Five
“ONE OF THE REASONS SALLY ALLEN IS NO TREMENDOUS success on radio,” Cap said to Jack, “is that radio’s not visual. She’s a comedienne chiefly, and she’s damned funny, but in every picture she does she has a role that lets her show off her legs. In her radio show she’s a housewife. We give her funny lines, but . . .”
Jack frowned. “Let me ask you something. Has she ever smoked a cigarette on-screen?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Well, she smokes on the radio show. Every goddamned episode has some line like ‘Hey, Harry, I need to relax. Light my Amber for me. Ah . . . thanks. That’s better.’”
“Hell, I know,” said Cap. “And Harry probably says something like ‘Yeah. Relaxing. Sure tastes great.’ The sponsor demands it. Which makes our comedienne sound like a vacant-headed idiot.”
“Why do we let sponsors—or sponsors’ advertising agencies, actually—dictate to us?” Jack asked angrily. “Why the hell should Sally Allen’s show start with a breathless idiot yelling into a microphone, ‘The Amber Cigarettes Hour, Featuring Sally Allen!’? Why? Why not The Sally Allen Show, sponsored by Amber Cigarettes!?”
“Because the bastards will desert us,” said Cap.
“No they won’t. They need us as bad as we need them.”
Six
JACK DECIDED TO FLY TO LOS ANGELES TO SEE SALLY ALLEN. They met for lunch at the Brown Derby.
Sally Allen was distinctive. In a Hollywood that still insisted on bland conformity in leading ladies, she was different. Her eyes were too big. Her teeth were too prominent. Her voice was high-pitched and nasal, except when she held it in tight control. On the other hand, her figure was one that any leading lady would envy. She was twenty-eight years old.
They chatted about nothing much for a while, but when she was halfway through her third martini she told him she was sorry she had signed a five-year contract. “Cap Durenberger’s a sharp, persuasive guy,” she said.
“You want out of the contract?” Jack asked.
“Well . . .”
“I’ll let you out. I don’t want anyone working for me who’s unhappy with the deal.”
She tipped her head to one side and regarded him with skeptical curiosity. “You’re not the kind of guy your brother says you are.”
“You know my brother?”
Sally grinned and opened her big eyes wide. “Everybody knows the Lears, father and son. I understand you refused to release me from my radio contract to make a picture for Carlton House.”
“We’ve released you to do four other pictures. I was trying to protect you from my father, who inisists on doing you-know-what with every actress Bob hires.”
“This kid can protect herself.”
“Don’t kid yourself. Erich doesn’t play fair.”
“I don’t have to either.”
Jack put his hand on hers and stared hard into her eyes. “Sally, you can’t compete with him. Don’t even try.”
Sally blew a loud sigh. She stared at her drink, as though considering ordering another, then visibly decided not to.
“Listen,” said Jack. “I’ve got a couple of ideas. Let me explain them. Don’t say no until you’ve heard me out.”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t doing anything else this afternoon.”
“All right. The fall season has started, and it’s the same old shit. Sally Allen, batty housewife, star of The Amber Cigarettes Hour. What have we got in the can? Enough to last till January?”
“I suppose.”
“Okay. Suppose we announce shortly that The Amber Cigarettes Hour is cancelled for the balance of the season. We—”
“The sponsors may cancel themselves. They can jump the gun on us.”
“Not if we announce tomorrow.”
“What are we gonna announce tomorrow, Mr. Lear?”
“Call me Jack. Suppose you and I call a press conference tomorrow. We announce that we are unhappy with The Amber Cigarettes Hour, Featuring Sally Allen and that we are going into production immediately with a new mid-season program called The Sally Allen Show!”
“Which will be different how?”
He snapped his fingers and ordered another round of drinks. “Sally Allen is no situation-comedy housewife, prattling about how much she loves her Amber cigarettes and her Flo laundry soap. She’s a showbiz girl! The comedy is built around her adventures putting together a vaudeville act, a nightclub show, a . . . whatever. Some of the lines are jokes about how brief her costumes are. The audience has an image of this hardworking, sharp-talking gal struggling to make a career on the stage and frustrated by every prosaic, cliché-ridden—”
“Who’s gonna write this?” asked Sally.
“We can find a writer. Got somebody in mind?”
“I might.”
“Well, if you want a release, you got it. You want to try something different, you got that.”
“Who’s gonna sponsor?”
“I am. For a while. But I’ll bet that Southern Tobacco will be back, offering money for commercial spots, before the opening half-season ends. That’s the way my network is going to oper ate from now on. Sponsors can buy commercial time, but they’ll buy it on shows we create and produce. Nobody is going to own us.”
“You’ll go broke,” Sally said flatly.
“Even if I do, you won’t. I can fund my obligations under your contract until it expires. Something else, Sally. In the bitter end, you know, you’re not really a radio performer. You’re too visual. Suppose we get into this thing called video—”
“Television,” she interrupted.
“Okay. Whatever. Suppose Sally Allen appears on the face of a tube—singing, dancing, showing her legs. Hey, all we have to do is not lose too much capital in the spring of ’49.”
Sally Allen turned down the corners of her mouth and shook her head. “You and Durenberger,” she said. “Okay, boss. Let’s give it a try.”
Seven
IN OCTOBER JACK RETURNED TO LOS ANGELES UNEXPECTedly.
“Siddown, kid.” Erich Lear pointed to the couch that faced his desk. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Jack let himself down heavily on the big leather-covered couch. “I’ve got a big problem,” he said.
“What are you saying?” Erich’s Marsh Wheeling stogie had gone out, and he snapped a Zippo and touched flame to it. “What kind of problem could you have that you’d want to talk to me about it?”
“This is goddamned serious.”
“I figure. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
“All right. You can screw me to a fare-thee-well on this. I’ve come to you for help. You can shit me or not shit me.”
“Runnin’ out of money?”
“I wouldn’t call that serious. I could handle that. I have something a hell of a lot more serious than that.”
Erich clasped his hands behind his head and leaned his chair back, letting the stogie hang from a corner of his mouth. He was wearing a madras jacket over a golf shirt. “Jesus . . . to think of it. My son coming to me for—What’s the deal, Jack?”
“Confidential. You and I have never been the best of friends, but I always figured your word’s good.”
“They figure that in this town. I screw broads, not business guys. They watch their chances and screw you back.”
“All right. When you need something out of the ordinary, you go to the guy who knows how to do it. Dad, I need the services of a damned good, damned secret doctor.”
Erich’s face lit up. He grinned. He brought down his arms and pulled the stogie from his mouth. “An abortion! Christ the Lord, who have you got knocked up? Don’t tell me it’s Sally Allen!”
Jack choked on his words. He wiped his eyes and shook his head. “That’d be a joke. This isn’t. This is serious!”
Erich put his stogie aside in an ashtray. “A kid . . . ?”
“Not by me! I don’t know who the guy is. She absolutely refuses to say.”
Erich frowned. “Who
?” he asked darkly.
“Joan. My daughter.”
Erich gaped. “What’s she . . . ? Fourteen fuckin’ years old?”
“Yes.”
Erich reached for a button on his desk, then pulled back his hand. “You gotta get somebody killed, son.”
“Yeah . . . when I find out who. Right now what I need is a one hundred percent trustworthy doctor.”
Erich nodded. “Okay. I know one who can do it. When?”
“The kids are coming to me for Thanksgiving. They’ll arrive in New York on Wednesday, but they have to be back in Boston Sunday night.”
“You tellin’ me her mother doesn’t know?”
“I’m telling you her mother doesn’t know.”
“But you do.”
“My son called me.”
Erich blew a loud sigh between the fingers that covered his mouth. “Chartered plane,” he said. “Fly her out here on Thanksgiving Day. Operation that evening, Friday morning at the latest. How far along is she?”
“Maybe two months, ten weeks.”
“It’s not a serious operation, but it’d be better if we could get it done sooner.”
“Dad, I’m not responsible for this. Not in any way.”
“Well. Something that makes you call me Dad is pretty important. I’ll set it up. You get her out here. Does the Countess know?”
“Anne knows.”
“Why don’t you tell Kimberly you’re celebrating Thanksgiving with the California grandparents?”
Eight
JOAN MANAGED TO HOLD BACK HER TEARS UNTIL THE CHARtered twin took off from Teterboro Airport. Then, in the air, she broke down.
Anne hugged her. “The operation is easy, Joni,” she whispered. “It’ll be over in five minutes.”
“I believed it couldn’t happen,” Joan wept. “I didn’t want it to happen! I was afraid.”
She was very careful not to stare at John, who sat opposite her. The passenger cabin was configured as a sort of little living room.
“The big point,” said Jack, “is that we keep a family secret. I’m not going to press you about who it was. But could it have happened when you were visiting us in Greenwich?”
“It happened then,” Joan wept. “And that’s all I’m going to say about it. Don’t try to figure it out.”
“We’re not going to say we don’t care who it was,” Anne whispered to her. “But you don’t have to say. What difference would it make?”
Joan sobbed and nodded. “A whole lot of difference!”
“But you don’t want to tell us?” asked Jack.
“I’ll never tell!” Joan shrieked. “I’ll never tell!”
“Well, answer one question,” Jack said grimly. “Was it Dodge Hallowell?”
“No!
Anne hugged the girl tighter. “When we fly back, you’ll feel better.”
“But I’ll have killed my baby!” Joan screamed.
Anne nodded. “Just remember, there’s nobody with you on this trip who doesn’t love you.”
TWENTY - ONE
One
1949
CURT FREDERICK’S CONTRACT CAME UP FOR RENEWAL IN 1949. He was by now one of the most respected broadcast journalists in the United States. Jack had released to him all copyright claims to his wartime broadcasts, so he could make an LP record, which was called As It Happened. Such cuts as his 1940 broadcast from Sedan, with the roar of German artillery behind his voice, won him brisk record sales and millions of new listeners who still did not have LNI stations in their communities.
Jack also released to him some snippets from more recent broadcasts, including the South Carolina Dixiecrat yelling “Truman! Truman! That nigga-lovin’ cocksuckah!” Many thousands of records were sold to people who had not heard the broadcast and still had to be convinced that the words had actually been spoken on the radio.
“I hardly need tell you I’m grateful to you,” Curt said to Jack over lunch at the Harvard Club, “but I’ve also got to tell you I’m a little tired. Doing a nightly news show five times a week is wearing me down. Betsy keeps telling me she doesn’t want me to have a heart attack, and she says we don’t need the money.”
“I can’t imagine you’d actually retire,” said Jack. “What are you looking for, Curt?”
“Maybe a weekly show, a whole half hour exploring some topic in depth, with interviews and so on.”
“I’ve got a different idea,” said Jack. “Sooner or later we’re going to start telecasting. Suppose you did a television show, maybe twice a month. You’d make a hell of a fine appearance on television.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’d look like an idiot. Anyway, how soon do you plan to go into television?”
“Let’s think in terms of next year. In the meantime, do me a favor and continue the nightly radio news for one more year. Right now, let’s suppose you take a month’s vacation. We’ll put that in your contract: a month off every year. Of course,” Jack added, “we can also work a little more money into the deal.”
TWO
IN APRIL JACK CALLED A MEETING IN THE OFFICES IN THE Chrysler Building. With him in the conference room were Cap Durenberger, Herb Morrill, and Mickey Sullivan—the three longtime members of the management team of LNI—plus Ray l’Enfant of Broadcasters Alliance and Professor Friedrich Loewenstein.
The meeting was held early in the evening.
Jack presided. In 1949 he was a new man. Exuberantly happy in his marriage to Anne, he had cut down on drinking and smoking and had lost a few pounds. Anne had measured him meticulously and sent the new dimensions to his Savile Row tailor, who kept him handsomely clothed. Jack was not the proper conforming gentleman Kimberly had wanted to make of him, but he was a gentleman in a better style.
“The purpose of our meeting, obviously, is to talk about this thing called television,” he said. “I think we have to get into it. We have no choice.”
“That’s going to be a little difficult,” said Herb Morrill. “The FCC has frozen the issuance of new television broadcasting licenses. RCA owns most of the stations now operating. CBS has a few. The independents are—”
“For sale,” Jack finished the sentence. “Five years from now a television license is going to be worth ten fortunes. Right now they’re not. In the first place, there’s not much programming. What is worse, the cost of sending out the signal, to only relatively few receivers, is prohibitive. How many television receiving sets are there in the United States? Cap? You know?”
“Half a million, maybe,” Durenberger said. “Almost all of them within fifty miles of New York City.”
Jack nodded. “Okay. Suppose we acquired a license in St. Louis or, say, Dallas. Suppose we put up a broadcasting tower that reached halfway to the sky. Suppose we sent out a signal that could be picked up for two hundred miles—by people who were interested enough to raise their receiving antennas high, maybe as much as fifty feet. Professor Loewenstein?”
“You could reach sree hundred miles, Mr. Lee-ar.”
“Okay,” Jack went on. “Forgive me. I’ve thought this through. Maybe too much. Maybe my enthusiasm is running away with me. What good’s a television receiver in Tulsa? It’s worth nothing because there’s no signal for it to receive. But suppose we were sending a strong long-distance signal out of Dallas or St. Louis—”
“Or Kansas City,” said Cap. “Look at your demographics. Look what you could reach from Kansas City.”
“You overlook something, gentlemen,” said Professor Loewenstein. “You could have a broadcasting station in Kansas City, let us say, but with satellite transmitters in Dallas, Tulsa, Wichita, and so on. You could send the signal from Kansas City to those transmitters by wire.”
Jack turned and stared at the professor. “Are you willing to join our company, Professor Loewenstein?”
“Yes, I guess so. And we must look into something else. There is a good technology coming along called microwave transmission.”
Three
THOUGH THE COMPANY WAS CA
LLED SOUTHERN TOBACCO, ITS offices were in New York—in fact, in the Chrysler Building a few floors above Jack’s offices. Jack had seen Luther Dickinson in the elevators, though they had never met until now.
After they had exchanged pleasantries, Dickinson went straight to the point. “Mr. Lear, my advertising agency is recommending we drop sponsorship of The Sally Allen Show and, indeed, of anything you broadcast.”
Jack smiled wryly. “Mr. Dickinson, you need a new ad agency.”
“I’ve had six of them over the past fifteen years. I sometimes wonder, quite frankly, if we sell Amber cigarettes because of the commercials or in spite of them.”
“Have you considered trying to sell cigarettes without advertising?”
“We’re not considering dropping advertising, just dropping advertising with you.”
Jack smiled. “Because I won’t let you call the new Sally Allen show The Amber Cigarettes Hour.”
“My advertising agency says we shouldn’t accept that. They insist on identification.”
Jack shook his head. “I won’t do it. It will be The Sally Allen Show, sponsored by . . . whoever. That’s enough identification. Also, I don’t know if your ad agency has told you this, but we won’t allow a sponsor to inject product mentions into the scripts.”
“The ad agency also insists we have script approval.”
“Out of the question,” Jack said.
“We’ve done it our way for many years.”
“But you’re not happy with the results. Why else would you have had six advertising agencies in fifteen years? I’m serious when I say you need a new agency. You need somebody with new ideas.”
“Easily said,” Dickinson remarked dryly. “Can you give me a new idea?”
“Yes, I can,” said Jack. “Ambers are identified with The Sally Allen Show and with a couple of shows you sponsor on other networks. Each week the same people tune in to Sally Allen and are exposed to your commercials. A substantial part of that audience already smokes Ambers. Another substantial part will never smoke Ambers. I’m going to suggest to you that your advertising dollars will be better spent if you diversify. Advertise on various programs at various times and reach different audiences. For example, I can open a place for you on The Curtis Frederick News.” Jack paused and smiled. “You wouldn’t ask for script approval on that program, would you?”
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