A Visit to "The Gluckmans"-- A Little Personal Note on Life on the Upper West Side

Going to end this evening with a little story from back when I was in NYU Grad Film School..

I was just 24 at the time --made the acquaintance of a very likeable fellow student whom I shall call Tom Gluckman-- he wanted to do some camera work and make a little film on our own ( I had a new Scoopic camera from Canon)

We filmed all sorts of "chase" scenes in Riverside Park with different lens settings from wide to telescopic( the camera had a great zoom lens)--in slow motion, in fast motion, all kinds of variations on a theme ( helped out by friends , fellow film students and acting students from NYU).

Tom was about four years older than me but did not look it at all.

He had just come back from time out West hanging out with rodeos for a couple of years after getting out of the Army (where he almost died from appendicitis that went untreated due to medical incompetence)

He had written a movie script about the Rodeo ( starring of all people, a rodeo clown) and had even found an established agent who was handling it for him.

I read it and while I thought it was very moving and sensitive, I felt it would be hard to sell to a studio unless you had a star lined up who wanted to play the lead

Tom mentioned his wife on several occasions and invited me over a couple of times but for some reason it took a while before I got to his place

Instead of living in a typical student apartment (shared, or  a small studio like I had had in the East Village) Tom took me to a grand apartment house on West End Avenue as shown in the picture above

There I met Tom's wife, and saw their apartment. Wow.

It was a fairly large co-op which Tom's wife's parents had bought for them as a wedding present.

It was furnished like the place of a middle aged couple with conservative and refined tastes, so different from the student pads I was familiar with

Tom's wife had hair immaculately coiffed and was immaculately dressed and looked except for her young face like a young middle aged matron.

She gave me a very frosty reception.

She made some polite remark that she thought it was time Tom started looking for some other line of work besides movies..

Which he did, kind of, within a year. Some reps from Bell Labs came and Tom jumped at the chance of getting a junior management job there. I suppose it made his wife a little happier..

But not much. But at least he would be wearing a nice suit and tie every day and be working with a big established company.

Just one of many stories that come to me now thinking of those days..seeing this building brought it all back in a flash.