Excerpts from the Variety reporters’ hit columns
by ARMY ARCHERD
Jan. 9, 1959 | View PDF
GOOD MORNING: Liz Taylor and Eddie Fisher were very much in L.A. last night, champagne-toasting each other at Chasen’s, when the Mirror-News headlined she was a patient at Menninger’s clinic in Topeka. Miss T’s comment on the false yarn: “THIS I’m not going to take sitting down. Watch out!”
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“Old Variety” mugs, those who worked for Variety / Daily Variety prior to the 1988 sale and to whom this website is dedicated, usually don’t turn up as film festival heads.
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by MORRIE GELMAN
Along with Marie Silverman, I sat opposite Army Archerd in an out-of-the-way office space in the L.A. office of Variety for several years in the late 1980s. I watched him at work every day. Given a sort of Rorschach test seeking a word association with Army, I’d immediately say, “Reporter!” The exclamation point really should be an extraordinary point. From 10 to 6 most weekdays I watched Army report ceaselessly, indefatigably.
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By MIKE MALAK
Army was one of the meekest, quietest staffers at the Daily. When he would take his copy into Tom, something he did personally unlike most other writers he would stand still, never sitting, while Tom read and edited his copy though the edits were more in the nature of paragraphing and transpositions. I never saw Tom get out a heavy pencil when he read Army’s work. Tom would nod to him and Army would take the copy back to deliver it to the City Desk which would send it for typesetting, in the latter days at the in-house Photographics Unit headed by Steve Smith formerly of California Offset Printing.
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By FRANK SEGERS and HY HOLLINGER
Army Archerd, that assiduously private, gentle-natured Hollywood columnist, was at his death the most publicly-known Variety / Daily Variety figure since Abel Green, the Weekly’s legendarily gregarious former editor who commanded the show biz universe for decades from his front-window perch on West 46th Street.
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