This first trip to Latin American would be taken in November – December, before the Christmas holidays. January and February were the summer months in the southern hemisphere when many of those that needed to be contacted would be away, thus the issue would have to be published in late March, with a nominal deadline for advertising and editorial copy to be in  New York by March 1, 1976, which would give me time to put the final touches on the issue and update information I had culled during my swing through Latin lands. As a truly generous gesture, Syd agreed to let my wife, Lucy, accompany me on the trip, including her air fare. She would join me in Rio and remain with me as far as Lima. She could be a kind of secretary, phoning key companies from the hotels we were lodged in to set up appointments for me. 

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We landed in Rio on Sunday, November 2, and checked into the Leme Palace. The next morning I started calling some of the contacts on my list to make appointments. My knowledge of Portuguese was of the most rudimentary sort, but in the course of the week in Brazil I managed to get along in Spanish when my contacts did not know English. However, setting up appointments from the phone in our hotel room proved to be a major chore. One of the puzzlements was when I was given a phone number for a client and was told, for example,: um, sete dois, meia, sete, oito, um. I looked through my pocket dictionary but could find no number listed at “meia”. It took a while before I realized that in Brazil it was the word used for six, deriving from “media” or “half”.

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My swing through Latin America then continued with stops in Lima, Bogotá, Caracas and finally Mexico City, after which I headed to New York to spend Christmas with my family. 

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Once back in Madrid, most of January and February were spent converting the ample notes taken during my trips into articles and typing follow-up letters to the many contacts I had made during my trips. I composed a house ad that ran in Variety announcing the date of the upcoming Latin issue, announcing that it would have a special “bonus” distribution at the MIP television market in April and at the film festival in May, both held in Cannes. I also contacted film and television companies in Spain, using my twin editorial and advertising hats. At the same time, I urged other European Variety offices, especially London, to contact companies that had dealings with Latin America.

On Sunday, February 29, 1976, I flew back to New York on Trans-World Airlines and checked into the Hotel Excelsior on West 79th Street. In the following years I would hang my hat at the far more pleasant Olcott Hotel on West 72nd Street, which became my “home away from home” in Gotham. The Olcott was an old-fashioned hostelry probably dating back to the 1920s, a little on the “worn” side, but it provided spacious suites with kitchenettes that enabled comfortable living in a part of town removed from the usual tourist crush. Its prices were modest, around $1,000 a week in the 1980’a, Within a few blocks of the hotel were dozens of convenient restaurants, several of them Chinese (the best was one on Columbus Avenue which had framed celebrities decorating its entrance, including one of Mayor Koch), a coffee shop on the corner of Columbus, several luncheonettes, a Greek diner on Amsterdam Avenue and 72nd Street where, sitting in booths you could dip into pea or chicken noodle soups with crackers on the side, roast turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and cranberry jelly, and for dessert apple or blueberry pie and coffee. On the corner, across 72nd Street, oppoiste the Sherman Square subway station was the time-honored Gray’s Papaya stand, famous for its hot dogs (50 cents at that time).Nearby were shops that rented home video (Blockbuster and Tower), a large Barnes & Noble on Mitchel Square at the intersection of Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, two Loew’s theatres within walking distance and Central Park, a half block away from the hotel, where the Boat House restaurant, with outdoor seating, beckoned. On special occasions, the Tavern on the Green in the park, with its delightful Crystal Room that in later years became a favorite  venue to celebrate Christmas Eve.

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