Lennon Gave Him TV Guide

Mr. Reed may not have made a fortune in the film business, but he is sitting on millions of dollars of real estate. “It’s an awfully comfortable bachelor pad,” he said of the book-filled Dakota apartment he has lived in since 1969, which he bought for $30,000.

He found the apartment through his friendship with Ruth Ford, the Broadway actress who lived there with her husband, the actor Zachary Scott, whose family “owned half of Texas,” Mr. Reed said. The playwright William Inge, Judy Garland, Judy Holliday and the saxophone player Gerry Mulligan were all neighbors at various points.

“I moved into this apartment with an A.&P. shopping cart, some books and whatever I could drag over from my little walk-up on 73rd Street,” Mr. Reed said. His only furniture was a corduroy Queen Anne chair and a sleeping bag. The night he moved in, the film star Robert Ryan, who was president of the Dakota’s board, rang the doorbell to welcome him, and the two shared instant coffee, Mr. Reed on the sleeping bag, Mr. Ryan in the chair. “Do you think that happens today?” he asked.

Boris Karloff was another neighbor. Rudolf Nureyev, Leonard Bernstein and Rosemary Clooney lived in the building. “Betty” Bacall, whose spacious three-bedroom apartment sold for $21 million in 2015 after her death the previous year, and Mr. Reed used to eat together regularly, he said.

He once signed a petition supporting John Lennon when the government was trying to deport Mr. Lennon because of his drug use and political activism. Mr. Lennon thanked him with a one-year subscription to TV Guide, Mr. Reed said, adding, “That was his bible. All he did was lie around stoned watching television.”

If Mr. Lennon famously sang, “All You Need Is Love,” Mr. Reed appears to disagree.

“I don’t have ‘relationships,’ except friends,” he said. “I don’t know, love is not something that I’ve been really good at. I think people are intimidated by people with opinions.”