Compton And Los Angeles Are Separate Cities

In the New York Times obituary (July 4, 2025) of the prolific hip hop choreographer for films and TV, Dave Scott, who grew up in Compton, California, and died in Las Vegas at age 52, Compton is described as "the city in South Central Los Angeles." I've lived and attended public schools in both places and know, if the obituary writer doesn't, that Compton is a city near Los Angeles, not in Los Angeles.

The obituary writer would have been on firmer ground if he or she or they had written that Compton is a city located in Los Angeles County.

Blaming Long-Dead Architects For Creating Inaccessible Buildings

Alice L. Givan, an 80-year-old Brooklyn resident, wrote a letter-to-the-editor that was published in the New York Times (January 2, 2023) in response to an article on the paper's website about a 200-year-old Greenwich Village building that was demolished.

In her letter, Ms. Givan stated that she had "two points of view" on the matter. "I see beautiful, historic houses, and I feel dismay that one will be torn down." On the other hand, she "see[s] houses that are inaccessible" to the elderly and to "parents carrying children and groceries." 

She ends her letter by asking, "What were the architects who designed these houses thinking?"

Ms. Givan has made the mistake of projecting twenty-first century sensibilities, needs, and ways of doing things on to those who lived a century or more ago. When those "beautiful, historic houses" were built, the elderly more than likely lived with their family members who could assist them up and down the stairs and parents, particularly the well-to-do ones, could hire servants to handle the groceries and nannies to look after the children. Plus, there were deliverymen (presumably able-bodied) who brought the milk and butter, coal, blocks of ice, and other necessities to these residences.

Revisiting TV's First Golden Age

 Ben Brantley, a New York Times drama critic, wrote an article that appeared in the Arts & Leisure section (August 30, 2020) with the headline, "Enjoying Live Theater, Decades Old."

Since Broadway shows are shutdown until January due to COVID-19, Brantley has had to content himself with watching plays that were originally broadcast live in the 1950s during what has been called the Golden Age of Television, via YouTube.

He recalled when he was five years old walking into his family's living room in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and seeing what he later learned was the tail end of Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House," starring Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer. He remembered their characters arguing which left him "both upset and enthralled by what I had witnessed."

No doubt this televised performance planted the seed of theatregoing in his mind that later blossomed into a (so far) 27-year career as a drama critic.

His depiction of the racial landscape on television in those long ago days caught my attention: "...the faces on the screen are still overwhelmingly white, a reminder that the United States was still very much a culturally segregated nation."

I think it was the black writer John Oliver Killens who wrote that blacks on TV were so rare that whenever a black performer came on the screen, black people all over America would race to their TV sets to see them.

Accompanying the article were three black-and-white photos (one of them of writer Rod Serling) from the 1950s. The photo I found the most arresting was the one of the actors seated around a table during a rehearsal of "Twelve Angry Men" in 1954. The photo caption says the rehearsal was for CBS's Playhouse 90. Actually, it was for Studio One. According to The Complete Directory to Prime Network TV Shows, 1946-Present by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine Books, 1979), "Reginald Rose contributed teleplays for Studio One and it was Rose's 'The Twelve Angry Men' in 1954 that won Emmys for writing (Rose), direction (Frank Shaffner), and performance by an actor in a drama (Bob Cummings)." 

Behind the actors are three cameras and crouching down behind one of the cameramen is a black man in short sleeves and wearing a headset. Although television back then was "overwhelmingly white," here was this black man (and possibly a second one in a far corner holding what looks like a still camera). But definitely the one behind the white cameraman is black.

Who was he? What was his job title? How did he get hired as a crew member on a major network show? What became of him? Did he encounter racial discrimination and racist comments while on the job? Does his name appear in the end credits? I have so many questions.

Just seeing him in the photo was a pleasant discovery. Who knew there was at least one black person among the crew members working on plays for the anthology series Studio One? He would have been, to reference a James Baldwin essay, a fly in buttermilk.

A Challenging But Fun Crossword Puzzle

One of my favorite crossword puzzles is "The Mini Crossword" that appears weekdays on page A-3 of The New York Times. It can be challenging but most of the time is fun with its clever, brain-teasing clues.


Note: Have a happy Columbus Day weekend!

The "Hidden Figures" Book Proposal

Entertainment Weekly (December 30, 2016/January 6, 2017 Double Issue) reports that Margot Lee Shetterly, the author of the New York Times Bestseller Hidden Figures, a non-fiction book about four black female NASA mathematicians, wrote a "55-page book proposal for Figures [that] eventually made the rounds in Hollywood and caught the attention of [film director Theodore] Melfi."

I'm sure there are budding writers and a few long-time pros who would love to see Ms. Shetterly's book proposal in print so they can study it and learn how to write a winning proposal that lures literary agents, book editors, and possibly Hollywood directors.

My Presidential To-Do List

On the editorial page of the New York Times (November 8, 2016), readers were asked "to list three things the new president should do in the first 100 days in office," in 150 words or less.

Here is my presidential to-do list:

1. Nominate a Supreme Court justice so the court can get back to being fully functional with nine justices.

2. Improve the nation's transportation and infrastructure systems.

3. Promote programs that encourage the use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar and thereby minimize the effects of climate change.

A Radio Talker Who Reads Five Books A Week

One talk show I regularly listen to is The John Batchelor Show, heard nightly on WABC-AM 770 here in New York. Although Batchelor is a conservative commentator and I am a liberal, I like his show and find it very compelling because of the range of topics and guests (which includes liberals like Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the editor of the Nation magazine.)

In a 2006 New York Times article titled "He Takes the Shout Out of Talk Radio" that is linked to his Wikipedia page, it was pointed out by the author, Anahad O'Connor, that Batchelor "reads up to five books a week." I would love to learn his secret to reading that many books in such a short time while maintaining a busy schedule. I'm reading several books at once but it takes me forever to complete them. Maybe he's taken a special speed reading program that has helped him read twenty books a month. If he has, I'd like to know what it is and subscribe to it.

Dreams And Knowledge, And Real Estate Musical Chairs?

The West Side Spirit
242 West 30th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10001

Attn: Letters-to-the-Editor

May 16, 2000

To the Editor:

In Felicia Lee's "Coping" column in the Sunday New York Times (March 26) entitled "Dreams and Knowledge, Under One Roof," she neglected to mention that the Columbia Branch of the New York Public Library on West 113th Street, near Amsterdam Avenue, has only been in its present location for four years. In January of 1986, it left its previous site on West 113th Street in the Butler Library building at Columbia University.

Now, four years after the move, Ms. Lee writes that the "good news for the neighborhood" is that the library will be relocated to "a space 10 times as big down the block" later this year or the early part of next year. "It's new home," she reports, "will be in another Columbia building."

This is the only branch in the library system that I know of that is being bounced around like this. What troubles me, as a frequent user of the Columbia Branch, is how long will the university allow it to stay in the new location? Will the branch, every four or five years, be the victim of what amounts to a real estate version of musical chairs? Perhaps the public library should consider putting the branch in a building that it owns and operates.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith

Note: The above is a previously unpublished letter.

Ailey Dancers Are Body-Poets

Among the various sections and inserts in the November 6 [1988] Sunday New York Times was--to my absolute surprise and delight--a 20-page advertising supplement celebrating Alvin Ailey's 30 years of dance making.

Surrounding the text were color performance photos and quotes from Ailey himself. In the back of the book was a schedule of the 1988-89 season at City Center [in Manhattan]. This slick -looking fundraising vehicle is worth saving because in a nutshell it gives potential subscribers the history and philosophy of the Ailey organization.

However, I was a bit dismayed with the presence of full-page cigarette and whiskey ads. For a [dance] company that glorifies dancers as "body-poets," these ads are out of place. Why didn't dance-related ads appear in their place?

This item, from a dance column I wrote, was published in the New York Amsterdam News (ca. February 4, 1989).

Damned If You Do

Letters
Arts & Leisure
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
August 10, 1994

To the Editor:

Judging by Rodney H. Clurman's angry response (July 31 [1994]) to the outing of his cousin, the composer Aaron Copland, it's no wonder Copland never discussed his homosexuality with him.

It's attitudes like his that have reinforced the view that homosexuality is an unsavory subject and caused generations of gays and lesbians, inside and outside the arts, to retreat further into the closet.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith

The above letter-to-the-editor was published in the Arts & Leisure section of the Sunday New York Times on August 21, 1994.

The Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Journalists

One aspect of disgraced New York Times journalist Jayson Blair's memoir, Burning Down My Master's House that got overlooked is his mention of that paper's employee relations department where he sought help for his drug addiction. This part of the book was more interesting than his tales of plagiarism and fabrications.
When I read the book I never knew that such a department existed at a major American newspaper. It made me wonder if other media outlets had a similar department.
Since the lives of a number of Times editors and reporters ended in suicide, no doubt from workplace pressures, I thought it was time for someone to examine the role that such a department plays in keeping employees healthy and functioning. What programs are made available? How accessible are they to employees? What are the origins and history of an employee relations department? What are the qualifications of the administrators? What are the annual costs such a department incurs? What is their success rate? What problems predominate? These are some of the questions I would seek answers to.
Such an article is important because it sheds some light on the underside of the media--the psychological and physical wear and tear of daily journalism.
In light of such recent tragedies as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina as well as the decimation of newspapers and journalism jobs by the economic downturn, it would be eye-opening, timely, and instructive as to the ways media outlets are helping their current and former employees cope with these events. It would allow news consumers the opportunity to see the human side of the journalistic profession, to witness the blood, sweat, and tears shed by those whose job it is to cover the events of the day.