Harvey Job Matusow's

Cockyboo & the Stringless Yo Yo

The author Lee Israel suggested that the biggest problem of this book was going to be credibility. I didn't dispute her. She had come to visit me in western New England, to interview me regarding a book on Roy Cohn which she never finished, selling the research to Nicholas van Hoffman, becoming his best selling book, CITIZEN COHN.

When she raised the credibility issue, I could not help but think of London, a day back in 1972. I had just produced an extravent avant garde music festival, ICES-72. The magazine New Statesman had just published an in depth review, devoting more attention to my political activities during the McCarthy days, then to the music. They had a number of facts wrong, and there was no question in my mind that the piece contained libel.

That was twenty years ago. It's been an incredible journey. One I wouldn't wish on many of you. Oh, there has been joy, there has been surface happiness, and there ere has also been much pain.I have to face the reality that I have rolled over many people. Have been the bull in the china shop of life. Blasted my way through life with a non-disturbance about many realities, and a great insensitivity to others. I have been horrid and weird and have probably made more enemies then friends.

I remember showing a newspaper headline from the Baltimore Sun to Roy Cohn. We were both invited to be on the Barry Farber radio show in New York. I had not seen Roy since he sent me to prison, 24 years earlier. It was a story about my travelling Childrens Theatre, The Magic Mouse. It read "MOST HATED MAN IN AMERICA NOW CHILDRENS FAVORITE ACTOR".

Roy looked at the headline, laughed and said, "more hated then me?" "probably not" I said, and he laughed some more. As he laughed, I could not but help thinking how deeply non-disturbed he must be about his deeds. I lost all my hate for him that night, just felt pity. But, most of all I saw us, Roy and Harvey as Two Kids From The Bronx", and told him that we ought to write a joint book with that as its title. He didn't think it too funny.

Then he asked me if I was going to write a memoir. Yes I said, and my working title is, "Oh No, Here Comes Harvey", He laughed some more. It wasn't easy learning to live with the level of rejection that I felt, much of it having to do with my reputation in the McCarthy period, but, much of it having to do with the basic me. I'm a guileful hustler who for much of his life exhibited many of the worse qualities of a New York City native. Yet, with all that not withstanding it's been a life of adventure. It's been creative, it's been arrogant, it's been humble, and without a question of a doubt,it's been rich and full. For that matter, it still is.

I entered my sixty-seventh year one week ago, October 3, 1992. It's a place I never thought I'd reach. I retired that day as full time director of The Gandhi Peace Centre, an organization I co-founded with Gandhi's Nephew, Yogesh ten years ago. Walked out of the front lines of social action, and going back into show business full time as a story teller, a toothless clown named COCKYBOO.

--Harvey Job Matusow, 1992

(The working title for Harvey Job Matusow's memoirs has since become ""The Stringless YoYo", named after Harvey's 1950s era Stringless YoYo invention.)