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Abel Green, Editor of Variety And Language Stylist, 72, Dies

Abel Green, Editor of Variety And Language Stylist, 72, Dies
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May 11, 1973, Page 42Buy Reprints
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Abel Green, who as the editor of Variety knew and reported the news of the great, the near‐great and the unknowns of Broadway and Hollywood, died of a heart attack last evening at his home, 55 Central Park West. He was 72 years old.

Mr. Green was the second editor of the showbiz weekly, succeeding Sime Silverman in 1933 after a career that began in 1918.

Mr. Green was one of the architects of Variety's extraordinary use of the King's English and his early years on the paper were marked by his ereaction of the historic headline, “Stix Nix Hix Pix.”

A heavy man of middle stature, he had a vocational disease. He talked in an abbreviated staccato style.

His request to a friend to give him a phone call would come out, “Gimme a quick Ameche one of these days,” a reference to Don Ameche's portrayal of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.

And once he canceled a plan this way: “Can't meet you today—unforch.”

Variety is food and drink to stars and the would‐be stars of entertainment in all its forms throughout the world. George Bernard Shaw read it carefully, and Francis Cardinal Spellman, when he first met Mr. Green, remarked, “Mr. Green, I read your Bible today.”

Mr. Green—who got the job when Mr. Silverman, Variety's founder in 1905, said to him one day in 1933, “You sit here, Abel”—occupied a battered desk close to the window of Variety's ground‐floor office on West 46th Street, just off the Times Square he chronicled. Mr. Silverman died later that year.

He had no working hours, for the good reason that he was always at work. A Hollywood producer might call him at any hour, a Broadway type might stop him in a drinking place, or a road‐show man might want advice.

He knew just about everybody not only in the theater, the movies, radio, television and peripheral media, but also the worlds bordering on entertainment — sports, newspapers, politics; he even knew a businessman or two.

Walking down the street with him could be a nightmare. He would exchange greetings and perhaps engage in hasty conferences at the rate of a dozen or so to the block.

He referred to a Variety employe as a “mug” and the paper itself as a “rag,” in keeping with the reference to his field as “showbiz.”

A Philosophy of Sorts

Mr. Green had a philosophy of sorts, distilled over the years, and he stated it as recently as last Feb. 20 in a letter to “Who's Who in America,” which had asked him for “thoughts on my life.”

“If you like what you're doing,” he wrote, “and so long as you can physically and mentally function, my credo long has been that I'd rather wear out than rust out.

“I've seen too many voluntary and/or enforced retirees disintegrate or many knock themselves out trying to ‘keep busy.’ The corporate provisos for ‘retirement’ at 65, sometimes earlier, is a mistake both ways, and especially where an enterprise could and should use the mature, vintage experience and benefit therefrom. Remember, there's no short cut to experience.”

He wrote for other publications as well as Variety, and his byline often appeared in The New York Times Book Review.

In a review of “Winchell,” by sob Thomas, in 1971, he called the book a “biog” and commented:

“The ‘ingreats,’ of which Winchell made much in his chroniclings, were provoked into severing ties. Among the first was Variety founder Sime Silverman whom Winchell saluted often as having mentored him. With overly generous cooperation Sime even let him scan the galleys in the Variety office and help himself to scoops ahead of this weekly. Sime once told him, ‘Walter, I give you tips to use so I can jack up my staff for being scooped.’ Sime later cooled on Winchell for his backstage behaviorism to a Variety advertising salesman.”

His own book, “Show Biz: From Vaude to Video,” written with Joe Laurie Jr. in 1951, drew this comment from Lewis Nichols in The Times:

“‘Show Biz’ talks off the cuff, splits an infinitive when it wishes and is slangy without being self‐conscious about it.”

Mr. Green was the editor of “The Spice of Variety,” a collection of pieces written for special numbers of the weekly by prominent figures of the entertainment world.

One, by Jimmy Durante, detailed “the true story of how his nose got that way.” It seems a blood vessel broke when he was helping Caruso by singing a high C in “Trovatore,” with Toscanini conducting.

Mr. Green traveled constantly. He knew entertainers throughout Europe and visited them often.

He was an even‐tempered man, much given to the details and minutae of the field he covered. He read every gossip column and checked rumors constantly.

Mr. Green was born in New York on June 3, 1900, the son of Seymour A. Green and the former Berta Raines. He studied at New York University but left to go to work.

His first major job at Variety, in 1929, was organizing theatrical‐news coverage in the capitals of Europe, North Africa and Latin America.

Earlier, he had been a top theatrical‐trade reporter, writer and editor, covering films, radio, music, nightclubs, Tin Pan Alley, vaudeville and, of course, the legitimate theater.

He was the co‐author and producer of the Philco‐Variety Radio Hall of Fame, a national one‐hour program. He also wrote “Mr. Broadway,” a Warner Brothers film about the life of Mr. Silverman.

Mr. Green was a member of the Motion Picture Pioneers and the Ameridan Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

He leaves his wife, the former Gracelyn Adele Fenn, whom he married June 3, 1921. The couple had no children.

Also surviving are two brothers, Harold and Murray, and a sister, Jean.

Mr. Green left instructions that his body was to be cremated and that there should be no funeral service.

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