What he will say is that he was once a college professor "in the New York area" working toward his Ph.D. in international relations and dreaming of becoming, one day, secretary of state. He gave that up. He is of Russian descent and speaks, reads and writes the language. He does not drink, smoke, or take drugs. For two years he worked on Wall Street. On lunch hours he would go out on the street with a twenty-five-dollar still camera and use it to try to pick up girls. He got pretty good at it.
He managed to talk a girlfriend into posing nude for him. Became a camera junkie. Soon he was spending more time dashing across streets after women than working and now he was asking them to flash for him as well. He tried to make it as a straight photographer but failed. His work seemed predetermined—the pickup as art. And he pursued it, trucking his photos around to men's mags for a living. Editors were impressed by the fresh faces of the women. "Where do you get your models?" they wanted to know. "I pick 'em up," George said.
He made enough money off stills to buy his first movie camera, a hundred-dollar windup Bolex. He shot some loops for the porn market. Everybody said his camera work was awful but that the girls were good, all new faces. Real everyday women. Where'd he get 'em? "I pick 'em up," George said.
One day a film producer suggested that what George was doing was not a bad premise for a movie—and that George should play himself in the lead. The film never got made. But George attained some minor notoriety as a result. A cable TV show taped him talking to a prospective model. When it aired, viewer response was evidently an overwhelming outburst of joy-of-sleaze and George decided that there was a market out there for him and that TV was his medium.
So in December of 1976 The Ugly George House of Truth Sex and Violence was born, a crude masterstroke of black-and-white drool. It lasted a year before problems with Manhattan Cable got him cancelled. By February of 1979 he was back on the air for a month, only to get cancelled again due to a clerical error and was finally rescheduled four months later.
By now he was working in color. The Village Voice wrote about him. So did Playboy and New York magazine. "Repulsive but fascinating," said New York. Other media began paying attention too. 20/20 taped a segment on him. He was a guest on the Stanley Seigel Show.
Cable TV has nothing to offer quite like the Ugly George show. He makes Midnight Blue look as stylish as Last Tango in Paris. George is supremely trashy and as such has found his ecological niche. The upshot is that his port-a-pack equipment now costs in the neighborhood of $5,000—a lot of cash to carry through the wild rapacious streets of New York. George has learned self-defense techniques in order to protect it. "Most of which are killer techniques," he says.
He believes the show now reaches 100,000 people, mostly young and affluent, or at least enough so to bother with cable TV. He has five videotape recorders at his disposal, three color cameras and a new Sony editing machine. He puts together three half-hour shows a week at six or seven hours editing time per show and the rest of his time is spent with business appointments and, of course, cruising. He carries three hours of blank tape with him everywhere he goes and cruises every day, Sundays included. He is out from nine in the morning until maybe ten at night. He tells me he already has enough tape in the can to edit fifty shows or more.
But that's not enough. There is never enough tape. Cruising, after all, is George's life—the show is just his forum and the means of paying for his habit. He has no steady women. But he can expect to meet at least one cooperative girl every day and some of these encounters get him laid in the bargain. For George this is jubilant romance. He knows which Manhattan hallways he can usually find empty for a few minutes. Their locations are "secret." Cops no longer hassle him—many of them watch the show and know that he coaxes, does not rape. So he coaxes hard? Enterprise is New York City.
Any woman will do so long as she meets George's personal standards of beauty and especially if he senses some "vibration" that she will strip. He has shot forty and fifty-year-olds. But it bothers him that not all women will play along. Especially resident New Yorkers.
He is, he says, sometimes bitter.
"Half the pretty girls walking around New York call themselves models and actresses," he says. "And they really believe they are because they're going through the motions. They're paying to go to acting school, they're paying for dancing lessons and singing lessons, paying for a portfolio, buying all the papers oriented toward show business. Now you'd think that when a girl like this sees me coming down the street...you would think that she would say to herself, 'There's a guy with a camera, here's my chance to be on television, why don't I be friendly to him?' But you're exactly wrong. Not only is she not friendly to me, she runs away. And is nasty to me."
Industry propaganda's against him he thinks. Girls learn that there's a right way and a wrong way to get into television and that Ugly George is the wrong way. He points to all the movie and TV stars, Suzanne Somers particularly, who've done nude work before they got famous. It escapes him that this is not exactly the same thing as pulling up your tank top in some malodorous hallway.
Has anybody ever gotten famous from The Ugly George Hour? Well, George has. And he recently shot two local TV commercials in which the sponsors—a disco and an Italian restaurant—asked specifically for a pair of girls George previously had photographed starkers. According to him they're on their way, thanks to The Ugly George Show.
But beyond that, George has plans, big plans. He's beginning to syndicate to Michigan, Long Island and upstate New York. He sees satellite hook-up on some distant horizon. One day very soon, he expects to be playing himself in guest shots on some network TV series, playing Ugly George "having something to do with shooting girls nude. It's already happening." He declines to say how or when. Eventually he sees a sitcom based upon his exploits. Girls who go along with him now can follow him up the Long Heady Staircase of Success. He is sick of "the same old trashy excuses from 'quote, unquote' actresses."
And dancers? Forget 'ern. Dancers never go along.
So who will, then? What's the profile? "No profile," he says, "that's just the point. You'll see."
Tomorrow we go out together.
"That's a very, very strange man," Paula says.
11:30 p.m.
The show again. Not only is Paula not in the room but I think my cats have a problem with polka music.
First there's old business—more footage from Naked City, more requests for letters to the new address. Then new business —Hits and Misses. "If you're a beautiful, liberated chick such as myself," says a decidedly male voice," you drag Ugly George into the hallway and if you're lucky, he might just let you rape him. And that is what you call a Hit, folks."
Then George is on the street waving his hands in front of the camera, girl in sight. "You think Ugly George could let a D-cup like this pass by?" he says. "What do you do with that D-cup in real life?" he asks her. "How does it feel to be a busty girl in New York?"
"Feels like shit," she says.
She comes from Hawaii. She's heard about the show. There's a break in the tape and the next thing you know she is pulling money and pills out of her bra so she can flash for George on the street. Which she does. A single toothsome breast. Then there's another break and they're in a hallway. George is trying to pull up her shirt.
"My shirt does not go up," she says. "No thank you." George has got her pissed off somehow. "A little shy at first," overdubs The Ugliness. "But she was willing to learn. Ugly George had to go into the patented Ugly George rap. And here are the results."
Cut to George's hand lifting a tit out of her bra. "Arch your back," he says, "that's it, a little more." She holds the pose. Then suddenly someone's in the hall with them. George seems to be motioning him by. "It's all right," he says, "she's not shy." The off-camera voice belongs to an old Jewish man. Polite, long-suffering, tolerant, unhappy. "Don't do that, please," he says. "Take the camera away. Take the camera away."
George does. Cut to the studio set an
d the same girl wearing only panties, posed against a pink rug hanging from the wall. There's a clothes rack with a sad-looking towel hanging down. George wants the panties off now. He gets them started for her. Finally she's naked and mashing her tits together and sticking her tongue out just like the real floozies do. Cut to an overdub and George getting naked, standing over her beside the bed. "And I'm ashamed to admit, gang, that I let Hawaii score with me. I have to cut it here—you would be offended."
I go to the kitchen for a beer. When I come back George is pissed at New York girls again. "Why is it that little boys can come up to me," he says, "but big girls cannot come up to me? Are you telling me that women are inferior to little boys?" Montage of women on the run. Then cut to E. G. Marshall smiling into the camera. "Could this be the famous E. G. Marshall," says George, "extinguished...I mean, distinguished actor?" E. G. introduces his son to George and starts to move away. "E. G.!" says George. "What do you think of sex and violence on television?"
I go for another beer. When I return there is a girl in the hallway, a pretty girl with NORTHWESTERN on her tee-shirt. George is trying to get the shirt up and the bra down. "Don't touch!" she says.
"This is only for work," says George.
"All right. But this is my body!" she says.
That so? Just flip on The Ugly George Hour. It belongs to everybody now.
Thursday, 12:38 p.m.
George is a bitcher, a kvetcher, a chronic malcontent. A girl walks by. "That's right," says George, "be sure not to smile. Don't become a TV star, don't get rich, don't get famous like Ugly George. That's right, keep running into obscurity, blondie! Let me know if you ever become anything." He looks over his shoulder and around his camera at me.
"That's why I get bitter," he says.
To stand on a corner with George and watch the girls trot away from him, you wonder how he meets any at all. Women are afraid of his camera. Not that he looks very intimidating. He's wearing the same red tee-shirt, Wranglers and walking shoes as yesterday. There is not yet any effluvium about them. He is decently shaved and washed. The video rig looks patched and bruised but it's real enough to even the barest scrutiny. So why do they loathe him?
There is, of course, an insular psychology peculiar to New York women, as George insists. From the moment they step off the bus someone is making obscene noises at them from a street corner. There are so many New Yorkers the noises can rise to a psychological squall level at times. They learn to pass men standing alone at a brisk pace. There are also many professional cameras in the city, shooting commercials, films, ads, television. It is a point of honor with most New Yorkers not to gawk to excess. And then there is the little red sign on George's camera—THE UGLY GEORGE HOUR OF TRUTH SEX AND VIOLENCE. What's a girl to expect of this encounter? Who wants to hear the truth on Fifth Avenue? As to sex, is Ugly George her type? And what if this time George's subject is violence?
Better scram.
Any girl can outrun George, what with that rig on his back. George has got so he rarely gives chase anymore. Though I did turn my back on him once to get a pretzel. I finally spotted his rig a block and a half away across the street. But the mad dash is rare. Most of the time he stands still or sits somewhere and watches, waiting for some opportunity to come along and present itself.
Or he walks and cruises the oncoming pedestrian traffic. He cruises hard. Walking with him I have the feeling I am on a serious hunt. Slowly I begin to see who he's rejecting. The extraordinarily beautiful, high-fashion type. The extremely well-dressed and moneyed. The utterly unlovely of nearly every variety. The business suit, the obviously straight, the very young and the very old. Everybody else has potential. Especially if they are showing somehow, if the pants are tight or the tee-shirt worn sans bra, if a bit of breast is visible through an open shirt front, if the girl has flash or a touch of the gaudy or carnal.
We walk all day, from 23rd Street up Fifth Avenue all the way to 57th Street, stopping to rest occasionally. At 37th Street George gets some chicken and a glass of milk and I have a couple of beers. We sit streetside at the open entranceway and George puts his rig on a chair between us, his UGLY GEORGE sign facing passersby. We get a lot of smiles and stares. George is well known here.
"One rule," he says. "Don't speak to drunks, scumbags, or old women." A girl might walk by and he'd miss her. But people do ask questions. "Don't answer," George tells me. And he ignores them scrupulously. Every so often he jumps up to talk to somebody. "That's right, don't smile, Miss Adidas—you might get on television!"
Always from the negative. Yet it often works, gets a smile, in which case George goes into his "patented rap," pulls out his Village Voice clippings and begins to sell the girl on television, on what a good body she has, on her potential for getting into commercials and—if she seems to have a sense of humor—on fucking him. He has a good eye. He can see what he wants across a crowded street, sees what I miss entirely. But then this is my first day at this.
Alas, my last day too. Whenever a girl ignores George he begins to grouse. The TV grousing is real, students. "Look at that. That's brilliant. Just walk away." George works as hard at his job as anybody I've ever seen—that rig is heavy—but it doesn't seem to make him very happy. Part of the problem is the street. He gets up to talk to a girl and while I'm watching them a black guy in a business suit comes over and eats his chicken and fries and reaches for my beer. I catch him reaching for the beer. The street can be lousy.
And I think that all the rejection makes him a little crazy. For instance, there's a woman ahead of us on the corner, waiting for the light to change. "See, this happens a lot," George says to me. "She's watching me out of the corner of her eye." She is? Damned if I see it. The light changes. "Now she's going off in a huff because I didn't approach her." Missed the huff too. Looked to me like she just crossed the street. But then this is my first day at this.
By mid-afternoon we've tried a lot of women. Some have been very nice and some hostile. Most have just danced away. But at 42nd Street in front of the New York Public Library, George hits. They're a pair of girls from the Midwest, blonde and a brunette, young and pretty. The blonde is the one showing—a bare midriff and an open blouse. I back off to give him room to work them. In a few moments they're walking down the street, the three of them arm in arm. George knows a little place off Fifth a couple of blocks down. I walk a few paces behind them so as not to spook anybody—this by arrangement with the maestro.
I turn a corner to see a door close half a block away. Through the doorway I see them going up to the second floor. Then George appears. "It's all right, come on in," he says.
By the time I get to the second floor landing the blonde has her blouse open and George has the camera and lights on and his hand inside her blouse, lifting both breasts out of the shirt. The other girl stands beside her, in the frame but still fully clothed. They're staying in Queens with some uncle. They're just out of high school. They had not really thought about being actresses or models but what the fuck.
The girls have to catch a cab somewhere so we wrap it up and George hands the girls a pair of releases. They seem to engage in a moment of quiet panic, but it is only a moment and they do sign. It's amazing how easily it goes.
Out on the street again we move up the Avenue past Saks, past Tiffany's. We stop awhile. George sees a girl. "Not another stuck-up model who doesn't want to be on television!" he says. The girl smiles and walks on. It's rush hour now and the wrong kind of woman is walking by in force. Business suits everywhere. We move through the crowd. George stiff-arms a middle-aged lady in defense of his rig. He sees a possibility across the street.
"They're always on the other side of the street," he says. He's not about to chase her. So we walk and wait.
By now I'm bushed. I convince him to sit down. We talk about the life, about the housewife who's so bored she lets him plug into her electricity and shoot his pick-ups in her apartment just to have something to do. About New York women and beautiful
women and how defensive they can be and usually are with The Ugliness. I'm tired and my head is beginning to hurt, maybe because of the beers and maybe because George really does complain a lot.
He goes off to make a phone call and I watch his equipment. When he returns he's really pissed. That new mailing address he's been pushing on the show? It seems the managers of the building have been tuning in nights and they've decided that what George does for a living is disgusting. So he can't use their mail drop anymore. And he's just delivered a week's worth of tapes to Manhattan Cable, all of which hype the new address. George can just bet some sponsor is going to try to reach him and the mail is going to fuck him up. Or some girl, some really hot girl, will send her pictures. Now he'll have to sue or something. Jesus!
A woman comes racing by on roller skates, moving gracefully through the crowd. She sees us. "It's Ugly George!" she says and grins. But she's interested too long and plows into a guy with a briefcase in front of her. They both go down screaming.
"Too bad you didn't get that on tape," I tell him.
"Fuck her," says George.
You can tell what he's thinking. He still has problems with Manhattan Cable. Now this business with the mail. And shit, no good girls around. He's a little morose about it all. We sit down.
And now the mood is really getting to me. George hasn't stopped a woman for about a half-hour though he assures me he's far from finished for the day. I tell him I've got to go, it's dinner time. "I can see you're not really into this," he says. "Too bad. Probably fifteen minutes from now I'll be balling some girl in a hallway." I tell him I don't doubt it. But I've got enough for the article. "Okay, muscles," he says and I say goodbye.
I go home and turn on The $1.98 Beauty Show. There's a cross-eyed Jewish girl with a nice body, a Hawaiian girl named Tweety and a fat middle-aged woman in a Liza Minelli costume singing a tune from "All That Jazz." A line from a poem comes sliding into my head unbidden. "The world was old and cluttered with spoiled arts they defended but could not revive." Good line. Paula walks into the room and asks me, "how did it go?"