Born in New York City, he grew up around 98th Street and 5th Avenue, attended Harvard University (where he edited the _Harvard Lampoon_), and spent three years in the Army before heading for England to study at King's College, Cambridge. During an Easter vacation there, he joined some friends in Paris to discuss the launching of the literary magazine he has guided ever since. In 1979, said Plimpton with a grin, "I'm supposed to manage the New York Yankees for a day, and go through the whole procedure of being fired by George Steinbrenner. I hope it's followed by a beer commercial with Billy Martin." Asked about his attachment to the East Side, Plimpton stressed his fondness for the city as a whole. "In the last couple of years, there's been an enormous rebirth of excitement about living in the city. ... I think Mayor [Ed] Koch has a lot to do with pulling it up. He seems to fit everywhere. If I saw him twirling up a pancake dough in a pizza shop on Broadway, or driving a 5th Avenue bus, or carrying a briefcase into 20 Exchange Place, I wouldn't be surprised. He's a quintessential New Yorker." When my visit with Plimpton was about to end, I couldn't resist testing him with my favorite sports question: "Who was the only man to play for the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Patriots and the Boston Bruins?" He couldn't guess. The answer, I told him, was a guy named John Kiley, who played the national anthem on the organ. But Plimpton got the last word in. "Who was the only man to play for the Boston Bruins and the Boston Celtics?" he asked. I said I didn't know. He smiled and replied: "George Plimpton." ******** EASTSIDER OTTO PREMINGER Rebel filmmaker returns with _The Human Factor_ 1-26-80 On the cover of his 1977 autobiography _Preminger_, he is described as "Hollywood's most tempestuous director" and "the screen's stormiest rebel." But today, at 73, the years appear to have caught up with Otto Preminger, the Austrian-born director and actor who came to the U.S. in 1935 and met success after success, both in movies and on Broadway. He became the first producer/director to make major motion pictures independently of the giant studios, and with such films as _Forever Amber_, _The Moon is Blue_ and _The Man with the Golden Arm_, won precedent-settling battles with censorship boards that established new artistic freedom for filmmakers. Between 1959 and 1963 he produced and directed, in succession, _Porgy and Bess_, _Anatomy of a Murder_, _Exodus_, _Advice and Consent_, and _The Cardinal_. After that his career took a dip, and since 1971 he has released but a single movie, _Rosebud_ (1975), which marked the screenwriting debut of his son _Erik Lee Preminger_ and the acting debut of a New Yorker named John Lindsay, the city's former mayor.