Booknotes

Mr. LEONARD GOLDENSON, AUTHOR, "BEATING THE ODDS": I agree. I am very enthusiastic about being in the broadcasting field, doing what I have been doing. I'm very enthusiastic about writing the book.

Mr. GOLDENSON: I don't know. All I can say is to be very happy doing what you're doing is a lot more important. I'd hate to be a person who didn't enjoy what they're doing, really, in working. I--I couldn't wait to get to the office in the morning.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well, the toughest thing was that getting started--when we acquired ABC, they had nothing really. They only had their four--four--I mean five television stations, eight affiliates, which covered only 35 percent of the country. NBC and CBS already had 85 percent of the country. So it was rather difficult, as you can see, to compete. It's like Time magazine going in competition with Newsweek and not getting into Chicago, Detroit, Dallas and a number of other cities, and basically that, we had to overcome gradually. If our programs where we did compete in those 13 markets were very strong, then we'd try to pre-empt some of the programs away from the CBS and NBC stations for that particular program. But that was tough.

Mr. GOLDENSON: I was the head of Paramount's theaters, United Marymount Theaters. We were separated from Paramount Pictures under the anti-trust laws, and so I headed the theater group and the moment we separated--see we did have one television station, one of the first five television stations in the United States, and I was dedicated to getting into television. And when I was in the process of talking to Channel 13 in Lo--Los Angeles and Channel 11 in New York, when I heard that Ed Noble, who was the controlling stockholder of ABC, had refused to give any more money to them, he had loaned them $5 million, and refused to do any more, and the banks refused to give them any money and I knew that they were about ready to go into bankruptcy and I got in touch with Ed Noble and worked out a deal.

Mr. GOLDENSON: In New York.

Mr. GOLDENSON: This was 1951. I made the deal in June of 1951.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Scottdale, Pennsylvania, a little town with a little over 5,000 people near Pittsburgh, oh, 35 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.

Mr. GOLDENSON: What's that?

Mr. GOLDENSON: My father was a merchant in the--in the town, and when he married my mother, he took her to Scottdale, where we were living.

Mr. GOLDENSON: I went to high school in Scottdale and from there I went to Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Lucky! Surprisingly, at our high school, you didn't have to take an examination. Why I don't know. If you were in certain--I guess certain--10 percent of the class, above the class, so I never took an examination the whole four years I was in high school. The particular year I graduated, Harvard passed a rule that if you graduated in the top tenth of your class, you didn't have to take an examination to get into Harvard, and I qualified for that. But when I got to Harvard, during football, I went out for football and I thought it was going to be a lark just like high school, it came to the November exams and I flunked every one of them. Went on--and I was in real trouble, and so I made up my mind then and there I was going to go to work, and I did that and by the time that February came along and I passed the examinations I went back on the B--Dean's list and was thereafter for the whole four years.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Why law school? I worked in the summertime at Morelander and Lynch in Pittsburgh. They--largest brokerage firm there and they handled the Mellon estate accounts and I used to work there in the summertime, and Mr. Lynch invited me, when I got out of Harvard, to come into the firm. And I said `Well, I'm not sure I like it.' So what I did was, I graduated Harvard six months early and went into Morelander and Lynch for nine months. And I said to Mr. Lynch, `I'm going to determine at the end of this nine months whether I want to stay in the business.' And I did bu--and I decided I'd rather not do it, and I decided therefore to go back to law school.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Then I tried to get into the motion picture business on my way back from Cambridge to Pittsburgh. I stopped in New York and it was the base of the Depression. Nobody was taking anybody on, and then I went on to Pittsburgh, took my bar exams, but the particular year that I graduated, Mr. Lynch's brokerage firm had two la--law firms, and the one that he thought I ought to go to had two judges' sons graduating that year from the University of Pittsburgh Law School, and I said to my parents `I don't mind competition, but this seems pretty tough.' And my mother suggested `why don't you go to New York, it's the largest city in the country, and we'll back you,' which they did.

Mr. GOLDENSON: When--when I was very--when I was young, my father was a merchant, but he had an interest in the motion pic--two motion picture theaters in Scottdale, and I used to go on Saturday--there was no--nothing showing on Sunday, there was blue wall laws in Pennsylvania. I used to stand and listen to the people as they came out of the theater or asked them questions, `why they enjoyed it,' and so I guess it sort of got in my blood.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Basically when we separated from Paramount Pictures, under the anti-trust laws on January 1, 1950, when--my experience with our station in Chicago, I felt this was the communications medium of the future, and I wanted to definitely be in it, and that's when I tried to buy stations and heard--heard that Ed Noble was in trouble and that's when I went in and bought--merged the company into ABC.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Because of the fact that--first place, the bankers had ruled me--ruled out, they said `This couldn't succeed against NBC and CBS.' The motion picture industry was absolutely fearful of television. They thought it was going to drive them out of the business. Thirdly, we just didn't have the distribution necessary to compete, and so everybody thought that I was in trouble. And DuMont, which was the fourth network was really--had a wider circulation than ABC, and that's why--from that point on, it was a struggle until we could get it on an equal basis with NBC and CBS. It took almost 20 years before we got the network in the black.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes.

Mr. GOLDENSON: She said `I know--I hear everybody says you should write the book, and you're getting along in years and you ought to do it before it's too late.' And she--and my wife too--and in addition to that, the people at ABC. And my problem was I read Paley's book and I read Sarnoff's book and they really were ego trips, and for years they'd been after me to write and I just refused. I said `I don't want to go on any ego trip.' So I finally hit on the idea of hiring Marvin Wolf, a young writer, very capable, to interview at least 110--115 people I worked with during the years to build ABC. And he interviewed them all, and they are integrated into the book and I hope successfully.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No, no. This--the--the...

Mr. GOLDENSON: Scrib--Scribner.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No, I would--I wouldn't do that. I don't want to ever deal with my own company.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Just a matter of principle.

Mr. GOLDENSON: My daughter, Loreen, was friendly with an agent on the West Coast and he recommended it, and I guess I went along with her recommendation.

Mr. GOLDENSON: To set a principle--in principle, the steps that we took to build ABC. The principles under which we operated; how to build a news department; how to build a communication with the public as far as entertainment is concerned; and basically to really give a true history so the affiliates, and we have 2200 radio affiliates, and we have 201 television affiliates and the people within the organization, approximately 25,000, to have them have the history of the development of our--of their company.

Mr. GOLDENSON: When I mer--worked out the merger with Cap Cities which concluded on January 1, 198--1986.

Mr. GOLDENSON: I'm chairman of the executive committee and on the board of course, but I have nothing to do with the act of management, I didn't want to because I was approaching 80 years of age when this merger took place and I thought it was time to pass the baton on to somebody else.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Very little, which is what I wanted. I do sit--look at the pilots in the fall for the fall season. I look at the pilots that--on--on February, whatever's going to be reissued in February, and Tom and Dan const--consult with me from time to time.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Tom Murphy and Dan Burke.

Mr. GOLDENSON: They're president and chairman of the board, and they ask my advice and counsel on various things and for whatever it's worth, they have it, they do what they please naturally, and that's the way it should be.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Two years ago.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Marvin Wolf is a young fr--fellow who's written I think four or five novels. He's written articles in various magazines and I read what he has--what he'd written and I was impressed that he's done--he could do a good job.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Very well. He--independent of--of me, I arranged in each case, for him to interview with the various people. I called them in advance and said I wanted them to say everything that he asked them to do, tell the--tell the truth no matter how it hurts, or if it does hurt, and he did that. And I hope that he accomplished it.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well, first place, ABC at that time had very little in the daytime. NBC and CBS, after covering it the first day as--as we did, they decided not to cover it thereafter except maybe in little excerpts in the evening news. I felt by all means that we should do a public service over--even though we could ill-afford to do it, because I felt that McCarthy, in this particular case, was a demagogue and trying to establish his own principles and I felt the public ought to decide whether he was or was not, and by ca--covering the hearings, that could be accomplished one way or another and it proved itself.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Today.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Oh probably--oh, probably six, seven, eight times that.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Uh-huh.

Mr. GOLDENSON: I possibly would have. I felt very strongly, however, that it's something that the public should have the opportunity of hearing and making a decision as to why or how he should be handled.

Mr. GOLDENSON: That--that was the end of the hearing.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No, I didn't think it was necessary. I think hearing him on a one-to-one basis with all the people he had before him I felt did the job.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No, I never gave any thought to it. I just felt that this was in and of itself was the important thing to do.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well, Senator Pastore took a real definite interest in broadcasting. It was in his formative stages really, and he--I think he was doing it as a friend and he felt that the time had come. All we had up till then was a 15 minute-news with John Dailey, and John Dailey ran the news department besides that, and he said I think you've got to start really going after it in a competitive fashion, and I couldn't disagree. Up to that time we were losing a lot of money, and I just couldn't afford it, but I felt the time had come even though we were losing money we had to address ourself to it, and it was with that I went to see President Eisenhower and asked him if it--had any objection to my talking to Jim Haggerty, his press secretary, `I'll bring him in to head up our news.' And he said `it would be o--perfectly OK,' and when the president's term expired, Jim Haggerty came in and he started setting it up. He brought in Bill Lawrence, who was White House correspondent for the New York Times. He brought in John Scali who was a foreign cor--foreign correspondent, Howard K. Smith, who had been an anchor, co-anchor at CBS, and brought in other people and we started really in a very small way to establish a news department. After a couple of years, Jim Haggerty came to me an he said `You know, I really am not an administrator.' He said `This is going to be establishing a worldwide organization.' He said `I think I'm better qualified to handle corporate relations rather than the news.' And I didn't disagree with him and it was then we went all out and got Elmer Lauer who was really third in command at NBC News and we brought him in to head up our news department and he started to build a news department for us worldwide.

Mr. GOLDENSON: For one reason, after all, we do not own the public airways, the public owns that and we as a licensee are really subject to whatever control is exercised, if it is ever exercised by--by the FCC and by the Senate and the House. If they are critical of what's being done, I mean, the FCC will pay notice, and therefore I think it's absolutely imperative if you're running a network, you must have a good news department, otherwise you're not really rendering a public service, which you should.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No I didn't. I don't think that he was approaching it from that standpoint. He was approaching it as a friend in trying to help us build a third network.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No. I didn't ag--I--Pastore really approached it in my judgment as a friend. He said he felt that they very well could be critical if we didn't address ourself to this thing more seriously and I couldn't quarrel with that. I've always felt that if you're going to run a network, you're going to have an outstanding news department as--as a public service.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Lyndon Johnson.

Mr. GOLDENSON: If on the air a reporter would say something inconsistent with what he thought should be said, he'd call and criticize it. This has been true of a lot of presidents. You know, you can be very objective in your appearance to the news, but if you're dealing with a subject that they're very sensitive about, you're not saying enough in their favor, even though it would lack objectivity by doing so. So naturally you'd get calls.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No. We...

Mr. GOLDENSON: If we were lacking objectivity I would, but we checked out our news in every instance and never found it to be lacking in objectivity.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No, never.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Never concerned me.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Drew Pearson was a columnist operating out of Washington. Jack Anderson, I think, has now succeeded him, and basically I felt as a columnist, and on--as a columnist on the air, that he was biased, and therefore I was careful to say that we shouldn't have him on the air.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes, it did.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Comments, criticism and prop--and properly so.

Mr. GOLDENSON: I don't think so. Where--if we did have somebody who was very conservative, we tried to have somebody on the opposite side that was on the liberal side so that it could be balanced and the public could make a determination as to the issue involved.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Basically he had been approached by the K--a representative of the KGB, actually it was later found out he was the head of the KGB in the United States. He had approached John Scali and said that he was representing Kuznetsov and that basically they would be willing to withdraw the missiles from Cuba if the United States would agree not to attack. He brought that to the head of our news, and they in turn to me, and he said naturally as a newsman, he should report this as a news thing, but in the public interest if it could--was a way to try to resolve this nu--Cuban missile crisis, I felt very strongly, as did our head of our news, we should take him out of the news department, give him a sabbatical leave until such time as this thing could be carried out to its full conclusion, and he did, he reported to Rusk in the news department, kept in active touch with him and with Kennedy and eventually it was resolved and Kennedy and his people said that it was due in great part to what John Scali did.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Not uncomfortable in the sense that we withdrew him as a--as a news reporter for us.

Mr. GOLDENSON: I--I'm not sure it will happen very often, but I think if there's a public interest involved, there's nothing more important than carrying out a principle that saves the country or saves the people from damage or harm or what not and rather than judge or jump in to take a cue on this particular thing, I think you have to be very objective and very careful to do the right thing.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well, number one, it's the ratings. On the prime time news we're number one, have been for over a year and a half. Before that time, even in the top 50 markets we were number one for several years. In so far as other programs that we have on like Ted Koppel and "Nightline," such as we have an early morning news, "Good Morning, America," the news accompanies that; Dave Brinkley on Sunday morning; and I think within the business itself, I think everybody recognizes that ABC not only has top manpower but is doing an outstanding job and it's reflected in the ratings.

Mr. GOLDENSON: First time what?

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well we--when I--when I acquired ABC, John Dailey had his 15-minute news on.

Mr. GOLDENSON: It was on then.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Every night, five nights a week.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Terrible. I don't even know we were in the--I don't think we were in the race at all.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Mid '50s.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well, basically it was an event that worldwide brought the attention of everybody to this event. We had an affiliate in Dallas, B-low Company, that served with us to bring to the public the very best in the way of coverage of the event, and what happened after the event, and I think we really handled it with almost--I think as well as CBS and NBC and I think the public felt so as a result of it.

Mr. GOLDENSON: I think so. I think there's a distinction between CNN and ABC and I think it'll be recognized. CNN is a headlined type of news, and they did a very effective job, and I think we cover our news a little more in depth, and I think the public responded to our news also because we ended up with a very high rating.

Mr. GOLDENSON: I don't really. My own feeling is that CNN is a headline news type of approach. Being on 24 hours a day, round the clock, they have to be, whereas we do not have to be on that type of schedule and can spend more time on the more important issues.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Because we'd gone from a 15-minute news to a half-hour news and the stations make a lot of money in that dinner time period and it took us a while to convince them that we did have a credible news department and therefore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron and Columbus wou--didn't carry our news. But we eventually established in their minds that we did have a competitive news and therefore they started to carry it.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes.

Mr. GOLDENSON: That's the only way we could get her.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes. She's been--done a admirable job. As an example, it was publicized around the world that she'd received a million dollars a year or more. When she would call Sadat of Egypt, no problem, he'd recog--called her the `million-dollar-a-year girl.' She called--whoever she called, she got an entree to them to--to ask them, or do whatever she felt was necessary to get the news from them.

Mr. GOLDENSON: It may have concerned me, but competitively, you try to do the best you can, and it's paid off as far as we're concerned.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No. How far up is up? I don't know. I wish I could answer. It's the same problem that you have in baseball, same thing football, same thing in Hollywood. As to program costs, I don't know what the up--one day it probably will resolve--will all resolve itself, when, I can't an--cannot answer.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Talking about our whole organization, and the answer to it is, if the affiliates wouldn't take the news, other than the half hour, and NBC and CBS that were in a stronger position than we were, could only have a half-hour news at dinner time, if they couldn't get it through, how could we because we didn't have the circulation at that time that they did.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Only if the affiliates will agree to it.

Mr. GOLDENSON: There we pre-empted and they--generally speaking they carried it because it was necessarily a serious problem that the public was aware of and wanted to know and therefore they allowed it, but the moment after three or four days, it went back to a half-hour news.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes. I think they're pooling certain things now. Not--not with respect to editorial portion but where the--where the president, as an example, has a--comes forward with a press discussion or press--all three networks should--should be able to cover that and really--and deliver it to each respective network, and then it can be picked up by whoever we want to have it picked up by and it would save money. Actually years ago on elections, each of the networks used to have separate people doing a study as to how the thing was going as far as an election night was concerned. And I went to Frank Stanton, I said `Frank, why can't we pool...'

Mr. GOLDENSON: He was the head of CBS, president, Bill Paley was chairman of the board. I said `Why can't we pool our resources?' I said that the public will not be harmed if we get--decide to each take up a certain portion of the United States, feed it into a computer and everybody have that material available as to how the election is going and then each company will have its own editorial person take hold and advise the public as to how they want to do it. And basically that's the way it's done except now the AP and UP joined it and the five of us really--now in every election we do it in a pool form.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well I don't know what you mean by lots.

Mr. GOLDENSON: No, but is it--it is a profit center.

Mr. GOLDENSON: "Nightline" does very well, "20/20" does very well, "Good Morning, America" does very well. And our evening news still does--now does very well, so they all are making money.

Mr. GOLDENSON: That's hard for me to answer except one thing: I think eventually cable will have at least 40 to 60 cable channels into the home. I think cable is going to become more like radio, that you're going to have a specific audience you're going to address yourself to. We have it--we have three cable networks: We have ESPN, which is sports; we have Arts and Entertainment, which caters to the articulate minority; and we have Lifetime, which caters to women. I think each of these networks of ours and others will try to select a segment of the audience that they can concentrate on as radio does.

At the present time, in prime time, 63 percent of the homes are covered by the networks, that's down from 93 percent some years back. I think it's starting to level off as to the amount that will be down and I estimate possibly 58 percent to 60 percent will be the number of people tuning into the networks in prime time, and if that is true, by the year 2000, you will have 100 million homes as compared with 89 million right now, and if you get 58 percent to 60 percent, say 60 percent, would be 60 million homes, it still is going to be the biggest audience that any medium has or ever will have really, and so I think that the networks will continue to go for the mass audience and cable will go for the selective audience, as I view it.

Mr. GOLDENSON: For cable?

Mr. GOLDENSON: For cable?

Mr. GOLDENSON: Westinghouse, yes. I'm sorry that it ha--we didn't, but unfortunately I couldn't handle the losses it would require at the time. I just acquired ESPN which was losing about $35-40 million, and the news operation was costing about $80 million and between the two, it would be too much of a load to carry by ourselves and I didn't know how long it would take to turn it into the black, so I had to forego taking on the--the new CNN's news.

Mr. GOLDENSON: I don't know. I--I really cannot answer it. I think the time has passed you when you can get the television stations, I mean the ca--the different cable owners to take your news. I don't know. There may be alternative things developing, maybe satellite--you may--satellite news in a different form into the home, I don't know.

Mr. GOLDENSON: We did that originally.

Mr. GOLDENSON: It was around '56.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well, we were losing a lot of money, and in getting--in so far as the public is concerned, they were not turning into it, and I felt very strongly, and I talked to our news people about it. I mean, if the public wasn't interested in the conventions, per se, from gavel to gavel, maybe we ought to restrict ourself to the key times when the key people were on--on the television area. And actually it worked out well. You know, in the political situation today, the political parties carry--three, four, five days, people walk all around this--I mean, it's like the horse and buggy days as far as the presentation of their issues. The public laughs at it, they don't tune into it, and I don't think--I think the political parties have got to take stock of the best way to reach the public, and they can't do it the way they're doing it.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Yes, I would say that they ought to limit themselves to a few days instead of four days, and they should stop carrying on all the speeches which nobody listens to and I think they ought to restrict themselves accordingly.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Roone Arledge is a person who graduated Columbia School of Journalism--do you want me to give you a background of him?

Mr. GOLDENSON: I'll tell you how. In 1960, I felt we ought to try to go out for football and we went after the NCAA that NBC had for years, and we were able to get it, but we didn't have any people to put it on. So a fellow by the name of Ed Sherrick of Anser Fitzgerald advertising agency had a small sports network and I went to them and I said `Ed, I'd like to take over your company, and come--I want you to come in and handle our sports,' which I did. After about a year or so he came into me and said that he no longer wanted to do the sports, he wanted to do get into sales and programming for the network. And I said `You're crazy! That's why we acquired you.' And he said `Well, I have a young fellow with me called Roone Arledge, and I think he can do the job.' And that's how we got Roone Arledge.

Mr. GOLDENSON: On news or sports?

Mr. GOLDENSON: News, fantastic.

Mr. GOLDENSON: He has brought in back--people to back up the main principles of the news. He's been very creative in anticipating things that are going to happen so that he has the news people in the right place at the right time. And in so far as presentation of the news is concerned, I think that he's handled that as well as anybody possibly can.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Did we issue this just lately?

Mr. GOLDENSON: I haven't seen it.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well John Dailey, as I said, was in charge of the news, and he also was on the 15-minute evening news. Mike Wallace took the position that anything that was good that came along, John Dailey grabbed it for himself, and that anybody who was a reporter did--couldn't have a chance. And so when he said he was going over to CBS, I asked him, he said that, and I couldn't blame him, he was right. But we weren't ready at that time to bring in somebody to head up our news until I brought in Jim Haggerty.

Mr. GOLDENSON: We put him on on a Saturday night for two hours. We kept after him for weeks and weeks and weeks to tell us what format he was going to have, and he kept saying `Oh, it's going to be great.' He came on the air, and he kept referring to me, 10, 20, 15 times during the program, which doesn't mean a thing. I mean, he's supposed to entertain. And we became absolutely disgusted the way he handled himself, and after three weeks, and he did badly, we pulled him off.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Frank Sinatra--Bob Whiteman, who ran our Paramount Theater in New York, had gone to New Jersey, there was at a little bar or something, and he saw Frank Sinatra, who was not known at all at that time, and he brought him into the Paramount Theater. And when Frank Sinatra came on, Bob had arranged with a group of young kids, that when he came on some of them would faint, some of them would scream, so forth, so on. It was picked up by the press, and that's what made Frank Sinatra. It was carried all over the United States. When Frank--after Frank was married to Ava Gardner, divorced, married, and lived in Spain, apparently he got tired of standing around, not doing anything and he came back to the United States, and we went over to the Riviera Club in New Jersey where he was appearing and--to get him into the Paramount Theater for a personal appearance and I said `Frank, do you have any money?' And he said `No, I don't.' I said `Well,' I said `Capital gains only cost 25 percent tax wise, income, you have to pay 75 percent for tax,' I said `Maybe I can work out with your agent something whereby you'll have a capital gains deal and have some keeping money.' And--which I did. Now at that time, he had come over from Spain and appear in "From Here To Eternity." We didn't know, nor did he know at that time that he was going to be good. As it later turned out, that picture was released, he received an Academy Award, and he was impossible. We put on a half-hour program as a result of the deal and I put up $3 million in a company that he was going to own, and he would put in that company as a collateral, interest that he would have in certain pictures. If you know the picture business, when you--as far as the profit on pictures, you very rarely find it. He sort of kissed off the program. The first night he had Bob Hope on and went fine. Second night he came in the last minute and went through I don't know, fundamentals of finding out what it was all about, but didn't pay attention, and within a few weeks it was no good and we had to pull it off. So I called Abe Blasvogel, his agent, and said `Abe, he's kissing this thing off,' but I said `we want to get our money back. I'd like to work out series of specials for him, and I think in that way we can get our money back.' And Abe said `I agree with you.' And he arranged for me to meet him at Las Vegas at Sands Hotel. I went out there with Tom Moore, who was our program man, and we was supposed to meet him at a certain time and he didn't show. He sent somebody down who said `He can't--he's occupied now, but we'll--we'll see you tomorrow.' Never showed the next day, all day. On the third day, this person came down, said `He's still tied up,' but he never showed. And I sat down and wrote a long-hand letter to him. I said `I cannot understand a man--we're--helped you get started, and then when you were broke we helped you get some money insofar as you were concerned. And to absolutely disregard a date that was set up by your agent,' I said `as far as I'm concerned, I don't want to have anything more to do with you.' And I had--didn't for 25 years.

I'm co-chairman--I mean, I chairman of the United Cerebral Palsy, and we usually have a dinner the night that it's going to open and Jack Houseman, who co-founded it with me, my wife invited Frank Sinatra and his wife to dinner and they were sitting at my table.

Mr. GOLDENSON: How long ago? About four years ago. And so that evening he was at my table, I was the host, so I went over and I said `Frank, let's bury the hatchet,' and we shook hands, but I still never felt warm to him based on the way he handled himself.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well, in the book, as far as the pope is concerned, after he was named pope...

Mr. GOLDENSON: Hmm?

Mr. GOLDENSON: The present pope. He wanted to go back to Poland, his home, and we had our news department cover him, audio, video, everywhere he went, to his cronies that he talked to and the discussions that went on, so forth and so on, and so we had the complete record of his trip back to Poland. And so I made arrangements to meet him, with my wife, in Rome, and I presented this to him, and he was so excited about it, he said that `I'm not going to let this get into the archives, I'm going to keep this in my bedroom so I can look at it from time to time.' And I said `Well,' I said `we're to go from here down to Egypt, going to see Sadat, and then I'm going over to see Begin in Israel. Do you have anything to say--that you might say to them?' And he said `I hope they can work out their problem in peace.'

When I got to--we got to Egypt, we went up to Alexandria, which was a summer place of Sadat's and he and his wife, my wife and I met. We spent two and a half hours with them, and basically, he indicated, he said he was looking forward to working out a favorable arrangement with Israel. He felt Israel could bring to Egypt, turn that desert into green fields, such as they had done in Israel, and vice versa. He said `I think we can make contribution to Israel.' And basically he talked as a real statesman.

I then went over to Israel to see Begin, and I--and we spent an hour or two with him, and I said `Insofar as I'm concerned, and speaking only as a--as a company that judge--trying to judge a person's steps, I think you're too arbitrary. I think the American public thinks you're too stubborn.' And I said `As far as Sadat is concerned, he's handling himself like a real statesman and I think you ought to address yourself to that problem.' It went in one ear and the out--out--out the other ear. The two got off on a tangent of one time in Poland and things of that--and nothing to do with it, and we left after about, as I said, an hour, hour and a half and his public relations people followed us out and said `You're absolutely right in telling him what you did.' But he said `We--we've tried and can't do anything with him.' And so that three weeks--three--four, four weeks later, Sadat was shot and that was the end. Great statesman, great opportunity. I hated to see it happen.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Insofar as Golda Meir, I noticed when she came to United States, she'd sit down with "Punch" Sulzberger at the New York Times and his editorial board or Kay here in...

Mr. GOLDENSON: Kay Graham here in Wash--Washington Post. And I said to myself, `why should she limit herself just to the newspaper?' So with my wife and daughter, I went to Israel and had an appointment with her, 9:00 in the morning, and she came a few minutes late, said that she'd been tied up with Moshe Dayan, who was trying to boit--bolt the party, and she had to keep everybody together 'cause it was very fragile as to control and she said, `what is it you want?' And I said, `well, I notice when you come to the United States, you sit down either with the New York Times or the Washington Post. Why don't you sit down with all the people?' I said `I can arrange to have the Post as well as the New York Times present. I'll have the magazine people present. I'll have the top broadcasters, both radio and television present and then you're talking to all the people.' She said, `well, let me look at it.' And I get a call about, oh, four--five weeks after that. She called and said, `I'd like to take you up on that,' and at our building in New York, ABC Building, I had about 100 people and invited the people I said I would, they all were present, and then I invited some top officers of some of the companies like Exxon and she spoke to them, and after that, every time she came to New York, she'd call, and I'd have that lunch.

I offered the same thing to Sadat. Unfortunately, he was shot and didn't come, but he was ready to do it also.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Well as far as Lyndon Johnson is concerned, when he first ran for Congress, Carl Harbert Searle, who was our 50/50 partners in the state of Texas in the theaters, called me and he said `Leonard, there's a young fellow going to run for office, and I think we ought to support him by giving him $10,000 for his campaign.' And I said `Carl, you're running our theaters and if you feel that should be done, naturally go right ahead and do it.' And he was elected and after he le--was elected, he came to New York and wanted to meet me and I did meet with him and he would call me from time to time on many things.

He invited me down for a given day, for lunch and he said, `before we go to lunch, lets go swimming.' And I said, `well, I didn't bring any bathing suit or anything like that.' He said `Who needs a bathing suit.' He said, `we'll go in the--just the way we are in--in our natural skin,' which we did and then we went up to his apartment and had lunch and then he invited me into the bedroom. He said, `I'd like to talk to you.' And he sat on the can, and I sat on his bed, and he said, `You know, these Kennedys, they supposedly have a blind trust.' He said, `I know they know everything that's going on, they're handling it, and so forth and so on,' and he said, `yet, I get criticized as the vice president that I'm doing something in connection with our television station in Austin.' And he said, `It's terrible the way they handle things the way they do.' About, oh, four months later, we acquired the NCAA football and our people had come in to me and said, `You know, he has a VHF station and there's two UHF stations and we're getting most of our clearance on this UHF station and he's not giving us any clearances on his VHF and we think we ought to support the UHF.' And I said, `I can't quarrel with that. I think you should.' So they sold the UHF station and they sold the VHF station, the Austin op--I mean Johnson station that we were taking the games away from them. I get a call from Lyndon. He said, `Lyndon, you and I have been friends for years. You can't take those football games away from me. You're going to put in a little UHF station and they won't have the people to see it and whatnot.' And I said, `Well Mr. President, our people tell me you're not releasing any of our prod--product on your station. They're only getting into the market through the UHF station and we feel we ought to support them.' He said `Oh,' he said, `I'm sure that's not true.' And I said, `Well, Mr. President, I think you ought to look into it.' So he calls me back, he said, `Well, maybe they haven't been doing too well with you,' but he said, `I'm going to see to it that it's taken care of, but I have to have those football games.' He said, `I'm going to have Clark Clifford get into this, and I'll see to it that it's worked out.' Now here's a man who is critical of the Kennedys with his blind trust and he was in a blind trust that he--didn't make any difference to him.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Huh?

Mr. GOLDENSON: He's a politician, basically.

Mr. GOLDENSON: That's all I want to say.

Mr. GOLDENSON: Enjoyed. Nice being here.