11 My Affair With the Monster
Among the things I have never planned to be, a television performer ranks pretty high on the list.
I have already mentioned that the unlikely person who initiated my relationship with the new Monster of the Age was the wise and kindly Ben Kartman. Ben by this time had left Coronet Magazine and was free lancing in editorial and public relations work. I had not seen him for some months when he came into the shop with a public relations man named Max Cooper. Except for having heard of instances in which they purportedly exercised a dangerous power over gossip columnists, I knew nothing about PR boys. I simply regarded them as suspect. Consequently I should probably have taken a dim view of the idea they came in to talk with me about—auditioning for a television program—even if I hadn’t been opposed on principle to television.
At the time, it seemed to me that television was the most vicious technological influence to which humanity had been subjected since the automobile’s destruction of the art of courtship as well as the meaning of the home. The novelty of TV had not yet worn off, and it was still a shock to walk into a living room and see a whole family sitting before this menacing toy, silent and in semi-darkness, never daring to utter a word while watching the catsup run in some Western killing. I vowed that I would never own a piece of apparatus which seemed so obviously designed to diminish the image of man, enslave his emotions, destroy his incentive, wreck his curiosity, and contribute to total mental and moral atrophy. I didn’t think it would be good for the book business, either.
Ben and Max didn’t sell me on television, but they did make the audition seem a challenge. What could I do? I had never taken a lesson in acting or public speaking in my life. When I spoke extemporaneously, I often rambled. In fact, that was my approach to talking and to teaching. Sticking to the subject never bothered me... or breaking the rules; I didn’t know any of them. I just talked. All I had was a spontaneity springing from a love of ideas and of people. I laid these cards on the table as carefully as I could, but Cooper’s only response was, “You are a raw talent. I’m sure you can make it.”
Make what? On the morning of the auditions, I arrived at the Civic Theatre (an adjunct to the Chicago Civic Opera House which at that time had been taken over as a television studio—this was while Chicago was still active in the game of creating for the medium) and I was as nervous as a debutante on the threshold of her debut. A hundred men and women were standing in the wings, and the fact that I knew some of them and had sold them books made matters worse. All at once, I knew that I was at war with them all. I was competing for a role and I had to be better than the rest.
We were instructed to come out on the stage at a given signal, peer toward a camera marked by two red eyes, and talk, sing, dance, or perform in our fashion for three minutes. By the time my turn came up, I was ready to fall on my face from sheer nervous exhaustion. The red lights blinked on, and I began to talk. I talked for three minutes and was waved off.
I had had enough lecture experience to feel the incompleteness of such an experience. No audience, no response, no nothing, just: your three minutes are up (after all the tension and readiness to go out and perform). I hurried out of the theatre and back to the store, where I paced around like a wild beast. I was certain that I had failed. Everything that I had been building up for seemed cut out from under me, and I could only talk to people or wrap their packages in a mechanical daze.
At five o’clock in the afternoon the spell was broken. Max came in along with a towering young man of massive build who extended a huge hand toward me, crying, “Let me be the very first to congratulate you. You have a television program for the next thirteen weeks!”
At my total astonishment, he threw back his head and emitted a Tarzan laugh. I liked him very much, but I could not place him at all. He was Albert Dekker, an actor who has probably appeared in more Western movies than any other star and who at that time was acting in a play in Chicago. He was a friend of Cooper’s and subsequently a friend of mine, frequently accompanying me to the television studio during the remainder of his run in Chicago.
But at that moment I could only sputter and stutter and wheel around as though preparing for a flying leap, and the next few minutes gave way to complete pandemonium, as everyone shared in my sudden good fortune.
The show ran for more than thirteen weeks. It lasted a year. It was sandwiched between a show about nursing and one about cooking. It was a fifteen minute slot, but in the course of this time I had to do three commercials—opening refrigerators and going into the wonders thereof, selling cosmetics, even houses. It was a mess. During the entire year, nobody ever evinced any interest in building the show, and when it was finally cancelled, I was torn between hurt pride and recognition of an obvious godsend. Now and then I had received a small amount of critical acclaim, but on the whole, my first venture into television seemed a disaster, financially as well as spiritually. And I hate failure.
Well, there was no use apologizing. I had had my chance, a whole year of it, and I didn’t make the grade. The poor time slot, the overloading of commercials were no excuse. I could lick my wounds and say, “Nothing lasts forever. Television is television. They squeeze you out and throw you out.” But in my heart I knew that the show had never had an audience because it was not good enough. So it ended in failure, and along with it, my relations with Max Cooper.
For two years, I was away from television entirely, except for an occasional call from Dan Schuffman of WBKB asking me to pinch hit for someone who was taken ill. Among those for whom I served as proxy was Tom Duggan, a real good guy who developed considerable local fame by getting into one scrap after another and finally, after getting into the biggest scrap of all, practically being deported from Chicago to pursue the same career in Southern California where he continues to be a nightly success.
Although it seemed to me from time to time that glimmerings of creativity could be detected in the television field, I no longer had any serious interest in the medium. When, shortly after Hope and I were married, we gave an autographing party for Walter Schimmer, a local TV and radio producer who had written a book called, What Have You Done for Me Lately?, the TV relationship was incidental to the objective of boosting a Chicago writer. One of the guests at the party was the station chief of WBKB, Sterling (Red) Quinlan. I had previously met him only casually and was surprised to be drawn into a literary conversation with him, during which he told me that he was working on a book, to be called, The Merger. The next day, he sent me the manuscript to read and I found it most interesting, particularly as it dealt with a phase in the development of the broadcasting industry, about which Quinlan, as an American Broadcasting Company vice president, obviously knew a great deal. This was a period during which any number of novels with a background of Big Business were being published. I thought Quinlan had done an unusually honest job with it and wrote him a note to this effect when I returned the manuscript.
Several weeks later, I received a phone call from Quinlan which sounded quite different from the tough-minded executive of my superficial acquaintance. “What’s wrong with my book?” he said. “No one wants to publish it.” He really wanted to know where he had gone wrong.
I tried to explain the vagaries of publishing and of publishers’ tastes and how it was a matter of timing and placement with certain publishers who publish certain types of things. But I could see this made little sense to Quinlan, because there is really not much sense in it. Finally I said, “Look, send the book over. You need a front runner. Maybe I can break down a door for you.” I’m sure he didn’t believe me, but he sent the book over anyway.
I sent the manuscript to Ken McCormick, editor-in-chief at Doubleday, after phoning to tell him about it, and as luck would have it, Ken liked the book and made an offer. I’m sure Quinlan thought I was some kind of wizard, and of course I was delighted to have been able to help.
With Red’s book in the process of being published, I turned my mind to other matters—mostly the sheer joy of living. Business was strong, Hope and I were enjoying the best of good times, we were soon to have a child, we were floating on a cloud and wanted no interference from anything. I avoided phone calls and invitations and put away all thoughts of becoming anything in the public eye. I just wanted to be a good bookseller, earn a living, spend time with my family, and leave the world alone.
It was in this frame of mind that I received a call one day from Quinlan asking me to join him for lunch at the Tavern Club (a businessmen’s luncheon club located near the WBKB studios). I was interested in Red’s literary ambitions and was glad to accept.
Red Quinlan is more than a typical example of a “pulled up by my own boot straps” success story. He is a fairly tall man with reddish hair, a white, smooth face, and blue eyes that can change from pure murder to the softness that only Irish eyes can take on. He knows every way to survive the jungle and moves with the slightly spread foot and duck walk of a man treading a world built on sand. One part of his mind deals only with business; the other part is dedicated to a sensitive appreciation of the written word and a consuming desire to write a good book. At the beginning he may have wanted to make the best seller list, but his concern is now with truth and craftsmanship and with what it means to be a writer. He is a fascinating man who has done much for me.
Two other men joined us for lunch at the club. One was a heavy-set man of Greek descent named Peter DeMet who controlled large interests in the television world. The other was Matt Veracker, general manager of WBKB. We ate a good lunch and talked in generalities until Quinlan asked me if I had read any good books lately. I had just finished a collection of short stories by Albert Camus and was particularly taken by a piece called, “Artist at Work.” As I told the story, DeMet seemed suddenly very interested. But the conversation went no further. We shook hands all around and broke up.
Less than an hour later, Quinlan called me at the shop and asked me to come right over to his office. I could tell as I walked in that something was on the fire. Red came around the desk and sat down with me on the couch. “Stuart,” he said, “we have an open half hour following a new science show that the University of Chicago is sponsoring. How would you like to have it?” This was in 1958 when astro-physics had burst upon the public consciousness. Hence the science show.
“I’ve even thought of the name for your show,” Quinlan continued. “Books and Brent.”
I still remained silent, caught in an enormous conflict. I did want the show... to prove something to myself. But at the same time I didn’t want to be bothered, I didn’t want to get caught up in the hours of study the job entailed. And I no longer needed the money or a listing in the local TV guides to bolster my ego. Yet I wanted the chance again.
Red noted my hesitation and, although slightly nettled by my lack of enthusiasm, recognized that I was not giving him a come-on. He went to the phone and said, “Ask Dan Schuffman to step in here.”
Danny took over the argument. The price was set, with promise of a raise within twelve weeks. The show would run from September through June, no cancellation clause, no commercials sandwiched in to break up the continuity of my presentation. I had complete control over the choice of books and what I would say about them. Everything was settled. Now all I had to do was tell Hope!
It wasn’t easy. Hope knew something was on my mind and refrained from asking about it until the children were in bed. Then I told my story. It would be five days a week at the frightening hour of eight o’clock in the morning. Hope took the whole thing in and accepted the situation. But we both had strong misgivings.
I went to work. Each book had to be read and pondered the night before I reviewed it. Asking myself of each volume what in essence it was really about, what meanings and values it pointed to, was the crux of the matter and a most difficult undertaking. Every morning I delivered my presentation and then ran to the bookstore. I came home at six, had dinner, and started preparing for the next morning. It was impossible to entertain or to see friends, and I was half dead from lack of sleep. Finally, to lessen the strain of five shows a week, Red suggested that Hope appear with me on the Friday shows for a question and answer session, cutting the formal reviews to four a week. Again it took some persuading—Hope would have nothing to do with it unless she “looked” right, “sounded” right, and could offer questions that were sincere and significant. She did all of these things superbly and for the next three years appeared with me every Friday.
Still, it was a grueling task. I wanted to give the very best I could each day, and I felt that I was being drained. But what was really killing my drive was the suspicion that I was working in a vacuum. After all, who could be viewing my dissertations on the problems of man and the universe at eight in the morning? I decided it would probably be appreciated all around if I quit like a gentleman. So one morning, after about eight weeks of giving my all to what I judged to be a totally imaginary audience, I interrupted whatever I was talking about and said, “You know, I don’t think anyone is watching this program. I’m very tired of peering into two red eyes and talking books just for the sake of talking. I believe I’ll quit.”
What I really meant to say, of course, was, “If anyone is watching, won’t he please drop me a note and say so.” But it didn’t come out that way. I walked out of the studio thinking it was all over.
To my great astonishment, Quinlan soon reached me by phone at the shop, saying, “What are you trying to do? Get me killed? The phone has been ringing here all morning with people demanding to know why I’m firing you! Did you say that on the air?”
I hastened to explain and told him what I did say. The following day hundreds of letters arrived. I suddenly realized that I had an audience.
Hope and I were thrilled and went to work with renewed vigor. The mail continued to grow. At eight a.m. people were viewing and listening and, of all things, writing to me—not only housewives, but also teachers, librarians, doctors, lawyers, occasional ministers. Newspaper columnists became interested and reviews were flattering to a point where I was afraid I might begin to take myself seriously.
Another thing was also happening. Although I never mentioned on the air that I had a bookstore, people began to call the store asking for books I had reviewed. Other bookstores found that Books and Brent was stimulating their business, and some of them, particularly in outlying areas, took it upon themselves to write notes to the publishers about what was happening. I began to wonder if what the book business needed generally wasn’t a coast to coast TV bookshow.
Not long after these thoughts had formed in my mind, Pete DeMet asked me to come and see him at the hotel where he was staying. When I arrived, I found his room filled with men... some kind of important meeting was just breaking up. Finally they dispersed and I was able to sit down with Pete. He told me he wanted to create a TV book of the month show, which he was ready to back to the hilt. He would investigate the possibility of getting the major publishers to pay for some of the time—the rest would be sold to other sponsors. Apparently he and his organization had the genius required to market such a thing. In any event, his gospel was “success” and he evidently saw in me another way to be successful.
I always had mixed reactions to this powerful, heavy-faced man with his white silk shirts and his, to me, mysterious world of promotional enterprise. He had been in the automobile business and subsequently acquired ownership of successful network shows, particularly in the sports field, and no one seemed to doubt that he could do anything he set his mind to.
He was always forthright in his relations with me. He boasted that he had never read a book and never intended to, but he saw in my work a vision of something he wanted to be part of. But he also insisted: “If I take you on, I own you.”
Contracts were being drawn up, but Hope and I decided that although the amount of money being offered me—$130,000 for nine months of work—seemed extraordinary, the only thing to do was to turn the offer down.
So I went to see Pete and told him the deal was off. The money was wonderful, but so was my marriage, my personal life. I couldn’t see myself catching a plane to the West Coast on a moment’s notice, only to be told that I was heading for the East Coast the following week. There might be some excitement in such a frenetic pace, but I was getting too old for that sort of thing, and I didn’t need the pace and the noise to persuade me that I was living.
My would-be benefactor looked at me as though I had gone out of my mind, but he let me go without any further badgering.
By this time I had become more than a little intrigued with the Frank Buck approach to capturing live talent. On the next occasion DeMet pressed me to sign the contract, he assured me that I wasn’t nearly as good or important as I thought I was. They were not at all certain, he said, of my “acceptance” in various markets, and furthermore there was threat now of replacing me altogether: some people felt that a Clifton Fadiman or a Vincent Price with a “ready-made” or “built-in” audience would be distinctly preferable to someone completely unknown outside of Chicago. It would take a lot of adroit PR work to build up the ratings for an unknown.
I couldn’t contradict him, and happily I did not feel smart-alecky enough to tell him, “Go ahead and get those fellows if you think they can bring a book to life better than I can.” I simply refused to sign without the consent of my wife.
That night I was in the midst of reporting the day’s events to Hope when the phone rang. Hope answered. It was for me: Pete saying, “Can I come over? I must see you now.”
A half hour later Pete was with us, going through the entire proposition and concluding by saying, “You’ll do everything I tell you to do, and you’ll make a fortune. We’ll all make money.”
Hope looked Mr. DeMet squarely in the eyes and said, “Money isn’t the God of this household and at the moment I can’t say I enjoy being here with you.”
In the stunned silence that followed, I was seized with a feeling of terrible embarrassment over our attacking Pete DeMet on a level so totally removed from his frame of reference or the very principles of his existence. A few minutes later, Pete got his hat and left. I was sure the whole thing was finished.
As it happened, it was just the beginning. One of our best friends, in or out of television, was the late Beuhlah Zackary, producer of “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” and as fine a spirit as I have ever known. She used to say to me, “If I can only discover exactly what makes you tick, I’ll make you a household name throughout the nation.” Had she lived, I’m convinced she would have done it. In any event, it was Beuhlah at this point who saw merit lurking somewhere beneath the high pressure and convinced Hope and me that we should explore the matter further. Finally we consented to go ahead, provided Jack Pritzker act as our attorney and read every line of every paper (including the dotting of i’s and the crossing of t’s) before it was signed. Things were agreed upon to everyone’s satisfaction, and I was in the Pete DeMet organization.
I had confided in Hardwick Moseley at Houghton Mifflin about the enterprise and he wrote to me (in March of 1959): “I do hope the DeMet deal on Books and Brent goes through and that you get your rightful share of the plunder. You know I always expected something like this. I am delighted that it is happening so soon. When you get time why not let me know a little of the detail. If we can get you on in the high grass and a variety of stations everywhere it will be the best thing that has happened to the book business in years because you do sell books.”
It seemed a long time since Hardwick had lifted me from the depths by writing me that I had to remain a bookseller, no matter what.
But everything fell through from the very beginning. The money Pete hoped to raise from the publishing industry failed to materialize at all. Television does not sell books, the publishers chorused. From my end, I was assailed by doubts because I was never invited to present the proposition to the publishers with whom I was most intimately acquainted. From Pete’s end, there was anger and frustration when the industry would not buy something which he was convinced might prove their economic salvation. He decided to look for other markets.
Production was scheduled to start in September. But by this time other things had taken precedence over Books and Brent. Pete entered into a real estate promotion to develop a kind of Disney wonderland in New York called Freedom Land. His lawyer, Milt Raynor, wrote to me in flattering terms about myself and the book project, but indicated that for the time being the undertaking would have to be shelved.
It was a letdown. But the irony of the thing was that a promotional genius like Pete could be so fascinated by the publishing field and what might be done for it, and then so totally discouraged by the supineness, invincible ignorance, and general reluctance of an enormous, potentially very profitable industry to take even modest advantage of the only advertising medium that might bring it before the public. Pete found only one publisher actively encouraging. The rest were negative.
This was the idea they were offered: I was to review, on a network show, books selected by myself from the lists of all publishers. In our experience in Chicago, although I rarely, if ever, suggested that anyone rush down to his neighborhood bookstore (if any) and buy the book in question, every bookstore in the area felt the impact of my lectures. The instances in which my own store sold hundreds of books in a week because of a review I had given were fantastic—and more frequently than not the very large downtown stores considerably outsold my own shop on the same volume, for I was not engaged in self-advertising. This is something unique in our day, but not in publishing experience, for Alexander Woollcott used to have the same effect through his radio broadcasts. He was, of course, a national figure... but not in a popular sense until he went on the radio. Publishers were aware of all this, but they were not convinced.
Pete was convinced. He believed in me because he saw the results of the job I was doing in a very difficult city and saw no obstacle to doing at least as much in other cities. He was an entrepreneur, but perfectly willing to try the idea of wedding television to culture. Actually, I was never a party to any of the planning, any of the strategy, any of the meetings held with publishers or their representatives. To this day, I know nothing of what actually went on. I was just the talent, and all I knew was that there was a clause in the contract that required Pete to put the show on the road no later than September 30, 1959, or else I was free to return to my local television commitments. The option was not picked up, and that was that.
As I mulled the whole thing over at Bark Point, a comment of my father’s kept running through my mind: “When is a man a man? Only when he can stand up to his bad luck.”
Of course, there was no saying whether the luck was really bad—only that what I envisioned for the future was certainly being held in abeyance. I came back for another year of Chicago television, much like the year before, except for the feeling that I was bringing more experience to it.
It was the letters that kept me persuaded I was right. In spite of the hour, with wives kissing husbands off to work and mothers frantically preparing breakfast and dressing children for school, people were listening and, in increasing number, writing. Greater numbers of people were searching for answers to forgotten questions, or driven, perhaps, back to fundamental questions and to restating them. Hope and I found all this mail a tremendous stimulus. We returned to our city routine. Every evening I came home from the bookstore, had dinner, played or talked with the children, then sat down to read, while Hope read or knitted or mended or listened to music. At midnight we took a short walk to the corner drugstore with Mr. Toast, our Golden Retriever, and had a cup of hot chocolate. These moments were the best of the whole day.
Getting to the studio in the morning was never easy, and on Fridays when we made the mad rush together it was more than usually frantic. Hope is not easy to awaken and would be engaged, more often than not, as we raced across the street like maniacs toward our parked car, in the final acts of dressing, zipping up her skirt, straightening her hair, trying to find her lipstick. Sometimes we barely made it ahead of the cancellation period—five minutes before showtime, but we always managed. Then when the ordeal was over, it was perfectly delicious to go out for coffee, swearing solemnly, absolutely, never again would we oversleep... until the next time.
But why were we doing it? The financial rewards for an unsponsored, sustaining program simply bore no relation whatever to the effort involved. Finally Quinlan called me in and suggested that since the networks didn’t seem interested, it might be a good idea to form an organization and see if I couldn’t sell the show myself.
Hy Abrams, my lawyer and tennis partner, and his brother-in-law, David Linn, often used to ask why I didn’t do anything about promoting the show, to which my answer normally was: “Do what?” But now, with Red’s insistence, I had a feeling that perhaps the time was ripe. Perhaps in the present era of political, economic, and spiritual confusion, people might be becoming worried, harassed, clipped, chipped, agonized enough for a return to reading. They might be susceptible.
David was all for it, and we called a meeting, bringing together, as I recall, Ira Blitzsten, Sidney Morris, Adolph Werthheimer, and my brother-in-law, Milton Gilbert. I made the presentation, outlining not only the prospect but also the likelihood of absolute failure. Together we created the Stuart Brent Enterprises and hired a man to run the show. Again the idea was to sell the thing to the publishing industry. The project hardly got off the ground, yet our case seemed an extremely sound one.
To begin with, we surveyed a thousand letters that had been written to the Books and Brent show. A summary of the survey showed:
Of the 1000 letters read, 705 or 70.5% had bought one or more books due to Stuart’s review. Some writers had bought as many as ten books. Many listed the books bought and several enclosed sales slips.
Of the 1000 letters read, 107 or 10.7% planned to buy in the near future. Many of these pointed out the difficulties of buying books in the suburbs, where there are few bookstores.
Of the 1000 letters read, 188 or 18.8% wrote “keep up the good work” type of letters. There were requests for book lists, particularly from librarians. A number suggested starting a book club.
Libraries, bookstores, and publishers were represented. The letters showed a good cross section of the community, both economically and age-wise.
David Lande, of Brason Associates, a distributing agency for publishers, helped the cause by writing to Mac Albert, of Simon and Schuster, a letter that said: “While this may not be news to you, I thought you might be interested in knowing that the Stuart Brent book review program has caught on like ‘wildfire’ in this area. Our personal experience has been that Stuart Brent has made more best sellers than Jack Paar. If this is good information for you, use it—if not, we’re still good friends.”
I went to New York and had an opportunity to talk with Mr. Simon, of Simon and Schuster, along with other editors, publishers, and booksellers. Mr. Simon said, “I like you because you are not interested in the I.Q. of man, but in his C.Q.”
“What, sir,” I said, “is the C.Q.?”
“His cultural quotient,” he replied. Then he said: “The book business is exploding. We have a lot of new schools, a lot of new libraries. So long as we believe that a child must attend school until eighteen years of age, we will need a great many textbooks. People are hungry for a lot of new things. Books are one way of appeasing that new hunger. No matter where you go or how small the community, you will usually find a new library building and new schools. The book business has a new, great future. We need more good writers to fill the need for books these days. That’s our problem, finding new writers, good writers.”
Most of the major New York publishers and some of the smaller ones bought time on Books and Brent to help initiate its showing on WOR-TV. The pre-taped half-hour shows made their debut simultaneously in New York and Los Angeles on September 12, 1960. In the October 26 issue of Variety, the showbusiness weekly, Thyra Samter Winslow said: “The best of the new live shows is certainly Stuart Brent, who reviews books, and books only, daily Monday through Friday, on WOR-TV.... His style is easy, intimate, calm, interesting. Who knows? He may give just the fillip needed to cause a renaissance of reading by the home girls. And about time, too!”
In Chicago, Paul Molloy, the Sun-Times columnist, who had followed this apparent breakthrough with great enthusiasm, commented on the record of 2,700 letters received during the first four weeks of the broadcasts. “More interesting,” he said, “than the plaudits, however, is the fact that Brent went out on his own and sold the show because he’s convinced there’s a market for it. Most broadcasters aren’t, but they’ll have to come around to it. For 2,700 letters in four weeks is a lot of reaction. Even The Untouchables doesn’t touch this record. For my part, I find Brent the most scholarly and at the same time most down to earth teletalker in Chicago today. I’ve yet to leave one of his shows without having learned—or at least thought—something.”
But in spite of all the good sendoffs, TV syndication of Books and Brent failed to pick up the additional sponsorship necessary to make it a going concern. Hal Phillips, program director of KHJ-TV in Los Angeles, wrote: “After much discussion and consideration, we have determined that we will not be continuing with the ‘Books and Brent’ series after Friday, December 2, 1960. This in no way reflects upon our feeling of the top quality and standard of the program. The decision is based upon the lack of sales potential, etc. We have liked this series and have had fine viewer response from it and regret that we will have to discontinue these programs.”
This time, when my venture crumbled, I did not feel affected too deeply. I continued with my daily broadcasts from WBKB, fully prepared to accept their demise also. By this time I had a realistic sense of the pressures to which this industry is subject, and I knew this was a world in which I could not afford to get involved. At the end of my third successive year, the rumors began to circulate. Then Danny Schuffman dropped a hint at lunch one day. Danny has been carefully schooled in the diplomacy of the television jungle and unless you were listening with a third ear you would probably never catch the veiled meaning of the innocent remark.
After all, while nobody questioned the public service value of the show, the fact remained that the “rating” was at a standstill and there was apparently no possibility of getting a sponsor. At the same time that an estimated 20,000 were viewing me, 46,000 were supposed to be watching something on another channel, 61,000 on another, and 70,000 on still another. The competition must be met. The parent company in New York wants higher ratings. The stockholders want higher profits. Five days a week is too much exposure anyway. Books and Brent has had it. In a world about equally divided between those who are scared to death and those too bored to do anything anyway, the soundness of these operational judgments can scarcely be questioned.
When, finally, Red Quinlan got around to telling me all about this, I knew what was coming and offered no objections. It would have been inconceivable for us to part except as friends. And my mild, husbandly trepidation about breaking the news to Hope proved utterly groundless. She was simply delighted.
During the last weeks of my daily broadcasts, I planned every show with the greatest care and instead of reviewing new and popular fiction and non-fiction, I chose the most profound works that I felt capable of dealing with. In succession, I talked on Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, Joyce’s Ulysses, Kafka’s The Trial, Camus’ The Stranger, Galsworthy’s short story, Quality, Northrop’s Philosophical Anthropology, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Hamlet, Job, Faust, and Peer Gynt, Fromm’s The Art of Loving, Erickson’s Childhood and Society, Huxley’s Brave New World, Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment; Four Modern American Writers, and Stendahl’s The Red and the Black. It was a pretty wild course in Western literature and the results were astounding, not only in viewer response, but also in the run on these books experienced by bookstores throughout the city and the suburbs.
Demand was particularly sensational for Father du Chardin’s The Phenomena of Man, also included in this series. A check of bookstores in the area showed sales or orders of approximately 900 copies in a single day. Over 2300 copies of this one title were sold in less than one month. Our shop sold almost 600 copies. A. C. McClurg’s reported: “We had 375 copies of Phenomena of Man on hand before Brent’s review. By 3:30 that afternoon we sold them all and wired Harper and Brothers for 500 more.” McClurg’s had moved only 150 copies of the book during the previous five months.
When I reviewed The Red and the Black, we had only ten copies in stock at the shop (in the Modern Library edition) and sold them out immediately. We tried picking up more from McClurg’s, but they too were sold out. I then called one of the large department store book sections to see how they were doing. The clerk who answered the phone said, “No, we don’t have a copy in stock. We’re all sold out.”
“Was there a run on the book?” I said.
“Yes, as a matter of fact there was.”
“Can you tell me the reason?”
“Yes, you see they’ve just made a movie out of the book.”
He almost had me persuaded until I checked the theatres. There was no such movie—not playing Chicago, anyway.
Since I continually counseled men and women to accept life, to live it, to change themselves if necessary, but never to turn against creation or to abandon love and hope, never to fall for the machine or the corporation or to look for Father in their stocks and bonds, I was hardly in a position—even armed with the facts and figures—to try to fight the organization for the saving of Books and Brent. I did, however, two weeks before the series ended, take the audience into my confidence and explain the situation as fairly as I could. Mr. Quinlan had my talk monitored and agreed that I handled the matter with sincerity and truthfulness. There was nothing Red could do—he was tied to an organization that was too impersonal to respond to the concerns of a mere 20,000 people. We understood each other perfectly on this score.
But what happened after my announcement was something neither of us ever expected, even though we knew there were some people out there who bought books and wrote heartwarming letters. Phone calls began coming into the studio by the hundreds, letters by the thousands. One late afternoon, Red called me and said, “I knew you were good, but not that good. I just got a call from the asylum at Manteno protesting your cancellation. Even the madmen like you.” We both laughed but we were touched, too.
Letters, telegrams, and even long distance phone calls began to plague the chairman of the board in New York City. Letters by the score were sent to Mr. Minow in Washington. But the most beautiful letters were those directed to Hope and me, on every kind of paper, written in every kind of hand, some even in foreign languages. Until this has happened to you, it is impossible to imagine the feeling. The meaning of a mass medium strikes you and all at once it seems worthwhile to cope with the whole shabby machinery if you are able to serve through it.
Hope and I sat reading every bit of mail late into the night. She said: “Do you remember telling me what F. Scott Fitzgerald said?” I looked puzzled. “He said that America is a willingness of the heart,” she prompted.
I have indicated that Red Quinlan is a man who knows his business and his way around in it, and that he is also a man deeply enamored of the world of letters. He was even less ready than I to call it quits. He invited me to lunch one day, and after pointing out that, anyway, for the sake of my health the five-day-a-week grind was too much of a strain to be continued, he asked, “But how about once a week at a good hour with a sponsor?”
I hesitated. The columnists had broken the story of my demise at WBKB. Another station had shown interest and we had had preliminary talks. But the fact was, I couldn’t have asked for better treatment than WBKB had given me. Nobody ever told me what to do or how to slant my program. The crew on the set could not have been more helpful. I felt at home there. And while Hope had at first been concerned about the possibility of our lives being wrecked by the awful demands television exacted, she was now beginning to worry about the people who wrote in, telling about the needs that my show somehow ministered to. When Red sold the show on a weekly basis to Magikist, a leading rug cleaning establishment, there was really no doubt about my decision. When I met Mr. Gage, the president of the corporation, he said, “If my ten year old daughter likes you and my wife likes you, that’s enough for me. I’m sure everybody will like you. And we’ll try very hard to help you, too.” If you can just get that kind of sponsor, things become a good deal easier. But somehow, I do not think the woods are full of them.
Quinlan’s interest in conveying through television some of the excitement of the world of books and ideas also resulted in an interesting experimental program called “Sounding Board,” in which I was invited to moderate a panel of literary Chicagoans in a monthly two-hour late-evening discussion on arts and letters. Our regular panel consisted of Augie Spectorsky, editor of Playboy Magazine; Van Allen Bradley, literary editor of the Daily News; Fannie Butcher, literary editor of the Chicago Tribune; Hoke Norris, literary editor of the Chicago Sun-Times; Paul Carroll, then editor of the experimental literary magazine, Big Table; Hugh Duncan, author, and Dr. Daniel Boorstin, professor of American history at the University of Chicago. They were fine discussions and we kept them up for six months, but nobody would pick up the tab.
My approach to television performance, being untutored, is probably quite unorthodox. I do not work from notes. In preparation, I first read the book, then think about it, seeking connective links and related meanings. In the actual review of the book, I quite often stray into asides that assume greater importance than the review itself.
I never say to myself: this is the theme, this is the middle, this the end. I say: get into the heart of the book and let your mind distill it, and, as often happens, enlightening relationships with other books and ideas may develop.
I cannot perform in a state of lassitude. Before the cameras, I always find myself tightening up until the floor manager signals that I’m ON. For a moment, I am all tenseness, realizing that people are watching me, but in a few minutes I have forgotten this and am thinking about nothing but the book and the ideas I am talking about. Now I am carried by the mood and direction of thought. If I want to stand, I stand; if I want to sit, I sit; if I want to grimace, I grimace. Nothing is rehearsed or calculated in advance. All I can do is unfold a train of thought springing from the study that has preceded performance, and the toll is heavy. Sometimes after the show, I can barely straighten up, or I may be utterly dejected over my inability to say all I should have said. Then I leave the studio, moody and silent.
I never talk to anyone before a show except my director. He understands me and knows how easily I’m thrown. It can be a slight movement from the boom man or a variation in the countdown signal from the floor manager, something unexpected in the action of a camera man or a slight noise somewhere in the studio, and I react as though someone threw a glass of water in my face. Then I am off the track, floundering like a ship without a rudder. Sometimes I can right myself before the show is ended, sometimes not. Hence the frequent depression, for I feel that every show must be the best show possible, that “off” days are not permitted, and that I can never indulge myself in the attitude of, “Oh well, better one next time.” When people are watching and listening, you must perform, and perform your best.
Often my grammar goes haywire. I know better, but I can become helpless against the monster known as time. I have to fight time. I cannot hesitate or make erasures. So I plunge on, hoping that some one significant thought may emerge clearly—some thought perhaps as vital as that which animates the pages of The Phenomena of Man, calling on us to recognize the eternal core of faith and courage: Courage to rebel and faith in the realization of our own being. Courage that takes the self seriously; faith that is grounded in activity.
I hesitate to make any predictions about the future of television, as a means of communication or as a business. As a business, it must be run for profit. The argument is not about this point, but about the level of operation from which such profit shall be sought. From personal experience, I can say that TV does not have to constitute a blow to life itself. Perhaps many of us are “mindless in motion” and now sit “mindlessly motionless” in front of our TV sets. But I take heart in the certain knowledge that many men and women are not so much concerned with the camera eye as they are in finding a way back to the inward eye.