STILL HAPPENING.(The Talk of the Town)(Gene Weber)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 12-JAN-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

When the raffish Winchell-era press agent Eddie Jaffe died, in March, at the age of eighty-nine, the consensus was that there went the last of his kind. Then, in December, Leonard Traube, another New York publicity man of the old school, died, at eighty-three, and that pretty much seemed to be that. As it turns out, flaks are a heartier breed than we thought. Gene Weber, who is eighty-eight, is still open for business and still sending out typewritten press releases, such as a recent one announcing a stunt at a restaurant called the Pump, involving the "largest, biggest, hugest bowl of soup ever served in a restaurant--over 400 bowls of soup in one soup bowl."...

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