Jack Hartzman

I first met Jack Hartzman in 1967 when, as a rookie staffer at Canadian Press, London, I clocked in at the Hoop and Grapes pub, next door on Farringdon Street to CP’s workshop in the AP building. Jack was a not infrequent member of the delegation that represented Reuters at the Hoop’s nightly, multi-national press mêlées. These also drew imbibers from such journalistic juggernauts as America’s Associated Press, Moscow’s Tass, Beaverbrook’s Express and even a Japanese agency personified by two jokey, Rising-Sun enthusiasts of British bitter.

By the late 1960s, Hartzman had been an 85 Fleet Street inmate for over 10 years. He’d shed whatever Canadian traits had scarred his person by virtue of birth at a Toronto sickbay and tender years spent in that “sanctimonious icebox” of a town. But he showed no ill-will towards myself and others of CP’s Hoop contingent (among them ex-Reuterian Carl Mollins).

Even at this early time, JH’s public-house demeanour, so comically mythologised by colleagues down subsequent years, had begun taking shape. There was, for instance, the inconspicuous entry of his compact figure into the already swirling, smoky pub-scene, followed by a barely audible order for a Bell’s on ice (or was it at first a lager?) conveyed in that epoch to florid Hoop Guv’nor Ted Wright. Then all was smileless musing on the latecomer’s part until the ravages of World Desk editorial trials had at last been alcoholically soothed away, or eclipsed by the relentless antics of the surrounding inebriates.

Perhaps some particularly outrageous eruption of bar-room jocosity would cause Jack’s solemn mask to crack wide-open and his work-bleared eyes to glisten, all signifying the onset of near-hysterics. Hartzman had actually become “Jolly Jack” to the incredulous delight of those colleagues who even then had devised that sobriquet as an ironic commentary on his workplace bouts of creative brooding or vociferous displeasure. These mannerisms were compounded by eloquent displays of exasperation and – in the event of tardy notice from far-flung bureaus of their story plans - by the grim declamation to all on the Fourth Floor: “SKED’LL BE LATE!”

But I was later told by Reuter veterans of labour out in “the swamps” that the cantankerous-seeming Hartzman was well respected and deemed a brother-in-arms by such working stiffs, his influence on reportage constructive and incisive. Thus I should have felt flattered when, learning in 1974 that I was reluctant to acquiesce in a CP transfer back to Canada, Jack joined other Reuter regulars at the Hoop in suggesting I try for a spot on World Desk.

One consequence of this successful attempt was an alteration in drinking dens from the Hoop to, ultimately, the fabled dive-bar known as Mrs Moon’s. There, Jack’s recreational image solidified on the lines first in evidence at Ted Wright’s establishment. But other sides of his character became known to me - notably his leisure-time fascination with classic cinema. Once retired with Vickie to a congenial nest in NW3, he realised his ideal of satiation in Life-after-Reuters - viz, watching a steady stream of favourite black-and-white movies on video. A good 300 such tapes surrounded him at 15 Tudor Court and so did numerous books on film topics. One wall of the flat was emblazoned with a king-size poster for Casablanca, even though Jack once told me he didn’t care much for Bogart.

Hartzman’s opinions on movies were as unorthodox as his views on most issues and his dismissiveness bore the stamp of personally evolved authority. He admired Citizen Kane not for the famed input of Orson Welles but for the production’s masterful cameraman, Gregg Toland (forgotten by me for lack of JH’s expertise). Jack’s preoccupation with film extended to documentaries also, as I learned by joining him, far into a London night, in watching a supercharged cinematic account of the 1990s strife in Algeria.

Jack once told me he’d always wanted to be a movie director rather than a journalist. Possibly his take-charge style as a Reuters Horseman had something about it of an on-set directorial chieftain from Hollywood noir, 1930-50 - right down to having his very own production-master’s chair. And on one of the few occasions I heard him pronounce on matters musical, he spoke with admiration of that master of cinema programme music (later given symphonic and concerto form), Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

As for JH’s reading, it appears to have been wide and undogmatic. Even the much-denounced Louis-Ferdinand Céline came into Hartzman’s ken - not the French writer’s racist polemics but his ground-breaking Voyage au Bout de la Nuit. Yet that novel’s appeal for Jack may have resulted from its cinematic quality. Céline himself declared that the book took aboard all the effects of cinema without actually having to be put on film. Hartzman the cinéaste manqué must have felt right at home on that Journey. “Quels tableaux à brosser,” enthused one Paris critic in bilingually listing the book’s movie-like renderings of “la guerre, l’Afrique, l’Amérique des buildings et des girls, la banlieue sordide, l’asile d’aliénés!”

Surely this was more bracing than another novel I was dismayed to hear mentioned as a Hartzman favourite - the modish Catcher in the Rye. But when I claimed The New York Times was the world’s best newspaper, JH - ever the consummate editor - growled that its stories went on too long. The New Yorker seems to have been a regular read for him and BBC World Service’s radio news a relief from the parochial and over-featurised British press. ■