Lisa Hoffman and Charles Atkins

Published January 25, 2006

We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture. It’s big business and nowhere is it more apparent than at the supermarket check-out line, where this week, almost every magazine has the beautiful face of Angelina Jolie and news of her pregnancy. So as Lisa and I get set for our weekly write, I pose a couple questions. "Why do we care so much about the comings and goings of celebrities? What’s the deal with fame?"

"It’s funny how your value goes up in other people’s eyes," Lisa comments, "when you mention a famous person’s name and that you had some connection with them. You’re still the same person, but suddenly you’re something more."

"I think that’s right," I say. "We put celebrities up on pedestals, although there’s also a lot of interest in knocking them down in the tabloids. Now, as a journalist, you’ve met many famous people over the years."

"True, but with the younger generations it amazes me when somebody says, ‘Marlene Dietrich, who’s that?’ It seems a pity, and kind of sad, that all of these people I’ve known are vanishing without a trace. At the risk of seeming a horrible name dropper I’d like to remember some of my own brushes with the famous and the infamous."

"Of course, but it’s an interesting point, and something of a truism, that fame is fleeting. There’s always a new crop of celebrities, while the old ones fade out. So how was it that you got to meet all of these people?" I ask.

"I was a U.S. foreign correspondent for a Swiss magazine and was a member of the Foreign Press Association and the Overseas Press Club. This gave me the opportunity to screen movies and then interview the stars and directors afterwards. I was also the chair person for special events at the Foreign Press Association and scheduled the speakers, everyone from Gloria Swanson, Jacqueline Susann, Goldie Hawn, Kirk Douglas, Charleton Heston and Angela Lansbury, to name a few.

"It was a different time and I was never interested in sensationalism. Not like today where the major focus is on who’s having an affair with whom. In fact, I always tried to protect my subjects. Interviews can be quite intimate; I learned a lot of secrets, but if someone asked me to, ‘keep it off the record’, I most certainly would.

"There was also a lot of excitement among the reporters when we’d do press conferences with celebrities. We’d race to be the first one to get the story and pictures back to our editors. Like with Dietrich, who insisted on controlling every angle from which she was shot and how many pictures you’d be allowed. I was a bit pushy and took one extra shot, which infuriated her. She put her hand in front of my Rolleiflex to make me stop. After the interview, I raced to a photo lab in Greenwich Village and dropped off the film. I went back at midnight to pick up the negatives and made sure they got mailed from the main post office as soon as it opened. Nowadays, it’s all electronic."

"Do you have a favorite brush with celebrity?"

"I do, although I suspect most people today won’t even know who Françoise Gilot was. She was Pablo Picasso’s companion and the mother of Paloma and Claude."

"What made that interview so special?"

"I approached her after seeing her on a television interview, with an especially tactless reporter. I learned that she was staying at the St. Regis and I called her up. I told her how appalled I was at the way she’d been treated. I’d also recently worked with her son Claude, who was a photographer, and I let that fact slip out. She agreed to meet me and I remember I brought her a red rose. She was completely open and what impressed me was how independent a person she was. Looking back, I think of her as one of the first women’s libbers, before people like Gloria Steinam and Betty Friedan, both of whom I met years later. That despite her famous and wealthy partner, she was a painter in her own right and had a life very separate from his.

"It was a wonderful interview," Lisa continues. "Just one woman talking to another."

"How come it never got published?"

"I called up Women’s Home Journal and spoke to their editor, who said he was not interested. I persisted and asked him to at least read it. He agreed and so I brought it down and sat there while he went through it. All the time he kept muttering, ‘what a great interview. What a great interview.’ But when he’d finished he gave it back to me saying, ‘But out readers can’t identify with it.’"

"Did you take it anywhere else?"

"I don’t think so."

As a writer this appalls me. Rejection is part of our business, but it’s so important to not stop after a single ‘no’. "Do you still have it?" I ask.

"I should have the tape somewhere."

"Maybe I can hunt it down and you can transcribe it. Someone—maybe an art magazine—might want to publish it. So what about meetings with the infamous?"

"Well, there was Tiny Tim, whom I interviewed after his televised on-air wedding to Miss Vicky. It was on the Carson show."

"What was he like?"

"Extremely polite, and he giggled every time I’d ask something personal. He’d say, ‘Oh, Miss Hoffman’ in a warbling high-pitched voice. I met him again at a toga party I was covering at the Roseland Ball Room. The comedian Henny Youngman was there, as well. Over the years he and I became quite friendly and he’d jokingly refer to me, probably on account of my accent, as ‘The Countess’."

"Any bad encounters with the famous?" I ask.

"A few. But there’s one thing I cannot stand, it’s when people are pompous. I remember interviewing the director, Otto Preminger just after he’d recognized his son with Gypsy Rose Lee. When I entered his office on Fifth Avenue, he was sitting behind a big desk. He never got up and the first sentence out of his mouth was, ‘what can I do for you?’ That question annoys me. Like I want something from people."

"But you did," I say, "You wanted an interview. All of which gets back to the question of why are we so fascinated with celebrity? Much of your professional career has been spent interviewing and taking photos of famous people. There’s a huge market for this stuff, and it seems bigger than ever."

"It sells," She says, "everything from magazines, to cosmetics to movies. People want to see the big name and the beautiful face."

"But why do we elevate these people and make them so important?" I ask.

"People want to live vicariously through others. We see celebrities in their beautiful homes and enjoy the fantasy of what it might be like."

"Are they different from the rest of us?" I ask.

"No. Some might be a bit eccentric or affected. But most are just ordinary people. Except," she says with a grin, "Cary Grant, whom I met when he was a partner at Fabergé. That’s the only time I’ve been awed in the face of a movie star. He was so handsome, very elegant and tall, and when he opened the door to his office I nearly fainted."

"Really?"

"Yes, you might not believe this, but when he took my hand and said, ‘How do you do? I’m Cary Grant,’ even I was speechless."

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