Neil Young waged heavy bullshit in a memoir that spent all of a paragraph describing hanging out with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson and the Manson family in favor of slinging hundreds of pages of PR copy about the new sound system Mr. Young invented. The masochist in me kind of liked this book, the same way I like the most pointless of Mr. Young’s guitar solos. Passages such as this are the prose equivalent:

A funny thing happened at Woodstock. I didn’t want cameras onstage distracting me while we were playing. I hated the showboating atmosphere that surrounded the filming and thought it distracted from our music. The music was between us and the audience, and anything that got in the way was taboo in my opinion...On the Woodstock record, Atlantic Records used a song of mine recorded months later at the Fillmore East in New York called “Sea of Madness.” That was kind of misleading.

Okay, grandpa. Thanks for lunch, but I really gotta get going now.

Pete Townshend turns out to be a better writer than ol’ shakey—he devotes quite of lot time in his book, Who I Am, to his career as an acquisitions editor at Faber & Faber, a job he took a few years after the death of Who drummer Keith Moon. It’s interesting, but not as interesting as, you know, getting into a fistfight onstage with Keith Moon or throwing televisions out of hotel windows, details that get shortchanged.

Of all the music memoirs this year, my favorite is the one by Rod Stewart, the hilariously-named Rod. Mr. Stewart positions himself as a stately, Evelyn Waugh-esque narrator. (The chapters all have headings like “In which our hero throws in his lot with the damaged remnants of the Small Faces and is reluctantly made alert to the perils of trying to run two careers at once. With sundry meditations on graffiti, Ronnie Wood’s hooter, and the wearing of velvet in hot rooms.”)

The worst book of the year—and possibly of the past several—is Say Nice Things About Detroit by Scott Lasser, an insulting and entirely misguided fictional account of my dear, troubled hometown that manages to make one of the most complicated and evocative places in the world about as interesting as a conference call.

The runner-up was Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie’s third-person memoir of the fatwa issued on him by Ayatollah Khomeini. I took less issue with the author—who lived under the titular pseudonym Joseph Anton during those threatening years—casually placing himself in a lineage with Conrad and Chekhov, as well as comparing his novel to Ulysses and Lolita, than I did with his numerous attacks, almost in the same breath, on the “majestic narcissism” of Padma Lakshmi, his fourth wife, whom he might as well just refer to as “dumb slut.” Mr. Rushdie uses the third person as if it protects him from the offhanded misogyny of his assaults, not to mention his own preposterous self-aggrandizing. There is also prose in the book that makes Top Chef look like Joyce:

His biggest problem, he thought in his most bitter moments, was that he wasn’t dead. If he were dead nobody in England would have to fuss about the cost of his security and whether or not he merited such special treatment for so long. He wouldn’t have to fight for the right to get on a plane … He wouldn’t have to talk to any more politicians (big advantage). His exile from India wouldn’t hurt. And the stress level would definitely be lower.

Yes, because the worst thing about having an international hit put on you is that it’s just so stressful.

A superior memoir is A Sense of Direction by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, which includes this description of Berlin: “Cigarettes marked off the time. For the few minutes one lasted, you knew exactly what you were doing: you were smoking that cigarette. When it was done, you would figure out what to do next, or you would just light another.”

Toni Morrison’s uneven novella Home, about an alcoholic veteran of the Korean War trying to rescue his sister from an evil eugenicist, felt both overwritten and unfinished; Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan’s humorless, entirely unsexy novel about Cold War-era British espionage, made Moonraker look smart; and Junot Díaz’s This Is How You Lose Her was like a teaser for better things to come.

Of the year’s failures, Zadie Smith’s novel NW was at least a very interesting one. Ms. Smith can make the description of a dumpy office feel dire: “Here offices are boxy cramped Victorian damp. Five people share them, the carpet is threadbare, the hole-punch will never be found.” But the novel is less a narrative than an unwelcoming environment to move around in at random. She bogs down her writing with a disruptive and schizophrenic style.

Speaking of interruptions, Laurent Binet’s HHhH was translated into English this year, and is nominally about Reinhard Heydrich—Hitler’s “Butcher of Prague”—but is much more about the difficulty of trying to write a novel about Reinhard Heydrich, including various William Gass-like digressions from the author himself.

A (slightly) less-tortured historical novel was Hilary Mantel’s very entertaining Bring Up the Bodies, about Thomas Cromwell.

Katherine Boo’s amazing reconstruction of life in an Annawadi slum beat out another of Robert Caro’s minute-to-minute biographies of LBJ for the nonfiction National Book Award. Louise Erdrich deservedly won the NBA for fiction with The Round House, her novel about a violent rape on an Ojibwe reservation, though the award felt like it was retroactively awarding a mostly consistent 25-year career. Let’s not even talk about how there was no Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Metafictional winks—for example, an author naming her protagonist after herself and her supporting cast after her friends—have always seemed dubious to me, so I picked up Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? with apprehension. The book stars Sheila Heti and seemingly includes transcripts of Ms. Heti’s conversations with her real-life friends, though that might be a fictional ruse. Ms. Heti is thoughtful in her exploration of the thin line between fiction and reality, especially in her examination of the ways in which the two bleed together.

Chris Kraus, an antecedent to Ms. Heti, also wrote a small masterpiece this year with a novel about the Los Angeles art world, Summer of Hate.

I can’t think of a better work of nonfiction in 2012 than Mark Binelli’s Detroit City is the Place to Be, an antidote to Scott Lasser’s atrocity. Nothing has come as close to realistically documenting the wackiness of contemporary Detroit. At one point, Mr. Binelli sneaks onto the set of the remake of the communists-are-coming smut movie Red Dawn, which was filmed at the author’s old high school. The city had been plastered with fictional propaganda posters that say things like YOU DESERVE TO BE HERE. Mr. Binelli overhears a crew member talking about how much he loved filming in Detroit: “We were setting off major explosions in the middle of downtown! Seriously, man, there’s nowhere else in the country they’d let you do something like this.”

It was a good year for poetry. Maureen N. McLane (full disclosure: a grad school professor of mine) wrote a brilliant poem-memoir that attempted to answer the question, “Why poetry?” (The answers range from “Poetry is connate with the origin of man” to “I have wasted my life.”) Having Louise Glück’s collected poems in a single volume is a gift. Michael Robbins published the most assured debut I’ve read in a long time. And any year John Ashbery publishes a book is A-okay with me, especially one with the lines, “No one expects life to be a single adventure,/yet conversely, one is surprised when it turns out disappointing.” Also, Frederick Seidel’s Nice Weather included some of the bleakest imagery of the year:

This is what it’s like at the end
    of the day.

But soon the day will go away.

Sunlight preoccupies the cross
    street.

It and night soon will meet.

Meanwhile, there is Central
    Park.

Now the park is getting dark.

Oh, and speaking of bleak, Fifty Shades of Grey saved publishing.

mmiler@observer.com

The homey, surreptitious atmosphere was utterly antithetical to the blindingly lit, obscenely priced, techno-soundtracked salons that have taken over Manhattan of late. “People are rebelling,” said Heart, dragging on a cigarette between appointments.

A new wave of hairdresser has arrived in New York: under-the-radar, itinerant and cozy all at once. You go to their small, makeshift salon; perhaps in their home—or, better yet, they come to yours, as if you were Jennifer Lopez. In an era when cuts can run into the high three figures (Sally Hershberger and Orlando Pita both charge $800)—and this from stylists who are splashing their names on mass-marketed shampoo bottles and across the pages of In Style!—perhaps it is chicer to find someone slightly obscure, reasonably priced and, most importantly, there for you. Think Kenneth (still working, too busy to comment for this story) instead of the now thoroughly corporatized Vidal Sassoon.

“I tried Bumble and Bumble,” said Yasmeena Chaudry, a lawyer in her late 20’s, who was sitting next to a statuette of Frankenstein while waiting for her appointment with Heart. “But it was over $100, and the haircut was just O.K. I come here and I love it every time.”

Hair by Heart costs $80. “I can’t imagine asking someone for $800 or $900 with a straight face,” said the stylist.

Jodi Kantor, the former Arts and Leisure editor for The New York Times, declared herself fed up with snooty salons, which she said provide “a thoroughly intimidating experience.”

“They have these huge mirrors; everyone’s staring at each other,” continued Ms. Kantor, now 31 and a reporter for The Times. “You sort of have to think about what you’re wearing that day, and you feel guilty for not buying $40 products.” She became a devotee of a former Times colleague who had turned to hairdressing in her Brooklyn apartment. Alas, the stylist, who asked that her name not be published, has since moved to California, where she currently has a loyal following among Los Angeles Times staffers.

That’s the problem with getting attached to itinerant stylists: Their itineraries can change.

‘My Ben Is Right There’

Big salons have long offered house calls to those who can afford it, of course. Katie Seguin, a 24-year-old stylist for Sally Hershberger’s downtown location, regularly totes a small suitcase full of hairbrushes and dryers to penthouses overlooking Central Park, for triple her usual $130 fee. “It’s for the kind of woman that has a lot of money and prefers more privacy,” Ms. Seguin said. But the typical itinerant hairdresser shuns the cookie-cutter (no pun intended) atmosphere of the big salon.

Stylist Shannon Dettrow, 30, recently quit her job at the swanky Prive Salon in the SoHo Grand, which she described “way too, like, ego and status—lots of makeup and big curls and heels,” for one at Soon Beauty Lab, which she called a “mom-and-pop-like” shop. “It’s like walking into my living room,” Ms. Dettrow said. “I just want to be able to be comfortable and wear my jeans.”

Ms. Dettrow’s actual living room in her Greenpoint apartment is where the real action is: She cuts her friends’ hair there once or twice a week. When it comes to payment, “I always just say, ‘Give me what you want,’” she said. “Some people give me $20, some people give $60.” Some just pay her with drinks, dinner or tickets to a show. Ms. Dettrow also makes house calls, where “we can drink beers and watch reality TV while I cut. It might take a little longer, but it’s way more intimate,” she said. “Hair is such an intimate thing. Like you don’t want just anyone to touch it; you need to feel comfortable.”

Jen Childs, a 28-year-old interior designer, is one of Ms. Dettrow’s satisfied clients. “People at work will ask me where I got my hair cut,” she said. “And when I tell them that my friend comes to my house, they’re like, ‘Really? They come over to your house? That’s, like, awesome.’”

Up on Madison and 67th Street, Paul Podlucky, 43, has been running a slightly more upscale two-chair salon out of his small studio apartment for eight years. A former assistant to the late, great rock-star stylist John Sahag, Mr. Podlucky has tended to the locks of socialites including Helen Lee Schifter, Gigi Mortimer, Aerin Lauder, Tory Burch and Miss Bergdorf Blondes herself, Plum Sykes. “The rich like the privacy and the special attention,” said Mr. Podlucky, who charges $350 for a cut (more for house calls). “If you’re in a [professional] salon and you’re somewhat famous, everything you say, people stare at you.”

Although his apartment provides privacy for his clients, Mr. Podlucky doesn’t have a lot of his own. “I’ve grown not to like it. I mean, my bed is right there,” he said, pointing toward his sleek, dark-wood frame with light blue sheets and large white pillows, just a few feet from where he cuts hair in front of large, wall-sized mirrors and two brown Eero Saarinen chairs.

Calm down! The new itinerant hairdresser is decidedly not Warren Beatty’s libidinous George Roundy of the 1975 Hal Ashby movie Shampoo. He’s someone you can trust. “He has safe hands,” said Tami Goven, 32, a headhunter who used to live across the street from Mr. Podlucky and praised his “Zen, calming presence. I feel comfortable that he knows the right thing to do.”

Mr. Podlucky’s clients get their hair washed in the kitchen sink. Boxes of food coloring cover the stove; shampoos crowd out food from the cabinets. Three Boston terriers, Monkey, Lucky and Buster, scuttle about his feet. “It feels like you’re going for a visit—you just happen to walk out looking fabulous,” Ms. Goven said.

Mr. Podlucky said that he hopes to open a commercial salon within a few years. His business is legal, but many itinerant hairdressers run off-the-books operations, perhaps enhancing the “clubby,” insiderish feeling enjoyed by their clients.

The Four Degrees of Heart

Heart is a licensed hair stylist, but her business is unlicensed and technically illegal, which is why she refuses to disclose her full name for this story. “I pay the I.R.S. so they won’t bother me. But they just want money,” she said. “It’s health-department stuff.”

Heart added that she doesn’t want to open a more legitimate salon because it will price out some of her customers, and “I save $8,000 a month in rent and expenses easily.”

In the basement of Heart’s salon, Ms. Dailey, the reflexologist, said she’s been seeing her friend for more than a decade. Heart has dyed her hair every color of the rainbow except green. “It’s a miracle I still have hair,” Ms. Dailey said. “But that’s all thanks to Heart.”

Men gotta have Heart too, perhaps attracted by her unprissy rock ’n’ roll clientele, which includes Iggy Pop, Bono, P.J. Harvey and Rod Stewart, as well as a consistent freelancing gig with Island Def Jam and Atlantic Records. On a recent Thursday, Heart trimmed the cropped, dirty-blond hair of Paul Budnitz, Kidrobot founder and creative director; of salt-and-pepper-haired Craig Anderson, a 54-year-old writer for the comic Marmaduke; and of the bearded Jason Baer, a 31-year-old marketing consultant, who came in with pictures of his month-old son Hudson to show Heart on his P.D.A. “Oh my gosh, how freaking precious,” Heart cooed. Baby will get his first haircut with Heart, of course. “He’s on the list,” Mr. Baer said.

Mr. Anderson has been seeing Heart for more than 15 years, formerly climbing the five floors to her old, tiny studio on 26th Street a few blocks from her current location. He said that since Heart’s business is run by word of mouth, talking to her clients is like a game of “the four degrees of Heart,” because everyone is connected somehow and almost everyone gets along so well. He stayed for an hour and a half to gab about the most recent Lost episode with Heart and some of her clients. “People will be in here for six hours and never realize it,” Heart said. “That’s the good thing about having no windows in here—you can’t see the sun go down.”

The stylist was sitting on one of her black couches, Diego blinking lazily on her lap.

“I left salons 14 years ago, and I’ll never go back,” Heart said. “There’s huge egos and always drama when you put a bunch of hairdressers in a room. There’s meetings and team effort and blah-blah-blah …. And they love the game of selling products. I’m not a sales person.” She said the salons docked 55 to 60 percent of her pay for “fees.”

Not to mention bitchy New York customers with unreasonable demands. As an itinerant stylist, Heart can pick and choose. “The people that come here, they’re all my friends,” she said. “They come over to my home, we have coffee together, and I happen to cut their hair, too.”

George Hamilton was enjoying a leisurely stroll along West 125th Street when the remark, lobbed by a beefy man in a security guard's uniform, stopped the actor in his tracks. Shoulders back, head slightly cocked, Mr. Hamilton unleashed a dazzling display of tooth enamel that underscored the mahogany hue of his taut movie-star face. His inky hair gave off a jaunty purple sheen in the sunlight. He might have heard a wittier bon mot in his life, but his easy laugh suggested it was unlikely.

It was the afternoon of May 8. Mr. Hamilton, who is in town shooting the new Woody Allen movie, had the day off and had elected to spend it in Harlem. He had lunched earlier on fried chicken, collard greens and candied yams at Sylvia's, and for dessert he was relishing the accolades and good-natured ribbing of the uptown crowds.

Judging by the rapturous reception, Bill Clinton will have a hard act to follow when he takes possession of his new office later this summer. Women of every age and size screamed: "George Hamilton! I lo-o-o-ve you!" Men yelled the titles of his movies. Their firm favorite was Love at First Bite , the 1979 horror spoof in which Mr. Hamilton plays a disco-era Dracula who swiftly dispenses with a gang of muggers on these very blocks.

Since arriving in New York last month, Mr. Hamilton–who by his own admission has always been "famous for being famous"–had once again become a fixture of the local gossip columns. But as he walked the main drag of Harlem, he seemed intent on sending the message that his appeal was more than skin-deep. Those who have followed his career and remember his winning, nuanced turns in Where the Boys Are or Viva Maria have long harbored the suspicion that behind Mr. Hamilton's arched eyebrow, knowing smile and fancy mole lurked at least one paradigmatic performance.

That he has yet to provide an obvious Act III has, strangely, contributed to his quixotic, evergreen appeal. But 40 years is a long time to coast on promise and a tan and, at 61, Mr. Hamilton sounds like a man with something to prove. "I don't think I've done my best picture," he had said a few days earlier. "But I think that keeps you lean and hungry. Most actors at my age think they've done that, and they fade on out. Me, I feel like I'm just beginning."

Mr. Hamilton has chosen New York–the city where fame commingles with substance–as the stage for his latest rebirth. And he's here to do substantial things. He's attending the Actors Studio as an observer and teaching a class of his own at the Century Theater on East 15th Street. But just in case anyone misconstrues these gigs as a sign that Mr. Hamilton is acting his age, he let drop that he is the father of a 15-month-old love child (but more about that later).

The Harlem excursion felt somewhat stage-managed–his town car was idling a few blocks away–but it was difficult to think of another celebrity who would have gone to such lengths to demonstrate that he could hang as easily at the Harlem U.S.A. mall, where Mr. Hamilton surveyed the heaving crowd. "I don't feel like any part of this city is forbidden to me," he beamed.

"People have always thought I was born with money, but it's not true," said Mr. Hamilton, the son of a society bandleader turned cosmetics executive and a mother whom he described as an Auntie Mame character. "We were often broke," he elaborated in his cultured, Belgravia-meets-Bel-Air drawl. "Never poor, though. Poor is a bad thought. Broke is just a temporary weather change."

After his parents divorced when he was 6, Mr. Hamilton had a peripatetic childhood. He often begins a sentence with "When I was growing up in …", but it's anybody's guess what the concluding phrase will be: Palm Beach, Boston, Mexico, London, California, Tarrytown, or Gulfport, Miss. When he was 14, he briefly attended Browning, the Upper East Side prep school, subsidizing his education by working in Manhattan's flower district after school. "I paid my own way and my brother's way, and I signed his report card," he said. "I was fearless. I would go and sell flowers to whomever would buy them, in any district, anywhere. I realized early on in life that I wanted to cross all the boundaries. I didn't want to grow up with a Brooks Brothers shirt and lockjaw. But at the same time I didn't want to lose that, because that was part of me, too."

Suddenly, a man in a sober white shirt and a Kente-cloth-patterned tie jumped out from behind a trestle table covered with flyers. "I'm your biggest fan," he told the actor. "Now, could I interest you in a basic cable package from Time Warner?" Mr. Hamilton, who is looking for an apartment in New York but is currently enjoying the amenities at the Plaza Athénée hotel, seemed momentarily to entertain the offer before politely declining.

I had met Mr. Hamilton at the Plaza Athénée earlier that morning. He sauntered into the empty bar in a black cashmere jacket, black suede bucks, gray slacks and a white-on-gray-check Façonnable shirt. A white-gold Cartier Tank watch glinted at his wrist; every hair was in place. His fly was unzipped.

Some minutes later, when he made the discovery on his own, he explained that the same thing had happened to him the previous week, when he was talking to a style editor from People magazine and wearing button-front pants . "These things are always happening to me," he roared.

"That's the only trouble with not being married," continued Mr. Hamilton, who has been divorced from Alana Stewart since 1978. "If I want to know if my bald spot's showing, I have to walk out and ask the hall maid." He pondered this for a moment and then said, "On the other hand, the hall maid never asks you, 'Who were you with last night? And what time did you get back?'"

He has been relying on the good judgment of the Plaza Athénée's maids since before it was the Plaza Athénée. When he was 11, his mother divorced her second husband, a Boston businessman, and uprooted her two sons to this East 64th Street address, which was then known as the Alrae. "They always treat me very well here. They put on my music when I come in the bar," Mr. Hamilton said. A bossa nova played softly in the background.

He has made something of a science of hotel living. He generally travels with a specially customized Louis Vuitton trunk, which contains a fold-down desk for his laptop, a 1930's martini shaker and special compartments for his Anderson & Sheppard suits and handmade shoes. For shorter trips, he confines himself to one pair of blue jeans, a dark suit and three sets of buttons: plain, gold and satin. "That way I can wear the jacket as a tuxedo, a blazer or a suit," he explained.

The buttons come in handy, because it is in his social life that Mr. Hamilton truly fulfills his desire to "cross all boundaries." Among the whirl of engagements he had squeezed into the two weeks he'd been in Manhattan, two stand out: One night, he had found himself in a joint popular with the Russian Mafia. "Some major guys," Mr. Hamilton confided with a cocked brow. "They didn't know me at all. But I could see in their eyes that we would connect. Before I know it, they're sending cognac to my table."

On April 23, Mr. Hamilton attended the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala with the actress Anjelica Huston. After the event, they went to the Stanhope Hotel, only to find that the bar was closed. Mr. Hamilton sprang into action: "I said to the manager, 'Why are you closed down on a night when the Met is on? You're the kind of guy who'll give the bar business a bad name.' [The manager] said: 'This is a dead night.' And I said: 'It won't be!'" The retelling seemed to fill Mr. Hamilton with a giddy joie de vivre . "I brought in 75 people and I made everyone sing 'New York, New York,' and I served champagne to everyone," he said.

George Hamilton is clearly comfortable with his fame. "Living in the fishbowl is not a problem," he said. In the sepulchral Plaza Athénée bar, his tan seemed to exude a gentle inner glow. "People basically want to do the right thing, and you just have to let them," he continued. "They're panicked to say hello to you, so you must put them at their ease. For example, it takes a lot of guts for a man who's with a girl to come over. You have to show them in two sentences that the environment is safe … and you're going to make them look good in front of their girlfriend. You do that and they become your best friend. Plus," he added slyly, "they'll introduce you to the girl."

Mr. Allen's spring project came along at a fortuitous time. He had previously been offered a sizable salary to appear in a film opposite the rap stars Method Man and Redman as a Vice President of the United States who gets turned onto dope by the hip-hoppers. Mr. Hamilton, who has an innate understanding of the fine line between self-parody and making a fool of himself, passed. "One week later," he marveled, "I got a call saying 'Woody Allen wants you for this movie.'"

Mr. Hamilton plays a movie producer in the film, and a natural assumption was that he would base the characterization on his longtime friend, Robert Evans. "Dustin [Hoffman] played Bobby a little in Wag the Dog , so I try to steer away from that," he explained. "I'm trying to be myself, as if I were in that position, and I think that's ultimately harder to do." Besides, Mr. Allen had encouraged him to "just be you"–right down to the tan. "Sometimes they darken the leading lady," Mr. Hamilton explained, addressing the problems his complexion can cause for cinematographers. "But it doesn't bother Woody. He told me, 'There are people as dark as you. I've never met one, but ….'

"As an actor, I feel like an abused dog having been in a shelter," he said. He recounted how, as a young actor in the waning days of the studio system, he had worked "on the bell"–when the director was ready to shoot a take, a loud bell would ring out across the sound stage. "I used to freeze up," said Mr. Hamilton, looking pained, "and it's taken a lot of time to get rid of that feeling." With Mr. Allen, however, "You can do pretty much what you want, as long as your ad libs are in character. He knows the minute the rhythm isn't there."

Mr. Hamilton is even doing a bit of directing himself as an acting teacher at the Century Theater. His friend, the New York-based acting coach George Di Cenzo, had been summoned west to tape a television pilot, and Mr. Hamilton found himself supervising a disparate group of about 30 actors on everything from Shakespeare to scenes from Girl, Interrupted . "I think my innate sense of making people feel good has helped me bring the best out of them," he said.

Mr. Hamilton is full of the kind of no-nonsense tips that you rarely hear on Inside the Actors Studio . When it comes to learning lines, for example, he laboriously records all the other speaking parts at correctly timed intervals on separate tape recorders. He then plays them back and hones his own delivery.

Then, of course, there is the experience that comes from having survived so many movie sets. About Godfather III –which, among its many disappointments, reduces Mr. Hamilton to wallpaper–he said he had trouble finding the motivation for a character who didn't do anything except "follow around behind Al Pacino trying to help him out and look interested." Finally, he turned to Andy Garcia for advice. "Count the hairs on the back of Al's head," Mr. Garcia counseled. "And I did," laughed Mr. Hamilton. "I did it for weeks. I didn't look interested; I looked fascinated."

Mr. Hamilton arrived in Hollywood in 1958 at the age of 18, just as a new breed of actor was transforming the face of moviedom. For a budding matinee idol, his timing was lousy. "Somebody once said, 'George Hamilton is the only guy I know who came to Hollywood, and they asked him, "Who would you rather be, Jimmy Dean or Marlon Brando?", and George said: "David Niven,'" Mr. Hamilton said. "It's true. I didn't want that. I wanted that other thing that I'd grown up with. I liked the movie-star lifestyle as much as I liked acting. I thought movie stars were the royalty of America, and I wanted to join that group."

Cast in the very first movie he auditioned for, Crime and Punishment USA , Mr. Hamilton nevertheless found Hollywood wanting. He had already cavorted on the zebra-striped banquettes of El Morocco at 17, attended Palm Beach dinner parties where Henry Ford II, Senator Jack Kennedy and C.I.A. chief Allen Dulles sat together and smoked cigars after dinner "like a giant tribal council." So when an old school friend–Oscar Molinari, a cousin of New York-based socialite Reinaldo Herrera–invited him down to Venezuela, Mr. Hamilton hopped on the first plane south. "Everything I imagined Hollywood was going to be, Caracas was," he recalled. "I lived this Hollywood idea in Caracas, dating, partying, studying bullfighting."

But soon Mr. Hamilton had been lured back by the offer of a seven-year contract at MGM. His early films ran the gamut from Your Cheatin' Heart , in which he played a surprisingly convincing Hank Williams, to Where the Boys Are , in which he turned his early, effortless charm on full.

In the mid-60's, he gained off-screen notoriety by dating Lynda Bird Johnson, the daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The affair elicited a level of public disapproval that's hard to imagine today. L.B.J.'s enemies charged that he had personally secured Mr. Hamilton's draft deferment from Vietnam. Meanwhile, when Mr. Hamilton brought the First Daughter as his date to the 1966 Oscars, the press frenzy upstaged the events onstage. "There was a presumption that I was some upstart trying to insinuate himself into the White House. Certainly, it hurt my credibility as an actor," Mr. Hamilton said. Coincidentally or not, movie offers started to dry up and he was soon headed for TV land, the Harold Robbins series The Survivors and the eventual professional nadir of The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977).

At the end of the 70's, Mr. Hamilton made his comeback, taking control of his career, producing and starring in a pair of films, Love at First Bite and Zorro: The Gay Blade , in which he deftly spoofed his own reputation as an effete playboy. He became a running gag in Doonesbury , where Zonker worshipped his tan. This brief renaissance fizzled quickly, however, and after that, Mr. Hamilton survived by turning himself into a free-floating franchise. He hawked self-tanning products on QVC, hosted a TV talk show with his ex-wife and operated a chain of cigar bars. All along, though, he never lost his mysterious hold on the public.

"Why does this generation respect me? Why am I not out of date?" he mused rhetorically, a look of sudden concentration creasing his remarkably unlined face. "I think it's because I bridge the generations. I'm not like some actors my age who are frozen like moths in amber …. What was cool was I saw the end of the studio days. Commissary dinners. Dates with Marilyn Monroe. All the things guys read about, I did. We were told to date people at the studio. That was like being in a candy store."

In 1970, Mr. Hamilton married Ford model Alana Collins. The ceremony took place in Elvis' suite at the Las Vegas Hilton, and Colonel Parker was his best man. The relationship didn't last–Mr. Hamilton was inexplicably going through a fleeting domestic phase. "I wanted to stay at home and raise children," he said. She subsequently married and divorced Rod Stewart.

Today, the two are close again. "He can still make me laugh more than anyone I know," said Ms. Stewart from California. "He's a much deeper person than people give him credit for." When his ex-wife says that we don't know the real George Hamilton, she means it as a compliment.

Mr. Hamilton and Ms. Stewart had one son, Ashley, now 26 years old. Lately, Mr. Hamilton has taken a new, unexpected detour into parenting: "I have a little 15-month-old child that I had with a girl." Mr. Hamilton said this so matter-of-factly that I thought he might be putting me on. He was not: "We're not married, but I signed the birth certificate and I see the boy and I have co-custody of him," he said (although he ultimately declined to identify the child's mother). "I bought baby clothes last week and had a great time doing it. I have a responsibility to that child, and that comes built-in with me."

He said he has been giving a lot of thought recently to his last act. "It's the final turn, and most people flame out," Mr. Hamilton said, indicating that he wished to avoid that fate. And even George Hamilton, veteran of The Victors , Hollywood Squares and QVC, can become philosophical: "This is where the road starts to get interesting," he said, trying but failing to wrinkle his forehead. "Up until now, it's been a piece of cake."

At a time when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has got the city's purveyors of pornography stocking up on Zantac, Ugly George says he's fixing for a comeback. More than three decades have passed since Mr. Urban donned a silver lamé jumpsuit and a video camera and sallied forth into the streets of Manhattan, looking for and finding women who would either doff their clothes, or more, on camera. In the late 70's and sporadically through the late 80's, Mr. Urban aired clips of both his successes and his rejections (count actress Dana Delany in the latter category) on Manhattan Cable Television Inc.'s public access channel.

In the process he became a fringe-dwelling urban "folk antihero," as author D. Keith Mano called Mr. Urban in a 1988 article he wrote for the National Review . Not only had Mr. Urban demonstrated that any man can get what he wants if he tries hard enough–he also made a bigger, more institutional point. Mr. Urban has claimed that Ugly George attracted some 600,000 viewers at his height and said, "I was someone who challenged the broadcasting viewing establishment and came away with all the viewers and no money." Or as he said to The Transom, "What good are sitcoms, drama or variety versus tits?"

Ah.

After developing a rather contentious relationship with Manhattan Cable (he said he was booted off the cable operator five times; in 1986, he sued Manhattan Cable, charging conspiracy, and lost; the cable company charged him with not paying his bills), Mr. Urban has been without a regular outlet. (He said that he still provides clips to other public-access shows and that he has experimented with direct-to-satellite broadcasting.) His last lamé suit has fallen into disrepair ("I have to get a new one for ceremonial occasions," he said). But the relatively new, less regulated medium of the Internet has given him reason to be optimistic.

For about two months now, Mr. Urban's Web site, uglygeorge.com, has been up and running on the World Wide Web. There are action graphics of various sexual acts and ad copy boasting, "In 10 years, Ugly George has undressed 30,000 women–maybe even the girl next door!" In one shot, Mr. Urban, looking like Benny Hill and sporting a gold lamé headband, plays "Emperor Zero, who's having an orgy in 69 A.D." He noted that the aforementioned program would soon be available in a pay-per-view format. There's not much else to the Web site besides a bunch of videos for sale, many of them featuring Mr. Urban, for either $19.95 or $29.95. Mr. Urban even claimed to have a niche that distinguishes him from the countless other sex sites on the Web. He's the equivalent of an organic porn purveyor: "No silicone girls with teased hair," he said.

Despite the public-access-TV look of his Web site, Mr. Urban claimed to have good reason to be happy. "We just got our first two orders from Europe," he said. That may not sound like much, but for Mr. Urban, it's a sign that he's getting international exposure. "I always liked the expression 'Around the world with Ugly George,'" he said.

Mr. Urban declined to discuss how many video sales he might be making, but he said that if international orders do take off, profits will help him realize his dream to open a nightclub that he calls "the Po-

lish Penthouse." He talked about "secret well-heeled people" who have inquired about investing in his dream, which, he envisions, will utilize the latest in interactive technology to allow V.I.P. patrons and other Web heads to check out the action from the comfort of their PC's.

But isn't Mr. Giuliani trying to crack down on just the thing that Mr. Urban wants to erect in lower Manhattan? Mr. Urban argued that "what Giuliani mostly objects to is that lower class" of porn joint. He said that he knew this because "I know some of his people." But Mr. Urban explained that the Polish Penthouse will be "mostly members, but high class," some of the " Wall Street Journal -reading crowd." He insisted his establishment would feature only natural beauties. "I will have to personally check them out," he said.

Mr. Urban added: "If you could say you had the Ford Center of porn and strippers, he," as in Mayor Giuliani, "would not be unhappy with that."

In and Out With Jerry Goldfeder

On July 20, the Democratic district leader for Manhattan's West Side, Jerry Goldfeder, announced that he was withdrawing from the race for the State Senate seat being vacated by Franz Leichter. Mr. Goldfeder cited a lack of funds as the reason. Too bad. Political races are more fun when there are more than two contenders because the candidates must fulminate all the more in order to make an impression.

Take the letter that Mr. Goldfeder sent to members of the Democratic club Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, or G.L.I.D., in May. Mr. Goldfeder's two opponents in the State Senate race are attorney Eric Schneiderman, who had been endorsed early that month by State Assembly member Deborah Glick–who is openly gay–and Daniel O'Donnell, an openly gay candidate and brother of talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell to boot.

In his letter to G.L.I.D., Mr. Goldfeder seemed intent on demonstrating his supreme sensitivity to gay issues. "I have a long history with G.L.I.D., and with the lesbian and gay community," Mr. Goldfeder wrote, in boldface type. As part of his argument, he included a two-sided sheet of "highlights" of his involvement. At the very end of this list, Mr. Goldfeder included in a list of "Gay and Lesbian Candidates Actively Supported" by him the names of former Representative Elizabeth Holtzman and former City Council president Carol Bellamy. Since neither Ms. Holtzman nor Ms. Bellamy has ever said she was gay, the perception was certainly that Mr. Goldfeder had either (a) outed the women or (b) bought into the stereotype that single, plain-jane policy-wonk women must be lesbians. Mr. Goldfeder explained that actually that portion of his letter was an "error" that occurred when a list of gay candidates was accidentally merged with a list of women candidates.

Mr. Goldfeder said that he called both Ms. Holtzman and Ms. Bellamy up to explain what had happened. A follow-up letter was also sent to G.L.I.D. "Mistakes happen," Mr. Goldfeder told The Transom. (Ms. Bellamy, who was traveling in the Sudan on behalf of Unicef, could not be reached for comment. Ms. Holtzman said she had no comment on the matter.)

G.L.I.D. president Kevin Finnegan said that Mr. Goldfeder's letter didn't create that much of a stir, anyway. "I only got two phone calls from it," he said. "One was from Jerry. One was from another member, who was laughing about it." Mr. Finnegan added: "I think people recognized that it was a pretty amusing mistake."

The Transom Also Hears

… Producer Robert Evans' wedding to Catherine Oxenberg seemed to catch everybody off guard (except Cindy Adams). The Transom hears that Mr. Evans' two good friends, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, were not at the wedding, and that Mr. Beatty did not learn of Mr. Evans' nuptials until after the fact. Mr. Beatty did not return calls.

… If he only had hair, Ronald Perelman could be another Carmine Appice. The billionaire owner of Revlon Inc. spent a lot of time with rocker Rod Stewart over the weekend. On July 19, Mr. Perelman, Mr. Stewart and Mr. Stewart's model wife, Rachel Hunter, dined together at Nick & Toni's. (By coincidence, Mr. Stewart's manager, Arnold Stiefel, who is summering in the Hamptons, was also in the room.) The following evening, Mr. Perelman guest-drummed on Mr. Stewart's encore cover of "We're Havin' a Party" at a concert that Mr. Stewart gave to benefit Southampton College.

… Hamptons social slaves will have to hit the Long Island Expressway early on the weekend beginning Aug. 14. After sitting out the Hamptons premiere circuit for three years, Home Box Office Inc. returns this year with its film about Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, The Rat Pack . But this year, HBO has decided to do its premiere on a Friday at the East Hampton Cinema, followed by dinner at Sapore Di Mare. Realizing that those who will be driving between the screening and the supper, including actors Ray Liotta (Frank), Don Cheadle (Sammy) and Bobby Slayton (Joey Bishop) and HBO chief executive Jeff Bewkes, will have to make a left on Montauk Highway–a virtual impossibility on a Friday evening when everybody is driving to their homes–the pay-cable channel has enlisted the local police force to handle traffic. The following evening, another rat pack–the crusty literary kind–will gather when October Films hosts a premiere of Ishmael Merchant's A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries , which is an adaptation of Kaylie Jones' semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in Paris and New York with her writer father, James Jones ( From Here to Eternity ). Those gathering in honor of the late James Jones include Hamptonite writers E.L. Doctorow, Peter Mathiessen and George Plimpton, as well as non-Hamptons scribes, Arthur Miller, William Styron and Norman Mailer, who are being flown in by October Films. Mr. Mailer isn't even staying the night. Peggy Siegal is handling publicity for both events, but her regulars shouldn't expect invites to both nights. The Transom hears they're trying to keep the two crowds different so the same people don't see each other at both events. Hey, Peggy–why should things be different than any other weekend?