Oral History Interview with Robert Schulman, July 5, 2007

O. LEONARD PRESS: Testing. Testing. No, there’s not—testing. Yeah. Do we want to listen to it, or we know, we know it’s working right?

SARAH MILLIGAN: Yeah, you’re fine. That sounds good.

PRESS: Okay. [laughter] So, you were about to say— MILLIGAN: You need to introduce him.

ROBERT SCHULMAN: I got [ ]— PRESS: Oh, excuse me. Wait a sec. This is Len Press.

SCHULMAN: Oh, yes.

PRESS: And I’m interviewing Bob Schulman and the, for the Kentucky Oral History Project, and time is 1:34 on July— SCHULMAN: Five.

PRESS: Fifth, 19-, 2007.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. [laughs] PRESS: I missed that one. Okay. And we have a witness.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Yes.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Sarah Milligan. [INTERRUPTION—TAPE STOPS] SCHULMAN: But the lodestone of folk art.

MILLIGAN: Right. Today.

SCHULMAN: Well, I get up in the middle of the night to make little notes because it suddenly occurred to me that there were some interesting things that I had forgotten, 1:00one of them going to back to 1950 when I was still a part-time, a stringer for Time and Life in St. Louis, and the New York central office, the news headquarters did the lovely thing of calling in all of the stringers from around the world for a, two or three days in New York. Lovely way to go. And the individual who got the most attention was our man in Havana, as Life referred to him. That week’s issue of Life had a double truck, a two page photo of him stretched out in Havana on a chaise longue with a group of attractive women servicing him in all kinds of ways. He, giving him a drink, doing his 2:00nails, waving a big fan— PRESS: We don’t know all the details, right?

SCHULMAN: No, I mean, I’m, I’m only accomplishing the over achiever award.

PRESS: I’m afraid of where you’re going.

SCHULMAN: And his name was Henry Wallace. Henry Wallace, the son of Tom Wallace, the early editor of the Louisville Times, who consi-, made achievable, con—God, I’m—considerable fame acquiring a valuable forest land and therefore, as I understand it, leaving son Henry Wallace with a considerable fortune and my impression is that Henry did not work that much longer for Time, Incorporated, that he returned to his home, native heath of Louisville where he established a native heath on Ri-, 3:00pardon me, Rose Island Road, which is, leads off towards the river, a little east of the city. And there established a zoo, literally, which, to which people had free access over a period of years. He had ostriches and gnus and alpacas and elephants and, and wild beasts and so on. And there was a parking area to begin with, but then he had trails so that parents and their children could walk through. And periodically, he would write a short but pungent letter to the Courier-Journal when something irritated him. He was a far left ideologue. And he raised a family, all of whom emulate his 4:00patterns. And two daughters are very active in the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union. Anyway, that was my first meeting with Henry Wallace, our man in Havana, when Castro took over. I’m sure that, that Henry Wallace was very supportive of Castro and deplored the dictator, Batista, that, that, yes. At any rate, it seemed to me that that was some [laughs] local interest.

PRESS: Yeah. I, I was afraid you were talking about Henry Wallace the— SCHULMAN: Oh, not, not the Vice-President. No. No. This was Kentucky’s Henry Wallace. Oh, I thought maybe if, I notice you quivered Len, and I thought you recognized that Henry Wallace, but you were reacting to— PRESS: Yes. That’s 5:00what I was reacting to.

SCHULMAN: Vice-President Henry Wallace.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: Whose candidate I opposed then as a progressive, later. [laughs] PRESS: Well, a lot of us did. A lot of us did.

SCHULMAN: Well— PRESS: And the other— SCHULMAN: Then, in, still in Chicago, when I went to work for Time and Life, sort of indicative of how departmentalized Time Magazine was, and, and readers are not—you probably are, Sarah—but readers were not at, in most cases, aware of this. National Affairs was the most sought-after role for writers. But then it was followed by Business, Science, Theatre, Religion, and People. 6:00And the People section was celebrity, but not all celebrity. Gossip of a, of a polite kind. You know Liz Smith the celebrated, this gossipist, who went to work and still does, for the New York Daily News. You remember, she said, “Gossip is not malicious. Gossip is relatively truthful personal material. It’s not bitchy.” Is what she said. I don’t know about that. It’s a hard line to follow. At any rate, for those of us who were then working, especially full-time, you found yourself thrown into a whole marvelous kaleidoscope of dramatic changes 7:00and I remember in Chicago, one week or one month, part of when I was working on the Sears-Roebuck cover story, but that same week, a little boy in Brazil, Indiana got caught inside a hollow tree. He had climbed, he was, he was, you know, adventurous [ ] and he climbed up the tree, and got down into the tree, and got stuck in the tree. And would have died there except that his dog went off and called somebody. And it was a delightful story, the kind of thing—there were no pictures—of the kind of thing Time Magazine—yes, it was a People story. And I was dispatched from the Chicago bureau to Brazil, Indiana [laughs] to talk to the youngster, the survivor, and the dog. . .

PRESS: Yeah. 8:00SCHULMAN: It was very expressive, by the way. Oddly enough, and this was not for ten years, but ten years later, the success, the constant success among readers of the People section of Time Magazine led to the creation of a whole magazine. Rid— PRESS: People.

SCHULMAN: People.

MILLIGAN: Ah.

SCHULMAN: Yes. What a silly simple idea. But today, it’s still going merrily and rompously, and, you know, making all kinds of money. I think— PRESS: With the gossip, I think.

SCHULMAN: Yes. It’s gone, it’s gone—I don’t read it anymore because it’s gone the celebrity way and the gossip way and, you know, who’s sleeping with whom and all. You know, is Paris Hilton really what she looks like? 9:00[laughs] So on. But, and oddly, interestingly enough, a, a friend of mine who had been working in New York for the People section became the first editor of, of PeopleMagazine, which reminds me then of another individual, in this case somebody from Kentucky, T. George Harris.

PRESS: Oh, yes.

SCHULMAN: Oh, you’re saying, “Yes,” so you know T. George.

PRESS: Yes.

SCHULMAN: Well, I should really ask you how, but I’ll tell you where and how I met T. George. When I was, joined the staff of Time and Life in Chicago, he had just been hired out of Yale. We talked about how Henry Luce until the late ’40s, the early ’50s favored 10:00the, those, those kinds of sources for his talent. I mean it, and there were others of lesser import in the Ivy League other than Yale, sort of they, you know, they leveled it off a little bit. T. George married by that time, lovely wife, and was considered a hot prospect in the field, as I was, for Time Magazine from a career standpoint. And this is not maybe of general interest, but from a career standpoint within Time Inc., if your interests lay that way, you wanted to be advanced out of the bureau—Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles—into New York, especially at Time, to write. In all of my years with the exceptions when I was called for 11:00special assignment, in all of my years, I was in the bureaus, that is St. Louis, Chicago, Seattle. And I would initiate—we, in, in those days, kept in touch by teletype—I would initiate and try to sell stories. I would then do the reporting, if it was accepted and scheduled, and for a Sears-Roebuck cover story, I might write, report and write ten thousand words or more. And, and then be the recipient of, from, by the fact checkers, so called reach-, researchers, who until a belated, unfortunately belated time, were always women. They were the researchers.

PRESS: Lower paid.

SCHULMAN: Yeah, that’s right. [laughs] Brilliant women who finally began to get through 12:00the glass [ ceiling]. But I would write perhaps ten or fifteen thousand words for what came to be a perhaps two thousand word story. And the writing out of my material, the final shaping of it, using all too often my phraseology, my stories and so on, but the final writing was done by one of the writers in New York. I mentioned T. George— PRESS: What—one of writers, not being the researchers?

SCHULMAN: No, no. No, no, no. No, the researchers— PRESS: Just did the fact checking.

SCHULMAN: Served the—they were the fact checkers.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: As the source of the cover story wherever I was, I would get enquiries, little inchy-pinchy questions, you know: Was the mole really on the left side? 13:00When the president of Boeing had a, a cactus plant growing, how tall was it in his office? And so on. I would— PRESS: And exactly what services was Henry Wallace receiving?

SCHULMAN: Yes. [laughter] Exactly so. And T. George Harris comes to mind as an example— PRESS: Give, give me a year here.

SCHULMAN: He, he was in Chicago when I went there, which was 1951.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: He went to another bureau in the ’50s and then, then in about 1957 or ’58 got to the point where he was in New York writing. Not for National Affairs, but eventually that being the ladder, writing for National Affairs. 14:00And I mentioned him in this context because he was still working, writing for Time in 1967 when in Kentucky, his native state, he having grown up in Trenton, Kentucky, which is, I think, in Todd County, far Southwest where George Street Boone—and George Street Boone was his lawyer throughout the years, handling his home stuff. Nineteen fifty-seven, T. George Harris was a writer for the National Affairs section of Time when the first Republican governor in umpteen years, Louie Nunn, was campaigning for that office against the Democratic candidate, Henry Ward. And T. George Harris got Time Magazine 15:00that mentioned in Kentucky because he described that contest as one between “half an oaf and none.” [laughter] Is that worth going into T. George Harris?

PRESS: Was Psychology Magazine after that?

SCHULMAN: [laughs] Yes. Yes. For the benefit— PRESS: I’m still back trying to figure out from his perspective which was the half oaf. [laughs] SCHULMAN: Well. Yes. Yes. Well. Just briefly, as a, as a matter for the record, the story, and I, I checked him out, but I thought it was not apocryphal. Not too long after that, Henry Luce was engaging in one of his weeks when he took over editing the magazine, Time, which he liked to do. 16:00And a piece of copy came over his desk. And he said, “Who wrote this?” They said, “Why?” He said, “I think it’s despicable. It’s unacceptable. Fire the man.” So, T. George Harris went to work for Look.

PRESS: He was the man?

SCHULMAN: And became a senior editor of Look. It was after Look died that T. George found his way to editing Psychology Today and made it a very considerable, sparkling success, edited out of La Jolla, California. They did their editing meetings on the beach. It was marvelous.

PRESS: En route, Look Magazine was edited by a Kentuckian.

SCHULMAN: Bill Arthur. 17:00PRESS: Bill Arthur.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes.

PRESS: Good for you. Good for you. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: Yeah, later, later the executive director of the National News Council and maybe we’ll get to that at some later point.

PRESS: The one that New York Times would not participate in.

SCHULMAN: New York—the one that the New York Times was most effective in killing.

PRESS: Well, that was—yes.

SCHULMAN: Yes. And— PRESS: Yes, let’s get to that at some point.

SCHULMAN: And the one that, Norman Isaacs, whom I mentioned—I discovered in, in St. Louis—here.

PRESS: Oh, no. No, no, no. I, I got to go.

SCHULMAN: Norman Isaacs— [sound of phone ringing] Let it be.

PRESS: Let it ring. Let it ring. Let it ring.

SCHULMAN: We got an answering machine. 18:00They elected not to leave a message, I think. That’s alright. Well, anyway. T. George and it’s of some passing interest that, and since we mentioned Psychology Today, the fact that it was edited in, in shorts and thongs on the beach at La Jolla, when Ziff-Davis bought Psychology Today, to T. George’s dismay and torture, they moved the editorial offices back to New York, and somehow the spell was broken, 19:00and it was not too long after that that T. George left for other, other ventures. Anyway, I thought that, that came to mind also in Chicago, before we leave Chicago—I don’t know that we were on the verge of leaving Chicago, but several things, of major interest from my point of view, took place. Number one, of course, I among other things, I [ ] an interest in and explored the nature of the Chicago Tribune. Colonel Robert R. McCormick was still running it. He owned it. And people who will remember that period in the, the late ’40s and early ’50s in Chicago journalism will remember Chicago Tribune as being, if anything, more reactionary in it’s news 20:00and editorials than the editorial part of the Wall Street Journal. I mean, he was appallingly jingoistic, unashamedly so. It was his paper. But as I got to know it there in 1951 and ’52, there began to be some mellowing below him and he had a managing editor, Clayton Kit Kirkpatrick, who really impressed a number of us for his desire to erode and lessen that ideological right-wing bias in the news as well as the editorials and the cartoons. And that became of some special interest when a newly acquired friend, a history professor at the University of Chicago who later had a very consequential 21:00career, and you’ll recognize that when I mention his name, Daniel Boorstin, who did a number of very creative books about the image and the destructors and so on. A new, fascinating approach to American history. And he and his wife Ruth had become friends and he came to me one day in great distress. He said he had accepted the role as chairman of the Chicago Tribune’s annual flag essay contest, and not the Velde Anti-Communist Congressional Committee—it was the Velde, rather than the Martin Dies committee. There were two committees in the, in the mode of Joe McCarthy 22:00exploring, calling witnesses and so on, and “Were you ever a Communist? Did you ever go to a Communist dig?” So on and so on. And Dan Boorstin said to me that while at Oxford, he had, you know, attended some meetings and so on and he was at— PRESS: Was this the Boorstin who was then Library of Congress— SCHULMAN: Library of Congress. Exactly so. Yes.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: The head librarian of Congress.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: Just died within the past year. Lovely man. Very important and ingenious. But he was distressed because as chairman of the Tribune’s flag essay committee, he had been subpoenaed by this congressional committee, and was going to be called to testify about his left-wing antecedents. And what should he do? 23:00Should he, you know, how was he going to face up to that with the people who had trusted him with this patriotic venture? And I, only I, that’s why I mentioned having gotten to know Clayton Kirkpatrick. I had the, the sense that there was some fairness there. And after some discussion, I suggested to Dan that he simply seek out the editor of the Tribune and [ ] simply tell him what was going and being, and being willing to resign or do whatever and—and he did that, and bless his heart, and you know, my sense of—it was all fine. He continued to serve as chairman of the committee. And when they called him, when the cut-, when the committee 24:00came at this, had this public hearing and called on him, it was not all that bad. Because he’d attended some meetings in, in Oxford, so watch, you know. So— PRESS: Well, later with McCarthy, it would have been [ ]. But, but that wasn’t the Thomas committee, right?

SCHULMAN: I’m sorry.

PRESS: That wasn’t the Thomas committee?

SCHULMAN: No, no. No. No, no, no. No, there was a Velde is my recollection.

PRESS: That’s a name I don’t remember.

SCHULMAN: Yes. But it was one of the House committees.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: A consequential. I think you’re wrong when you would have suggested that McCarthy—because what could McCarthy do at that time? It would have done more. I don’t know he would have— PRESS: Could he have been?

SCHULMAN: Well— PRESS: [laughs] What did he do?

SCHULMAN: I will now segue to McCarthy because it was 1952 and—or 1950—yes, 25:00it was 1952. Here came Senator McCarthy speaking at a big, big well-attended luncheon at the Sherman Hotel. And, of course, by then Adlai Stevenson was being touted as the candidate for the Presidency by a, the Repub-, Democratic ticket. And Sen-, I went. And Senator McCarthy said, in his typical way, “I,” holding up a bunch of papers, he said, “I have documentation here showing that Governor Adlai Stevenson on such-and-such a date was meeting with active leaders in the Communist Party in Chicago.” And he named the place and so on and so on. 26:00The press there, as soon as it was over, they raced to the phones to tell the rewrite people, or they went back to their office. I, as a weekly magazine [laughs] peon, had some time. So, I went round to talk to the Senator and to his aide, and I said, “Senator, I’d like to see the documentation.” “Oh! What, what, what document?” I said, “The documentation that you mentioned that indicated that Adlai Stevenson—” “Well,” he said, “I’ll have somebody send it to you.” I said, “Well, when?” He said, “Well, talk to my associate here.” And off he went.

PRESS: R-, Roy.

SCHULMAN: Yes, Roy Cohn. Yeah. So, I went back to the office and checked with Adlai Stevenson’s 27:00office and discovered that on the date in question, Adlai Stevenson was in London, England. Well, this was not for Time Magazine, you know. I mean, Time had just gone to press. So, I did the only thing that seemed to be appropriate. I called Kup. Much as those who are old enough will remember that San Francisco had the most influential columnist named Herb Caen, C-A-E-N, and, of course, New York had Walter Winchell among others, and Mark Hellinger and so on. Chicago had Irv Kupcinet.

PRESS: Kupcinet. Yes.

SCHULMAN: Kupcinet. Yes. And his column was called “Kups’,” K-U-P-apostrophe-S. And Kup was always interested in news. And he leaped on this. And it, next day it ran 28:00in the Chicago Sun-Times. Of course, then, Time called me and said, “Is this a—” [laughs] I said, “Yeah.” Well, anyway. But it was a little blow at McCarthy’s authenticity. And interestingly enough and sequentially enough then, the next week, I was working late in the, what was the Time-Life office on a building that’s no longer there, along the Chicago River, LaSalle-Wacker Building, it was called. And this was, advertising was upstairs, elsewhere. This was the Time-Life bureau. And this woman came in. I thought she looked a little familiar. It was the proprietor’s wife, Clare Boothe Luce.

PRESS: Oh.

SCHULMAN: So, there was time, and we 29:00chatted. And I told her about this experience the week before with Senator Joe McCarthy, and what she said to me really was, seemed to me so cogent and incisive that I’ve remembered so very, very well ever since then. She said, “Senator McCarthy is a charlatan. The only reason,” she said, “that he has achieved such influence is that he has filled a void that nobody more responsible stepped in. That is, to address the feelings, the concerns about Communism by the American people.” They were ready to accept—and nobody more responsible stepped into that void.

PRESS: Huh.

SCHULMAN: But, you know, it, it, I’ve found it a 30:00considerable insight.

PRESS: Yeah. Yeah. When you think about it.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes. And, and of course, there was ample, there was plenty of stuff— PRESS: Ex-, ex-, except— SCHULMAN: For the American people to fret about, if you will consider. Now I’m speaking from my YPSL background point of view. You know, the, the Young People’s Socialist League insight into the ways of Communists and the Communist Party. Bear in mind that the International Labor Organization was spending huge amounts of its money trying to unveil the fruits of Stalinism in the U.S. and around the world. It was not, it was not a puff-ball situation. There was enough there for the American people to be concerned about and they needed to have some material.

PRESS: You anticipated 31:00my question, which was: was it really a void? And you’re saying, “Yes, it really was.” SCHULMAN: Indeed, as far as I was concerned. Yeah. Well, so, Clare Booth—oh! And there was one—then the following day—this is extraordinary—the phone rang. I picked up the phone. And this unmistakable voice said, “Is this the Time Magazine office?” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “I’m looking for Clare Luce. Is she there?” PRESS: Henry himself?

SCHULMAN: It wasn’t Henry.

PRESS: Oh. [laughs] SCHULMAN: It was Carl Sandburg. [laughs] “Creeping down on little cat feet.” No, with that great rolling voice. Henry Luce did not have a rolling voice. No. I mean, he had a rolling influence, [laughter] but not a rolling voice. 32:00And I had to say, “No. No, I saw her yesterday.” Anyway. You know Carl Sandburg? No? Multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. Author of a, what, four volume biography of Abraham Lincoln. The man whose poem has still come to represent Chicago, the city of Chicago.

PRESS: What was it about the shoulders?

SCHULMAN: The city of big shoulders.

PRESS: Big shoulders.

SCHULMAN: The city of big shoulders. What then, that, that was, reminds me I was still in Chicago there at Time when the New Yorker Magazine with all of its typical provincial superiority assigned A.J. Liebling, 33:00who was the, the hero of the so-called “Wayward Press.” He was really the first, in those days, press critic. First in the, toward the end of his long years a writer, columnist for the New York World Telegram and then for the New Yorker magazine. And the “Wayward Press” was his title that he became known by. And they assigned A.J. Liebling to come to Chicago and spend some time and do for the New Yorker a profile, which it then ran and it was typically entitled “The Second City.” [laughs] PRESS: Which then became— SCHULMAN: Then became everlastingly the title for that marvelous satirical group that spawned— PRESS: [ ] Yeah.

SCHULMAN: Spawned 34:00Elaine May and, and— PRESS: Mike Nichols.

SCHULMAN: That’s right. Mark Nicholas and a whole raft of other satirical comedians. And Second City still functions in Chicago, pursuing that same line.

PRESS: Hm.

SCHULMAN: And the, the whole, the whole piece dripped with that kind of snide, look-down, patronizing, and having become a Chicagoan, I joined, you know, in the— PRESS: In the resentment or the merriment?

SCHULMAN: Resentment. No, the resentment. One other thing about Chicago, then. [laughs] And maybe we’re spending too much time on Chicago, but it, it was— PRESS: This is, this is history.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Good.

PRESS: Important history.

SCHULMAN: Good. But Time at that point was being edited by a man named 35:00T.S. Matthews, a brilliant journalist and writer and essayist. Later when he quit Time for one reason or another, he authored any number of well, well-reviewed essays and novels and so on. But the word that came to us in the bureaus, including Chicago, was that he was hungering for a story that would really capture the spirit of the big city hospital. And there had been several efforts and what had, what had come to New York was simply not, didn’t have the content. So, who would try it? Okay. Cook County Hospital is, there’s probably no juicier institution, even in New York, because 36:00New York has so many more emergency rooms where you get loaded in all of the heavy, tragic, funny, bizarre juices of, of America. And so, I spent three, three Saturday ni-, Friday and Saturday nights in the Cook County emergency room with the young doctors and the nurses and the attendants and the, the strangest, most conglomerate collection of people, the poseurs, the mangled people, and the shooting victims, and the families weeping and crying and yelling and so on. It was fantastic stuff. I did not write what appeared then, you see. My material went into the, but it got 37:00plentiful with lots of my stuff always there in it. Got big run in Time Magazine. This led to the most galvanized interest in the subject by Hollywood and television. And whether it was Dr. Kildare, “Calling Dr. Kildare,” and I was interviewed and there was some slight passing thing that, you know, that maybe I would be called to New York or called to Hollywood - no. They took that material and ran with it. And we now have how many generations, how many decades of proliferation— PRESS: Of Cook County Hospital.

SCHULMAN: All out of Cook County Hospital and Tom Matthews’ idea 38:00that this was a story to be told. But, you know, that it, I was just lucky to be there when and where and how it, it was to be done. But it was exciting. [laughs] PRESS: That actually stimulated a lot of local documentation, documentaries, radio and television on local emergency rooms.

SCHULMAN: Ah.

PRESS: Became quite a genre.

SCHULMAN: Of course.

PRESS: During that period.

SCHULMAN: Yes. It would— PRESS: Right after that.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Huh. [laughs] PRESS: I even did a stint of that myself.

SCHULMAN: Did you really? I didn’t hear. You didn’t call. [laughs] PRESS: No. No. Sm-, small towns, real small towns.

SCHULMAN: Well. Then I, then I—this is still at midnight, you know, when I was, those two storms last night. I wrote also down here, 39:00Pat Suzuki and Dorothy Sarnoff. In the news business, if you were in the right places as a feature writer in, in St. Louis and then with that H-, Hollywood spoof, in Chicago, then, having the opportunity to pick and choose what you would pursue, you were inevitably thrown together—I mentioned Burr Tillstrom’s Kukla, Fran and Ollie and the, the singers and so on. And I was still already then working on my mother’s sister, Romany Marie, just collect the material, and here came South Pacific 40:00through. The Road Company came through. The Ezio Pinza role had been taken over—did I mention this?

PRESS: No.

SCHULMAN: The Ezio Pinza role had been taken over by Dick Eastham, with whom I had performed on the Little Theatre of St. Louis, together with his sister Lillian. She didn’t get anywhere, but he was the understudy to Ezio Pinza in the New York company of South Pacific. And, I went up to, you know, visit. Dick Eastham, and talk about Greenwich Village and St. Louis and so on. While I was still back in St. Louis, a lot of the Feature material I had was from talking to entertainers who came to the St. Louis Muny Opera. One of them, a singer, actually the niece of the founder of NBC, Dorothy 41:00Sarnoff, very attractive woman, talented— PRESS: I’m just trying to figure out the niece relationship of, of Ro— SCHULMAN: David Sarnoff.

PRESS: David Sarnoff’s s-, sibling’s child?

SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: I’m, I’m, I don’t know the detail there.

PRESS: Okay. Okay.

SCHULMAN: But she, a couple of years later, maybe two or three years later, got the role in The King and I of the king’s wife. And she was the one who sang that marvelous song, “He’s so wonderful, so wonderful.” You know, with, with the bowl-taped—anyway.

PRESS: Yul Brynner.

SCHULMAN: Yul Brynner. Exactly. 42:00And thanks to knowing Dorothy Sarnoff—and this is why it was memorable to me, not just because she was on her own, but I was in New York. She invited me to watch the show from the wings. And it was just, it was one of the few last weeks of Gertrude Lawrence in the role of the teacher before cancer struck her down and she died. So, to be standing there with Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence knowing how sick she was—and this is an experience that you, you can’t buy tickets for.

PRESS: No, and this, would it be just before they made the movie?

SCHULMAN: Y-, oh, yes. Of course.

PRESS: And with many of the same—Yul Brynner and— SCHULMAN: [laughs] Yes. He’s gone too.

PRESS: Oh, yeah.

SCHULMAN: Well— PRESS: From smoking, no less. 43:00SCHULMAN: That’s right. This then brought to mind, still back in St. Louis, interviewing and spending time with Sophie Tucker, “The Last of the Hot Mamas,” and then with Hildegarde.

PRESS: Hm.

SCHULMAN: Now, Sarah, Hilde-, Hildegarde was a fancy chanteusey-auer—chanteuse.

PRESS: She, she defined the, the term.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Out of Milwaukee, if you please. But she spent two weeks in Paris one time, and her great song was “Darling, Je Vous Aime—” PRESS: “Beaucoup.” SCHULMAN: “Beaucoup. I hardly know what to do.” And something. [laughs] She was back in St. Louis appearing at the Chase Hotel, and I did a feature about her so I was invited up to a reception in her suite at the hotel. And I found myself—and 44:00I met her PR guy who, it was a celebrated hotel, Hollywood PR man, named Bill Doll, and I found myself seated on the banquette next to this very strikingly attractive woman. And I was not playing, really. I, I looked at her and said, “Have, have I not seen you before? Have we not met?” “Oh,” she said, “Well, that’s possible.” She said, “Were you in the service in World War II?” I said, “Well, as a matter of fact, I was.” “Well,” she said, “Perhaps that could be it,” she said. “You know the movie that was made to protect the boys from getting in trouble with strange women? Well, I was the girl who gave the boy the disease.” [laughter] PRESS: I saw that movie, too.

SCHULMAN: How could you forget that? 45:00[laughter] That’s my recollection of Hildegarde.

PRESS: She, she started the trend, I think, of the one name— SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Celebrities.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. That’s right. Today. Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. I don’t, I don’t remember if there was any other. Hildegarde. Yeah, there’s Liberace, of course. That was long afterward. Well. [laughs] So, those are the things that came to me out of our last vicinity.

PRESS: This is still in Chicago?

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: Yeah, in the Chicago period. Post-St. Louis period.

SCHULMAN: Yes. And also my, well, I’d had the exposure to Life Magazine, but one of the really great fruits of being involved with 46:00the Life part of Time, Inc. was getting to know and work with some of these globally important photographers. And on one memorable occasion, I was called back for a couple of weeks to New York to work in, in Life’s home bureau, home office. What was I doing? I was writing text blocks and headlines— PRESS: For the pictures?

SCHULMAN: In, for Life stories, and, you know, that gave one an opportunity to get to know the one woman who went through all of the hundreds and hundreds of, of contact prints being turned in by these celebrated photographers. And she was the one who picked out the prints to be enlarged to show 47:00to the editors of whatever department that was going onto. And if you didn’t think this didn’t fry these virtuosos, you know, the Gordon Parks and the Eisenstaedts and the— PRESS: Capas SCHULMAN: Yes. And the, and [J. Iremans] and—anyway, I, Mark, Mark Kauffman and George Silk and, you know, they were, they were—and Gene Smith who did that fantastic series on the Japanese suffering from mercury poisoning and then did the Harlem—remarkable. As a matter of fact, while I was there, I got to meet Gordon Parks.

PRESS: From Harlem, yeah .

SCHULMAN: Who was really not consequentially known at that time and had just been elected to New York City Council. And people thought that 48:00he was going to leave photography and go into politics. But he didn’t, thank heavens. But talk about—he was then really the only full-accepted Black, and not yet a staff photographer for Life.

PRESS: And he had a brother who is equally— SCHULMAN: Gordon Parks?

PRESS: Yeah. No?

SCHULMAN: No.

PRESS: There wasn’t a— SCHULMAN: No. No, no, no. No. No. I, I— PRESS: I, I’m thinking of somebody—I’m thinking of— SCHULMAN: I mean, we talked, we talked early on about Cornell Capa, and it was Bob Capa, his brother.

PRESS: It was Robert. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Who was shot and killed by a sniper. Fantastic.

PRESS: In Spain?

SCHULMAN: In Spain. Yes. L-, later—well, then there was that 49:00occasion in St. Louis when Cornell Capa and two or three others came to do that story about Sunday in church in America. In Mexico, Missouri, of all places. These, and there was only—you know, there really were only two women of consequential photographic exploit. One was Martha Holmes and the other was—she did the, the first cover of Life Magazine.

PRESS: Not Margaret Bourke-White?

SCHULMAN: Margaret.

PRESS: Margaret Bourke-White?

SCHULMAN: Margaret Bourke-White. Thank you. Yes. I had it a moment ago. [laughs] Yes. And that was, that was good for Life, because, you know, on newspapers around the country, not, 50:00as I’ve mentioned, not just in terms of photography, but in terms of reporting, in my later years in St. Louis on the Star-Times, it was really strikingly progressive that two of the women working there were reporters and not just stuffed into what was called Society. Unfortunately today, 2007, you, you’re seeing the return, even in the New York Times, although it’s called Style and so on, you’re seeing a return to Society. Local newspapers falling all over themselves to shoot photos of who’s getting married to whom. It’s pandering under pressure of the bottom line and economics. And it’s— PRESS: It’s a void. [laughs] SCHULMAN: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. 51:00PRESS: That needs to be filled.

SCHULMAN: Hear, hear. And there’s nothing that, quite as popular as avoiding a void. [laughter] PRESS: Margaret Bourke-White— SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Did the Depression-era photographs of Appalachia, did she not?

SCHULMAN: Um. I don’t think so.

PRESS: Of the South.

SCHULMAN: That was— PRESS: Was that, was that before her time?

SCHULMAN: That was before her time. That was the Farm Security Administration. That was— PRESS: There was a woman between— SCHULMAN: If you push me I’ll come up with the names, but, they’re— PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: Nobody that I’ve ever known, but— PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: They were WPA and so on. No, I don’t think that Margaret—now, when I got to Seattle, I had a young man 52:00who was already a part of the number one, a photo syndicate, called Magnum.

PRESS: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: Which was started by the Capas along with Henri Cartier Bresson [laughs] and others, called Magnum because they started it over a magnum of champagne in Paris. And here’s this young man’s name was Burt Glenn and I found him there when I got to Seattle in 1953. He was a kid out of Pittsburgh, and he’d done enough to, and been brassy enough to sell himself to his elders who were in Magnum. And he was part of Magnum, but he was not a staff photographer. But he was doing well enough out of our bureau. I mean, I hired him when it was appropriate with the editors in New York. I hired him 53:00for coverage, especially, Life had a marvelous feature called “Life Goes to a Party.” PRESS: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: And—you know, I’m now drifting off into the Northwest—but we had some marvelously frolicsome wantons. There was a, there was a great clam. It, it looks very erotic. It is called a geoduck. It’s G-E-O-D-U-C-K, but it’s pronounced “gooey-duck,” and it is a clam with a pistil so long it looks phallic. And they’re hard to get at, and you’ve got to dig like mad. And we did a photo story of a group of city folks out on the beaches of the Olympic peninsula digging for geoducks. 54:00And then cooking them on the fire and so on. Another story, Mt. Baker in, north of Seattle, is one of those mountains that has skiable snow most of the year. Certainly well enough into July that on July 4, there could be, there could be an annual ski dunk. Now, I may have named it, but that’s what it was. At, at the bottom of this intermediate slope, there was this great pool of chunks of ice and water. And sufficiently beered up, these skiing hotshots would race down the slope and see if they could get across this pond of water without going in. Of course, some did, some didn’t. Marvelous high-jinx 55:00stuff. It, that was another “Life Goes to a Party.” The third of which I have a picture showing me as a bartender, was Troy, Montana, a town which may still, but in those days, in the ’50s, on the opening of elk hunting season, everybody closed up, with the exception of the saloons. The schools, the teachers, the doctors, the dentists, the nurses, bankers—everybody closed up shop and went elk hunting. But the saloon remained open for spirits. And we covered that, you know. Photographically it was marvelous. Great fun. [laughs] But to get there, we would drive, my God, through these perilous trails at night in snowstorms. 56:00I shiver whenever I think of what we did for the sake of a picture story. That was the fun side.

PRESS: What pried you out of Chicago then?

SCHULMAN: Good question. I’d been there from November of ’51—I beg your pardon—June of ’51 to November of ’53. Kind of, as I said, I, the word seminal is what I apply to Chicago in, in that period. And from a newsperson’s standpoint, it was, it was a load-, it was a great diamond mine, you know. But the, the head of the Time-Life news services, an old friend from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Larry Laybourne, whose daughter-in-law, 57:00by the way, years later, became head of Nickelodeon, [laughs] ran into her at the— PRESS: The cable channel, you mean?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Geraldine, Geraldine Allegra. Anyway, he called from New York, and he said, “We’ve got the Seattle bureau opening up, and we’d like you to consider going over and taking it over, running the bureau.” PRESS: Uh-huh.

SCHULMAN: At that point, however it was only a one man or a one person bureau. But they looked for Seattle.

PRESS: Excuse me, is that, does that mean that Seattle wasn’t considered important enough before that time?

SCHULMAN: Seattle was a far away colony. [laughter] Truly. Truly. 58:00As you will see—well, I’ll tell you in a minute how one of the first manifestations of that. But I thought, “Gee, well, you know, but Chicago’s so productive. I feel free, and I love it, and little daughter Becky was just beginning school and—“Well,” he said—and the, the Time bureau chief then was a remarkable man named Sam Wells, the son of a bishop. I’ll say that again, quietly: the son of a bishop. [laughs] And himself a, a versed ch-, churchman. Splendid literary arsenal. And Larry said, “Well, look, Sam won’t be there forever and, but we don’t know how long 59:00it will be.” So, I thought, Well— I went back to the Wilmette Library and looked up Seattle, discovered that it was not on the Pacific Ocean. It was a hundred and twenty-five miles away on Puget Sound. What’s Puget Sound, you know? You know, you tap your ear to listen. [laughter] So, it was that kind of thing. Well, why not? And Time-Life being Time-Life¬, we were able to hire a drawing room on the Canadian-Pacific, or whatever it was—I’ve forgotten which way the [ ] went. And you know, we were served in, in the room and marvelous club car and things for the, Becky to play with and so on. And we got to Seattle 60:00and there was a remarkable office manager and secretary, the daughter of a former school superintendent. And she really knew the city and its people and so on and had a number of years in that role. Her name was Sylvia Fruoula, F-R-U-O-U-L-A. Sylvia Fruoula, bohemian. And we, Eleanor and Becky and I found an apartment first while we were looking for a house. And the first order of business was to get a proper welcome to the new chief of the Time-Life bureau. It was a fantastic reception 61:00and the Washington Athletic Club, which is sort of like Seattle’s version of, not the Century Club, but the Harvard Club, I mean, I, you know—exclusive. The only one other than the Rainier Club, which was top dog, and which I later—and scores and scores of the community’s and the state’s people, including the mayor and the governor, the CEOs of all the banks, the superintendent of schools, Dave Beck, the international president of the Teamsters who lived just north of the city’s downtown. That was Seattle, because Time-Life was considered such an absolutely fundamental part 62:00of Seattle’s hope for its growth, really quite interesting and surprising.

PRESS: This is in ’53?

SCHULMAN: This is in ’53. Bear in mind, Seattle did not have a World’s Fair until 1962. That was when it got its opera house and its Pacific Science Museum and its, the Space Needle, and all that stuff, developments in which, by the way, I had a role because of where I was, first with Time, Inc. and then with the King Broadcasting Company. You, you knew and you could grasp cities’ leadership in a minute and 63:00all of the, the consequential leaders, a room full, a small room full of them that included if you please, the political editor of the Seattle Times. He did not consider it unethical or improper for him to be meeting every week with the city’s chamber leadership and [ ] leadership and banking leadership and to plan. And then if the plans didn’t go out well, of course, you didn’t have editorial culmination against it.

PRESS: This is all about developing the city.

SCHULMAN: That is correct.

PRESS: By everybody.

SCHULMAN: That is correct.

PRESS: Well, and, and— SCHULMAN: But within, within— PRESS: He was, he was owned by— SCHULMAN: Within—if I may answer another question, and this—I assure you, not because of, it, certainly I had the interest, but not the—certainly 64:00would never have happened in New York or Chicago—within the first seven or eight years, I was chairman of the city’s Municipal Arts Commission and was working with the governor of the state of Washington on creating a state arts commission. [laughs] I was on the committee to plan the World’s Fair. It was ridiculous what I did in so short of time, except that it was that remote— PRESS: Hm.

SCHULMAN: From the centers of provincial—of business and banking and political power. And, you know, what you see of Seattle now, there was nothing across the lake— Lake Washington.

PRESS: Bellevue, you mean?

SCHULMAN: Bellevue was nothing— PRESS: It was a— SCHULMAN: It was Mercer Island, really.

PRESS: It was, it was a summer, summer resort. 65:00SCHULMAN: That’s, that’s exactly right. But the, the building in which our, our offices were located is no longer there. It was right across from the Fifth Avenue Theatre. And the man that, the one men’s apparel shop was downstairs, Albert’s. Nordstrom was not in existence hardly. We had Frederick & Nelson.

PRESS: At that time, what was the power of the city commercially? Was it the lumber industry? Wey-, Weyerhaeuser, whatever they, however you say that?

SCHULMAN: Weyerhaeuser. Weyerhaeuser.

PRESS: Weyerhaeuser.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Actually, Weyerhaeuser has always been and remains headquartered in Tacoma.

PRESS: Oh.

SCHULMAN: No, the power, the power first and foremost: Boeing.

PRESS: Was Boeing.

SCHULMAN: Boeing.

PRESS: Boeing was there already? 66:00SCHULMAN: What do you mean already?

PRESS: Well, already to me.

SCHULMAN: Boeing, Boeing was there beginning in the end of World War I when a young man named Bill Boeing started this company. And worked through the ’30s and into the ’40s and the Boeing Company was of no significant consequence until World War II brought it the B-17 which it had prepared for by getting a variety of small, inconsequential military contracts that enabled it to pursue the technical developments that led to the B-17. And, and, and after World War II, after World War II, 67:00when the need for the B-17s disappeared, literally, there were a couple of years when the Boeing Company was getting its profits from making toilets. Literally. That’s right. Toilets.

PRESS: The civilian air system had not yet developed.

SCHULMAN: Had not yet developed. And I’m—we’re sort of getting ahead of ourselves, but, oh, one of the—obviously I’ve, one of my first moves had to be to become oriented on and conversant with the dynamics of the Boeing Company. And it was in such terrible straights in the, in the 1953, 1954, that it put 68:00its lawyer in as president, a man named William Allen. He had no technical capacities. But they were that, they were in such difficulties and such, and he had been long time Se-, Seattle and had witnessed the struggles that had gone on, and Bill Boeing was still alive. So that, as the Boeing Company got to the point where it was found developing, with the help of military money, developing a workable model of a commercial jet transport. A commercial—there were none then. And as the Time-Life 69:00person, by then I had a series of juniors. I had a number two person. I had stringers throughout the region. But we were a two person plus secretary-manager, although she was much more than a manager, remarkably. But I had trouble, such was the provincialism of New York and the separateness psychologically from Seattle that I had great trouble selling the Times editors in New York on the consequence of Boeing being on the edge of developing a flyable, dependable jet commercial transport. And it was nip and tuck when Time agreed to do a cover story on this development. 70:00[END OF TAPE] ROBERT SCHULMAN: The prototype, I have a card upstairs, the prototype flight of the first 707 in 1954—I better check—’56, ’54. The first flight of the prototype from Seattle to Baltimore, because there was some uncertainty about it, the capacities for landing a plane of that jet size included a special group of people, William Randolph Hearst, Doug Edwards, Bob Considine, L-, Leonard McComb of Life Magazine, the Seattle bureau chief 71:00for Time and Life. And I’ve got to tell you, the experience when that plane went off the ground was astonishing and breath-taking. Today it’s nothing, but [zoom sound] and we flew at thirty thousand feet. And there were jokes, you know, “Ooh, those contrails, Theirs or ours?” And William Randolph Hearst balancing a pencil on its end to see if it would stay. And a map up front where they were giving us indications of where we were and how little time it took. So, you know, it was the end of— O. LEONARD PRESS: The, I was, I mean, jets were beyond, for 72:00the rest of us, jets were even beyond contemplation practically because we were still flying, what are they— SCHULMAN: Turbo prop.

PRESS: The, y-, well, [laughs] first prop.

SCHULMAN: Well, propellers, that’s right.

PRESS: And we were just getting—turbo prop was not yet— SCHULMAN: Was later, that’s right.

PRESS: Was it ’53, ’54?

SCHULMAN: That’s right. That is correct.

PRESS: You didn’t fly out of Lexington in a turbo prop?

SCHULMAN: No, no. No, no. No, no. No, you flew in— PRESS: And a jet was futuristic beyond belief.

SCHULMAN: Well now—of course, of course. And you know, one of the sports phenomenon in Seattle, it’s gone now, tailed off, was, there were lots of Gold Cups—this was the annual big hydroplane race.

PRESS: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: The, the Gold Cup on Lake Washington. And it was madness for these vessels to be going a hundred and fifty miles an hour on the lake, but it was St. Louisan, 73:00Stan—Seattleite, pardon me, a man named Stanley Sayres who pace-marked, who, who really was the pace-maker, the pace-setter for this. And periodically, the, the favorite driver of these boats would take on national significance and finally get the attention of the New York Times and then they’d die in a crash. Bill Muncey, a name you would know.

PRESS: Oh, I do. I remember that name.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was big time. He died, you know. But a hundred thousand people—you talk about the [ ]. A hundred thousand people would come line the shores of Lake Washington to—now, the other economic things 74:00in addition to Boeing were the Alaska steamship lines, a freighter, freighter company out of Seattle that went to Japan and other places. The beginnings of Alaska Airlines. And that was about it. I, I’ve always been astonished in recent years how small companies and banks, the Washington Mutual Bank, which was just in St. Louis is now nationwide. Nordstrom’s is a small store with nothing, just down the corner from where our office was. By, by other, by, in contrast, the, the department store in Seattle, Frederick & Nelson 75:00is gone. Is gone. The other one, Bon Marche is now a Macy’s, you know, as so many others. The big hotel, the big hotel in Seattle was the Olympic. One hotel. And it was owned by a, an old guy who developed, helped develop Alaska Airlines and then it was taken over by Westin. And these were all, you know, stories for me, for us. And Alaska, of course, which did not get statehood until 1958, you know—extraordinary. And the battles that Alaska did, I had some interesting 76:00adventures in Alaska. But one of my last shots in 1967 was to do a story for the Saturday Evening Post in which I suggested that were it not for the oil boom, Alaska would be, and perhaps in the future would become again a load on the economics of the entire country, of the lower forty-eight, because it had no economy other than that sudden oil boost. And you’ve been reading this, this year the attempts by, by Alaskan senators to get pork to build weird things that helps no one.

PRESS: Like the bridge to nowhere. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: That’s exactly right.

PRESS: But they still have a negative tax— 77:00SCHULMAN: That is correct. That is correct. Anyway. The first big thing that, for me, other than Boeing was, of course, the phenomenon of the Teamsters Union run from Seattle, run by Dave Beck. And I was fascinated and astonished to discover that the year before I got there, there had been a great civic banquet attended by all of the civic and political luminaries including the Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Stephen Baine, later an international leader of the Episcopal church in, in England, who attended that as well to honor Dave Beck 78:00because Dave Beck had been so generous, sort of like Al Schneider in, in Louisville, and so generous with the money from the Teamsters, giving to various civic projects. But it, he lived in a, what we called a compound, literally a, a sequestered bunch of land, northward off of Lake Washington with any number of houses where not only he and his wife but his subordinates had houses. And he was a sentimentalist. He and his wife had a little cupid over their bed and so on. [laughs] But he was corrupt as corrupt would be.

PRESS: Were you, were you—well, were you instrumental in making him an infamous, infamous national figure?

SCHULMAN: Sufficiently 79:00so that, that the, the bishop in a piece that I did that ran for a half page in Time Magazine acknowledged the pressures that had forced him for so many years to make obeisance to this labor leader PRESS: Hm.

SCHULMAN: And of course the, it was Bobby Kennedy in the hearings, the Senate, that really did the job. My role was to crack it open at the local level where his home and his home heath was and where many of the things that he’d done were transparently corrupt. And, you know, such was his nature that I, I was able to come visit with him and his wife 80:00and look through their bedroom and their living room and so on and write all about this. But interestingly, the Bobby Kennedy, of course, figured heavily in this racket’s inquiry. And he was covered on the local level on a more immediate basis by a man named Ed Guffman of the New York, of the Seattle Times. And when Jack Kennedy was elected and made Bobby his Attorney General, Ed Guffman became Bobby’s press secretary. And so that all tied in with the Dave Beck dénouement. But I was able then, when Beck was tried and sentenced to prison and taken down, I attended the meeting 81:00in a crowded room. As I recall, it took place on Queen Anne Hill, if you know that.

PRESS: Yes.

SCHULMAN: Where a newcomer was battling to take over the union. And he was a steel-faced, bug-eyed guy named Jimmy Hoffa.

PRESS: Ah-ha.

SCHULMAN: And you could tell in that room what a tough son of a bitch this man was. But he captured them, you know. And compared to him, Dave Beck was an angel, you know.

PRESS: As— SCHULMAN: A jolly, roly-poly guy doing good for the town and so on. But such was the nature, the smallness of Seattle that they were in this man’s pocket until things changed.

PRESS: Hoffa was not from our, at there— SCHULMAN: Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

PRESS: He was, he was working out of Chicago.

SCHULMAN: The meeting was held 82:00in Seattle because that’s where the, all of the [ ] were. And, well— PRESS: And you’re still working Time-Life?

SCHULMAN: Oh, say, say again.

PRESS: You’re still working Time-Life?

SCHULMAN: Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Yes, oh, indeed. Well, of course, it was a—I said Chicago was seminal, but even more from its point of view, Seattle was, with the leadership that was very shrewd and very devoted, and that had more breadth of thinking and commitment to culture and the arts than the populous. So much so that, 83:00well, the kinds of things that, for example, I discovered because of the hedonistic quality of the life in Seattle, and if only I had been smart, there was a time when I owned a little place on Bainbridge Island, on the beachfront. You could walk out with a bucket and collect a bucket of clams. And there was the ferry on its way to Bremer when I left Seattle, I had to sell it because it got—it’s worth a million, literally.

PRESS: I know. I know.

SCHULMAN: A million dollars now.

PRESS: I know.

SCHULMAN: It, but, I found the hedonistic life, among other things, attracted more than the normal quota of psychoanalysts. Several of them came from manager training in Topeka, and they drew others. And several of them became personal 84:00friends, in part because Eleanor, my wife, was for many troubled years involved with analysis, beginning in St. Louis and Chicago and then in Seattle. But this group got together and, as a practice, decided that they wanted to build for the first time anywhere a clinic center that would be designed for the an-, analysand, so they called in Walter Menninger from Topeka to advise them and a marvelously talented local architect, lame, but bright, named Paul Kirk. And what they did was to give me a Time story 85:00about the country’s first psychiatric, psychoanalytic center where each room with a couch looked out on a garden with a sliding door where you had a separate entrance and a separate exit so that people didn’t have to sit around and be exposed and so on. That was another manifestation. I’m thinking of the various other cover stories. There was actually— PRESS: Is that still, is that still there?

SCHULMAN: The clinic?

PRESS: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: Yes, I understand so although the people are now off—they’re dead or, one of them, a particularly good friend 86:00named George Allison, otherwise known as Mike Allison, in more recent years became president of the American Psychoanalytic Society, but he divorced his wife and married his secretary. Four or five of the others divorced their wives and married analysands or the, the rate of— PRESS: They were trying to improve their mental health, were they?

SCHULMAN: It, you, exactly so, you know. I mean, there’s nothing like a fresh— [laughter] But they were, you know, they were having great life and they did start a community psychiatric clinic— PRESS: Was— SCHULMAN: Of which I was on the board.

PRESS: Is this your personal characterization or was Seattle really known as a hedonistic society? Was it— 87:00SCHULMAN: It was not known to Seattle. It was known to people who became, who, who got to know Seattle and who began, you know, it came to be a flood. There was a marvelous columnist there, a good writer, I have one or two of his books about Seattle, named Emmett Watson. He died just last year or two years ago. I had a marvelous letter from him. He founded an organization called Lesser Seattle, Incorporated.

PRESS: Lesser Seattle?

SCHULMAN: Lesser Seattle, Incorporated. And it’s motto was “Don’t Californicate Seattle.” [laughter] PRESS: Well, that tells me they were self-conscious about it. [laughs] SCHULMAN: That gives you the view. Well, he was not typical, you know. He was trying to warn, warn 88:00the populace, because, you know, if you enjoyed fishing and skiing and sailing and it was available to people of modest income, of modest craft, but modest income, why, you know, you didn’t think, Gee, what a, what a—it was the Californians and the Texans who began flooding in and now the practically own the place.

PRESS: Yes, it’s still—that’s right.

SCHULMAN: See? You know, our, our good friends, Margaret and Scotty Green, you know, I, Margaret was here, brought here as the council but quickly became president of what was South-Central Bell, the telephone company, later BellSouth. Margaret went from here—although before she left, she organized the 89:00first Paul Patton cabinet. And did very well for him. And then she went to Atlanta to BellSouth where she became one of the two, top two or three executives. She’s now with the, retired, with the takeover of BellSouth by AT&T, and where do you think their summer place is?

PRESS: On Bainbridge Island?

SCHULMAN: San Juans.

PRESS: San Juans. San— SCHULMAN: San Juans. San Juan Islands, off the coast of Washington. Sarah, you would love it. And the San Juans friends of mine, friends of ours used to have places. Now, you can’t get in there.

PRESS: You can but— [laughter] SCHULMAN: The first, the first Life story I did when I got there in November of 1953—and 90:00this was an assignment I didn’t think I’d get, but one of the fine contract photographers, George Silk was sent out. It was to go to the remote west coast of Vancouver Island and get aboard a twenty-six foot tub with a little bare Christmas tree strapped to the top of the cabin with two missionaries and take Christmas goodies to the Indian tribes living along the west side of Vancouver Island.

PRESS: Huh.

SCHULMAN: I got to tell you, wild waves and going and this—I mean, if either one of us had been seasick-prone— SARAH MILLIGAN: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: And we put through the breakers to land at these little places and these poor God-damned Nic-Nac 91:00and Intuits with their totem poles, you know. You could buy a totem pole for nothing. Now, there are resorts all up and down the west coast of Vancouver Island. And then my first trip to Alaska, we were allowed to equip ourselves with double, double-space sleeping bags, great parkas that outranked anything I had had to wear in the war in Labrador, you know. That’s because of the apocryphal, you understand, story about the expense accounts that were submitted to Time, Inc. in those glory days.

PRESS: Well, I’m sorry to hear they were apocryphal.

SCHULMAN: Ugh. Ugh. You know, Bob Landry who did the marvelous 92:00war, war-time photo of Rita Hayworth in her negligee, he, he went on a aircraft, new aircraft carrier and he turned in this fantastic expense account and they said, “What did you—” “Well,” he said, “Don’t forget it was a big ship. I needed it for taxi cabs.” [laughter] PRESS: That’s a wonderful story. Wonderful.

SCHULMAN: Well, Morrison-Knudsen was the, the country’s most exciting and interesting heavy construction company, started by this ham-handed carpenter and, and builder and his wife, Ann. And it was Harry Morrison out of Boise, 93:00Idaho. That was where they lived. And Morrison-Knudsen, either by itself or with Bechtel out of San Francisco, built the Hells Canyon Dam, [ ] Dam, and other major dams along the Columbia and the Snake River, and did some work in the Middle East and so on. And, an enthralling story. And I got to know them. You know, they sent a plane at Christmas to take us to a party there. It was in the process of, of covering Morrison-Knudsen’s doings that I had my first mountain oysters. You know what the mountain oyster is?

MILLIGAN: Um-umh.

SCHULMAN: And I, it was up in the hills, what they call the benches of the, of Boise. Boise itself, you know, 94:00which is now getting to be a favorite haunt—this, our stringer there was the top political writer in Idaho, John Carlett, working for the Boise Statesman. I had stringers also in Portland, in Spokane, Washington, in, in Vancouver, in Anchorage, in Fairbanks. And I’m, I, well, the wildest thing of course was preparing for coverage of statehood. After all of those weary and peculiar and interesting battles, beginning with the—it was a, really a Socialist, a guy named Earnest Gruening, G-R-U-E-N-I-N-G, assisted, great conservationist. 95:00You don’t have them in Alaska now, in our—and Bob Bartlett, who became for many years the non-voting representative in Washington for Alaska. I remember on one visit to Ketchikan, which is in the lower panhandle. It was from Ketchikan that the Senator last year was trying to build this “bridge to nowhere.” I remember standing outside one of the shop windows downtown and Bob, in Ketchikan, while Bob Bartlett wanted me to show him how to tie a bowtie. Their young Republican, first Republican Governor, named Mike Stepovich, and then, the weird—you know, you’ve been to Juneau? 96:00PRESS: No.

SCHULMAN: It’s, it’s still the capital. It’s reachable only by airplane or boat. Still. And makes no sense whatsoever, and there have been repeated efforts to change it to Anchorage, but Alaskans don’t want it that way. And it, and Van-, and Juneau has the Red Dog Saloon which theoretically, ra-, Robert Service used it when he talked about the shooting of Dan McGrew. Of course now, it’s touristy and the original spirit is gone. But it was there one of the first times I went. A remarkable character in, in Seattle was the, the leading real estate man, named Henry Broderick. I have a book of his. Very literate. Liked to write his own books, musings. 97:00He had gone to Seattle as a youth, early in the twentieth century, and had gone up to make money out of the gold rush. Went up by boat and got to know nice women up there whom he talked about and actually panned for gold, but was smart enough to come home and start buying up downtown Seattle property. He was so, he was so directed towards the arts that there was a man who was working at the University of Washington who really became consequentially famous as a poet, Ted Roethke, R-O-E-T-H-K-E. 98:00PRESS: Oh.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: I didn’t know that was how it was pronounced. I didn’t recognize— SCHULMAN: Roethke, yes. Yes. And periodically, Henry Broderick would us, gather some of us at what was Seattle’s only good restaurant, Canlis, started by a guy from Hawaii, on the side of land overlooking lake Union. And what was funny about it is he was serving mahi mahi, which nobody ever knew about until then and Henry Broderick would bring in Roethke, slightly drunk, to read his latest poems and talk about the world with us, [laughs] you know. The, the Seattle orchestra, symphony was in early trouble, early trouble. 99:00But with considerable support from the establishment and searching for a conductor. They couldn’t get one. And they had Sir Thomas Beecham for a year. [laughs] And he left in disarray and the community and the orchestra in disarray. And then somehow they hired the young man who was the concert, assistant concert master and first violist for Toscanini and the NBC symphony. His name was Milton Katims. I, Milton and Virginia lived near us and became fast friends because Virginia, who was a concert cellist loved parties and loved to do things that would build her husband’s career. 100:00So much so that one, it was in, I guess in 1958, Life wanted to do a party, social party and I was able to sell them on Virginia Katims’ Seattle party. And it made a cover of Life, and, oh, Virginia was, was carried away. And their house, where, they lived overlooking Lake Washington, in a neighborhood called Laurelhurst. We lived down the hill but still in Laurelhurst. Well— PRESS: What was the name again?

SCHULMAN: Laurelhurst.

PRESS: Laurelhurst.

SCHULMAN: L-A-U—it’s up—from the university, you go down in to that valley where there’s a shopping center. And there used to be World War II barracks. And then you go up a big 101:00hill, up toward the lake, and that’s Laurelhurst. And the prow of that hill overlooks Lake Washington. Still, I’m told, a marvelous neighborhood. Somebody presented early on, somebody presented the Katim’s with a little dog, he’s a part Cocker, part Labrador. Of all things, a Cockador. [laughter] So, Milton named him Rimsky. [laughter] And— PRESS: Rimsky and Cockador.

SCHULMAN: Mil—that’s right. And Milton used to practice down in the rec room in the bottom of the home. And the little dog was running all over the linoleum on the kitchen floor and killing Milton, so we ended up with Rimsky.

PRESS: Ah.

SCHULMAN: And had him for twelve years. Marvelous dog. 102:00Marvelous. And talked, talked to Rimsky the whole time.

PRESS: Let’s take a quick break.

SCHULMAN: We may. [INTERRUPTION—TAPE STOPS] SCHULMAN: You have a stopwatch upstairs. No, you— [laughs] PRESS: Let’s, let’s pick it up at you’re still in Seattle. You’re still working for Time-Life.

SCHULMAN: Right.

PRESS: Pretty soon, you’re not going to be working for Time-Life.

SCHULMAN: Pretty soon. Well, the things, you know, the, the, the—I was deeply involved on a voluntary side, as I mentioned, with the local arts commission, and Seattle was very fortunate with its, with its, some of its mayors and councilmen. The, there was a, and he, this man was a Republican, Gordon Clinton, by name. But he not only supported the 103:00arts commission but we arranged for a, a, an annual percentage to come out of appropriations for the arts overall, which made an extraordinary difference including commissioning local sculptors. And we had a profusion of sculpture, which is now manifest in Seattle and in Bellevue and elsewhere. But I mean, fine stuff. And as a result, of course, it, it fostered the development of a more active sculptural, sculptural and arts community.

MILLIGAN: What year was that?

SCHULMAN: This was in the ’50s.

MILLIGAN: In the ’50s?

SCHULMAN: Yes. One interesting—on the ballet side, was a 104:00local teacher came to us, of ballet, one day, one month, one meeting, and said if we could come up with a modest sum, and I’ve forgotten, but it was modest, she was in touch with a former student who was interested in coming back and establishing a, a ballet company in Seattle. And his name was Bob Joffrey. Joffrey Ballet. And he did. And they did. And there were some just extraordinary ballet performances, original ballet performances, before he went off to make bigger hay in New York. So, it—and, from an arts standpoint, I think I had mentioned, had I not, the, when I came, 105:00I was the tailend, when I got to Seattle, of a Life interest in doing a major picture essay on regional Northwest artists, although they, those artists involved hated to be categorized as regional, which was a put-down.

PRESS: Sure.

SCHULMAN: But it included later nationally, internationally known Morris Graves, Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Anderson, Carl Morris, and—Graves, in particular, of course, got—but Mark Tobey was the winner of the Venice Biennale one of those years, I think in the, in the, when I was in charge. 106:00And it was a, the funny thing is—as I say, this is at the tag-end. When I got there to Seattle and the Life picture essay ran, Mark Tobey called, and Mark Tobey had had his earlier work in Greenwich Village at my aunt’s bistro in 1929 with Buckminster Fuller as the, the designer of the studio. And he called me and he was outraged. Why? Because Life had run his white painting—that was his forte, white painting—his, run one of his white paintings upside down. [laughter] I called—I called Dorothy Siberland, whom I met recently 107:00in New York in connection with the Romany Marie book, and she said, “Well, I’ll check into it. That’s dreadful.” She called me back, and she said, “How can that be? We ran it with his signature in the lower right-hand corner.” I called Tobey, and Tobey said, “That’s ridiculous. I frequently sign my, put my name on the bottom—on the top.” [laughter] Talk about Jackson Pollock, you know.

PRESS: Yeah. I get—upside-down Jackson Pollock. That’s funny.

SCHULMAN: Well, quickly before we move on from Time-Life, there was, of course, preparing for the Time and Life coverage of Alaskan statehood, which, when it was finally coming, and perhaps this was a little bizarre 108:00and extensive and expensive and perhaps it was stretching a point, but I felt that I needed to explore both the story in the magazines, those parts of Alaska which were not yet overcome by tourists. Even today people go to Alaska to—fantastic to go to Anchorage and to Fairbanks. Well, damn it, they are tourist traps. And even going to glaciers or marvelous glaciers-, Glacier Bay, but, you know, there’s a, a novel out this week called The, The Yiddish Policeman of Sitka. [laughter] It’s a new, it’s a new think about a, a, a bunch of Jews who settle in Sitka, Alaska, [laughs] By Mark Chabon, I think his name is. I haven’t read it. But it’s still that magic of Alaska. But what I did, 109:00among other things, was to hire a wonderful guy, Don Sheldon, who had a reputation as a glacier pilot. His fame had come, and his single— PRESS: From surviving.

SCHULMAN: Huh?

PRESS: From surviving.

SCHULMAN: From survi—exactly so. Had come from flying his single engine Piper Cub onto the slopes of Mt. McKinley with the skis and rescuing stranded climbers. ‘The glacier pilot,’ they called him. He had his home and his little airstrip in Talkeetna, outside of Anchorage. So, I did a little bit of the externals of Anchorage. I mean, there was a new ski area, Alyeska, that was worthy of note and some of the bush pilots stuck close to suburban Anchorage 110:00and then went to, or, well, he came, flew me into Talkeetna and was so proud, because he said that for this trip he had equipped his Piper Cub with a machine gun, synchronized with the propeller, so that if we saw wolves, we could take after the wolves. I said, “Well—” He said, “No, don’t worry.” You know, “I, I’ll show you.” [laughs] Well, we took off and we flew west through Elliott Pass, you know, through these fantastic icy cra-, crags, and you’re flying in this little plane between them. And I said, “Elliott Pass?” “Oh, yeah,” he said, “See that splotch down there? That was where Elliott crashed, and we named it after him.” [laughs] We flew on, and we landed in all of that 111:00hundreds of miles of tundra, you know, where it’s marshy, fre-, freezes in the winter time, and landed on the skis in the Kuskokwim River near the hamlet of Sleetmute. He wanted me to visit with the man living across the river from Sleetmute who had made a fortune on mic-, mercury—the mercury mine he had there. And his son had his own little plane strapped to the dock. And we stayed with the local minister and his wife and their little log cabin. And they put up a curtain, like ‘a wall of Jericho.’ You remember Claudette Colburn and Clark Gable.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: It Happened One Night. That was a movie where they put a blanket between Sheldon and me and the minister and his wife. 112:00And the next day we went over the river and visited with this miner, this old man. And he’s worried about his son, you know, who was playing around with the plane and really was not making anything of himself. And we looked around at Sleetmute and then took off on the river and we were then flying over the Yukon and it was a bright, bright day. It was in April. And the river was mostly free of ice and, by God, there on an island was a wolf. “Hey,” he says, “Sheldon.” And I’m sitting in the back behind him, you know, with my portable typewriter and my suitcase behind me so that my knees are up at my chest. He says, “Here we go!” And he takes after this wolf. And the wolf hears us and starts to run toward the end 113:00of the island where there’s a bunch of bushes. And as we get close to him, “Sheldon, let’s go with this—” Talk about the helicopters. The whole God-damned plane shook like it had the ague. And it, we zoomed o-, over. “We missed the son-of-a-bitch,” said Sheldon. “Let’s go around and get him again.” I said, “Don, Don, I’ve seen enough,” you know. About an hour later when we landed at a little refueling spot of some kind. We had underbrush in the carriage. [laughter] Well, the idea was to go on to the west coast. Not to Nome, which is already a tourist trap, but to a smaller place called Unalakleet. Sheldon says to me, “You know, 114:00that’s a hell of a long way. Do you really want to go there?” I said, “Don—” “Well,” he said, “Look, you wanted to go to the Brooks Range, which is the mountains north of Fairbanks, the arctic circle.” I said, “Can we make it?” “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve never been there, but it’s just a question of following the river.” So we land in, outside of Fairbanks, refuel, and take off into the Brooks Range. And again, it’s a brilliant sun-decked day, and you can see the winding river. And as we fly, we see herds of caribou migrating back up into the hills, and the sick ones behind being taken down by wolves. It was a considerable sight and very dramatic.

PRESS: I bet. Who knew— SCHULMAN: To get to the summit— PRESS: You’re not shooting this with camera? 115:00SCHULMAN: No. Alas. [ ] This was all to be followed by. We land up in the, in the summit in the place called Anaktuvut Pass. It’s getting towards darkness, and we land on this frozen lake between two huge strips of icy mountains. And when we land, here comes a dogsled [laughs] with a little Eskimo Inuit man and a little boy and “Hello,” they say. “Hello. Hello.” And they sit us in this dogsled and we go quarter of a mile into the village. They’re not igloos, but they’re shaped like igloos. They’re mud and, and snow. And there’s a little frame shack occupied by the storekeeper who’s name—I’ll 116:00never forget—was Pat McGraff.

PRESS: Wow.

SCHULMAN: And Pat McGraff is selling candy bars and Tangee lipsticks and nylon panties, [laughs] among other things. So, we go in to meet with the headmaster, the postmaster. And he speaks a little English and somehow we make, you know, converse, what’s life like and where do they go. And they’re nomads and they come up for the summer and then they go back down and take logs and things with them, in the win-, back in the winter. And suddenly we hear a plane, another plane. Who’s that, for God’s sake? Once a month, a Lutheran pastor comes in from Point Barrow, which is on the arc-, far 117:00on the arc-, and lands here to, to counsel with these people. I’ve forgotten his name. But he was startled to see us, you know. So, he gives us more enlightenment about what life is like and what these people do. And all of a sudden he says, “Say, folks, it’s getting dark. W-, I’m sure they’ll put you up, and if you don’t have sleeping bags, I got some sleeping bags.” And I said, “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Don Sheldon says, “No, no, no, no, no.” He said, “I got a date back down in Fairbanks.” The other guys says, “Well, but you know, it—” “Oh,” he said, “We came up, we’ll go back down. You know, follow the river—it’s the same deal.” PRESS: Same river.

SCHULMAN: “No problem.” So, they put us on the dog sleds, the huskies and take us out. The moon flecked 118:00valley here in this icy thing, and they, they say, “Good-bye.” And here we are with his plane. Now, he starts to try his engine, try his engine. He says, “Hey Bob, get into there, and when I yell at you, push the button,” he said. Well, turns out, they used smoke pots to warm the engines, and he’d left his smoke pot back home in Talkeetna. He said, “Bob, do you mind?” He said, “I’ll keep working on the engine,” he said. And he checked, the minister’s plane was locked. He said, “Go, go back to the village and tell him our problem and see if you can get his, get out his smoke pot for me to use.” So, it’s dark, and there are hummocks of ice and snow 119:00as I’m walking along, and, you know, and the fucking wolves. Looked at him. I said, “What the hell? I’m a Bronx boy.” [laughter] What the hell? Whose, you know, Life’s not going to come up this way anyway. What—and you hear the strange noises and your feet are crunching in the snow, and you get to the village. Thank God I saw one little candlelight, because there are no lights in the God-damned things. I saw a little light. So, I found my way [laughs] to the postmaster and the minister. “I told you,” he said, “You should—”[laughs] “Alright,” he said, “We’ll, we’ll go out and open it up.” So he went out and opened up the plane and, and Don Sheldon starts the fire under the—and he said to me, “Get in there,” you know. “And when I tell you to push, push.” 120:00[laughs] Wind coming through must be thirty below then. I mean we’re, it’s icy. The whole damn thing is icy. And his plane, finally it starts. Lutheran minister says goodbye, he goes back and we’re throttling up, you know, and, boy, says, Don Sheldon says, “Hey Bob, we’re in shape now.” [laughs] And he closes his door, and of course, his door doesn’t quite close, so it’s blowing in on me. Cold, oof. And he takes off down this bouncy, icily, icy lake. Well, we took off and we’re flying away, you know. I’m looking down [laughs]. He said, finally, “Hey Bob,” he said, “You got your, can 121:00you see your watch?” I said, “Well, not really, you know.” And it was—“Well,” he said, “see if you can tell me when it’s been two minutes.” So I’m watching my set and listening to this thing and feeling the wind, and suddenly I look up and we are in a blind canyon running, and Sheldon makes a hundred and eighty degree turn and says, “Tell you what, Bud,” he says, “I think we’re lost.” PRESS: Huh.

SCHULMAN: He said, “I tell you what—I’m going to, I think maybe we can find our way out, but you keep looking for a light.” [laughs] But here are these mountains, you know, and we’ve lost the river. Where the hell is the damned river that we’re following? And suddenly, there’s a funny little flick 122:00of light over that furthest icy mountain. And it’s the emergency landing place at Bettles, Alaska. [laughs] We spend the night there in the office chairs and next morning, we take off for back to Talkeetna. You know, I get out, my back, my bad back is killing me, and I got my suitcase and a typewriter. Don says, “You going to be okay, Bud.” He said, “I’m going to have you picked up, and don’t worry, and I’ll see you again.” And off he went. That was the last I ever saw of Don Sheldon. And two years later, he died of cancer. And there’s a, a shrine, I mean a little thing to him there in Talkeetna. Anyway, when Life 123:00went to cover the statehood in Alaska, they did go to Anaktuvuk, thank God, but they did not go to Sleetmute. And they sure as hell did not find that wolf on the Yukon. Anyway, Bob, the, you know, there was the newspaper story, but, interesting, for many, many years, the Anchorage Times was the paper in Alaska. And then the, there was an earthquake that hit that fancy neighborhood where it was, Turnagain Arms, and the Anchorage News, which had been very much a failing paper, was bought 124:00by an editor from the lower forty-eight. And his wife, whose name escapes me—it should come to me—who was on the Boston Globe, went up to edit the Anchorage Daily News. And then and today, the Anchorage Daily News is the chief paper, and an effective one, in Alaska. And the Times has gone down. So, it can happen there, too. But, you know, Anchorage is mostly bars, as far as I was concerned.

MILLIGAN: Speaking of bars, where was Pat McGraff from?

SCHULMAN: Wyoming. Wyoming and Don, Don Sheldon, he had quite a bond, because Sheldon had grown up in Wyoming as well, so that this, it’s nice to realize there’s 125:00something in, comes out of Wyoming other than Dick Cheney. [laughter] Well— PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: Nineteen-fifty-eight, I was still working at Time, Inc. Then, Washington state had a very young progressive Republican governor and I worked with him much as I had with his predecessor, Al Rosellini, who was a robust game-playing Democrat of the old school. Dan Evans was a clean arrow Republican. And with him and a young man of wealth from the Weyerhaeuser-or—Norton Clapp dynasty, monied, we 126:00ran a marvelously successful conference called “Design for Washington.” We brought in people from all over the country to talk about the values of conservation and good planning and design. We had Charlie Eames in from L.A., the maker of the furniture. We had Russell Trane, the head of the conservation, Nat-, Conservancy. We had Governor Chafee, Lincoln Chafee, later the Senator.

PRESS: Rhode Island.

SCHULMAN: Yes. We had the, John Lindsay’s chief of staff from New York. And a whole host of other people that really—and, and we, you know— PRESS: Who was we? Was that Time that was putting this on?

SCHULMAN: The governor and, and King, and King, King, 127:00Time, Inc.— PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: Was supporting it as a, you know. Anyway, it was that fall that Dorothy, that Jim Shatley, the new, new director of Time-Life International News Services came to Louis-, to Seattle for a visit. As was our wont, my wont, I rented a speedboat and took him on Lake Washington for a, he said he was a great surfer, I mean, a great s-, water skier, and he didn’t need a life jacket, and he was, only needed one ski. [laughs] Well, of course, the first thing you knew, poof, he went into the water and the ski went somewhere else. 128:00Well, I went to get the ski first.

PRESS: Naturally.

SCHULMAN: When we picked him up, he was blowing water and cussing, saying, “Don’t you know, you pick up the God-damned water-skier first?” This is the guy who, a few months later when he called me back to New York at Twenty-One to talk about Los Angeles, and Richard Rogers recognized me, anyway, it was a shock. I, I did not want to go to L.A., however much it was considered a fantastic promotion. Eleanor was still in analysis. Becky was a teenager and, you know, so I called Dorothy Bullitt, the woman 129:00who had built the King Broadcasting Company into a nationally significant, three city, covered the region, Sarah. They had, we had stations in Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and Spokane, Washington. And I called her and said, “Mrs. Bullitt, I’m faced with the necessity of leaving Seattle. Does this mean anything?” And the next day we were having lunch.

PRESS: You knew her?

SCHULMAN: I’d been on, on the programs from time to time. The local version of news of the week or what was it called—“What’s the Story?” “What’s the Story?” And it was on that program that I may have mentioned I had my first experience with John Kennedy. He was a guest one, one week, and so I prepared by doing a little bit of superficial research 130:00and learned about his grandfather Honey Fitz, who was the ward healer in, in Boston, and the story that was in the book that one afternoon he was talking with friends in downtown Boston when there were the sounds of a crowd going the opposite side street. And he said, “Folks, forgive me. I’ve got to run away, I’m in their leader.” I told this story on the program. J.F.K. got furious. He upbraided me. He said, “You’ve got no God-damned business bringing up that kind of thing about my grandfather.” And so on. My first visit with J.F.K. And at that point, unfortunately, d-, Bobby was a little like that, too. He was tough. Later there 131:00was a transformation in Bobby Kennedy that I saw.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: But then, I told you then in 1960, the, with Marilyn Monroe and so on. Anyway. Mrs. Bullitt, with her son, Ste-, Stim Bullitt—the family name was, before she married A. Scott Bullitt of Louisville, which I’d never known til I got here, you know. Didn’t know the Bullitts from— PRESS: I wondered about that. I didn’t put those names together. I, I kept thinking— SCHULMAN: Neither did I until I got here. [laughs] PRESS: Yeah. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: Oh, she, she was a young woman— PRESS: And I didn’t know it until just this second now.

SCHULMAN: Because some friends in, in Louisville had met Scott Bullitt and love came and she came to live here. And she told 132:00me later that—or excuse me, she didn’t tell me: it was in her book that she hated it here because the Bullitts were so smug, so snobby, so intolerant of people that were not at their level and so on. She persuaded her husband to go back with her to her home, to Seattle. And he got into Democratic politics there and was slated when FDR was elected to be named Ambassador to France, and he developed a, a tumor of the brain and died. And Dorothy Bullitt, Stimson Bullitt, then went about developing herself much like Kay Graham developed.

PRESS: Uh-huh. Well, did she, did she get the resources to do that 133:00from that marriage or— SCHULMAN: No, no.

PRESS: She had it already.

SCHULMAN: Her family owned half of downtown Seattle.

PRESS: I see. [laughs] SCHULMAN: And that what was her lawyer husband—lawyer son, Stimson, was doing.

PRESS: I see. Okay.

SCHULMAN: As a lawyer, he was handling the property. And he also had political ambitions. While riding on the bus—he was peculiar—while riding on the bus to the office, he wrote a book about his unsuccessful campaign for Congress, called To be a Politician. It was so effective that the reviewer in the Sunday New York Times, on the front page of the book review said, “To quote from this book is to make it bleed.” Stanley Hindman said that about Stim Bullitt. But Mrs. Bullitt wanted 134:00Stim—well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: He was with her then in 1959, and she said, “What we would like for you to consider is coming to work for King and starting a documentary program and editorializing.” And when it came to economics, it was worth my while to leave Time, Inc. and do that. And of course the, staying in Seattle and the opportunities were so fresh and refreshing. I advised Time, and, you know, there were the appropriate, reconsider and so on and so on. And I went to work and found good camera people and good news operation 135:00and I had friends who were close to the Port of Seattle, which was a politicized, weak operation, well known to John Hayden who was the editor of a weekly publication, called the Marine Digest. He covered that area. And so our first documentary, which was a ninety minute prime-time affair called Lost Cargo, we filmed in the straits of Juan de Fuca with the freighters coming in from Yokohama and the pilot ship and so on. We filmed the longshoreman. We filmed the ports in Seattle and San Francisco and Long Beach. We talked to the, and Harry Bridges’ people and so on. There was a great 136:00restauranteur who played the guitar, Ivar Hagland—it’s still there. It’s called Ivar’s. He’s dead.

PRESS: Oh, sure. The great— SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: The great fish place.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Exactly. He had some great songs about Puget Sound which we used.

PRESS: Huh.

SCHULMAN: And we had sponsorship from a local bank. It, it—Lost Cargo. And we really were merciless about these punky politicians. The result was they had a town meeting with a theatre full of people, The Moore Theatre. Out of the town meeting came a successful ten million dollar bond issue that made Seattle the number one port on the Pacific Coast. [laughs] PRESS: Love it.

MILLIGAN: Wow.

SCHULMAN: How lucky can you get?

Good spot. 137:00[END OF INTERVIEW]