EASTSIDER PETER MAAS
Author of Serpico and Made in America
1-12-80
On the surface, his life could hardly be calmer. Peter Maas gets up every morning to have breakfast with his 12-year-old son, then heads for his midtown office, where he spends about five hours at the typewriter. He rarely goes out in the evening, and his idea of fun is a weekend of fishing, a set of tennis or a game of backgammon. "I don't have to live in New York," he says. "When I'm working on a book, I might as well be living in the wilds of Maine."
But in his mind, Peter Maas leads the life of James Bond and Al Capone rolled into one. "I know an awful lot of people on both sides of the law," says the author of two nonfiction block-busters about crime, The Valachi Papers and Serpico. The Valachi Papers, the real-life saga of three generations of a Mafia chieftain's family, was published in 1969 following two years of court battles and rejections from 26 publishers who felt that books on the Mafia had no commercial potential. It sold three million copies in 14 languages and paved the way for an entire industry of Mafia books and movies.
Serpico (1973) revealed the rampant corruption in the New York City Police Department through the eyes of officer Frank Serpico. Then came King of the Gypsies (1975), Maas' third expose of the underbelly of American society which, like the others, was made into a successful movie.
Now the 50-year-old author has written his first novel, Made in America. Published in September by Viking, it is a raw, violent, grimly humorous story of an ex-football star for the New York Giants who gets mixed up with organized crime while borrowing money for a shady investment scheme. King Kong Karpstein, the terrifying loan shark who dominates the book, is based on several people whom Maas had known personally, and the novel's head Mafia character has much in common with Frank Costello, the "prime minister of the underworld," who granted Maas 11 interviews shortly before his death in 1975. The scenes of Made In America — porn parlors, criminal hideaways, the FBI offices — are all described with the same intense realism as the characters. The movie rights have been sold for $450,000.
"The reason I wrote it," explains Maas, sitting restlessly at his 11-room Eastside apartment on a recent afternoon, "was that I didn't want to wake up 10 years from now wondering what would have happened if I had written a novel. … I also think a writer has to challenge himself constantly. I don't think he should play a pat hand."
As he talks on in his breezy New York accent, fidgeting with a gold matchbox on the antique table beside him, Maas seems barely able to restrain himself from getting up and pacing the room. Quite striking in appearance, he is a tall, stocky man with a Brillo-pad thatch of silvery hair and eyebrows like cotton batting. A native Manhattanite, he was one of the country's top investigative reporters for many years before writing his first book, The Rescuer, in 1967.
The reason for the title Made In America, says Maas is that "the events in the novel could only happen in America. … One of the themes is that nobody in the book, including the football player and the federal prosecutor, thinks that he's doing anything wrong. So that's a very profound kind of corruption."
Like his previous books, Made in America took two years to write. "The biggest difference that I found," he points out, "was that in nonfiction, all the discoveries and surprises are in the research, and in fiction, they're all in the writing. When I write nonfiction, about two thirds of the time is spent in research. I didn't do any research for this. It was much harder. And it was the only time I had to rewrite the whole book."
Although Maas claims that his own life has never been in imminent danger, he was touched by deep personal tragedy in 1975 when his wife, a highly talented writer/producer named Audrey Gellen, was killed in an automobile accident. Their only child, John Michael, is a skilled pianist.
Puffing on an imported little cigar, Maas speaks with pride of some of his most important stories in the past. An article he wrote in 1960 led to the release of Edgar Labat, a black convict in Louisiana who had been on death row for 11 years. An article about columnist Igor Cassini in 1963 resulted in Cassini's arrest and conviction as a secret agent for Dominican strongman Trujillo. The biggest story Maas never wrote was a book about the shah of Iran; several years ago he turned down an offer of $1 million for the project in order to concentrate on his novel.
"I've always had trouble writing about women," he confesses when asked about future books. "So the main character of my next work will be a woman. It was going to be another novel, but now I've run across what I think is a fantastic nonfiction project, which I'm mostly interested in because the subject matter is a woman. So I think I'll do that first and the novel afterward. At least I know what my next two will be, and that's comforting."
died 8-23-01. born 6-27-29. Auth or of Serpico and The Terrible Hours.
WESTSIDER LEONARD MALTIN
Film historian and critic
9-2-78
Most people who opt for a writing career do not expect to accomplish much before the age of 30. But Leonard Maltin, a 27-year-old Westsider, breaks all the rules. His book The Great Movie Comedians: From Charlie Chaplin to Woody Allen, published in June by Crown Press, is the 30th volume to bear his name on the jacket. One of America's foremost film historians, he has written nine books and edited 21 others, while contributing articles to such publications as TV Guide, Esquire and the New York Times.
The Great Movie Comedians is one of his most ambitious projects to date. In 240 pages of text and more than 200 photographs, the author analyzes the careers of 22 comic stars from the days of silent film to the 1970s. Sales have been brisk so far. The book is already in its second printing and has been picked up by the Nostalgia Book Club.
Leonard was born on the West Side, moved to New Jersey at the age of 4, and became hooked on old movies by the time he was 8. At 13, he began to write for a magazine called Film Fan Monthly. Two years later, he took over as editor and publisher — a job he continued for nine years. His work with the magazine led to his first book contract in 1968 — a thick paperback titled TV Movies with summaries of thousands of films. The third edition is coming out this fall.
In 1975, when Leonard got married, he and his wife Alice moved to the West Side. She, too, is a film buff; their favorite Westside movie theatre is the Regency (Broadway at 67th).
Leonard's literary career has never been in better shape than now. Two of his other books will appear in new editions this fall. And the 10th book that he has authored, a comprehensive history of American animated cartoons treated Of Mice and Magic, will be published next year by Signet.