Columnist George Maksian Looks Back at Life Covering NYC Glitterati

Armenians were an exception, and Maksian got to know many famous ones. One favorite was William Saroyan. They met when Saroyan came to New York to do the introduction for an operatic version of My Heart’s in the Highlands for Channel 13 and PBS. Channel 13 announced that Saroyan was not doing any interviews or meeting the press, but when Maksian learned that Saroyan was staying at the Royalton Hotel, he decided to drop off a copy of his forthcoming article on the opera. At the hotel, the attendant insisted that he take the article directly to Saroyan’s room. When Maksian knocked, Saroyan, in his robe, answered the door, grabbed the column and shut the door in Maksian’s face. The next morning, when Maksian came to his office around 10 a.m., the receptionist, very excitedly, asked where he had been. Saroyan had come to see him. Maksian, therefore, called him up at the hotel, and they became pals. He arranged for the Daily News editor Ben Gross to interview him at the Balkan Armenian restaurant. Afterwards, whenever Saroyan came to town, he would call up Kevork (George’s Armenian name), and ask what was going on in the Armenian community.

Once Maksian brought Saroyan to an engagement party at the AGBU building. Maksian thought that Saroyan was torn between his Armenian background and being an American celebrity. He sadly noted that Saroyan once had said to him, “I know that the Armenians love me, but the Americans have forgotten me.”

Maksian never forgot Saroyan and was one of the organizers of a memorial tribute at the Diocese of the Armenian Church in New York on June 1, 1981 after Saroyan’s death. It was a star-studded event, with novelist Kurt Vonnegut, then-New York Mayor Edward I. Koch and even actor Danny Aiello (before he became a big film star) on the program alongside many prominent Armenians. Daily News journalist Don Singleton, who named his son Aram in honor of Saroyan, was among the speakers. The audience included widely-known personalities such as Henry Kissinger and Mike Wallace.

In general, not only did Maksian kept his distance from the stars, but he also occasionally criticized or even pilloried them with an acerbic tongue in his columns. Nonetheless, he avoided being sued or fired during his 44 years at the Daily News. Two people did attempt to get him fired. Maksian said in wonderment, “Though they can dish it out, the bigger they are, the less they can take it.” Frank Fields, the weatherman, was mad that Maksian panned the former’s daughter, who was trying out as a weather person for the station.

The second person to try to get him fired, Howard Cosell, was criticizing boxing as brutal, but told his audience that he was forced to cover a fight in Los Vegas as part of his contract. Maksian telephoned Cosell’s bosses at ABC, who said that Cosell’s contract allowed him to pass up on any assignment. Maksian printed this. Then, later the same year, when the sports Emmys were announced, Maksian wrote as the last line of his column something like, “No, Howard Cosell did not win an Emmy as clown of the year.” This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and Cosell then wrote a four-page handwritten letter to the general editor of the paper, bashing Maksian. Maksian didn’t get fired or punished, but was just told to lay off Cosell. Cosell wrote about the incident in one of his books.

If Maksian kept his distance from the celebrities, he did not shy away from socializing with other reporters, editors and critics. This gave him a platform to promote other Armenians: “I was able to get them to write about our Armenian artists if I did not do so myself. Nona Balakian [the famous literary critic and editor at the New York Times] said I wish I could do what you do at the News.”

He helped both individuals and groups. Maksian was able to get the Antranig Dance Ensemble a two- page spread in the Sunday Daily News. He said, “We got a photographer to come and take pictures at rehearsal, and we used that to do the article in the Sunday magazine section. Three thousand seats sold out at Carnegie Hall because of that publicity. Publicity and promotion are the most important things for success. You have to obtain good reviews and initial exposure, and follow up on this.”

Maksian felt novelty is also important for attracting publicity. He gave the example of the annual Armenian Genocide commemorations, which need a new angle or something different to obtain more coverage. On the 75th anniversary of the Genocide, Maksian was on the publicity committee in New York and convinced the others to do a service at the Statue of Liberty to thank the US for opening its doors to Armenian immigrants. Seventy-five survivors went there, and presented the Ellis Island Museum with an Armenian silver chalice as a gift. Maksian said, “That event was covered by every television station and every newspaper in the area.”

On the other hand, when an important Armenian event does not get media coverage, Maksian encourages Armenians to speak out and protest, not just individually but collectively: “Our organizations should complain and bombard the New York Times and the rest of the press, so it does not just go by. You have to hit them in the pocketbook and say we won’t subscribe to the Times, or buy the products of the sponsors.” Part of the secret is also to take out advertisements every year in major newspapers like the Times on the Genocide in order to maintain a public presence and tell the Armenian story.

After Maksian retired from the Daily News, he went to Archbishop Khajag Barsamian of the Diocese and told him he wanted to do a show. This was incorporated into the celebrations for the 25^th anniversary of St. Vartan Cathedral in 1993 and became a series of Friday night programs called “Live at the Diocese.”

The individual shows bore titles such as “A Night at the Opera,” or “A Little Lite [sic] Music.” Loren Toolajian, program director at WQXR hosted the first show, which had singers including Lucine Amara and Lili Chookasian as guests, and radio personality Mark Simone hosted the second show, as well as a later one. Harry Goz performed excerpts from “Fiddler on the Roof,” and Anita Darian and Kay Armen were also part of the first Simone program. At Maksian’s suggestion, Simone at the Christmas show recited “A Visit from St. Nicolas” (more popularly known by its first line, “’Twas the night before Christmas”), and changed the names of all the reindeer to Armenian ones.

Maksian, aside from organizing this series, found a unique way of publicizing it. By accident, in one sense, or, looked at in a different way, through the good fortune of his prior contacts, he ended up on the Howard Stern show. Maksian was delivering an item to a young Armenian girl who worked on the show but was also a member of his Diocesan organizing committee, when producer Gary Del’Abatte producer spotted him in the corridor and invited him on the air.

Stern was doing a telephone interview with comedian Richard Pryor. Maksian remembered, “It was going nowhere. Stern said to Pryor, ‘you are a comedy genius. Would you tell my listeners, Howard I love you?’ Pryor said, ‘I can’t say that. I don’t know you.’ Stern then said, ‘We’ve been talking for 15 minutes now, can’t you say it? Or at least how about I like you?’ Pryor said, ‘I still can’t do it.’”

When Maksian was brought on the show, he declared, “I have a confession: Howard, I love you!” This broke everybody up. Maksian remembers that a little later, “Howard started to read the names on my Diocesan program, which I happened to have had in my hand. He butchered their names. He asked, ‘Who are these people?’ I said, ‘The problem with you, Howard, is that you have no culture.’” This exchange ended up serving as good publicity for the Diocesan series, Maksian discovered.

The shows received rave reviews not only from Armenians, but from some prominent critics, such as Playbill Magazine columnist Harry Haun, classical music critic Bill Zakariasen and WOR broadcaster Arthur Schwartz. Haun praised Maksian as “an Armenian Ed Sullivan.”

NBC television newsman Edwin Newman and announcer Martin Bookspan, the “voice”of Lincoln Center, were among the audience members who sent Maksian notes of appreciation later.

While Maksian did not want to work fulltime any longer, he did want to occasionally write. He declared, “I don’t miss the deadlines or pressures, but I do miss the socializing and the outlet to express myself. Forty-four years — that was a lifetime, at the Daily News.” For a number of years, Maksian wrote articles for the Armenian Reporter on Armenian topics, until the newspaper changed hands.

People still ask Maksian to bring back “Live at the Diocese” and he usually replies, “I would be hard-pressed to bring together the talent of yesterday today. Where are the Arlene Francises, Charles Aznavours or Lucine Amaras?” He added, assessing the Armenian celebrity scene today, that though we have some people like Eric Bogosian, “I’m ashamed of the Kardashians. What have they done, after all?”

In general, Maksian feels the quality of television has declined: “Today’s sitcoms are aimed at juveniles, teenagers. They try to be as risqué as possible and tease the audience. It is not really very funny. And what about the British invasion of reality shows? Don’t we have any homegrown talent any more?”

Maksian hopes more young Armenians will work in newspapers and communications. He pointed out, “I had an influence at the Daily News, because I used it. Communications are so important. When an army takes over a government the first thing they do is take over the newspapers, radio and television. The printed word is still mightier than the sword. The things said on radio or TV, get lost eventually, but when they are printed, it hurts, and they remain.” He also hopes that more Armenians appear on Broadway, or at the Metropolitan Opera. Though such careers are difficult, persistence pays off.