Audition (17 page)

Philippe owned a big, rambling house in Peekskill, New York, and we went there almost every weekend. He was an avid gardener, and my job was to plant new beds of pachysandra. Gardening is not my strong suit—I didn’t know pachysandra from poison ivy—but I dutifully spent hours on my hands and knees mucking about in the dirt. And I learned how to plant pachysandra. I wish instead I had learned about wines, but education was not on my agenda with Philippe.

The magical parts were not the daytimes but the evenings. Philippe had an old, quite crotchety but warm-hearted housekeeper who tended the house, along with a humorous young man who helped out on the estate. Philippe would cook us the most delicious meals, complemented always by a bottle of the finest wine, and we would linger at the table, in front of a roaring fire, talking and laughing. Then we would go to bed. Philippe, older and more experienced than the men I had known, was a great lover, tender and passionate. I grew up sexually. We never spent the whole night in the same room, however, because I didn’t want the housekeeper to think that we slept together, so I would jump up every morning and tiptoe into the guest room. (What can I say? It was a different era.)

There was never company. Our weekends were just for the two of us.

After a year or so Philippe and I occasionally did talk about getting married, which I may have done had he pursued it. I was in love, probably for the first time. But Philippe dragged his heels about getting a divorce. Instead he decided it would be a good idea if we rented two apartments next to each other. I didn’t think that was a good idea at all. So we meandered along with no real goal and, as so often happens, the relationship eventually cooled. Philippe finally did divorce his wife, but by then it was over between us. For a couple of years, however, our time together had been extraordinarily romantic and very sophisticated. Like the Cole Porter song, it was “Just One of Those Things.” And looking back, I have only two regrets. One, my French didn’t improve. And two, I never did learn a thing about wine.

Throughout my relationship with Philippe, I would from time to time still hear from Roy Cohn. Roy didn’t take well to rejection, so he was trying a typical ruse. He was attempting to take control of my life by buying his way in.

Roy had taken over Lionel trains in 1959 from a distant relative, the inventor Joshua Lionel Cowen. Owning the wildly popular electric train sets and their many accessories, like smoke pellets and operating grade crossings, had been the dream of almost every American child for decades. But sales were declining at the end of the fifties as children turned more to model cars and airplanes. Lionel needed a PR boost and Roy, because of me, gave the account to Tex McCrary, Inc. I was still trying, in general, to avoid him, but I was grateful because the account gave me a huge boost in prestige at the firm. (It didn’t, however, give me a bonus. The agency never offered and, afraid of losing my job, I never asked.)

The trains also gave me yet another boost—with the
Today
show. The host of the popular morning show was still Dave Garroway, with the ubiquitous J. Fred Muggs. And guess what Dave Garroway loved above all else? Lionel trains. At Christmas he accepted from us an elaborate train setup, and then he played on the air with the new locomotives and cabooses and whatever other Lionel products I kept supplying for free. In those days before payola became a no-no, he’d then take them all home. Nobody cared, least of all me. The publicity for our client was worth all the free cabooses he wanted.

Beyond Dave Garroway’s obsession with Lionel trains, the
Today
show was one of the most receptive outlets for all our clients’ products. For most of the time I worked at Tex McCrary,
Today
had to broadcast three hours of live programming every day, although it was on the air for only two hours in the morning. Videotape technology didn’t arrive until 1958, and the first hour in the East had to be repeated for the Midwest and the West. Few guests on the show were willing to wait around for an hour to repeat their interviews or demonstrations or whatever for the third hour—a very different mind-set from today, when TV publicity is all-important—so
Today
needed every gimmick it could find to fill the time. I supplied many of them.

The agency’s biggest coup, however, was orchestrated by my boss, Bill Safire. The setting was the American Exhibition in Moscow in 1959. Bill’s client was All-State Properties, Inc., a mass manufacturer of affordable tract homes. And the principal characters were none other than Nikita Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union, and Richard Nixon, vice president of the United States.

Are you old enough to remember the famous “kitchen debate” between the number one Communist in the world and the number one capitalist? Well, it took place in Moscow because Bill Safire somehow managed to maneuver Khrushchev and Nixon, who were touring the exhibition, into All-State’s model all-electric kitchen. There, against the backdrop of our client’s ideal kitchen, complete with stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, and washing machine, with flashbulbs flashing and television cameras whirring, Nixon extolled the quality of affordable housing for workers in America. The images ran on the front pages of every newspaper the next day and led the television news. Brilliant.

I had nothing to do with Bill’s coup in Moscow, but it certainly made it easier for me to get our clients’ products into the media and on television. It was not very satisfying work, but I was not in a position to be choosy, since I desperately needed the paycheck for my own expenses as well as to send whatever I could to my parents. I liked Bill Safire enormously, but I felt I was underpaid for all my hard work, so I worked up the nerve to ask him for a raise. He turned me down. Instead of money he gave me a lecture about supply and demand. Women looking for a job, he said, were in large supply. The demand for such women, however, was slim. Therefore I should be grateful for what I had. I was. No raise.

He understood me in a way I didn’t understand myself. My insecurity led me to be a workaholic, to eat lunch at my desk, never to miss a day of work, to make more and still more phone calls on behalf of our clients. I rarely relaxed, which he obviously noticed. That is why, at an office Christmas party, his gift to me was a sheer, black, shorty nightgown with matching lace panties. I was somewhat embarrassed but also delighted. Today when we are so concerned with sexual harassment such a gift might not be well received. But given my relationship with Bill, I knew that he didn’t mean the gift as a come-on. We never dated, rather it was a sweet way of noting that underneath my no-nonsense veneer I was still a female, maybe even a sexy one, and I should enjoy it.

Save for my time with Philippe, however, I rarely indulged in enjoyment. I couldn’t. I worried constantly about my family and the tax case hanging over my father’s head.

It took a year but my father gradually regained his strength and somehow remained the showman he’d always been. While the tax case in New York dragged on in the courts for two years, he was hired to produce lavish shows at the fashionable Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach. That led to a five-year contract at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas, where he imported the entire Folies-Bergère from Paris beginning on New Year’s Eve in 1959. The Folies-Bergère was an enormously popular French extravaganza with beautiful showgirls, elaborate costumes, and entertainers who sang, danced, juggled, and in general put on a terrific show. It was just up my father’s alley. He knew the managers of the Folies-Bergère and his introduction of it to Las Vegas was a big event. The audiences, accustomed primarily to just one big attraction, loved the whole show. My father now was definitely back on his feet, even if no longer his own boss. But he still owed a great deal of money to the IRS.

Before he found work in Las Vegas, my father had occasionally come to New York. When he did, he stayed in my small apartment, sleeping on the other twin bed. I didn’t like this. I had never shared a room with either of my parents, and it made me uncomfortable, but there was no extra money for a hotel. The one time my father did stay at a hotel I got such a scare when I telephoned him and there was no answer. I kept calling. No answer. Terrified that he had attempted suicide again, I ran to the hotel and banged on the door. My father, rubbing sleep from his eyes, opened it. He was fine. Just sleeping late, by habit.

He spent a lot of time trying to work out his tax problems, and I thought he had succeeded. He certainly made it sound as if everything was working out. But then, in the fall of 1960, came another frightening phone call from my mother.

I was expecting my father in New York when my mother called from Las Vegas to say he wouldn’t be coming. When I asked her why, she said, in that tone of voice I had come to dread: “He can’t. Or he’ll be arrested.”

Arrested!

I sat down hard while she told me that he had missed the latest in the endless series of court dates in New York and a warrant had been issued for his arrest. He’d told the court that he couldn’t afford any more trips to New York, but the judge was evidently unmoved.

I couldn’t believe it. My father a criminal? Unable to return to the city he loved and to which he had contributed so much joy? I felt sick. I didn’t know what to do. I realized I was shivering and drew a hot bath. I was in the tub, crying, when the phone rang. It was Roy Cohn.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. Lord knows why, but I was so upset I told him what my mother had said. “Get dressed and come meet me and we’ll talk about it,” he said. I did. For years my friends have wondered why I became a loyal friend of Roy’s. I remember Walter Cronkite once asking if he could put a very personal question to me. What was the question? “How could you possibly have had Roy Cohn for a friend?”

I understood—and still understand—how people ask such a question. Here is the answer I have never given before. When I got out of the bath and dressed, I met with Roy and told him exactly what was happening. A week after that meeting, the charges against my father were dropped. Did Roy perhaps pay the back taxes himself? I doubt it. He had strong connections and friendships with most of the major judges in New York. Roy’s father, Albert Cohn, had himself been a judge. Over the years, for one reason or another, Roy had done a lot of favors for various judges and politicians. So a much more likely scenario is that he asked for a favor in return. And got it.

I don’t know exactly how he did it. I asked but Roy would never tell me. All I know is that, because of Roy, the arrest warrant against my father was dropped and the court case was settled. My father’s reputation was restored. He was able to come back to New York. Forget the ethics of the matter. We are talking about my father. After what he did, Roy had my gratitude and loyalty from then on.

Television 102 and a Strange Marriage Proposal

D
O YOU BELIEVE
in fate? Luck? Timing? All of the above? Well, I must, because today I might well be the president of an important head-hunting employment agency recruiting executive secretaries and prospective CEOs. I think I might have been really good at that job, but fate, luck, or timing intervened. Here’s how it happened.

By 1961 I had more or less had it at Tex McCrary. I was tired of trying to sell clients who were not suitable for television. My pal and boss, Bill Safire, had left the agency to open his own PR firm. (He would later fold that company to go to work as a speechwriter for then president Richard Nixon.) There still seemed to be nothing for me in television, so I took myself to a top employment agency, deciding it was about time to start a new career. Instead of sending me out to other companies, they offered me a job right there to go to work for them, screening and hiring secretaries. They gave me a couple of days to decide, and I was on the verge of saying yes. Just think of what a good interviewer I would have made, probing prospective secretaries. Instead, while I was trying to make my mind up, I got an offer from
Redbook.
The magazine had heard about my work at Tex McCrary, Inc., and was offering me more money to publicize their articles. So I said okay, thinking, I’m back in the public relations trap again but at least it’s a trap I know.

So off to
Redbook
, where I was bored and somewhat unhappy, but it didn’t matter. Working was not a choice for me but a necessity, and this was the best job I could get. I often think of all the men—they were mostly men at the time—who had to work at jobs they really hated until they got to the next step, the next promotion. Unlike some of my women friends who had jobs but could quit or get married if things got tedious, the men and I
had
to work. It’s all changed now, of course, and many women face the same need to earn an income. But back then the burden fell mostly to men, whether or not they enjoyed what they were doing.

I didn’t much enjoy what I was doing at
Redbook
, but it wasn’t torture. Then, one absolutely wonderful day, I got a call from the new producer of the
Today
show, Fred Freed, saying he needed a writer. It wouldn’t be a long-term job, he told me, it was for a limited time on a limited segment, but if I wanted to try it, it was mine. Did I want to try it? Is the pope Catholic?!

I realized I was giving up a steady job for something that was short-term, but I loved working in television—the creativity, the interesting people, the whole atmosphere. And unlike in PR, I wasn’t constantly selling. Moreover, I felt if I worked hard and did well, I just might be offered a permanent position on the staff.

I should remind you that I had known Fred Freed back in my CBS days. He was one of the producers on the morning show I wrote for. Fred would go on to be one of the great creators of television documentaries, but then he had been brought in to revitalize the
Today
show, which was getting slightly draggy. Another footnote about Fred: He was also the father of a young producer I would later work with on ABC’s newsmagazine,
20/20.
Her name is Kayce Freed Jennings. She is also the widow of Peter Jennings. When I worked for her father, I remember Kayce as an adorable little girl. Now she is a strong and talented woman. Anyway, back to 1961.