King James to the End

In the wacky world of show biz, the week begins on Wednesday when Variety hits the newsstands. Invariably it hits hard, and not just because the 60-c- tabloid sometimes carries more than 300 pages. Far superior to the average trade paper, Variety crams its columns with all the news and minutiae of the entertainment industry: exposes, grosses, mergers, failures, successes, plans, postscripts, cast additions, reviews, trends.

For stars and extras, angels and hellions, hookers and authors, Variety is holy writ, even if its writing often plays havoc with the English language. A lead story last week about efforts to clean up Times Square, also known as Broadway, carried this one-sentence socko para: "Specifically, Times Square's polyglot floating population, the porno pix and the massage parlors remain a hard-core hard-nose hurdle."

The story carried the byline of Abel Green, Variety's editor for the past 40 years and the man most responsible for its whammo style and success. If Variety is the bible of show business with a slanguage all its own. Green, to mix up a Variety-style metaphor, was its King James. Virtually half the industry's vocabulary was respelled under his jocular hand. Samples: webs (TV networks), fest (festival), biopic (filmed biography), exex (executives), soap scripter (writer of soap operas). His most quoted headline was penned early on in his career: STICKS NIX HICK PIX.

Green bore a bulky resemblance to George S. Kaufman, and he could be almost as funny, talking in an original staccato shorthand. Broadway legend has it that when he wanted a friend to give him a phone call, he would say: "Gimme a quick Ameche one of these days," referring to Don Ameche's bio-pic of Alexander Graham Bell. Canceling a meeting: "Can't meet you today --unforch."

Green was a blunt, unpretentious man. Sime Silverman, who founded the paper in 1905, hired Green in 1918; in 1933 Green began to edit the paper, was given a battered desk close to the window of Variety's office just off Manhattan's Times Square and never changed it. He was rarely without the bow tie and sleeve garters he affected to look like Sime. He seemed to know every entertainer, the famous and freakish alike. A walk down the street invariably involved dozens of exchanged greetings and many an impromptu conference. He found time to coauthor, with Comedian Joe Laurie Jr., Show Biz: From Vaude to Video, an encyclopedic history of the business. He traveled constantly and kept up with entertainers all over the world. But he could not accept some of the changes he saw. The new pornography appalled him.

Early this year, in a letter to a publisher, Green distilled some of his personal philosophy: "If you like what you're doing," he wrote, "and so long as you can physically and mentally function, my credo long has been that I'd rather wear out than rust out." Last week, shortly after writing his Page One story, Abel Green died of a heart attack at 72--doing what he liked.

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