Personal History (93 page)
Authors: Katharine Graham
In fact, my relationship with Ben was solidified forever by Watergate. I relied heavily on him throughout. More than ever he was the gung-ho, charismatic leader, remaining cool and courageous no matter what we were hit with. As Woodward later said, “There was always a sense that Bradlee’s our leader. He’s the guy who’s planting the flag.” Ben’s personality was and is so “up” that I would go to see him sometimes just because a visit was reassuring. In addition, I almost always learned something new from him.
Rumors swirled around us that I was going to get rid of him, that he had gone too far in reporting Watergate. When this kind of rumor circulates, denials win you nothing; the rumors get recycled even though the person stays on and on. There were also numerous sexist comments on our relationship. Somehow it always seemed to be depicted in exaggerated ways. For example, I wrote Tom Winship after a piece had appeared in the
Boston Globe
on Ben Bradlee and Abe Rosenthal, complaining, “[W]hy is it if a female publisher and a male editor get along, he is accused of stroking and she of being susceptible to manipulation?” The fact is, I always loved working with Ben, and this period—even with its many strains—was probably the most rewarding time of all.
In keeping with our established tradition of writing each other end-of-the-year letters, I wrote to Ben at the end of that momentous year of 1974. This letter summed up many of my innermost feelings about what we’d been through together:
This year I’m not going to wait for yours—because I began to think while dressing about the past year and by the time I got to my shoes I had to grab the pad and begin—as I thought of your remark yesterday afternoon that it was that time of year.
The first thing you and I have to do is separate myth from reality because after this year the myth will start to grow and reality will start to diminish even in our minds.
The reality is so much less pretentious but so apparently impossible to describe. And it really is much nicer because it’s human. You are now supposed to be a hero and I a heroine by many and the opposite by many. I think heroes and heroines are both vulgar and boring and usually lead that kind of lives. But when you tell people you were just doing your own thing in an admittedly escalated situation, they say, Ah, yes, etc.
So what are the realities?
They are so complicated of course because we have known each other and our lives have impinged on each other with almost Proustian coincidence, both closer and more distant than they’d think.
Closer because I am thinking of the shared Walter and Helen Lippmann type memories, the first tour at the Post, Phil and me seeing you and Jean in Paris, leading up obviously to the drama of Newsweek, followed by the horror years viewed so differently at the time and then Phil’s death. You have to remember at that time we hardly knew each other and certainly not in reality or very favorably either.
How could the rest have happened? It couldn’t ever again. We were still small enough as a company, still private, and so the impossible happened.… I with nothing more than a family feeling, a passion for newspapers and this newspaper in particular, (not the slightest clue about business, broadcasting or Newsweek—only negative vibes about the latter which was associated only with madness in my mind) took over this peculiar and charismatic entity.
Two years later you knocked—typically brashly, intuitively, humorously, rudely, perceptively, farsightedly, ballsily, and pushy as Hell. And because this was a not unfamiliar syndrome to me—and one whose merits and drawbacks I knew—I nodded a feeble assent (I guess that’s slightly exaggerated I say hastily for all those future fucking Columbia Journalism Review stories). But there’s a kind of core truth to the scene.
Then came another—the years of learning, of stumbling, of fun, of some achievement, progress, mixed with big smelly eggs on the floor—laid and cleaned up or just shoved under the rug until the stain soaked through. The fascinating thing—and the thing to remember, is that if you have enough going for you in the way of momentum and luck, everyone looks at the developing pattern on the rug whether it’s an Oriental design or the stain from the egg, and says, “What a beautiful rug.” And pretty soon we’re telling ourselves, “It’s a hell of a rug we’ve made”—and even funnier, it is. But let’s always remember the stains, the unfinished work, with the total effect and the fun—my god, the fun. It’s unfair, who else has fun? And that’s my Christmas thanks to you, kid—more than even the Watergates, although that, too.
The things that people don’t know—that I know—are style, generosity, class and decency, as well as understanding of other people’s weaknesses.…
It was out of all these many things that Watergate evolved for you and for me and for the way it worked.
If there was one thing I thought of at the time it was a high wire over a canyon in which I almost couldn’t pull at your coattails and say “Are we all right, because if we’re not, look below.” It was
sort of like trying to talk to the pilot during a hairy landing. Not that I didn’t—and that you didn’t respond to the feverish “are we all rights?” and “whys?” …
And maybe one of the things it’s easy to forget in 1974, is that the answer was, we were not all right—we were righteous but mercifully stupid. We were only saved from extinction by someone mad enough not only to tape himself but to tape himself talking about how to conceal it. Well, who could have counted on that? Not you and not me.
Thank god for the reality, it will never be in any book or any cruddy movie. It’s much too good for that.…
Ben’s letter to me at the end of that year concluded: “We probably won’t live to see another year like 1974.” He was quite right.
E
ARLIER
, in the spring of 1974, at a time when the story had advanced considerably but was still months short of its dramatic conclusion, Woodward and Bernstein had published
All the President’s Men
, their first book on Watergate. The paperback rights alone sold for $1 million. Ironically, the million dollars came their way at the time of a strike by The Newspaper Guild. I vividly recall watching a news broadcast that showed the two of them leaving the building with their files, and I caused a stir with a rather acid remark about their being the only two people ever to have made a million dollars while on strike.
From the beginning there had been talk of a movie. Once Woodward and Bernstein sold the movie rights to
All the President’s Men
to Robert Redford, who intended to play Bob Woodward, there was a great deal of fun and funny speculation, both in the
Post
’s newsroom and elsewhere, about who would play whom in the movie. I jokingly told a group of circulation managers at an association meeting that I had been assured by the editors “that my role will be played by Raquel Welch—assuming our measurements jibe.”
In many ways, the idea of a movie scared me witless. Despite Redford’s assurances that he wanted to make a good movie about the First Amendment and freedom of the press, I was naturally nervous about having the image and reputation of the
Post
in the hands of a movie company, whose interests did not necessarily coincide with ours. I couldn’t visualize how he and his producers would deal with as complex an issue as press freedom in a dramatic story on the big screen.
Someone had to set the ground rules for what they could and couldn’t do. I was particularly concerned about the effect of the movie—and our portrayal in it—on the political scene. As public people, which by then
many of us at the
Post
were, we had no control over the use of our names, but there was a great deal of discussion in the beginning among all of us, our lawyers included, about whether the name of the
Post
should be used. Many of those on the business side of the company said no. Ben’s argument in favor of its use was one with which there was widespread agreement in the newsroom: “Whatever we’re going to get, we’re going to get whether they call it the
Post
or the
Bugle
.”
To help calm my nerves and provide some assurances that the producers had every good intention, Bob and Carl brought the Redfords to breakfast at my house in May of 1974, just as plans for the movie were getting under way. I should have been pleased and interested to meet Redford, but we didn’t get along, thanks partially, I’m sure, to my own defensive crouch—the result of all my concerns, however real or imagined. He knew how much I wanted to keep a low profile both for me and for the paper. On the other hand, Alan Pakula, the director, and I became great friends and have remained so.
Redford later gave an interview describing our meeting at breakfast:
It was brittle, that’s the best way I can describe it. She was gracious but tense. There was a definite tight-jawed, blueblood quality to Graham that cannot be covered by any amount of association with Ben Bradlee or other street types.… She said she did not want her own name or that of the
Post
used. I told her that was impossible. She was a public figure and in its own way so was the
Post
. I respected her for not wanting her privacy invaded … but we weren’t interested in her personal life. And I was puzzled. If she wanted to maintain so low a profile, why did she keep making speeches and accepting awards?
Ben sent me a copy of this acerbic interview, to which I responded, “I don’t want to be too neurotic but it reinforces paranoia, no? … He’s got a point about my ambivalence, which was and is real.”
I was already worried about the effect of the use of the
Post
’s name when I opened a magazine one day and read that the movie would be filmed in the
Post’s
city room. Within minutes, I was on the phone to Bob Woodward, to whom I exploded with outrage at the idea of our newsroom as a backdrop for the movie. Among all the evils I was imagining was how little work would get done under such circumstances. Bob told me he’d never heard me so angry. In the end, we didn’t allow filming in the newsroom; Redford’s people had arrived independently at the conclusion that it would be too disruptive for them as well. Instead, an exact duplicate of the
Post
’s newsroom, including the stickers on Ben’s secretary’s desk, was created in Hollywood (for a mere $450,000, it was reported), and in the
interests of authenticity, several tons of assorted papers and trash from desks throughout our newsroom were shipped to California for props. We did cooperate to the extent of allowing the filmmakers to shoot the entrance to the newspaper building, elevators, and certain production facilities, as well as a scene in the parking lot.
At one point, I got a message from Redford that they had decided not to shoot the one scene in the movie in which I was to be portrayed. I was told that no one understood the role of a publisher, and it was too extraneous to explain. Redford imagined that I would be relieved, which I was, but, to my surprise, my feelings were hurt by being omitted altogether, except for the one famous allusion to my anatomy.
The next I heard from Redford was a phone call saying he was sending a preliminary print of the film for us to see, and that we could still ask for changes, which I felt was a charade. In March 1976 several of us went to the viewing in Jack Valenti’s screening room at the Motion Picture Association. Because we were all so nervous, we sat in pockets around the room. When the movie ended, there was dead silence. Finally, Redford got up and said, “Jesus, somebody say something. You must have some reaction to it.” Then there was a lot of nervous babble.
In fact, I loved the movie. I wrote Redford afterwards, sending the letter via Woodward:
I suddenly realized that the impact of the movie as we saw it, with you and with each other, was so great and we were all so tense, that I have never told you what I thought of it. It’s just extraordinary in every way.
You really did what you told me you were trying to do—and I thought impossible—but you did it. It proves a lot of things that defy reason. My reasoning was that the story couldn’t be laid out straight, because if you did, it would bore people. And if you had to hype it, it would hurt the paper. My other concerns for the paper and all our lives were no doubt overdrawn but real. I’m only sorry about them because I’m afraid I let them interfere with the kind of simple, direct relations I usually enjoy and value.
So I want to be very sure you know that I deeply admire what you did in creating “All the President’s Men.”
It pictures Carl and Bob almost, eerily, as I perceive them. They are tenacious, able, complex, intelligent and wise beyond their years, funny and nice. Incidentally, they have also withstood fame sensibly and decently.
It really does tell people what a newspaper is like—the important thing I thought you couldn’t do.
… We are grateful for the vision you had, for all the incredible
hard work, financial investment, passion for your profession, consuming attention to detail—all those things we all strive for—and most of all the love and care that makes the movie one of which we will all be proud always.
To pile one irony on another, the world premiere of the movie took place in April at the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center, next door to the Watergate, and President Ford sent me tickets for the presidential box, along with the key to the refrigerator in the box, which contained champagne for me and my guests with his compliments.
The movie’s effect on us at the
Post
was electric, yet a little like a bite from the apple of discord. Maybe it wasn’t just the movie but, rather, the outcome of Watergate itself. Sometimes the gods give us too much and then exact a price. I suggest this discord because the portrayals in the movie of the roles various people had played had a negative effect on several real-life relationships. The movie gave everything to Ben, largely because that made for a simpler story line and because he was played by Jason Robards, but of course that wasn’t Ben’s fault. Howard Simons was made quite bitter by the movie. He was poorly treated—all for the sake of clarity and simplicity. Much of what he had actually done throughout Watergate was divided up in the movie between Ben and Harry Rosenfeld. Barry Sussman was left out altogether, which must have hurt his feelings even more than mine were hurt by having been omitted. Alan Pakula later justified my exclusion by pointing out that I figured only marginally in the book as well.