The Kingdom and the Power (38 page)

The next morning, John Randolph was no less surprised than dozens of other
Times
men to hear that the picture in
The Times
had caused a “great flap” in the publisher’s office, and that Randolph was no longer
The Times
’ picture editor. Randolph at first could not believe it. He could not believe, nor could the other
Times
men, that Miss Monroe’s open-mouthed French kiss would so offend the sensitivities of Arthur Hays Sulzberger, or Iphigene Sulzberger, or whoever may have registered an objection in the publisher’s office. Of course, it was true that there was an incredible double standard where sex was concerned at
The Times
; that is, while sex has been
the traditional excess of so many of the paper’s most prominent reporters, editors, executives, and shrine keepers—“Drink is the bane of the
Herald Tribune
,” one old saying went, “sex is the curse of
The Times
”—it was equally true that the personal habits of
Times
-men rarely if ever tainted the purity of the paper itself, which remains comparatively Victorian. Young
Times
reporters writing about sex education or birth control or deviates are forewarned about being “too clinical,” and
Times
editors have been known to have the genitals of dogs airbrushed out of photographs before printing them, and to have cloaked the cleavage of some buxom opera sopranos. But on the other hand, the Monroe photograph was not “cheesecake”—she was wearing an unrevealing black dress—and she and DiMaggio
were
married and it did not seem inappropriate to publish a mildly passionate wedding-day kiss in Mr. Ochs’s newspaper. Or so Randolph thought.

In any event, he was out as the picture editor. He was not embittered nor angered by Sulzberger’s decision, which was relayed to him by Catledge—just surprised. Catledge seemed deeply embarrassed by the whole incident. He asked Randolph more than once if he had sent to the bullpen
other
pictures of the DiMaggio-Monroe wedding; if Randolph had, then the choice would have been the bullpen’s, and Catledge might have been able to spread the blame around and permit his friend to remain as the picture editor. But Randolph answered that he had submitted only the one picture that had appeared in the paper. He was willing to quietly accept the entire blame, and he did.

Catledge assured Randolph that his salary would not be cut—he would merely be transferred as a copyreader to the national-news desk on the other side of the newsroom, and there was in Catledge’s manner the hint that Randolph, who had played the game well, would somehow be taken care of after things had cooled off.

Two years later Catledge heard that there was to be an opening in the Sports department—the writer of the “Wood, Field, and Stream” column, who had held the job for nineteen years, had resigned to accept an important management job at a big resort in the Bahamas, and Catledge thought that Randolph might like to take over the column—which carried with it a large expense account and the freedom to travel around the country to hunt and fish and to write about it for
The Times
. Randolph was delighted by the offer, and if there was ever a
Times
man who was ideally suited for a particular assignment, Randolph was suited for this one—and his
column became immediately one of the most readable features in the paper. It was not so much his knowledge of the outdoors or his expertise as a fisherman or hunter that brought distinction to his writing; it was almost the opposite. Randolph was neither a lucky fisherman nor a great one. While he was a good shot, he was not superb. He was like a million other men who hunt and fish merely because they enjoy the act of doing so, and particularly enjoy escaping from a clamorous city and wandering through the woods or relaxing on a boat; and a typical Randolph column began:

It was generally conceded within
The Times
’ newsroom that John Randolph had the softest job on the paper. He was the only
Times
man who got paid for playing. His columns appeared from warm sunny places during winter, from cool lakes during summer. On the longer, more interesting trips he usually took his wife, not only because he liked her company, but also because without her he was nearly helpless. The simplest gadget, whether it was a can opener or a lighter, baffled him and sometimes infuriated him. He was endlessly absentminded, leaving almost every hat he ever owned, and a few overcoats, on trains. He burned cigarette holes in most of his suits, never filled in check stubs, and once sat fishing while his tackle box floated out past his feet and sank.

He was a terrible driver with little judgment, and he needed a valet-chauffeur and personal manager, which was his wife. He loved to complain about “TV jolly boys,” hated all commercials, yet he would sit mesmerized before one and then complain loudly when it was over to his wife: “Jean, don’t buy that.” A political cynic, he thought that all politicians were corrupt in one way or another. He was impatient with theories and intellectual “preciousness,” but he was awed by academic honors and pursuits (an Oxford don was the most fascinating creature he could think of), and he was hurt and disappointed when his very intelligent daughter, Belden, when elected to Phi Beta Kappa, failed to buy the key.

Randolph could not name five good contemporary novelists or dramatists, but he was entranced by Shakespeare, Cervantes, Gibbon, and Twain. His own column in
The Times
had among its readers many literary figures, one being the novelist Vance Bourjaily, who wrote in one of his books that it was through reading Randolph in
The Times
“that I first realized that it is possible to write of hunting with wit and gentleness, in a spirit of equal love for the creatures hunted and for the follies of those of us who hunt them.” Randolph neither knew nor cared what was happening in contemporary music, but he loved opera, Verdi in particular; he always said that he wanted the “Triumphal March” from
Aïda
played at his funeral. It wasn’t.

He died of lung cancer in 1961 at a hospital in Massachusetts. He had written the column in
The Times
for five years, and soon another
Times
man filled Randolph’s space on the sports page. Randolph spent the last several weeks of his life sitting in a hospital bed, being kept alive on oxygen and miracle drugs until there remained only the husk of the man. He drifted through dope vaguely from consciousness to semiconsciousness. Speaking left him exhausted; listening, only less so. And so he said little and waited with his family and friends in the hospital, but at one point before he died he looked toward the corner and said to his daughter: “Belden, get me my fishing rod.”

She had to say that it was not there. He looked a little confused and closed his eyes, seemingly exhausted. Then his hands moved for maybe thirty seconds, not in the random way that the deeply drugged move their hands, but with some direction which at first his daughter did not understand. Then the pattern of his motions made it obvious. He was fly casting.

F
or several thousand Americans, their first and only interior glimpse of the
Times
building was provided on a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1954 when a CBS camera crew from
Omnibus
was admitted to the newsroom to do a live telecast of
Times
men working on the next day’s edition. It was, like most
Omnibus
shows, a dignified and erudite presentation, enhanced as always by the soft British voice of Alistair Cooke. While the cameras moved around the newsroom focusing on the bent heads of copy-readers and the furrowed brows of reporters tapping typewriters, Alistair Cooke described the scene in hushed, almost reverential tones that Adolph Ochs would have approved of and appreciated. Cooke’s commentary revealed something of the size of the staff, the enormous effort and expense that is required to publish the paper each day, and then he moved across the newsroom to speak with a handsome, gray-haired man who stood leaning, arms folded, against a desk near the bullpen—Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who had come into the office on this Sunday to participate in the show.

Sulzberger spoke warmly of the staff, conveying great pride in them and modesty about himself, and he also gave his views on the role of a free and responsible press in a democracy. Then the cameras moved upstairs to observe a large, broad-shouldered, serious man seated behind his desk—Charles Merz, reading from an editorial that he had just written for tomorrow’s
Times
. The cameras
later caught the mood and clatter of the composing room on the fourth floor—the ink-stained printers wearing aprons and picking, pecking, pounding with rubber mallets upon iron tables of type; the silent men who sat straight-spined behind large linotype machines, lightly gliding their fingers over the keyboards amid a tinkling tune of words on paper turning to metal. The cameras also moved into the managing editor’s office during a conference, where, at the head of the table, relaxed and avuncular, sat Catledge. On his right was Theodore Bernstein; on his left, Robert Garst. Across from him, at the opposite end of the table, was the city editor, Frank S. Adams, flanked by the foreign-news editor, Emanuel Freedman, and the national-news editor, Raymond O’Neill. Along the sides of the table sat other editors, including the picture editor, John Radosta, who had replaced John Randolph after the DiMaggio-Monroe incident.

Although a few editors were made mildly self-conscious by the presence of cameras and microphones, they generally conducted themselves with remarkable poise, and they apparently proved to be of great interest to the television audience. Seconds after the show had ended, the telephone switchboard at
The Times
began to light up with hundreds of congratulatory calls from readers around the nation, some of them old retired
Times
men who said that the show had made them very nostalgic. There were also several telegrams of praise from
Times
correspondents who had watched the show from their bureaus in major American cities—Richard Johnston wired in from Chicago, Seth King from Des Moines, Gladwin Hill from Los Angeles, Lawrence Davies from San Francisco, as did several others, including Reston from Washington, whose telegram to Catledge read: “You all did fine. Guy just called up and said he wanted to subscribe to
The Times
. Sounded as if he’d never heard about it till today.”

It was an altogether satisfying day at
The Times
, one of handshaking and fraternal harmony that confirmed, if only briefly, the picture of unity that had been presented on the television screen. And this picture no doubt reflected positively on the
Times
men themselves, reminding them of the grandeur of the institution and of their meaningful contributions to its purpose, which was something that they had not given much thought to during the past year—a most unhappy year at
The Times
. Three months before the
Omnibus
show, there had been a photoengravers’ strike that had been supported by most of
The Times
’ news staff, and as a result
The New York Times
failed to publish for the first time in its history. The strike, though it lasted less than two weeks, disrupted not only the publication of the newspaper, but it also inspired deep personal dissension among certain members of the staff: those reporters and copyreaders who crossed the picket line outside the
Times
building had incurred the animosity of the vast majority that had not. And even after the strike had been settled, the strikebreakers within the newsroom were quietly ostracized by
Times
men who now looked to the labor leaders for guidance, not to the spirit of Ochs.

The paper had grown beyond the pale of paternalism, or so it seemed to many on the staff who were aware of top management’s desire for a more efficiently run operation—and if this were the case, then the staff members would become more self-protective and practical, more committed to unionism and less romantic about
The Times
. This new attitude was soon apparent in the casual way that certain reporters began to submit overtime slips to the city editor whenever they had worked a half-hour or so beyond their normal quitting time. In the old days,
Times
men would have been too embarrassed to do this, thinking it an honor and pleasure to occasionally work overtime for a newspaper that usually demanded so little of them and had a traditional policy of early good-nights. But the old thinking was fading fast in the newsroom, and while
Omnibus
briefly reminded
Times
men of what the paper represented to the nation, and while this had its salubrious playback in the newsroom for a while, it did not last for very long. Three months after the show, Meyer Berger, the most honored and admired reporter on the New York staff, told a few editors that he was thinking of quitting
The Times
.