Bookbag: A. J. Liebling on Harold Ross

Ross liked writers, but he would no more have thought of offering a writer money than of offering a horse an ice-cream soda. "Bad for them, Liebling," he would have said. Ross thought that a healthy writer wouldn't write unless he had had to emit at least two rubber checks and was going to be evicted after the week end. It was an unselfish conviction, a carry-over from his newspaper days. He reminded me of a showman I knew named Clifford G. Fischer—the impresarial analogy pops up constantly when I think of Ross. Fischer spoke to actors only in a loud scream, and when I asked him why, replied, in a low conversational voice he used on nonactors, "Because they are abnormal people. To abnormal people, you got to talk in an abnormal voice." —A. J. Liebling, "Harold Ross: The Impresario"