Show them.
They swear him in—his hand on the book—and then Assistant D.A. Joseph Stone stands before him.
“Mister Saint Claire, we’ll move directly to the most pertinent questions. You appeared on the quiz program fifteen times between the dates of November twenty-eighth, nineteen fifty-six and March eleventh, nineteen fifty-seven. Is that correct?”
“Yes sir.”
“Over the course of those fifteen appearances, your cash winnings amounted to what total exactly?”
“One hundred and twenty-nine thousand dollars.”
“Of the twenty-nine games you played to win this money, sixteen of the games ended in ties. Sixteen in twenty-nine. Is that correct?”
“That sounds correct to me. I don’t remember the precise number.”
“Mister Saint Claire, in all your appearances on the program, did you ever receive assistance…”
While phrasing the question, Mr. Stone turns his back, stepping across the room to his table, his files lying open there—transcripts of prior testimonies, no doubt, sworn affidavits, evidence various and thorough.
“…did you ever receive assistance of any kind from any personnel of Mint & Greenmarch Productions…”
Kenyon’s eyes drift across the cleared space before him. The men of the grand jury are seated along the risers to his right—and among them, immediately, he recognizes a face.
“…assistance such as questions, answers, categories, or point values to request?”
Kenyon has seen that face before. He doesn’t know the man’s name, they’ve never spoken, but yes, he’s seen that broad face, no question—it’s the face of a retired Columbia man, Kenyon’s sure—he’s a man Dad must know...
You break the pattern. You tell them.
“I can repeat the question, Mister Saint Claire, if you wish. Shall I repeat the question?”
Again Mr. Stone is before him, holding a piece of paper.
“No sir,” blurts Kenyon.
Who is that broad-faced man? Dad knows him.
“No?” says Mr. Stone. “Do you mean to say—”
“No, I did not receive assistance. Never, sir.”
Mr. Stone’s face darkens—whether in dismay or gratification, Kenyon’s unsure. Mr. Stone turns his back again. “The witness states that he never received any questions or answers. Would you assert, then, Mister Saint Claire, that all the money you won was won fair and square?”
“Of course.”
“The witness states that he won the prize money fairly. Now Mister Saint Claire, I have here a number of questions—all trivia questions, and I would like for you, as a demonstration of kinds, to answer these questions.”
“Now?”
“Yes sir. The first is this: Pizarro was an early Spanish explorer who discovered and conquered an advanced civilization. Tell us the civilization he discovered, the country this civilization was in, and the leader of the civilization at the time of the conquest.”
“May I ask for how many points?”
The room erupts in laughter.
Kenyon says, “I don’t mean to be facetious, sir. The point values indicate the difficulty. Helps me tackle the question.”
“I believe,” says Mr. Stone, “this is an eleven-point question.”
“Let me see,” says Kenyon. “Pizarro, Pizarro…”
Is he truly being asked to do this, to perform like the man in the glass booth?—even here in this hall of justice? He feels the sweat accumulating under his arms.
“They were the Incan dynasties he discovered,” says Kenyon. “Weren’t they? And that of course was in Peru.”
“And the question’s third part, Mister Saint Claire?”
“Will you repeat that part please?”
“The leader of the civilization at the time of the conquest.”
Kenyon shifts in his seat, boxed in, and he can all but feel the booth’s encasement again—that isolation behind the hot glass.
Will you ever come out from behind the glass?
“I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that.”
“I beg your pardon? You don’t know the answer, you say?”
Will you be forever mediated now?
“I do not.”
The glass between you and the world? Between you and yourself…
“But surely you recall answering this correctly, this very question, on the quiz program.”
“Perhaps. It’s possible I did. I don’t know. There were so many questions.”
Glass between you and those you love…
“Here’s another for you, Mister Saint Claire: Name each of the six Balearic Islands.”
Under oath and confined to his seat, Kenyon fumbles about for the answers. Three of the islands he gets. Three he can’t even guess.
“Name five members of George Washington’s cabinet.”
He’s perspiring very badly now—under his coat, along his brow, in the cavities of his cheekbones. He’s trembling too. He says, “Sir, must I really? Is it necessary?”
Mr. Stone simply nods, impassive. “Please.”
“Well, there was Jefferson.”
“Yes.”
“And Hamilton.”
“Correct.”
Mr. Stone is eyeing the paper in his hand, waiting, waiting as Kenyon strives to dredge up another name.
“I knew them all at one point. I studied so much at that time, you see. Let me think a minute. … Oh, McHenry!”
“Yes.”
“And Knox, of course.”
“Yes.”
But there are more, and still Mr. Stone stands waiting.
“How many more are there, sir?”
“You’ve named four of the five we need. There are seven more names to choose from.”
“Seven, goodness. … Well, I’m afraid I don’t have one more.”
“Mister Saint Claire, you gave five names on the quiz program. Do you recall that?”
“Certainly. It’s been more than a year since then, as you know.”
Mr. Stone’s eyes remain on the paper. He half-turns to the jury. “The witness, we may note, is having great difficulty answering fully any of the questions that he answered with remarkable success during his winning streak on television. But I have a few more for you, Mister Saint Claire…”
Mister Saint Claire …
Mister Saint Claire …
Who are you here? Are you this face? This name?
Isolated in the witness box, Kenyon cannot articulate these thoughts—no, but the ambient anxiety of the thoughts besieges him.
Are you merely who they take you to be, and in this moment only?
Do you answer to the name as they speak it?
Or in their mouths does the name become another word altogether?
Meanwhile, relentlessly, the transmissions of the culture swirl on. Even confined in the witness box, Kenyon stands amid the swirl, like anyone.
The culture never rests, the sponsors never quit reaping.
Who are the sponsors?
And is he someone wholly isolated—in body, in time? A face?—still only a face from the screen? A name broadcast into the dark room of a mass mind, a mass memory.
The scores are very close now. His own face in closeup—but the frame is split: it’s Kenyon Saint Claire against himself.
A face against a name.
Look you’re a teacher we understand that—we’re not looking for actors here if that’s your concern you go on the show as yourself you’re the educator the man of good family that’s you we help you be you even on television—cause television it’s a different dimension—what we do for the program Kenny is create people.
Who are the sponsors?
The frame is split—his face in two places …
Still the Assistant D.A. stands before him. “Might it be, Mister Saint Claire, that you don’t know everything you have claimed to know?”
What did you ever know?
And still the quiz questions keep coming.
This show isn’t over.
Who are the sponsors?
Rain pours down, the sidewalks awash, all the gutters running high. Pedestrians keep close to the sides of the buildings. From the Criminal Courts building Kenyon heads up Centre Street toward Canal.
He’s one person amid this city’s millions, only one, and he’s feeling that personhood now—the vulnerability—while the rain seeps through the shoulders of his overcoat. He’s now as exposed as anybody in this city, except more so. He’s alive to the dread truth that anything can happen: a cab can run you down, you can slip and break your neck on the subway stairs, these buildings, any of these buildings, can topple and crush you, the rivers can rise—the East River, the Hudson—and sweep you right off this frantic island. You can become famous.
Kenyon is trapped inside the possibilities, alone. He’s lied again—what choice did he have, with that broad-faced man looking on from the jury?
What choice did you ever have?
He’s locked in the glass isolation booth. Kenyon is in the booth and they’ve shut off the lights. It won’t be much longer now until …
He keeps walking. This is his city, but he is far—very far—from home. From the city in which he was born, the city of his father and mother. From Ernestine.
He keeps walking, wetter by the minute, no stopping.
Somewhere on the air, in the atmosphere, in the whisking of taxi tires, amid the drenched steel and concrete, from the bridges, the basements, the alleys, the towers, the open windows, the subways, the limousines—there’s a voice.
The voice is electronic: Stay with us.
The voice is in the ears of every hunched and hustling citizen: We’ll be right back.
In Kenyon’s ears, in everyone’s, the voice is saying:
DON’T
GO
AWAY.
TV NOW
On a stadium floor beside a wrestling ring, the favorite blonde billionaire—stocky in suit and tie, his hair a wavy golden pelt—bodyslams a second billionaire in suit and tie.
From the tiered seats, tens of thousands roar as the camera zooms and retracts.
Zooms and retracts.
Sprawled over him on the floor, the favorite blonde billionaire repeatedly slams his fist into the second billionaire’s head.
Minutes later, spot-lit at the center of the wrestling ring, the defeated billionaire is strapped into a barber’s chair. The favorite blonde billionaire stands over him, thrusting high in one hand a pair of electric barber clippers.
The camera zooms and retracts.
Wrestler henchmen hold the man’s head still. The favorite blonde billionaire bears down with the clippers.
The defeated billionaire’s hair comes away in clumps, which the favorite blonde billionaire flings to the floor of the ring.
The defeated billionaire is wailing, crying, his face histrionically wracked.
Zoom and retract.
From the tiered seats, tens of thousands roar.
TIME Magazine
March 23, 1959
Show Biz:
No Longer Embarrassing
Until very recently, you would have been hard-pressed to find a self-respecting intellectual who might admit to owning a television. The cathode-ray set was faux-pas, or was at least a cause for mild embarrassment, something like professing an admiration for Norman Vincent Peale or California burgundy. These days the TV is all but taken for granted as a household fixture even in the homes of high-brows, and even a literary and academic intellectual can admit, without too much irony, to TV addiction. A surprising case in point: ever since his son Kenyon triumphed on a TV quiz show, Columbia University’s Maynard Saint Claire has become an avid TV consumer.
In her new book, Marriage of Minds (Appleton-Century-Crofts; $3.95), wife Emily Saint Claire reveals that her husband is an addict “not of informative or egghead programs … but of pulpy and high-pulse offerings like noir mysteries, shoot-out westerns, crime stories, and quizzes. He is done for. I settle in by the hearth with my book, and soon the idiot commercials are blaring and I know he’s up to it again. Occasionally I join him, it’s true; often I remain with my book. But the professor is more and more faithful to ‘prime-time.’ There was, one particular evening, a great deal of shouting and carrying on. I waited for it to pass, and when I asked, ‘Whatever was that ruckus?’ the professor was red-cheeked, like a boy caught in some no-no. ‘Wrestling,’ he admitted. ‘I just wanted to see what it was like.’”
9.
ENTR’ACTE:
The News, 1959
“The historical situation is not a background,
a stage set before which human situations unfold;
it is itself a human situation, a growing
existential situation.”
—Milan Kundera
TV QUIZ INQUIRY
SEALED BY JUDGE
Jury Foreman Angered—
Insists Findings Be
Made Public
Quiz Show Legal Teams
Oppose Report
June 11, 1959—The New York grand jury which for the last nine months has investigated television quiz shows was officially discharged yesterday by General Sessions Judge Mitchell D. Schweitzer.
During its long investigation, the panel sat for more than 150 hours and heard more than 200 witnesses. The grand jury’s findings on rigging of the shows were handed up in a 12,000 word presentment to Judge Schweitzer, but the judge said today that he felt the report was “expungable prima facie,” which means he thought it should be stricken from the record on its face value.
A presentment is a grand jury finding that calls attention to illegal activity but does not include an indictment. After lawyers for several quiz shows filed objections, Judge Schweitzer has ordered the presentment sealed and kept secret on the ground that such a report makes accusations without offering a forum for denials.
“An indictment may be challenged by the accused,” he said, “but a presentment is immune. It is like a hit-and-run motorist. The damage is done. The injury it may unjustly inflict may never be healed.”
Yesterday, Louis M. Hacker, foreman of the grand jury, expressed anger over Judge Schweitzer’s decision. “I disagree in a most serious way with the court,” Mr. Hacker said. “Our presentment does not contain the names of any individual contestants, quiz shows, producers, or television networks.” He added that the grand jury, hearing its testimony in secret, was able to protect the contestants who testified. He said that if the presentment were impounded, “society would not be satisfied” and open hearings by the Federal Communications Commission or Federal or state investigating bodies would result. “Testimony would then be taken in public and many people would be hurt.”
The Grand Jury Association, in a brief filed today, also took issue with Judge Schweitzer’s decision. Grand jury reports are subject to judicial scrutiny, the association said, but once a grand jury has reported, “the suppression of its report fosters a dangerous policy of depriving the public of any knowledge of its investigations.”
Of the 497 grand jury presentments returned in New York since 1869, every one has been made public.
IN LIVING ROOMS ACROSS AMERICA
American Vice President Richard Nixon jabs a finger into the vest of the man before him: “You don’t know everything!”
Soviet Premiere Nikita Khruschev and the Vice President are inside the geodesic dome of the American National Exhibition in Moscow—or so the anchor person has said. The picture on your screen limits itself to the two
men standing before a single microphone, members of the press crowding in around them. Khruschev is a short fat man with a warty nose. Beside him Nixon is lean and swarthy.
The picture wavers in black and white, but the men have been looking together at the RCA Company’s exhibit: a new color television camera, accompanied by a color monitor. Any who pass before the RCA camera, said the anchor, can see themselves transmitted in full color on the monitor. You have to take their word for it. The picture on your screen limits itself to black and white.
“How long has America existed?” Khruschev says. “Three hundred years?”
During the awkward delay in which Khruschev’s translator relays the question, the noise of many camera shutters is heard.
“One hundred and fifty years,” says Nixon.
But is that correct? Isn’t it in fact one hundred and eighty-odd years?
“Well then, we will say that America has been in existence for one hundred and fifty years and this is the level she has reached.” Khruschev gestures off-screen, presumably to the color monitor. “We have existed for not quite forty-two years and in another seven years we will be on the same level as America. When we catch up to you, in passing by we will wave to you.” Grinning, the gap-toothed Khruschev wiggles a hand in the air and swivels his head as if watching America recede into the past.
“I can only say,” says Nixon, “that if this competition in which you plan to outstrip us is to do the best for both our peoples and for peoples everywhere, there must be a free exchange of ideas.”
The two men, each eager to make best use of the microphone, are standing very close together, and now, without even needing to extend his arm, Nixon jabs a stark finger directly at Khruschev’s vest.
“After all, you don’t know everything!”
Q:
What is meant by the American dream?
A:
That all men shall be free to seek
a better life, with free worship, thought,
assembly, expression of belief and
Q & A Page 28
