Now I've Heard Everything

Well before her 20th birthday, Patty Duke had already won an Oscar and was star of her own TV series. Patty Duke won the Oscar for best supporting actress in The 1962 movie The Miracle Worker, which was the captain from the Broadway play in which she also starred.  On the heels of that success came her TV series, the Patty Duke Show, in which she played the dual roles of typical American teem...

In 1953, an earnest and ambitious 25-year-old scientist nmaed James Watson made a groundbreaking discovery that helped revolutionize science, medicine, even the law. Working alongside Francis Crick, Watson identified the double-helix structure of DNA. That breakthrough earned Watson and Crick the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1962. Watson wrote a book explaining the double helix.   I met him in...

A third-rate burglary” at Washington's Watergate hotel and office complex in the summer of 1972 launched a scandal that ultimately brought down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.  At the very center of that burglary, and ensuing Scandal, was G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent who headed the the infamous White House “Plumbers” unit. After serving prison time for his role in Watergate, Liddy...

Sometimes when I interview celebrities,  they are exactly the way I thought they would be.  And sometimes, a celebrity would surprise me a little. I was surprised a little by former First Lady Barbara Bush, wife of George H.W. Bush, our 41st president.  When I met her in 1994, when she published her Memoir, I was unprepared for how simple, straightforward, and folksy Mrs. Bush was....

You would probably be hard-pressed to find a person with more natural energy and enthusiasm than Dick Vitale -- former high school, college, and NBA basketball coach turn sports broadcaster.  Indeed, it's kind of hard to think of college basketball these days without Dick Vitale coming to mind.  And when I met him, more than 32 years ago now, he seemed as perplexed as anyone by how succe...

Jim Lovell was the commander of the three-man crew, whose mission was to land on the Moon. But just two days into the mission, something went terribly wrong. Tom Hanks, who played Jim Lovell in the movie Apollo 13, uttered the words that have become a catchphrase.  But in the moment when level actually said those words, he and his crew mates were dangerously close to death. In 1994, Jim Lovel...

Tomorrow is Major League Baseball's opening day. So today, a conversation from a few years ago with one of the greatest major league pitchers of all time. Bob Feller, a farm boy from Iowa, joined the Cleveland Indians when he was just 17 years old. And during his 18 Major League Seasons that followed, seller set all kinds of pitching records. Is 98 mile per hour fastball earned him the nicknames r...

40 years ago this week, a young would-be assassin put a bullet in President Ronald Reagan. The man whose quick thinking likely saved the president's life was Jerry Parr, a member of Mr. Reagan's Secret Service detail that day outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. Before anyone was aware that one of John Hinckley jr. shots had actually hit the president, Jerry Parr recognized something was seriously...

Born in Somalia, and raised in East Africa, Iman first caught the attention of the fashion world soon after she turned 20. And very soon, she became a supermodel, as photographers and designers recognized her extraordinary beauty and grace. She is frequently seen with other beautiful people, from Hollywood and elsewhere around the world. She was married to David Bowie. I met Iman in 2005, when she...

She's been a top New York City real estate broker for many years, but you may know Barbara Corcoran best for her role that's one of the investors pitched by entrepreneurs each week on the TV series Shark Tank. What you may not know is that Barbara Corcoran is one of 10 children, and that her very strong mother inspired her to become a business success. I met Barbara Corcoran in 2003, when she wrot...

if you were in high school or college in the 1970's, as I was, you undoubtedly are familiar with the comedy of Cheech and Chong.  Cheech Marin went on to act in dozens and dozens of TV shows and movies, as well as doing voices for several animated films.  But what you may not know is that Marilyn is also an astute art collector. That's how I met him, in 2002, when he published a book of...

If you were in network TV news 50 or 60 years ago, the place to be was the CBS News Washington DC bureau. CBS was long considered the gold standard of television news - after all, Edward R, Murrow helped shape and define it. Among the roster of journalism heavyweights in the bureau was Roger Mudd. He had a front-row seat to that historic 20-year period from 1960 to 1980, which he wrote about in a...

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! As I was mulling over all of the Irish or Irish-Amerian people I've interviewed through the years, one name kept coming to the forefront: Frank McCourt. McCourt burst onto the literary scene in 1996, wth his memoir of his early childhood, a powerful book called Angela's Ashes. It also became an award-winning movie. He followed that up with volume two of his memoirs, a bo...

ia Farrow may have been born to be a star. Her parents were both major Hollywood figures, and she grew up amongst big stars. By the time she was a teenager Mia Farrow was a star on the ABC TV primetime soap opera Peyton Place. Then came movie roles, as well as a brief marriage to Frank Sinatra. In 1968, Farrow starred in "Rosemary's Baby," the movie which propelled her to major stardom. And anothe...

In January 1966 a new TV series premiered, unlike any we had seen before.  Even though it only ran on the ABC network for three seasons, it changed television history. And it made the show's star a folk hero. That show, of course, was Batman. Adam West played millionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, whoalong with his sidekick Dick Grayson, aka Robin, fought evil criminals in Gotham...

Larry Flynt is best known for Hustler magazine, which he founded in the mid-1970s, and for the videos and cable TV channels the grew out of the Hustler brand. But it turns out Larry Flynt was also an amateur student of history. Ten years ago, fFlynt and a professional historian co-authored a book called "One Nation Under Ssex: How the Private Lives of Presidents, First Ladies, and Their Lovers Cha...

She was Donald Trump's first wife, from 1977 to 1992. Ivana Trump is the mother of Don Jr, Ivanka, and Eric Trump. Ivana Trump has also been a professional athlete, a designer,and a novelist. And that's how I met her in 1993, the year after she and The Donald divorced.  She had just published the second in what was to be a series of novels, about a beautiful Czech immigrant named Katrinka. Wh...

Economist and Texas Republican politician Dick Armey was first elected to Congress in 1984. By 1995, he has risen to the post of Majority Leader, as the Republican Revolution swept Washington.  He remained in that post until his election defeat in 2002. The following year, Armey wrote a little book of wit and wisdom called Armey's Axioms.

Long before she was a successful solo act, Cher was half of Sonny and Cher. Perhaps no married couple in music was popular in the mid-'60s as Sonny and Cher.  Sonny Bono wrote hit songs like I've Got You, Babe and The Beat Goes On,   Eventually, they even had their own television variety show. Sonny and Cher went their separate ways in the early '70s. Sonny became interested in politics,...

It can be fun, informative, and educational to go back and revisit the things that futurists said years  ago. Just, you know, to check and see if they were right. Kurzweil has been honored by three U.S. presidents, he has 21 honorary doctorates, and has been called the rightful heir to Thomas Edison.  In 1990, I met and interviewed legendary inventor and futurist Raymond Kurzweil. He had...

February is, of course, the shortest month of the year. So it occurred to me it might be an appropriate time to share some of my shortest interviews with you. Normally, I would get 15 to 20 minutes or more with a given celebrity or VIP. But occasionally, because of the constraints of their schedules, I might only get two minutes, or three, or four. So here now are some of those short takes: ...

Margaret Cho rose to prominence in the mid 1990s, with her TV sitcom All-American Girl.  Since then, she's established herself as not only a talented actress but as a standup comic,  fashion designer, and social activist.  I've met her and interviewed her twice, about her first two books. Thi interview was the second one we did, and as you'll hear, her views seem as current today as...

Most of what the scientific world knows about chimpanzees comes from the work of anthropologist Jane Goodall. She first went to Tanzania in 1965.   And in 1990 she wrote a memoir of her work.  That's when I met her. So here now, from 1990, Jane Goodall.

Warning: What you're abiyt ti gear is a true story, told by the suvivor of a violent and horrisying  attack. You need to know that some of the descriptions are graphic, some of the words used are offensive.  James Cameron was born in 1914 in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.  When he was a child, his family moved to Marion, Indiana. It was there, in the summer of 1930, that James Camero survived...

For nearly 20 years Joan Lunden was the co-host of ABC's Good Morning America.  Millions woke up every morning to her cheerful, reassuring, and professional presence. As a journalist, Lunden interviewed presidents and royalyu. She covered the Olympics. She bungee-jumped. In 1997. she left the show -- and was a bit taken aback by what other people assumed she must have been feeling. I met her...