Lucky Bruce

By Bruce Jay Friedman

Bruce Jay Friedman – novelist, playwright, screenwriter, actor, magazine editor – lived his life right at the centre of a golden age in the arts scene in America.

Born in The Bronx in 1930, to Jewish parents of no great means, Lucky Bruce did indeed appear to lead a charmed life. In charge of four magazines on Madison Avenue by the age of thirty, he befriends or hires all the literary giants – Mario Puzo, future author of The Godfather, Philip Roth, Joseph Heller and Richard Yates, to name just a few. At a house party given by Norman Mailer, he and the famous author come to blows. In London he dines with Edna O’Brien and Harold Pinter, and in Hollywood attends parties with Joan Collins and Warren Beatty. Commuting between the family home in the suburbs and Manhattan, he hangs out at media haunt Elaine’s, living the full Mad Men lifestyle.

His second novel, Stern, won critical and commercial acclaim and Friedman quit magazines to write full time. Despite the outward appearance of success his marriage was failing, and in order to support his three much loved sons he turned to screenwriting, delivering first the hit prison movie Stir Crazy, starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. Pryor takes him into his trailer to offer him drugs, at which point Friedman explains the reasons why Jews don’t become junkies. He followed this up with the timeless Splash, which launched the career of Tom Hanks.

With fascinating cameos from Lillian Hellman, Marlene Dietrich, Joyce Carol Oates, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Kurt Vonnegut and of course the legendary Elaine, this brilliant, immensely readable memoir displays the self effacing charm and dry humour which earned Friedman his place among the giants of American culture.