A Fond Farewell: Area Journalists Remember Art Buchwald

The death last week of humor columnist Art Buchwald left two former colleagues in the Northwest Corner with memories of a man who was complex and enigmatic — but almost always entertaining.

Barnett Laschever of Goshen and Bob Yoakum of Salisbury shared some of their memories with The Journal.

Laschever worked for the legendary Herald Tribune, as did Buchwald, but the two journalists actually met years before they were on staff together.

Laschever worked in the paper’s New York office from 1955 to 1965; Buchwald worked in the Paris office from the late 1940s to the 1950s.

"But my encounter with Buchwald came earlier," Laschever recalled, "when I was travel editor for the Hartford Times. I was one of the first editors in America to use his column from Paris, when he first started to send them over [to be syndicated].

"I remembered reading a column he did where he did a six-minute tour of the Louvre. I thought that was terribly funny, so I ran the column, and I continued to run it."

The columnist’s six-minute sweep through the Paris museum featured visits to "the three ladies" (Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa and Winged Victory) and ended with a fast dash to a nearby taxi stand.

In later years, when Laschever would visit the Paris office of the Herald Tribune, he and Buchwald would go out for a drink at the nearby Hotel California.

The bar at that hotel was a favorite gathering place for Herald Tribune staff, recalled Yoakum, who was a reporter and then city editor for the paper from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s.

Buchwald arrived at the paper’s Paris offices shortly after Yoakum, "asking for work and suggesting that the paper could use a column on Paris after dark."Paris When It Sizzled

The idea was accepted and Buchwald, the Jewish boy from New York who had been raised in foster homes and an orphan asylum, soon found himself dining out at the best Paris restaurants and befriending Hollywood celebrities who were visiting the City of Lights.

"It was a job I wanted but Buchwald said, correctly, that if I had an opportunity to go out to Paris nightclubs every night, I would die within six months of liver disease and God knows what other afflictions," Yoakum said. "He didn’t smoke or drink, and I smoked and drank and it was thanks to his perception, and the perception of the editors of course, that I ended up covering airplane accidents and bad food stories."

The persuasive Buchwald soon talked his way into doing movie reviews as well, though he found out perhaps too late that the American films in the cinemas there had all been dubbed into French — which he could barely speak or understand.

"He had to take those of us who could interpret for him," Yoakum said. "His French was almost nonexistent at that time. He would get telephone calls and he would speak in English with French accent. ‘Yess, I seenk I can come...’ Everyone in the newsroom would say ‘Shhh!’ so they could listen to it, and that really pissed him off. But he had to keep on our good side, because we were the ones who were taking him to the movies that he couldn’t understand."

One thing Buchwald did understand was that "writing favorable reviews of Hollywood films in France would pay off when Hollywood VIPs appeared in Paris, ready for a Buchwald nightlife experience," Yoakum said.

The columnist became friends with the most glamorous stars of that era.

"They would do anything for him, because he used his expense account judiciously and really was very much the right kind of guide for Ingrid Bergman or Humphrey Bogart, with whom he became dear friends. He did handle the

vedettes very well. He entertained them and was a source of good stories. He mixed a kind of storytelling humor with the good host’s ability to put people at ease."

Buchwald also understood that his nightlife guide, and the restaurant reviews it featured, would allow him to eat out at the city’s best restaurants for free.

"Soon after he arrived, he was admired because he was eating better than everybody else, all of whom were better paid but didn’t get the same quality meals," Yoakum said. "He was brighter, in other words, than anyone else on the staff — people who for years had worked for French franc pay and didn’t ever eat as well as Art did after starting his column. How come no one else ever thought of this tremendous source of good food: writing a column on restaurants."

Unlike modern restaurant critics, who do everything in their power to remain anonymous, Buchwald took the opposite tack, and waltzed into the eateries enjoying meals on the house.

"They were delighted to give free food to a reviewer from the Herald Tribune,"Yoakum said. "There wasn’t even a hint of moral concern. They were delighted to have him, and he was delighted to get the food. And he always wrote a favorable review."

For his part, Yoakum figured out that columns could be a good thing for a young journalist in Paris. In 1949, when the writer of a Herald Tribune column called Mostly About People decided to leave the paper, Buchwald and Yoakum proposed to their editors that, instead of killing the column, they should give it to the duo, who would write it with a shared byline. Grace and Fearlessness

Both Yoakum and Laschever admired Buchwald not just as a humorist but also as a journalist, and as a man.

"I learned from him that you can take a really simple little idea and spin it out. [Washington Post editor] Ben Bradlee was quoted as saying Buchwald would write three sentences, and that was his basic idea. And then he would elaborate on those lines until, by noon, he would have a 300- or 400-word column," Laschever said.

Like many humorists, Buchwald had a dark side.

"He was an enigma as a person, and troubled," Yoakum recalled. "His childhood was tumultuous, almost like a Dickens childhood. It was a rough one. Once in a radio interview, when asked why he became a humorist, he answered, ‘To get even.’ It was a good explanation of the way he looked at things, and at the way humor played a major role in his life."

Despite those shadows from his past, Yoakum said that Buchwald "could be lots of fun" — although "he suffered from a problem that a lot of humorists suffer from, which is being called up to be funny, especially at dinners. Nothing knocks out humor faster than being asked to be funny."

Buchwald owed his success to more than just a quick wit.

"Art, from the beginning, did things audaciously," Yoakum said, recalling a tour that Buchwald made of the Eastern bloc nations. "He persuaded the Tribune to finance a limousine that would take him into the Soviet Union, and he went in wearing a top hat and smoking a cigar. He was dressed as a stereotypical capitalist."

The trip was done partly to gain attention and publicity, but it also required some fearlessness on the part of the journalist.

That courage extended into the final days of Buchwald’s life, when he refused to go on kidney dialysis.

"I admire him for that," Laschever said. "It took a lot of guts to do what he did. And he didn’t just say, ‘I’m going off dialysis,’ and then sit around and wait. He started writing columns again, he wrote a book, he got his cell phone renewed. ‘Dying is a lot of fun,’ he said in one of his columns. He went out gracefully, on his terms."

Buchwald also understood that his nightlife guide, and the restaurant reviews it featured, would allow him to eat out at the city’s best restaurants for free.

"Soon after he arrived, he was admired because he was eating better than everybody else, all of whom were better paid but didn’t get the same quality meals," Yoakum said. "He was brighter, in other words, than anyone else on the staff — people who for years had worked for French franc pay and didn’t ever eat as well as Art did after starting his column. How come no one else ever thought of this tremendous source of good food: writing a column on restaurants."

Unlike modern restaurant critics, who do everything in their power to remain anonymous, Buchwald took the opposite tack, and waltzed into the eateries enjoying meals on the house.

"They were delighted to give free food to a reviewer from the Herald Tribune,"Yoakum said. "There wasn’t even a hint of moral concern. They were delighted to have him, and he was delighted to get the food. And he always wrote a favorable review."

For his part, Yoakum figured out that columns could be a good thing for a young journalist in Paris. In 1949, when the writer of a Herald Tribune column called Mostly About People decided to leave the paper, Buchwald and Yoakum proposed to their editors that, instead of killing the column, they should give it to the duo, who would write it with a shared byline. Grace and Fearlessness

Both Yoakum and Laschever admired Buchwald not just as a humorist but also as a journalist, and as a man.

"I learned from him that you can take a really simple little idea and spin it out. [Washington Post editor] Ben Bradlee was quoted as saying Buchwald would write three sentences, and that was his basic idea. And then he would elaborate on those lines until, by noon, he would have a 300- or 400-word column," Laschever said.

Like many humorists, Buchwald had a dark side.

"He was an enigma as a person, and troubled," Yoakum recalled. "His childhood was tumultuous, almost like a Dickens childhood. It was a rough one. Once in a radio interview, when asked why he became a humorist, he answered, ‘To get even.’ It was a good explanation of the way he looked at things, and at the way humor played a major role in his life."

Despite those shadows from his past, Yoakum said that Buchwald "could be lots of fun" — although "he suffered from a problem that a lot of humorists suffer from, which is being called up to be funny, especially at dinners. Nothing knocks out humor faster than being asked to be funny."

Buchwald owed his success to more than just a quick wit.

"Art, from the beginning, did things audaciously," Yoakum said, recalling a tour that Buchwald made of the Eastern bloc nations. "He persuaded the Tribune to finance a limousine that would take him into the Soviet Union, and he went in wearing a top hat and smoking a cigar. He was dressed as a stereotypical capitalist."

The trip was done partly to gain attention and publicity, but it also required some fearlessness on the part of the journalist.

That courage extended into the final days of Buchwald’s life, when he refused to go on kidney dialysis.

"I admire him for that," Laschever said. "It took a lot of guts to do what he did. And he didn’t just say, ‘I’m going off dialysis,’ and then sit around and wait. He started writing columns again, he wrote a book, he got his cell phone renewed. ‘Dying is a lot of fun,’ he said in one of his columns. He went out gracefully, on his terms."