How I Got This Way (4 page)

Though the show had its moments after I took over, it died within months. Suffice it to say that for me, it was a major heartbreaker.

And what about Steve Allen? Over the years, I met him at many functions, would actually enjoy dinners at his home, had him as my own guest on future shows, and even guested on one of his shows. And every time I saw him, it dredged up the painful memory of following him on that Hollywood Westinghouse show. Steve never mentioned it to me or even gave the slightest clue that he remembered I’d once been his catastrophic replacement. He was always in good spirits, maybe thinking the mere topic would be uncomfortable and that it was all part of the business—that if it hadn’t been me who took over his show, it would have been someone else, and at some point, why would it matter in the long run anyway?

But for me, he represented much more than I could’ve ever told him. His was the very first undeniable television talent I had seen up close and personal in this business. And I mean
tremendously
personal
. Starting on that day when I began my own career, wearing my crisp new NBC page uniform and watching him onstage from that second balcony, all the way through the many years to come. I must admit that every time I drive down Forty-fourth Street in New York, past the old Hudson Theatre where I’d once been so unsure of what my future would hold, I always think of Steve Allen. Because he forced me to wonder long and hard and practically ever since—in a way that maybe nobody else could have—about what exactly my talent really is.

Chapter Four

RONALD REAGAN

P
robably more often than you’d guess, I catch myself thinking about my early days in San Diego TV and how it all got started—thanks to my rather unconventional work on radio there. Those were the days sandwiched between my stint as an NBC page in New York and the whole Westinghouse debacle in L.A. With the help of Al Flanagan, who’d previously hired me as a pretty menial stagehand at Hollywood’s KCOP-TV, I’d now landed a somewhat bigger broadcasting job right back in good old San Diego, across the bay from the Coronado military base where I’d been stationed in the navy for two years. This new job—which is probably hard to even fathom nowadays—required me to cruise the city’s streets in a KSON-radio car equipped with both a microphone and a typewriter set up in the front seat, so I could slide over and bang out my report and then broadcast it on the ham-operated mic. Every hour on the hour, I had to deliver a story—it was as if I was on a nonstop news-hunting expedition, always searching for the next “breaking” incident in town. Usually, the blotter that hung in the pressroom of the San Diego police station would have something I could work with—which I’d then go chase down. Not always, though.

Once, with my hourly deadline drawing near, I went to the blotter desperately hoping for something,
anything
! There was something about—are you ready for this?—a break-in of a piggy bank in Poway, a little town, now probably booming, outside of San Diego. Believe it or not, I
knew
it was the last thing I should even consider filing as a legitimate news story. But time was running out! So I wrote an overly dramatic, and hopefully funny, account of how this little piggy bank—holding less than a buck in change—had been busted open and the contents stolen. A piggy bank—
in
Poway . . .
for god’s sake!

But I wrote the hell out of the story and delivered it like Edward R. Murrow: somehow both somber yet urgent in tone, which made it pretty funny. I just hoped whoever heard it had a sense of humor. Understandably, I never thought stories like that would get me into television. But sure enough, the news guys over at KFMB-TV happened to be listening and wondered,
Who is this character reporting such offbeat kinds of stuff?
They liked it, called me in, and hired me to do regular funny feature stories on their newscast—one every night, no less. And they gave me an 8-millimeter camera to shoot it. I’d go out, film the piece, come back to the station, process the film, edit it, write the copy, and deliver it on the show. The rival station, KOGO-TV, liked what they were seeing, too—and soon offered me an even better job: do my feature story on the 6 p.m. broadcast—and then actually anchor the 11 p.m. news, which was quite a major step up. Also, I asked for, and received, the promise of a Saturday-night talk show, which would begin in early October 1961.

By then I had been inspired hugely by Jack Paar—especially by his gift of connecting directly with that camera lens. I wanted to give it a try, in my own way, and also to have real and lively conversations with guests in front of a TV audience. For this local show, there were no writers, no producers, and, naturally, no budget. Tom Battista—who became my lifelong friend from the start—was assigned to direct the program. During the week, it was just Tom and I. In between my nightly newscasts, I would try to contact whoever was coming to San Diego that weekend and build my guest lineup, combining visiting notables with our local San Diego celebrities—hoping for an interesting mix. For a few minutes every Thursday afternoon, Tom and I would have a meeting and outline the upcoming Saturday-night show. And that was it. Our whole planning session lasted about as long as a coffee break!

Sometime in 1962, I read in the papers that Ronald Reagan was coming to town. Right away, I booked him for that Saturday night. I had seen him in the movies, of course, as the Notre Dame football hero George Gipp in
Knute Rockne All American—
a favorite of every devout Fighting Irish fan—and also in
Kings Row,
his best acting role ever, as well as in a few so-so westerns. Maybe it wasn’t the most thrilling period of his acting career, but he was an established movie star, and I was hungry for guests. The show aired live beginning at 11:15 p.m., after the local news, with a studio audience of around two hundred people. A couple of gung ho San Diego State college students would set up the audience seats beforehand and then stick around to remove the whole setup afterward. (One of them was Bud Carey, who later climbed up the ranks of the business and became general manager of New York’s WCBS-TV; he went on to teach his great television know-how at Syracuse University before retiring. The other student volunteer was George Lewis, who turned into one of
NBC News
’s best reporters, covering the West Coast and also several wars overseas for the network through the years. I’m very proud of both of them.)

Anyway—because I probably already knew that hosting a talk show was the job I would always love best—Saturday night was truly the most important night of the week for me. To prepare what I hoped might make entertaining stories for my opening segment, I would think about all the things I had done that week and the interesting people I’d bumped into around town. This was to be my Jack Paar–style conversational monologue material—and I found that it came to me pretty naturally! After that, it was all about bringing out the guests, whether from New York, Los Angeles, or dear old San Diego. Pro football had just been getting started in town back then, and the Chargers were our new franchise team. Jack Kemp was the team’s star quarterback and, inevitably, one of our show’s first guests. Instead of just sitting on a couple of stools, we passed the ball back and forth during the interview. I was trying hard to do something different with the format.

So along comes Ronald Reagan. There was never a chance before the show to go over what the guests and I would talk about. It was always ad-libbed. My instinct told me this would be the most exciting and spontaneous way to do it. Reagan, as we now know, had been more than just an actor; early on, he’d done some radio sports announcing. So we talked a little sports. Plus, he did portray the Gipper so heroically on film two decades earlier. How could I ever resist that topic? But we never got into politics. Because frankly, it was unthinkable back then that he would go on to become the governor of California and, eventually, the president of the United States! Instead, we talked about his life and career, and also of his spirited feelings about this country and how, just like him, anyone else could achieve the goals they truly wanted. The more we talked, the more you had to like him. I could tell the audience was becoming mesmerized by his optimism. He just made you feel better, gave you hope, made you want to strive even harder to achieve your own goals. He looked great, spoke beautifully, and when he was finished the audience was completely his. He’d talk with such common sense and logic—always with that down-to-earth smile and easy, reassuring shrug. Guestwise, he was simply terrific. I could tell that he was having a good time, too. He left to rousing applause.

After the show I met with my director pal Tom, and we agreed that Reagan was dynamite, the best guest we’d had since we started the show. He had cast a spell. But there was more to it. This guy elevated you. No doubt about it. Tom and I were thoroughly impressed. The next day, Sunday, was gorgeous and bright and I was out on the beach at the Hotel del Coronado
,
across the bay from San Diego. I almost thought I was imagining things when I saw Reagan come striding through the crowd on his way to the water. He cut a very impressive figure, then plunged right into the ocean, sliced through the powerful waves, and swam out beyond them to a quieter place where he continued to swim . . . for a long time. The night before, I remembered, he had mentioned having been a lifeguard in his hometown in Illinois. He certainly seemed at home out there in the water. Then I spotted his wife, Nancy, walking right down to the shoreline, too, and watching him intently. She became famous for those deeply engaged and adoring looks at her husband during their White House years. Even then, she appeared very much in love.

And so life went on. I left San Diego in 1964 and, three years later, became the second banana on ABC-TV’s
The Joey Bishop Show
. And among the first guests we booked was . . . California governor Ronald Reagan! Backstage, Joey introduced me to him. I wondered if Reagan would remember that show of ours in San Diego five years before. Well, he actually did. He was that kind of guy, and he gave me a hearty handshake, telling everyone within earshot how much he’d enjoyed that Saturday-night show we’d done together back then. And I loved it—especially because all of this happened right in front of Joey, who stood there amazed at the easy familiarity of our warm and unexpected reunion.

Sometime after the Bishop show went off the airwaves at the end of 1969, I’d gotten a local daytime show in Los Angeles on KHJ-TV—this was the early seventies, which were wild and turbulent years in the streets of L.A. and in the hearts of Americans in general. But on several occasions, Governor Reagan was right there with me on the program, sharp and dependable as ever during those especially dangerous times. Riots and chaotic rallies were regular occurrences throughout the city and the rest of the state back then, but Reagan remained calm and strikingly firm. Once, in a speech, I heard him actually challenge the malcontents: “If we can’t settle things peacefully, then, okay—let’s get it on in the streets.” He was no wallflower.

Of course, our lives and careers continued. I’d joined KABC-TV in the mid-seventies, and by 1981, Ronald Reagan had become president. Then, shockingly, after only sixty-nine days in the Oval Office, he took a bullet from a would-be assassin. If the bullet had hit an inch closer to his heart he wouldn’t have survived. But he did. And in May of that same year, Notre Dame president Father Ted Hesburgh had an inspired idea:
Why not invite President Reagan to deliver a commencement address for the graduating class of ’81?
The president had not been seen out among the public since the shooting, and his recovery had been long and arduous—even though he made it look easy with his swaggering wisecracks that charmed the nation. At the time, I was the entertainment editor for the station and, like Father Hesburgh, a similar idea hit me right away:
Why not take a camera crew to cover the Gipper’s return to Notre Dame?
I worked out the deal with the news show producer, and off we went to South Bend, Indiana. The campus was alive and jumping that weekend with the graduates and their families—but all the more so because the president would be giving his first speech since the attempt on his life.

And to top it all off, “Knute Rockne” was there to magically watch over everything. That’s right, there I was standing with my crew outside the Morris Inn—the only hotel on campus—when a car drove up, and out stepped the great actor Pat O’Brien. Pat, of course, had so memorably played the title role in the classic 1940 movie, alongside Reagan’s portrayal of quarterback George Gipp. And believe me, Rockne is still a part of the tremendous Notre Dame legacy. In fact, during the immortal coach’s heyday, he was one of the most popular figures in the entire country, inside and outside of football. Over the years, whenever I was covering major Hollywood parties and events, I would always ask O’Brien to deliver Rockne’s locker-room speeches for our newscasts. And now here we were together on the legendary campus waiting for the Gipper’s triumphant return. What better time to go for it? I approached the car with my crew; Pat O’Brien, at eighty-one years young, was a bit slow getting out and looked a little tired. They probably drove him in from Chicago—hardly a quick commute—but this was a must. It took him a second to recognize me. Clearly he wasn’t expecting to see me there, but I gave him my most heartfelt plea: “Pat, we may never get together again on this campus as long as we live.
We must do it again with Knute—and also for Knute!
His spirit is still here all around us. I’m sure he’d love to hear his pep talk one more time—just the way he did it to fire up the team so long ago.”

And so Pat O’Brien braced himself, took a deep breath, and let me have it, full throttle, while our camera rolled:
“We’ll go inside them, we’ll go outside them, and we’ll never rest, boys, never until we win again for Notre Dame!”
On and on he went with the speech—and I swear to you, inside my head, I clearly heard the Notre Dame band playing “Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame.” It was an exciting moment for me—and for Pat O’Brien, too. I mean, we were reenacting history on sacred ground!

Next day, May 17, was the graduation ceremony—which looked very different from mine there on campus in the spring of 1953. For one thing, I naturally remembered that only a few years back Father Hesburgh had decreed that Notre Dame become a coed school—and here they were: all of these young ladies in their flowing commencement gowns heading toward the convention center to collect their diplomas. And they looked great. I thought of our own two little daughters—Joanna and J.J.—and imagined how nice it would be for them to one day be draped in those gowns and getting their diplomas here, too. And I’m happy to say that did happen some years later, which was another very special thrill.

As you’d expect, security at this graduation was terribly tight and restricted. Reporters were bunched together. There was no chance to talk to the president. What would I have said, anyway?
“Hey there, Secret Service guy, wait a minute—he did my local show in San Diego twenty years ago. He knows me!”
No, those days were over. Father Hesburgh, who’s known for his own warm and fabulous speeches, made a wonderful introduction—and then out came Ronald Reagan. No sign of being wounded, a big smile on his face, he simply gave one of the most stirring speeches I had ever heard. He noted that he was the fifth American president to address a Notre Dame commencement and, soon enough, began to reminisce about his experiences playing George Gipp on film, while giving credit to the now beaming Pat O’Brien for so generously helping him secure the role. But let me share with you a taste of some of Reagan’s remarkable words that day—specifically about the invaluable subtext of that Rockne movie, even though it was just a small portion of the president’s long and thrilling invocation. . . .