Garden State Babylon

The New Jersey Turnpike: scenic route to stardom

New Jersey. The most ravaged of the original 13 colonies. Punch line of a million jokes. Cradle of pollution, needle-distribution programs, toxic waste. And also, oddly enough, the nation's leading exporter of celebrities. The ninth-most-populous state has given us Jerry Lewis. And Richard Lewis and Carl Lewis. It produced Martha Stewart of Nutley, Meryl Streep of Bernardsville, and Queen Latifah of East Orange. The Garden State was home to Basie, Bon Jovi, Springsteen, and Sinatra The incandescent bulb, the phonograph, the motion-picture camera,

and the alkaline storage battery were all invented by Thomas Edison in Menlo Park and West Orange (he's one of the few celebrities who never left), and it was in West Orange that he established the world's first motion-picture studio (take that, California!). Steven Spielberg himself spent a portion of his influential early childhood in Haddonfield, New Jersey.

How to explain this fertile celebrity climate? "Being from New Jersey keeps you ambitious because you're coming from a punch line," says Piscataway's Paul Rudnick. "You know you'll appear in someone's talk-show monologue every night." So next time you find yourself on Celebrity State Turnpike, bear in mind that down the next exit ramp may live an Einstein—who escaped to Princeton from Nazi Germany. Or perhaps even the next Ice-T—who escaped to Los Angeles from Newark,

TED KAMP

Exit 1

DELAWARE MEMORIAL BRIDGE John Forsythe (Penns Grove) Paul Volcker (Cape May) Bruce Willis (Penns Grove)

Exit 2

SWEDESBORO-CHESTER Patti Smith (Pitman and Mantua)

Exit 3

VOODBURY-SOUTH CAMDEN Steven Spielberg (Haddonfield) Gay Talese (Ocean City)

Exit 4

CAMDEN-PHILADELPHIA Lola Falana (Camden)

Exit 5

BURLINGTON-MT. HOLLY James Fenimore Cooper (Burlington) Carl Lewis (Willingboro)

Exit 7

BORDENTOWN-TRENTON David Dinkins (Trenton) Ernie Kovacs (Trenton) Dennis Rodman (Trenton) Antonin Scalia (Trenton) Norman Schwarzkopf (Trenton) Ntozoke Shange (Trenton)

Exit 7A

TRENTON-SHORE POINTS Franco Harris (Fort Dix)

Exit 8

HIGHTSTOWN-FREEHOLD "Bud" Abbott (Asbury Park) Count Basie (Red Bank) Clint Black (Red Bank) Danny DeVito (Asbury Park) Mel Ferrer (Elberon) Norman Mailer (Long Branch) Jack Nicholson (Neptune) Eric Nies (West Allenhurst) Dorothy Parker (West End) Bruce Springsteen (Freehold) Edmund Wilson (Red Bank)

Exit 8A

JAMESBURG-CRANBERRY Drew Pearson (South River) Joe Theismann (South River)

Exit 9

NEW BRUNSWICK Jon Bon Jovi (Sayreville) Mary Chapin Carpenter (Princeton) Michael Douglas (New Brunswick) Ethan Hawke (Princeton) John McPhee (Princeton) Paul Robeson (Princeton)

Exit 10

METUCHEN-EDISON David Copperfield (Metuchen) Archibald Cox (Plainfield) Ray Liotta (Union Township) Paul Rudnick (Piscataway) Susan Sarandon (Edison) Frederica von Stade (Somerville)

Exit 11

WOODBRIDGE-THE AMBOYS Charles Addams (Westfield) Rosey Grier (Linden)

Exit 13

ELIZABETH-VERRAZANO BRIDGE Admiral Bull Halsey (Elizabeth)

Exit 14

NEWARK AIRPORT Linda Hunt (Morristown) Fran Lebowitz (Morristown) Jerry Lewis (Irvington) Sister Parish (Morristown) Meryl Streep (Bernardsville) Montgomery Ward (Chatham)

Exit 14 A

BAYONNE Sandra Dee (Bayonne) Barney Frank (Bayonne) Brian Keith (Bayonne) Frank Langella (Bayonne) Laura D'Andrea Tyson (Bayonne)

Exit 14C

HOLLAND TUNNEL-JERSEY CITY Louis Freeh (Jersey City) Alfred Kinsey (Hoboken) Marilyn McCoo (Jersey City) Ozzie Nelson (Jersey City) Frank Sinatra (Hoboken) Frank Sinatra Jr. (Jersey City) Nancy Sinatra (Jersey City) Alfred Stieglitz (Hoboken) Flip Wilson (Jersey City)

Exit 15 E/W

NEWARK-JERSEY CITY/NEWARK-THE ORANGES Buzz Aldrin (Montclair) Gordon MacRae (East Orange) Jason Alexander (Livingston) Richard Meier (Newark) Amiri Baraka (Newark) Shaquille O'Neal (Newark) William Brennan (Newark) Christina Ricci (Montclair) Aaron Burr (Newark) Philip Roth (Newark) Grover Cleveland (Caldwell) Eva Marie Saint (Newark) Stephen Crane (Newark) Dore Schary (Newark) Tom Cruise (Glen Ridge) Roy Scheider (Orange) Marvin Davis (Newark) Cindy Sherman (Glen Ridge) Brian De Palma (Newark) Andrew Shue (South Orange) Christopher Durang (Montclair) Elisabeth Shue (South Orange) Peter Eisenman (Newark) Joel Silver (South Orange) Connie Francis (Newark) Paul Simon (Newark) Gloria Gaynor (Newark) Rod Steiger (Newark) Allen Ginsberg (Newark) Frankie Valli (Newark) Marvin Hagler (Newark) Sarah Vaughan (Newark) Whitney Houston (East Orange) Jack Warden (Newark) Ice-T (Newark) Dionne Warwick (East Orange) Queen Latifah (East Orange) Max Weinberg (South Orange)

Exit 16 E/W

LINCOLN TUNNELSECAUCUS/SPORTS PLEX-RUTHERFORD Robert Blake (Nutley) Lou Costello (Paterson) Donald Fagen (Passaic) Peggy Noonan (Rutherford) Joe Piscopo (Passaic) Martha Stewart (Nutley) Loretta Swit (Passaic) William Carlos Williams (Rutherford)

Exit 18E/W

GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE Debby Boone (Teaneck) Dick Button (Englewood) Leslie Gore (Tenafly) Ed Harris (Englewood) Deborah Harry (Hawthorne) Richard Lewis (Englewood) Bill Maher (River Vale) Bill Parcells (Oradell) Nelson Riddle (Oradell) Brooke Shields (Englewood) John Travolta (Englewood) Trish Van Devere (Tenafly) Pia Zadora (Hackensack)