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.