The Times-Tribune from Scranton, Pennsylvania • 104

CJ I Dp you have a question about your favorite famous personality? Send your question to Hy Gardner. "Glad You Asked That. Post Office Box 1 1 743 Chicago. Ill 6061 1 EDITED BY Hy Gardner ft QUESTION: How did Dave Garroway, first host when NBC-TVs Today was launched 26 years ago, manage to awake early enough every morning to make the studio in time to do the shows live? i Mr. and Mrs.

Len Levy, Baltimore, Md. QUESTION: Is Omar Sharif that actors real name? Where and when was he born? S. Harden, Milwaukee ANSWER: Omar Sharif was born Michael Shalhoub in Alexandria, Egypt, Oct. 10, 1932. Says Sharif, Im Syrian by descent, Egyptian by birth.

After co-starring with Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, he said, Shes a monster. I had nothing to do but stand around. Sometimes I just stood on the sidelines and watched her. I think her biggest problem is she wants to-be beautiful and she wants to be a woman. And she is neither.

-o TO QUESTION: Weve heard many rumors that the late writer-columnist Damon Runyon, was the first to call New York City the Big Apple. My grandfather a former acrobat, disagrees. He says it was a vaudeville term that went something like Ihis: If you havent played the Big Apple, you havent made the big time. Which is correct? Bill Birch (an old vaudeville buff) San Diego ANSWER: Charles Gillett (president of the N.Y. Convention and Visitors Bureau) told us that whenever hes asked who originated The Big Apple, he answers: Runyon not because it has any foundation but because it sounds logical.

More likely the vaudeville version is closer to the truth. Especially when you consider that in the era of the two-a-day the struggling vaudevilleans goal in life was to play New Yorks Palace the heaven of his calling. QUESTION: How old is that amusing and talented writer-comedienne, Joan Rivers? Or. Aba Friedman, Miami Beach, Fla. ANSWER: I wont tell you how old I am, Joan moans, but the candles on my last birthday cake set off our smoke detector! Dave Garroway (hand raised) with past and present members of the Today show.

Next to him are Jack Lascoulie and Frank Blair. Standing are Gene Shalit, Tom Brokaw, Floyd Kalber, Jane Pauley and Lew Wood. ANSWER: David invented and installed a control board to synchronize various alarms starting at 4 a.m., revealed writer Robert Metz. A second buzzer alarm sounded at 4:25, but a more insistent urgent, must-get-up signal, as Garroway explained, went off at 4:35. To still its rude sound, he had to leave his bed and cross the room.

One can imagine an apprehensive Garroway, lying half-awake and enduring the countdown before hopping out of bed to beat the final alarms angry report. Garroway always had a breakfast prepared or orange slices floating in orange juice, dressed, stepped through the front door of his Manhattan digs, and entered a cab which awaited him daily by prearrangement. Then he rode in silence to the studio, where he would rouse himself with coffee and perhaps a doughnut. Hed arrive promptly at the RCA studios at 5 a.m. for a rehearsal of his unrehearsed rambling journey through the days highlights, interviews (two of his guests were Eleanor Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson) plus a variety or musical act or two and commercials, all punctuated with sips of coffee and yawns.

QUESTION: I hear thqt Garbo has finally agreed to sit for an interview with Dick Cavett. Howd he do it? June Taylor, Hallandale, Fla. QUESTION: Settle this family difference please. My husband insists that Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn were married. I am equally insistent that they werent.

Which one of us is correct. Mrs. Dorothy Lubbock, Tex. ANSWER: You are. The moon-struck stars were Mr.

and Mrs. only when the movie scripts for several movies they made together specified that status. One such flick, Woman of the Year, was voted an Academy Award for best original screenplay of 1942 won by Ring Lardner and Michael Kanin. QUESTION: Apart from his friend Jimmy Carter, does Bert Lance have any other defenders of his method of operation? Mrs. K.

New Bedford, Mass. ANSWER: Yes. Many businessmen and bankers believe in his way of handling money. One friend of ours, a conservative millionaire, said hed hire the former budget director in a second. That he was doing nothing different from other and less well-known money manipulators.

Loudest defenders of Lance's practices was economist and writer Eliot Janeway. In an article by Dan Dortman in New York Magazine, Janeway is quoted as saying, Lances policies, his ideas he stood for my thinking! QUESTION: I remember some years ago when singing star Sophie Tucker, The Last of the Red Hot Mamas, summed up what a woman needed as age crept up on her. Could you search your files to print what she said? I Vera Fulton, Mo. ANSWER: This was Sophies sassy saying: From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents. From 18 to 35, she needs good looks.

From 35 to 55, she needs good cash! QUESTION: Is it true that comedian Phil Foster now a big hit on Laveme and Shirley TV series was a fighter in his early Brooklyn days? Buff ORourke, New York ANSWER: No. Though Brooklyns Ambassador to the USA fancied himself as a great athlete, the only connection he had with boxing was being knocked out three times. Our favorite story about Phil concerns Buddy Hackett, (then a 190-pound, 5-foot-7 kid who had ambitions one day to be heavyweight champion. Phil appointed himself Buddys manager, trained him at Trinity Boys Club in Brooklyn, and booked his first fight. Buddy took one look at his opponent, (fi bruiser built like Mean Joe Green) and handed the gloves to Foster.

Foster, introduced as Hackett, got kayoed in two rounds. The same scene was repeated three times after which Hackett fired Foster: I dont want you as my manager any more he said. Youre giving my name a bad reputation! ANSWER: Dick didnt do it. It was a freelance journalist named Frederick Sands who got a private audience with the Great Garbo, for a German weekly, Bunte Dlustrierte. As the odd couple strolled around Garbos apartment in Klosters, Switzerland, the introverted beauty told him, Im restless wherever I go and cant stay put.

I would like to live differently somewhere, if only I knew where I could go. I think about my life and the past, she admitted. But Ive ruined my life and its too late now to change it. QUESTION: Why did Woody Allen plan not to attend the Academy Awards ceremony even though he was in contention in several categories? Was ne pulling a George Scott or Brando? Mrs.R.K.D., Knoxville, Tenn. ANSWER: No.

Knock on wood, thats not Allens style. He previously explained that while he wouldnt refuse an Oscar, he personally wouldnt accept one..