Pantechnicon; Harvey Jacobs

Hello there. Harvey Jacobs is a man of many careers. He's worked at racetracks in New York's garment district and has also managed to expend a lot of talent writing in the communications field. Robbie Jacobs has written for such people as Dick Cavett and has held an executive position as television writer for the American Broadcasting Company. He's also a writer of radio drama one of his plays called some of the mountain of spices received the Writers Guild of America Award for Best radio play in any category. The play is now been written into book form. And we recently talked with its author Harvey Jacobs. OK so tell us about death speech writing process some people give you direction most will not but the art of speech writing is to make the person for whom you've written the speech feel as if he wrote the speech conceived the speech and delivered the speech. So the actual hard part of speech writing comes after the speech is concluded. When you are in the audience listening to the speech and reacting to this beat you must then i confront the person for a minimum of 72 to 96 hours rather than have the status as an executive because in that period the trance.

Transmogrification occurs that's wonderful. Thank you I guess I doubt that I could hang up there for it was between translation my girth occasion I just can't. And then that period the person goes through this mystical change in which he becomes both author deliver takes on her and then gives you the material as a reference later on. That's. Bad. Yes that's that it's pretty bad point of of trying to. Guess how much comedy writing have you done in your career. Well many of the stories I've written have a comic vision comedy writing per se. If you mean for television I did some work recently with the cabinet. Other than that very little was this a very funny script. New is for children's television with no it wasn't it was for a show called Feeling Good which was essentially and it originated as an experiment to communicate health information in an entertainment form and the experiment never quite got off the ground I don't think but.

It came back after public television. You can be resurrected. And so we went through a period of limbo I was resurrected as feeling good with the care of it which had some smiles but was no longer and that some smiles just as your lies there and every kind of thought that fate tallied a mortality. Ha ha ha ass right. But no it came back as a more serious and direct show but originally it was conceived. As an experiment and as such could have been I think very interesting if it had been regarded as an on air experiment with the continuing we monitored what interaction to see if it were working because we were trying to learn how to do something was a television medium in the area of communicating information and through entertainment and a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down as well indeed it might but we were not given in my opinion a chance through an acutely test the theory before the show was changed to a more basic form and more direct format that in effect communicated information but I think that a very small audience.

Do you prefer working with serious material or do you really like to get out the old one liners. And I'm not a one liner person except very occasionally alternating New Years party. But alternating No I'm not I'm not out of a job writer at all but I do like to write with a comic vision because it seems to me it's a vision of balance. And from that viewpoint it's like being in the blimp over the stadium as well as on the ball field as well as in the stand so I like to have from perceptual point a perceptual point. I don't always make the jump but when police when it works it's a it's interesting because most things that happen contain within themselves of every element from the most serious to the highest common. And especially nowadays when so many bad events are occurring and so to juxtapose manner that if you pick up a newspaper or you watch you tell the television news is a classic example of it you'll hear a report of the most serious conundrum and it is a commercial for preparation Eller So your love life or whatever that stuff kind of interrupt your train of thought you know you might say well also. I just wonder if in

a while that people aren't going to have to stop in in prime time every 10 or 15 minutes in order to think about a product before they can proceed with anything. Along with your interest in television you certainly have done a great deal in radio. You've written a number of radio plays. How did you happen to go from one medium to another what caused you to leave radio as you did and then go into television and never really I mean when I was a kid in the back in high school I had a radio show in New York. Did you. Yeah it was sponsored by an effort called Junior Achievement and they gave us time on a station called INS. I was continuity director and would you believe it was called the E3 beaver at some point. That's a phrase call eager beaver is here and we're all working. That's what it was named but I was canned because I'd get the vet was called the bow tie kind it was my first gift it was about a capitalist who mistreated its workers in this ad that was run by the NAMM own our little group at the time was very nervous because we had this prime time radio show so I was quietly squeezed that the left door. But after that we were offered a

show for a company called Blue Ribbon Ice-Cream and we who like there our show was kind of better I think was the first month I thought and he said I'm ready and but this I think confused me but I'm used blue ribbon Ice-Cream which Anyway still exists or has melted. But I decided to go into school and so I did not do that. And that you were involved in a racetrack in the gov district to the point that while you were doing continuity writing for radio. No it was when I couldn't get a job doing kind of the writing for anybody I went to I was still in college and took some time off. And did the the American tour I hitchhiked at the West and around the country and did get a job at Golden Gate Field in San Francisco. And. Then came back and got a job and I had two great jobs in the garment center when I was called a public relations director for a company and my job was to sell labels into something called Camel

soles that girls used to wear a camisole. Oh yes it was nice as you said a level and you would figure that white girl wear would get this low in those Muslim relations. That was my title. Then I take the camisoles I knew we were able to put in boxes and wheeled the boxes through the streets feeling all the time like an executive. The communications director for this chain of stores I think of all these trembling young bodies waiting for their camel soles and with your label with Mike. That was my is this right. So I wrote the label but you also wrote a radio play that has been made into a novel called summer on a mountain of spices. How much rewriting Did you have to do to change it. It's totally totally different absolutely totally different the story of some amount of space is quite interesting and then I've been telling these stories for some time about this little hotel that was based on a hotel that my family owned for many years in the Catskill Mountains which is about 100 miles north of New York and became a resort center mostly at that time for Jewish people and. Because of so many entertainers who came out of there despite

all from Jerry Lewis to Woody Allen he became nationally famous and the area itself I think reached its high point as it was in 1945 which was the end of World War 2. And it gave rise to the giants that are now in Miami and the U.S. and all over the country but the prototypes with these tiny little family hotels from whence the Giants grew and that's the attic that would amuse people but I wonder about the material was it essentially my material or were they just amusing stories and I thought well this is a piece of history is going to be lost and these are this is really worth writing down at the time that your Play Project at the University of Wisconsin which had put some of my radio play with asked me would I do an hour's worth of material on a single thing and just as an absolute joke on the phone thinking the least possible people who would be interested are the people who would be least interested in the Catskill Mountain experience would be in Madison Wisconsin. And I started to talk about this little hotel and instead of being resistant

they were delighted and I thought well maybe there is something because I think you know that is indeed worth worth doing. And zen did these places now in the place they're really explorations for what became a novel for example the character of Harry crafters a young boy. Very young in the radio plays he's he's in his teens in the novel and there are many different things that happened but the first play was a bit and with a major theme in the book is a girl named Leslie Quinn who is in effect the gangster's moll and I see gangsters left her at this little family hotel. Her boyfriend because he was involved in a union hassle back in town and he went to a place where she would not only be safe but inviolate and figured nobody knowing he was a gangster nobody at that hotel would dare make an assault on her. Whatever it is they wore slacks and wedgies I guess and went around intimidating everybody at this tiny hotel and left but what he didn't realize was that he sent the challenge into the

hearts of all these young males waiters busboys concessionaire and guests. And she was gorgeous and nobody ever seen anything like that now that she was not Jewish. I want to listen to you naked. Progressive thinking that Israel's terrified surrounded by raving and then Eagles and screaming I mean how many of the characters in your book are real all of them all of them. They're not immediate like variations. Yes they're not immediately based on particular and specific people this is a work of fiction but everything is based to a very large the grand the way it was and characters who are very much there at the time and probably are still there and one or another and every place else too because why I like to think that while it's a book about a specific hotel at the end of World War 2 in the week the atomic engine began August of forty five and that it is ethnic in the sense that it's about this area and these people that it's about all people in a little town. And if it isn't then I fail and the

hotel will bring in the novel is a small hotel and sort of a family that reluctantly takes in Yes and that's how it was and that was the seed for all the large ones as I said entertainment even then was very important because entertainment was like a psycho drama. There I mean it was what do you mean I thought you were acting and all your fears and fantasies on stage for the entertainment wasn't performed by performers in most cases except maybe on a big weekend like July 4th. It was the people get out and they do their thing and it was usually a social director the one in my book Joe came in. Worked in the initiator and he was over the hill and where do you go if you're over the hill. You go to the mountains and you work in a little tiny hotel and he kind of directed the place. And his big moment in some of my spaces is the benefit night where I tried to recreate a benefit night using the sketches and the material and the comedy as it was used. If you look at it closely you'll notice that there's a lot of stuff about doctors well the people there were those you know of then afraid of doctors and in this

sense in their hands because if you're sick you're in the hands of a doctor to become a doctor was a great thing obviously was the top of the pecking order and probably still is for a lot of people. And so there are a lot of doctors sketches very hostile often very loving. And there are a lot of sketches about old people in confrontation with young people about the passing live tradition. The reason and frankly I chose the time from the end of the war and the list the last week of the world before this time again which is forever with us as long as forever my thing. It is because it was a time of great change in transition and that really is what I think the novel is about is a funny novel but I think that there is I hope a base beneath the air because humor is one liners floating about it's a laugh and that's it. And this book is not that I hope I mean the human is best I and move I think rather warm in the personal relations and here was a time of great transition some of the older people could not make the

transition they were left back in time blown back in the tireder of time by wind and others did make the transition and a bridge to the future and here with the children and when I was the central focus is this bill I mentioned earlier Harry is trying to balance his vision his identity as an American as a Jew or as as an eye romantic A versus somebody who is observing a rather pragmatic universe where there is much vulgar arity much tension and much a competition and backbiting at the same time trying to preserve some vision of poetry or of beauty. Thank you for being with us tonight. We've been talking with author Harvey Jacobs about his book titled summer on a mountain of spices published by Harper and Row. This program was made possible in part through the support of the Massachusetts Council on the

arts and humanities. The producers Greg Fitzgerald. This is the eastern Public Radio Network.