Norman Jewison has made some of the most influential and popular films of the sound era.

In Toronto this month they are celebrating his illustrious career with a month-long retrospective that includes such classics as In The Heat of the Night, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are coming!, and Moonstruck.

 Having known Norman since the 1980s, I've written an appreciation of him and his movies on my other blog. Please check it out at.

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In the late 1970s, working as a journalist for a New York syndicate I went down to Murrell’s Inlet, South Carolina to interview the legendary mystery writer, Mickey Spillane.

            Beginning in 1947, Spillane wrote a series of hard-boiled paperback novels starring a tough-as-nails private detective named Mike Hammer. Titles such as Vengeance Is Mine and I, The Jury and My Gun Is Quick sold in excess of 180 million copies and…

I met her in Detroit a long time ago at a party for author Harold Robbins.

Michelle—although she called herself Mickie then—was one of the models hired for the occasion to promote Robbins as the real life incarnation of the irresistible stud he wrote about in his bestselling novels. The deception did not work. Robbins was a blowhard who grabbed his crotch a lot and made lewd comments. The women stampeded away.

Mickie was sleek and doe-eyed, African American,…