New York City reveled in beautiful fall weather during our long weekend visit.
Rather than the chaotic, crime-plagued city depicted by rants in the New York Post, Manhattan displayed a vibrant, diverse spirit, its people warm and welcoming, filling the streets on a holiday weekend.
I first visited New York City 50 years ago, in October. Walking through the Museum of Modern art as an old man now walking with a cane, I summoned the ghost of my youthful self, stunned and transformed by viewing Picasso's "Guernica" there. I loved returning to the old masterpieces, from Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh to Jackson Pollock.
We walked to see Kenny Leon's endearing reclamation of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," starring Jim Parsons as a mesmerizing stage manager. In my first experience with Broadway, I saw Bernadette Peters, Robert Preston, Glenda Jackson, Elizabeth Ashley, Keir Dullea and Fred Gwynne on various stages.
Gwynne, the star of "The Munsters" and "Car 54 Where Are You" played Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," which also featured the radiant Ashley and a laconic Dullea.
The young Peters and the veteran Preston achieved aching chemistry in "Mack and Mabel." Jackson gave a dazzling performance in an Ibsen drama. I can't remember if it were "A Doll's House" or "Hedda Gabler."
Now, the young women aren't as stylish. Businessmen don't wear ties. Most newstands don't sell newspapers. Telephone booths are long gone.
The city still pulses with energy, a nutty entrepreneurial vitality. Manhattan might sink beneath the ocean one day, but I'll bet on it coming out on top, forever new.
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