Christopher P. Stephens, Bookman

Chris Stephens has been a book dealer since 1965 - earlier if you count childhood buying and selling.

Stephens has sold major collections to university libraries all over the world. He has operated appealing bookstores in Mt. Carroll, Illinois, Hastings on Hudson, NY and several in NYC, NY. He is a wholesale dealer to other bookstores all over the world.

Chris loves books.

Stephens now maintains a lively internet operation out of his new home in Scranton, PA.


Sunday, March 31, 2013

CPS 70

Even as a Little Kid, Chris Stephens was a Big Reader.
(Obviously there quite a bit more to this post.  Where is it though?)

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Jed Levin Talks About Ira Levin


   “I knew him both as a father and as a writer,” Jed says.  “He involved us in his writing life.  Not when he was writing books - he needed time alone then.  But once he finished something, especially plays, he brought us into that part.”
   Jed and his two brothers saw one of Ira Levin’s plays repeatedly.
   “I have no idea how many times I saw Deathtrap.
    “My father went to the out-of-town tryouts and, in New York, he went to every performance with a new actor – not just new leads, but any new actor.  He wanted to be able to confer with the director as to directions for the new actor.  Also, he liked to go to Deathtrap.  And he liked to take us with him.
“We went out to dinner at Sardi’s before hand.  We went backstage afterwards.
   “It was so much fun to be in the back of the theater.  We weren’t watching the play as much as we were watching the audience.  My father didn’t have tickets, of course, no seats - we just sat on the steps. We were fascinated by audience reaction.   We’d wait on the edge of our steps in anticipation.  How hard would they laugh at the jokes?  How much would they jump at the scares?  We never really got tired of it.”
    Jed wondered if I knew the play.
    “It’s great,” he said.  “It’s two plays – kind of a play about a play – something like the little play within Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  It’s funny and it’s suspenseful at the same time. There are lots of good twists.  I can’t tell you the plot.  You have to see it.  Go to one of the frequent revivals.”
     Ira Levin’s sons didn’t spend all of their time on the steps.  Sometimes they spent the second act backstage with Marian Seldes in her dressing room.
     “Marian was the female lead for the duration of the show.  She never missed a performance.  She was so nice.  We loved hanging out with Marian in her dressing room."
     Hanging out with performers in their dressing rooms, dinner at Sardi’s, fussed over by staff and celebrities, aware of his father’s impact in the theater, movie and book business – this was all part of Jed’s and his brothers childhoods.
     Deathtrap is the work of his that involved us most.  That was about 1974.  I was in the 4th or 5th grade when it opened and it ran for a good chunk of time.  Death Trap was something that was always going on in the background of my childhood.”
     When Ira Levin and Jed’s mother, Gabrielle, divorced the boys still saw their father frequently.  He took an apartment nearby their Wilton, CT home.  (Wilton likely provided the inspiration for Ira Levin’s “Stepford Wives”.)
     “It was a small apartment.  We slept on a foldout sofa, I think. We ate on his desk.  It was a big desk and at dinner time he would just move the typewriter.”
     What about all his papers and notes and other things spread out all over the desk?  I wondered.
     “No, no.  He was a neat person.  Meticulous really.  There would just be a folder of notes and an orderly stack of papers.  Easy to move.”
     Jed told me about “Drat! The Cat!”, a musical Ira Levin wrote.
     “He wrote the play, the lyrics, and he actually wrote the music too. They didn’t use that music though.  They advised him work with a musician for the melodies.  His were good though.  Very good.  My father played some of his songs for us in the on the piano.  We liked it.
    “Elliott Gould was in Drat! The Cat!  He was married to Barbra Streisand.  She recorded one of my father’s songs – “He Touched Me” – maybe as a way to help promote the play Gould was in at the time.   The song was a big hit lasting a lot longer than the play ran.
     “Such a charming play.  Too bad it flopped.”
     It flopped?
     “The New York Times went on strike just as the musical opened.  It was a disaster. The review wasn’t printed.  Wasn’t read.  No one knew about it.  The play closed early.
     “It’s just a matter of time, though, before someone puts it on again.  I’m surprised it hasn’t already happened. It was such a good musical.”
    Some time afterwards, the music for He Touched Me was used as background to a perfume ad.  “It was funny,” said Jed, “to hear it come on the TV.  ‘There’s Dad’s song’ we’d say.”

     What did Jed get from his father, Ira?
     “I really treasure his influence on me.
     “I value those interests of his that he passed on to me.  Movies – he loved movies.  The original King Kong was his favorite.  He was pretty clear about that.  That’s one of my favorites too.   I have his same general taste in books.  We both like Dracula and Sherlock Holmes and Poe.  Certain things I read make me think of him.
     “I remember him best when I am reading something we both liked.”



YouTube snippet from Deathtrap 2010 movie – British version

YouTube excerpt from 1982 Death Trap with Christopher Reeve

IMDb

about the Roman Polanski movie, Rosemary’s Baby, based on Ira Levin’s novel

Guide to Drat! The Cat!

Ira Levin bio



Thursday, March 7, 2013

Ira Levin plays board games


Ira Levin’s son, Jed Levin, took this photo of his father playing monopoly.  Jed and his brothers played monopoly and scrabble with their father frequently.  I was surprised.
Their father is the guy who wrote Rosemary’s Baby and the Boys from Brazil and Stepford Wives and A Kiss Before Dying - as well as plenty of other scary things.  Isn’t it hard to imagine him enjoying an ordinary, pleasant board game with his sons?
“People were surprised sometimes,” says Jed Levin.  “especially if they didn’t know him, or if they only knew about some of his work.  He was a mild, nice man.  He was our father.  I didn’t think of him as a horror writer.  For one thing, he wrote in plenty of other genres too.  He wrote comedy and even a musical.  He was a writer, not a certain kind of writer.”
Jed and his brothers spent Wednesdays and alternate weekends with their father after his parents divorced.  Sometimes the four of them would spend the weekend with Ira’s parents, who lived in a comfortable house outside the city.  The photo was taken at Ira Levin’s parents’ house.  Jed’s grandmother was a good cook.  His grandfather was an amateur painter (although Jed doesn’t think his grandfather painted the young woman gazing at Ira from out of a painting behind him).
This monopoly evening must have taken place in 1973 because Ira Levin is wearing a shirt with “Veronica’s Room” printed across the chest.
The play, Veronica’s Room, is one of his scary ones.
“Someone in the cast must have had tee shirts printed up,” Jed said.
Tee shirts announcing his father’s work, and chats with cast members in their dressing rooms, and opening parties at Sardi’s were part of Jed’s childhood.  He and his brothers were involved in all sorts of other aspects of Ira Levin's many plays, and books, and movies from books, and television productions.
Jed’s got good stories.  And they’re coming soon.

One of Jed’s brothers set up this very complete website

Veronica’s Room