The two editors and the writer went back and forth for a few months about what to do with the article, until it became clear to Flanner that Ross was stalling until Blum was so cold it would be a moot point. In the process it likewise became clear that Ross’s and Shawn’s concern was less about the Blum piece per se than about Flanner’s politics. Ross in fact was worried about her growing sympathy for socialism, how this had crept into her copy—and been expunged—and how she seemed out of touch with the mood in the United States. In the summer of 1950, they suggested to Flanner that she come back to New York for something of a “reorientation.” As Ross tried to explain it, “Merely and simply … we want you to re-sense the temper of the country here, which is rather outlandish: witch hunts, The New Yorker accused of being red, etc., etc.”
Flanner agreed to return, but she didn’t get to New York until early November, and when she did a curious thing happened: Ross didn’t want to see her. When she bumped into him in the hall on her first day in the office, he was flustered and abrupt. He didn’t have time to talk just now, he said. In fact, he was “getting [out] this damned Christmas issue and I can’t talk to you till next year.”
But the next evening Ross made some time over coffee at “21,” where Flanner had been dining with the Shawns and he with some other friends. He talked obliquely of his fear that Europe was being “lost” to “the Commies.” (“Odd that he, such a patron of good writing and editing, should nickname Bolshevism so it sounds like a baseball team,” Flanner wrote a friend.) Ross set no more store on socialism than on Communism, and he was concerned that she did. To Flanner’s mounting irritation, it was several more weeks before they resumed their fumbling discourse, this time in Ross’s office. As he talked, he began to pace nervously and become more agitated. Suddenly he blurted out that the French were not the people he had once known; they had changed, and no one could believe in them anymore. “And you don’t believe in them either,” he shouted at Flanner. “It shows in every goddamn word you write.”
Unaccustomed to this vehemence from her patron and friend, Flanner shot back that she agreed: no one in Europe felt the same about anything anymore, she said, because nothing was the same. She offered to resign, but Ross calmed down and mumbled an apology, and there the matter ended.
Looking back on this frustrating home leave, Flanner would attribute Ross’s erratic behavior to his genuine concern for her, and to his own marginal health. At the time, though, she felt bruised and estranged from her beloved New Yorker in a way she had never experienced before. Doubtless she was right in part about Ross, but just as surely his clumsy, groping performance was also about Boyer, about Hoover, about “The New Worker,” about writers and their politics generally, and his discomfort and despair in trying to reconcile the two. “I returned to Paris,” Flanner would write, “no wiser.”
——
All his life ross had worked hard to keep his public profile low, but over the years there was so much fascination about the unorthodox guiding spirit of The New Yorker that attention was paid him anyway. The father of contemporary magazine profiles was such an irresistible character himself that by now he had been the subject of half a dozen profiles in competing publications, and he still turned up regularly in the gossip columns. Thus he could not have been altogether surprised one morning in 1948 to find that “New Yorker editor” was the clue to a four-letter word in the Times crossword puzzle.
At this point in his life it might have been said of Ross what he once said of Alan Dunn, one of his most prolific and eccentric artists. Of Dunn’s many obsessions, the most pronounced was a paralyzing fear of fire. Good company though he was, the cartoonist routinely declined dinner invitations from friends if their apartments didn’t have what he considered an adequate number of fire escapes. He seldom came down to the office, which he felt was a fire trap. Indeed he seldom went out at all, and as a result he began to get a reputation as a recluse. Ross found this odd, even amusing, because he always seemed to be bumping into Dunn in restaurants and theater lobbies. Said the editor, “He’s some kind of recluse about town.”
His friends knew that Ross was anything but a recluse, but to the reading public his resolute shunning of the spotlight only enhanced his air of mystery. He didn’t mind this so much; he even cultivated it to an extent. Yet he was finding that avoiding publicity, especially when so many of his friends and acquaintances were in the media, was increasingly a challenge. Genuinely uncomfortable in public settings, he never accepted speaking engagements, attended few “functions,” and rejected frequent requests to appear on the radio (he liked to tell broadcasters that whenever he got in front of an open microphone he had an uncontrollable urge to swear). Writers, on the other hand, could not be so easily dissuaded. Being written about made Ross self-conscious, but as a print journalist he felt he owed colleagues at least grudging cooperation. Yet in his view, few of the resulting pieces ever did more than perpetuate the old, mad Ross of myth—or worse, give his friends cause to rib him. After two writers double-teamed Ross unsuccessfully for Harper’s, Mencken wrote him to say, “There was material enough to scare half the children of America to death, but all the authors managed to do is to touch the edges of it. I am almost tempted to spit on my hands and do [a profile] myself. If I ever get to I’ll print it in either the Christian Herald or the Police Gazette.”
In such ways Ross the private man was becoming, reluctantly, a public figure, but if he was not altogether happy about the idea, he was at least becoming more comfortable with it. More secure in himself and his accomplishments, he was finally demonstrating a willingness to drop his guard. In 1949 and 1950, this new attitude, along with some calamitous events beyond his control, combined to expose his public persona all the more.
In fact 1949 was a miserable year for Ross, and his chronic tax and marriage problems were only the beginning of it. White got the year off to an inauspicious start by giving up Comment, at least as a full-time obligation. In March, illness and exhaustion forced his friend James Forrestal to quit as Secretary of Defense, and then in May he leaped to his death from a window of the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Ross happened to be in Washington at the time, having put in a rare appearance at the annual Gridiron Dinner. The next morning a bellboy broke the news to him about Forrestal. Ross paced the lobby of the Willard Hotel in agony and frustration for half an hour, then decided to return to New York, the suicide of another friend—one the same age as he—leaving him “low and bitter.”
That summer, when O’Hara published A Rage to Live and Brendan Gill dissected it in The New Yorker, the ensuing flap drove O’Hara in a snit away from the magazine (temporarily, at least). In October, sparks from the chimney of Ross’s Stamford home ignited the roof, causing a fire that resulted in extensive damage and a year’s worth of insurance hassles and repairs. Only weeks later, there was more tragedy in Washington: artist Helen Hokinson died in a fiery airplane crash at National Airport. The horrible irony—“an outrage by fate,” Ross said—was that the shy Hokinson, who lived alone with her mother, virtually never traveled; her only reason for going to Washington was to appear at a Community Chest drive. Ross had an almost paternal feeling for her, having watched Hokinson grow up with his magazine, and arranging to have her body returned to New York and her mother was almost too much to bear.
Soon after, Ross went up to Boston for a one-week checkup at the Lahey Clinic. He returned to New York in time for the premiere of a new play, Metropole, which had been written by his onetime personal secretary William Walden. Not that Ross intended to see it, since the play was about a New York magazine called Metropole, a thinly disguised New Yorker, and its manic and temperamental editor, Frederick Hill, a thinly disguised Ross. It was directed by the editor’s old poker pal and sometime contributor George S. Kaufman, who realized that Metropole was weak but put his time (and some of his own money, it was later learned) into it so that first-time playwright Walden, who still worked at The New Yorker, might at least walk away from
the experience with a Broadway credit. Ross was not so charitable; having disclaimed the whole project—“People write about me, but I spend my time working”—he refused to see the play, and was not sorry when it closed after only two performances. Later that week Ross and Ariane attended the opening of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, sitting immediately in front of Kaufman, whom Ross needled about Metropole all evening.
But after this dreadful spate, in December matters took a decidedly sunnier turn. For two months The New Yorker had quietly but stubbornly protested the recent decision to permit broadcasting of music and commercials over the public-address system in Grand Central Terminal. To Ross, who commuted through Grand Central and thus spent a fair amount of time there, this commercial white noise was both a personal affront and a civic outrage, and almost every week The New Yorker commented on it somehow. One cartoon featured the terminal’s statue of Commodore Vanderbilt with a sign hanging around his neck that read, “Drink Shaefer Beer.” Thanks largely to the magazine’s provocation, so many people complained about the broadcasts to the New York State Public Service Commission that it decided to hold a public hearing on the matter. Amazingly, Ross, as de facto leader of the opposition, agreed to testify.
Ross hadn’t taken the hearing seriously, and said later that had he known how big a fuss would be made over his appearance, he would at least have prepared some remarks rather than ad lib. (In truth, he probably wouldn’t have appeared at all.) As it happened, it didn’t matter. True to the spirit of his magazine, the editor made his point, and provided comic relief to boot.
Before Ross testified, an attorney for the New York Central Railroad, which along with the New Haven line was sponsoring the broadcasts, described him as the editor of “an adult comic book.” Hence when Ross took the stand and was asked to state his occupation, he replied sarcastically, “I am editor of an adult comic book edited by a person who commutes to and from the Grand Central Terminal—to put it heavy-handedly.” He then proceeded to object to the broadcasts on almost every conceivable ground: that the screech was an invasion of privacy, and unintelligible in any case; that it made it difficult to read; even that it amounted to a “semiswindle” of the advertisers because anyone who was reading, eating, or conducting other business in Grand Central could not be paying attention to their commercials. Mostly, however, it was simply a damned nuisance. “I just want to be let alone in the terminal,” Ross said. “I can do all right with magazines and newspapers without them singing lullabies to me, or funeral dirges.”
When the New York Central’s attorney, Kenneth F. Stone, got his turn, he pursued Ross’s contention that the broadcasts were largely unintelligible.
“You said, Mr. Ross, that these broadcasts give you a ringing in the ears.… Your hearing is one hundred percent?”
“It is perfect,” Ross replied. “It is too good. Under the circumstances, I am thinking of having an eardrum punctured.”
When Stone accused The New Yorker of inviting readers to complain, Ross denied it. Stone then read aloud from a Talk item that had said, “We strongly advise any person who finds himself exposed to amplified sounds in hospitals, terminals or common carriers to protest to the management or call the police.”
Ross didn’t hesitate. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I guess I must have read that in the Grand Central Station.”
Dozens of others spoke against the broadcasts, but it was the rare public performance of the editor of The New Yorker that put the story on New York’s front pages. A few weeks later the railroads threw in the towel, and the broadcasts stopped as abruptly as they had begun. Ross joked that the victory was premature: The New Yorker had intended to propose an entire elaborate sideshow for Grand Central, complete with a crystal gazer to predict when trains were arriving, and a dime-a-dance area. Nonetheless he accepted congratulations for repulsing this latest assault on civility. He even found his handsome mug plastered in Life—and as himself this time, not Stalin.
The star witness offers animated testimony during the public hearing on broadcasts in the Grand Central terminal, 1949. (Archive Photos)
Thus, 1950 dawned more promisingly for Ross, which was only fitting, for with The New Yorker turning twenty-five it would be a year of celebration and introspection. A wire-service reporter interviewing him for the anniversary caught him in a typically reflective moment. He asked the editor whether the years had changed his conception of The New Yorker. “Damned if I know,” said Ross, and went on to take issue with the persisting characterizations of him as impatient and surly, and the only high-powered executive in town whose clothes looked as if he still rode to work in boxcars. “I’m a well-dressed man, dammit.”
In March 1950 Ross presided over the Ritz anniversary fete, and in June the high-school dropout accepted an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth. He was a bit anxious about the occasion. The fuss and the ceremony were sure to make him uncomfortable, and he had always resisted similar gestures before. But as he confided to friends, in light of all the “New Worker” business, this time he thought public validation from a respected conservative institution like Dartmouth might prove useful. Still, he was gratified, and in fact found himself in respectable company: fellow honorees included Federal Judge Harold Medina, Atlantic editor Edward Weeks, architect Wallace Harrison, and statesman George Kennan, who gave the commencement address. As he sat on the dais awaiting his degree, Ross scanned the program, then leaned over to Weeks and said, “It says here you’ll get an LL.D., but I’m to be a Doctor of Humane Letters. Means I’m a kinder man.”
That fall saw the premiere of yet another “New Yorker” play, this time Gibbs’s aforementioned Season in the Sun, about which Ross was in somewhat better humor. Season opened on September 28 at the Cort Theatre and was so well received that it ran for a year. Ross had long ago steeled himself to the idea of being stage fodder; aside from Metropole, Thurber had been trying to write a play about him for years. He never finished it, though others have pointed out that Ross inhabits many of Thurber’s protagonists, from Walter Mitty to King Clode to his besieged cartoon husbands. Ross felt if he was going to have his character appropriated, it might as well be Gibbs doing the appropriating, for at least the result would be funny. Sure enough, Season, while not a great play, made audiences laugh. Staged by Gibbs’s friend Burgess Meredith, it featured a thin plot that was resolved when the Ross character saves the hero’s self-esteem, marriage, and career by making him see what a great life he has after all. Today it would be sitcom fodder, with the Ross character being the crazy uncle who in the end talks sense.
Ross wouldn’t see the play until he was sure no one in the audience would recognize him—no mean trick, Gibbs said. Eventually he saw it twice, once with Franklin P. Adams—who was drunk, Gibbs recalled—and once with Patty. On the latter occasion he took her backstage to meet his fictional counterpart, who was played, ironically, by Broadway veteran Anthony Ross. Introducing her to the actor, Ross said, “This is what Mr. Gibbs thinks I’m like.”
On the whole, the year had been a fine season in the sun for Ross, who for the first time in his life really let himself accept acclamation for his extraordinary accomplishment with The New Yorker. That November, as she was about to leave New York after her “reorientation” debacle, Flanner stopped by Ross’s office and peered in. The editor looked up at her and smiled, all traces of the previous unpleasantness now vanished. He asked if there was something she wanted to talk over. No, Flanner said, she just wanted to take a long look at him.
CHAPTER 15
BACK TO THE ALGONQUIN
In june of 1950, harold ross, daughter patty, one of her girlfriends, her second cousin James Gilson (recruited to drive), Mrs. Gutzon Borglum, and her flatulent dog all piled into Ross’s three-year-old Cadillac and headed west. Ariane did not come along. In South Dakota they dropped off Mrs. Borglum and the dog at the Mount Rushmore monument that her late husband had blasted out of the Black Hills, then proceeded south to Colorado. Patty had been with her f
ather on vacations before, but this time in their three weeks together Ross was determined to really show her the West—his West. Its pull on him was so strong that had work not made it impractical, he would have lived there part of the year. Nothing could prevent him from retiring there, however, and he told friends that this was what he hoped to do, fully intending to grow as old and feisty as his endearing uncle John, who had died at ninety-one.
In Aspen they met up with more relatives and friends, among them Frank Capra, then headed up to a remote lake near Dillon, Colorado, where they fished, camped, and rode the mountain trails. (Ross was not exactly an elegant horseman. Each time before climbing into the saddle, his daughter recalled, her father liked to talk with his steed and try to persuade it to be civil.)
Ross, tired and with sixty in view, was coming to terms with himself, and this trip with Patty was only a part of it. Increasingly he found himself in an uncharacteristically contemplative frame of mind. The next spring, writing Rebecca West—sympathetic and an ocean away, she would receive some of Ross’s most revealing letters in his last years—he mentioned how Eleanor Roosevelt suddenly looked very old to him. He was reminded of a pleasant afternoon that the two of them had spent a few years earlier, talking for hours as they rode along in Mrs. Roosevelt’s sedan. At one point the former First Lady suddenly allowed as how “old people ought to be bumped off when their usefulness is done.” Since she was still a vigorous woman at the time, her remark took Ross by surprise. “I mildly raised the question of who would make the decision as to when the moment had come,” he recalled, “and she didn’t have a ready answer for that.”
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