Part 10

The show ran for more than thirteen weeks. It lasted a year. It was sandwiched between a show about nursing and one about cooking. It was a fifteen minute slot, but in the course of this time I had to do three commercials—opening refrigerators and going into the wonders thereof, selling cosmetics, even houses. It was a mess. During the entire year, nobody ever evinced any interest in building the show, and when it was finally cancelled, I was torn between hurt pride and recognition of an obvious godsend. Now and then I had received a small amount of critical acclaim, but on the whole, my first venture into television seemed a disaster, financially as well as spiritually. And I hate failure.

Well, there was no use apologizing. I had had my chance, a whole year of it, and I didn’t make the grade. The poor time slot, the overloading of commercials were no excuse. I could lick my wounds and say, “Nothing lasts forever. Television is television. They squeeze you out and throw you out.” But in my heart I knew that the show had never had an audience because it was not good enough. So it ended in failure, and along with it, my relations with Max Cooper.

For two years, I was away from television entirely, except for an occasional call from Dan Schuffman of WBKB asking me to pinch hit for someone who was taken ill. Among those for whom I served as proxy was Tom Duggan, a real good guy who developed considerable local fame by getting into one scrap after another and finally, after getting into the biggest scrap of all, practically being deported from Chicago to pursue the same career in Southern California where he continues to be a nightly success.

Although it seemed to me from time to time that glimmerings of creativity could be detected in the television field, I no longer had any serious interest in the medium. When, shortly after Hope and I were married, we gave an autographing party for Walter Schimmer, a local TV and radio producer who had written a book called, _What Have You Done for Me Lately?_, the TV relationship was incidental to the objective of boosting a Chicago writer. One of the guests at the party was the station chief of WBKB, Sterling (Red) Quinlan. I had previously met him only casually and was surprised to be drawn into a literary conversation with him, during which he told me that he was working on a book, to be called, _The Merger_. The next day, he sent me the manuscript to read and I found it most interesting, particularly as it dealt with a phase in the development of the broadcasting industry, about which Quinlan, as an American Broadcasting Company vice president, obviously knew a great deal. This was a period during which any number of novels with a background of Big Business were being published. I thought Quinlan had done an unusually honest job with it and wrote him a note to this effect when I returned the manuscript.

Several weeks later, I received a phone call from Quinlan which sounded quite different from the tough-minded executive of my superficial acquaintance. “What’s wrong with my book?” he said. “No one wants to publish it.” He really wanted to know where he had gone wrong.

I tried to explain the vagaries of publishing and of publishers’ tastes and how it was a matter of timing and placement with certain publishers who publish certain types of things. But I could see this made little sense to Quinlan, because there is really not much sense _in_ it. Finally I said, “Look, send the book over. You need a front runner. Maybe I can break down a door for you.” I’m sure he didn’t believe me, but he sent the book over anyway.

I sent the manuscript to Ken McCormick, editor-in-chief at Doubleday, after phoning to tell him about it, and as luck would have it, Ken liked the book and made an offer. I’m sure Quinlan thought I was some kind of wizard, and of course I was delighted to have been able to help.

With Red’s book in the process of being published, I turned my mind to other matters—mostly the sheer joy of living. Business was strong, Hope and I were enjoying the best of good times, we were soon to have a child, we were floating on a cloud and wanted no interference from anything. I avoided phone calls and invitations and put away all thoughts of becoming anything in the public eye. I just wanted to be a good bookseller, earn a living, spend time with my family, and leave the world alone.

It was in this frame of mind that I received a call one day from Quinlan asking me to join him for lunch at the Tavern Club (a businessmen’s luncheon club located near the WBKB studios). I was interested in Red’s literary ambitions and was glad to accept.

Red Quinlan is more than a typical example of a “pulled up by my own boot straps” success story. He is a fairly tall man with reddish hair, a white, smooth face, and blue eyes that can change from pure murder to the softness that only Irish eyes can take on. He knows every way to survive the jungle and moves with the slightly spread foot and duck walk of a man treading a world built on sand. One part of his mind deals only with business; the other part is dedicated to a sensitive appreciation of the written word and a consuming desire to write a good book. At the beginning he may have wanted to make the best seller list, but his concern is now with truth and craftsmanship and with what it means to be a writer. He is a fascinating man who has done much for me.

Two other men joined us for lunch at the club. One was a heavy-set man of Greek descent named Peter DeMet who controlled large interests in the television world. The other was Matt Veracker, general manager of WBKB. We ate a good lunch and talked in generalities until Quinlan asked me if I had read any good books lately. I had just finished a collection of short stories by Albert Camus and was particularly taken by a piece called, “Artist at Work.” As I told the story, DeMet seemed suddenly very interested. But the conversation went no further. We shook hands all around and broke up.

Less than an hour later, Quinlan called me at the shop and asked me to come right over to his office. I could tell as I walked in that something was on the fire. Red came around the desk and sat down with me on the couch. “Stuart,” he said, “we have an open half hour following a new science show that the University of Chicago is sponsoring. How would you like to have it?” This was in 1958 when astro-physics had burst upon the public consciousness. Hence the science show.

“I’ve even thought of the name for your show,” Quinlan continued. “Books and Brent.”

I still remained silent, caught in an enormous conflict. I _did_ want the show ... to prove something to myself. But at the same time I didn’t want to be bothered, I didn’t want to get caught up in the hours of study the job entailed. And I no longer needed the money or a listing in the local TV guides to bolster my ego. Yet I wanted the chance again.

Red noted my hesitation and, although slightly nettled by my lack of enthusiasm, recognized that I was not giving him a come-on. He went to the phone and said, “Ask Dan Schuffman to step in here.”

Danny took over the argument. The price was set, with promise of a raise within twelve weeks. The show would run from September through June, no cancellation clause, no commercials sandwiched in to break up the continuity of my presentation. I had complete control over the choice of books and what I would say about them. Everything was settled. Now all I had to do was tell Hope!

It wasn’t easy. Hope knew something was on my mind and refrained from asking about it until the children were in bed. Then I told my story. It would be five days a week at the frightening hour of eight o’clock in the morning. Hope took the whole thing in and accepted the situation. But we both had strong misgivings.

I went to work. Each book had to be read and pondered the night before I reviewed it. Asking myself of each volume what in essence it was really about, what meanings and values it pointed to, was the crux of the matter and a most difficult undertaking. Every morning I delivered my presentation and then ran to the bookstore. I came home at six, had dinner, and started preparing for the next morning. It was impossible to entertain or to see friends, and I was half dead from lack of sleep. Finally, to lessen the strain of five shows a week, Red suggested that Hope appear with me on the Friday shows for a question and answer session, cutting the formal reviews to four a week. Again it took some persuading—Hope would have nothing to do with it unless she “looked” right, “sounded” right, and could offer questions that were sincere and significant. She did all of these things superbly and for the next three years appeared with me every Friday.

Still, it was a grueling task. I wanted to give the very best I could each day, and I felt that I was being drained. But what was really killing my drive was the suspicion that I was working in a vacuum. After all, who could be viewing my dissertations on the problems of man and the universe at eight in the morning? I decided it would probably be appreciated all around if I quit like a gentleman. So one morning, after about eight weeks of giving my all to what I judged to be a totally imaginary audience, I interrupted whatever I was talking about and said, “You know, I don’t think anyone is watching this program. I’m very tired of peering into two red eyes and talking books just for the sake of talking. I believe I’ll quit.”

What I really meant to say, of course, was, “If anyone is watching, won’t he please drop me a note and say so.” But it didn’t come out that way. I walked out of the studio thinking it was all over.

To my great astonishment, Quinlan soon reached me by phone at the shop, saying, “What are you trying to do? Get me killed? The phone has been ringing here all morning with people demanding to know why I’m firing you! Did you say that on the air?”

I hastened to explain and told him what I did say. The following day hundreds of letters arrived. I suddenly realized that I had an audience.

Hope and I were thrilled and went to work with renewed vigor. The mail continued to grow. At eight a.m. people were viewing and listening and, of all things, writing to me—not only housewives, but also teachers, librarians, doctors, lawyers, occasional ministers. Newspaper columnists became interested and reviews were flattering to a point where I was afraid I might begin to take myself seriously.

Another thing was also happening. Although I never mentioned on the air that I had a bookstore, people began to call the store asking for books I had reviewed. Other bookstores found that Books and Brent was stimulating their business, and some of them, particularly in outlying areas, took it upon themselves to write notes to the publishers about what was happening. I began to wonder if what the book business needed generally wasn’t a coast to coast TV bookshow.

Not long after these thoughts had formed in my mind, Pete DeMet asked me to come and see him at the hotel where he was staying. When I arrived, I found his room filled with men ... some kind of important meeting was just breaking up. Finally they dispersed and I was able to sit down with Pete. He told me he wanted to create a TV book of the month show, which he was ready to back to the hilt. He would investigate the possibility of getting the major publishers to pay for some of the time—the rest would be sold to other sponsors. Apparently he and his organization had the genius required to market such a thing. In any event, his gospel was “success” and he evidently saw in me another way to be successful.

I always had mixed reactions to this powerful, heavy-faced man with his white silk shirts and his, to me, mysterious world of promotional enterprise. He had been in the automobile business and subsequently acquired ownership of successful network shows, particularly in the sports field, and no one seemed to doubt that he could do anything he set his mind to.

He was always forthright in his relations with me. He boasted that he had never read a book and never intended to, but he saw in my work a vision of something he wanted to be part of. But he also insisted: “If I take you on, I own you.”

Contracts were being drawn up, but Hope and I decided that although the amount of money being offered me—$130,000 for nine months of work—seemed extraordinary, the only thing to do was to turn the offer down.

So I went to see Pete and told him the deal was off. The money was wonderful, but so was my marriage, my personal life. I couldn’t see myself catching a plane to the West Coast on a moment’s notice, only to be told that I was heading for the East Coast the following week. There might be some excitement in such a frenetic pace, but I was getting too old for that sort of thing, and I didn’t need the pace and the noise to persuade me that I was living.

My would-be benefactor looked at me as though I had gone out of my mind, but he let me go without any further badgering.

By this time I had become more than a little intrigued with the Frank Buck approach to capturing live talent. On the next occasion DeMet pressed me to sign the contract, he assured me that I wasn’t nearly as good or important as I thought I was. They were not at all certain, he said, of my “acceptance” in various markets, and furthermore there was threat now of replacing me altogether: some people felt that a Clifton Fadiman or a Vincent Price with a “ready-made” or “built-in” audience would be distinctly preferable to someone completely unknown outside of Chicago. It would take a lot of adroit PR work to build up the ratings for an unknown.

I couldn’t contradict him, and happily I did not feel smart-alecky enough to tell him, “Go ahead and get those fellows if you think they can bring a book to life better than I can.” I simply refused to sign without the consent of my wife.

That night I was in the midst of reporting the day’s events to Hope when the phone rang. Hope answered. It was for me: Pete saying, “Can I come over? I _must_ see you now.”

A half hour later Pete was with us, going through the entire proposition and concluding by saying, “You’ll do everything I tell you to do, and you’ll make a fortune. We’ll all make money.”

Hope looked Mr. DeMet squarely in the eyes and said, “Money isn’t the God of this household and at the moment I can’t say I enjoy being here with you.”

In the stunned silence that followed, I was seized with a feeling of terrible embarrassment over our attacking Pete DeMet on a level so totally removed from his frame of reference or the very principles of his existence. A few minutes later, Pete got his hat and left. I was sure the whole thing was finished.

As it happened, it was just the beginning. One of our best friends, in or out of television, was the late Beuhlah Zackary, producer of “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” and as fine a spirit as I have ever known. She used to say to me, “If I can only discover exactly what makes you tick, I’ll make you a household name throughout the nation.” Had she lived, I’m convinced she would have done it. In any event, it was Beuhlah at this point who saw merit lurking somewhere beneath the high pressure and convinced Hope and me that we should explore the matter further. Finally we consented to go ahead, provided Jack Pritzker act as our attorney and read every line of every paper (including the dotting of i’s and the crossing of t’s) before it was signed. Things were agreed upon to everyone’s satisfaction, and I was in the Pete DeMet organization.

I had confided in Hardwick Moseley at Houghton Mifflin about the enterprise and he wrote to me (in March of 1959): “I do hope the DeMet deal on Books and Brent goes through and that you get your rightful share of the plunder. You know I always expected something like this. I am delighted that it is happening so soon. When you get time why not let me know a little of the detail. If we can get you on in the high grass and a variety of stations everywhere it will be the best thing that has happened to the book business in years because you do sell books.”

It seemed a long time since Hardwick had lifted me from the depths by writing me that I _had_ to remain a bookseller, no matter what.

But everything fell through from the very beginning. The money Pete hoped to raise from the publishing industry failed to materialize at all. Television does not sell books, the publishers chorused. From my end, I was assailed by doubts because I was never invited to present the proposition to the publishers with whom I was most intimately acquainted. From Pete’s end, there was anger and frustration when the industry would not buy something which he was convinced might prove their economic salvation. He decided to look for other markets.

Production was scheduled to start in September. But by this time other things had taken precedence over Books and Brent. Pete entered into a real estate promotion to develop a kind of Disney wonderland in New York called Freedom Land. His lawyer, Milt Raynor, wrote to me in flattering terms about myself and the book project, but indicated that for the time being the undertaking would have to be shelved.

It was a letdown. But the irony of the thing was that a promotional genius like Pete could be so fascinated by the publishing field and what might be done for it, and then so totally discouraged by the supineness, invincible ignorance, and general reluctance of an enormous, potentially very profitable industry to take even modest advantage of the only advertising medium that might bring it before the public. Pete found only one publisher actively encouraging. The rest were negative.

This was the idea they were offered: I was to review, on a network show, books selected by myself from the lists of all publishers. In our experience in Chicago, although I rarely, if ever, suggested that anyone rush down to his neighborhood bookstore (if any) and buy the book in question, every bookstore in the area felt the impact of my lectures. The instances in which my own store sold hundreds of books in a week because of a review I had given were fantastic—and more frequently than not the very large downtown stores considerably outsold my own shop on the same volume, for I was not engaged in self-advertising. This is something unique in our day, but not in publishing experience, for Alexander Woollcott used to have the same effect through his radio broadcasts. He was, of course, a national figure ... but not in a popular sense until he went on the radio. Publishers were aware of all this, but they were not convinced.

Pete was convinced. He believed in me because he saw the results of the job I was doing in a very difficult city and saw no obstacle to doing at least as much in other cities. He was an entrepreneur, but perfectly willing to try the idea of wedding television to culture. Actually, I was never a party to any of the planning, any of the strategy, any of the meetings held with publishers or their representatives. To this day, I know nothing of what actually went on. I was just the talent, and all I knew was that there was a clause in the contract that required Pete to put the show on the road no later than September 30, 1959, or else I was free to return to my local television commitments. The option was not picked up, and that was that.

As I mulled the whole thing over at Bark Point, a comment of my father’s kept running through my mind: “When is a man a man? Only when he can stand up to his bad luck.”

Of course, there was no saying whether the luck was really bad—only that what I envisioned for the future was certainly being held in abeyance. I came back for another year of Chicago television, much like the year before, except for the feeling that I was bringing more experience to it.

It was the letters that kept me persuaded I was right. In spite of the hour, with wives kissing husbands off to work and mothers frantically preparing breakfast and dressing children for school, people were listening and, in increasing number, writing. Greater numbers of people were searching for answers to forgotten questions, or driven, perhaps, back to fundamental questions and to restating them. Hope and I found all this mail a tremendous stimulus. We returned to our city routine. Every evening I came home from the bookstore, had dinner, played or talked with the children, then sat down to read, while Hope read or knitted or mended or listened to music. At midnight we took a short walk to the corner drugstore with Mr. Toast, our Golden Retriever, and had a cup of hot chocolate. These moments were the best of the whole day.

Getting to the studio in the morning was never easy, and on Fridays when we made the mad rush together it was more than usually frantic. Hope is not easy to awaken and would be engaged, more often than not, as we raced across the street like maniacs toward our parked car, in the final acts of dressing, zipping up her skirt, straightening her hair, trying to find her lipstick. Sometimes we barely made it ahead of the cancellation period—five minutes before showtime, but we always managed. Then when the ordeal was over, it was perfectly delicious to go out for coffee, swearing solemnly, absolutely, never again would we oversleep ... until the next time.

But why were we doing it? The financial rewards for an unsponsored, sustaining program simply bore no relation whatever to the effort involved. Finally Quinlan called me in and suggested that since the networks didn’t seem interested, it might be a good idea to form an organization and see if I couldn’t sell the show myself.

Hy Abrams, my lawyer and tennis partner, and his brother-in-law, David Linn, often used to ask why I didn’t do anything about promoting the show, to which my answer normally was: “Do what?” But now, with Red’s insistence, I had a feeling that perhaps the time was ripe. Perhaps in the present era of political, economic, and spiritual confusion, people might be becoming worried, harassed, clipped, chipped, agonized enough for a return to reading. They might be susceptible.

David was all for it, and we called a meeting, bringing together, as I recall, Ira Blitzsten, Sidney Morris, Adolph Werthheimer, and my brother-in-law, Milton Gilbert. I made the presentation, outlining not only the prospect but also the likelihood of absolute failure. Together we created the Stuart Brent Enterprises and hired a man to run the show. Again the idea was to sell the thing to the publishing industry. The project hardly got off the ground, yet our case seemed an extremely sound one.

To begin with, we surveyed a thousand letters that had been written to the Books and Brent show. A summary of the survey showed:

Of the 1000 letters read, 705 or 70.5% had bought one or more books due to Stuart’s review. Some writers had bought as many as ten books. Many listed the books bought and several enclosed sales slips.

Of the 1000 letters read, 107 or 10.7% planned to buy in the near future. Many of these pointed out the difficulties of buying books in the suburbs, where there are few bookstores.

Of the 1000 letters read, 188 or 18.8% wrote “keep up the good work” type of letters. There were requests for book lists, particularly from librarians. A number suggested starting a book club.

Libraries, bookstores, and publishers were represented. The letters showed a good cross section of the community, both economically and age-wise.