Audition (32 page)

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. The 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.

Aline’s goal was certainly worthy, but not many women were ready for such an intellectual exchange at 9:00 a.m. Still, the program would probably have plodded along if, out of the blue, NBC had not offered Aline a fantastic opportunity—to go to Paris as its first woman bureau chief. Needless to say, she accepted. (Sadly, she would die a year later of brain cancer.) So now her little morning show was adrift and, floating around, was offered to me.

This meant that, in addition to two hours of national broadcasting five days a week on
Today
, I would be adding to my schedule another half hour of local television. I was hesitant. “How can I do all this?” I thought. “Will I ever see my husband or my child?” Then I was told that we could tape all five programs in one day because that would save the station a lot of money, and it would be my show to host and to book. Still, I hesitated.

For weeks I watched Aline doing her show and decided that the premise was a good one but that the subject matter could be broadened beyond local issues. We didn’t have to deal with just a half hour on the city’s water supply, we could discuss the hot topics of the day. (Years and years later this simple idea became one of the tenets of my ABC daytime program,
The View
.) I asked NBC if I could broaden the subject matter and, to give the program a fresh start, if we could change the name from
For Women Only
to the rather cumbersome but I hoped more all-encompassing
Not for Women Only
? NBC agreed, and I then agreed to be the host.

The inaugural broadcast took place in September 1971, immediately following the
Today
show. I was worried that there would be more of Barbara Walters in the morning than the audience could bear, but the program was an almost immediate success.

It isn’t that I threw the baby out with the bathwater. I simply expanded the subject matter and reduced the purely public service format. When we did go the public service route we tried to make the subjects more personal and more relevant to our audience. Little by little, without making the program frivolous or reducing its intent to provide information, we changed it. Some changes were physical. To make the program more interactive, instead of seating the audience in neat little rows, I put them at round tables. This made the audience feel more relaxed and engaged with the panel. As a result they were not afraid to ask questions or challenge assumptions. Furthermore, the audience was no longer just experts but rather men and women who wrote in for tickets and therefore brought us people who asked questions the folks watching at home would most want asked. Though I didn’t know it then,
Not for Women Only
would become the prototype for later women-oriented discussion programs hosted by the likes of Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey and, still later, as I’ve said, my own daytime program,
The View
.

To make the program more meaningful, I tried to choose themes for the show that related to the lives of both the studio audience and the viewers at home—“Is the Family Dying?” “Sensitivity Training,” “TV and Children,” to name just a few. I threw in some lighthearted themes as well, like “The Hostess with the Mostest,” which examined the best ways to throw parties. We had a really experienced panel for that one—the very funny author and Washington hostess Barbara Howar, newspaper columnist and hostess supreme Phyllis Cerf (wife of Bennett), and fashion designer Mollie Parnis, then one of Manhattan’s leading hostesses. They dished about what made a great guest and what made a great bore. It was name-dropping with a purpose, another forerunner of
The View
.

I was delighted when the program took off. NBC was even more delighted. Their little local broadcast, buried in the morning before the hugely popular soap operas, was becoming a program to watch and therefore a program to be sold to advertisers. My own schedule was now insane. The addition of
Not for Women Only
meant I not only had to prepare for the interviews I did for the
Today
show, but for the varied themes of the new program.

I had a wonderful producer named Madeline Amgott and a small staff of very hardworking women, but I still did a lot of the booking for
Not for Women Only
and wrote my own questions. The books and magazines piled on my bedside table reached life-threatening heights. Leisurely weekends became a distant memory, as did quality time with Lee. Why I drove myself so hard I cannot imagine. Was it ambition? Was I afraid that my days on
Today
would not last forever? Was it money? It couldn’t really have been the latter. NBC paid me only an extra eight hundred dollars a week to moderate
Not for Women Only
, which came to $160 a program. I think it boiled down to the fact that I was grateful for the opportunity to prove myself once more. I had passed another audition.

My past work in public relations was proving very helpful. Just as I’d learned that anything about sex in the lead of a press release caught the attention of its recipient, so also was sex a surefire seller on
Not for Women Only
. Whenever the ratings slipped, we did a program that dealt with some aspect of sex. I remember that for one full week we explored female and male sexual dysfunctions. We had the most dignified and respected experts address these issues, and our questions were also dignified, but we managed to be candid and therefore exciting in a way few shows were in those days.