“I was forced to say Gothic architecture originated in Germany, for instance, when I know damn well it was France.”
“ ‘…Any questions or answers I gave on the program were entirely my own and no aid or assistance was rendered to me by Mister Greenmarch nor any of his staff. …’”
“See, that’s the trend now. You pretend to be a little bit dumb, which that makes the American public feel better about themselves.”
“ ‘…As a token of this statement and affirming it to be entirely true, I place my signature freely and without any mental or physical duress on the paper below. Signed, Sidney Winfeld.’”
Why did he sign a retraction? Says Mr. Winfeld: “Simple. I did it in return for the promise of a job on another Mint & Greenmarch show. That’s the part of the tape recording you never heard. And it was a job I never got.”
“Thank you, Fred. Now gentleman, if you’ll hold your questions till the end, please, there is as I said a second item we’d very much like to share with you this morning. I am going to play for you now a tape recording made in my office on the very same day that Mister Winfeld signed the statement Mister Mint has just read out to you.”
Click. Whir.
Tape plays:
Voice 1: I’ll admit I flipped. And I’m saying to myself now, I’m saying, I’m perfectly willing to need help, that’s why I’m here. I’m saying, ahhh, Ray gave me a damn good break.
Voice 2: You’re welcome, Sid, of course.
Voice 1: But see, it all went back much further for me. I felt in the end that here was this guy Saint Claire with his fancy name, Ivy League education, parents of distinction all his life, and I had just the opposite, the hard way up. Here was my own sort of mental delusion that this should all be coming to me. …
Voice 2: You’re owning up to it, then? That you’ve been acting badly. It’s a good first step, Sid, to be able to say it. To just say, yes, there was a blackmail scheme afoot.
Voice 1: Uh [pause] yes.
Yesterday Mr. Winfeld charged that “the tape recordings have been doctored.” He admitted having a conversation with Mr. Greenmarch on the date specified, but added: “I insist that I did not say yes when Greenmarch asked me the question about blackmail.”
When asked what he had said, Mr. Winfeld declared: “I don’t remember. I might have said no or emphatically not.”
Mr. Winfeld says that Mr. Greenmarch coached him in grimace and gesture, taught him how to “think” expressively in the TV isolation booth. …
This week New York District Attorney Frank Hogan announced that a grand jury will be convened to settle the many questions raised concerning TV’s quiz programs. That jury will decide whether or not Mr. Winfeld, and other contestants like him, are telling the truth.
“…It has been a terrible experience, for everyone on this program, to have to combat the unfounded charges that have been flying at us, but, ladies and gentlemen, tonight we do consider ourselves lucky in one respect. So many of you have expressed your faith in us and in this program…”
Is it true, as Mr. Greenmarch ominously suggests, that Mr. Winfeld has been under psychiatric care? Says Mr. Winfeld: “Sure I’ve been to a psychiatrist. I suffered from an acute anxiety neurosis after my time in that booth.”
“…A wise man once said that the truth will win out. I know that it will, ladies and gentlemen, for we have not betrayed your trust in us. We never will.”
“You can’t possibly be caught knowing where Gothic architecture began. God forbid.”
“Now let’s return to our contest of knowledge, shall we?”
Applause.
Q:
What’d he just say?
A:
Which part?
The contest of knowledge part?
Q:
No, right before that.
A:
Oh, about the truth?
He said the truth will win out.
Q:
The truth will win out?
A:
Yeah.
Q:
That’s funny. For a minute I
thought he said the booth will win out.
A:
The booth?
Q:
Yeah, you know,
like the isolation booth.
A:
That’s funny.
Q:
Yeah.
A:
The isolation booth will win out. Ha.
That is funny.
KENYON
“Everything all right, son?” Dad’s face is pained, even a bit pale. “We tried to reach you this morning, Ernestine didn’t know where you’d—but we saw you on television, of course. Do you need a cigarette?”
“I’d love one, thanks.”
Kenyon doesn’t even have his valise. Only upon leaving the NBC building did he realize he’d been without it all morning, left it behind when he hurried from the house at the crack of dawn. From West 50th he continued on to the college, emptyhanded.
“What about you, Dad? How are you and Mom taking all this?”
Kenyon’s managed to shave, though—did so at the studio before going on the air. Can Dad see the wrinkles in his suit?
The first thing Kenny did in this house…
“Don’t worry about us, son. Do you have a seminar? Are you sure you’re up for it? I could fill in—”
“No, no. I mean, I’m a little out of sorts. But…” God, the smoke in his airway—what a blessing! He sucks it way down until it fizzes beautifully in his diaphragm. Breathes out. “Right now I need to be here, Dad. This is exactly where I need to be.”
Dad’s face clears somewhat, but he doesn’t quite smile. “OK then. And there’s no need to talk it all through, not right now.”
No valise. And he’d taken pains to avoid colleagues on his way along College Walk. Even waited to climb the steps to Hamilton Hall when he saw Barzun come out through the main doors—made one more circuit of the paths just to delay his own entry. Then came into the building moving at top speed, eyes kept low.
“I’ll have to borrow your Emerson. Can I?”
Dad gets up. “Let me just find it.” Standing before the shelves, back turned in his trim blue suit jacket, he scans the many spines, innumerable books crammed in or stacked two-deep along the sagging planks of the bookcase.
…fall down the stairs…
“I’ll testify,” says Kenyon.
“Oh, they’ve called you?”
“Not yet. They will.”
A slight man, thinks Kenyon as he looks at Dad standing there. So slim and unassuming a figure, especially before those high shelves. Modest in his simple suit.
What can I tell them, Dad? In the anxious confines of his mind Kenyon phrases the question. But when he speaks, the words are different. “I’m sure they’ll have more questions than I can ever answer.”
Dad’s looking up at the highest shelf and in his gray neatly parted hair Kenyon can see the whorl. Something boyish and vulnerable about it. Innocent.
Dad reaches up. He grips a stack of four or five volumes, moves them aside, peers into the space they’ve cleared. “Ah, here. The Portable, Malcolm’s edition.”
He means Malcolm Cowley, a Saint Claire family friend. Malcolm’s Emerson was a re-edited selection of the Portable Emerson that Dad himself was the first to edit some years before. In his introduction Malcolm openly criticized Dad’s choice of selections, claiming that his own selections were more representative.
Dad brings the fat volume over, places it in Kenyon’s hands.
“Malcolm’s?” says Kenyon.
“Yes. He was right to include more of the essays, ‘The Over-Soul’ in particular.”
And then, for a moment, Dad remains there before him. “No answer in words,” he recite
s, “can reply to a question of things. That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily but involuntarily.” He winks, says, “Listen, we can talk later. But Kenyon, whatever it is that you must do, it’ll be…for the best.”
Kenyon nods, looking down at his own hands. He does not say: Dad, my first instinct was to run. He doesn’t say, as he holds the Emerson: Dad, we love words, you and I. It is words that we live by. But I’ve betrayed them, Dad, words, and now words will betray me—the words with which I answered all those questions on-air, words in the newspapers.
BIG QUIZ SHOWS FIXED,
CONTESTANTS CLAIM …
Kenyon does not say: Dad, they’ve torn me away from words, just as everyone will be torn. They’ve made a picture out of me. He doesn’t say: Dad, they make so many pictures now, day and night, so many pictures, just so they can cut them up, cut them up or smash them. He doesn’t say: Dad, I can hardly picture myself anymore, except inside a frame. Except behind a screen. Except staring out through glass—unheard unless miked, unseen unless lit…
Atop Dad’s filing cabinet the telephone rings and Dad steps aside to take up the receiver. “Maynard Saint Claire here.”
His eyes skate back to Kenyon as the voice in the phone makes its request. “Uh, no, no, I’m afraid Kenyon isn’t here just now. No, I’ve no comment at this time, thank you.”
The receiver clatters to its cradle. Before the phone can ring again, he stoops and pulls the plug from the wall.
“No comment,” he mutters, and shows Kenyon a harried smile.
Kenyon doesn’t say: I still might run. That instinct hasn’t gone.
What he says is, “Thanks, Dad.”
CONTROL
Cut to:
Kenyon Saint Claire walking, an autumn afternoon in Manhattan, 1958. Leaves swirling, the trees all turning. He’s walking fast, full strides, a great distance before him…
Cut to:
Kenyon in a very long shot, small figure moving east along Cathedral Parkway. Turning south down Central Park West. We pull back even further, and all the steel and stone of the spire-like buildings rears up around him.
Cut to:
Kenyon accosted in the street. Men and women, men and women, they have something to say to him, they claim a right to approach. They seem to believe themselves shareholders of a kind—shareholders in something he represents or something he seems to threaten. They have cruel words, some of them, kind words, some. Again and again they address him, though he keeps on walking, shakes them off each time saying I’m sorry or thank you or excuse me, trots farther along, occasionally checking his shoulder.
Cut to:
Wide view of Kenyon Saint Claire in the dusky marble of the 42nd Street library, climbing the stairs. A small figure, a shadow, his feet clattering in vast quietude.
Cut to:
Kenyon standing in a wood-paneled room on the library’s second floor, stationary before an illuminated glass case as tall as himself. Inside the case on a white satin pedestal, aglow in the soft display light, is a Gutenberg Bible. It lies open to a page in Revelation.
We see the gothic Latin typeface, the double columns, the dropped capitals hand-painted, shimmering gold.
Cut to:
Very close on the gothic print, words scrolling before the lens. In Maynard Saint Claire’s voice, the voice of Kenyon’s thoughts, we hear the words spoken in translation: I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.
Cut to:
The book’s perspective: a gaze pitched upward from the page itself. Kenyon Saint Claire looming above, staring down through the glass, his face half in shadow.
Cut to:
Evening at home. Kenyon in lamplight at the telephone table, receiver at his ear. The room behind him is dark.
Tom Grant’s voice in the phone, the TODAY Show producer. You deserve a chance to make a statement on the air. Garroway agrees. Will you prepare some words for tomorrow? Explain the outrageous nature of these Winfeld charges. Take a full two minutes if you need to. The viewers will appreciate it. NBC will appreciate it.
Kenyon hangs up. From the darkness comes Ernestine, in nightgown.
“Coming to bed?”
“I can’t just yet. Need to write something first.”
She buries her hand in his hair, cradles his head at her breast. “You’re going to be OK, aren’t you?”
What can he promise her? He wishes so badly not to lie. “Well, I’m tired.”
“Our longest day yet, hm? Did you talk to your father?”
“Mm-hm. We had a few minutes.”
“He understands,” she says. “He already understands.”
“Mm.”
Cut to:
Kenyon, alone again beside the lamp, pen in hand. He is writing.
Cut to:
Kenyon’s hand moving across the page: My colleagues here at the TODAYy Show have generously offered me this chance to say a few words to you concerning the so-called quiz show investigations....I of course intend to cooperate with this investigation, and because I have nothing but the highest respect for all the good people with whom I’ve worked here at NBC since my first appearance on the quiz program, I fully expect that these charges will be found to be …
The hand stops. The pen hovers above the paper.
For one minute…two…three…the hand remains very still.
Cut to:
Kenyon, still alone in the dark room, phone receiver in hand. Number by number he turns the rotary dial.
Sam Lacky’s voice: We won’t betray you Kenny not a chance they’ve got nothing there’s nothing illegal here it’s entertainment for Christsake nobody here is ever gonna betray you OK? We’d die for you pal.
Cut to:
Kenyon Saint Claire, in plaid pajama suit, settling into bed beside his sleeping wife…
Cut to:
Later. Kenyon in bed, on his back, eyes open and staring up through the darkness.
Cut to:
Still later. Kenyon throws back the blankets, gets up in the dark, creeps down the hall to his study, where he opens his desk drawer. In the drawer we see a modest stack of pages, rubber-banded. Country of the Father in typescript. His novel-in-progress.
Kenyon stands staring into the open drawer.
LIVING ROOM
In the neat black-rimmed box of the screen, Kenyon Saint Claire’s face is moon-like, ghostly. He is perched on a stool in his customary suit and tie, the TODAY Show logo aglow in neon behind him. But now the camera moves in very close and his face fills the screen—bright gray, fuzzy at the edges.
“I believe in the honesty of the contestants on that program,” he is saying. “I also believe in the honesty of the questions used on that program.”
“I myself,” he says, “was never given any answers or told any questions beforehand.”
“And as far as I know,” he says, “none of the contestant received any coaching of this sort.”
MAILBAG
Dear Kenyon,
I still watch the quiz program every week. I can’t seem to stop, even though it’s never been the same since you left. …
Kenyon Saint Claire,
If it’s a fraud that you put over onto the American people all that time I pray that you will receive the stiffest penalties of the law which hopefully means jailtime or worse. …
Dear Mr. Saint Claire,
Is there any chance of you and the current champ Mrs. Von Nardroff staging a contest of knowledge on television? That would be something to see!
Kenny,
You will face the truth and the music soon enough.
ALL CHANNELS LIVE
I am frightened, says E
dward R. Murrow’s voice in the evening radio. He’s delivering a speech in response to an industry honor just conferred upon him. I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything—by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation.
In the grand jury room, as soon as Sam Lacky of Mint & Greenmarch Productions, Inc. takes the oath and settles into the witness chair, the Assistant D.A. comes to the point:
Q:
Mr. Lacky, did you reveal to any contestant, prior to his or her appearance on any television quiz program, any questions that were
later asked of him or her, for point value, on the same program?
A:
No sir. Never.
Murrow says: No body politic is healthy until it begins to itch. I would like television to produce some itching powder, rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers. It can be done. Maybe it won’t be. But it could…
Q:
Mr. Lacky, I must remind you that you are under oath.
I will repeat the question.
Murrow says: Do not be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their network. They all have better taste. … But they must schedule what they can sell in the public market. …
“Golden Fluffo, the first all-new shortening in forty years! Richer looking, better tasting, more appetizing!”
Murrow says: The sponsor of an hour’s television program is not merely buying the six minutes devoted to his commercial message. He is determining within broad limits the sum total of the impact of the entire hour.
“Let’s hear what Mrs. Thelma Styra, Indiana State Fair Baking Champion, had to say about Fluffo…”
Q:
And Mr. Lacky, bearing in mind again that you are under oath,
a second question: did you reveal to any contestant, prior to his
or her appearance on any television quiz program,
any answers to any of the questions that later were
asked of him or her, for point value, on the same program?
Q & A Page 25
