I WAS BETTER LAST NIGHT: HARVEY FIERSTEIN'S MEMOIR

Who is this Anita Gates you speak of?

A.G.’s journalistic triumphs over 25 years at The New York Times include drinking with Bea Arthur (at a Trump hotel), Wendy Wasserstein (at an Italian restaurant) and Peter O’Toole (in his trailer on a mini-series set near Dublin). It is sheer coincidence that these people are now dead.

At The New York Times, she has been Arts & Leisure television editor and co-film editor, a theater reviewer on WQXR Radio, a film columnist for the Times TV Book and an editor in the Culture, Book Review, Travel, National, Foreign and Metro sections. Her first theater review for The Times appeared in 1997, assessing “Mrs. Cage,” a one-act about a housewife suspected of shooting her favorite supermarket box boy. The review was mixed.

Outside The Times, A.G. has been the author of four nonfiction books; a longtime writer for travel magazines, women's magazines and travel guidebooks; a lecturer at universities and for women’s groups; and a moderator for theater, book, film and television panels at the 92nd Street Y and the Paley Center for Media.

If she were a character on “Mad Men,” she’d be Peggy.

THE LOS. ANGELES TIMES called it “scrumptious.” The New York Times said it had “enough one-liners … for a one-man show.”. Publishers Weekly summed it up as “raucous.”

All of which adds up to a pretty good review for Harvey Fierstein’s memoir “I Was Better Last Night.”

On March 1, I signed on to watch Fierstein’s video interview with Michael Musto, sponsored by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Harvey, it seems, has given them some money for a theater lab. $2.5 million. So it must be a very nice lab.

Fierstein answered some questions, told a funny story about Estelle Getty (who played his mother in the original “Torch Song Trilogy” as well as Sofia on “Golden Girls”) changing her name and read a memoir excerpt that began “I don’t know if it was the pot or the penis.”

And I did learn that Ellen Stewart, the late grande dame of La Mama, was good to him and that Fierstein’s home office is dominated by black file cabinets and tabletop sculpture.

Who is this Anita Gates you speak of?

Apr 24 I WAS BETTER LAST NIGHT: HARVEY FIERSTEIN'S MEMOIR

THE LOS. ANGELES TIMES called it “scrumptious.” The New York Times said it had “enough one-liners … for a one-man show.”. Publishers Weekly summed it up as “raucous.”

All of which adds up to a pretty good review for Harvey Fierstein’s memoir “I Was Better Last Night.”

On March 1, I signed on to watch Fierstein’s video interview with Michael Musto, sponsored by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Harvey, it seems, has given them some money for a theater lab. $2.5 million. So it must be a very nice lab.

Fierstein answered some questions, told a funny story about Estelle Getty (who played his mother in the original “Torch Song Trilogy” as well as Sofia on “Golden Girls”) changing her name and read a memoir excerpt that began “I don’t know if it was the pot or the penis.”

And I did learn that Ellen Stewart, the late grande dame of La Mama, was good to him and that Fierstein’s home office is dominated by black file cabinets and tabletop sculpture.

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