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legendary broadcaster Studs Terkel is 88 years old, hard of hearing and sort of retired, or at least slowed down. But no one can stop the wizened legend, a Chicago dynamo whose feverish mind is as sharp as ever, as the folks on board the MS Maasdam just found out when Terkel was feted by the Floating Film Festival. Bolstered by a couple of martinis and flashing an impish grin, Terkel had held court each night since the Maasdam left port in Ft. Lauderdale last week. The highlight was an evening in which Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert took the stage to interview Terkel live. It was lively, all right.
Commenting on his nickname Studs, Louis Terkel said, "I wish it was what you think it was. " Then he went on to free-associate, recounting an anecdote about a Tennessee librarian who was shocked when a man came in searching for some "pornographic book" which turned out to be Terkel's book, Working. But the guy asked for "Working Studs" by the author Terkel. Terkel can still spin a story with the panache of an Irish poet. He remembers details from interviews he conducted with everyone from mime Marcel Marceau ("I couldn't get a word in edgewise!" ) to silent film star Lillian Gish ("She was a good woman, well read") to Marlon Brando (who manipulated the interview by asking Terkel what motivated him in his work), and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terkel thinks he is a selfish superstar who seeks success to feel superior). Terkel can also rail against injustices, whether it's bad big business tactics or racist dogma or people who forget their own history. He can still get worked up.
He has enough venom left to denounce the McCarthy-era Americans who blacklisted him from TV -- Terkel had his own show, Stud's Place, in TV's early days -- because of his pro-labour leftist attitudes. "People think I was a hero, " Terkel said of defying TV executives who wanted him to recant his leftist politics to save his show. "No, I was sacred s -- -less. It was my ego that did it. " Terkel just couldn't stand being bullied by idiots. As a result, he spent 45 years on the Chicago radio station WFMT. He kept writing books, most recently The Spectator, a collection of his celebrity interviews published last year.
He kept acting, doing cameos -- in Daniel Petrie's The Dollmaker, he played a cabbie, although he has never learned to drive and needed a stand-in to do the final drive-away shot -- and John Sayles' Eight Men Out. He keeps finding ways to make life both amusing and meaningful. "I talk a great deal, even to myself, " Terkel said. "When I talk to myself I find I have a very appreciative audience. " He had one here at the Floating Film Festival, too. Terkel got a standing ovation. Bibliography:
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