jerry w. marshall

i was born in danville, virginia. the last capital of the confederacy. and the first thing grandma daisy said once the doctor had done his announcin' was, "well, the jig is up. and he's got red hair. but the good kind."

and in kind, grandma daisy, mama and daddy and i grew up together, it seemed. laughin' and dreamin' and rarely cryin', 'cause cryin' was somethin' only done at funerals. if then. but anyway, i did have a wonderful childhood. no horror stories. or so it seems now. and my daddy took me to the forest indian burial fields instead of the baseball fields and my mama always looked so paris chic and my grandma daisy just suffered and suffered as she was wont to declare. 'cause we were her plight. mama and daddy and me. and she would always say that mama and daddy's plight was to gallivant. and gallivant they did. and i took after mama and daddy and do gallivant to this day.

so to get this picture taken ... i went away to college in north carolina. graduated. and became an english teacher ... and taught and taught and taught. and after payin' those dues i didn't know what to do. and i was living in washington, d.c. ... so, i became a lobbyist in the fcc and that was during the carter administration, and i did try to talk roslyn out of all the polyester ... didn't succeed ... but you know what? she was on to somethin'. 'cause polyester is mighty fine today. evolving is evolving. but to keep this story short, i won't go there. well, i had to move to new york city in 1980, 'cause i had gotten on the new wave and that was that. no more disco. art for art, so to speak, and i moved to new york city and i rode that new wave. hittin' the cement beach, hard. and also rode that new wave right into after dark magazine and did succeed in interviewing the interesting and the uninteresting too. was applauded as being innovative with instant art. by mr. warhol. so, during the falling apart of after dark i got out and became the head of worldwide publicity for the infamous delilah books and films, went to london dragging the everly brothers behind me ... put them in front of me and the queen at the royal albert hall for "the everly brothers' reunion concert" which was one of the first live performance specials for hbo. also at delilah i launched the book and home video for girl groups and the compleat beatles, and on and on until one day mr. robin leach invited me to jump start two specials for syndication called "lifestyles of the rich and famous". and i did. and i drank lots of champagne and ate lots of fish eggs. and of course "lifestyles" went on and on and on but i didn't. i left while the going was good after a couple of years and landed at abc. in casting. casting. and did become somewhat of a casting legend i did become i hear. and i must admit that i was far more interested in developing actors' careers than anything else. was one of the first to go to standup clubs and then go to the network and standup myself for standups. for sitcoms. after almost a decade at abc, and having been moved to the west coast office by mr. bob iger, i left abc to open my own company, marshall arts and entertainment, and lost just about everything. i wanted to do it all. all at the same time. but the one thing i did without agenda at all was, well, i had just finished reading dv by diana vreeland, and of course i'd gotten to know her and absolutely adored her. in new york. so while i was reading her autobiography i realized she had written that book just like she talked. to the rhythm. that lady knew who she was, so i closed the book. sat down at this very typewriter on february 17, 1996 and started writing letters to my grandma "daisy", knowing that she was probably bored wherever she had ended up, and i'm sure that's heaven, but i started writing letters to her about home. new york. los angeles. jayne mansfield. lana turner. home. home. and more home. storytellin' stories about the time i wore mama's wedding outfit to school for the talent contest and got in trouble for that, how i learned so much from ka-treen, the plantation poetess, over a lifetime. about the time we didn't have enough money for me to buy lunch at school, and ...

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