March 4, 2004

Celebrated columnist Murry Frymer joins the Almaden Times Weekly

By Kymberli W. Brady
Staff Writer

The Almaden Times Weekly proudly welcomes Murry Frymer, one of the Bay Area's most celebrated newspaper columnists to the staff, starting this week.

Frymer's impressive, award-winning career spans decades, including stints as editor, editorial writer and critic for Newsday in New York as well as senior editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Boston Herald-American, the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, the Levittown Weekly and the Westport Town Crier before moving to the Almaden Valley and joining the San Jose Mercury News in 1979 as a movie critic and humor columnist.

In 1999, Frymer retired from the Merc to pursue a new career as founding partner and writer for TheColumnists.com , a monthly Web magazine featuring celebrities and journalism icons, including actress Ann Jillian, former Merc columnist Ron Miller and former New York sportswriters Maury Allen and Stan Isaacs, among others.

Frymer also remains active with speaking engagements, combined with monthly columns for San Jose Magazine. He successfully sold out of his first book “They're Coming for My Mattress,” a collection of columns based in part on his popular cat series, along with memories that ensued as he replaced his old mattress with a new one—and said goodbye to an old friend. He is also the author and lyricist of the off-Broadway musical “Four by Night.”

Frymer's columns overflow with humorous bits and pieces of everyday life, taken in large part from personal experience and family memories presented in a down-to-earth atmosphere that readers can easily relate to.

“People want to read somebody who is sort of an everyday man,” he says. “It's all about the very little things in life. Seinfeld did this. You find somebody who's your stand in. Seinfeld was supposed to be about nothing,” he adds. “My column was about less than nothing most of the time.”

A young working boy
Born in Canada, Frymer was introduced to the newspaper business at the ripe old age of 5, where he could be found selling papers at the corner newsstand. “He [the owner] thought it was cute to put a bundle under my arm and people would give me the two cents,” he remembers. “I sold a lot of papers for him.”

Much of Frymer's creativity can probably be traced back to a vivid childhood imagination—where a tree branch doubled as the bus he would drive down Grace Street and Saturday afternoons were spent devising new plotlines and endings to the movies he had just seen at the Pylon Theater with his friend Sydney—good practice for a lad with aspirations to someday become a screenwriter or producer.

The pair also spent many nights selling programs at Maple Leaf Stadium; a job Frymer still considers one of the best he's ever had—given inflation and all. “If you go into newspaper work, you don't make much money,” he explains. “It's never been lucrative.”

In 1945, the Frymer family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where one of his fondest memories remains when he and his father, along with a family friend opted out of the synagogue activities on Yom Kippur to go to the movies.

“The idea of going to a movie on a holy day was just outrageous,” said Frymer. “I thought it was fabulous. We were doing something wicked, maybe even illegal. Of all the experiences I ever had with my father, this was the best—that we had done something together and it was our secret, even from mom.”

Years later, he would use that experience as fodder for a column, even though it would divulge a lifelong secret to his mother, whom he says “never believed anything in the newspapers was true anyway. She would always say, ‘Murry's a writer, he makes things up.'”

A career takes shape
Frymer attended the University of Michigan, where he admits being torn between the school newspaper, the Michigan Daily, and the all-male comedy productions on stage. He later produced a book of lyrics that earned him the Hopwood Award for drama. “Arthur Miller won that when he was at Michigan, so he and I are just like this,” he jests, crossing his fingers.

Frymer spent his summers as a copy boy for the Cleveland Press before taking a position with the paper for $66 a week. His first assignment was admittedly his most difficult as he was to visit the home of a family who had just lost their son and get a picture of him for a column he would later write for the op ed page. “It was the very same day they received the telegram,” he recalls. “It was awful. I should have gotten out of the business right there—it seemed so invasive.”

Later, he began writing for a new section of the paper devised to accommodate the city's growing black population. “I became the writer for the inner city community,” he says. “But it didn't run in the regular paper. Very few people bought it because a lot of them couldn't read. So I was writing for me. I thought I was doing very important work and really nobody was reading it.”

Still enamored by the entertainment industry, 22-year-old Frymer left his position for New York and endeavored to entertain a career in show business. Three months later, he instead joined the Army, where he became the entertainment director at Ft. Huachuca in Arizona and single-handedly rounded up a bevy of entertainment for the troops—bringing in talent greats such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Later, Frymer would write his own show—one that earned him a spotlight on the Ed Sullivan Show as the winner of the All Army Entertainment Contest. “Ed Sullivan then was close to being a god,” he exclaims. “It was the number-one show on television.”

He later attended Columbia University and New York University, where he received his degree in political science. Later his resume would boast a throng of positions for several prominent newspapers, including his 20-year reign with the Mercury News.

Family life
Frymer is now celebrating 37 years of married life with his wife Barbara, a special education teacher and former Peace Corps volunteer. The two met in April 1966 and were married five months later on Labor Day. “We were kind of strangers,” he says. “We hardly knew each other. It was very romantic.”

Together, they settled in New York before moving to Almaden and have raised three children, whom Frymer admittedly loves to brag about. Their oldest, Paul, 35, is a UCSD professor. Thirty-four-year-old Ben just received his PhD in sociology from UCLA and attends Columbia University on a fellowship. Carrie, 32, is a dancer and actress who works for the president of domestic productions at Warner Bros. “Funny,” he says, “In my career, when I was trying to do that kind of thing, I always wanted to meet someone like my daughter—who had access to the person who determines which movies to make. Unfortunately my timing was bad and she didn't get that job until I was pretty well beyond that point.”

Although there are no grandchildren yet, his son Paul has been engaged for three years, and the family waits for word on the wedding day. “You know,” jokes Frymer, “whenever Paul does [get married], we're having a parade down Camden Avenue!”

Murry Frymer Day
In 1999, Mayor Ron Gonzales presented Frymer with a proclamation declaring May 18 as Murry Frymer Day. “It was very nice of the mayor,” he says humbly. “A lot of fans showed up. The Merc made pins saying ‘It's Murry Frymer Day' and these pins have wound up all over the world. It's nice when people let you know that they like you. I'm very appreciative of that.”

Admittedly, Frymer revels in putting himself “where the reader wishes he could be” in an effort to use the experiences in his columns. Rather than attend the 2000 Academy Awards as a member of the press, he opted instead to go as a guest, rubbing shoulders and engaging in casual conversation at the bar with stars like Jack Lemmon. “The great thing was they didn't know I was press,” he recalls. “They thought I was a producer. It was very exciting. And I know the reader would like to be standing at the bar next to Jack Lemmon, rather than backstage waiting for him to come off and pose—with canned comments.”

Frymer admits that he is hardly ever at a loss for words—as this country has been and continues to be filled with inspiration for his columns. “America does have one wonderful thing about it,” he says. “It is a melting pot. We all blend in. I don't think that's true anywhere else in the world. It's a fascinating country.”