All morning, people have wandered in and out of our cell, some tearfully, some guardedly, some boisterously, most of them long-time friends in various stages of repair. We have amused ourself thinking of Ross’s reaction to this flow. “Never bother a writer” was one of his strongest principles. He used to love to drop in, himself, and sit around, but was uneasy the whole time because of the carking feeling that if only he would get up and go away, we might settle down to work and produce something. To him, a writer at work, whether in the office or anywhere in the outside world, was an extraordinarily interesting, valuable, but fragile object; and he half expected it to fall into a thousand pieces at any moment.
The report of Ross’s death came over the telephone in a three-word sentence that somehow managed to embody all the faults that Ross devoted his life to correcting. A grief-stricken friend in Boston, charged with the task of spreading the news but too dazed to talk sensibly, said, “It’s all over.” He meant that Ross was dead, but the listener took it to mean that the operation was over. Here, in three easy words, were the ambiguity, the euphemistic softness, the verbal infirmity that Harold W. Ross spent his life thrusting at. Ross regarded every sentence as the enemy, and believed that if a man watched closely enough, he would discover the vulnerable spot, the essential weakness. He devoted his life to making the weak strong—a rather specialized form of blood transfusion, to be sure, but one that he believed in with such a consuming passion that his spirit infected others and inspired them, and lifted them. Whatever it was, this contagion, this vapor in these marshes, it spread. None escaped it. Nor is it likely to be dissipated in a hurry.
His ambition was to publish one good magazine, not a string of successful ones, and he thought of The New Yorker as a sort of movement. He came equipped with not much knowledge and only two books—Webster’s Dictionary and Fowler’s Modern English Usage. These books were his history, his geography, his literature, his art, his music, his everything. Some people found Ross’s scholastic deficiencies quite appalling, and were not sure they had met the right man. But he was the right man, and the only question was whether the other fellow was capable of being tuned to Ross’s vibrations. Ross had a thing that is at least as good as, and sometimes better than, knowledge: he had a sort of natural drive in the right direction, plus a complete respect for the work and ideas and opinions of others. It took a little while to get on to the fact that Ross, more violently than almost anybody, was proceeding in a good direction, and carrying others along with him, under torrential conditions. He was like a boat being driven at the mercy of some internal squall, a disturbance he himself only half understood, and of which he was at times suspicious.
In a way, he was a lucky man. For a monument he has the magazine to date—one thousand three hundred and ninety-nine issues, born in the toil and pain that can be appreciated only by those who helped in the delivery room. These are his. They stand, unchangeable and open for inspection. We are, of course, not in a position to estimate the monument, even if we were in the mood to. But we are able to state one thing unequivocally: Ross set up a great target and pounded himself to pieces trying to hit it square in the middle. His dream was a simple dream; it was pure and had no frills: he wanted the magazine to be good, to be funny, and to be fair.
We say he was lucky. Some people cordially disliked him. Some were amused but not impressed. And then, last, there are the ones we have been seeing today, the ones who loved him and had him for a friend—people he looked after, and who looked after him. These last are the ones who worked close enough to him, and long enough with him, to cross over the barrier reef of noisy shallows that ringed him, into the lagoon that was Ross himself—a rewarding, and even enchanting, and relatively quiet place, utterly trustworthy as an anchorage. Maybe these people had all the luck. The entrance wasn’t always easy to find.
He left a note on our desk one day apropos of something that had pleased him in the magazine. The note simply said, “I am encouraged to go on.” That is about the way we feel today, because of his contribution. We are encouraged to go on.
When you took leave of Ross after a calm or stormy meeting, he always ended with the phrase that has become as much a part of the office as the paint on the walls. He would wave his limp hand, gesturing you away. “All right,” he would say. “God bless you.” Considering Ross’s temperament and habits, this was a rather odd expression. He usually took God’s name in vain if he took it at all. But when he sent you away with this benediction, which he uttered briskly and affectionately, and in which he and God seemed all scrambled together, it carried a warmth and sincerity that never failed to carry over. The words are so familiar to his helpers and friends here that they provide the only possible way to conclude this hasty notice and to take our leave. We cannot convey his manner. But with much love in our heart, we say, for everybody, “All right, Ross. God bless you!”
Thomas Whiteside
OCTOBER 16/23, 1954 (FROM “THE COMMUNICATOR”)
EOPLE WHO HAVE the reputation of being philosophers, plentiful though they may be in the poorer-paid professions, are comparatively rare in the radio-and-television industry. In Sylvester L. Weaver, Jr., the president of the National Broadcasting Company, however, the industry has such a man. Weaver, who, for no particular reason, is known to his associates as Pat, is regarded by many people connected with broadcasting not only as the leading showman in the business but also as its most unrelenting thinker and most vocal theorist. “Programwise, the guy is terrific,” says a talent agent who has had many dealings with him. “Long-hairwise, he’s great, too. With Pat, you can think big even about a cooking show.” Weaver has been thinking and theorizing at N.B.C. since 1949, when he joined the organization as a vice-president. He became president last December, taking on a job in which there had recently been a considerable turnover; before Weaver, three men had occupied the office of president in as many years. Weaver’s election to the position has been widely interpreted in the trade as not simply another change of leadership but an indication of a change in N.B.C.’s attitude toward the importance of improving its programs. Prior to Weaver, the company’s presidents were businessmen first, and their professional talents in the matter of creating radio and television programs were looked upon as relatively incidental to their ability as administrators. Weaver, on the other hand, is a professional program man. “Pat’s just what we needed,” one N.B.C. producer said not long ago. “He’s probably the first top guy we’ve had here who can dream up a big show, sell a sponsor on the idea, figure out the show’s dramatic form, and get the right budget for it and the right script writers, as well as the right talent and the right air time against the right competition. A broad-stroke guy in every respect. Other men, when they have a show on their hands that isn’t making dough, will drop it like a hot brick. Pat will take the same kind of show, pour half-a-million bucks into it, and use it like a loss-leader in a chain grocery to gain traffic. Pat knows how to build up a network audience.”
· · ·
Early one afternoon a while ago, Weaver, splendidly attired as usual and on his way to lunch at “21,” was pressing the “Down” button at the bank of elevators on the sixth floor of the R.C.A. Building when a quiet voice behind him said “Pat.” Weaver turned, and found himself facing Davidson Taylor, a tall, thin, pleasant-mannered man who is N.B.C.’s vice-president in charge of public affairs.
“Well, Dave!” Weaver said in a tone of pleased surprise. “I’m just segueing out to lunch.”
“Good news, Pat,” Taylor said. “I just got back from the Detroit client meeting, and came right up to let you know what the big fellows out there are thinking. Detroit wants to buy the football games and the 1954 elections. But you’re in a hurry. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Good, Dave, good. We’ll talk about it,” Weaver said. Then, as if he had just remembered something, he quickly added, “Say, Dave! I’ve been thinking of a big new weekly afternoon show that Detroit is sure to be interested
in. I’ve got the title already. It’ll be called The Wide Wide World, and it’s great, just great. A sure Peabody. I’m writing a memo on it now—” Weaver was interrupted by the arrival of an elevator. He stepped in, and waved jubilantly to Taylor as the door slid closed.
The next morning, a four-page mimeographed memorandum from Weaver dealing with the new program—a program designed to someday take its place alongside such other big-scale Weaver inspirations as Today, Your Show of Shows, Home, and the network’s current series of color spectaculars—lay on the desks of a number of N.B.C. executives and producers. “We must have the show that gets the most talk in the coming season, that wins the Peabody award, that enables me to keep carrying the fight to the intellectuals who misunderstand our mass-media development, and that can be profitably sold without affecting any of our present business,” the memorandum began, soberly enough, and then Weaver began warming up to his subject: “The Wide Wide World is what its name is. It takes you OUT. It takes you THERE. It puts you in IT. The Wide Wide World uses our five New York remote units…plus our other units, plus the remote units of our affiliates, plus our Cadillac unit, plus units aboard helicopters, aboard diving bells, plus vidicon walkie-peepie units on skis, and on surfboards, and on water skis, and watching frogmen, plus candid camera installations here and there but not by chance.”
A few days later about fifteen members of the N.B.C. staff gathered in Weaver’s office to discuss the proposed program and present their views and suggestions. As the group filed in, Weaver sat comfortably at his desk, at one end of the large room, busily signing mail. Arranged in a casual semicircle in front of the desk were a number of chairs, and off to one side stood Weaver’s Bongo Board, a sort of one-man seesaw device on which he exercises regularly to keep in shape. When everyone was settled, Weaver put down his pen, placed his fingertips together, and leaned far back in his swivel chair. “Well, fellows,” he said, after a moment, “as you know, we’re anxious to establish N.B.C. as it ought to be, and Wide Wide World is the sort of show that will do it. The show ought to be on Sunday afternoon. We’ll get new money for Wide Wide World —there’s no use creating a show like this on the usual agency level, where all they’re concerned about is the problem of people buying the client’s goods. If we did that, the results would be too standard, and, besides, the agencies wouldn’t go for the show anyway. You know that, fellows.”
Everybody smiled, and Weaver leaned forward and began a detailed dissertation on what he felt were the minimum financial requirements of the program. Then, tilting his chair back again, he surveyed his listeners. “Now, some of you have sent me memos with ideas for Wide Wide World,” he said. “After reading them, I think that perhaps what didn’t come through from my memo was what I thought the show was. This isn’t to be a point-of-view show but one in which we use television as communications to show the sort of places and events that normal, cultured, well-informed people want to see. Dismal Swamp, the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, playing an ancient Greek play with Greeks—real Greeks, fellows—as performers. Why not? It would be a non-hit, I admit, but it would be real nutsy. We should consider the artistic tastes of the whole populace.”
“Pat, a question,” Davidson Taylor said. “Is this The Wide Wide World or The Wide Wide U.S.A.?”
“Wide Wide World will be going to London, Moscow, and the Vatican before we’re through,” Weaver replied. “This program goes there.”
“Suppose you went to the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. Would most people want to go to the Greek Theatre?” Robert Sarnoff, who is now N.B.C.’s executive vice-president, asked. He was smoking a cigar, and he examined its ash as he awaited an answer.
“This show is not just about what the public wants to do but what you want them to do, Bobby,” Weaver said. “You take the American people to see the Greek drama, you take them to see King Lear at Stratford, Ontario. It would be good for them to see Shakespeare, whether they liked it or not.” Weaver paused and looked around the room. “I assume you all dig the cultural side of this,” he said.
“Would you like some suggestions from our boys in Hollywood?” asked Fred W. Wile, a vice-president of N.B.C. and its West Coast program chief.
“For laughs?” Weaver inquired.
“Well, laughs, too,” Wile said. He read a list of suggestions that had been teletyped to him from California.
“Negative,” Weaver said when Wile finished. “Negative, negative.”
Richard A. R. Pinkham, another vice-president, suggested that the Dance Festival at Jacobs Pillow might make a subject for The Wide Wide World.
“An hour and a half of Jacobs Pillow?” Sarnoff asked.
“Maybe there is an hour and a half in Jacobs Pillow, Bobby,” Weaver said. “Who knows?”
Someone suggested motorboating as a possible subject, and someone else suggested golf.
“Golf is a possibility, but motorboating is better,” Weaver said. “Golf is a game, but motorboating is a way of life. With a motorboat, you go places.”
“Isn’t going down the Hudson something you see in the newsreels?” Ted Mills, another producer, asked.
“We don’t care about the newsreels,” Weaver replied. “The important thing is the opening on the world.”
“How about a murder trial at a county seat in Georgia?” Mills asked.
“On Sunday afternoon?” Weaver raised his eyebrows. “Anyway, in urbane life I see no reason why such subjects should come up.”
“What do you mean by urbane, exactly?” Mills asked, in a puzzled tone.
“Why, you know, Ted,” Weaver said in an exaggerated drawl. “New York–type stuff.”
Everybody laughed, and then Weaver went on earnestly, “I think I know what I want but I’m not sure that you all do. I want a show that will give people a chance to go out of their homes to almost every part of our wide world that is America and participate in all of our activities—a show that people will say has enabled us to become more mature, more cultured, and more urbane, and that will be the conversation piece wherever people meet. That is why I say no to hunger and no to Chicago, but boating, yes—and if everybody was a member of the élite he’d have seen the show. Nobody would watch Wide Wide World all the time unless he was paralyzed, but he would see it occasionally and it would do him good. Fellows, don’t you see I’m trying to get something civilized?”
Geoffrey T. Hellman
MAY 14, 1955 (“MRS. POST’S PARTY”)
HE NINTH EDITION and eighty-second printing of Emily Post’s Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, which was originally issued in 1922 under the title Etiquette: In Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home, is just out. We celebrated its advent by attending a reception and buffet luncheon “to meet Emily Post,” given by its publishers, Funk & Wagnalls, in the Louis XVI Room of the St. Regis. Mrs. Post, who is eighty-one, received her forty-odd guests sitting on a settee next to her grandson, William Goadby Post, who is in his thirties and was wearing a Countess Mara tie crawling with monkeys. A Funk & Wagnalls publicity lady presented the guests to her; each time the guest was a woman, Mrs. Post rose. We buttonholed her son, Edwin M. Post, Harvard ’16, who was wearing a plain gray silk tie, and asked him for a few words about his mother and her book.
“There have been five major revisions in thirty-three years, and this is the most extensive one,” Mr. Post said. “We started from scratch this time. We made entirely new plates; expense was no object. Mother’s syndicated column, which appears in a hundred and sixty papers seven days a week, brings in about three thousand letters weekly, and some of them have suggested new material that has been incorporated into the latest edition. The Emily Post Institute, which has an office in her apartment, answers routine letters and relays the non-routine ones—about five percent of the total—to her to answer. She spends over six months a year in her house in Edgartown, where she keeps a secretary the year round. The first really warm day in spring, she flies up there with her cook, wai
tress, and parlormaid. Her house is in the middle of town. You can see the sea only from its widow’s walk. Crazy, isn’t it? You might just as well be in New York. I have a place at Westhampton Beach, where I can see the sea from my downstairs windows.”
“I gather Mrs. Post doesn’t want the age of the chaperon again,” a lady guest said. “I suspect she’s a rather forward-looking individual.”
“I think the thing she regrets most is the loss of the art of conversation,” Mr. Post said. “Discussing a book doesn’t exist today. No one’s read a book.”
Mr. William Roulet, Funk & Wagnalls’ vice-president, who was standing near him, frowned. “The advance sale is three times that of any previous revision,” he said. “We’ve never permitted any cheap commercialism in connection with the book. No reprints. No book clubs.”
We went into an adjoining dining room, which contained a number of small tables, and sat down between Miss Anne H. Lincoln, assistant to the editor of the Woman’s Home Companion, and Miss Christie Thompson, assistant to the editor of the Companion’s teen-age department.
“Mrs. Post is wearing a straw hat with red grosgrain trim and a black crêpe dress with red-and-white silk pleating,” Miss Lincoln advised us.
“I told her it was a sort of what-the-hell costume, and she told me she occasionally says ‘What the hell,’ too,” Miss Thompson said. “I use her book all the time to answer questions from teen-agers about how to address invitations, how to run a tea, what does the groom pay for, and so on.”
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