Author: Eric Levin
Fact Mason
December 19, 2007
In 1967, before “ecotourism” and “green living” became buzzwords and before legislation protected the state’s undeveloped tracts, this son of a Princeton doctor wrote The Pine Barrens, a slim, understated, magically detailed portrait of an unspoiled realm and its reclusive denizens.
Seen in: Best Of Jersey
For almost three decades he’s been a bankable star, the kind who can, as the saying goes, open a movie. Now the question is whether he can also produce one.
Seen in: Best Of Jersey
Many of the talk-show tropes we think of as hip and new—turning the camera on the stagehands, savaging the empty suits in TV’s executive suites, quick-cutting to sight gags—originated with this Trenton native who started on radio there and was a columnist for the Trentonian.
Seen in: Best Of Jersey
The 1954 Manasquan High School “class clown” got his break in horror films, then catapulted to fame in 1969’s Easy Rider as an insouciant rogue unlike any seen before. Who else has that lizardly mien, that puckish bravado, that trip-hammer temper, that sexy sinister smirk, that...well, you get the idea. You do know Jack, the one and only.
Seen in: Best Of Jersey
A tarpaper shack that could be rotated to catch the sun was America’s first motion picture studio. Thomas Edison’s 1888 “Black Maria” put New Jersey at the center of a revolutionary new medium and big-time business.
Seen in: History, Towns & Schools
The Newark lad’s spasmodic dimwit shtick and signature shriek (“Laaaady!” was the “Dyn-o-mite!” of its day) are a love/hate thing. But his gutsy turn in Scorsese’s kinky The King of Comedy is a keeper, and so is his legacy as a Muscular Dystrophy fundraiser– $2 billion since 1952.
Seen in: Best Of Jersey
In partnership with four investors who own hotels overseas, chef Craig Shelton says the Ryland Inn, dormant since a water main break last February, will reopen this spring.
Seen in: Eat & Drink
An author of books on developing leadership among Hispanic women and on the experience of Puerto Ricans in New Jersey, Bonilla-Santiago has designed cultural diversity curricula for colleges, corporations, and even the IRS.
Seen in: Best Of Jersey
Her classmates at Newark’s East Side High School voted her Most Likely to Succeed, and that she did. She earned her master’s degree at Montclair State and her Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Seen in: History, Towns & Schools
Possibly the world’s first Jewish punk porn star with a BA from Rutgers, Oradell native Joanna Angel calls the shots on both sides of the camera and minds the bottom line.
Seen in: Jersey Celebrities, Jersey Living