MICHELLE MARGETTS
Another 1963 assignment for the Saturday Evening Post saw Jim capturing an ebullient William Saroyan at the famed Algonquin Hotel in New York City. This was the second time Jim had bonded with Saroyan; the first was in Paris. It seems they hit it off and discovered a fair amount in common: Saroyan, an Armenian orphan from Fresno with strong agricultural roots, and Jim, raised mostly by his mother, a Persian Assyrian who also was connected to farming families in the San Joaquin Valley.
Jim really was, first and foremost, an American; he would pronounce it sort of like ’merakin with an aw-shucks Southern/ Western accent. But that adjective barely got out of his mouth before he stressed that what he really was, was Assyrian, descended from ancient, venerable tribes. He could even speak a passable version of Aramaic, the Semitic language known since the ninth century.
One of the very few times I saw Jim express true regret about his body of work was around the fact that he had not documented “where he was from like Saroyan had.” I remember him late at night, head in hand, moaning about how he’d blown his chance, they were all dead, and it would never be the same.
WILLIAM SAROYAN at the Algonquin Hotel, New York City, 1963
Personal note from Ogden Nash
Jim’s assignments for the Saturday Evening Post stand out from his incredibly productive few years in New York City. This proof sheet, opposite, shows OGDEN NASH, the American poet, novelist, and lyricist—and apparent chain smoker, as he is never without a cigarette in Marshall’s entire shoot.
