The
Beginning | Labor | Journalism
Why am I embarking on a website after
30 years as an editor and film critic on the San
Francisco Chronicle and the author of three books?
Several concurrent events brought this about. A friend
suggested that there should be a link to my work
on the website of
my brother, the legendary iconoclastic journalist I.F.
Stone BUT I didn't have a website
to link to. Then with newspapers claiming economic
problems, I couldn't get a free-lance assignment
to interview Eran Kolirin, director of "The
Band's Visit." So I gave my story to New
Life,
a monthly Russian newsletter that had run an interview
with me and the "Band" article was later
picked up by SF 360.org, a daily on-line magazine,
published by the San Francisco Film Society.
Thus a website
began to emerge as the solution for me to continue
speaking my piece. Furthermore, it would be possible
for readers to learn about my books: "The
Mystery of B. Traven," "Eye
on the World: Conversations with International Filmmakers" and "Not
Quite a Memoir: Of Films, Books, the World." That
adds up to about 300 filmmakers and 40 writers, not
counting B. Traven, literary mystery for the ages,
the pseudonymous author of "Treasure
of the Sierra Madre," and interviews with three
Nobel winners: Czeslaw Milosz, Orhan Pamuk and Doris
Lessing. My interviews took place all over the globe
from Argentina and Australia, to Iran, the Soviet
Union and Yugoslavia. From unfamiliar names like
Cheick Oumar Sissoko of Mali to Iran's Abbas Kiarostami
and to U.S.
notables from Woody Allen to Martin Scorsese. I always
preferred interviewing to  reviewing.
I disliked making lists of
favorite films, but I'm going to pull one together
now. And I hated writing mini-reviews that substituted
reasoned analysis for a "little
man" jumping up for joy or snoozing at the latest
movies. At my Chronicle farewell party, this
Little Man took the cake!
The Beginning
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My father at our family store
in
Haddonfield, NJ. |
As to how it all started, life began
for me in Philadelphia on May 1, 1924. My parents
were Katy Novack and Bernard Feinstein, emigrants
from Czarist Russia who owned a dry goods store in
Haddonfield, New Jersey. They had three sons before
I came along: Izzy, Marc and Lou, journalists all.
I began writing movie reviews in junior
high. Later while editing my Olney high school newspaper
and yearbook, I enjoyed interviewing visiting celebrities:
Walter Huston, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, William
Saroyan, Eve Curie.When Izzy was 14 he started publishing
The Progress, a little paper that supported the League
of Nations and Woodrow Wilson. After he began writing
anti-fascist articles in the early 30s, he changed
his name to I.F. Stone, but he remained Izzy to one
and all. He became known as a radical defender
of civil liberties in the dark days of Joe McCarthy
and was a favorite speaker at anti-Vietnam war rallies.
He didn't hesitate to assert that "all governments
lie." A joyful skeptic, he dug for facts in
government documents for his weekly newsletter, gems
that were usually overlooked by the mass media. Finally,
digging into the historic roots of free speech, he
capped his career with a scholarly book "The
Trial of Socrates."
So obviously, he was an influence on
me. Above my computer is the cover of "Ave,"a
Catholic magazine quoting Izzy, "We simply must
respect each other."
And in a sense, that is what I have
tried to do in offering some — admittedly limited
— insights into creative people all over our embattled
world and hoping readers can find a kind of inspiration
in their words.
Labor
World War Two changed the course of
my life. I'm probably the only U.S. critic who has
done time as a labor writer, along with being a two
- time college dropout. Shortly after Pearl Harbor,
I finished my freshman year at Temple University
and went to work as a drill and punch press operator
for two years making walkie-talkies in a Philadelphia
factory. While there, I became  editor of my union
paper, "The Square Dealer," for Local 155
, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of
America, CIO. That led to writing leaflets for two
organizing drives at Bendix and Western Electric
in Baltimore. The UE lost both elections, so that
doesn't say much for the persuasive powers of my
leaflets. Later at the University of Wisconsin I
wrote columns for the school's newspaper about the
mutual interests of students, veterans and workers.
Dropping out after my sophomore year, I had the opportunity
to work with my brother Lou who was editing the Trentonian,
a newspaper which was started as an experiment by
the International Typographical Workers Union. The
goal was to organize non-union newspapers by buying
shoppers' guides, going weekly, then daily to compete
with a city's monopoly paper — in this case, the
Trenton Times. I interviewed old labor "skates" and
occasionally donned a critic's cap to review plays
at the wonderful Bucks County (Pa.) Playhouse. In
1947, I headed west to San Francisco, where I worked
for a string of AFL union papers, notably writing
an in-depth report on the long-lasting 1947 DiGiorgio agriculture
strike in the Imperial Valley. It was the historic
precursor to Cesar Chavez's successful organizing
drives.
Journalism
I finally returned to daily newspapers.
At the Independent Journal in Marin County
for six years, I covered everything from government
meetings and San Quentin Prison to interviews with
the county's many artists and writers. I had five
seconds of fame when I reported that a German Jewish
doctor who believed in socialized medicine was denied
admission to the new Marin County hospital, a story
that enraged the county's affluent society medics
— but I had the support of my Republican publisher.
And Dr.Rudolf Wolff eventually gained admission to
practice there.
Looking for a change, I traveled to
New York but my job writing circulation promotional
copy for Look magazine offered few challenges and
I longed to return to San Francisco. Six years later
on September 1961, I began working for the San
Francisco Chronicle. At the same time, I started free-lancing
for the New York Times, the Los
Angeles Times, TV
Guide and The Toronto Globe
and Mail. The Ladies
Home Journal published my interview with Dianne
Feinstein who became the new mayor of San Francisco in 1978
after a murderous time of crisis in the city. A new
(British) editor inexplicably removed all mention
of Richard Blum who later became Dianne's husband.
I'm happy to offer my original article here. Ramparts
magazine not only got me started on the already mentioned
B. Traven mystery, but also published my interview
with Jose Luis Cuevas, "an old master" among
young Mexican artists; as well as my report on Hollywood
censorship: "The
Legion of Decency : What's Nude?" and an article called "Arabs & Jews," about
some unprecedented moments of friendship in Israel.
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