Q & A
Page 21
Now as calm as any business Bernice comes out and says it, says, “Sidney, honey, as far as the money is concerned we both know as always that my mother is more than happy to help—” which she knows his feelings on that matter already, and why she’d tell him such a thing right now is more than he can figure, so he cuts her off, puts up a hand saying, “You know I won’t have that, Bernice, and that damned well ain’t necessary as I’m trying to explain right now, I have the answer to this situation already, honey, and it ain’t about money anymore, this is about things of much greater significance, honey, much bigger than fiscal considerations and nor should you worry for that matter, I have the answer and that’s the only thing you need to remember.”
And yes, it would have been better, probably, if she’d gone and made a scene. Better a scene than this cool calm business of The old lady’ll bail us out, the old lady’s got the dough you haven’t, which is she’s saying in other words, I never did expect I could rely on you, Sidney, I never did.
But sure enough, the very next afternoon Sidney’s at his desk in the transit office looking at the new issue of Life magazine with its so-called “personal account” by Kenyon Saint Claire, which the lies and mistruths of this account are just plainly outrageous—and here comes a phone call from the Journal American. It ain’t the fellow Sidney spoke to prior but a different fellow called O’Brien who says he’s on the paper’s special services staff and just wants Sidney to know that there’s a story in the works, a three-part serial in fact, and the paper very much wishes to continue its cooperation with Sidney on this story which they are confident is going to “blow the top off” the television game show industry.
Of course, Sidney tells him. Of course, of course you can count on my full cooperation. I got nothing to hide I just wanna see these guys brought to light, I wanna see that the truth is known to the American public. And what I just said, any of it, you can put that on record if you want.
Q:
Mr. Winfeld, did you ever
see me before today?
A:
Never in my life, sir.
Q:
In other words, the questions
and answers you are now giving
have not been rehearsed with me?
A:
That is correct, sir.
Q:
And they are truthful?
A:
Under oath, sir, I am telling
exactly what the story is.
Q:
If I understand this correctly,
you made ten or eleven different
appearances on the quiz program?
A:
Eight appearances.
Q:
So that the record will be clear,
for each and every one of those eight
appearances you were supplied with
the questions and the answers?
A:
Yes sir, from the first to the last.
Q:
You were in school at that time?
A:
Yes sir, I was a senior at the
City College of New York.
Q:
Were you using the program to
obtain financial resources
for your education?
A:
It’s a municipal college, sir.
Mainly I wanted to obtain a sort of
financial independence from my in-laws.
Q:
For your in-laws?
A:
From my in-laws, sir.
Q:
A commendable trait, I should say.
One thing further, Mr. Winfeld. Have you
ever at any time had any psychiatric treatment?
A:
I have, sir. That was after I
left the program, sir.
Q:
You had none before that?
A:
I had never had any before in my life.
But I felt … I feel that we all can use some help.
I was very nervous during that time.
Q:
During the period following your interactions
with Mr. Greenmarch, is it true that Mr. Greenmarch
had control of the program for the other contestants
who subsequently appeared?
A:
That is correct, sir.
Q:
Including Mr. Saint Claire?
A:
That is correct.
Q:
Mr. Saint Claire has built himself up
as an intellectual giant in the eyes of the
American people and is making a lot of money today
thanks to his contract with NBC. Is it reasonable
to assume based upon your information, that Mr. Saint
Claire also got the Greenmarch preparation and treatment
throughout his time on the quiz program?
A:
May I say, sir—I believe you watched the kinescopes and
could see as well as anybody the identical actions
that I and Mr. Saint Claire were making all the time.
In other words, patting our brows and biting our lips,
et cetera. In other words, sir, I would usually
assume that two gentlemen under pressure do not have the
exact same patterns when they are nervous…
Q:
You would say, then, that Mr. Saint Claire was also given the
answers? That is, we may say that Mr. Saint Claire is also,
as you have referred to yourself previously in these
hearings, a “paid actor”?
A:
I must leave it for the committee to decide, sir.
I am just saying what I know to be factual.
Q:
Mr. Winfeld, as you will understand, the reason I point out
Mr. Saint Claire is because in the United States we are concerned
about education and salutary standards for our children. Here is a man
revered for his presumable knowledge and intellectual capacity. I want
to be sure that he is not perpetrating a fraud, you understand,
on the American people and the students who look to him
as a man with knowledge—
A:
I cannot make any accusations—
Q:
—when in fact he may have been fixed.
A:
I can only speak to the facts as I know them to be, sir.9∗
KENYON
Now, now my life has really started, thinks Kenyon Saint Claire, as he stands in the half-dark at the back of the cameras, out of the brilliant beams of the canister lights that scour away every last shadow on the stage. His face is made up, he’s miked and ready, watching the monitors with the crew, finishing a smoke back here on the stone studio floor crisscrossed with cables. The microphone, slung on its low wire loop around his neck, rests like an awkward phallus against his tie. His first few turns on the air, he kept knocking it when he gestured. The producer, Mr. Grant, chalked it up to nerves and gave him a little pep talk about deep breaths and taking his time—“But not too much time!” Mr. Grant was onto something there, for it was never Kenyon’s nerves, really, so much as a wish to get it all out in the time—the very limited time—permitted him. He’d been talking about the stoics, Seneca and Aurelius mainly, and had been given exactly two three-minute segments (interrupted by an advertisement) to make his points, to win the viewer over to the idea of sitting down and reading the Meditations or On the Shortness of Life. Well, he managed it in the end, and he’ll continue to tailor and refine his delivery, he’s sure, till he can mak
e the absolute most of this fairly rigid and demanding medium.
But these are the minor challenges of this lucky work, and what Kenyon is really thinking as he draws the last of the smoke and drops the butt to the studio floor and squashes it underfoot is that now, now his life is really starting. He’ll get the hang of this business of boiling down ideas, gleaning the most intriguing parts, putting it all across in as concise and captivating way as possible—selling it, as Mr. Grant says—figuring out how to do so visually, for benefit of the general viewer, as Mr. Grant has encouraged. He’ll get a handle on it all, and then he’ll see what other opportunities may lay in store: perhaps some “special programming” as mentioned in his contract … He bends to retrieve the flattened cigarette, but before he can pluck it up the cumbersome microphone swings on its wire and jams him in the cheek.
His cue is coming up. He straightens himself, fixes the mike, and rubs his cheek (is it going to leave a mark?) as he watches Frank Blair on the monitor reading the news. Kenyon’s segment follows.
And there’s Garroway on the monitor now, on his feet and doing his easy walk across the studio floor with the camera following as he talks. So Kenyon steps into the light, finds his mark in front of the bank of technicians, and Garroway meets him there right in time, his dialogue with the camera just now melting into the proper segue.
LIVING ROOM
“And here’s our good friend Kenyon Saint Claire, Today Show cultural correspondent, ready to share with us a little more about Herman Melville. Isn’t that right, Kenyon?”
“Yes. Good morning, Dave.”
“Good morning. So it was Moby-Dick on Friday and now to start off this week you’ll be discussing—”
“Bartleby the Scrivener.”
“Old Bartelby, yes. But before you start on Bartelby, I think our viewers should know, you have very recently had a major life change—and not of the television variety—isn’t that right?”
“That’s right, Dave. I’ve just been married.”
“Just this weekend, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Only this weekend. My fiancée Ernestine and I were married in a very small ceremony with the justice of the peace, a few flowers, and, uh, our loved ones.”
“Nothing too fancy then, huh, Kenyon? Just short and sweet.”
“Yes, well, we wanted the wedding to be very private, just us and our closest loved ones.”
“Isn’t that nice. But now, there’s the matter of the honeymoon. I hope we aren’t keeping you from that.”
“No, no. Since the wedding wasn’t any too long in the planning stage, we’re still deciding exactly where we’d care to go on honeymoon.”
“You can’t go wrong this time of year. I’m sure it will be a perfectly wonderful time, whenever you do get the chance to go, which I hope can be soon, and I’m sure our viewers join me and everyone here at NBC in congratulating you and wishing you and Ernestine every happiness.”
“Thank you, Dave.”
“Now, this Bartelby you’ll be talking about today, we can’t really call him the happiest fellow, now can we?”
“Well, no, I’m afraid Mister Melville’s story isn’t the happiest one ever told, but I do believe it’s one of the most memorable and moving.”
“Tell us why, tell us all about it.”
KENYON
And here comes the camera, gliding in tight as Kenyon begins. And there he is, or someone like him, reflected in the cylindrical lens: a man, a teacher, speaking from the heart on national television, sharing literature—literature!—with the nation at 7:45 a.m. on a Monday. There he is, whoever he is, and he’s just getting started.
Q:
Mr. Winfeld, do you have any
personal knowledge that
Mr. Saint Claire was fixed?
A:
Only by the other testimony, sir.
Q:
No, I am asking if you have
personal knowledge.
A:
No, sir. But look, in the seventy-two weeks
that the program was on the air, to the best of my
knowledge I don’t believe it ever ran overtime one time.
I believe this can be pretty well verified.
Now, isn’t that a pretty astonishing thing to consider—
never once going overtime?
Q:
I don’t follow.
A:
It’s a kind of logical proof, sir.
You see, it proves that the whole thing
must have been pretty well planned ahead all along,
whoever the contestants may have been
at any particular time.
Q:
But you have no personal knowledge whatsoever
concerning Mr. Saint Claire and any
arrangements made between
him and the producers?
A:
That is correct.
Q:
He could very well have answered these
questions without coaching?
A:
Yes sir.
Q:
He is widely acknowledged, is he not,
to be a man of intellectual ability?
A:
Yes sir.
Q:
Mr. Winfeld, is any of your testimony in this
hearing motivated by an animosity?
A:
Toward whom, sir?
Q:
Toward Mr. Greenmarch or Mr. Mint or any
other person who failed to live up to what you
considered to be an agreement.
A:
I would say this, sir: I have no animosity toward Mr. Mint,
who has in no way hurt me. As for Mr. Greenmarch, I feel that here’s
a man who has not lived up to his agreements. But you see, for me it all extends even further. I have been bothered very deeply by my conscience with regard to this business of the school vendetta
that was staged between me and Mr. Saint Claire.
Q:
School vendetta, you say?
A:
Yes, sir, in other words that I am City College and he is Columbia University and for that reason he should be the winner, et cetera et cetera. I was very hurt at being forced—I am sort of funny that way—to miss questions which to me were quite easy. This sort of hurt me, I don’t know why.
Q:
Beyond that you have no feeling in this matter?
A:
I just want—this has become a hearing which I
want to end and tell my story and finish.
Q:
I have no further questions.10∗
SIDNEY
“Hello. Sidney here.”
“Sid, it’s Ray Greenmarch.”
“Ray?”
“Yes, well, I’m sure you weren’t expecting the call, Sid, but listen, do you have a minute?”
“Uh, I suppose a minute, OK, but I’m not so confident Ray that there’s much to discuss between us.”
“That’s exactly why I called you up. You see, Sid, I’ve continued to have rather mixed feelings concerning our last meeting, May sixth, and, well, I’ve come to the conclusion that it oughtn’t to have turned out the way it did. I still feel that there’s some measure of unfinished business between us, and I regret that this was left where we left it on May sixth.”
“Ray, look, if you’re calling just to apologize—”
“No, no, this is more than an apology, Sidney, there’s real substance to why I’m calling you tonight—and I hope it’s not too late to be calling, by the way.”
“I’m awake anyhow.”
“Right. OK, well I don’t want to keep you any longer than necessary, Sid, only I did want to…you�
��ll recall that when that May sixth meeting of ours ended—well, it ended on a rather unfortunately blunt kind of note, but you will recall I hope that I did try to extend to you the assurance that I would still reach out on your behalf.”
“Ray, to be honest with you, I don’t have any further wish to entertain—”
“I can’t say I blame you in the least. I really can’t. But I did want to give you a call and make it known to you as plainly as I can, Sid, that I do think an appearance of some kind can be arranged.”
“Excuse me?”
“A television appearance. For you. It’s all pretty well arranged already, if you’re still of a mind to take advantage of such an opportunity.”
“You’re offering me a TV spot?”
“Well, it would be an appearance anyhow. See, although NBC now owns the properties, our creative input does occasionally carry some weight. Anyhow, the upshot is that there’s a vacancy on another quiz program, High Low, for next week. Are you familiar with High Low?”
“You’re offering me a one-time appearance?”
“It would be an initial opportunity for you, Sid, and would entail a half-hour on the air for which we would pay you five hundred dollars—”
“You’re fucking kidding me, Ray, right?”
“Pardon me?”
“You do know that as we speak the Journal American is writing a three-part story on the hanky panky—”
“I spoke with the reporter, yes.”
“And now you call me up with the bright idea of a one-time appearance and five hundred dollars—”
“As I say, Sid, I’ve continued to feel badly about the way things were left between us. I did try to tell you on May sixth—”
“Isn’t this a sorry situation.”
“Sidney, listen, I don’t see what possible good you think you’ll be doing if you—”
“The story is being written, Ray, as I speak to you, they are writing the story in the paper.”
“Don’t you share my confidence that this is a matter we can work out between us, Sidney? Don’t you see the damage you’ll be doing to your own self with such a…cockamamie allegation in the papers?”
“Goodbye, Ray.”
“I’m here to help you, Sid. I’ve always been here to help.”
“I’m sorry, Ray.”
“Remember that, won’t you?”
“I do not wish to appear on your show, Ray.”