REX REED: THE HAZEL-EYED HATCHET MAN

I ADORE him," declares Melina Mercouri. "He knows how to cry." Says Angela Lansbury: "He has antennae most people haven't even heard of." Others are more to the point. "If I had an affair with Jack the Ripper," sighs Valley of the Dolls Novelist Jacqueline Susann, "the offspring would be Rex Reed."

Rex Reed? Yes indeed. The young man who wrote all those scandalous things in Esquire, the New York Times and elsewhere about Ava Gardner, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, Sandy Dennis and Lester Maddox is the Now Kid, the jet set's latest instant celebrity --seen at the poshest places, invited to the nicest parties, cajoled by the sweetest people.

Rex `a la Mode. At 28, Reed is both the most entertaining new journalist in America since Tom Wolfe and the most unprincipled knave to turn name dropping and voyeurism into a joyous, journalistic living. His detractors appear to be in the minority, however, and to the 30,000 readers who have thus far bought his recent book, Do You Sleep in the Nude?, he is a fascinating gossip who has recast the interview format in his own bitchy image. Son of a Texas oil-company supervisor, Reed spent his formative years in the South traveling from oil boom to oil boom (13 schools, straight A's, a degree in journalism from Louisiana State). He dabbled in acting before he broke into print three years ago with a brace of unsolicited interviews in the New York Times and the late Herald Tribune's New York Magazine. Now the assignments threaten to inundate him: last week a treatment of Jean Seberg in the Times; next month interviews with Jane Wyman, Katharine Ross, Harper's Bazaar Editor China Machado; a reminiscence on Carson McCullers (an old personal friend); a film for Melina Mercouri (a new personal friend); reviews and TV appearances; and, on the side, two novels abuilding. Thus it was only by dint of diligent spadework and interminable waiting that TIME Reporter Carey Winfrey cornered the famed interviewer for the following exchange `a la mode du Rex:

SCENE: Eleven a.m. in front of one of those ultrachic, applesauce-green beach houses that line the Pacific Coast Highway at Malibu. The sun is so bright that I'm convinced it's bleaching the blue right out of the new pullover I'd bought only that morning to distract California eyes from a bad case of East Coast pallor.

I'm in no mood for broken doorbells and locked gates, having suffered through the last hour or more guarding the only pay phone within miles at the Malibu sheriff's office, trying vainly to break the Rex Reed busy-signal barrier. Suddenly, like Ray Bolger bouncing onstage for a final bow, he is there before me, has waved hello, left three sentences hanging on the air like a vapor trail from a Boeing 707, and is breezing back inside before I even hear him : "It's-just-frantic-around-here-I've-been -on -the -phone - all-morning--now -I'm-talking-to-Melina-Mercouri."

I dodge the swinging gate, and catch up just in time to see him put the dangling receiver to his ear.

"So Melina, my love, when can I see you?" he intones. We're off and running, as we say.

Texas in the Vowels. He is standing at the phone, wearing a light blue knit T shirt over white dungarees, wool athletic socks and brown loafers. He is smoking a True cigarette in what appears to be an ivory holder but which is actually something called an Aquafilter.

"True cigarettes in an Aquafilter. You wouldn't say I'm anxiety-ridden, would you?" he asks. His voice, as he talks to Mercouri, is soft and slightly nasal, with more than a trace of Texas in the vowels. Most of the time, his face is serious, soft, and his features are slightly edematous, particularly his nose, which looks as if it has been puttied in place. His hair and eyebrows are lush as a Labrador's, and his eyes seem artificially limpid. During most of the interview, he continually purses his lips, twisting them into a kind of paralytic grimace. When he does relax them, they are cherry-red and pouty. He looks as though he could be blown over by an air conditioner set at low.

Off the phone at last: "Melina Mercouri--she's just the sun and the moon all wrapped up in one epidermis!" Next, the tour of his beach house: "It's not elegant, but it's kind of fun. Did you see what it is? Did you notice? Come here, I'll show you. It's a London bus! A real one. See, this is where the people get on. And the conductor stood here, and the straps the people hang on to went here, and this is where the seats went and ..."

We sit down, he at the round dining-room table that serves as his desk, now covered with press releases and notebooks. Pouring a soft drink for himself, he doesn't wait for a question. As an interviewer's interviewer, he knows what I'm looking for.

"I don't like breakfast-type foods. I usually just have a hamburger and a Dr. Pepper. I'm really in my element out here with Dr. Pepper. You can't get them anywhere in New York, and all the Southerners there search for it. It's in our bloodstream. The only place I could get it was in Angela Lansbury's dressing room. You must talk to Angela about me. Tomorrow I've arranged for you to come with me when I see Jackie Susann and Denise Minnelli and Melina Mercouri ..."

Another Dear Friend. In the next three hours, over countless cups of coffee, an icebox of Dr. Pepper, turkey sandwiches, sunbathing (his), two swims (mine) and about 20 phone calls (all his), Rex Reed dropped, hurled, rolled, and let fall enough capital-N Names to fill a McCarthy endorsement. "... I'm using Raquel Welch's car right now. The Camaro parked outside. She sent it over . . . Look, here's a letter from Bette Davis. When I did my piece on her, I did a naughty, naughty thing--I printed her address. Listen to what she says: 'Here's my new phone number. But don't print it!' Isn't that a riot?

. . Carol Burnett lives right down the beach. And Lana Turner . . . Last week

I was at a great beach party Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman had right on the beach . . . Another dear friend of mine is Tallulah Bankhead . . . Last week I had invitations to parties from Katharine Hepburn and Mae West . . . Marlene Dietrich calls me up all the time and sends me cold remedies ..."

The Other Side. Somewhere between Bette Davis and Lana Turner, we have moved outside to a terrace overlooking a reach of the Pacific Ocean. Offshore, four young men bestride their surfboards, eyes riveted on the horizon, looking for all the world like guards against an invading fleet of Chinese gunboats. Rex now lies supine on a chaise longue, and somewhere I have managed to ask a question: How does it feel to be on the other side of the interviewer's pencil?

"Oh, I'm used to it. I've had plenty of practice. Like 22 appearances on radio and television in one week. Sometimes it's really funny when people start interviewing. I remember one time Les Crane did an interview on the radio, and he started by saying 'Here, Rex. Here, Rex; here, boy.' And I said, 'Is that the way you introduce Rex Harrison if you're lucky enough to get him?' And there were no more digs."

"But I don't like most of the things that have been written about me. Most of the things make me sound like a young, pompous Public Enemy Number One who does nothing but groove around with the jet set. And that's not what I'm really like at all. You know, I'm beginning to see why some of the people I talk to have anxieties. Being interviewed is a very artificial thing. You never really know what the attitude of the interviewer is, why he's asking a particular question."

Waiting for Hitler. My particular question at that moment concerns the miniature gold whistle Reed wears around his neck. He keeps tugging at it. "It's from Tiffany's," he replies. "Fourteen-karat. From Tiffany's. It's just a gift from a young lady. Nobody famous."

He seems disappointed, and I can't tell if it is because of the question I asked or because nobody famous had given him the 14-karat gold whistle from Tiffany's. So I ask him about his work habits. At once he is cheered.

"I'm so undisciplined it's a miracle I ever get anything done. I'm a slow writer. I hate deadlines. All my writing is done at night, usually after midnight. I take copious notes, even though I remember everything. During an interview I'm writing all the time--just write, write, write--everything. I've only used a tape recorder once. That was on the Peter Fonda piece. I felt I just had to--Peter has his own vocabulary, his own way of saying things. Unfortunately, all of the really great people to interview are dead--Hitler, that would be a great interview. And oh, let's see. Lizzie Borden. Marie Antoinette. Beethoven. Rimbaud. Robespierre.

"It's much easier to do a piece on somebody you've never met before and you'll never see again. It's hardest when it's somebody you like. Valentines are the hardest things in the world to write."

Non-Valentines. About the non-Valentine pieces. Any repercussions?

"Surprisingly few. Oh, some things backfire. Like reviews. I feel in a review I have a right to be as brutal as I want to, especially with television because it's such a crappy medium. So I did a review of a Nancy Sinatra television special and I said no matter how much of her father's money she spends on herself she still looks like a pizza waitress. Well, Nancy Sinatra has a lot of friends out here. I've gotten some nasty phone calls and a few letters.

"Yeah, little things keep cropping back. Like an onion, you know, two days later. Warren Beatty. I shouldn't tell you this but I will--Warren Beatty had his lawyers draft a letter to Esquire, not threatening libel or anything, but asking for a correction. It had eleven points--eleven things he objected to. But the funny part is they were all stupid things, like he didn't really eat as many hot dogs as I said he did."

I ask him if he minds his reputation as the nation's sharpest hatchet man. "In four out of five pieces," he answers, "I bend over backwards to be nice to the subject. But life just isn't apple pie and Mother's Day seven days a week, and if you're going to write something that isn't going to be thrown out with, the coffee grounds, you have to tell it like it is. Look, I'm a very people-oriented person. I grew up without any unhappiness. And I just love people. But if some jackass picks his nose, I'm going to write it."

Fan Letters. Then he's up off the chaise and inside the house. In another moment he's joined me at the umbrella-covered picnic table, a thick folder filled with newspaper clippings in his hand.

"Did you see this in yesterday's L.A. Times? It's Rex Reed talking about women. Which, quite surprisingly, I find I'm a sudden authority on--according to some people." He shows me the clipping, which contains the information that "his mere presence in an Edwardian coat and ruffled Palacio shirt" assures "A" status to any party. And just what is a Palacio shirt? "It's a store in New York," he informs me. "Actually I have most of my shirts made at Fisher's, in London."

He thumbs through the folder and suddenly suggests: "This might be fun--nobody's done this. You could just do a paragraph on what this week's mail has brought."

He begins:

"Fan letter from Harold Arlen. Fan letter from Bette Davis. Fan letter from Carol Burnett. Fan letter from Henry Mancini. Just listen to what he says: 'You not only write the melody line but also the second, third and fourth harmony parts.' Isn't that wonderful?

"Offer for $25,000 for a book on Peter Fonda. That's $25,000 advance. Offer to do a syndicated column for Newsday--here and abroad. A funny letter from a girl who says she just read the Peter Fonda one and who is Holden Caulfield? Is it somebody she should know?

"An invitation to an all-day luau with David Susskind in Pound Ridge, New York. Five letters this week from personal managers wanting to manage my career. Three marriage proposals. Plus about 20 invitations to parties."

After the Luau. The interview has ended, and as I gather up my notes, Reed is standing at the kitchen sink blowing water out of his Aquafilter like a kid trying to blow bubbles. We shake hands goodbye and he says, "I just know you're going to make me sound like a pompous ass."

We'll see, I say. And driving back to my hotel, I wonder. Hours later I am leafing through his book, checking facts and idly perusing when, near the end of his Warren Beatty piece, I come across this paragraph: "Maybe I wasn't being fair. So what if Warren Beatty acts like a jerk? When he's far from the maddening Hollywood hysteria, shut off from the beach-blonde starlets busily buying baby sharks for their swimming pools, out of touch with phonies filling his head with how they're spending $3,900 on totem poles for their front yards featuring hand-carved faces of all the members of their families-away from all the silliness, Warren seems like a nice guy."

I thought about that. And you know, when the invitations to all-day luaus at the David Susskinds' in Pound Ridge, New York, are locked away in the cupboard, when Melina Mercouri isn't tousling his hair and looking at him like he's a lamb sandwich and she hasn't eaten all day, when Jacqueline Susann isn't sitting there stroking his ego and feeding him Nikoban lozenges, Rex really isn't all that bad either.

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