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.