1963

I have been reduced this month to writing again about Mike Moriarty. Not that he is not worth writing about. He's probably the most worthwhile talent that the Class has going at the moment. At least he's the only one I hear of regularly. Some of you should hire a press agent if you are too modest to sing your own praises.

Mike does not need a press agent to get into this column. He has become something of a show business phenomenon in a very short time. You may recall that he won an Emmy in 1974 as the gentleman caller in support of Katherine Hepburn in the television production of TheGlass Menagerie. He added a Tony award the same year for his performance in the Broadway play, Find Your Way Home. A year or so earlier he had first attracted national attention in the moving baseball film. Bang the DrumSlowly.

Lately he has been acting in Long Day'sJourney Into Night at the Kennedy Center in Washington. He also has found time to record an LP album with Columbia.

"The sound of the album is very '50s," he told The National Observer in a recent interview. "I guess I could say along with Tennessee Williams that I slept through the '60s." (How many of us wish we had as well?)

Mike plays jazz piano, along with a drummer and bass, and sings too. ("Believe me, I have not got a great voice.") He also writes songs - and plays.

His drama, Flight to the Fatherland, may be produced this fall by Joseph Papp in workshop. But acting has become his prime "identity."

By the way, Mike has a message for all you novelists out there:

"Good writers are especially hard to find today," he told The Observer. It is a common actor's lament. "Most of the writers capable of good work today are novelists. My fondest hope would be that a kid could get excited by seeing this production of A Long Day's Journey IntoNight and instead of writing the novel he was about to write, he would do a play."

Well, as I said, get yourself a press agent.

Secretary, 11 Nelson St. Keene, N.H. 03431

Class Agent, 185 East 85th, New York, N.Y. 10028