Well, he wasn’t being a big shot. I understood that it was important to his pride that he be able to buy a bond, just like his cardplaying friends. Yes, he had been a big spender. But his talent was to see everything in a huge way. If he had listened to my mother, he never would have put his last dime into a nightclub in an old church in Boston and expected it to work. He would have taken a job selling shoes or dresses like my uncles instead of traveling all the way to Nova Scotia putting on little shows trying to earn a living for his family.
So here he was, buying an Israel Bond, saying, “I’m successful and can afford it,” and my mother saying back, “Why do you always have to be a big shot? You can’t afford it.” And there I was, as always, in the middle, as my mother’s messenger. “Talk to your father and tell him that he can’t…that he owes…” On and on. But I didn’t say a word to him about the Israel Bond. Instead I quietly slipped some cash into his pocket.
Both my mother and father hated being financially dependent on me and constantly apologized about it. I used to respond: “Everything I am, you made me. You sent me to good schools. You allowed me to travel. You taught me to read and be curious. I’m lucky to have the chance to pay you both back.” And I meant it.
Oddly, the man who’d always thrown financial discretion to the wind worried constantly that I’d lose my job. “Do your bosses like you?” he would ask. “After that show, did they send you a note?” Here was a man who’d never been the slightest bit nervous about his own future, yet he constantly fretted about mine. He saw my career through the lens of show business, just one bad review from closing. But then again, so did I. Some magazine, I can’t remember which, did a profile of me around that time and quoted my father as saying that my childhood years of such financial instability had cast a “halo of fear” over me. It was in that same article that I learned that he had indeed considered becoming a salesman to support us after the death of vaudeville. What a tragedy that would have been. My father cast as the self-deceiving Willy Loman, the doomed, disillusioned character in Death of a Salesman.
During this depressing time in Florida, I began more and more to see my father in a different light. Instead of seeing him only as a man who had neglected his wife and children and was never home, I also saw him as a man who stayed with a woman he could have left years earlier, a disappointed woman who had trouble sharing his dreams.
But how could she share his dreams? They had turned into nightmares for her. My father had run through several fortunes, even cashing in his life insurance policy, and was reduced to financial dependency on his daughter. She had had to endure one tragedy after another—one child dying at fourteen months and another child mentally retarded. Yet to her very great credit, she remained a loving mother to my sister, helping her dress every day, doing her hair, being her constant companion. She also remained a devoted wife, in her way, to my father, fussing over him, cooking his favorite foods, brewing his tea in a teapot.
No one can ever really understand other people’s relationships, and I didn’t try. As much as I loved my mother and my father, I was always relieved to return to my work in New York.
IN JULY 1969 I was given the plum assignment to go to North Wales in Great Britain to cover the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales. Royal investitures are elaborate, lengthy, and rare pageants. This one, bestowing the title on the twenty-year-old heir to the British throne, was only the second in the twentieth century and followed well-defined traditions unchanged over the centuries. Every movement, every costume and prop, every participant, has some sort of ancient meaning and I had to know every one of them.
I had some help from Princess Margaret’s husband, Lord Snowdon, whom I’d interviewed for Today, and who was the architect of the elaborate ceremony. We were in Wales for a week, and all I can remember today is that there was a Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod and a Silver Stick in Waiting, but, by God, when we went on the air for five straight hours, I knew every stick and rod there was, and why, and what they were supposed to do with them. I had also memorized every historic name and its significance and could identify virtually every Prince, Princess, Duke, Duchess, Earl, and Lady What’s-Her-Face coming out of the thirteenth-century Caernarfon Castle after the ceremony, including Lord Snowdon, who was running about in a green velvet suit looking rather like a little elf. With it all, I loved Wales and had a wonderful time.
After that I just kept going. The Today show traveled all over the place—to Jamaica, where I remember getting high on rum with Hugh and his wife, Ruth; to the Greek islands, where Win Welpen, a very funny and beloved producer, writer Barbara Gordon, and I drank ouzo at the local taverna and learned to do Greek dances—we looked like a poor man’s version of Zorba. There were trips to Holland, Italy, Portugal, and also to Romania, where the Communist May Day parade thundered right past our hotel, as well as a memorable, freezing-cold trip to Ireland, where our wise “prop” man gave us our early-morning orange juice with a big shot of Irish whiskey in it—some of the happiest mornings I’ve ever had.
Scotland was more sobering. I went down into a coal mine and it was a devastating experience—the blackness, the utter dark, the feeling of death. I brought home a piece of coal from that mine and kept it for years on a table in my living room as a stark reminder. Our trip to Japan presented another reminder—my gender. The Japanese invited Hugh everywhere but wouldn’t invite me because I was a woman, so I spent a lot of time in my hotel room. Hugh had a swell time in Japan. I didn’t.
Don’t think the gender issue was restricted to Japan. At NBC the men in suits had not undergone consciousness raising either. The women’s movement was in full cry by the end of the sixties, but they barely seemed to notice. Women’s groups all over the country were holding demonstrations to legalize abortion and to demand equal pay for equal work. Women were picketing the New York Times and other newspapers around the country to protest sex-segregated want ads—executive-training openings for men, gal-Friday openings for women—and men-only bars and restaurants, including the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel in New York and the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles.
One display of women’s determination took place in New York in the summer of 1970 when some fifty thousand women, led by Betty Friedan, marched down Fifth Avenue in what was called Women’s Strike for Equality. Fifty thousand is a lot of women and, not surprisingly, the turnout got a ton of press. I wrote a memo to the president of NBC News, Reuven Frank, suggesting a special hour on the women’s movement. This is the reply I got from him: “Not enough interest.”
The dismissive attitude of many men toward women at the time was certainly not limited to NBC but was pervasive throughout the media. We few women journalists in television were struggling to find our places in the male-dominated newsroom, and none of us knew if it would ever change.
Winning Nixon, Losing Sinatra
AT THE SAME TIME that women were fighting for equal rights, I unexpectedly added a new arrow to my bow. You know that old saw—one thing leads to another? Well, an article I wrote in the late sixties certainly proved that expression true. It provided what I hoped was helpful advice about how to talk to a celebrity. It was prompted by a new trend emerging at the time: celebrity lectures. More and more “names” were traveling around the country to speak (for money) to all different kinds of organizations and charities. The growing business of lecturing meant that more and more so-called ordinary people were meeting these celebrities, searching for something memorable to say or trying to connect personally with the speaker if only for a moment in time—yet not having a clue how to make that connection.
I drew from my own budding celebrity the kinds of things people said to me, which were often mistakes, like: “You look better in person than you do on television.” How do I answer that? “Thanks a lot. It took me two hours of makeup and hair and I still look lousy on television?” Or, what was just as well-meaning but worse: “You look so much better on television than you do in person.
” I still can’t think of the right response to that one.
I wrote the article and thought that was it until I shortly thereafter got a letter from Doubleday. It contained, you should excuse the expression, an offer I couldn’t refuse. Ken McCormick, the editor in chief, had read the article and thought it could be expanded into a little book for tongue-tied, socially awkward people—the many people who worry that they can’t think of the right thing to say to start a conversation.
And so I set to work on How to Talk with Practically Anybody about Practically Anything. The idea was that there were all kinds of situations in which people just didn’t know what to say. These situations included not only when talking to a celebrity, but to someone you don’t know at a dinner party; to a person who has just lost a loved one; to a child; to an athlete when you know nothing about sports; to a tycoon—even to a bore.
The book was published in 1970. I thought it was a nice helpful little book, but to my great surprise it became something of a phenomenon. It just kept selling and selling. There I am, on the cover, in a bright pink dress with my real dark hair, smiling away. No wonder I am smiling. By now the book has been through eight printings, sold thousands and thousands of copies worldwide, and been translated into more than a half a dozen languages. People still come up to me with old copies to autograph. I continue to be amazed by its success.
In writing the book I drew on my own social awkwardness, because I was still rather shy off camera. To make the book more fun, I also threw in anecdotes from almost every celebrity I knew, and there weren’t that many. Mostly there were a lot of mentions of Hugh Downs and Bennett Cerf, the two celebrities I knew the best at the time. Bennett, the head of Random House, the publishing company, was best known for his many years on the enormously popular television quiz show What’s My Line? He was also known as a great raconteur, and I quoted him throughout the book. But mostly, the advice came from my own everyday experiences. Want to know how to tell if a guy, not wearing a wedding ring, is married? My advice was to admire his tie, jacket, sweater, whatever, and say: “How good-looking. Did your wife choose that for you?” Simple. And you get your answer.
Want to get some tycoon to open up? Just ask for a description of his or her very first job. Trust me: everyone, from presidents and movie stars to policemen and moving men, remembers his or her first job and will relate it in minute detail.
I used as one of my examples my meeting with the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, soon to marry Jackie Kennedy. I had been invited by his press people to meet Mr. Onassis at a lunch in New York. When I arrived (looking better in person than I did on television), Onassis was surrounded by shipping people busily discussing tonnage. I sat silently until there was a momentary lull in the conversation, and then, all wide-eyed with curiosity, I inquired, “I wonder as I listen to you extremely successful gentlemen how you all began? For example, Mr. Onassis, what was your very first job?”
There was no more talk of tonnage. Onassis traced his first jobs, as a young immigrant from Turkey to Argentina (his father had been jailed during the persecution of the Greeks by the Turks), starting as a dishwasher, then becoming a construction worker and finally a cigarette salesman, which ultimately led to his first fortune. By the end of lunch Mr. Onassis was my new best friend and, moreover, had agreed to let me interview him on his legendary yacht, the Christina, with its swimming pool and gold bathroom fixtures. Sadly his schedule and the NBC camera crews didn’t work out, so I never got that interview. Who knows? Had we worked things out, I, instead of Jackie Kennedy, might have been the next Mrs. Aristotle Onassis. Yeah, right….
From tycoons and VIPs to drunks and lechers, I kept ladling out advice. I wrote how I squelched one persistent knee-grabber at a dinner party by looking deep into his eyes and saying, “You’re absolutely right. We are meant for each other. Why don’t you divorce your wife and marry me?” I never felt his hand again.
I ended the book with “When All Else Fails—Twenty Sure-Fire Conversation Starters.” Some came from my friends and colleagues, but others were ones I used in interviews. Here are a few that would still work today.
1. If you were not doing the work you are now doing, what would you most like to be doing?
2. If you could live at any time in history, when would you have wished to live?
3. If you could be any person in history, who would it be?
4. If you were suddenly given a million dollars and told that you had to spend it just on yourself, what is the first thing you would buy?
5. If you were hospitalized for three months but not really too sick, whom—and it can’t be a relative—would you want in the next bed?
That last question was one of my favorites because it got so many funny answers.
The comedian Alan King chose the actor Richard Burton because Burton’s then wife, Elizabeth Taylor, would come to visit.
Liberace, the flamboyant pianist, chose the secretive, taciturn Greta Garbo so that he could do all the talking.
Johnny Carson didn’t miss a beat with his answer: “The best damn doctor in town.”
One day I hope to update this little book, with its somewhat useful and sometimes entertaining advice. But first I’ve got to finish this tome, so let’s get back to the early seventies.
My budding celebrity also had its dark side. Most people in the public eye get lots of letters, some from fans, some from crabby critics, still others from prisoners incarcerated in their respective prisons. So I paid little attention to a love letter I received from a besotted fan during my early time on the Today show, saying how much he adored me. Then came the second, third, and fourth letters from the same man, and an ominous change in tone. He wanted to kill the pope. He wanted to kill Lee. “I watch you,” he wrote. “I see you.” It was frightening. Was he watching me leave my apartment in the predawn stillness of New York? Was he planning to throw acid in my face between the building and the car? Was he really planning to kill Lee? It is a federal offense to send death threats through the mail, and luckily my stalker wasn’t too bright. He put his return address on the letters. We went to the police and they arrested him in his apartment in the Bronx. He turned out to be a big man who struggled violently to escape arrest, and we breathed easier when he was in custody. Lee pressed charges and he was sent to jail. That made us breathe even easier. My anxiety rose again when some time later the authorities notified us he’d been released from jail, but mercifully, I didn’t hear from him. I continue to this day to get letters from fans and nonfans and prisoners, most of whom declare their innocence, but I have never been threatened again. Very scary experience.
On a much happier note, in the summer of 1970 I met a man who would become my adviser and very dear friend. His name was Lee Stevens, and he was an agent with the William Morris Agency, then as now one of the biggest theatrical agencies in the business. The agency represented many top actors, directors, and writers. They represented no one in news. No talent agency did at that time.
None of us in television news had agents; at least I don’t think anyone did. People in news were considered too pure to ask for anything as crass as more money. Agents were for entertainers. Those of us in the news division were supposed to treat the industry as if it were a privilege to belong. True, we were far better paid than print journalists, who came close to taking vows of poverty, but still, none of us were getting rich.
People in the television entertainment divisions, however, made tons of money and had agents and managers and publicists and lawyers. In 1970 Johnny Carson, for example, was reputed to be making some $3 million a year. But we journalists were a different species. In my case every time my contract was renewed, I’d simply be called in and told what my salary was going to be, and I’d say, “Thank you, good Lord.” It never occurred to me to question my salary.
Then one day Lee Stevens came to lunch along with Hugh and his wife, Ruth, and assorted other people at a summerhouse my husband, Lee, and I were renting for a month. Th
e two Lees were friends. They were both in show business, where even dog acts had agents. Lee Stevens assumed I had an agent as well, and was amazed when I told him I didn’t. To make a long story short, by the time that very pleasant summer afternoon was over, I not only had a new friend, I had an agent. I had no idea at the time what a pivotal role he would play in my professional life.
I had already signed a three-year contract with NBC for the 1970–72 seasons and was making what I considered to be a fortune: $2,500 a week with an additional raise of $500 a week annually. That didn’t mean I was living high off the hog as much of that money still went to support my family in Florida. But neither was I standing on a street corner with a tin cup. Since I had already signed this contract, Lee told me that he would not charge me the usual 10 percent agents traditionally took from a client’s salary. During the term of the contract he would represent me gratis. Should I go on to any new ventures, however, William Morris would receive its customary 10 percent. It seemed like a good deal to me, especially as I could not imagine having any new “venture.”
So I didn’t give money a thought when NBC came to me in 1971 and asked me to take over For Women Only, the local morning discussion show my colleague Aline Saarinen had been hosting, that immediately followed the Today show. Part of the local NBC affiliate’s public affairs department, it was a thoughtful program that attracted few viewers but provided the station with its proper FCC credentials. (The Federal Communications Commission required all television stations to provide a certain amount of programming dedicated to the “public interest,” or risk losing their licenses. The FCC list included children’s programs, news, and, relevant to Aline’s program, public affairs.) As NBC’s cultural correspondent, Aline invited intellectuals and academic authorities to sit on a panel and discuss what Variety described as a “deadly serious and icily cold forum of pubaffairs discussions.” A small studio audience, experts on a particular subject who were invited to attend, was there to ask questions.
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