Sidebars

Waiting for Gojoe....by Bob Sanders

Timing, as the saying goes, is everything and that undoubtedly explains my recent series of failures to find Joe Scarborough on his "Morning Joe" television show.

Slotted on MSNBC beginning at 3 a.m. (PCT), the three-hour program is my Plan A when I find a return to sleep challenging.  Searching for Scarborough has been something like "Waiting for Godot," Samuel Beckett's absurdest play in which nothing happens while the main characters anticipate the arrival of Godot who never appears.  Let's call my Joe no show "Waiting for Gojoe."

The interruptions of my sleep were occurring about every fifth night or so.  Scarborough simply wasn't showing up whenever I flipped on "Morning Joe" and there were a number of possible reasons.  Had the former Florida U.S. Congressman returned to hometown Pensacola preparatory to running for public office?  Never in memory has any former politician shown greater evidence of a longing for, in his case, those good old days featuring Newt Gingrich as House Speaker and his Contract With  America--proudly signed by Scarborough.  What a contrast with today; yesterday's Contractors, who screwed things up, have been replaced by today's Tea Party leaving in the dust such forever pols like Scarborough whose evidence of GOP loyalty consists largely of trumpeting the triumphs of Ronald Reagan.

There were other possibilities for Scarborough's absences including a resumption of talks with CNN or CBS regarding a move away from MSNBC.  The original rumors came last year on the heels of "Morning Joe" executive producer Chris Licht's leaving NBC to take over the always foundering "Morning Show."  Self-serving like most rumors of its kind, they coincided with contract negotiations involving the major "Morning Joe" hosts.

Those devilish contracts nearly ended Joe and Mike Brzezinski's show about a year after it began in 2007 when Mika learned Joe was making 14 times her salary.  There were a number of factors involved including Joe's positioning as producer plus Mika's having joined NBC after being fired from CBS.  A then recent book published by her with the title, Knowing Your Value, was a bit awkward and she successfully battled for a re-worked contract after producer Joe, the guy who underpaid her, casually gave her one of his paychecks.  Joe, obviously, didn't want to lose Mika.

Another plausibility for Joe's no show might involve that very odd intern death back in Walton Beach, not far from Pensacola.  Had the cops finally come up with some answers to questions about Lori Klausutus' mysterious death 11 years ago?  Klausutus, 28, a Scarborough employee, was found in the congressman's office early one morning.  The shoddiness of Florida police work was no better then than the current Trayvon Martin shooting death in Sanford.  The cops all too quickly determined that Klausutus, a long-distance runner in outstanding condition, had fainted striking her head twice on a desk.  The cause of death, heart arrhythmia, was determined by a discredited medical examiner apparently incapable of wondering how a head could strike a desk twice.

Scarborough, scornful of the media these days, back then also was publisher of the Redneck Riviera's Independent Sun and he quickly resigned his ties to the newspaper and his seat in Congress.  The man people now refer to as "Morning Joe" had initiated divorce proceedings two years earlier from a wife of 13 years.

A much more likely reason for Scarborough's disappearing act would be occasional guest appearances by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Mika's father and national security adviser during the Carter administration.  Do not invite Zbigniew and Scarborough to the same party.  The latter plays smart ass to a man who treats the show's host much as an un-wanted son-in-law.  Their relationship peaked late in 2008 when Brzezinski called him "stunningly superficial" for his assessment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Brzezinski's umbrage was very reminiscent of Jack Paar's Alexander king, maybe the best TV guest ever.

"Morning Joe," close to celebrating its fifth anniversary, has strange origins even for television and began with Brzezinski doing a news segment from beautiful downtown Secaucus, New Jersey for Scarborough, then hosting a failing "Scarborough Country" program from Florida.  Informed by friends that Mika had used mocking tones about "Scarborough Country" during her feed to the show, Joe was intrigued, looked her up and, as they say, it was just a matter of time.  That time came when Don Imus, host of "Imus in the Morning" and the prior occupant of the "Morning Joe" time slot, was fired for making insensitive remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team.  We can measure the true power of a broadcast personality on the basis of whether or not they get fired for serious indiscretions.  Imus was gone quickly for what was paltry compared to Rush Limbaugh's recent disgraceful series of rants leveled at a female law student.

Keith Olbermann, who left MSNBC last year for the Current Channel, continues to suggest that Scarborough's sharp elbows are being thrown all over NBC as he challenges credentials of guests on shows other than his own, now augmented by a talk pack of nearly 30. 

There is an odd chemistry, not yet fully realized, that exists between Mika and Joe.  The fractious relationship of "The Odd Couple" has been suggested more than once although it seems to this viewer that whatever magic exists is much more reminiscent of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn although Trace rarely did the kind of off-putting body language now so seemingly intrinsic to the Scarborough persona.  Arms across the chest, Scarborough seems committed to sweaters and other casual attire to set himself off from the guests, regular and otherwise, who bring to the table far too much about politics--particularly the strange people who have been attempting to unseat President Obama.  Third host Willie Geist seems to be on board mostly to keep beady-eyed Joe from running roughshod over Mika.

Of late, the political pickings have been so sparse that clothing worn by regulars and guests has been seized upon as slim and obvious subject matter.  Three hours a day is a long, long time.  Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post and clearly a sartorial dandy, was a bit put out recently by show regular Mike Barnicle whose clothes might best be described as the kind of go-to-hell casual worn by far too many men in Bellingham, Washington, a serious candidate for dress down capitol of this country.  I know about these things because I live there. 

With my sleeping habits much improved during very recent days, I have managed to note that Pat Buchanan is no longer a "Morning Joe" regular.  Pat, who has managed to maintain guest status on the decibel impressive "The McLaughlin Group," recently dashed off a book in which he finally put in writing what he has been saying for many years: he's an out and out racist.  Good luck with the book, Pat.

Other people have come, gone and, in one case, come back.  The comebacker is Mark Halperin who got cut from the talk team last year when he called the President a dick.  To be perfectly accurate, the quote was "sort of a dick the other day."  Poor Obama gets blamed for everything: gas prices, wars, being a Muslim (according to one poll, 52 percent of Mississippi residents believe so), a questionable birth certificate (45 percent of Republicans are birthers), and, probably, bad asshood for putting a hex on second-seeded University of Missouri by picking the Tigers to be one of March Madness' final four.  Missou was knocked off in the first round by 15th seed Norfolk State.

The dick caller returned to "Morning Joe" after a month's banishment and everything, as my dad used to say, is copacetic.  A Time senior political analyst, Halperin is co-author of Game Change with fellow "Morning Joe" regular John Heilemann.  It's an inside look at what went wrong when John McCain and others decided to put Sarah Palin on the 2008 GOP ticket.  Made into a feature length film, it is currently playing on HBO.

In truth, Halprin should have received a stiffer sentence than a month's dismissal not so much for disparaging the President but for being so inaccurate with political predictions.  Among his gaffes: insisting that both Palin and fellow lightweight Donald Trump were serious GOP ontenders; suggesting that McCain's mid-campaign week's return to Washington "won the week" for the Arizona Senator, and just about any crystal balling found in his (2006) book, The Way to Win.  Co-author John Harris, co-founder of Politico, has to share the blame for that turkey.

Halperin's castigation that morning of the President created a momentary pall upon the show's usual cocktail party atmosphere (Starbucks served, of course) with Scarborough expressing agitation that a new producer was unable to activate a seven-second delay.  Such are the vicissitudes of broadcasting when a producer can't punch the right button.

The essence of "Morning Joe," clubby yet rife with the distinct possibility of someone walking in off the street to take exception to Scarborrough's brand of conservatism heavy with wish for the halcyon days of Reaganism, may very well be on the right track.  The challenge is that the rigors of doing it three hours a day for five days a week may wind up boring the hell out of viewers but that would have happened by now.  "Morning Joe," with less than half the audience of the hardly scintillating "Fox & Friends," continues to stay ahead of CNN in the time slot.  Certainly, the casual roundtable banter is a welcome contrast to the all too traditional panel stuff seen in short segments on "Meet the Press," "This Week," "Fox News Sunday" and "Face the Nation," soon to expand to 60 minutes.

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Sarah Revisited....by Bob Sanders

 

Anyone who thought Sarah Palin was simply going to disappear from public consciousness has been convinced otherwise by two cable films during recent days.

The first, "Game Change," debuted this past weekend on HBO and it must have been tempting to those responsible for creating the film's trailers to borrow from the marketing maneuvers of Jack Nicholson's 1980 "The Shining."  Yes, Sarah is back.

Perverse pleasures admitted, this viewer has missed Palin and it may very well be due to the obvious contrasts she offers to the rag tag collection of politicians who for far too long have flailed away at nailing down the Republican Party's presidential nomination.  Mitt Romney, challenged by Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul, simply can't make the sale to a party base moved to the right somewhere in the general vicinity of Attila the Hun.  All this, of course, has come after semi-final rounds during which we were introduced to the strange campaigns of Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, and poor Jon Huntsman, he of the nice-guy-what-am-I-doing- here? persona.  Never in the past 100 years of the election process has the American public been confronted by such a collection of boring possibilities.  Never has the other party been given such a leg up while 20 debates put audiences to sleep.

Palin's remarkable selection as John McCain's running mate is the focal point of "Game Change."  The film is based upon the best-seller by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.  Palin, as played by Julianne Moore, initially is drawn as a sympathetic character decidedly over-matched as McCain's advisers determine she is a logical choice as the Arizona Senator's running mate.  Moore's portrayal of Palin invites comparisons to the wickedly funny Tina Fey impressions on "Saturday Night Live."  As good as Fey's you-betcha takes were of Palin, Moore's provide much greater insight as we experience her strengths (connecting with crowds) to her weaknesses (foreign affairs about which she knows next to nothing).  It is through Moore 's nuanced performance that we see the many Palins: fragile, sullen, magnetic, and vain.  The pit bull mom may not have much upstairs but she appears to have a vast collection of hockey jerseys.

Woody Harrelson, as campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, gives another outstanding performance as he moves from enthusiasm for Palin to a realization that five days were simply not enough time to vet the Alaska governor.  Ed Harris is splendid while offering a compassionate portrayal of McCain.  Harris and Harrelson, both compiling impressive bodies of work, have become two of our very best film actors.

What is particularly intriguing about "Game Change" are the sympathetic roles played by the advisers who, much like race horse bettors given a sure thing in a four-horse race, are aghast as their filly stumbles out of the gate and at all the turns.  Often with media backgrounds, advisers in a political story are people in the shadows, rarely gaining audience rapport or even interest.  Senior adviser Nicolle Wallace, played by Sarah Pauley, bears the brunt of Palin mistakes and malice; Schmidt's "explanation to Palin about the why of not allowing her to give a concession speech is a classic.

Something quite different in Palinology may be observed in "The Undefeated," like "Game Change," inspired by a book.  Going Rogue, "written" by the then jobless governor having fled Juneau, was Palin's explanation of how things happened.  The bad show business people, led by Bill Maher and Matt Damon, are introduced.  The best line is that of ex-New York mayor Ed Koch who, in describing Palin as "plucky, perky," then adds, "and she scares the hell out of me."

First viewed last July, the documentary comes off as an infomercial rather inexpertly cut on somebody's dinner table.  The guilty are director/writer Stephen K. Bannon and the late Andrew Breitbart whose producer credits are augmented by appearance snippets enabling the audience to better understand Palin's brilliance.  He is joined by conservative talk show host Mark Levin and others as the banal product unwinds providing explanation of the box office failure following theatrical release.  It is currently playing on the ReelzChannel as what can only be regarded as a curiosity piece.

One of the reasons for it being a curiosity is its frantic pace and helter-skelter use of very low grade digital video of a lesser quality than YouTube.  Be assured that when the bad guys are offered up as depraved contrasts to the self-appointed mama grizzly, you can count on either stock footage of good old boys in a smoke-filled room or an incessantly brooding film score.  The feel of much of the material is that it is a collection of out takes clipped from promotional film shot for "Sarah Palin's Alaska" whose run on The Learning Channel mercifully has been completed.  There are always re-runs for the Palin-addicted.

Another of the oddities of Bannon's love letter to Palin is the paltry amount of time spent on the presidential election although her considerable triumph, an acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention, gets a lot and it's Sarah at her best, by golly.  John McCain is barely recognized.  Hardly a master of subtlety, Bannon tells us that government is wasteful, then gives us three shots of money swirling down a toilet.

We never see Palin inThe Rogue: Searching for Sarah Palin, Joe McGinniss's wickedly amusing and sometimes frightening six months spent living next door to the remarkable woman who threatened to become a heartbeat from the Presidency.  McGinniss is not new to Alaska having researched the critically acclaimed Going to Extremes  there in 1977.  McGinniss does make it clear that, in his opinion, the Palinized Wasilla and much of Alaska is full of people thoroughly fed up with Palin.

In an unusual bit of good fortune, McGinniss, having determined that Alaska's most famous resident was worth a book, was offered a rental next door to Palin.  The mere beating of such odds strongly suggests Palin has a lot of enemies in Alaska in general and Wasilla in particular.  In investigative journalist fashion much more Confidential  than New Yorker, McGinniss gives us Sarah: having a fling with an NBA basketball player; doing drugs back when with First Dude Todd; coming up with easily doubted stories about the birth of son Trig suggesting she is not his mother; and as being committed to religious control of government in spite of not being sufficiently devout.  Oh, yes, the Palin family in all its dysfunctional glory is on board and, as described by McGinniss, not pretty.

She may be guilty of all his charges but McGinniss weakens his case with a disconcerting bitchy quality to his reportage and there are far too many stories told by "a friend," "one resident," and "a former resident."

On the other hand, if only one-quarter of McGinniss's stories can weather a scrutiny closer than the author's he said, she said conclusions, then Sarah Palin is, indeed, one of our major oddities worthy of the Koch quote about scaring the hell out of us.

McGinniss strikes just the right note with his last two paragraphs: What should never have been more than a freaky sideshow performed on a carnival midway was transformed by John McCain's desperation into what many still seem to see as the greatest show on earth.

Actually, it's long past time to strike the tent.

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"Boomerang"....reviewed by Bob Sanders

 

With the world going broke as a result of a tsunami of cheap credit extended between 2002 and 2008, some outstanding writers have stepped forward to provide a great many explanations of how it all happened.  Andrew Sorkin's splendid Too Big to Fail is a tour de force of Wall Street meltdowns, House of Cards finds William Cohen detailing the last 10 days of Bear Stearns, while The Greatest Trade Ever is a look at John Paulson and his bet against home prime loans.  As good as these books are, they lack world scope.  

Offering a different approach is Michael Lewis whose Boomerang offers insight based upon national characteristics of a strange collection of world-wide financial experts whose inane antics provide the book's subtitle: Travels in the New Third World.

Lewis writes funny about a very serious subject; while it would be easy to pay too much attention to his devastating satire, he is far more significant while seeking out the why of the world's self-inflicted destruction.

Particularly damning is Lewis's sad hilarity about Greece where tax evasion is a birthright and where new governments immediately call off tax collectors.  As with other nations of financial fools highlighted in the book--Iceland, Ireland, and the U.S--it is the author's point that a nation's fiscal recklessness is closely tied to the desires of its people.  Both Greece and Iceland are particularly odd.  A room full of the world's greatest writers of satire could not come up with the story of the bedlam that is Greece where Vatopaidi monks, energized by a Father Ephraim, were awarded a lake for a 700-year-old destruction of their land by Catalans.  Even Spain got drawn into Ephraim's remarkable chutzpah and soon the monks were extracting money from a variety of sources.  Grants and more reparations were brought into play; through it all, the Vatopaidi monastery did what no other did: cultivate relations (very effectively) with the outside world.

The monks then traded the lake for government-owned properties and it wasn't long before another coup was performed through prayer given for the prime minister's right hand who had a life-threatening illness.  A miraculous recovery followed and, as the plot developed, the monks achieved further fiscal triumphs including the acquisition of property built for the 2004 Olympic Games.  It became clear that the monks were either simple con men or the savviest businessmen extent.  Peter Doukas, a Ministry of Finance official and Lewis' initial monk contact, estimates he helped create for them a nine-bill-dollar trading profit.

Author Lewis exhibits his own chutzpah when he gains audience with a monk named Father Mathew from Wisconsin.  With the monks subjects of many lawsuits, Father Mathew tells Lewis: "Most people in Greece have this image of the abbot as a hustler."

Lewis' experiences in Iceland are almost as bizarre.  A tip-off occurs on page 1 when a representative of The International Monetary Fund explains how a nation of extremely well-to-do, well-educated, historically rational human beings had organized themselves to commit one of the single greatest acts of madness in financial history.  "You have to understand.  Iceland is no longer a country.  It is a hedge fund."

Stefan Alfsson is one of the more fascinating Icelanders.  A fisherman, Alfsson quit at age 30 to become a banker specializing in currency trading.  All the young people were doing it in the country whose population is 300,000 and Alfsson's customers were mostly fishermen.  The good times rolled with a rollicking flourish and Iceland became an adviser to companies on currency risk hedging.  When the kids were through with Iceland, three brand-new global-size banks had collapsed and the population learned its responsibility for $100 billion in banking losses works out to about $330,000 for each citizen.  That's in addition to tens of billions of dollars in personal losses from their own speculations including a stock market down 85 per-cent.  As Lewis points out, Iceland became the only nation on earth that Americans could point to and say, "Well, at least we didn't do that."

Another oddity is Ireland whose financial disaster, according to Lewis, "shared some things in common with Iceland's.  It was created by the sort of men who ignore their wives' suggestions that maybe they should stop and ask for directions, for example."  While Iceland's initial profit overflow bought foreign places like trophy companies in Britain, the Irish turned its profligacy inward.  They bought Irish land from each other with disastrous results.  Irish unemployment is at 14 per-cent, the budget deficit is now 32 per-cent of its GDP and the country's population is shrinking.

"Alone in a darkroom with a pile of money," writes Lewis, "Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom.  They'd been conditioned to grab as much as they could without thinking about the long-term consequences.  Afterward, the people on Wall Street would privately bemoan the low morals of the American people who walked away from their sub-prime loans, and the American people would express outrage at the Wall Street people who paid themselves a fortune to design the bad loans."

States like California face problems similar to those of Greece with ballooning pension obligations and employment costs a major fctor.  Lewis examines this nation's biggest state challenge by way of two interviews with former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger plus a frightening visit to that state's Vallejo, a bankrupt community where drastic cuts in human services are making the town of 112,000 unlivable.

Considerable pause for thought is offered by Lewis' somewhat upbeat conclusion: "When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things they can immediately afford.  They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, they'll figure it out.  They don't always do that.  But you can never rule out the possibility that they will.  As idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off."

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"Rin Tin Tin" by Susan Orlean...reviewed by Bob Sanders

 

Susan Orlean, whose The Orchid Thief  found the enormously able writer examining an obsession, is at it again with a nearly 100-year look at Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend.  Be advised that any fond memories of a dog will make it difficult for the reader to put down the unlikely tale of a man who masterminded the creation of what was billboarded as America's Greatest Movie Dog.

The obsession in Rin Tin Tin is that of the dog's owner and trainer, Lee Duncan, who found the celebrity canine on a World War I battlefield in France.  Duncan's extreme devotion to his dog is similar to John Laroche's intense attachment in The Orchid Thief.

Orlean weaves three story developments in telling the compelling tale of a dog who achieved public recognition that grew into the cult of Rin Tin Tin.  There's the story of Duncan's bonding with and training of the dog; the Hollywood part of the story as Rinty (as intimates called him) achieving greatness in silent pictures; then the super dog's TV career when producer Herbert B. Leonard re-introduced him to audiences.  With an eye for rich detail, Orlean explains how Rinty (there were a great many over the years totalling a singular icon) fit in with the transformation of dogs from work animals to pets.  "Keeping an animal in the house as a companion is so common now," she writes, "that it's easy to forget how fundamentally odd it is, and what a leap it must have been to share living quarters with a nonhuman life form just to have their company."

Abandoned first by his father, then his mother when he was six, Duncan lived in an orphanage three years before his mother retrieved him and an older sister.  Lacking the ability to make normal human interaction, Duncan became dependent upon animals for lasting bonds.  His single-mindedness in creating a legendary super dog and the author's pursuit of a sprawling story are the book's recurring themes.

It was in a shelled kennel in eastern France that Duncan stumbled upon a newborn litter of German shepherd pups.  In an unfinished memoir, Duncan wrote that Rinty "crept right into a lonesome place in my life and...became a part of me."  Although the dog was found in September, 1918, Rinty's greatness didn't become obvious until he was filmed in slow motion by a friend of Duncan's.  The footage of Rinty jumping over an obstacle nearly 12 feet high wound up on newsreels resulting in a Warner Bros. contract.

Rin Tin Tin's enormous silent film success was in 23 productions that saved the studio from bankruptcy on a regular basis. He was then the most famous dog in the world; at the height of his popularity, he was filmdom's number one box office star receiving 50,000 fan letters a month.  Duncan became very wealthy.

"A dog was at no disadvantage," writes Orlean, "to a human in silent film; both species had the same set of tools for telling a story--action, expression, gesture.  In fact, an animal acting without words looked natural and didn't fall into pantomime and exaggeration the way human actors in silent film often did." 

The original Rin Tin Tin died in 1932 and the Hollywood rumor mill had the dog dying in the arms of handy Jean Harlow who was living across the street.

Talkies were tough on Rinty whose contract was terminated shortly before the dog's death.  It wasn't until 1954 that Leonard brought him back in the huge TV success, "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin."  The show played in more than 70 countries and became so popular in the U.S. that nearly one-third of the television sets in the country were tuned to the show.

Leonard is one of many odd characters who wander in and out of Orlean's impressively researched story.  Caring nothing about dogs, Leonard sought out Duncan who held TV in low esteem.  It was Leonard, whose other tube triumphs include "Route 66" and "Naked City," who "antagonized everyone he ever knew," according to one insider as Orlean pieces together who did what to whom in those early days of TV production.  Some of Leonard's more significant battles are with Ralph Cohn, founder of Screen Gems and nephew of the outrageous Harry Cohn, head of parent company Columbia Pictures.  Leonard, whose extravagances included four wives and a gambling addiction (at least one studio assumed his losses contractually),  wound up sleeping in cars and homes of friends.  Orlean has to have so much Herb Leonard material that she must be tempted to crank out a book about him.  On the other hand, Sammy Glick in Hollywood has already been done.

One of the particularly insightful passages of Orlean's writing occurs near the book's end; more than anything else, it explains why she was so drawn to the dog:.."I was used to the idea that everything connected to Rin Tin Tin was full of happenstance and charm, lightning strikes of fortune and hairpin turns of luck; from a standstill, life around Rin Tin Tin always seemed to accelerate out of the depths of disappointment to a new place filled with possibility.  Just like that, wonderful things happened to someone who otherwise would have been luckless, friendless, abandoned.  This is what the story of Rin Tin had become in my mind--a myth--and why it had drawn me in, as it had drawn in all these other people.  The facts were all interesting, but they were mere armature; the rest was like an ancient legend, wondrous, lifting everything around it, as buoyant as a dream."

Orlean, a Clevelander and graduate of the University of Michigan, has been a New Yorker magazine writer since 1992.  The Orchid Thief, one of several books, formed the basis of a film script by Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze.  The film, Adaptation,   portrayed Orlean (played by Meryl Streep) as Laroche's lover and partner in a drug production operation in which orchids were transformed into a fictional psychoactive substance.

Now, go get the book if you haven't already.  Susan Orlean's pursuit of detail is extraordinary, her insight also at that level.  She is simply one of our very best writers.     

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"Such Interesting People"....reviewed by Bob Sanders

 

I seem to have come full circle public transportation-wise during these latter years.  I began early on in Lakewood, Ohio where I moved about as a youngster--first on the Detroit Avenue trolley, then the more upscale Clifton Boulevard ride.  The destination was nearly always downtown Cleveland and the movie houses featuring live entertainment including swing era bands such as Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and Count Basie.  I just remembered not to leave out Jimmie Lunceford.

Now, I'm retired living in Bellingham, Washington and using a free WTA pass available to those who have lasted at least 80 years.  WTA stands for Whatcom Transit Authority and I ride the #15 bus from the Cordata Station three times a week.  It's transportation that takes me within two blocks of a swim at the YMCA.  It's a 25-minute run each way and I manage to read round-trip except when kids with little to say somehow produce boisterous enthusiasms about such things as video games.  It's times like that that I realize how fortunate I've been to have lived most of my life during less techy crazed times.

When I became a working stiff, I still managed to use public transportation--first in Cleveland, then in St. Louis where I went to work for TV Guide in 1954.  Actually, I did St. Louis gigs twice eventually prompting a Canadian friend to observe: "Guess you couldn't get enough of the place the first time around, eh?"  It was after a transfer to Atlanta by the magazine that I turned to the automobile doing the same in Rochester, New York, the Quad Cities and Los Angeles to get to work.  Being without a car in Los Angeles is nearly impossible and I stayed with wheels there and for three more years when I went to work in Chicago for Playboy Enterprises.  That was in 1968.  While big cities offer plenty of auto shortcomings, the Chicago lake route south to my office at Playboy wasn't bad and involved indoor parking for $27 a month.  The parking customers were largely Playboy employees and I never tried to figure that one out.  Maybe someone owed Hefner.  I needed a car for the magazine where so many working hours were at night.  My perky '66 powder blue Mustang convertible, parked one night in front of Hefner's State Parkway home, was the only car in the neighborhood untouched when The Weathermen smashed windows during the Democratic National Convention.  The car's windshield had a Playboy logo.

Most of my 22 years in Chicago utilized public transportation.  Maybe the greatest plus about it, certainly to readers, is the opportunity it affords them.  I once figured out my Chicago Transit Authority trips from and to the Wilmette Station (parking there most of the time for 50 cents and a buck a pop for the CTA) enabled me to read more than 11,000 hours worth.   

One of my great joys has been talking with members of the media whose stories made me aware that the unique qualities of some of the characters in Robert J. Casey's Such Interesting People were reflected in some of my contemporaries.  I got to thinking about Casey and his book maybe a month ago and determined to re-read it.  My thanks to both the Bellingham Public Library for obtaining it and the University of Oregon Library in Eugene for the loan. 

 Published in 1943 by Bobbs-Merrill, the book is an absolute classic and was touted to me by Bill Ashboldt, a photographer I worked with on the Lorain (Ohio) Journal.  Bill eventually moved on to the nearby Cleveland Plain Dealer and is best known for the many and widely-circulated photos he took of Sam Sheppard, neck in a brace.  Sheppard, a doctor convicted of murdering his wife, inspired The Fugitive TV series plus a feature film in addition to an enormously undeserved public chorus shouting Sam's innocence.  The latest is a Sheppard 60-minute "documentary" currently playing the ID Channel with a lot of facts either altered or cast aside.

Casey, who retired from Chicago journalism in 1947, would have loved covering the Sheppard trial.  On the other hand, he had his hands full back in his day with such interesting criminals as Al Capone, Dion O'Bannion, Tough Tommy Megrim and Peewee Poopopolos around and about.  Interestingly, the book's hoodlums are bit players to the journalism stars and eccentrics whose enterprising spirit and creative insanity made possible the greatest of the journalistic shows.

Casey nailed it as in: "The fantastic twenties! Those were the days when there were two cars in every bootlegger's garage and a corpse in every alley--when the kitchen smelled of raisin mash and the tattoo of bursting bottles marked the progress of the home-brew in the basement--when the best places to eat in the city were the speak-easies, or maybe your stomach was too paralyzed to tell--when scotch with a Southern accent cost twelve dollars a quart and the customers all seemed to have twelve dollars--when hearts were young and gay, and livers and lights, apparently, were more durable."

Having earned three citations for bravery in combat during World War I, Casey became an itinerant newsman before he made it in Chicago.  Joining the Chicago Daily News in 1920, he worked as a columnist and foreign correspondent.  He also wrote features, became an expert on the era's gang wars and traveled extensively.  Casey's coverage of World War II included Pearl Harbor and the blitz in London.  He authored 27 books.  All are worth your time.

While the emphasis of Such Interesting People is on Chicago editors including Henry Justin Smith of the Daily News, Walter Howey of the Tribune and Daily News and the American's  Harry Reutlinger plus the idiosyncratic approach to journalism by the reporters, there also are supporting walk-ons of stunning invention who became attached to newsrooms after wandering in off the streets.   

One was "The Ghost Catcher" who spoke with a pronounced German accent, said he was a proof reader and carried cards identifying himself as a "Ghost Catcher" whose name was Professor Otto Reichmann.  Claiming to be a catcher of considerable talent, he had once been hired by the Tribune as part of a claque that went around exposing spirit mediums, story matter probably accomplished by an artful end around Trib publisher Robert R. McCormick.

The Ghost Catcher, described by Casey as looking "like a relic of somebody else's elegance" quickly became a daily visitor to the Daily News and "like the sort of crank who usually pays visits to newspaper offices," temporarily lost out when the paper's publisher, Walter Strong, gave a tour of his brand new building to visiting publishers and editors from South America.  In an unfortunate piece of timing, the copy desk, located at the entrance to the news room, was missing its usual quota of habitues.  Only a "soiled old man in a grease-spotted overcoat and bilious-looking straw hat" sat writing something on a sheet of copy paper.  

Strong touched him on the shoulder asking: "I beg your pardon, but who are you?"

Professor Reichmann turned around and with an odd combination of surprise and indignation, shouted: "I sir," he cried, leaping to his feet, "I am The Ghost Catcher!"

Casey's delight is particularly apparent when he tells the story of Daily News editor Howey, formerly of the Tribune, who wrote a glowing editorial about the paper's leadership in sending a relief train downstate to do good deeds following a cyclone in Murphysboro.  The editorial soared in its successful attempt to properly describe the paper's humanity, timeliness of the project's execution and heroism, then decided what he had written deserved readership beyond that of his paper.  Giving a copy boy detailed instructions, the editor handed the lad a copy of the just-completed editorial scribbling a couple of words on it.  The lad made his way to the Tribune as directed to give the chief copy reader (identified as wearing an eyeshade) Howey's prose.  The scribbled note at the top read: McCormick: MUST.  The copy editor complied and the next edition of Col. McCormick's paper carried the bitter rival's self-congratulatory pronouncement atop the Editorial Page.  It was widely believe Howey had left McCormick's employ unhappily some years before, a likelihood backed up by Casey's suggestion that such a condition "would explain so well the little pleasantries that Mr. Howey extended to the Tribune."

Strong, the publisher who made the acquaintance of The Ghost Catcher, had limited association with the editorial side of the busi8ness and became upset with member of the business community who suggested Daily News reporters were careless.  Strong took public transportation between his home and office and eventually tired of the charges.  One day he invited the critics to dinner on top of the half-finished Daily News Building.  The critics arrived believing they were to be confronted by a gesture of conciliation.  Most of what they knew about the newspaper business was confined to what they saw at the movies.  Forced to make their way in the dark through piles of gravel, they eventually arrived by way of a wooden construction elevator at the 24th floor banquet room.  During the ride, there were strange echoes in the big building.

Strong never finished his opening line of welcome.  Writes Casey: "A man at the middle of the table who hadn't spoken much during the evening and didn't seem to know anybody suddenly pushed back his chair, jumped to his feet, pulled out a pistol and fired point-blank at the guest sitting opposite.  The guest fell over backward.  A police whistle shrieked outside.  The door opened and a woman was glimpsed in the entrance.  But only briefly.  As she stepped across the threshold the lights were out and there was another series of shots and two or three more screams.  An electric lantern flashed to reveal a brace of policemen and as that single ray of light died out the air was filled with a noise of clanking iron.  Then the lights flashed on again to discover the petrified diners in a number of odd attitudes and to reveal that both the murderer and corpse had gone away.  Where there had been a bedlam there was now a dead and terrifying quiet.  Through  it broke the voice of the host who oddly enough had begun to smile.

"Now, gentlemen," he said, "we shall see how good you are as reporters.  A waiter will give each of you a pad of paper and a pencil and you shall write out in your own way a record of what you saw just now--or what you thought you saw--and when your stories have been read aloud I shall entertain further suggestions about the improvement of my staff."

As Casey observed: The best brains of Chicago went to work then to prove what any cross-examiner knows about the fallacy of human testimony.  Mr. Strong burned the manuscripts before his guests took their way sheepishly to the terrifying elevator.  One wishes he hadn't."

Get the book if you can find it.  Anyone who enjoys reading about the kind of folks who made The Front Page possible will delight in Such Interesting People by Robert J. Casey.

And now, if you'll excise me, I have a bus to catch and the last chapter of the book to read.

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Bonhomie Bob Cromie....by Bob Sanders

It was while taking the #15 WTA bus to downtown Bellingham the other day that I began thinking about my good fortune to have known Bob Cromie.  Perhaps it was the book I was reading during the ride that reminded me of him.  A classic among journalists, Robert J. Casey's Such  Interesting People is a highly perceptive look at Chicago reporters, writers and editors who, among other things, inspired Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur to write The Front Page.

Cromie, who left us at 90 with six months and change left before the Millennium, was a carry-over from Casey's era.  His book, published in 1943, did not goose me into the field of journalism; rather, it was reportorial efforts on The Heun Gazette, a for-laughs-only publication passed around study halls by restless students at Lakewood High School located in a suburb immediately west of Cleveland, Ohio.  More later about The Gazette, editor Dick Heun and our decidedly bizarre approach to journalism as we created our versions of the first pages of history.

Cromie may be recalled as the host of a nationally syndicated radio show about books plus two TV programs, "Cromie Circle" on Chicago's WGN and "Book Beat," home based at WTTW, the city's public TV channel that fed the shows to PBS stations.  His broadcast triumphs were an adjunct to four decades of reportorial excellence.  He loved words and the people who used them--particularly those who called attention to social injustice, an attitude that characterized every aspect of his work and life.

Successful journalists owe their reputations to many things.  Some dig deeper for stories than their counterparts.  Others, not as persevering, may place greater emphasis on originality while some make effective use of contacts calling upon rolodexes both real and of the mind.  Cromie is the only journalist I ever met who was thoroughly noble and it showed in the way people responded to him.  I never heard him swear and that includes time on the golf course where people are very inclined to do so.

In a business where excessive drinking, more than any other shortcoming, has probably ended more careers, Cromie (to my knowledge) never took a drink.  Whether this was a lifelong consistency or a resolve preceded by a battle with demon rum I know not.  He often sat at John Fischetti's First Amendment celebratory table at Riccardo, joining in and providing hilarity while not imbibing.  Fischetti, a Pulitzer winner for editorial cartooning, was my best friend first at the  Chicago Daily News, then at Sun-Times after the Daily News was folded by Marshall Field V.

Like many outstanding journalists, Cromie was a messy desk person although he was on the neat side compared to sports writer/columnist Bill Gleason of the Sun-Times.  I once made reference to something he had written nine years earlier prompting Gleason to dive into a filing system everyone called Mt. Gleason.  Groping for a moment or two with Herman Cain-like proficiency, he extracted a published piece plus paper-clipped notes and proclaimed: "You mean this?"   

The messy desk possibly continues to be a matter of pride to some contemporary journalists.  I once took wife Janet on a tour of the Chicago Tribune editorial floor during which she met such print paragons as columnist Eric Zorn, critic Gene Siskal (then thumbs-upping it at the movies with TV co-host Roger Ebert) and cartoonist Jeff MacNelly, a three-time Pulitzer winner.  It was in the newsroom that we came upon a remarkable example of clutter whose magnitude suggested it had to have been detritus of an Oklahoma tornado decidedly off course.

"Whose office is this?" asked Jan.

"It's Casey Bukro's,"  I replied knowing what was coming next.

"What does he do?" was the anticipated question.

"Why, he's the Environmental Editor" I giggled in return.  Bukro, responsible for environmental entries, nearly won a Pulitzer for his "Save Our Lake" series.

Born in Detroit and educated at Oberlin College, Cromie joined the Tribunein 1936 and was the newspaper's war correspondent for four years.  Wherever World War II battles raged, whether in Europe or the Pacific, Cromie was there to report--often with a local angle.  His modus operandi nearly always was kicked off by asking if there were any soldiers or Marines from Chicago or Illinois.  Tribune readers had the war "personalized" for them and Cromie was masterful.

Cromie was with the Marines when Guadalcanal was invaded and he put in a lot of miles traveling with Gen. George Patten including coverage of the Battle of the Bulge.  Like Ernie Pyle, he wrote stories about average guys turned into everyday heroes.  Typical of his work was an October 12, 1943 report telling of a raid on Rabaul located, as the dateline proclaimed, SOMEWHERE IN NEW GUINEA.  The writing is rich, spare and aimed at a readership whose heightened interest in the war is in direct contrast to today's indifference.

"As we taxied on the runway," continued Cromie, "I moved into the bomb bay and stood between rows of 1,000 pound bombs.  We had plenty of respect for the 1,000 pounders--Staff Sgt. Fred C. Whitney, 22, Independence, Mo., Staff Sgt. John G. Shaffer of Logan, W. VA, and I.  We didn't return to our comfortable posts in the waist until Bond (Lt. John E. Bond 24 of Scarsdale, N.Y.) had plenty of time to get his plane on an even keel.  Other heavy bombers were all around us.  I could count more than 50 at one time.  We gradually got into formation and headed for Rabaul, soon running into heavy fog which hid the wingtips and sent tiny drops of water running on the windows.  Then into the sun once more.  The morning was all blue and gold and blinding white.  I went forward and stood behind the pilot's seat.  Tech Sgt. H. V. Milarski of 3800 Diversey boulevard, Chicago, was working on the radio.  As he smoked a cigarette he looked as bored as if riding down State street in a street car.  Tech Sgt. Joseph A. Gosseaux, 23, of Grindstone, Pa., the engineer, was busy writing down the names of the personnel.  He did this with ease from long practice, even to putting down each man's serial number from memory--some numbers containing eight digits." 

Cromie's war journalism is something we don't get today because of the military's control explicit in embedding reporters resulting in spoon fed versions far short of what we should be getting.  For that we can thank President George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney (then Defense Secretary) and other members of the administration who conducted an assault on constitutional freedoms during Operation Desert Storm.  Without question, a strangely passive press also was at fault.

I have two particularly fond memories of Cromie.  One involved attending services for Fischetti who died two weeks after I left Field Enterprises (owner of the Sun-Times).  There were people critical of my leaving for the Tribune but Fischetti was highly supportive during two months of my maneuverings with the marketing and editorial departments of the Boul Mich monolith.

Cromie's eulogy for Fischetti was perfect.  In the company of all who loved the guy, Cromie offered a parting line that recalled a legion of mid-day fun: "I think it's entirely possible that John Fischetti invented the long lunch."

My other indelible memory of the journalist was the result of a question I asked him following a taping of "The Cromie Circle" at WGN.  Of all the authors he had interviewed, with which one would he prefer to spend a lot of time?  Cromie mentioned several but the stickout he decided was Ernest K. Gann.  Gann's many lives were spent as a theatrical manager, film director, painter, writer, pilot and seaman.  Both he and Cromie were man's men for whom laughter was an important ingredient of living.  "He is truly one hell of a guy," was the way he put it.

"'ll tell you something interesting about Gann," observed Cromie.  "His was the only interview I ever conducted in which the subject would not tell me where he lived.  I asked him why and Gann replied: "If I tell you, you'll ask me what it's like and I'll tell you how wonderful it is.  Members of your audience will then get interested in the place and they'll buy property and build homes and the place won't be the same.  That's why."

Our conversation took place in 1985 shortly before Cromie retired.  When more than four years later Jan and I moved to San Juan Island in the Pacific Northwest, we discovered that one of its better-know residents was Gann, author of 25 novels about aviation and the sea.  Among the best known: Fate is the Hunter, The High and the Mighty and Blaze of Noon. 

We met Ernie and spunky wife Dodie (an inductee into the National Ski Hall of Fame, she captained the 1948 Olympics team) at a party a couple of weeks after our January, 1990 arrival in Friday Harbor.  He recalled the conversation with Cromie and thought our meeting indicative of pronounced prescience on Cromie's part.  Among the many joys of our island life were the sensational views offered from our home including the Olympic and Cascade Mountains, the waters of Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and much of Ernie and Dodie's 760-acre Red Mill Farm in the San Juan Valley below.

The farm and its assured future gave further evidence of Ganns' staunch attitude regarding the heaven on earth he had referenced in his conversation with Cromie.  Shortly after donating a conservation easement to the San Juan Preservation Trust thus denying development, Gann told me: "We have to do something to save this land, not only for our children but for ourselves.  People need to stop thinking of money all the time, or the land won't be here." 

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Frank: The Voice....A review by Bob Sanders

 

I finally caught up with James Kaplan's ring-a-dingdingally good Frank: The Voice and, once again, became intrigued by the two Sinatras; one, a singer of remarkable sensitivity able to communicate in thoroughly entrancing fashion, the other an often highly immature, nasty, selfish oaf who fraternized with hoodlums in an apparent attempt to further a reputation for being tough. 

The book, of more than 700 pages,  while largely a re-write of many of the tomes about the entertainer, is a penetratingly good one comprehensively researched.  Like Gary Giddons' examination of Bing Crosby (A Pocketfull of Dreams), it takes the reader up to the break-through moment in the life of a musical sensation.  The Crosby book ended with his entry into films having concentrated on his development as an artist in addition to stories of palship with such notables as Hoagy Carmichael, Bix Beiderbecke, the Rhythm Boys and other members of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra who enjoyed a drink or ten.  Unlike, Sinatra, Crosby was regarded favorably by the public thanks to astute public relations and The Groaner's ability to confine his shortcomings largely to the home.  He was, by nearly all accounts, a complete antithesis of the merry, nice guy next-door screen presence.  Kaplan devotes considerable space in the Sinatra book to Crosby and for good reason.  It was Sinatra's worship of Crosby that inspired a career built on a lot of talent buoyed by intense determination.

Kaplan takes a warts and all approach to the finger-snapping singer from Hoboken, NJ in a kind of hip, semi-wise guy fashion--particularly when telling of gangster connections, piggish behavior and insensitive endings of relationships with women including Ava Gardner.  Yes, Ava is there along with Lana Turner, Marilyn Maxwell and women of less notoriety.  Actually, Ava, according to Kaplan, drove Sinatra up a lot of walls including one time in Palm Springs when the two of them had serious spat #187 (or whatever) with Sinatra taking off for the desert community presumably to resume a relationship with Turner.  Gardner, a good friend of Turner, beat Sinatra to Palm Springs as another Hollywood tale unfolded.  Good reporter Kaplan takes us through a number of versions of that overly-reported story including Kitty Kelley's His Way.  A bibliography of 127 suggests how much digging the author did to come up with what is, above all, a fair look at a most complicated performer.

Many of the musicians who played roles in Sinatra's early days as a band singer are there.  Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers, Jack Leonard (he preceded The Voice as the boy singer in Tommy Dorsey's band), Harry James & The Music Makers, song writer Jimmy Van Heusen (worth a book himself), Dick Haymes, Alec Wilder (the vastly underrated, eccentric, self-taught composer) and drummer Buddy Rich, a Sinatra nemesis whether it was women or tempos.  Anecdotes of musicians and their lives on the road are particularly effective while providing enormous insight.  The reader gets a vivid sense of what the Rustic Cabin was like when Sinatra waited on tables in the New Jersey joint and sang for his supper while learning his craft before discovery by James. 

One of the book's delights involves the circumstances of some of the 1,300 songs recorded by Sinatra.  Kaplan is particularly adroit at analyzing Sinatra's style revealing small but significant differences between the live and recorded singer.  "Four nights later, on an NBC radio broadcast from the Astor Roof, Sinatra sang 'I'll Never Smile Again' to another houseful of upper-crusters.  The air check of the number reveals a small but striking difference from the recording: on the radio version's out chorus (the last words sung in the song) as Sinatra sings 'Within my heart, I know I will never start/To smile again, until I smile at you,' he uses the vocal trick he'd discovered back at the Rustic Cabin, a breathy little catch in his voice, in this case before the initial h of 'heart.'  It's a small thing, a showman-like touch that would have made no sense on a recording but all the sense in the world before a live crowd--a naked play for the hearts of the rich girls in the audience.  Calculated, and thoroughly effective."

A fan of the Pied Pipers, I once sat next to Jo Stafford on the dais of a Kansas City Advertising Club luncheon where Stafford was a special guest, not the main speaker she should have been.  What a delight.  She was funny, a great teller of stories, totally engaging and the best lead singer of vocal groups I ever heard.  We spoke of Sinatra and her comments about him were almost word-for-word what Kaplan got from her some 50 years later.  "When you sing with a group, it takes a certain amount of discipline, and Frank was excellent at it," Stafford said.  "You can't wander off into your own phrasing.  You've got to do exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.  Very few solo singers can do that.  He could.  When he sang with us, he was a Piper, and he liked it, and did it well.  I don't know any other solo singer, solo male singer especially, that can do that."

Some of Sinatra's not so supporting players come off worse than others.  Hardly surprising, Louis B. Mayer is his usual suspicious, small and vindictive self while being critical of his MGM singer/actor property during a period when Mayor's mistress was former Kay Kyser singer, Ginny Simms.  Simms, vivacious and appealing, was something less than beautiful and some thought her a bit horse faced.  Sinatra had fun with that one.  Seated one day in the MGM commissary, someone threw him a provocative line: "Hey, did you hear about L.B.'s accident?"  Not missing a beat, Sinatra replied: "Yeah, I hear he fell off of Ginny Simms."  The incident immediately preceded the actor's leaving the studio.

Earl Wilson, whose Sinatra: An Unauthorized Biography gets heavy usage by Kaplan, comes off as a guy desperately wanting to be considered a Sinatra intimate.  His column items reflecting various stages of the singer's career--particularly the seemingly never-ending series of Gardner/Sinatra fights--suggests he asked a lot of dumb and self-serving questions.

A typical Wilson/Gardner scene occurred shortly before the actress filmed "Mogambo."   She and the columnist met "in a large eatery run by a large eater" (probably Toots Shor's) and the column item suggests an editor had complainted about Wilson plugs for "eateries."  Continue Wilson, "I happened to mention her Herculean husband whom she considers has negleted her, which--if it's true--makes him this century's man of iron."  Wilson then asks if he can be an intermediary and the onslaught of drivel continues.  

There has always been an understandable disconnect between segments of the public and artists whose personal lives are less than exemplary.  There's the Charlie Chaplin of all his cinematic triumphs and The Tramp's suggested but never proven communist sympathies.  The right's disenchantment with Hollywood goes back to Chaplin.  He was the first movieland "enemy" and it wasn't long before McCarthyism began doing damage to a bunch of people who didn't deserve it.  Kaplan's telling of the Sinatra saga includes the singer's early liberalism but, because the book ends with the career-changing Best Supporting Oscar for his role in From Here to Eternity (1954), we don't learn of his switch to conservatism because of what he felt was a social slight by John F. Kennedy.

Mitch Miller, who produced Sinatra's largely disappointing recordings at Columbia Records, comes off better than expected.  It was Miller who tangled with the singer over such fare as "Mama Will Bark."  The recording, possibly the worst of Sinatra's career, was done at the depths of his career.  The "Mama" on the record was Dagmar (her straight name was Virginia Ruth Egnor) whose description as a "tall, eye-poppingly buxom West Virginia blonde" is not nearly sufficient.  According to Kaplan, Sinatra did not squawk when Miller broached the tune.  The author also reveals that Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Stafford and others had to pay for their own recording sessions.

If there's a hero in the book, it's George Evans, a brilliant PR guy who guided Sinatra's career through nearly all the time covered in the book.  Evans was enormously creative, far seeing, loyal, and of tremendous energy.  It was Evans who gave Sinatra the tag that never left him: The Voice.  Evans invented the bobby sox hysteria that provided the singer such overwhelming attention which, nevertheless, brought a great deal of grief to the publicist; Sinatra was not an easy going employer.  Evans, more than a savvy PR practitioner, somehow worked his success in a quaint era where such a thing as bad publicity actually existed; he painted the singer as mostly a family man in spite of reality's red flags.  No one thus far has been named the inventor of spin, but George Evans' name has to be right up there should such a determination be pursued.

While there is little new in Sinatra: The Voice, the writing is crisp and the research exhausting.  James Kaplan has succeeded in giving us a much better understanding of an American icon who dramatically changed popular culture.   

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Rodent Repartee....by Bob Sanders

 

It isn't every day you get to talk with Mickey Mouse.  My meeting with the affable rodent occurred 45 years ago this summer and it took three people, more than two years and a move of 1,500 miles to make possible.

By the time I returned to Kansas City in 1959, I had been employed by TV Guide five years having provided the magazine a willingness to be moved.  Often.  Publisher Jim Quirk used to refer to me as "the peripatetic Bob Sanders" on the basis of having served the firm nine months in Atlanta, five in Rochester, N.Y., and 16 in the Quad Cities.  I hoped that my return to Kansas City would be of greater longevity.  The first time around had been for three months but with the move back to St. Louis included a promotion from editor to regional manager.  I transferred eight times for the magazine in 13 years with the second stop in Kansas City good for six and one-half years.

Kansas City was a production center so I was not surprised when told to develop an Arkansas Edition around three stations in Little Rock plus single channels in northern Louisiana cities Shreveport and Monroe.  Little Rock was in turmoil after  Central High was desegrated following tumultuous times; among them the failed notion that golfing President Dwight D. Eisenhower might symbolically lead a black child into the school.  Humorist Mort Sahl, master of the labyrinthine digression, had wondered whether Ike would use an interlocking or overlapping grip.

I haven't seen Little Rock in nearly half a lifetime but it was a pretty limited place in those days--certainly one of the lower 48s least impressive capitols.  Overnight accommodations in terms of easy access to TV stations was a choice between the Marion Hotel and the newly-constructed Coachman's Inn.

The Marion had seen better days.  On the tattered side, it boasted a bar called The Gar Hole.  On one occasion while traveling with promotion manager Eddie Cassard, we dropped in for a beer.  Long, narrow and a bit forebodidng, The Gar Hole had a very large fish tank behind a bar presided over by a pleasant enough fellow.  Eddie and I settled in and eventually expressed curiosity about the name of the place.

"Why call a place The Gar Hole?" I asked.

"Y'all know what a garfish is?" asked the bartender exhibiting early proof that Bill Clinton would not be the first Arkansan to suffer syntax shortcomings involving the word "is." 

"No, what's a garfish?"

With that, the bartender reached under the bar, pulled up- a handful of what appeared to be hamburger and, with a reasonable facsimile of Kareem Abdul Jabbar's hook shot, tossed the meat into the tank and let loose a rebel yell not unlike Slim Pickens riding Dr. Strangelove's bomb to eternity.  Transfixed, Eddie and I witnessed an aquatic explosion featuring the ravenous garfish, a piscine wonder whose alligator-like snout appeared to run half its length.  I recalled seeing an iguana lizard for the first time and wondered how such ugly rascals, obvious remnants of the Mesozoic Era, could hang around this long?

With a George Bush the Younger half-hidden smirk, the triumphant bartender announced: "Now, that there's a garfish.  He jess loves hamburger."

It wasn't long after the introduction of the Arkansas Edition that I was contacted by a disappointed station in Hot Springs.  Because the channel claimed a limited number of homes reached, we didn't include its listings.  I agreed to hear their case and was soon being shown through the station whose tiny tower was located atop a short telephone pole and whose amoeba-shaped signal, according to a coverage map, did not reach all of Hot Springs.

As I recall, the station had fewer than 10 employees, one of whom took me into the channel's only studio.  Noticing a huge mirror leaning against a wall, I became curious.

"What's it for?" I asked.

"Well," said the young man, "we have a Dick Clark kind of dance show.  You know, one of those programs with high school students.  We don't have many kids so sometimes we angle the camera at the mirror and it looks like there are twice as many people dancing."  My story is told in The Annenbergs: The Salvaging of a Tainted Dynasty by John Cooney.  The story is told correctly.  My name is misspelled (Saunders) and Cooney gave me an advertising sales background rather than editorial.   

In term of Mickey Mouse of another kind, I found myself one 1964 night in a Hot Springs supper club where Kaye Ballard was performing.  A very funny lady, Ballard had graduated from Cleveland's West Tech High located relatively close to Lakewood High, my alma mater.  Born Catherine Gloria Balotta, she has done it all from a first gig straight from high school with Spike Jones to television (she and Alice Ghostley played the ugly stepsisters in Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella) to Broadway ("Lazy Afternoon" was introduced by her in The Golden Apple).  Still active in the theater, Ballard now lives in Rancho Mirage, CA in a home she stayed in when working on The Mothers-In-Law.  The home was owned by her producer/friend Desi Arnaz.

Aware of Ballard's educational lineage, I sent a note backstage on my business card indicating that Lakewood High says "hi."  Chatting with her afterwards, I indicated it was likely I would be transferred to Los Angeles and she mentioned a high school friend who also had been a cheer leader in high school.  "Funny thing," said Kaye.  "Joe is Mickey Mouse at Disneyland.  If you're ever there, tell him I said 'hello.'"

Two years and two months later, I was moved to Los Angeles and soon took my three kids to the Magic Kingdom.  Suddenly, there he was, readily within reach, the rather radiantly resplendent, resourceful, rarely rankled, revelry-rooted and receptive rodent available to respond randomly to this now retired reporter's initial sally.  Not to gee whiz this piece to pieces, but Mickey Mouse was then (and now) the most famous personality in the entire world.  Bigger than Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, LBJ, Charles de Gaulle, Pope Paul VI, Leonid Breznev or Simon & Garfunkel, was the magnificent mouse.  Even today, MM is bigger than Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Rupert Murdoch or the latter three as a matchless trio, but, of course, Mickey has been working celebrityhood longer than any of them.

Mickey was taking five near Pirates of the Caribbean just like regular mortals and it was while furtively sidling over to him that I began contemplating effective ice breaking methods so vital in initiating dialogue with the famous.  Might there be subjects of historical significance that, while provocative, might very well make  communications with Mickey awkward?  I had heard, for example that Walt Disney had a pronounced fear of mice.  At the heart of things was an obvious challenge: How do you talk to a mouse and not just any mouse?

In the company of celebrities, we tend to notice certain things that even memory's loss makes difficult to forget.  What we are left with are Frank Sinatra who talked like a gangster in person, Barbara Eden who appeared to glow, and Jerry Lewis who, more than anything else, was angry.  What struck me about Mickey Mouse was the enormity of his ears; they were each bigger than the catcher's mitt of Yogi Berra.

Out of a corner of my mouth, I managed a half-choked whisper: "Hi, Joe.  I'm Bob Sanders of TV Guide.  Kaye Ballard says 'hello.'"

"No shit," said Mickey Mouse.  "How is she?"

Mort Sahl isn't the only one capable of labyrinthine digression.   

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Hugh Hefner's Busy Month....by Bob Sanders

We're barely past the middle of the June and there can be no question that Playboy Enterprises founder Hugh Hefner has already had a busy month.  The London Club has been re-opened in glitzy Mayfair, an announcement has been made that NBC's fall schedule will include something called "The Playboy Club," and Hefner is continuing efforts to buy back his company, having taken it public in 1971.  Then, there's the 33rd Playboy Jazz Fest that kicked off last Thursday (June 9) with Bill Cosby again hosting.

That paragraph would have been constructed differently were it not for Crystal Harris, 25, (Miss December, 2009) who had a "change of heart" involving marriage to Hefner, 85, scheduled for tomorrow (June 18).  The wedding would have been Hefner's third and was scheduled for the Playboy Mansion located in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles.  As "Dandy Don" Meredith used to sing nearing "Monday Night Football sign-offs, "The Party's Over."   

It was Hefner himself who announced his engagement to Harris, a singer of modest accomplishments, who was expected to achieve a career boost in addition to a cover appearance in the July Playboy as "America's Princess, Mrs. Crystal Hefner."  It was too late to stop the presses and the wily Hefner ordered red "Runaway Bride" stickers to be slapped on each copy.

Strange things can happen between printing the magazine and getting it into the hands of readers.  One day I got a call from Associated Press indicating that a truck carrying centerfolds (they are produced separately) had upended in front of an exclusive Catholic girls school and thousands of copies were blowing around the school's grounds.  "Do you know why the truck turned over?" asked the reporter.  I replied: "I believe the truck was top-heavy."  My explanation was published world-wide and I heard from a lot of people.

The now disappointed invitees to the wedding do not include me.  I'd been stiff upper-lipping it placing understood emphasis on not having seen Hef in 40 years.  A former employee of his going back to the second day of January, 1968, I was Press Information Manager for more than three years.  I didn't expect an invitation but neither did Holly Madison, one of many ex-girl friends of recent and precious past vintage beginning with a divorce from second wife, Kimberly Conrad (1989 Playmate of the Year) who lives next door.  Hefner has always been fond of girls next door.

It was Holly Madison, Hefner's most recent major flame, who cautioned him about Harris calling her "mysterious" and in too big a hurry to get married.  Breathless reports in the celebrity media suggest Harris has been having a dilly of a dalliance with Jordan McGraw, son of silly Dr. Phil.  It may be that Hefner gave second thought to a decision that a prenuptial agreement would not be observed.

Except for dinner fare heavy on fried chicken and Pepsi Cola, Hefner has lived like an Arabian prince in The Mansion (as employees and intimates are inclined to call it) although, technically speaking, the 1920s Gothic-style home is owned by Playboy Enterprises--not Hefner.  He rents the place at a rare good price and pays for non-business expenses.  Having attained geezerhood some years ago, Hefner can look back on many battles that include victory over a stroke (1985) plus an IRS triumph in which the Bunny King proved that expenses incurred during long-running parties, held at his two residences (the one in Chicago from 1959-84), could be written off.

The company pays for house and grounds expenses and the salaries of an 80-employee staff including a kitchen crew in place on a round-the-clock basis.  There's also a gang of 13 who take care of business and personal needs.  During my employment, former Bunny Pat Pappas was a full-time compiler of Hefner scrap books now numbering more than 1,800.

With the wedding off, it is interesting to note that Victor Aubrey Lownes III did show up at the June 4 re-opening of the London Playboy Club.  It was Lownes, a Chicagoan and early-on Hefner pal, who 45 years ago established a key element of what became "Swinging London."  Lownes' leaving of Chicago was a bit hasty; his  relationship with an underage TV star, whose mother was a prominent newspaper columnist, speeded his departure.

Lownes now lives a reclusive life remaining married to Marilyn Cole, Playboy's first full frontal Playmate (January, 1972).  He was a brilliant guy in those days and he achieved even greater glories for the Playboy Empire than what just another club might offer.  Gambling had been legalized in the UK and Lownes wisely added a casino to the club that opened in 1966 at 45 Park Lane.  Fifteen years later, Playboy Enterprises owned five casinos and interest in two others plus more than 70 off-track betting parlors and six bingo parlors.

During the period, Lownes had established himself as a certified bon vivant with a 42-room Georgian Mansion called Stocks, a residence of many uses.  A Catholic girls' school for more than 20 years, the home was used as a training camp where proper Bunny Dips were achieved under the direction of Lownes and others armed with Bunny Manuals.  (For the uninitiated, the Bunny Dip is a graceful cleavage-revealing method of table service).  Much more outgoing than his boss, Lownes gave every indication he was attempting to out Hefner Hefner.

It was during the 70s that Lownes' positioning in Playboy was undergoing more than subtle changes as Playboy Enterprises entered a fallow financial period.  As conjecture became fact, it was evident that UK gaming was keeping the company afloat while Lownes became a British version of Hefner with striking differences;   Hefner wore pajamas as he edited the magazine, while Lownes was photographed going to the hounds wearing full hunting regalia, don't you know?  Some Playboy insiders believe Hefner was jealous of Lownes.

Regardless, things came to a head not over lifestyles but gambling.  The story gets a bit murky and there are, of course, two sides.  Lownes' version is that the British were always uneasy with foreign controlled casinos and that he was falsely accused of "irregularities" by British gaming authorities.  Lownes says he was leading the charge to qualify Playboy for a New Jersey license (there was a temporary one in play) and that Hefner panicked firing Lownes before the latter could testify to authorities.  The Hefner version has Lownes providing gambling markers to Middle Eastern potentates, a very big British violation.  Lownes is quick to point out that Playboy made $31 million in the year ending June 30, 1981 and the firm lost $51 million the following year.  Regardless of which story is true, the British gaming commission threw Playboy out of the UK.

There was another angle to what became enmity between Lownes and Hefner.  Both had dated Cole who continued to pose for Playboy until 1984 and her marriage to Lownes.  Cole is now a journalist who attended friend Roman Polanski's 2005 trial on behalf of Lownes who was ill and unable to support his old pal.  Hefnerand Lownes had at each other in published books.  For some interesting reading, there's Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream by Steven Watts and The Day the Bunny Died by Victor Lownes.

London is abuzz over the re-opening of the club Lownes founded, and it isn't all positive.  About 100 feminists, Bunny ears and all, carried signs suggesting "Eff off Hef," a demonstration in sharp contrast to what Lownes pulled off just before he was fired by Hefner in 1981.  Having been informed about poor business at Playboy Clubs, Lownes glanced out of what then was a Playboy Building window and observed a group of businessmen, then quickly rounded up Bunnies, put them in uniform and armed them with signs protesting the company's firm rule about dating key holders.  It would be nice to report than Lownes had turned the proverbial lemon into lemonade while attracting a lot of press attention but the world was changing and demise of the clubs was around the corner.  It was Lownes who in in 1959 had given Hefner the club idea fashioning it after Chicago's Gaslight Club.  A re-establishment of Playboy Clubs began in 2006 with the opening of a franchise in Las Vegas.

Press reaction to the new London Playboy Club was mixed with the London Times archly reporting: "Beatrice Potter with her original cottontails is more fun."  Employees include 80 Bunnies chosen from among 3,000 applicants.  Their ages range from 19 to 40.

Memberships are not cheap with a lifetime key costing 15,000 pounds.  Annual fees of 1,200 pounds do not include a joining price of 1,000 pounds.  So far, Playboy claims 850 members, 350 of them women.

I'm happy to have read that Lownes and Cole attended the London Club opening at which Hefner and his then bride-to-be also were present.  Apparently, some sort of hatchet burying took place.  An elapse of 30 years, the former employee's enormous contributions to Playboy's corporate well-being, and Hefner's deeply romantic side probably put the checkmark beside Lownes' name.  Maybe, it was Cole's presence.

Certainly keeping Hefner hopping these days is a recent success in beating back a bid by Penthouse which attempted to wrest control of the publicly-held Playboy Enterprises.  Penthouse, held by the oh, so comfy-named FriendlyFinder Enterprises, had offered $6.15 a share but Hefner's board turned down the bid for a firm troubled by poor advertising sales and an internet offering easily accessed pornography.  Hefner currently owns 70% of Class A voting stock and 28% of non-voting Class B shares.

When I worked for Hefner, I was always surprised that writers who interviewed him rarely if ever asked him a question concerning what seemed to me one of the most logical: How significant was the Marilyn Monroe picture in the first issue of Playboy in terms of the publication's eventual success?  That December, 1953 issue sold around 52,000 copies and enabled the editor/publisher to achieve credit with the publication's printers.  The question is now being asked following Hefner's having chosen his final resting place: a crypt next to Marilyn Monroe's in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.  Perhaps, that choice reveals her significance to him.

Knowing little about crypt creeping by the interred and Las Vegas odds against such an occurrence, I would still be inclined to put a wager on my old employer to, somehow, find a way to wriggle over to Marilyn.

A final thought.  Keep an eye on Holly Madison in the Hefner Marital Sweepstakes.

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Then Everything Changed (a review)....by Bob Sanders

 

In today's curious world where the search for truth is often damnably difficult to pursue if find, I recently set about chasing just who qualifies as a journalist.

Starting at a logical first step in acquiring historical insight, I consulted my somewhat battered Webster's New World Dictionary whose 1994 copyright assured me that it would contain neither new words inspired by Twitter short speak nor the inadvertent creative efforts of Sarah Palin.

My Webster's suggests a journalist is a person whose occupation is journalism; reporter, news editor. Etc. 2 a person who keeps a journal or diary.

Seeking something a bit more modern, I checked in with my computer's handy dandy TheFreeDictionary and, not surprisingly, found a broader interpretation in which journalists who broadcast on radio or television are taken into the journalistic fold.  Thesaurus, offering a list of various types of journalists, came up with a truly faded phrase: sob sister.  I could have sworn that one went out with Rosalind Russell and His Girl Friday.

What I'm getting at is that journalists, once an easily-defined species, are all over the place these days.  As amateur and professional photo journalists, they have taken us amazingly close to tornadoes, inside mass murder in Tucson, and, by way of cell phone photography, uprisings in the Middle East.  Twitter has played a key role in the development of the uprisings.  We may be approaching a time when journalists-to-be won't need a large leg up by getting a degree at a prestigious school of journalism.

That's not to suggest that rabble-rousers like Rush Limbaugh and Ed Schultz are journalists although their followers disagree.  Bloggers are of a quality to be considered on an individual basis.

One of this country's very best journalists is Jeff Greenfield whose most recent book, Then Everything Changed, prompts further questions.  Fortunately, the category Alternate History is enabling to writers who want to play the game of What If?  It is challenging territory.  As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin suggests on the book's cover flap, "Historians have long been tantalized by the what-ifs of history--imagining where we might be if certain events had unfolded in a different way.  In the hands of this tremendously gifted storyteller, Then Everything Changed will captivate the reader every step along the way."

Greenfield's story, of three novella-length pieces about modern Presidencies, come together as highly plausible.  In 1960, just before John Kennedy was sworn in, a suicide bomber (Richard Pavlick) failed to detonate his charge at the President-elect's home in Palm Beach when wife Jacqueline and daughter Caroline appeared at the front door.

Greenfield posits the question: what if he had carried out his mission thus forcing Lyndon Johnson into making decisions about the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The other what ifs include the failure of Sirhan Sirhan to murder Bobby Kennedy (he is saved by brother-in-law Steve Smith who suffers a shoulder wound) and a campaign surge by Gerald Ford that beats Jimmy Carter in 1976 enabling Ford to handle the Iran hostage crisis and other matters.  Greenfield is, perhaps, at his best with understandable insight into John Kennedy's younger brother, warts and all, whose conflicts with J. Edgar Hoover and Johnson are legendary.  Greenfield, in addition to his impressive reportorial work (CBS, ABC, CNN, Time magazine, New York Times) was a speechwriter for Kennedy.  There can be no doubt that Greenfield thoroughly enjoyed writing Then Everything Changed.  Political news junkies will delight in this one.

Greennfield has a lot of fun with General Curtis LeMay making reference to him as having inspired the Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) character in Dr.  Strangelove while Nixon is a paranoid presence whose hatred of the Kennedys knows no bounds.  All the major political players of their times are here including: John Lindsey, George Wallace, Ted ("Spiro") Agnew, Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, Hubert Humphrey, Dean Acheson, Eugene McCarthy, and Clark Clifford.  The latter, a trusted and discreet advisor to Presidents, had soldiered on for Johnson largely because of contempt for Nixon.  He eventually comes to the conclusion that Johnson is so perturbed by Bobby Kennedy that he wants Nixon to beat him in the alternate history run for the White House

I'll not reveal more since, in a very real sense, Then Everything Changed, is a kind of whodunit perhaps best described as a what's-going-to-happen-next?  A nice surprise at the end is an Afterward in which Greenfield explains how reality shaped his speculation with plausibility his goal.  "Many of the words, thoughts, and deeds described here are taken from the real-life record.  Many of the words spoken by the principles were actually spoken by them, in different settings, of course.  The political terrain on which these stories played tracks as closely as possible to reality; and where I have turned an 'almost happened' event into reality, I've tried to shape an altered political atmosphere based on history."

Greenfield's book is compelling largely because he has achieved plausibility.  Among other things, one wonders how many of us have even heard of the Kennedy Palm Beach would-be bomber?  As the author explains, historian Richard Dallek, who wrote a JFK book titled An Unfinished Life, had no knowledge of the event until a newspaper reporter called him about it in 2003.

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