‘PIMP’ PUBLISHER

It was interesting to see how many of today’s young hipsters and trendsters, including Quentin Tarantino and Snoop Doggy Dogg, revere the film “The Mack” as a Hollywood original (Film Clips, Oct. 1).

But I was disappointed that writer Todd Boyd made only a passing reference to Iceberg Slim’s book “Pimp,” published by Holloway House in Hollywood, which specializes in black fiction. Slim wrote several books and novels about pimping, from which “The Mack” was almost certainly taken, without credit.

Holloway House also published many books (including “Black Gangster”) by the late Donald Goines, who probably inspired every black gangster film of the past five years, from “New Jack City” on down, also without credit.

To longtime fans of Holloway House paperbacks, Hollywood’s hippest black films are startlingly familiar.

LEW PIPES

Hollywood

*

As delighted as I was to read that the fine 1974 melodrama “Three the Hard Way” would be playing at the Nuart (Movie Listings, Oct. 1), I would have been even happier had you correctly credited Jay Robinson as one of the co-stars of the movie instead of Andy Robinson.

Jay Robinson’s performance as Monroe Feather (“I know what you are thinking, light as a feather”) contains more ham than all of the delis in New York put together.

DAVE Del VAL

Dana Point