The World's Pocket-Billiards Championship was held this past April in the chan-deliered ballroom of Manhattan's Commodore Hotel. Competing on the brilliant-green felt of two adjacent tables, a dozen crack shots took their cues in a seven-day pursuit of the title (the winner: Luther Lassiter). Watching the dinner-jacketed pool pros at solemn play was a connoisseur audience that included Playboy's LeRoy Neiman. Reports Neiman: "I was most impressed by the emotional excitement that charges the smoke-filled air during a match, particularly when a high run starts to develop. Sounds are a dominant part of the drama -- the scratchy rub as the cue is chalked; the clean, sharp click of cue on ball as the player strokes; then the sharp crack of cue ball on object ball and the clunking drop into the intended pocket. If the shot is well-executed, spontaneous applause breaks the quiet, just as in tennis. Each formally clad player takes over his table with the direct, accomplished skill of a concert pianist taking over a keyboard. In the ornate setting -- a dramatic contrast to the seamy pool-hall milieu of Hollywood's The Hustler -- the absorption of both players and spectators is complete."
Sardi's, the traditional sipping and supping headquarters of New York's theater professionals, is customarily aswarm with celebrities after dark -- but never more so than during the frenetic post-show hours of a Broadway opening night. At curtain's fall following the debuting production, the cognoscenti -- headliners, flacks, agents, angels, starlets, columnists -- head like lemmings for the hallowed haunt on 44th St. off Times Square, there to politick for tables, savor cannelloni au gratin and assorted libations, applaud the arrival of the evening's stars, and await with the other insiders the make-or-break verdict of the drama critics. On such an electric evening Playboy's wayfaring colorist, LeRoy Neiman, stationed himself in the burgundy purlieus of the venerable restaurant, absorbed the festive excitement -- the swirl of elegant latecomers before walls papered with the caricatures of stars, the flash of smiles and diamonds, the tinkle of glasses and expectant laughter -- then recorded the sensitive impression to the right. "The atmosphere," observes Neiman, "is convivial, intimate, and hopefully buoyant. Of course, careers and reputations are at stake. Watching, one becomes intensely aware of the exhilaration and the fragility of status in the theater."
