For 30 years, Michael Schwartz has owned and operated Galerie Michael, an art gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, building, in his own words, “museum-quality collections, one work at a time.” Works by Picasso, Dali, Goya and Miró adorn the walls for the current exhibition on Spanish masters. With a staff of 24, many […]

“Tooker Lips,” New York, 1965, by Melvin Sokolsky, © 2011. On the afternoon I attended the Annenberg Space for Photography’s latest exhibition, “Beauty Culture,” I was standing in the dark watching a series of fashion images projected in the digital gallery, when I was distracted by a woman who entered the room. I did a […]

“2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America” (St. Martin’s Press) is Albert Brooks’ novel (in all senses of the word) take on our not-so-distant future. Anyone familiar with Brooks’ films, such as “Defending Your Life” or “Modern Romance,” will not be surprised that his debut novel is clever and entertaining. But it is […]

William Link “Now, Tom, do I look Jewish?” William Link, 77, was asking the question. Link is one of, if not the most successful producer and writer in television history, having put, with his late partner Richard Levinson, 16 series on the air, including creating “Columbo,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “The Cosby Mysteries” and “Mannix.” They […]

Who do we have to thank for Hitler’s eventual defeat? What was World War II’s turning point? Who, by his actions during the war, inspired Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s early leaders? The answer, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s stirring new documentary, “Walking With Destiny,” is Winston Churchill. Churchill, who died in 1965, […]

A work by Niso Maman The Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon in Southern Israel, six miles from Gaza, is a 500-bed facility with an emergency room and a teaching hospital that treats Israelis and Palestinians. Qassam rockets launched from Gaza land so regularly on the building that the top two floors are kept unoccupied as […]

Tony Curtis was so famous, so iconic an American movie star that I don’t really need to tell you who he was. He was Tony Curtis, and he lived that role with childish delight, relishing where his life had taken him, and the pleasures and opportunities fame had afforded him. By the time he died […]

It’s been 10 years since my mother Eva Teicholz died on Sept. 22 – nine since I stood by her graveside at the unveiling. Since then, I have visited her grave in New Jersey on many occasions and have diligently observed days of mourning and lit memorial candles. I loved her dearly. But have I […]

Following last year’s cancellation of the original New York version of the series after a venerable 20-year run — a record matched in drama only by the classic Western “Gunsmoke” — a new spawn will appear this fall: “Law & Order: Los Angeles.” While some may dismiss this latest iteration of Dick Wolf’s procedural formula […]

Given that I haven’t been posting much lately, I thought perhaps I would fill the gap by publishing an interview I did for Andy Warhol’s Interview back in the early 1980s with Isaac Bashevis Singer, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. As I recall he was prickly but quite game — qualities evident […]