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.