary of Defense (Donald) Rumsfeld, some of the members of Cabinet, who killed all those people in Iraq. We just think about 3,000 plus Americans. But there are triple that amount of Iraqis, ordinary people, killed."

But Talese holds hope that the United States will be able to prove itself to the world in the future.

"I'm thrilled that Barack Obama is the president. I am very hopeful that America will get the second chance to the world to prove its democracy, fair-minded ... I think there is hope." (Interviewed by Takayasu Ogura, New York Bureau, Mainichi Shimbun)

(Mainichi Japan) April 6, 2009