NEW YORK (AP) — George Goodman, a journalist, business
author and award-winning television host who under the pseudonym "Adam
Smith" made economics accessible to millions of people, died Friday at
age 83.
Goodman’s son, Mark Goodman, said his father died at the
University of Miami Hospital after a long battle with the bone marrow
disorder myelofibrosis.
Starting in the 1950s, the elder Goodman
had a long, diverse and accomplished career, whether as a founder of New
York Magazine, as a best-selling business author or as the personable
host of "Adam Smith’s Money World."
Known as "Jerry" to his
friends, he prided himself on making arcane debates among economists and
business leaders understandable, often using an anecdotal or irreverent
approach to explain a complicated issue. He has been credited with
coining the mocking catchphrase, "Assume a can opener," as a parody of
academic jargon.
"I have always believed that if you dramatize a
story, you can make it comprehensible while at the same time maintaining
a relatively high level of sophistication," he once said.
"Adam
Smith’s Money World" was a multiple Emmy winner that aired on PBS
stations from 1984-1996, with guests including Warren Buffett and
then-Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker. He was also an
executive editor at Esquire, a member of The New York Times editorial
board and a commentator for NBC television. In recent years, he
sponsored a lecture series through the Harvard Club of New York
Foundation.
Before his success in the business world, Goodman had
written novels and worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter. He helped
adapt his own book, "The Wheeler Dealers," into a 1963 movie of the same
name starring Lee Remick and James Garner.
Smith was editing the
monthly journal The Institutional Investor when his first nonfiction
book, "The Money Game," was published in 1968. Among the year’s top
sellers, and read for decades after, "The Money Game" offered a colorful
take on the financial markets that added a human element to the laws of
finance and seemed as influenced by Damon Runyon as by any economic
theorist. One popular character was an oversized investment guru known
as "Scarsdale Fats."
"As far as I know it was a couple of the
Boston institutions that hung the nickname on him, which shows that
Boston institutions are not as stuffy as they used to be" Smith wrote.
"One of his enthusiasts described him as ‘glob shaped.’ Minnesota Fats
is an ectomorph and Sydney Greenstreet would blow away in the Scarsdale
Fats ratio! All Scarsdale will say is that he is comfortably over 200
pounds."
"The Money Game" was also Goodman’s first book as "Adam
Smith." He wanted to keep Wall Street from learning his identity — the
game was up soon after publication — and accepted a suggestion from
founding New York Magazine editor Clay Felker that he name himself after
the 18th century economist.
His other books included
"Supermoney," a 1972 publication that introduced many readers to a
then-little known Buffett; "Powers of Mind" and "Paper Money," which
came out in 1981.
"Where some authors exploit the paranoia over
paper money, warning of horrible crashes and galloping inflation to
come, Adam Smith strives for sanity," Leonard Silk wrote of "Paper
Money" in a review for The New York Times. "And where some writers urge
people to look out for Number One and to be prepared to head for the
hills with their gold coins, silver futures, cans of beans and weapons
to keep out the neighbors, Adam Smith counsels the revival of a sense of
community."
George Jerome Waldo Goodman grew up outside St. Louis
and was graduated from Harvard University in 1952. He was a Rhodes
Scholar at Oxford and a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, the
forerunner of the Green Berets. He was still in the Army when his first
novel, the comic tale "The Bubble Makers," came out in 1955.
He is survived by two children and three grandchildren. His wife, actress Sally Brophy, died in 2007.
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