Stars, friends remember Jerry Tallmer, writer, TALLMER, continued from p. 1
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February 26, 2015
PHOTOS BY TEQUILA MINSKY
ed the Village Voice in 1955. Fancher recalled a party in 1954 where Tallmer, who was then working at The Nation, complained about his writer’s block. A year later at the fledgling Voice, Tallmer agreed to write movie reviews for the Voice and “never complained about writer’s block again,” Francher said. While The Villager was a strong and established, albeit stodgy, paper back then, he noted, they were precarious days at the Voice. “In the spring of 1956 we were running out of money,” Fancher said. “Jerry and I added up our accounts receivable and found we had $25,000 coming. We found an ex-boxer, heavy and menacing, and were able to collect some of it,” Fancher recalled. Then there was the time the Voice threw a big benefit in the 3,000-seat Loews Sheridan Square, starring the great jazz musicians of the day. Billie Holiday was booked as the last number. “But Billie had a gig in Philadelphia, so Jerry, who had a car, drove down to bring Billie and her boyfriend back to the concert,” Fancher said. With the theater crowd impatiently waiting, “Jerry finally arrived with Billie, who stopped for a shot before she came in, and she went on to sing the closing number,” recalled Fancher. In 1957 Tallmer founded the Obie Awards for Off Broadway theater, an event soon picked up by the daily press. Needing a real salary in 1960, Jerry Tallmer went to the New York Post. “We never quite forgave him for that,” said Fancher. “Jerry was the most principled man I ever met,” said Diana Maychick Foote, a fellow writer who Tallmer mentored at the Post. “He was an idealist and still a child at heart. I never really learned to write until I had Jerry Tallmer at my side. He loved words. He loved words as if they were people, and he loved the beguiling Fran [Frances Tallmer, Jerry’s wife].” Jerry Stiller, who with his wife and acting partner, Anne Meara, became Tallmer’s and Fran’s good friends, recalled that he was once engaged to play Launce in Joe Papp’s production of “Two Gentlemen of Verona” for Shakespeare in the Park. Another actor was hired to play Crab, Launce’s dog, but a real stray dog that attached himself to Stiller replaced the actor. “Tallmer wrote about the show, and the dog got the review,” said Stiller. “We kept the dog until Anne got pregnant and he had to go,” he added.
Jerry Stiller with his daughter, actress Amy Stiller.
Cabaret singer Baby Jane Dexter belted out a bluesy number in Jerry Tallmer’s honor.
Ed Fancher, founding publisher of the Village Voice.
Frances Monica Tallmer, Jerry’s wife.
Jonathan Slaff, the actor and theatrical press agent who was master of ceremonies at the Monday memorial, read a column that Tallmer wrote for The Villager about his being a young radar/radio man in a B-17 that was in the sky over Japan when the plane dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and watching the mushroom cloud rising from 130 miles away. “ ‘I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now,’ “ Tallmer wrote. Slaff read tributes from the cartoonist Jules Feiffer, whom Tallmer hired for the Voice soon after it opened. Pete Hamill, the legendary newsman and novelist, wrote that Tallmer was one of his great teachers in the newsroom. “He was a superb writer and a generous teacher,” Hamill wrote. “He never wrote down to the reader. He didn’t believe in making people dumber.” Playwright Terrence McNally wrote a tribute and so did Tom Stoppard, the latter who met Tallmer when he first came to New York. “In fact,” interrupted Fancher, “Stoppard slept in the Voice office for a night or two. He didn’t have a place to stay, so Jerry told him he could sleep in the office.” Actor Austin Pendleton said, “His good reviews were a call to responsibility and his critical reviews never felt like an attack. It was more like a caress… . He made people feel humble, because he was humble. I told him that he was humble because he was so secure, and he said he was secure because of Frances.” Playwright Mario Fratti effusively said that a good critic’s job is to encourage not to tear down artists, and that Tallmer was all about nurturing TALLMER, continued on p.13 TheVillager.com