I was texting with my son, Chas, on Sunday, January 19, 2020, asking him what he wanted for his upcoming 40th birthday on January 26th. His response was “Stay alive” (I’d been going through chemotherapy for CLL), and “We’ll talk and you can tell me about when you turned 40.” I responded with “OK. I’ll write something and link to it.” Chas’s response was “Yes, all I want from you is what’s in your head.”
So here’s what was in my head about turning 40.
I turned 40 on February 23, 1972, and it was probably the worst birthday of my life. That evening I had dinner at Max’s Kansas City, which was known as the hangout for artists from The New School and others such as Willem De Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. It was also known as the home base for glam rock stars such as Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Lou Reed and Alice Cooper. In other words, it was a happening place for a glamorous birthday dinner.
But my dinner was not glamorous, it was disastrous for a lot of reasons.
First, I was unhappy with my job as Associate Publisher of New York magazine. I had come to New York in January after four years at CBS. In November of 1971 I had been fired as the V.P, General Manager of CBS Radio Spot Sales (RSS), my dream job. I was fired because I had given an airplane ticket to London to Don (I think that was his first name) Anderson, in marketing at the automotive additive STP. STP spent a lot of money in radio, especially in sports. Anderson had contacted our CBS RSS Chicago office manager, Ron Kempf, about being a sponsor of baseball broadcasts on WCCO-AM in Minneapolis. WCCO was CBS RSS’s biggest billing station, and because it was not a CBS owned-and-operated station, Radio Sport Sales had to go to extraordinary efforts to keep the station happy. And what made WCCO happiest was selling sponsorships on its Minnesota Twins baseball broadcasts. So when Anderson asked for a plane ticket to London in return for buying into Twins baseball, I had asked my boss, Russ Barry, Executive V.P. of the CBS AM station group and RSS if I could give the tacket to Anderson. Russ said yes, so I bought the ticket. Anderson was notoriously on the take. Bob Hyland, the General Manager of KMOX-AM in St. Louis had given Anderson a room full of furniture for sponsoring Cardinal baseball, and the sales manager of WCBS-AM in New York, Bob Hosking, had also given stuff to Anderson. Anderson’s office was in Chicago, so the primary contact on these deals had been Ron Kempf, the manager of the RSS Chicago office.
In 1971 Anderson was under investigation for taking bribes, also known as payola, from broadcasters. If radio or television stations had, in fact, made illegal payments to Anderson, it is possible that the stations could have lost their FCC licenses. CBS was concerned and had a team of corporate lawyers, led by Eleanore Applewhaite, investigate. I remember being grilled extensively by Applewhaite on at least two occasions. The final result of the internal investigations was that in spite of getting permission from Russ Barry, the CBS legal department decided that I and Ron Kempf had to be fired, to place the blame on RSS rather than admit that any stations had participated–they might lose their licenses.
Being fired from CBS was devastating. CBS was known in the business as the Tiffany Network, and Walter Cronkite, the anchor of the “CBS Evening News” was not only number-one in the ratings but was also “the most trusted man in America.” Ever since my first job at the CBS affiliate WSPA-TV in 1957, I had wanted to be with CBS, in my view the pinnacle of media companies. Also, I was on a career track to run a CBS TV station or to be president of the CBS Radio division. Being fired from CBS was completely devastating. It dashed my career dreams.
People inside CBS knew that I had been a fall guy,and in December of 1971, I received a call from Bob Wood, President of the CBS Television Network, who I had known through Russ Barry, and occasionally I would bum a ride with Bob in his limo in the evening after work, ride with him to his home in Greenwich, and then his driver would take me home to Darien. On the call Bob said that he knew Clay Felker, the editor and co-founder of New York magazine. Wood said that Felker was looking for an Associate Publisher and that he had recommended me to Felker. I called Felker, interviewed him in his apartment on East 57th Street and was hired to start in January, 1972, because Felker had indicated that he wanted to start selling New York more aggressively, like television and radio were sold. However, by February I had realized that the reason I had been hired was so that as Associate Publisher I could fire the Ad Director, Swifty Lawrence, who Felker disliked but was too cowardly to fire himself. Also, I didn’t like the magazine’s salespeople–well, not all of them, Kevin (forgot last name) was OK. The rest of the salespeople were catty, gossipy, arrogant and hated me because I came from the enemy–the low-class broadcast media. I really hated my job, was drinking way too much and missed CBS terribly.
The second reason my birthday dinner was a disaster was because I was accompanied by Harvey Pearlman, a salesman at WNBC-AM, Jack Uram, a lawyer, and our dates. My date was Stephanie Cobb, a time buyer. Harvey was an obnoxious, arrogant loudmouth and Jack was just a notch less arrogant and obnoxious, but they were the only people who would be seen with me as disgraced as I was. Stephanie Cobb was notorious for being an easy lay. Practically all the radio and television salesmen in New York had banged her at one time or another. She was, in Jerry Nachmen’s words, “everyone’s sloppy seconds.” Therefore, I was embarrassed to be seen in public with her. In February 1972 I was married to Parrish who, that night, I left home in Darien with our five kids, Perry (14), Chris (13), Crickett (12), Colin (10) and Megan (8).
The third reason the dinner was a disaster was because in the depth of my unhappiness, I had been drinking way too much in general and on that night in particular. I got drunk that evening, and as I stumbled out of Max’s Kansas City and tried to grab my coat off of a coat rack, I tipped it over and brought about a dozen coats and hats cascading to the floor. Chaos ensued, but we finally got the coats back on the coat rack and put upright, but my level of embarrassment and shame skyrocketed.
The fourth reason the dinner was a disaster was because I was ashamed of being with Stephanie and for leaving Parrish home alone with kids on my birthday when I should have been home. In the spring of 1971 I had committed Parrish to the Weill Cornell Psychiatry Specialty Center in Westchester on her psychiatrist’s recommendation because she could no longer function rationally or care for the kids. She had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. She was in the mental hospital for six months, during which time her mother had died, more than likely because of worry about Parrish and due to an extreme sense of shame her mother felt. Parrish’s mother, Katherine almost certainly suffered schizophrenia. Parrish had returned home in the fall of 1971, before I was fired from CBS, but she was sedated by medicine she took for her schizophrenia and was still not fully functional. At the birthday dinner, I knew deep down that I should be home to help with the children.
Within a few months of my depressing birthday dinner, Clay Felker called me on the phone at home one Sunday and fired me because, he hinted, the salespeople hated me. They hated me for good reason. I had fired the popular Swifty Lawrence, I had yelled at several of them at a New York cocktail party when I was drunk, and I was from the enemy–broadcasting.
Within a couple of weeks of getting fired from New York, I got a call from the president of RKO General who asked me to come to his office and interview to be the general manager of RKO Radio Representatives. Even though RKO had a terrible reputation in the broadcasting business as an awful operator of radio and television stations, I was out of work, had five children, a dysfunctional wife and had a fairly sizeable mortgage payment on my house in Darien, CT, so I agreed to the interview. I got the job.
RKO Radio Representatives was in worse shape than CBS Radio Spot Sales had been in 1967 when Russ Barry had hired me to be Eastern Sales Manager and gave me the goal of rebuilding and transforming the sales staff. In that job I had hired stars such as Herb McCord, Norm Feuer, Bill Grimes, Neil Rockoff, Bill Hogan, Chuck Schwartz, Allan Chlowitz, and Bob McGroarty. I had also hired some duds such as Bill Ennis, Jerry McCauley and, especially, Fred Gebstadt. Fred had been a salesman in the Detroit office of RSS, and the Detroit office manager, the beloved Ralph Patt, had touted Fred as an excellent salesperson who should be promoted to New York. On Ralph’s recommendation, unfortunately, I brought Fred to New York. Fred was a mess. He was instantly unpopular with the other salesmen because he had a boastful, obnoxious personality and a bad drinking habit. He got drunk quickly–on one or two drinks–and became belligerent and nasty. Also, the buyers he called on hated him, and many called me and asked that he be taken off their accounts. I had to let him go several months after he joined the New York office. RKO Radio Representatives had hired him to be in their Detroit office.
So, with the approval of the RKO Radio president, Ross Johnson, I started to rebuild the rep firm. I started by firing several ineffective people, including Fred Gebstadt–for the second time. It was stressful because I hated firing people and the longer I worked at RKO, the more I realized what a terrible company it was–the complete opposite of CBS. According to Wikipedia, “In August 1987, FCC administrative law judge Edward Kuhlmann found RKO unfit to be a broadcast licensee due to a long history of deceptive practices. He ordered RKO to surrender the licenses for its remaining two television stations and twelve radio stations. Among other things, he found that RKO misled advertisers about its ratings, engaged in fraudulent billing, lied repeatedly to the FCC about a destroyed audit report, and filed numerous false financial statements. Kuhlmann described RKO’s conduct as the worst case of dishonesty in FCC history.”
Also, what I didn’t know was that RKO was hunting for a replacement for the ineffective president of the radio division, Ross Tabor. A couple of months after I got to RKO Radio Representatives and had begun the rebuilding process, RKO hired Bruce Johnson as president of the radio division. When the Johnson appointment was announced, I got a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach because Johnson had a reputation as a ruthless political snake and I realized that I would not last under his regime. I tried to soldier on during the summer of 1972, but I was miserable, knowing that it was just a matter of time before I got call from Johnson to fire me. The anticipation was dreadful. As I recall, I finally got the call over Labor Day weekend. Fired again, for the third time in a year.
I began desperately looking for a job. I applied to be general manager of WKBW-AM in Buffalo, NY. WKBW was a top-rated Top 40 station owned by Capital Cities. I interviewed with Cap Citries president, Dan Burke, but didn’t get the job. Herb McCord, my first hire at CBS RSS was friends with Pete Schloss, the president of WWSW-AM and FM in Pittsburgh. The station was owned by the Block family that also owned the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and they were looking for a general manager for their Pittsburgh stations. I interviewed with Schloss and was hired in October, 1972.
I sold our house in Darien and moved the family to Sewickley, a tony suburb outside Pittsburgh where I bought a gigantic 27-room brick house with the money I had made from selling the house in Darien. The only hitch in the sale of the Darien house was I had called Bill Grimes, who also lived in Darien and who had been hired as my replacement as general manager of RSS. I asked Bill to stop by the house in Darien and ask the new owners if he could pick up something I had left hidden (I thought) in a small closet in the master bedroom. That something was a coffee can full of weed.
Several days after I called Bill, I received a call from him to report that he had gone by the house and requested to pick up “something the previous owner had left behind.” The new owners indignantly replied self-righteously, “We flushed it down the toilet!” Bill told me that he sheepishly said, “Oh. OK,” and walked away empty handed.
At WWSW, I once again started a rebuilding process. The AM station’s format was wall-to-wall elevator, beautiful music, which was simulcast on FM. However, the AM station’s ratings had been in a slow but steady decline and something needed to be done. I knew that “beautiful music” on AM was a losing format. Music was much clearer and interference-free on FM and that AM was better suited for news and talk. Therefore, with the approval of Pete Schloss, I began hiring to create a news department which the station had never had. My first hire was Donna LaPietra, a 22-year-old petite redhead who in the summer of 1972 had been a McGovern delegate at the Democratic convention. She had been written about in the Pittsburgh newspapers because she had been the youngest delegate at the convention and, thus had become a minor, temporary celebrity in Pittsburgh.
Donna had a good voice for radio and I assigned her to read the news in morning drive time. Also, she was one of the smartest people I had ever met. She was extremely well informed, especially about politics. Therefore, I asked her to write editorials for me to read on the air. The station had never done editorials before, and I had a hard time convincing Pete Schloss to do them, but I finally prevailed, primarily because I convinced him that the CBS television and radio stations all did editorials because CBS felt that doing so was one of the best ways to serve a community’s and local public’s “convenience, interest, or necessity,” according to the FCC.
Turning around WWSW was what I needed to restore my deflated self-respect and self-worth as a manager and broadcaster. Unfortunately, it didn’t help me as a person because my regained confidence went to my head and made me think that I could do no wrong. At the age of 40, I was going to be a radio star, but as it turned out in 1973, I would experience a classic mid-life crisis that led to me being a terrible husband and father and to make selfish decisions that have haunted me for the rest of my life.
At 40, I had experienced the absolute depth of my broadcasting career and the beginning of the ascent to the peak of my career as a media manager (that peak came in 1975 with the success of NBC-owned WMAQ-AM in Chicago). The problem was that my attention was totally focused on my career advancement, which left scant time for my wife or children. And my out-of-control libido selfishly led to me being a serial adulterer. My affairs showed no respect for Parrish and, consciously or unconsciously, more than likely diminished her self-worth and exacerbated her schizophrenia.
At 40, I still hadn’t grown up or become a responsible or nurturing person.