Tick... Tick... Tick... (3 page)

“I'll have the board,” Hewitt told the perplexed waitress when she asked for his order, or so he recalled in his
2002
memoir,
Tell Me a Story.
Paying $
45
, he walked out the door with the blackboard and carried it back up to the CBS News broadcast booth at the convention.

“Hey, look at this!” Hewitt shouted to his colleagues, lifting up the blackboard. Within minutes, a camera had filmed his new possession with names of various Democratic dignitaries now listed upon it; technicians then superimposed those shots onto the screen as the politicians showed up. By the end of the day, Hewitt's breakfast brainstorm had become an essential ingredient of all news broadcasting. Eventually this technique would come to be called a “chyron,” or “super.”

Hewitt understood the need for shorthand terms in a fast-paced industry—and either dreamed them up himself or popularized them to the point where people assumed they were his creations. For years, his colleagues recall he took credit for applying the relay-racing term “anchorman” to the role Cronkite played at the
1952
conventions—the notion being that while other reporters roamed the convention hall in search of stories, he would remain “anchored” to the news desk. “He always said it was his term, even though we all heard different stories,” recalls Sanford Socolow, who joined CBS News as a news writer in
1956
and later worked as a producer alongside Hewitt on the
CBS Evening News.
Hewitt now backs off the claim; Cronkite himself credits the term to a junior CBS News producer named Paul Levitan. “Hewitt would be glad to take credit for that, but it's not so,” Cronkite says firmly. “He may have picked it up instantly and made it the word that was used, but it was used in conversation before that.”

Nonetheless, these household words would never have emerged from backstage without Hewitt to promote them. He knew the value of quick, catchy terms like “anchorman” for the nascent TV viewer. As producer, Hewitt was the advocate for the guy at home—the one in the Barcalounger, with the beer and the potato chips and the short attention span to rival his own. Hewitt wanted that guy, and he was always ready to do whatever it took to get him.

Chapter 2

You Son of a Bitch!

Don Hewitt flew to Iowa with the noblest of intentions. It was September
1959
, and he was now the most powerful man at CBS News. As executive producer of
Douglas Edwards and the News
, the frenzied Hewitt made all the crucial decisions governing each night's broadcast and shaped the network's coverage of news events more than any other employee. At
37
, Hewitt's dogged personal style colored every aspect of CBS's daily coverage; he often held two telephones to his ears at once, the better to bark commands at underlings. His terrified but fiercely loyal team of reporters worked nonstop to deliver better pictures, bigger scoops, and fresher stories to their demanding boss. That said—all the power and noise notwithstanding—CBS was losing to NBC's more popular newscast anchored by emerging stars Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. And Hewitt didn't like to lose.

He traveled to corn country that September with Harry Reasoner and Charles Kuralt, two of the most formidable young members of the CBS News reporting team. They were going to cover the first visit of Nikita Khrushchev, then premier of the Soviet Union, to the farm of Roswell Garst of Cumberland, Iowa. A Soviet leader was touring the United States for the first time since the advent of communism and the explosion of television, and he cleverly saw the potential for creating goodwill through a staged media event.

Khrushchev's trip to the heartland handed TV networks the chance to vie for a new kind of broadcast coup—a contest seemingly made for Don Hewitt, who loved nothing more than the adrenaline rush of fighting over a breaking news story with great pictures.

On Friday, shortly after Hewitt got to Cumberland, he and his colleagues dropped in on the local police chief to say howdy. They were also looking for help in finding a driver to take them around town and hoped the officer might oblige. He connected them with the recently retired chief of police, who happily signed on for the job and agreed to wear his old uniform—giving Hewitt the benefit of a badge in making his way around town. Hewitt could barely contain his excitement, and then he pushed his luck even further. “What should we do when he's not available?” he gently inquired of the police chief.

“Oh, we'll make you honorary sheriff,” the chief replied and gave Hewitt a badge.

The next day, Hewitt ran into an NBC camera crew from Omaha sent to help with that network's coverage and flashed his badge. “Howdy, folks,” Sheriff Hewitt said as he approached the crew, who had no idea who he was.

“Morning, Sheriff,” a crew member said to Hewitt.

“Mornin', boys,” Hewitt replied. “What's goin' on?”

Whereupon the camera crew began to outline the details of NBC's coverage plans—until an NBC executive spotted Hewitt from a distance. Hewitt quickly excused himself and raced to spill the secrets to his CBS pals.

On the Saturday morning Khrushchev was to arrive, Hewitt roused his two correspondents before dawn and loaded them into a car, along with a young desk assistant named Robert Wussler, who went on to become president of CBS. They began driving around Cumberland in search of fresh new angles for the story.

“What's that over there?” he asked, as they drove along a dirt road alongside the Garst farm. He'd spotted a large truck parked in the distance. The side of the truck was clearly marked with the letters “NBC.” Noting its size, Hewitt quickly deduced that the truck contained the mobile control room his primary competitor would need to broadcast its own coverage live.

Hewitt parked his car and walked over with Reasoner and Kuralt to take a look. “Hey, look,” he said. “The keys are inside!”

Hewitt looked at Wussler and smiled.

“You wouldn't dare,” Wussler said.

“Try me.”

“You wouldn't have the guts.”

“I have the guts, but what in hell would we do with it?”

“Hide it in a cornfield,” said Wussler. “They won't find it until they harvest the corn in August.”

With his reporters watching incredulously, Hewitt opened the door on the driver's side of the truck and hopped in. He turned the key and the engine started. With a big smile for his colleagues, Hewitt prepared to drive the short distance down the road, to an area of trees big enough to camouflage the truck. (It was as though Hewitt was hoping to duplicate, in spirit, the famous scene from
The Front Page
in which Hildy Johnson stashes the prisoner in the rolltop desk.) Only at the last minute did he reconsider and return to his own vehicle. Wussler wiped Hewitt's fingerprints off the steering wheel, and the four men drove off.

 

Of course, the news division executives were apoplectic over Hewitt's various stunts. But how do you punish your top producer, particularly when he was delivering great TV to a growing audience? A stern reprimand was all he ever got. And as frequently as Hewitt annoyed his bosses with his antics, he also pushed his notions of news as entertainment by devising ingenious ways to circumvent the normal methods of news gathering. His methods ranged from the benign to the extreme—from hiring a Navy plane to film the sinking of the
Andrea Doria
in
1956
to making an off-camera obscene gesture at prisoners to get them angry enough to re-create the scene of a New Jersey prison riot for film cameras, after the riot had already been quelled. Hewitt had an image in his mind of news that didn't always conform to the pictures he got.

Hewitt rankled most of his bosses, from Sig Mickelson, who ran CBS News in the
1950
s, to his replacement, Richard Salant, a lawyer for CBS who had no previous news experience when he took over the news division in
1961
. With his literate memos and aggressive adherence to ethical standards, Salant was a gentlemanly adversary for Hewitt, who wasn't about to change his ways. And despite the controversy around Hewitt, there was no doubting his talents as a visionary news producer who was attracting attention to a news show that desperately needed it.

To Salant, Hewitt's primary failing as a showman was his allegiance to Douglas Edwards, the stolid anchorman of the broadcast who couldn't compete with the combined charisma of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, NBC's more successful news anchors. It seemed to Salant and others that Hewitt championed Edwards because the anchorman never contradicted Hewitt's own demanding point of view. “Edwards was Don's puppet,” recalls Dan Rather, who joined CBS News as a reporter in
1961
, just before Edwards was replaced in April
1962
with a popular TV journalist from Missouri by the name of Walter Cronkite.

Hewitt agreed to continue as executive producer of the
CBS Evening News
with Walter Cronkite, but neither man was overjoyed with the prospect. Radically different in their approach, the two men had already worked together a number of times since their days in London during World War II. Cronkite, a former United Press war correspondent and one of the fabled “Murrow's boys,” was yet another CBS News employee with little patience for Hewitt.

 

On the night of Tuesday, April
5
,
1960
, Hewitt was in the control room calling the shots as Walter Cronkite sat behind the broadcast desk in the studio of CBS's Milwaukee affiliate, reporting on the returns from the all-important Wisconsin primary, which Senator John F. Kennedy had just won with
56
percent of the vote—bolstered by the state's substantial Catholic population.

Religion was a hot media topic that spring, as pundits and reporters speculated about how Kennedy's Catholic heritage would help or hurt his campaign, given that no Catholic had ever been elected president. Kennedy had grown sensitive on the subject, declaring in West Virginia at one point, “I don't think my religion is anyone's business.” On this primary day in Wisconsin, Hewitt had assigned reporters to canvass voters in two key precincts—one Catholic, one not—to compare the candidates' strengths in these areas.

Earlier in the evening, Cronkite had already told viewers that Kennedy had shown unusual strength among Catholic voters—but he was looking forward to sharing the findings with Senator Kennedy himself. In a deal brokered by the senator's brother and campaign manager, Bobby Kennedy, Hewitt had arranged for Kennedy to meet with Cronkite live in the studio.

With Bobby Kennedy in the control room alongside Hewitt, Cronkite held an early TV interview with the presidential candidate. “Senator, tell me something.” he said at one point, leaning in toward Kennedy. “We have some interesting returns here from a Catholic district and a non-Catholic district.”

Kennedy froze. Leaning back in his chair and glaring across the desk, he said nothing. Cronkite, mystified by his reaction, continued to press the question. “And we're showing so far that there seems to be a very definite religious preference,” Cronkite went on. “The Catholics are voting almost solidly for you, and the non-Catholics are voting almost solidly for Humphrey.”

“Well, that's interesting,” Senator Kennedy offered curtly.

“Do you think that'll carry around the country?” Cronkite asked.

“I discussed that in Houston this past week,” was Kennedy's clipped response.

“Well, I was just going to ask you—” Cronkite blurted, before Kennedy cut him off.

“I've answered the question,” he snapped, standing up and removing his microphone. “Thank you very much.” At which point he walked off the studio set, leaving a stunned Cronkite behind.

Bobby Kennedy, in the control room, turned to Hewitt. “You son of a bitch!” he screamed. “You told me you weren't going to ask him any questions on religion!”

“No, I didn't!” Hewitt yelled back.

Bobby Kennedy stormed out of the control room, grabbed his brother, and left the building. Hewitt walked out onto the set to talk to Cronkite.

“What the hell happened?” Cronkite asked.
“Did
you tell Kennedy I wouldn't ask the Catholic question?”

“I told him we were going to ask him the question,” Hewitt said.

Cronkite looked at Hewitt; he didn't know what to think. He knew the producer's penchant for exaggeration and his desperation for a good interview, and wondered who was telling the truth. He hoped it might have been a misunderstanding, but harbored doubts that would linger for many years after.

When asked about it recently, Hewitt remembered the incident but says it was between Kennedy and Cronkite. “I know he and Bobby had a fight,” Hewitt says of Cronkite. What about the promise Cronkite had described? “I never said that in my life,” Hewitt replied. “Never ever said that in my life.” In fact, Hewitt says, he took issue with those who predicted that “bingo games and confessionals” would follow the election of a Catholic to the White House. “I had nothing to do with any of this,” Hewitt continues. “Bobby Kennedy and Cronkite . . . I had nothing to do with that. That was nothing [Cronkite] ever blamed me for.” However, it was difficult to dismiss the Cronkite version; the Most Trusted Man in America told the story in a March
2003
interview with considerable recall of details.

 

During the same campaign, Hewitt the showman produced a singular event that forever changed the American political landscape. On September
26
,
1960
, he directed the first of two debates between the two presidential candidates, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Historians now generally concede that Kennedy changed the course of history that night. Theodore H. White, in
The Making of the President 1960
,
described Nixon in the debate as “half-slouched, his ‘Lazy Shaves' powder faintly streaked with sweat, his eyes exaggerated hollows of blackness, his jaws, jowls and face drooping,” whereas the well-tanned Kennedy “appeared to be the pillar of robust good health.” Hewitt had offered Nixon the services of a professional makeup artist; the dour Nixon had declined. Although the debate's production came under Hewitt's exclusive control, he ultimately had little to do with the course of that night beyond doing his job. But his presence there, recorded on film and in photographs (including one on the cover of his
2002
memoir), has nevertheless contributed to Hewitt's reputation as a part of television history.

The debate created the central story of the
1960
presidential campaign—and demonstrated yet again Hewitt's skill at being at the center of big stories and major news events. He had no trouble locating the nexus of drama, especially in politics.

In those days conventions could still alter the course of presidential politics, and Hewitt covered them more like a Hollywood movie than a political event. He positioned cameras everywhere on the convention floor, in the offices of the candidates, on the ground floors of the hotels, and outside for street scenes. He made sure no image was left unrecorded and then choreographed the coverage from inside the control room—choosing on the fly among dozens of shots to tell the ongoing, unscripted story. He monitored events and made sure that crucial characters stayed on screen. He developed roles for his correspondents, assigning them delegations and keeping them in place down on the floor with microphones and headsets, constantly reporting up to Cronkite in the anchor booth.