R.I.P., Variety's Army Archerd: 1922-2009

You get a chance to work with damn few legends in this business (or any business, I suppose), and Army Archerd was certainly that.

Army died Tuesday (here's the full Variety obit) at the age of 87. When I started here for the first time in 1987, the mere idea of me -- then just a few years out of college -- working in the same building as Army Archerd  seemed simply preposterous to a few of my friends, who kept asking if I had met him. To them, Army was Variety.

Although I have several memories of Army, the image that always stands out in my mind was how hard he worked, how he answered his own phone, how he came into the office every day and pounded out that column. At one point an editor asked him if it wasn't bigger news that Genvieve Bujold had been cast as the star (she was later replaced by Kate Mulgrew) in the new version of "Star Trek: Voyager." Army had dashed it off in just a single line. When I said that exclusive was probably Page 1 news, Army was asked if he might at least move the item up from the bottom third of his column into the lead.

"There's no 'buried' in my column," Army said. "Everyone reads through all the way to the end."

And for the most part, they did.

Army continued working, steadfastly, long past the point where many of his contemporaries had retired, even as technology (computers were something of a mystery) occasionally flummoxed him. After more than 50 years pulling together items, I'm not sure he would have known what to do with himself without it.

The days of the "... " column have largely disappeared, especially for those of us who grew up reading Allan Malamud's sports musings and Army Archerd in Variety. (I actually did occasionally read Army as a kid on those occasions when I visited my dad's law office, since he subscribed, even though he didn't have many show-business clients.)

At one point early in my career I wondered about what it would be like to replace Army, but the thought soon passed. Sure, it looked like a darn good way for an ink-stained wretch to make a living, but those shoes just seemed impossibly big to fill.

Legends have a way of doing that.