Howard Smith (December 10, 1936 – May 1, 2014) was an American Oscar-winning film director, producer, journalist, screenwriter, actor and radio broadcaster.
[6] During the Village Voice's early and formative years, his column, "Scenes", with its reporting on the emerging counterculture, became a part of the paper's groundbreaking new journalism.
[7] At the peak of the historic Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969, he managed to get inside the now famous bar with his Village Voice reporter's police credentials.
[citation needed] In the 1960s and 1970s, Smith had a weekend overnight show on WPLJ FM radio in New York City, which was also syndicated nationally, where he conducted extensive in-depth interviews with well-known musicians and notable figures, as well as playing an eclectic mix of albums and songs in the "progressive" freeform rock music and Album-oriented rock formats.
[11] He covered many of the tumultuous era's most legendary events including Woodstock, from which America heard his live radio reports, broadcast around the clock for five full days.
[6] He was writing a book about his involvement, as both participant and commentator, in the late 1950s beatnik scene, the explosive hippie 1960s, right through to the brouhaha that was to characterize the Nixonian mid-1970s.
[citation needed] On November 15, 2005, in New York City, the IFC Center showed Marjoe as the closing film in a series of documentaries called "Stranger Than Fiction".
The collection featured full length audio interviews with many influential artists of the day, including Lou Reed, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton and Jim Morrison.