Audition

by Barbara Walters

  My job was to be the producer-writer on the five-times-a-week, five-minute segments with Anita. I was to create material revolving around fashion, trends, beauty tips, how-to advice on such crucial matters as properly tying a scarf, entertaining at home, preparing for the holidays, and so on. Occasionally I would throw in a quickie interview, write some funny patter, and we would fill up the five minutes quite easily. Anita was very much a lady and a nice one, too, but she was limited as a performer. She had done little television, and all this was extremely difficult for her. Her life was dinner parties and supper clubs. We could never do a cooking or food feature, for example, because Anita could barely find her way into her own kitchen. She once told me that when she had to cook bacon, she put the strips into hot butter. Yuck. Even I, a lousy cook, knew better than that.

  The schedule was grueling. Five mornings a week I showed up at the studio at 4:30 a.m., having taken a taxi (not always easy to find at that hour) from my apartment on Seventy-ninth Street. Anita would arrive an hour later to be made up and get her hair done, which, in those pre-blow-dryer days required sitting under a hot beauty-parlor hood for an hour. The early hours were a big problem for Anita. The poor woman got so exhausted that one day, just after finishing her five-minute segment, she fainted. We weren’t sure that she would return the next morning, but she did. Not only that, the segment was renewed after the first three months, as was my contract.

  I was thrilled. I was making only a few hundred dollars a week, but I was back in the business I loved. I enjoyed writing the scripts and scouting for new ideas that Anita could talk about. Once Anita left the studio, I spent the rest of the day planning the fashions, writing more scripts, booking the guests, the sort of thing I had been doing for years. This was “mother’s milk” for me. And then it was over. After the second three months of our segment, S&H Green Stamps decided that The Face wasn’t exactly the face collectors of S&H Green Stamps could relate to. So Anita got axed. I think she was relieved that she could go back to her life of dining at the Stork Club and dancing at El Morocco. As I said, she was a very nice lady and we stayed in touch for quite a while, although I never let her make bacon for me.

  Anita may have been fine with being fired, but I was distraught. I thought the ax was going to fall on me, too. No Clark Gable was going to whisk me away to El Morocco. For me it would be back to the employment agency.

  But just before the ax fell, lightning struck and my life changed, never to be the same again.

  There were eight writers on the Today show then, who also produced the interviews and features. Of the eight, only one was a woman. There were never two. It wasn’t until that woman left the program voluntarily or died that she would be replaced. But to my very good fortune (here comes the luck) the one female writer who was there chose that moment to decide to get married. And there I was, ready, willing, and on the spot.

  Fred Freed hired me full-time. I was given a small office in the RCA building in Rockefeller Plaza, which I shared with one of the seven male writers, a delightful Englishman named John Lord. We had a great relationship, as indeed I had with all the other writers. They couldn’t have been more helpful, though our assignments were very different; the female writer’s job at that time was limited to writing specifically for whoever was the so-called Today Girl.

  How Neanderthal it seems now to look back to the era of the Today Girls, who were only assigned the features geared for women, and, of course, the weather. By the time I joined the staff there had been at least nine of them. On air, they could ad-lib with the other cast members and look pretty, but that was it. I called them “tea pourers,” though it was through no fault of their own. Some were accomplished actresses like Betsy Palmer and Estelle Parsons. Others were fine singers like Florence Henderson and Helen O’Connell, or beauty pageant winners like Lee Ann Meriwether, a former Miss America, and Robbin Bain, a former Miss Rheingold. (The Miss Rheingold competition was a staple in New York for twenty-two years, an ingenious interactive promotion for Rheingold beer, which plastered posters of the six gorgeous finalists all over subways, buses, and stores and invited the public to vote for their favorite. And vote they did, making the Miss Rheingold race second only in number of votes cast to that for U.S. president.) That the Today Girl’s major requirement on the Today show was to look wide awake and pretty at 7:00 a.m. was not surprising. In that “don’t worry your pretty little head” era, the popular culture on television mirrored the sweet and subservient image of the good wife; it did not include women who were doing anything with their brains. I Love Lucy had wound down its spectacular run, and one of the most popular entertainment shows at the time was Leave It to Beaver, the sugary portrait of a perfect happy suburban family doted on by a perfect happy wife and mother. The women’s movement had yet to be born. John F. Kennedy was president in 1961, and more women aspired to wear Jackie Kennedy’s pillbox hats and sleeveless linen sheaths than to enroll at MIT. Still, change was in the air at the Today show. Once again the timing was on my side.

  The catalyst was Dave Garroway. He has been somewhat forgotten, but in those days he was a huge star. For nine years he had been the urbane and witty host of the Today show, and he still held all the reins. Very little happened that he didn’t control or approve. He had to sign off on me when Fred Freed decided to hire me. But first, so did his ferocious secretary. Only after I got her approval was I ushered in to see Garroway. That first meeting was a little odd. While we talked, he kept sipping something out of a bottle in his desk. He vaguely remembered me as the person who used to supply him with Lionel trains, and he was slightly flirtatious. He asked me a few questions, seemed mildly interested in the answers, and that was that. After I was hired I had little actual contact with him.

  Garroway’s talent was an ability to appear laid-back and relaxed. He seemed to be talking directly to the viewer. He always ended the program holding his hand up and saying, “Peace.” Nice and calm. He knew a lot about a lot of things, and the network backed him for years. But by 1961 he was becoming increasingly demanding and his behavior more eccentric and erratic, which may have been the result of whatever was in that bottle he referred to as “the Doctor.” Garroway said “the Doctor” gave him energy. No one ever asked him just what was in the concoction, but whatever it was, it no longer seemed to improve his performance or disposition.

  He had started to bawl out writers for simply writing a sentence he didn’t like (mercifully, because I was writing for the Today Girl and not for him, I wasn’t on his radar). Sometimes he would upend the carefully planned show and move all the guests from the second hour into the first, throwing off everything—the teleprompters, props, the lighting. Poor Fred Freed. No wonder he was beginning to count the days until he could leave the show.

  Garroway’s personal life had also just taken a terrible blow. His wife, Pam, mother of his three-year-old son, had committed suicide in April 1961, just before I arrived at the show. That would have devastated the strongest of men, and Dave was already somewhat unstable. Three years before, he had collapsed into the arms of the Today Girl just before they went on the air. The medical diagnosis had been “physical exhaustion,” and he returned to the air a month later, but there was continuing concern that he was taking downers to sleep and uppers to cope with the show’s cruel hours. It all came to a head during his contract renewal negotiations with NBC that same spring of ’61. Dave lay down on the floor of his office just before airtime and refused to get up unless NBC honored his demands. By then the powers that be were so worried about his behavior that they wouldn’t humor him. Just as NBC had retired J. Fred Muggs some years before (the chimp became too aggressive), so they decided to retire Dave Garroway. His last show was on June 16, 1961.

  Garroway would go on to produce or appear on several other television shows over the years, but he never regained the prominence he had on Today. He would remarry. In January 1982 he made a nostalgic appearance on the Today show for its thirtieth-anniversary broadcast.
He seemed his old, upbeat self, but six months later he shot himself in the head. Garroway’s stepson, Michael, ascribed his suicide to postoperative complications from open-heart surgery. What a sad end for the man who had been the brilliant father of morning television.

  Garroway’s departure from the helm of the Today show set in motion a whole sequence of events. One change affected the program more than it did the audience (which didn’t even know the difference). The Today show had been under the auspices of the entertainment division, but the news-oriented president of NBC, Robert Kintner, decided to transfer the program from entertainment to the news department and replace Dave Garroway with a more sobersided journalist—male, of course.

  Veteran correspondent John Chancellor became the new morning host and, to my great delight and surprise, he brought in Shad Northshield as Today’s new producer. Fred Freed had recently left to start his new career as a producer of documentaries, but I wasn’t affected. I had worked with Shad at CBS, and I liked him enormously. He was a big bear of a man with a great sense of humor, which is just what we all needed after Dave Garroway’s latter-day reign of terror. All should have been well. But it wasn’t.

  John Chancellor was attractive, bright, articulate, and completely wrong for the show. He was a serious journalist and stood in sharp contrast to Garroway. Viewers were used to watching him playing with trains and making jokes about the girls in bathing suits. In a million years John Chancellor would never have tolerated working with a chimpanzee.

  The Today show’s ratings dropped. The program was no longer lighthearted and cozy, so a lot of people simply stopped watching. It wasn’t John’s fault. He was the wrong guy in the wrong place in the wrong time slot. And he knew it. Years later, in an interview with Larry King, John, who would go on to anchor NBC Nightly News for twelve years, described his fourteen-month stint at Today as “simply awful. I found myself introducing musical acts at 7:45 in the morning and that was just too much for me.”

  I, on the other hand, benefited mightily from John’s uncomfortable tenure—because of Shad. Enlightened Shad. “I don’t see what Barbara is doing just writing women’s features,” he said one day at a writers’ meeting. “She’s perfectly capable of writing any of the stories for the show.” Did the world stop? Did anyone realize what was happening? No, but for the first time in the program’s history, I, a female, was cleared to write stories about science and finance, even world news, as well as, of course, the tea-pouring features. As far as I know there was no revolt from the show’s viewers or any of the daily guests, and there didn’t seem to be a serious protest from the other writers—although no one volunteered to write the tea-pouring stories with me.

  Even with all the extra work, I was very grateful. My day still began at 4:00 a.m., but the work was much more interesting. Once in the studio, I would meet with John Chancellor and go over the interviews I had prepared for him. Then I would meet with the guest who was to be interviewed and discuss the area of questions to make sure we were all on the same track. When the program was over at 9:00 a.m., we would have a postmortem meeting to discuss what did or didn’t go right. At 10:00 a.m. I would go to the food counter at the drugstore in the lobby of 30 Rock. As I had by then been up for five hours, I would have a BLT or perhaps a hamburger, followed by an order of chocolate ice cream. Then it was off to my nice office, where I manned the phone, booked guests, wrote features and future interviews. There were meetings, conferences, private rages at the guests who canceled and cheers if someone we really were trying to book came through.

  I rarely went to lunch, as I had already had my lunch at 10:00 a.m. About 6:00 p.m. I took a bus home, often stopping at the supermarket across the street from my apartment to buy bologna and a roll, still my favorite dinner. If I wasn’t going out, I was in bed by 9:30 p.m. It was all fine. And it got better.

  Shad was the first producer at NBC to put me on the air (at least in something other than a bathing suit). My mini debut in July 1961 was from a bicycle seat in Central Park. Shad’s hope was to give a female slant to what was most often a very male-oriented broadcast, so I produced and introduced a piece for him about biking in Central Park. I couldn’t drive but I did know how to ride a bike. That appearance was followed the next month by a more substantial debut—covering the fall fashion collections in Paris.

  I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I had suggested the feature to Shad and there I was, being sent to Paris to cover the ever-so-chic couture fashion shows. What an assignment! I still have the grainy black-and-white film of my debut at the Today desk on August 29, 1961, and though it sounds so immodest to say it, I can see now why Shad put me on air. I still had the then-fashionable short-with-bangs Audrey Hepburn haircut, so I looked like almost every other young woman in the country, which meant they could relate to me. Most of all, I was funny. I was introduced by Frank Blair, who was doing light features for the program. I remember complaining with a wink, “Oh, Frank, it was awful. First of all, every day I had to go look at fashion shows. And then I had to have lunch at Maxim’s and drink champagne. And then I had to smell all the perfumes at Dior. I mean it was so trying that I took absolutely the last plane home.”

  I loved doing my little segment on the air. But it never occurred to me that I would ever have a regular on-air role myself. Glamour, not humor, and certainly nothing intellectual, was the requirement if a woman wanted to be in front of the camera. All I wanted was to do whatever I was asked to do so I wouldn’t be replaced by some other female writer. I just wanted to keep my job.

  For the next twenty years, thirty years, maybe even forty, I would feel the same way. No matter how high my profile became, how many awards I received, or how much money I made, my fear was that it all could be taken away from me. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to link that insecurity to my father’s roller-coaster career or to my mother’s constant anxiety or to my sister’s needs. I have, as I’ve said, always felt I was auditioning, either for a new job or to make sure that I could hold on to the one I had.

  And that’s not all bad. Though I’ve lived in varying degrees of anxiety throughout the course of my career, I’ve never really changed my attitude. I’ve worked as hard or harder than anyone else, accepted most every assignment, done my homework, kept complaints to myself, finished the job, and moved on. That is not a bad formula for success.

  To my relief, my family was stable during that first whirlwind year at Today. My parents and Jackie were settled in Las Vegas, where my father continued to produce his lavish shows and assemble the most gorgeous line of showgirls and dancers. Unlike in Miami or New York, in Vegas these beauties could leave their breasts exposed. The costumes, as usual, were exquisite. So were the breasts. The owners of the Tropicana, which, up until then, had mostly big-name stars as their headliners, were delighted with my father’s work, particularly with his version of Paris’s Folies-Bergère. They gave him a contract, and more and more of the other hotels began to follow his formula, using big production numbers as the main attraction.

  My parents bought a small house in Vegas. My father even planted a rose garden. It wasn’t Broadway, but it wasn’t a low floor in a hospital, either.

  Professionally he was having a second wind. He was flying to New York, Miami, and Europe looking for acts and inspiration. The Tropicana’s owner rode hard on my father’s extravagant impulses and they were paying him a nice salary. I myself was making pretty good money then, some five hundred a week, and I continued to repay Lou Chesler. I never told my father about the loan; I thought it would humiliate him. Mr. Chesler often offered to forgive it but I didn’t want him to. He was there when I needed him, and this was my way of showing my gratitude.

  I was also relieved that Jackie seemed happy. As usual she’d made friends with some of the chorus girls and soon found a brand-new friend in one of my father’s headliners: Carol Channing, the irrepressible Broadway star of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and, later, Hello, Dolly! Carol’s father, George Channing, had been
a serious follower of the Christian Science movement, and she had grown up with many “Jackies” around her family’s house. She seemed to truly enjoy my sister’s company. Carol invited Jackie to her every show, telephoned her regularly, visited her when she could, and their friendship lasted until the day Jackie died. I will always love Carol Channing.

  During this period I spent a good deal of my vacation time with my family in Vegas, but I was always happy to get back to New York. I was in my early thirties, I had a great job, I was single—and, finally, I had a personal life.

  From time to time I would still see Roy Cohn. I knew all his faults, but I could never forget what he had done for my father. We never, ever, discussed politics. Though he claimed to be a Democrat, his views were so conservative that, had we discussed them, I probably would never have been able to see him again. Instead I just concentrated on the fact that Roy was very smart and could be very good company.

  In spite of his despicable role in the McCarthy hearings, he seemed to have a million friends in all walks of life. For all his tough reputation and his questionable favor swapping, Roy had a whole side of life that was legitimate and attractive. He was a close friend of my old friend Bill Safire, and of William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of the conservative political magazine National Review. Another very good friend was Si Newhouse, the head of Condé Nast publishing, and also Si’s parents, Mitzi and Sam, to whom Roy was very loyal. On the political side he was a friend of President Ronald Reagan, of the Catholic cardinals, and of the New York political boss Carmine De Sapio. Roy was like a godfather. You do a favor for me, I do a favor for you. He was also one of the toughest divorce lawyers in New York.

  On our rare dates Roy would take me to dinner and then on to the Stork Club, where we would be seated at the best table. Sherman Billingsley, the owner, would sit down with him. So would the leading columnists of the time: Walter Winchell, Leonard Lyons, and Jack O’Brian, who was the most important and toughest television critic of the time. (Today, Kate O’Brian, Jack’s youngest daughter, is a vice president at ABC News. I’ve known her since she was a baby.) If all these people seemed to accept him, I guess I thought I could, too. I’m not trying to justify my friendship; I’m trying to make it more understandable. Partly, I suppose, to myself.