TWO FOR THE SHOW

Tough week to be eighty-seven. At that tender age, I am going into my third surgery in the last ten months for a persistent and resistant hernia, while almost simultaneously two important people in my life passed away at that very same age.

The first woman to ever play Christine Cagney in a movie I made for the CBS network was Loretta Swit. She was better known for her role in that network’s classic comedy, M*A*S*H, where she gained her star-status in the role of “Hot Lips.” She died at 87 in New York.

Loretta and I had a good working relationship throughout the entire production of that movie for television, but that soured when Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey moved on without her to become the iconic TV series, Cagney & Lacey. Ms. Swit was not dismissed, or anything like that, she was simply not available due to her regular job as “Hot Lips” Houlihan which interfered with anything but off-season movie or stage work. Still, it seemed as if she never got over the “slight.”

I write in my book Cagney & Lacey…and Me, what I think are some interesting things about that period of our collaboration and, as I have so oftentimes before, commend that memoir to one and all. Buy it on Amazon. I am running out of copies to autograph.

College mate, Harris Yulin, also recently died in New York. He, too, was my prime age of 87, when a failing heart proved fatal last week. Harris is mentioned more than once in my new book, A Life Without Cagney & Lacey. That is something more than another shameless “plug.” After all, the book will probably not be out and for sale until next year, but I mention it because he was more than just a blip in my life.

Harris Yulin and I were good friends in college. We shared the same “best friend” whom each of us admired more than all others and who had a life-time impact on both of our lives.

For years I was more than a little envious of my friend Yulin, who had the courage of his convictions to drop out of USC, where he was a pre-dental major in deference (I would imagine) to his doctor-father, in order to pursue a career in New York as an actor.

As a young publicist for MGM on my first business trip to New York, I recall climbing those five flights of stairs to his cold-water flat in the Village while my wife luxuriated in our suite at the Plaza Hotel, paid for by MGM. I was on a liberal expense account, owned a home in the San Fernando Valley with a swimming pool, drove a sports car, and was so jealous of my starving actor friend that for months I had nightmares where he was the lead character.

Harris did not starve for long. His talent was soon recognized and in the 1960s he began a long and rewarding career as an actor on stage and screen and succeeded as a director of multiple theatrical productions. He worked for me in my independent film, Who Fears the Devil (aka The Legend of Hillbilly John) and he played featured roles in two of my series, Cagney & Lacey and The Trials of Rosie O’Neill.

Harris appeared in over one hundred film and television series’ roles, got an Emmy nomination for Frasier, and was featured in some major movies, including Training Day, with Denzel Washington, Scarface with Al Pacino, Doc (as Wyatt Earp) with Stacy Keach and long-time companion Faye Dunaway, as well as Night Moves with Gene Hackman. He was on the mailing list of these Notes From a Warm Island, and I often had a response from him to something I had written. I have known him for most of my life. He was one of the brightest, most talented people in a vast collection of such folks I have been fortunate enough to associate with over the years. I have no desire to follow in this, his latest “adventure,” but he truly lived a life worthy of envy.

Barney Rosenzweig