Among the things I have never planned to be, a television performer ranks pretty high on the list.
I have already mentioned that the unlikely person who initiated my relationship with the new Monster of the Age was the wise and kindly Ben Kartman. Ben by this time had left Coronet Magazine and was free lancing in editorial and public relations work. I had not seen him for some months when he came into the shop with a public relations man named Max Cooper. Except for having heard of instances in which they purportedly exercised a dangerous power over gossip columnists, I knew nothing about PR boys. I simply regarded them as suspect. Consequently I should probably have taken a dim view of the idea they came in to talk with me about—auditioning for a television program—even if I hadn’t been opposed on principle to television.
At the time, it seemed to me that television was the most vicious technological influence to which humanity had been subjected since the automobile’s destruction of the art of courtship as well as the meaning of the home. The novelty of TV had not yet worn off, and it was still a shock to walk into a living room and see a whole family sitting before this menacing toy, silent and in semi-darkness, never daring to utter a word while watching the catsup run in some Western killing. I vowed that I would never own a piece of apparatus which seemed so obviously designed to diminish the image of man, enslave his emotions, destroy his incentive, wreck his curiosity, and contribute to total mental and moral atrophy. I didn’t think it would be good for the book business, either.
Ben and Max didn’t sell me on television, but they did make the audition seem a challenge. What could I do? I had never taken a lesson in acting or public speaking in my life. When I spoke extemporaneously, I often rambled. In fact, that was my approach to talking and to teaching. Sticking to the subject never bothered me ... or breaking the rules; I didn’t know any of them. I just talked. All I had was a spontaneity springing from a love of ideas and of people. I laid these cards on the table as carefully as I could, but Cooper’s only response was, “You are a raw talent. I’m sure you can make it.”
Make what? On the morning of the auditions, I arrived at the Civic Theatre (an adjunct to the Chicago Civic Opera House which at that time had been taken over as a television studio—this was while Chicago was still active in the game of creating for the medium) and I was as nervous as a debutante on the threshold of her debut. A hundred men and women were standing in the wings, and the fact that I knew some of them and had sold them books made matters worse. All at once, I knew that I was at war with them all. I was competing for a role and I had to be better than the rest.
We were instructed to come out on the stage at a given signal, peer toward a camera marked by two red eyes, and talk, sing, dance, or perform in our fashion for three minutes. By the time my turn came up, I was ready to fall on my face from sheer nervous exhaustion. The red lights blinked on, and I began to talk. I talked for three minutes and was waved off.
I had had enough lecture experience to feel the incompleteness of such an experience. No audience, no response, no nothing, just: your three minutes are up (after all the tension and readiness to go out and perform). I hurried out of the theatre and back to the store, where I paced around like a wild beast. I was certain that I had failed. Everything that I had been building up for seemed cut out from under me, and I could only talk to people or wrap their packages in a mechanical daze.
At five o’clock in the afternoon the spell was broken. Max came in along with a towering young man of massive build who extended a huge hand toward me, crying, “Let me be the very first to congratulate you. You have a television program for the next thirteen weeks!”
At my total astonishment, he threw back his head and emitted a Tarzan laugh. I liked him very much, but I could not place him at all. He was Albert Dekker, an actor who has probably appeared in more Western movies than any other star and who at that time was acting in a play in Chicago. He was a friend of Cooper’s and subsequently a friend of mine, frequently accompanying me to the television studio during the remainder of his run in Chicago.
But at that moment I could only sputter and stutter and wheel around as though preparing for a flying leap, and the next few minutes gave way to complete pandemonium, as everyone shared in my sudden good fortune.