October 30, 2003

There Are Times We Don't Need to Speak

he Oral History of America Project has set up a booth in Grand Central Terminal where people can tell their life stories without other people suddenly deciding they need to freshen their drinks. Though STUDS TERKEL is not part of the project, at the kickoff of the project last week, Mr. Terkel, who is 91, was invited as a guest interviewer.

We were not lucky enough to see the author of "Working" and "The Good War: An Oral History of World War II" in action, but we did catch up with him at the cocktail party for the event at MICHAEL JORDAN's restaurant in the terminal.

Mr. Terkel was sitting in front of a martini. He was wearing a red-checkered shirt and a brown coat and, crumpled on his head, a despondent wad of felt that kept falling off.

When we introduced ourselves, he laughed. "You know I can't hear a word you're saying," he said.

Yes, as he himself would cheerfully note later, Mr. Terkel is deaf. Not entirely deaf, but close enough, we soon realized.

He could do the showcase interviews in the Grand Central booth, a publicist explained later, because in an enclosed place with minimal background noise, Mr. Terkel could turn up his hearing aid.

At a cocktail party, however, this was out of the question.

But Mr. Terkel is not a fellow who needs a whole lot of prompting. When he asked our Boldface reporter to write down his name and place of origin and saw it was Alabama, he was off and running.

"You should have been there that night," he began, "Selma to Montgomery, March '65. The end of it. And everybody was there. E. D. NIXON and ROSA PARKS and C. VANN WOODWARD. And they're all there.

And MYLES HORTON — ever heard of Myles Horton?"

Interruption was futile and sitting across from someone who's talking history first person, what for?

There were stories about the civil rights activists MARY McLEOD BETHUNE and VIRGINIA DURR, the farm worker organizers JESSIE DE LA CRUZ and CESAR CHAVEZ. Still, when Mr. Terkel mentioned that he was thinking of doing a book on music we had to write a question in our notebook:

You like opera?

A big, barroom kind of a laugh from Mr. Terkel, who also wrote a book called "Hard Times," and still finds the workings of the world hilarious.

"See, the irony of it is, I'm deaf! When there's sounds in the background, I hear nothing! You ever hear of TITO GOBBI? Well, he's an opera singer. Or GERAINT EVANS or JON VICKERS?"

"Tito Gobbi was known as SCARPIA — he was the villain in `TOSCA' — but he was also known for his role in a VERDI opera, `BOCCANEGRA.' He was a great man of peace . . ."

Mr. Terkel runs through the book he has in his mind: jazz, folk, the young BOB DYLAN, the legacy of PETE SEEGER; how his stepmother, RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER, was one of the great composers of our time, and how they meant to bring music to the countryside.

"Pete was a baby in the buggy, he said, when he discovered the people had music of their own," Mr. Terkel said. "So it's quite a story, so it'll be all that stuff. It's a horsing around thing. Oh, I'm way early on it. I've got a long way to go. I may not finish it."

He pauses. "Well, that's just it! Right now I'm deaf."

The Phonophobia Specialists Are on the Big Island

We're feeling worse and worse that that reality show with DAVID GEST and LIZA MINNELLI never happened. To be with Liza, even with one crummy hand-held camera, when she heard that her husband had said in court papers that when they met she was "overweight" and "alcoholic" and her career "had been eclipsed" — that would have been television.

Yesterday, the love story continued.

Lawyers for Mr. Gest, who was hit by a divorce suit by Ms. Minnelli last week, filed their own divorce suit in Manhattan Supreme Court late yesterday afternoon.

The suit, according to Mr. Gest's attorney, RAOUL FELDER, who represented RUDOLPH GIULIANI in his divorce, cites cruel and inhuman treatment.

Mr. Gest, of course, had filed a $10 million lawsuit against Ms. Minnelli that claimed she had pummeled him so soundly about the head that he now has to take "11 prescription medications per day, some more than once."

"Severe unrelenting headaches; scalp tenderness; insomnia" as well as "phonophobia" — a condition we've had from time to time ourselves — was also cited.

Asked where his client was these days, Mr. Felder said, "recuperating in Honolulu."

   with Campbell Robertson