The other day, Mayor Koch acted as host at a lunch for Merv Griffin, because Merv Griffin’s new contract calls for him to tape six weeks of his Merv Griffin Show here each year for the next five years. The Mayor said that this was a good thing for New York and one more sign that New York was on its way back up. Before lunch, which was to take place in the Blue Room at City Hall, people gathered in an upstairs room for cocktails. Merv Griffin himself, wearing gray pants and a navy jacket, and looking almost too well fed, told stories about Las Vegas to people who are in show business and have probably been to Las Vegas. The Mayor himself, wearing a navy pin-striped suit, and looking just well fed enough, told jokes to the same people. Ethel Merman, wearing a double-knit maroon dress with matching cape, was there. Carol Bellamy, the president of the City Council, wearing a blue silk shirt, a brown skirt, and a soubrette hairdo, was there. Estelle Parsons was there. A man who is a big television-film-property
agent and who sometimes plays tennis with Jack Paar on weekends was there. Maureen Stapleton was there. E. G. Marshall was there. Celeste Holm was there. Shelley Bruce and Alice Ghostley, from the musical Annie, were there. Someone who looked just like Shirley MacLaine but wasn’t Shirley MacLaine was there. When it was time to eat, the Mayor cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted “Come on down for lunch, everybody!” and at least three women in the room said “Oh, isn’t he cute!”
After lunch (Scotch salmon, blanquette de veau with rice, carrots, pear tart), the mayor proposed a toast in which he said that New York was No. I again. Then he said that he had been on a radio show taking calls from listeners and one person had called in to complain about a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound naked woman cooking in a shopwindow. He said that he told the person calling in that he would have someone look into the matter officially. He said that he would now read from an official report he had received on the incident. He read, “Memorandum. To: Edward I. Koch, Mayor. From: Carl B. Weisbrod, Director, Midtown Enforcement Project. Re: Squat Theatre, West Twenty-third Street. We have investigated the complaint regarding a production at the Squat Theatre on Twenty-third Street during which a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound woman was reported to have performed nude in a storefront window. [Mild chuckle from guests.] It is true that this performance did indeed occur as described. It was, however, part of a radical avant-garde theatre group’s play entitled Andy Warhol’s Last Love. [Loud laughter from guests.]
The play itself was not written by Andy Warhol. [More loud laughter.] Nor did Warhol have any connection with this production, which has been described as the reflection of recent immigrant experiences in America. [Really loud laughter.] The production was staged by an extended family group of Jewish Hungarian refugees who fled from Hungary because they were about to be arrested for not conforming to the standards of Socialist Realism of the East Bloc nations. [Loud, loud laughter.] The play ended its run here in New York on September 15th. It is currently in production in Amsterdam, Holland, where the group will be spending the fall season. [Loud laughter.] The scene involving the naked fat woman in the window was part of this group’s theory about ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ theatre. [More loud laughter.] They created a concept of performing before two audiences—the audience in the theatre and passersby on the street. The woman has been described as an authentic American witch who acts out a real witch’s ceremony in the window. She was not cooking. [More loud laughter.] It is doubtful that her act would be declared legally obscene. [Mild laughter.] This play, supported with a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts [really loud laughter], was apparently very popular. It attracted an average of ninety per cent capacity audience. It received good reviews except from John Simon. [Loud laughter.] The theatre group, consisting of nine adults and five children, arrived in this country in June of 1977 under the aegis of the International Theatre Institute. It received an Obie for the play Pigchild in Fire, in 1977, and has been invited to represent the
United States at the Festival of Nations next spring in Hamburg, Germany. It is considered a serious group of artists who came to this country seeking freedom of expression through innovative methods. [Loud laughter and applause from guests.]”
—November 20, 1978