Oral History Interview with Robert Schulman, July 13, 2007

SARAH MILLIGAN: Then and you’ll know it’s recording.

O. LEONARD PRESS: All right. On Sarah’s instructions, I, I, I report that I am Len Press and the date is the, July 13, 19-, 2007. [Laughter] ROBERT SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: And that I am interviewing Robert— SCHULMAN: That was such a good century.

PRESS: Robert, Robert Schulman.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Of Louisville about his life.

SCHULMAN: Ah, amen.

PRESS: What have I left out, Sarah?

MILLIGAN: You’re good.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: That’s a splendid start.

PRESS: Now then. Let’s, let’s start with what you were just saying Bob— SCHULMAN: Well, I, I— PRESS: What, what did we leave out?

SCHULMAN: It occurred to me that I displaced a decade.

PRESS: Well, we would have come back to it, but pick up where you think you left off.

SCHULMAN: Well, where I think I left off is talking about the occasions that, that ended my stay with the King Broadcasting Company. Was that not where we were? And— PRESS: We were in Seattle, for sure.

SCHULMAN: Yes. In Seattle. And Dorothy Bullitt bringing 1:00her son against his better judgment and desires out of his law practice and taking care of the family property to run the King Broadcasting Company. And this was disruptive to a number of us. I mentioned in his case and mine that he wanted to send me to Los Angeles to learn how to make art films. And when you [laughs]—yes.

PRESS: For King?

SCHULMAN: Sorry?

PRESS: For King or— SCHULMAN: Yes, for King. Uh-huh.

PRESS: Which you should explain, did you— SCHULMAN: Huh?

PRESS: King stands for?

SCHULMAN: Oh, well, King stands for the County in which it was located. When Dorothy Bullitt took over that station, she was sufficiently influential and shrewd and politically astute, that 2:00she arranged for another station that had the name of the local county to give it up in her favor, and it became K-I-N-G, the King broadcasting company.

PRESS: Was the other station in Seattle?

SCHULMAN: That is correct.

PRESS: She didn’t buy the frequency though? Just the, just the. . .

SCHULMAN: No, just the name. Um-hm. And the, it was, I think—and you may have some insight into this—it was that same shrewdness and, and influential effectiveness that led her to become a powerhouse with the NAB. And I think she had a hand then when the former mayor of Louisville, Neville Miller— PRESS: Oh, my.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. [laughs] Yes.

PRESS: Now, I don’t remember her name. Of course Neville Miller was the president—was he the executive director of— SCHULMAN: Executive director, yes.

PRESS: Of NAB. 3:00SCHULMAN: Uh-huh.

PRESS: In the late ’30s.

SCHULMAN: Correct. Exactly so.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: The, there’s a funny Louisville political story about that which I, I suggest we defer until we get here. [laughs] PRESS: Will you not—you will not forget.

SCHULMAN: Anyway. Where I, where I erred was that when I left King, and at that point, the only option for me was to take, to go to work for Boeing in public relations. I had, as I’d mentioned, started really with King not with Time Magazine. It was in, at King in 1967 that we ran this phenomenally successful “Design for Washington” conference. I mentioned that we brought in 4:00Charles Eames and Chaffee and the head of nation-, not, the con-, Nature Conservancy, and New York major John Lindsey’s deputy mayor and so on. And it was King that helped put that about with, along with local banks and so on. So, I had mentioned that for whatever reason as coming when I was thinking about leaving King—leaving Time to join King. Well, of course there was no occasion for that. I think I misplaced it last time we were together.

PRESS: But it was Time that took you out there.

SCHULMAN: Oh, to Seattle?

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: Oh, abso-, well, let me quickly review. Why, I’m, I’m confusing you and I’m sometimes very good at that. [laughs] Time took me from Chicago to Seattle in 19-, November 1953. I remained with Time and Life 5:00and all the other publications until 1959 when there was an offer, desire to move me to Los Angeles.

PRESS: Right. That’s the part— SCHULMAN: And it was at that point that I advised Dorothy Bullitt of the situation and she provided me with such an irresistibly tempting offer to do documentaries and editorializing that I left Time, Inc. and went to work for King. And did that first—I think maybe I was talking at that point about the gratifyingly successful first documentary that we did, Lost Cargo, were we not?

MILLIGAN: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: Which led to a, a town meeting— PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: And by the way, out of my youth, we had, if you remember, George V. Denny— PRESS: Yeah, sure.

SCHULMAN: Who ran the town meeting, town hall meetings. 6:00PRESS: Sure.

SCHULMAN: We brought him in to Seattle to MC this town meeting, which was at the Moore Theatre, one of the legit theatres in—and of course, it was a turn-away crowd, really wonderfully. And out of that came, as I mentioned the successful approval by the people, voting public of the ten million dollar bond issue that made the Seattle port the most successful on the West Coast. Don’t let me at some point then miss in 19-, I think it was ’56 when Sports Illustrated—did I get into that?

MILLIGAN: I don’t think we’ve gotten— SCHULMAN: With Roger Bannister and John Landy. No, I didn’t.

PRESS: I don’t remember it.

SCHULMAN: Sports Illustrated, and, and interestingly 7:00it’s first managing editor was a man who had led the exodus from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to working for Time, Incorporated. There was a whole covey of people. And it was he who was the first managing editor of Sports Illustrated. And the decision for the first cover story of Sports Illustrated was to cover the Pan-American games in Vancouver, British Columbia. And it was a stunning set of track and field events. But the big newsy one was the race between Roger Bannister, the first human being to break the four minute mile and—a medical student at that time—and his chief competitor from Australia, John Landy. And it, tremendous sell-out crowd. 8:00And I do remember that S-, SI as we called it internally, Sports Illustrated had two or three photographers, but the lead photographer from Life was Mark Kauffman. And here came Bannister and Landy pushing against that four minute mile and they broke, they broke again. Roger, Roger Bannister set yet a new record. And just beating out John Landy. And I, of course, with credentials, like Mark Kauffan, was on the infield. Well, what would anybody do? You know, as, as, like, pace hor-, like racehorses cooling off after they had breasted the tape, Landy and, and Bannister went 9:00trotting down the field, just the two of them. And this somewhat overweight guy from SI trotting behind them to listen to what they were saying. Mark Kauffman took a picture. Yes, it was I. And so the, the— PRESS: Hot on the trail of an interview.

SCHULMAN: Yes, exactly. Well, it was the normal thing.

PRESS: A hot trail interview.

SCHULMAN: So, the publisher’s letter, the thing at the opening page of the first issue of Sports Illustrated in effect—I have it somewhere, we can—in effect said, “Now, look what this new magazine does. Look at the lengths to which our people will go to get the full story. Here’s that fatty bolting Bob Schulman—” 10:00and so on. [laughs] But anyway. It was very satisfying. And what, and what Bannister said to John Landy is “Chum, I’m so sorry.” PRESS: Really?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s worth the run.

PRESS: Yeah. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: I couldn’t quite make it now. But— [laughs] PRESS: Neither could they, you understand.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Well. So, that was mid-’50s. And we’ve already gone over Boeing, the Boeing exploit, which of course was—and I have a little, I’ve shown you the rather poor duplication—I’ve got it somewhere. Each page, each passenger on that first maiden flight of the prototype from Seattle to Baltimore was given this card that indicates that you were 11:00on that first flight. And the, the publisher’s letter that goes with that cover story about Bill, William Allen, the ex-lawyer, ex-counselor for the company who was called in twenty years beforehand to rescue the company. Why did I bring up—that’s a good point—why did I bring up Bill Allen in the— PRESS: Only you know.

SCHULMAN: You’re right. You’re right. What was it about the flight? Oh, well, anyway. It was a, it, I think I’ve mentioned it was an extraordinary experience because none of us knew this—a, that plane—oh, I know what I was going to get to. The, the pilot, Tex Johnston. And that he’s mentioned 12:00in the pub letter that goes, publisher’s letter of that issue of Time. He was a rangy Wyoming guy and a superb, but wild, test pilot. And here’s this incredible billion dollar machine, you know, and the only one of its kind in the world. And the company is waiting to unveil it. And it’s the time of the summer Gold Cup hydroplane race, which was big in Seattle at that time. In fact, for a number of years thereafter the hydroplane races, which became national significant, the sports events in Detroit and Seattle and other cities, wherever they had a river or a lake. And it was developed primarily by a, by boat enthusiasts whose 13:00home was on Lake Washington in Seattle, a man by the name of Stanley Sayers, S-A-Y-E-R-S. Here was the Gold Cup. Tremendous crowds lining the shores of Lake Washington there, east of downtown Seattle. And Tex Johnston—you know what’s hap-, you’re smiling. You know what— PRESS: I assume a flyover.

SCHULMAN: Yes. [laughter] Yes. And everybody thought, you know, there’s a, there’s one floating bridge—now there are two—one floating bridge connecting mainland Seattle and Mercer Island. And when he came roaring down with this big jet plane, people thought he was going to try to go under the floating bridge. [laughs] Damned if he didn’t turn it turtle and go upside down.

PRESS: Well, are you guys in it?

SCHULMAN: No, no. No, no, no, no. He was just—no, no. We were watching.

PRESS: Oh, this was a test flight.

SCHULMAN: No, no. No, no, no, no. This was before we took off to go to Baltimore. 14:00[laughs] PRESS: Okay. I thought this was on the Baltimore trip.

SCHULMAN: No, no. Knock wood. And did he catch unshirted Hell from everybody for doing that. The, the flight itself as I may have mentioned—the ascent was so stunningly surprising. I mean— PRESS: You stood on your— SCHULMAN: Oh, before you—zoom! Right off, right off the—it’s commonplace now.

PRESS: Oh, I remember the old days.

SCHULMAN: You know.

PRESS: Propeller ships struggling to get aloft.

SCHULMAN: That’s right.

PRESS: Yeah. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: And I think I’ve described, have I not, some of this already about W-, William Randolph Hearst was a passenger— PRESS: I don’t remember.

SCHULMAN: And Doug Edwards was then the Walter Cronkite of network news. I had Life photographer Leonard Macomb, one 15:00of the, again, one of the big ones. Hearst’s chief writer, you remember perhaps, Bob Considine.

PRESS: Oh, sure. Oh, sure.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. And what has fascinated me, I had time, you know, being, working for a weekly, but when we landed in, in, in Baltimore, Considine was already at his typewriter, and within hours, he had a stunning, dramatic story in the New York Journal , America, the Hearst paper, long gone, of course. And, you know, it was a, we were flying at thirty thousand feet,. So? [laughs] PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: But thirty thousand feet in, and, and just short of, of the speed of sound. You know, so commonplace these things today 16:00and for years, but it was incredible and unbelievable and revolutionary at that time. And the result was at thirty thousand feet, something we’d never seen before, contrails— PRESS: Contrails, huh.

SCHULMAN: Over the, over the wing. The differences in pressure and so on. Little waves over the wa-, over the wings, you know.

PRESS: Jet streams.

SCHULMAN: I think it was Bob Considine who looked under, outside and said, thinking of the Red Scare, and all, he said, “Is it theirs or ours?” [laughter] And it was William Randolph Hearst who led all of us in playing the game of trying to, how even the flight was to balance a pencil on the, on your table in front of where you were sitting. [laughs] And occasionally, the pencils did balance. 17:00Anyway, it was—and of course it, I should end.

PRESS: What did they do when they got you to Baltimore? Did they fly you right back?

SCHULMAN: No, we were free. No, I, we went, to go to New York, and we were put up in hotels, and you know. No, no. This was a, after all— PRESS: One way trip.

SCHULMAN: Exactly. [laughs] Yeah.

MILLIGAN: Did you take the train back to Seattle? [laughs] How did you get back home?

SCHULMAN: No. No, no, no. You had propeller. No, it took—let’s see. The boast was that you could get to, to London in six hours, and that was phenomenal.

PRESS: Sure.

SCHULMAN: But, you know, flying to Seattle was—I’m trying to remember. It was like seven hours to Seattle from New York, back to Seattle.

PRESS: That’s not bad.

SCHULMAN: Well— PRESS: Seems like today’s standards, 18:00 Bob.

SCHULMAN: Maybe it was longer, and I’m, you know.

PRESS: I think so. I think so.

SCHULMAN: Those, those documentaries were so fulfilling that one of the next ones that we were able to do, we called Suspect. They came, there’s still, although not nearly quite so accentuated—Eastern Washington State was then rigorously reactionary, far right in its politics. And Spokane was, was typical of, you know, Rep-, Democrats were hardly allowed into the city limits. And the Spokesman Review was almost like the Chicago Tribune in its addiction 19:00to the Republican Party and the John Birch Society was flagrantly powerful. The John Birch Society, of course, being, we don’t have—well, no we really don’t.

PRESS: Now, now— SCHULMAN: Today’s, today’s— PRESS: Now they call it the Republican Party.

SCHULMAN: Well, that’s almost close. And Ronald Reagan for a while used to go lecture around, especially the west.

PRESS: Welch. Was that his name?

SCHULMAN: Huh?

PRESS: Welch?

SCHULMAN: Yes. Exactly so. He was, he was the— PRESS: Founder?

SCHULMAN: Very much so, yes. And they recruited people, and all too often, dentists and doctors and people whom you expect from their education to be more informed—but fiercely agonized by the Red Scare. 20:00And as I’ve mentioned in one of our previous sessions, if you recall, that Clare Boothe’s at, and I felt this at the time, and so did the, a lot of people in the Labor Movement. It was a consequential or meaningful problem of people in the Communist Party, or who had been and still were not awakened to the crimes of Stalinism. But the people in the John Birch society were rabid.

PRESS: Oh, yes.

SCHULMAN: And we had in Eastern Washington, in an area close to the Canadian border, called the Okinagan. Marvelous country, cattle country. If you know Washington state—well, you know this Len. Washington state is bisected by the Cascade Mountains.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: West of the mountains is green, lush, rainy, 21:00everything grows all year. East of the mountains, it is desert-like. The Okinagan is not quite, but it’s great cattle land. And living on a ranch in that part of Washington state was a remarkable man named John Goldmark who had moved from New York. The Goldmarks are very consequential family at Harvard, liberal movements and social action and so on. He and his wife— PRESS: Peter, Peter Goldmark, was it?

SCHULMAN: It’s part of that family. That’s correct.

PRESS: Okay. Okay.

SCHULMAN: John Goldmark moved with his wife who had been a member of the Communist Party but had left it in Brooklyn. And they settled, bought a ranch, and where, it had a working ranch, and he became a member of the state legislature and 22:00an enormously effective, widely respected member of the state legislature. But so liberal that the people in the John Birch society in Eastern Washington state, including Okinagan, were collecting material, you know, about this man and his Communist, or ex-Communist wife, and watching to see what kind of company they had and all that kind of demented, passionately devoted stuff. And they were spreading the word that he was a subversive. And the Spokesman Review, the newspaper in Spokane, which had wide circulation, was going along with that. Well, there in Seattle, that seemed to us, because John, we knew John Goldmark very, very well, of course. 23:00He was really a leader in the, in the state legislature and a profoundly valuable one. So, I went to Okinagan and to Spokane and to the towns in between and talked to people, had a camera man with me, Ralph Umbarger, who did a lot of our stuff. Never know what’s happened to Ralph, but I’d like to know. He played a significant part in the first one, Lost Cargo. Anyway, among the people I talked to—because they were delighted somebody from Seattle—were members of the John Birch Society, and in particular there was a local dentist who took me down to his basement where he had materials collected, you know, and, and there were subversive books that were being read and circulated around 24:00in the schools, you know, like H.G. Wells and people like that. And we filmed and, and made notes and so on. And we called the, the documentary, which ran again in prime time, and like all of our documentaries were sponsored, we called it Suspect. Well, it had a, it had, in Seattle, it had a fine rep-, a fine response. It got reviled and booed— PRESS: Basically, it was critical of the Birch Society.

SCHULMAN: In a reportorial way. Yes.

PRESS: Honest, but— SCHULMAN: Well, no. And I, I don’t want to be cynical.

PRESS: Not cyn-, but not cynical.

SCHULMAN: You know, we did— PRESS: On the— SCHULMAN: We didn’t name names. I mean, we didn’t call.

PRESS: Yeah, but, I, I’m asking—I’m not trying to, to be facetious, I’m, I am 25:00trying to establish that this was essentially an editorial piece.

SCHULMAN: Yes and no, in that— PRESS: You would call it totally objective piece, right?

SCHULMAN: I would say— PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: Yeah, well, don’t say totally objective.

PRESS: Well, you’re saying this was, this was a— SCHULMAN: The, the very title suggested an approach.

PRESS: Well, it did.

SCHULMAN: Suspect. But, but we treated straight away the dentist and the people in the John Birch Society. We didn’t introduce them with adjectives that— PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: Suborned their position. I would have to say, later, I editorialized, separately, on the same station, on behalf of the station.

PRESS: You said this was sponsored.

SCHULMAN: Oh, yes.

PRESS: Commercial sponsor?

SCHULMAN: Oh, yeah. 26:00Everyone of our, everyone of our— PRESS: What about the—was the editorial part of the, the separate editorial, part of the series?

SCHULMAN: No, no, no, no. Editorials were s-, were totally separate from the documentary.

PRESS: And those were sustaining. They, they were station—the voice of the station.

SCHULMAN: That’s right. Nobody sponsored the editorials, any more than spon-, anymore than newspaper editorials are sponsored.

PRESS: Were, were you, were you asked for equal time for either of those?

SCHULMAN: That’s a good question. Of course, we offered it.

PRESS: You did offer it?

SCHULMAN: Oh, persistent, routinely, yes.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. That, that, that was, I’m, that’s a question I, I can’t for sure answer.

PRESS: SCHULMAN: PRESS: But those days, you were operating under the fairness doctrine SCHULMAN: Oh, of course. And then, and you know, management was pushing to be, to see, I mean this was a highly, 27:00highly regarded in the fairness thing. But really the, the, the great value of the program, as it turned out, was not so much in the presentation, but in what happened probably two years later. John Goldmark who then, as I recall, lost his next race in the legislature, and he and his wife sued the John Birch Society for libel. And the, and the, the political commentator who, that wrote, Ashley Holden, who wrote for the Spokesman Review, and some others perhaps, and the trial was in this wonderfully bucolic, almost like the Scopes Trial, like, you know, in Okinagan, 28:00an old dimly lit classical small courtroom. And it, the trial, the trial drew national attention. New York Times was there. Goldmark, Goldmark called as character witnesses, among others, actor Sterling Hayden, and the John Birch people went, Ashley Holden and so on, they called as their character witness and their, their evidentiary person Philbrick. “I was a communist with the FBI.” PRESS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And— SCHULMAN: So— PRESS: And Hayden was a known liberal, was he not?

SCHULMAN: Oh, of course. Well, yes. Like—sure, but, but, but he was a star and, you know.

PRESS: Let me go back a second. 29:00They were suing, Goldmark was suing the Birch Society for defamation?

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Was this defamation during Goldmark’s last campaign, or was it a general— SCHULMAN: It was general. It was general.

PRESS: For just, for, for, for impairing the reputation basically?

SCHULMAN: Well, constant—yes, that’s exactly so.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: Exactly so.

PRESS: Okay. Okay.

SCHULMAN: Now, I could, we could get more visual PRESS: [ ] SCHULMAN: [ ] referred to in a moment.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: We could get more of the accurate answers to your questions.

PRESS: I’ll be patient. Go ahead.

SCHULMAN: By getting, by getting the book that was written some years later by the federal judge who presided at the trial, William O’Dwyer. He did a book about this case. And I think I can find it. But, again, 30:00you know, gratifyingly, our film and, and my ability to quote from what these John Birch people had said to me led Judge Dwyer to say that this had been a key, a key group of facts and a key piece of evidence.

PRESS: Said to you what you then reported on the air?

SCHULMAN: I think we did. It was more the significance— PRESS: Well, if it— SCHULMAN: He said it, he said it in the book. I have, I’ve forgotten about whether or not we made traffic with that at the time.

PRESS: Um-hm. I mean, I— SCHULMAN: I’m sure we, I’m sure our news department had, yes. I didn’t. But— PRESS: No, I was, I was talking about what you reported of what the Birch Society— SCHULMAN: Yes. Uh-huh.

PRESS: Had said about Goldmark. 31:00SCHULMAN: You’re asking about my testimony.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: And you were saying, did, did— PRESS: Would it— SCHULMAN: Did King report afterwards that the consequential— PRESS: Well, what I’m questioning, what I’m wondering about is, how, what I’m wondering is, you, the, you were reporting on what the Birch Society had said.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Where had they said it?

SCHULMAN: Oh, to me and on film.

PRESS: But where publicly?

SCHULMAN: Oh, in their, in their office, in their home, when I interviewed them for the, for the tube.

PRESS: But unless that were in public, it wasn’t defamation.

SCHULMAN: It was on the program.

PRESS: Okay, that’s what I was getting at.

SCHULMAN: Yes. It was on the documentary.

PRESS: That’s what I meant.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. I’m sorry.

PRESS: I should have understood that, but I didn’t and I wanted to clarify.

SCHULMAN: No, no, no. I— PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: The obfuscation was my— PRESS: So, this was part, this was partly from your own program?

SCHULMAN: Let’s get that clear. The obfuscation was mine, Len. [laughs] PRESS: Okay. No, no, no. I want, I want credit for that word. [laughter] But, but, so this was, this was— 32:00SCHULMAN: I schmeared it. [laughs] PRESS: This was publicly consumed through your program.

SCHULMAN: That is correct. That is correct. So it was a matter of public record. And so, when he called, when we were called by Goldmark’s attorney, it was dis-, disclosed under questioning what we had heard and what we had filmed and what this had to say about the, these charges and the, what had been wrought against Goldmark. And, as I said then, some years later, Judge Dwyer really was very, even more generous. And that was very satisfying, obviously. Oddly enough, and tragically enough, some, I don’t know, eight or ten years later—I 33:00would have to check the record—the Goldmarks moved to Seattle. He was no longer, you know, in the role that he’d played. But they survived and—that’s Louise—and then he and his wife and one of their children were brutally killed by some crazed person. It was an appalling tragedy. Yeah. In their home. In the Madrona district. Nice residential district of Seattle.

PRESS: You haven’t told us how it, the trial came out.

SCHULMAN: Oh, he won, of course. Yes.

PRESS: Was, was he, w-, was this— SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Was the Birch Society responsible, pretty much, for his defeat?

SCHULMAN: In, in the legislature? Well, 34:00what they said and what they did— PRESS: Didn’t help any, I know.

SCHULMAN: Oh, of course.

PRESS: But he wasn’t claiming that as the injury?

SCHULMAN: No. No, no, no. No. It was the injury to them overall.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: Throughout the community and throughout the region, really. Well, as I, I think I had started to mention, at, during that period, for about five years, in the, beginning in ’59 and ’60, the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, we had thought of the name of the president in our last get-together.

PRESS: Don McGannon.

SCHULMAN: Don McGannon. Yes. Each year for about five years, Westinghouse, which had television stations in major cities selected one of their cities as a, for the, as the venue 35:00for the conference on public affairs broadcasting. And we were lucky enough to be invited to each of them for a documentary. And I think it was maybe the first or second one after Lost Cargo or Suspect that it had, each of us had to make a talk, and it occurred to me that, to say that the television camera could be likened to a thousand po-, thousand pound pencil.

PRESS: Hm.

SCHULMAN: I didn’t want to lose the sense of, the value of print. But you could use the new medium in precisely the same, if not greater effectiveness in social issues. The funny, the first one that, Lost Cargo among others, won the—this 36:00was sort of a prestigious award then—the Ohio State— PRESS: Oh, yes.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. I’m glad you know that.

PRESS: Oh, I know that, for sure.

SCHULMAN: And Lost Cargo won for television documentaries. That news came when I was in the Swedish Hospital in Seattle with a badly broken ankle, came from skiing on Mt. Hood, spring skiing. [laughs] Well, you know, skiing is natural if you live in the Northwest.

PRESS: For, for people of the Northwest. [laughs] SCHULMAN: Well, no, I was not bad. I wasn’t nearly as good as our daughter, who— PRESS: Who grew up with it.

SCHULMAN: Got to be taught. She taught skiing.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: And married a— PRESS: Married a skier.

SCHULMAN: Married a skier. He was at, at one point, I think, the country’s youngest certi-, 37:00professionally certified ski instructor. Steve McIntyre. That, it was a marvelous day for skiing. Supreme. [laughter] We, the company included a, two psychoanalyst friends and a brain surgeon, Wolfgang Klumper. That’s a name, hard to forget.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: And the situation was that we all got into a tractor and were taken up to the summit of Mt. Hood. And then spent that whole morning traversing the snowy slopes of Mt. Hood. As I recall, it was like March or April and finally, we came within—and blinding sun, you know, marvelous—my bindings were tight, too tight. Or rather, excuse me, too loose. 38:00One ski kept coming off. And at that point, they were really like roller skates. You tightened the bindings. I really tightened, you know. And we, that, great, that really did it. We came within sight of the top of the lift, which meant that we were close to the lodge and to lunch. So, some goof-ball, of course, was leading the pack. Guess who? [laughs] Yes. And the snow, spring snow was thick. And I caught an edge and went ka-boom, and the ski did not come off.

PRESS: Ah.

SCHULMAN: Well— PRESS: That’ll twist your ankle.

SCHULMAN: Twist? It was a great compound fracture. And unfortunately, these guys came down, the two analysts and the brain surgeon, they stood around shaking their hands. [laughter] PRESS: Ankles—we 39:00don’t do ankles!

SCHULMAN: What a tragic [ ]. Give us a brain, you know. [laughter] MILLIGAN: You were leading the pack.

SCHULMAN: So, but they did have, they did have spirits. They fed me whiskey, and, of course, unfortunately, it was a time of year when the ski patrol was not functioning.

MILLIGAN: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: You— MILLIGAN: How far were you from, to the bottom? Like, how did you get down?

SCHULMAN: Well, we were up above the ski lift. What they did, finally, the kept me, you know, feeding me whiskey and one of them went down to the lodge and got the, and they came racing up in a tractor or whatever and then put me into a station wagon and took me to a hospital in Portland, and then later moved, moved me [ ].

PRESS: I don’t have a dish for you. You want a dish?

SCHULMAN: Huh? I’d love a dish. Yeah. 40:00[laughs] MILLIGAN: I’ll give him this one. I have some snacks for us. Nice cherries and grapes.

SCHULMAN: Mmm. Oh, that’s marvelous.

MILLIGAN: Thank you for everything.

SCHULMAN: Thank you. Thank you.

MILLIGAN: So, did the brain sur-, surgeon feed you whiskey or— SCHULMAN: Yes. [laughs] All three fed me whiskey, thank God. Anyway, I was in the hospital in Seattle when the word came to the station that Lost Cargo had been awarded, given that nice award.

MILLIGAN: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: And the question was, could I go to Columbus and receive it?

MILLIGAN: Ohio?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Um-hm. Ohio State. Mm. Well, nice doctor, friend of ours, surgeon, said, “Yeah, you can go.” I was on crutches, though, wif you were careful. I’d better wait 41:00for Len to hear the climax of this. [laughs] MILLIGAN: I’ll go see if he needs some help.

PRESS: I can’t find them.

MILLIGAN: What are you looking for?

SCHULMAN: What do you need?

PRESS: Paper napkins.

SCHULMAN: Oh, there’s some on the table.

MILLIGAN: [ ] PRESS: I don’t see them.

SCHULMAN: Under the window.

PRESS: Oh. Hm.

SCHULMAN: Oh, this was good. But I’d better not. [laughs] MILLIGAN: So, did you get to go to Cleveland?

SCHULMAN: I did get to go to Columbus.

MILLIGAN: To Columbus.

SCHULMAN: And arrangements were made, you know, for a guy on crutches. I got to Columbus, United Airlines, I looked around. Everybody’d got off the plane. There I was. [laughs] Well, rather stupidly, 42:00I thought, well, I’ll go to the door of the plane, and I’ll be careful. With crutches, I’ll go down the steps. It wasn’t the jetway, we were in on the tarmac, you know. You didn’t have jet. Well, all of one step, and I went completely down the stairway on my wrists. [laughs] MILLIGAN: Face first.

SCHULMAN: That’s correct. All of a sudden there were more people around me than I knew were in the neighborhood, and I can swear that included a lawyer. They carried me inside. I had a, a slight fracture of this wrist. They bandaged—it’s all right.

PRESS: No, no.

SCHULMAN: Bandaged me up. [laughs] MILLIGAN: I think your cherry rolled under the table. 43:00PRESS: It was a grape.

MILLIGAN: Oh, grape.

SCHULMAN: I won’t move my feet.

PRESS: Oh, I see it. Keep talking.

SCHULMAN: Well, they took me into the infirmary, you know, and bandaged me up. And then decided to get me to the hospital, where they took more care of me and then transported me to the hotel. And, you know, I signed a waiver. So it was time to check in. So, I got out of the room and went down the hallway to the meeting room. And the, the guy in charge of welcoming and so on came to meet me. And he, he said, “We knew you were hurt, but we didn’t know that 44:00it was this severe.” [laughs] Because I had blood and all, you know. Well, that’s the, however, that’s the last time I fell out of an airplane. [laughter] PRESS: And survived.

SCHULMAN: And I did make the talk and, by the way, these things were reported by Variety, and in Variety, it was the very—and it was that way that I made great, good friends with the then TV critic for the Washington Post, whom you may well know, Larry Laurent.

PRESS: Hell, yes. I knew him. Yes.

SCHULMAN: Marvelous. Marvelous guy.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: And always very supportive. As a matter of fact, then, a couple of years later, when we did a documentary called The Volcano Named White, this was about an African American who had had one of those typically 45:00appalling childhoods. Punishment and cruelty and dysfunctional family and moved around from foster home to foster home and all of that. And grew up into a life of crime. And finally one day he went out and he was, got, got himself a bottle of Thunderbird Wine and got into a fight with somebody and then went into a nearby ap-, apartment house and was trying to pick himself up. He was in the laundry room when this old woman came in to do her laundry, and he killed her. He was sentenced to death. The man was phenomenally expressive. And also he was painting in the most primitive, but 46:00demonstrative and expelling—and impelling—ways. And fine reporter, writer on the PI, the Post-Intelligencer, did a series with him. Barry Farrel, who later ended up working for Life Magazine, writing for Life, and Barry was a friend and, you know, he said, “Gee, isn’t there stuff here for you, isn’t there?” I said, “You’re damned right.” So, we spent the next several months with and around Don White and talking to his buddies and his, what was left of his family, and the people in the neighborhood where he killed and so on. And re-, resulted in this documentary, 47:00the essence of which was visiting with Don White. And called it The Volcano Named White. It, it had phenomenally effective results in Seattle and Spokane, and it ran also in Chicago. And then WPIX in New York—there was a guy named, I think Ted Hughes was the general station manager. Anyway, he was very supportive of what we were doing. I mention that because it was reviewed by Jack Gould of the New York Times. Now Variety had been raptured about the program and so had the local press in Seattle and also in the Northwest. Jack Gould reviled this program.

PRESS: Why?

SCHULMAN: This was grossly taking 48:00advantage of a poor demented man. It couldn’t, it couldn’t have been more poisonous a review. Well, so much for Jack Gould.

PRESS: I wonder what Jack Gould would have said about the sequel, In Cold Blood.

SCHULMAN: Well, yes. Yeah. Exactly so. That was in spades.

PRESS: It was.

SCHULMAN: Well, ours was in spades, but [laughs].

PRESS: He didn’t understand the genre.

SCHULMAN: No. No, no, no. It was— PRESS: But you were, you were a pioneer in that regard.

SCHULMAN: I think that’s fair to say. Yes. Yes.

PRESS: Every place— SCHULMAN: We did, we did one about urban transportation.

PRESS: Oh, Lord, you had a good case there.

SCHULMAN: Oh.

PRESS: Good material.

SCHULMAN: What, I’ve got material of, you know— PRESS: They could use it again.

SCHULMAN: And the publicity, of course, was great. The station did a marvelous job 49:00and, and again, each time we had a bank usually as a sponsor. Another one that comes to mind, we called Trade or Fade. It was an effort to show the interdependence, economically between business and industry in the Northwest. And business and industry in Europe. And, and, and Britain. And so, we, you know, communicated with companies that were already doing work or had drawn upon technology there and companies there who had drawn upon Northwest. Nike shoes and Weyerhauser lumber and 50:00all of those. Plywood, so on. And so I went with then, a cameraman and a producer. And we went, we did stuff at Guernsey and Jersey, the islands, in, in London, in Berlin, in Geneva, in Paris, and in, in and outside of Munich. The, and in France. And you know, it was extraordinary. We found a, a guy making plywood in Toulouse, France, who had a technology that was new to the plywood manufacturers in Seattle and in Portland. It was really— PRESS: Was he shipping here?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And 51:00he’s, he, you know, he had us to stay at his chateau. The, the, again, it was a wood products thing. I don’t recall the details. But it was in a little place outside of Munich called Rosenheim. I can’t tell you—I’d have to go look at the map. But here we were, you know, three— PRESS: You could check that, couldn’t you?

SCHULMAN: Huh? Three guys— MILLIGAN: Look at a map, yes.

PRESS: Uh-huh.

MILLIGAN: [ ] SCHULMAN: Ssh. Schlepping, schlepping, the, you know, cameras and through a—heavier now. And— PRESS: Tell me something. Excuse me.

SCHULMAN: No, no.

PRESS: If you marshal all the candor you can and, and take no umbrage, please— SCHULMAN: Oh, I wouldn’t take any umbrage from you, Len. [laughs] PRESS: Yeah. Yeah. I understand how you mean that, too. Was the decision over what subject you might take, 52:00or how you might treat it, ever influenced by who might be sponsoring it?

SCHULMAN: Who might be— PRESS: Who might be sponsoring it?

SCHULMAN: No. No, no. We decided, that’s an, that’s an intriguing question.

PRESS: Well, you know, later that would have been.

SCHULMAN: I’m not, I’m not, I can’t— PRESS: I, I— SCHULMAN: I can imagine it’s from your own experience is what you’re, why you’re asking.

PRESS: My, my— SCHULMAN: Because you felt pressure.

PRESS: My own experience tells me that, that was a day before there was any kind of interference with program content by sponsors. But it still was the beginning, it was the beginning of a tender period when the question of sponsorship of opinion programs was very much alive.

SCHULMAN: That is true. That is true. Well, I, I welcome that question. And, and no possible reason why I would take umbrage, because it’s a proper and legitimate question. And what may 53:00be shaping my answer may well have been something about the character, the social character and the dynamics of Seattle and of the business community in S-, in Seattle. I would not include Boeing, because Boeing was never a sponsor and Boeing has always been tough. Witness today, you know, they, they’re back on top. Billions and billions of dollars selling their new dreamliner, and it makes me think of the 707 days.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: You know, they’re, they’re sticking their propellers right up Airbus’s, Airbus’s butt.

PRESS: As it were.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: But, of course, of course— SCHULMAN: Not Boeing. But mostly— PRESS: Boeing wouldn’t have— SCHULMAN: As I said, my recollections—the banks.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: And there were one or two banks in particular. 54:00And the presidents—I’m not saying they were Democrats, but they were, they were socially open. And, but the fact remains that the choice of subjects was totally internal. Totally internal. I’ll give you a sample in a moment of how Mrs. Bullitt functioned. We would, she had a, a remarkably bright—you may—remarkably bright general manager named Otto Brandt. He did a good deal nationally.

PRESS: I don’t know— SCHULMAN: He’s now dead, now, unfortunately, before his time. And, and 55:00we came up, you know, special productions, or whatever we called it, came up with the proposed subject, depending on what was going on, whether it was Lost Car—I mean, much of it was always attuned to what was going on in the community and in the world. I digress for a minute and I’ll get back—another documentary we did, of which I’m particularly proud for a reason I’ll tell you in a moment, was done at the suggestion of the news director in our Portland station. And then we used the facilities of all three stations. It traced the lives of the hot migrant workers leaving M-, Eagle Pass, Texas and moving up the West Coast, through California into Oregon and Washington working fruits and 56:00then hops and all of those other commodities. And it was a subject of, of phenomenally touching neglect. The families and the conditions and so on. And we called it Bitter Harvest. And it had all kinds of great impact including the local legislators and the local congresspeople. Local. But it, it never got anything more than regional, regional attention. It, surely did Westinghouse six months later. It aired six months before Edward R. Murrow’s bitter—Forest of—Harvest of Shame.

PRESS: Harvest of Shame is what I was thinking of.

SCHULMAN: Yes—Harvest. 57:00Six months before. It, it, history now referred—you know, that’s Murrow’s chief accomplishment. I don’t know to what degree the old bastard was personally involved. Probably not. I mean, he didn’t do the reporting and the research and so on. He beautifully and eloquently mouthed the commentary. But we were out there doing the research and the reporting. And frankly, I will put what we did up against the CBS thing. There’s of course was the migrant stream on the East Coast. Anyway. That’s a, a bitter pill.

MILLIGAN: So, were, were other people doing those sorts of documentaries around the country? Was it a popular— SCHULMAN: No.

MILLIGAN: No.

SCHULMAN: No. No. There were, as I’ve indicated, some other efforts 58:00by the Westinghouse. But to my recollection, nobody with the, with the free use of resources and, and bold choice of subject— PRESS: What’s your time change—frame?

SCHULMAN: This was 1959 to 1967.

PRESS: Okay. Shortly thereafter Sarah, PBS was doing those. But— SCHULMAN: Yes. No question. Of course.

PRESS: But that was, now we’re into the ’70s, though.

MILLIGAN: But this was one of the fore-, forerunners?

PRESS: That’s right. This, very much so.

SCHULMAN: I think that’s— PRESS: I didn’t know about your program, but Harvest of Shame was famous and infamous in this country.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: I mean, everybody t-, was talking about that.

SCHULMAN: That’s right. That’s right. And this was typical, you know. As I, I mentioned in connection with our developing the cover 59:00story for Time on the first, on the 707, again, the editors in New York had to be persuaded.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: What kind of—what can be doing out there, you know, that’s of sufficient—you know, we can do an item, but a cover for heaven’s sake, you know. Something consequential in public service television. Give you an—I think I’m proud of this. [laughs] The news came that the head of the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, the year, it was probably not until the mid-’60s. It was really surprisingly late. Maybe it was not quite that late. 60:00Schick Razor—and I’ve never used Schick since—Schick, president of Schick Razor Company was putting up a humongous amount of money for a Christian Anti-Communist Crusade in the Hollywood Bowl and they were buying an hour or an hour and a half of prime time in each of the major West Coast cities to air that Hollywood Bowl program live. And they came of course, in Seattle, to Dorothy Bullitt and the King Broadcasting company, and she called us all together. She said, “This is, vexes me very, very much. What do we do about this?” She said, “Not only is this poison, but it’s a lot of money.” [laughs] 61:00PRESS: For us, you mean?

SCHULMAN: Yes, of course. Of course. What do we do? Must we say no?

PRESS: Excuse me. This is interesting. He’s buying the time on stations.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: He’s buying it.

SCHULMAN: Buying. Yes, oh, yes.

PRESS: He’s, he’s not asking for public service sponsorship.

SCHULMAN: No, no, no, no, no. No. He was paying money. [laughs] PRESS: Okay. So she says, “This is a lot of money.” SCHULMAN: “This is a lot of money, but it’s a poisonous, totally antithetical to my views, our views. What should we do?” PRESS: Aha.. . I can see it coming. Go ahead.

SCHULMAN: Would you like to guess what we did?

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: What I suggested and what we— PRESS: Took the money and ran a counter program.

SCHULMAN: Of course. [laughs] Yes. [laughter] Len did that again and again.

PRESS: We’ve been in the business. 62:00Go ahead.

SCHULMAN: What we did is, we—and I hope I’m [ ]—we got Richard Rovere who was the New Yorker Magazine’s staff guy on politics. We got Dr. Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb.

PRESS: Hydrogen. Right.

SCHULMAN: And, you know, an enemy of Oppenheimer. And candid, but conservative, but not, but not Anti-C-, not a, nut about the Communists.

PRESS: And you probably, and you might add, and I think that Oppenheimer probably was one of the targets of the program. of the Christian program.

SCHULMAN: Oh, I’m sure. Oh, of course. Not I.F. Stone. One of the media 63:00critic people—oh, damn. I’ll have to look that up. S-, Hm! I’m blocking the name. Maybe it will come to me, even this afternoon. [laughs] PRESS: In New York.

SCHULMAN: Yes. New York or Boston. One of those places. [laughs] He, he’d done many, many books, you know, on the press and, and on media and so on. Anyway, I shall, I will come up with the name. 64:00And also I have to come up with the, seems to me we brought somebody in to MC and moderate the program. And we put that on immediately following. And of course, with announcements before and after so that the listeners who were tuning in to the anti-Communist crusade at the bowl knew what was going to follow.

PRESS: From a public service point of view, you, it was better to have run their program with a rebut than not to have run it at all.

SCHULMAN: Well, of cour-, well, if we’d— PRESS: If they would have— SCHULMAN: We had our cr-, critics. There, there were, not everybody was in support of KING’s generally liberal positions. And Mrs. Bullitt, who was a Democrat, you know, a resolute Democrat, 65:00oh, no question that KING would have been the subject of all kinds of scaborous attacks. You know, we knew that they were pro-Communist all the time.

PRESS: [laughs] Yeah. Right.

SCHULMAN: You know, [laughs] right.

MILLIGAN: So the anti-Commun-, Communist campaign was intertwined with the football game? Is that what—what bowl was it at?

SCHULMAN: No, no, no, no, no. No, no. No, no. The Hollywood Bowl was a place where they—no, that’s— PRESS: Oh, oh. [laughs] MILLIGAN: I’m sorry. I was trying to figure out— SCHULMAN: [laughs] [claps] PRESS: No, it’s a, it’s an entertainment amphitheatre.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

MILLIGAN: Oh, it was a location.

PRESS: A location.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Oh, I can see— PRESS: Not an event, no. A location.

MILLIGAN: Excuse. . .[ ] SCHULMAN: You’re thinking, you’re thinking of a— PRESS: An actual bowl SCHULMAN: You’re thinking of a toilet bowl.

MILLIGAN: Yes. [laughs] PRESS: Interesting.

MILLIGAN: This is not clicking. Thank you.

SCHULMAN: I’m certainly glad you spoke up.

PRESS: Listen, if you hit any more like that— SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: Any more like that, yeah, give them a contemporary understanding.

MILLIGAN: Uh-huh.

SCHULMAN: There’s something called the generational gap. 66:00[laughter] PRESS: Language gap.

SCHULMAN: See, it never oc-, that’s— PRESS: No, I didn’t understand what you were saying even— SCHULMAN: It’s like saying, “FDR,” and not explaining or— PRESS: Yeah. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: Or “WPA” or—but oh, we, see, you added something to my comprehension. [laughter] Gee whiz.

MILLIGAN: Going to. It’s a lot better PRESS: Anyway, so, that was— SCHULMAN: Well, got a lot of good— PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: A lot of good stuff.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: I, I’m still bothered about— PRESS: I.F.. Stone?

SCHULMAN: Not Claude.

PRESS: Let me look.

SCHULMAN: Huh?

PRESS: Open your mouth and I’ll look and see if we can’t— SCHULMAN: Yes. [laughs] PRESS: It’s on the tip of your tongue.

SCHULMAN: Why don’t I make a note?

PRESS: I have one, too.

SCHULMAN: Oh, 67:00do you? [laughs] I’ve got, somewhere I’ve got the entire script of, of the program.

PRESS: Hm.

SCHULMAN: It’ll come to me. If not, I’ll dig it up. Well, so, this was a totally fulfilling career. It really was.

PRESS: So, this was, how many years of doing this?

SCHULMAN: Well, as I say, it started in 1959 with Lost Cargo and ended— PRESS: Sixty-seven?

SCHULMAN: Late in ’57.

PRESS: Sixty-seven.

SCHULMAN: In ’67. Yes, excuse me.

PRESS: So these were the years— SCHULMAN: Special features, we called them.

PRESS: Special features.

SCHULMAN: Director of Special Features. [laughs] Yeah.

PRESS: And you were not connected with the magazines at all any more?

SCHULMAN: Oh, no. No, no. No.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: The, the last thing I did for—well, not then, 68:00but then, when I was leaving KING and looking around to see what to do rather than go to Boeing and was working with “Design for Washington,” which we created after the successful conference which I did while still at KING. I mentioned the cast of characters that we had.

SCHULMAN: And it was beautifully covered regionally, and really, it made a considerable impact, and at a time and a, a region and a state which needed to begin to think about planning and preserving and, and the environmental sensitivity and all, all of that. The forests and the streams and the—so, anyway, when I was, found that I had to leave Time, KING, 69:00a very well-endowed—monetarily—young executive, Langdon Simons, who came from a banking family, joined in financing “Design for Washington” on a, on it’s own two feet as a state-wide environmental movement. We made a couple of documentaries for use around the state and prepared, you know, pronouncements and models of approach and so on and worked with farms, farmers and union people and so on. But as Langdon made clear when we sat down after a year, or close to a year, we needed a, a more permanent and sound basis of financing. And the decision 70:00was to appeal for a, for a federal fund— ROBERT SCHULMAN: And the decision was to appeal for a, for a federal fund, a federal grant. And we got great encouragement. The problem was that the, as had been the first conference, “Design for Washington,” it was intimately involved with the straight arrow Republican governor of the state of Washington, one Dan Evans, later a United States Senator. And we should have thought of this because—remind me and I will tell you about Warren Grant Magnuson and Lyndon Johnson, long-time chairman of the United States Senate Commerce Committee and a man of profoundly wide influence and importance in Washington and one hell of a partisan. 71:00And Maggie, as we called him, Maggie killed because he didn’t want to see anything like that help the political campaign of Dan Evans.

O. LEONARD PRESS: Oh, did he? Oh. Oh. [laughs] Maggie was a powerful— SCHULMAN: Indeed. But, but so, it was in that period—and I’m getting back to your, did I ever have to do with Time. I had, of course, kept in touch with many of my old friends from Time and Life. You know, when I was in Chicago, George Hunt, who later became the editor of Life was one of my colleagues in Chicago. Then Ralph Graves, who was, appears in the film Hazard—Hoax, rather, played by somebody else. He has a piece of a Time-Life 72:00Alumni Society bulletin, which I can assure you, that’s something else again. It is, it is an existing organization, and we’ve had some marvelous trips with them. Anybody who’s ever worked for Time, Inc. can belong. And TLAS, Time-Life Alumni Society. Anyway, it was during that period that the head of Time-Life Broadcasts—Time had its own television stations, as you may recall. And one of them was in Detroit, and there was this starting—excuse me, Denver—and there was a, a big, as I recall Nelson Rockefeller, it was an alliance thing to get the broadcasting industry to sharpen its attention to racial problems. This was 73:00in 1967, 1968. The alliance something. Anyway, Dick Krolik, the, I was in New York. I had not yet made any decisions. And Dick Krolik, the head of Time-Life Broadcasts had got in touch and said, would I consider going to one of the Time, Inc. cities. And what they wanted, they were wanting to do each to their cities, was to have somebody spend several months and get a fix on what were race relations and problems in that community as a guide to the programming for their stations. And so I accepted that mission for Denver. And it was a most interesting time. They had me fixed up in a lovely apartment 74:00and with a good expense account. And the, the benefit of whatever research the news department and the station management had done. And then I was free to explore what Denver’s situation was. And it was most interesting. They had a hot la raza Chicano, called Ricky Gonzalez, and there was an active Black Panther movement, with which I was in touch. The mayor, the governor, the local University of Denver, the unions, and so on. You know, that’s a good opportunity to shake down and gumshoe and get a feeling—I did it over a three month period—and 75:00prepared a report to Krolik with a copy to the station manager. I think his name was Terry, as I recall. I’ve forgotten the call letters, Len.

PRESS: To Denver?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Anyway, Krolik was very nice. He indicated that it was one of the better, you know. [laughs] PRESS: You, but you, you were n-, you were departed from KING by now, right?

SCHULMAN: Oh, yes. I, I was— PRESS: What was the— SCHULMAN: I was the executive director of “Design for Washington.” PRESS: Did you, did you leave KING to do this? I mean, was that the reason for leaving?

SCHULMAN: No, no. No, no, no. You’ve, I thought I’d got—no.

PRESS: I— SCHULMAN: Dorothy Bullitt—this was the whole business of her son wanting, she wanted him to come in and take— PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: Control of and run the, 76:00these stations, the broadcast empire.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: And he did and he had his own peculiar ideas.

PRESS: Okay. Okay.

SCHULMAN: And had to go learn about art films. He started a magazine called Seattle. He imported people. The, the other day I made a, an error, because he imported some very, very bright people, all from New York. One, Suzanne Braun, later became editor of the Columbia Journalism Review.

PRESS: Hmmm.

SCHULMAN: Another, Charles Mitchner, is doing fantastic stuff with the Smithsonian and other magazines, you know. And he’s doing work with documentaries and so on. It was for Seattle magazine that I accepted 77:00the mission to do a profile of the aforementioned Senator Warren Grant “Maggie” Magnuson. And that’s worthy of note—other than his turning against my project—worthy of note because it was one of the occasions when I had a close visit with Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States. Maybe at this point, because of this being the week that Lady Bird died, I want to back off and remember my visits with Lady Bird and Lyndon.

PRESS: Was it around—yeah, the first— SCHULMAN: This, huh? Does this make sense?

PRESS: Just, just, just—sure—just for a backdrop, if you’re talking about the ’67 period, you’re talking about a time when he was under tremendous, tremendous fire.

SCHULMAN: In ’67. Oh, yes. No, no, this was earlier. 78:00PRESS: Oh, earlier? Okay.

SCHULMAN: All earlier. Yes. Oh, of course, although, I’ve, because of our, my early contacts, I’ve listened with rapid—vapid, vapid—[laughs] robust interest to those tapes that Michael Beschloss developed and—out of that period, the Vietnam period. But let me go back to 1960 when as, as I, we may have indicated at that point, you recall, there was a gaggle of people wanting to be Democratic nominee for President. Stuart Symington, Averell Harriman, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy. There may have been one or two others, see. Imagine. 79:00And Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird came to that— PRESS: Wasn’t Humphrey in that one too?

SCHULMAN: Hubert? Yes, he was. Yeah. Of course. Yes. Hubert, then— PRESS: I think he was. As a matter of fact, he was the— SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah, how could I forget him? [laughs] PRESS: Anyway.

SCHULMAN: Well, Lyndon Johnson and his wife came to Washington state to electioneer for his chances as the nominee for President. And it was a dismal situation. They, they called to meet the press in Spokane’s old hotel, the Davenport. And it was a miserable, rainy, cold day as I recall. 80:00And here were the candidate and his wife in a suite in the Davenport. And it was a dimly lit room for some reason, and it was—the whole thing seemed depressing. And, you know, our feeling as political sooth-sayers was that he had very little chance against Kennedy, let alone some of the others. And my chief recollection of that period, that, that meeting is that there were maybe five or six reporters there and maybe two cameras, local cameras. And I asked Mrs. Johnson, as best I could recall, “The polls are so unfavorable to your husband. 81:00And this is such a dreary thing to have to have to do. Frankly, Mrs. Johnson, how do you feel about this? You know, are you all geared up for it?” And she took her husband’s hand and she said, “I want to do whatever Lyndon wants to do.” [laughs] PRESS: Spoken like a proper wife.

SCHULMAN: Well, came— PRESS: Which means, “I’ll tell him later.” [laughs] SCHULMAN: Came the, came the, “Thank you, Mrs. Johnson.” Came the Democratic Convention in San Francisco. And I was, because of, I was allowed into the caucus of the Washington state delegation. And here came 82:00candidate Lyndon Johnson, introduced by Warren Magnuson at the, who was puffing for Johnson, of course. And I think I’m getting a reasonable replication of what he said. He said, “Friends, you all know how much I have held high in my heart and in my mind the well-being and the needs of Washington state.” He said, “Every time that our friend Maggie has asked for something, I have seen to that he got it, as long as it was to benefit your state.” He said, “A million here. A million there.” He said, “I am always ready to replenish that well. I’m asking for your support.” 83:00He didn’t get it. He didn’t get it.

PRESS: Even— SCHULMAN: Even then. “Scoop” Jackson, the other Senator, the Senator from Boeing, as he was known. He was very conservative. He was almost a hawk, for understandable reasons. I mean, Boeing’s fate rested on the contracts from the military. After all, World War II was not just the B-17, which I’ve talked about. But it was the B-29. So, of course, Johnson didn’t get it. Everybody expected Scoop Jackson to be JFK’s choice for Vice-President. So much so, that there was a syndicated columnist named Jim Bishop, if you remember him. His specialty was “A Day in the Life of…” 84:00and he was, after JFK’s choice, as nominee for President. He was, as was I, in Scoop Jackson’s suite, in the hotel, the closets absolutely loaded with signs, “JFK and Scoop.” PRESS: [laughs] Already printed, huh?

SCHULMAN: Just waiting for the word, for the phone to ring. Didn’t ring. Didn’t ring. Then it rang. Scoop sent Johnny Salter, his AA, down to Jackson’s—to JFK’s suite. And he called from there, asking Scoop to come down. When Scoop came up, it was hard to imagine a more depraved—b, 85:00betrayed and disconsolate man. For whatever reason, primarily Texas, JFK’s decision was to say, “Sorry, Scoop. We’re choosing Lyndon Johnson. We’re offering you to be the chairman of the Democratic National Party.” So, that was another, offhand, Johnson connection. Then I mentioned earlier that I was working on a profile for Seattle magazine. And Maggie, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, was presiding over this hu-, in the huge, biggest Senate dining room—it was a bill on truth in advertising. Huge crowd. What was the woman’s name? 86:00Anyway, all the Senators, you know, and this big semi-circle of chairs. And with Maggie in the central chair and I was huddling behind him. And suddenly somebody comes in from the back and says, “Excuse me, [].” And whispers in Maggie’s ear. And [ ] Maggie turns to me and says, “I’ve got to go to the White House. President’s called.” I think, “What—” He says, “No, no. Come on.” He calls on Senator Phil Hart from Washington to take over his chair, and off we go. Get into his limo, get to the White House door. Believe it or not, Maggie has left his ID somewhere, and there’s some delay. You can imagine. We were allowed through. At that point, there was not yet a press room, and the press corps had to sit on chairs 87:00in the anteroom. And you know, here am I [laughs] walking with Senator Magnuson past all these ink-stained wretches.

PRESS: Your colleagues.

SCHULMAN: That’s right. We get into, we get into the little small and narrow anteroom, and who is sitting there? Richard Helms, the head of the CIA. [laughs] PRESS: Um-hm. Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: But we are brought in to the Oval Office ahead of Mr. Helms. As, having seen Lyndon, you know, in the Davenport and in this caucus room and so on, he seemed so tall, so impressive, so magnificently shaved, and, you know, everything was just great. Just breath-takingly impressive. And Maggie introduces me to, 88:00to Lyndon, you know, “One of our really—he’s all right.” And he said, “Well, that, delighted,” you know, and he gives me a big handshake and says, “Hope you’re enjoying your stay in Washington.” And then he turns to Maggie, and he says, “Maggie, what in the shit are we going to do about that son-of-a-bitch in Chicago.” [laughs] Who’s the son-of-a-bitch?

PRESS: Who?

SCHULMAN: The Republican Congressman, Hallock.

PRESS: Mark Hallock.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes. Was supposed to be arranging some bi-partisan do or banquet or so on. And it was not working to the President’s satisfaction.

PRESS: Hm.

SCHULMAN: And Maggie—I’ve forgotten what Maggie said. I was— [laughs] I don’t know. But he— PRESS: Can’t help you.

SCHULMAN: He satisfied, and out we went. 89:00Two years later, I have succeeded at an architect named, in Seattle, named Bob Durham as the chairman of the Municipal Arts Commission.

PRESS: Excuse me. Excuse me, this visit to LBJ would have been in ’64 or five?

SCHULMAN: Yes, yes. Yes. Exactly. Probably—yes. Uh-huh. Bob Durham had preceded me as the chairman of the Seattle Municipal Arts Commission. By then, a year later, he’d become the national president of the American Institute of Architects and was working with the First Lady, Lady Bird on her fantastic beautification, which is, you know, there’s a piece in the papers today, syndicated columns 90:00and so on. Sarah, it is responsible for millions of beautification things all around the country. For, wherever the states that have taken advantage of it, like Kentucky, relatively free of highway billboards it, it, the plantings in Washington, DC, the whole, I mean, and Bob Durham was went, going to the, to the White House to meet with the First Lady and, and run the ceremony announcing the passing of this legislation and to look at the, outside in the Rose Garden, all kinds of stuff. Well, you know, charm, maternal warmth, a passion about loveliness 91:00and beauty and the environment and so on. And she couldn’t have been more affable and welcoming. I didn’t see her husband, but again, it was so impressive, and the, the atmosphere, and, of course, he had already, he’d already worked his magic with the Civil Rights Act. I visited on that occasion with an old friend, whom I think I’ve mentioned, Morton Mintz.

PRESS: Um-hm.

SCHULMAN: Of the Washington Post. And stayed at his house. We were just sitting down to dinner when the phone rang, and his wife, Anita, says, “Mort, it’s the President.” [laughs] Mort goes to the phone. He had done some story and the, 92:00it was in the early edition of the Washington Post. And I hear Morton say, “No, sir. Yes, sir. Well, you see, sir, ah-, yah—” Lyndon Johnson giving him unshirted Hell for having misinterpreted or otherwise shortchanged what he was about with some truth in advertising or whatever the Hell it was. [laughs] And Mort comes back and he’s ashen, you know. But he said, “Look—ah.” [laughs] PRESS: It’s my job.

SCHULMAN: So, the other side of Lyndon Johnson.

PRESS: So, we are now, we are now in the stressful, most stressful period in the nation— SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: For many, for many a decade.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Indeed. Indeed. 93:00PRESS: The height of the war. The campuses are being burned down.

SCHULMAN: I did not—you see, I did not, I did not experience that until I got to Louisville, Kentucky.

PRESS: Then you must have got here around ’67.

SCHULMAN: Nineteen-sixty-eight.

PRESS: Eight.

SCHULMAN: June of ’68.

PRESS: June of ’68? Okay.

SCHULMAN: Yes. And believe you me, I’ve— PRESS: What about— SCHULMAN: And I think I’ve explained how that happened. My old managing editor from the , from World War Two PRESS: Oh yeah. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: Norman Isaacs.

PRESS: Yeah.

SCHULMAN: And the man with whom I shared a cubicle and went through his, his marriage and his first children and his lovely wife, Mary, who later died of a brain tumor, when they were living in Tarrytown and he was working for the New York Times. 94:00He was here, having been brought by Norman Isaacs from the New York Times to be the editor of—this was Isaacs—the combined Courier-Journal and Louisville Times—one paper on Sunday, to combine the, the resources. And Jeff calls me and says, “Look, you, you’re going to be coming from—” I, I’d been doing the Time-Life broadcast thing in Denver.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: He said, “You’re going to be coming from New York. Why don’t you stop in in Louisville and visit, look around.” Talk about culture shock. What I have, what I have not mentioned of course in, in the Seattle years was my representing KING management in the small group 95:00that planned Seattle’s future. That met every other week in a back room of the Olympic Hotel and included some of the most consequential of the CEOs, the political editor of the Seattle Times. Now, I was independent, you know. I could be involved and not be re-, ethically affected. I was there at the behest of Mrs. Bullitt and Otto Brandt to observe. And it was there that I saw the genesis of two significant things. One was the Seattle World’s Fair of 1962, which galvanized Seattle and start, started it on its really great rush to recognition and change. 96:00PRESS: That was the day of the Space Needle?

SCHULMAN: The Space Needle was developed by a—here’s Louise—Space Needle was developed by a guy who was all too soon forgotten. He was never part of the group. He was part of the architecture school at the UW—the U-Dub. Victor Steinbrook. His name is hardly known. It was his idea for the Space Needle. I have always likened him to my old friend in St. Louis, Luther—hello, Louise.

PRESS: Hi, sweetheart.

LOUISE: Excuse me. I won’t interrupt.

SCHULMAN: There was a fascinating man called Morris Shevel.

PRESS: Are we bothering you? [laughter] SCHULMAN: A Brown University graduate, of all things, a lawyer, 97:00and little, short, not terribly impressive guy physically, but what a fantastic mind. And great insight. And he along with another lawyer named James Ellis of the firm of which Bill Gates’s father was a—[laughs] Bogle, Bogle and Gates. Later, he went to another firm, Door, Glimsen and something. And Jim Ellis will come into focus in Seattle terms in a little bit. [laughs] Anyway, these two had developed the concept of having a Seattle World’s Fair. With Magnuson’s help, they got a big bundle of federal money. 98:00There were any number of times when there was a temptation to settle for something less, particularly in the, the search for and recruitment for the man to be the, the commanding general of the World’s Fair organization, the CEO. When it came to such things as designing, thinking about how to design an opera house and a Seattle, and a reparatory theatre and a science center, you know, and, and, and a main fountain that had to be just a different fountain. That’s what poor Bar-, Barry and Mary Bingham were thinking about, you know. This was an electronically controlled fountain. Have you been there? In Seattle? Anyway, it was my great luck 99:00to be a, a watching part of that, and of another thing which Jim Ellis developed, called forward thrust, in which he almost unilaterally worked to combine all of the dissident elements in the Seattle community and in the urban community. Labor and industry and finance and education and the law—get all of those people together to agree on a package of capital improvements, one hundred million dollar capital improvements. And damned if they didn’t get public vote for it at a time when there were all these distractions and Vietnam and so on and so on. So, 100:00it was from that kind of Seattle that I came to Louisville. I walked down what was then Fourth Street. It’s a terribly antsy and personal thing, but I was still smoking little cigarettes called [simalphenics] that came in a tin. I was keeping away, cutting down, you know. I was smoking a pipe and I stopped in the smoke shop, I was told, near the Dutchman, it was the downtown smoke shop, and I went in and I said, “I’d like a tin of [simalphenics].” And the man said to me, “What?” I said “[Simalphenics.]” He said, “What? What are they?” I walked past what was the, now the, now the Ba-, Brown Theatre, was the McCauley Theatre. And that’s where the orchestra 101:00was going to play. You know— PRESS: It was different.

SCHULMAN: Yes, it certainly was. On the other hand, here was Mr. Bingham and Cy Mackinnon, president of the company who had been brought down from RR Donnelley and Company in Chicago, and who’s home out on Blank-, off of Blanken-, off of Lime Kiln, they called Todd Hall. And, among other things, there was a telephone in the tree in the backyard. [laughs] And lots of literate awareness and he was on the CPB Board. Later Al Smith used to call me to, how to get in touch with Cy Mackinnon when he was working for his, toward the Appalachian— 102:00PRESS: Regional Commission?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Right. So, and what were the alternatives, you know? So, I did come.

PRESS: To work for the Courier?

SCHULMAN: To work for the Courier. Now— PRESS: And the station?

SCHULMAN: Well, no. Before I left— PRESS: Did, did you work the Magazine?

SCHULMAN: The, the, the—I’ll be there in a minute. Yes. Yes.

PRESS: But it—you, you, you take them there. I got to leave for just a minute.

SCHULMAN: Oh, okay.

PRESS: You keep on going. [sound of microphone falling] SCHULMAN: Oops. Oops. Oops. [laughs] I’ll have a break too.

PRESS: Don’t let him [ ] skip that.

MILLIGAN: All right.

SCHULMAN: Oh.

MILLIGAN: How did you end up in Louisville? Did they, did they court you to come?

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

MILLIGAN: You’re getting there.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Norman Isaacs and Jeff Benson, on behalf of the Binghams. And I came and visited with them. 103:00What they offered me economically was a considerable step down, very much so, because I came to be a writer on the Magazine.

MILLIGAN: On which magazine?

SCHULMAN: The Sunday Courier-Journal and Times Sunday Magazine.

MILLIGAN: Sunday edition?

SCHULMAN: Yes.

MILLIGAN: But you had been doing broadcasting previous to that?

SCHULMAN: That is correct. [coughs] I was not, I was brought here. [coughs] Excuse me, Sarah. I was brought here by the newspapers. By the Sunday Magazine, the Sunday Magazine part of the newspapers, to write for, and I must say it was a very talented group of writers, including John Fetterman, F-E-T-T-E-R-M-A-N, long-time 104:00reporter here, began on the Louisville Times before he was writing for the Sunday Magazine. And the first year I was here, he, he was a great one to go off to Appalachia and find characters. You know, the Melungeons or some craftsman or something. He absolutely loved that. So would you have, you know. And one weekend, he went to cover the funeral of a young man from Hindman or Jenkins or somewhere, killed in Vietnam and buried in the family cemetery up on the hill. And he came back to the office and he was sitting at the typewriter, and he said, “Boy, oh, boy. I got a Pulitzer Prize here. Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my. Got a Pulitzer Prize.” “The Funeral of Johnny” or something. 105:00It did win that year’s Pulitzer Prize.

MILLIGAN: Really?

SCHULMAN: How about that? [laughter] Yes. Yeah. Bill Woolsey, good friend of Louise’s, who was also the music critic for the Times, part of the establishment, a man named Bill Morrissey, who left as I came in order to join his girlfriend, later his wife, in the local Weight Watchers. [laughs] Today, they are millionaires.

MILLIGAN: They began the local Weight Watchers?

SCHULMAN: Correct. She did. Yes. Uh-huh. And if you go by the Home of the Innocents, there’s a big sign, the future thing courtesy of, of Jim and what’s-her-name Morrissey. 106:00The art editor, Sarah Lansdell, very good, quite a character. When I came in June, by then, of course, my daughter was married. Her husband was in Vietnam. My then wife came sometime afterward, but I should have mentioned that, in that final year—oh, thank you—in that final year in Seattle, I, Eleanor and I owned a beachfront plot on Bainbridge 107:00Island, forty-five minutes across Puget Sound from Seattle, from the city of Seattle. And I spent as much time as I could away from the “Design for Washington” working on the book about my aunt, Romany Marie, now, The Queen of Greenwich Village. I assembled these massive notes from interviews with her and had interviewed as many of her aficionados and so on, and had not done anything with it, and thought well, I guess maybe I’ll be going to Louisville, but here’s the chance to sell that book. And I’ll jump ahead and say that when I did come to Louisville, hanging on to that property, 108:00you would walk out onto the beach with a bucket and get back with a bucket of clams. Today that’s worth several million dollars. It was too much from here to keep up. So, at any rate, quickly I had made a friendship with the, the editor of the Saturday Review, Russell Lynes, well known, written in any number of books about taste and so on. And he was intensely interested in the community college movement, which I had become interested in while still at KING. And we’d, so he’d, I’d give him material which he used, 109:00and he said, “Well, if you come to New York with this book, check with me and I’ll see that you get in touch with my agent.” So, wife Eleanor and I went to New York and stayed in my uncle’s Central Park West apartment, because they were in Florida [laughs] and went to see her with what was then the manuscript, not anything like what is in the book. And she got, she said she would let me know next day. And next day she called up, her, she would then riding the crest of the wave. She had just sold Bill Styron’s book, The Rebellion of Nat Turner.

PRESS: Oh, wow. 110:00SCHULMAN: Yeah. She said, “I’m going to take on, take you on with this book.” Unfortunately, stupid, naïve. I had no awareness, I had these two cousins in New York, one of them, his wife was a relative who had a, I call cousin, at Random House, and I had shared the manuscript with them. Two days later, a messenger comes to de-, return the manuscript from the agent because she had called Random House, and they said, “Oh—” PRESS: “We already have it.” SCHULMAN: “We already have it.” Oh, geez.

PRESS: Oh, God. Oh, my.

SCHULMAN: Mmm. I schlepped back to Seattle and prepared to come to Louisville. 111:00And one of the last days at Bainbridge Island, I turned on Huntley-Nutley, [laughs] Huntley-Brinkley, NBC News. There was a so called “race riot” in Louisville, Kentucky. It was late April or early June. It must have been June of ’68. and they put on a woman who was so startlingly eloquent about what had happened and so eloquent in terms of speaking the piece for the people who were living in Louisville’s West End. Her name was Lucretia Ward, the wife of a well-known, Jasper Ward, well-known architect here, and an immensely eloquent 112:00and active—she had gone down to participate with Martin Luther King and Abernathy and so on. There was some talk about she dallied [laughs]. She may very well have, that was—anyway, they, I thought to myself, Well, if there’s a woman like that in Louisville, it can’t be all bad. Sarah asked why did I come? I came to write for the Sunday Magazine.

PRESS: That’s what I thought. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: At, I said to Sarah, a considerable reduction in income. And my friend the editor, Jeff Vinson and his wife were in, in England. He’s English-born. And his second wife, whom he met when his first wife 113:00died, came from the London Telegraph. And she was work-, had an adjacent desk to him at the New York Times News and Review, Sunday News and Review. And they married. And so, I was invited to stay in their house up on 22 until I found a place to live. And of course, Eleanor remained for the time being back in, in Seattle. Well, and as I was telling Sarah, it was a very impressive and talented group of writers that Jeff had. And Jeff is a superb editor. And I, I remember the first story I did. It was the political season. It was 1968 114:00and a Presidential campaign. And the first story I did was about people who collect political buttons, you know, that—and I, but I got to know Mary Helen Byck— PRESS: Mm-hm. Sure.

SCHULMAN: Who was of course a friend of his family and so on. Dowdy. She was a National Committewoman for the Democratic party in Kentucky and a remarkable force. I don’t know whether, whether it was the Binghams of the Mackinnons, but to my interest I was sought out not too long after I got here by a member of the economic establishment, top insurance man named Baylor Landrum, took me to dinner at the Brown Hotel. 115:00Why? Because he’d heard that I had been talking very enthusiastically about what the “Forward Thrust” movement had done in Seattle, and what was it like? Well, I told him. The result was that fall, they had Jim Ellis here to speak at the annual meeting of the Chamber of Commerce. You know, the fan-, and Ellis was his old persuasive, outreaching self. You’d have thought, “Gee. Well, then it could have had the same result here.” PRESS: Sure.

SCHULMAN: The problem was that it then put into the hands of the then county judge, Todd Hollenbach.

PRESS: Ah-ha.

SCHULMAN: M-, the, one of the most amoral men I have ever met. Too bad, because he looked like Jack Kennedy, and he had Jack Kennedy’s 116:00bust on his desk behind him and so on.

PRESS: It’s his son, now who is running— SCHULMAN: It’s his son who’s running. That’s right. And his son is supposed to be much better than Todd. Todd is still around practicing law.

PRESS: The old man is?

SCHULMAN: Huh?

PRESS: The old man?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. The old—it’s funny. This is a terrible digression, but two or three years ago, it was in the news here, a new president of Delta Airlines, Gerald Grinstein. I said, “For God’s sake, could that be Gerry Grinstein whose father was one of the owners of the Long Acre Racetrack in Seattle? The doctor?” And that reminds me, get me back to, get me back to sports and another doctor. [laughs] 117:00And he had been the administrative assistant to the aforementioned Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, in Washington. Young man, you know, lawyer,Gerry Grinstein. I thought, Gee. So, I wrote to Gerry Grinstein, and he answered. A nostalgic letter, you know, all about—the only difference is that Gerry Grinstein—it is the same Gerry Grinstein, but he’s seventy-two years old. [laughter] PRESS: How did you remember him?

SCHULMAN: That, I— [laughs] We’ve had a couple of contacts since. He’s in Atlanta, of course. He had a, because then he, I said, “Gee,” we talked on the telephone. I said, “Gee, there’s a couple you really ought to know, being new in Atlanta.” PRESS: The Greens?

SCHULMAN: The Greens, yes. And he wrote me a card later. He said there was this big welcoming thing for him 118:00in Atlanta, and this man came up to him and said, “I’d like to meet you. I, my name is Scotty Green.” And I said to him, “I already know about you Mr. Green.” And his eyes— [laughter] PRESS: Nice.

SCHULMAN: Anyway, six degrees of separation, you know.

PRESS: Yes, exactly.

SCHULMAN: Well, I, I did okay, you know. I did a piece on the community college movement in Kentucky, including, visited around— PRESS: Were you, were you then already using the, the “One Man’s Opinion”?

SCHULMAN: No, no. I was writing for the Magazine.

PRESS: I know, but I didn’t know if you were using that in there.

SCHULMAN: No. No. No, no. I was Robert Schulman. Yeah, you know, okay. And did, and did a piece on a community which 119:00did get a, that year’s top award from the education writers’ association. I quickly became—we, we talked about Al Schneider?

PRESS: I don’t know. Well, in what respect?

SCHULMAN: As the man who, whose, whose money and, and green light were needed for Seattle—for Louisville—to begin achieving it’s Belvedere on the river front and the Galt House?

PRESS: I think we did.

SCHULMAN: I think we did. He was, he was held in dire disrespect by the Binghams and the other establishment because he was crude and heavy-handed and out, and out of Shively and so on.

PRESS: He did things his way.

SCHULMAN: Anyway, I did the story about how Schneider, a cover story in that Magazine, which made him— PRESS: Gave 120:00him credit for what he did.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. That’s right. And as a result, the, for the next twenty years, we were invited every week to his holy Thursday dinners at which he had with his establishment friends at the Executive Inn and then at the Galt House on the top. And the guests usually included Sammy Kline, the chairman of the board of Louisville—of the Bank of Louisville, the then head of Urban Renewal, Connie Hubbock, Connie Hubbock, then interior decorator and so on. And Thelma was always there. Thelma, Mrs. Al Schneider. That’s why their bowling alleys, which he built near the Executive Inn are called the Thel-mal Alleys. [laughs] 121:00Then I did, because it was interesting and because it was part of the community’s racial challenge, the police chief, C.J., Columbus James Hyde. [laughs] Again, a, a luscious, interesting personality. And for that, I, you know, did the usual. I spent a couple of weekend nights riding around the squad car with the local police. There was considerable corruption then. And it was later blown open wide by WHAS television in a program series called “Open City.” But Hyde was above that. He was not, he was condoning however. But on that occasion, I had one of those typical police situations that 122:00drive into your psyche what being a policeman is like when you get a call for a domestic disturbance. And you don’t know what it is. This was a house down on Louisville’s Second or Th-, South Second or Third Street. And the two officers—and I walked behind them up the steps. And the door was open. They opened the door. And here was a woman standing there with a shotgun and her husband dead on the floor. And, you know— PRESS: What do you do? Bang!

SCHULMAN: She could—well, once she saw us, thank God, she dropped the gun.

PRESS: Oh, good.

SCHULMAN: But that’s what you hear every week. Some officer is, you know, or somebody else is getting—anyway— 123:00PRESS: It made for a Hell of a story.

SCHULMAN: Yeah, indeed. Indeed. I s-, I took C.J. Hyde—he’s still alive. A year or two ago, I took him out to lunch, you know. He was going-, and he gave me a switchblade. [laughs] He collects them.

PRESS: From, from domestic violence sites?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. [laughter] It was like, it was like, then, you know, in my early experiences, having heard all my life about Kentucky moonshine, I was visiting with a police chief in Pike County, and his name was Justice, and we got along just fine. And he looked around the shelf, all around his office wall, filled with mason jars.

PRESS: Clear.

SCHULMAN: And he gave me my first taste. [laughs] PRESS: Clear fluid.

SCHULMAN: That’s 124:00a nice introduction to the—well, it was about that time—I did other things and had my first involvement with Tom Clark because he called. It was the, it was the establishment of the new consortium press, called the University Press of Kentucky, rather than individual— PRESS: University of Kentucky Press, right?

SCHULMAN: No, no, no, no.

PRESS: I say, instead of.

SCHULMAN: Thank you. Exactly.

PRESS: Yeah. Right.

SCHULMAN: So that made a piece for the Op-Ed section and I talked with Tom Clark. And he was very pleased with the story. Because it struck me that it was a very fresh idea. Anyway— PRESS: And it was, it was—it turned out very well.

SCHULMAN: Oh, indeed. As a matter of fact, they published my book about John Sherman Cooper.

PRESS: They did.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. 125:00And last year, the put out paperback versions.

PRESS: Of that?

SCHULMAN: Yeah. I have some upstairs. Would you like one?

PRESS: I have the hardback. But I— SCHULMAN: You got—well, you’re all right.

PRESS: I ought to have a soft back too?

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: [ ] SCHULMAN: Remind me.

PRESS: Will you, will you autograph it?

SCHULMAN: Of course. I’ll even use my own name. [laughter] Well, but at that point, I had met among others the new news director of WHAS television and radio, Bob Morris.

PRESS: Bob Morris.

SCHULMAN: And Bob Morris wanted the stations to start editorializing. That was the big thing still, Sarah.

PRESS: And then, give, give me another date check on that. What year would that have been?

SCHULMAN: That would have been— PRESS: Seventy?

SCHULMAN: Seventy.

PRESS: Seventy.

SCHULMAN: Seventy.

PRESS: All right.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: Okay.

SCHULMAN: And 126:00Mr. Bingham and Junior—well, the Binghams and Cy Mackinnon considered his request and said “No. We’re already getting enough tzuris (Yiddish for trouble) with our two paper editorials, being accused of a monopoly of opinion and so on. The last thing in the world we want to do is add. But,” they said, “You could try an individual voice.” So Morris says, “That’s a nice idea.” And he had auditions. Don Ridings was one of them. I don’t know who else.

PRESS: Dot or Don?

SCHULMAN: Don. Don. Don. You, Sarah, you should—Dot Ridings was a, came here as a newspaper woman, with her husband from Winston-Salem or somewhere 127:00like that. And she became very active in the League of Women Voters, active enough that she became then national president of the League of Women Voters. And the first time the League of Women Voters was vested with running the Presidential debates was when she was president. Don, meantime, quit the papers and took some advance studies and became a planner and worked for the mayor and then the county judge. Anyway, Don was among the auditioners. I don’t know who else. I auditioned. Morris calls and says, “Would you like to come be the commentator, the editorial voice of WHAS?” I go to Norman Isaacs. I say, “Norman, 128:00big, big advance in pay.” PRESS: To change over entirely?

SCHULMAN: To change over from—yes.

PRESS: It wasn’t a double deal?

SCHULMAN: No, no, no, no, no. No, no. That would not have been acceptable. No.

PRESS: I didn’t know that.

SCHULMAN: No. No.

PRESS: I’m not sure I knew that. Okay. Good.

SCHULMAN: Well, live and—that’s the whole point.

PRESS: Of this whole exercise. That’s right. Go ahead.

SCHULMAN: [laughs] Well, the— PRESS: Don’t slow down. Don’t slow down.

SCHULMAN: Well. No, I said, “Norman, this was embarrassing.” I said, “What do I do? You know, you can, I’m—you and Jeff brought me here so obviously, I would rather stay and continue to do what I’m doing, but it does call for—” “Well, Bob,” he said, “You know—” and he thinks back to after the war and get your ass 129:00over to city hall. He said, “We’ll lose you. We’ll miss you. But if you want to go, go.” So, what should we call it? We’ll call it “One Man’s Opinion.” [laughs] PRESS: To differentiate it.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: From station policy.

SCHULMAN: Exactly.

PRESS: Right.

SCHULMAN: And, Sarah, as Len may recall, was the usual ninety seconds, but run every weekday on the news at 6:30 and 11:00. Next morning, both radio and television and I had a very smart and effective assistant, researcher. It, I, I needed that. I mean, we had to have some authenticity and competence. 130:00And it was a marvelous platform.

PRESS: Bob, I think I know the answer to this, but, but I think this is what made me wonder if you were using that masthead, as it were, in the paper. Didn’t “One Man’s Opinion” appear in the paper? All right. Then I know why I think of it that way.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: Because I used to get copies of it.

SCHULMAN: Ah. [laughs] PRESS: Mimeographed, I think.

SCHULMAN: Oh, yes. Of course, we, yes.

PRESS: Used to distribute it.

SCHULMAN: Yes.

PRESS: And it had your picture, and it had the “One Man’s—” SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes.

PRESS: So I think of seeing it in print. I never heard it.

SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Oh, yes, we sent—yes, that was part of the promotion department, you know. I had my own ideas about promotion. One time I had them come photographing, shoot me at the corner of Fourth and Broadway in the middle of the street. [laughs] And another time, the swimming pool. 131:00And you know, like, of course, we offered rebuttal time, and we had a lot of that.

PRESS: Where, where did the rebuttal time appear?

SCHULMAN: Huh?

PRESS: The rebuttal time appear in the same— SCHULMAN: Oh, yes. Oh, indeed.

PRESS: In the slot?

SCHULMAN: Yes. Yes. I had a whole series about King Louie and his fables, as a result of which I got into King Louie— PRESS: Louie, Louie Nunn?

SCHULMAN: Governor Louie Nunn, the Republican Governor. At the same time, I perforce got sufficiently close that I was intrigued by the degree to which Nunn, who had his, his—others can tell you—had his negative and reactionary sides, but he called together as his assistants an 132:00unusually bright and in some cases progressive group of young men, which I named the Kiddie Corps. And— PRESS: And to this day— SCHULMAN: They, and they, for a number of years, they had annual reunions to which I was invited. [laughs] Yeah. And it was an interesting time, I must say.

PRESS: How long a time?

SCHULMAN: Four years. Four years. In 1972, a couple of impassioned women conservationists came to me about a particularly heinous strip mine. And so we toodled off with a cameraman and went up, found our way, drove 133:00up into the, along the tops of this mine, and we were greeted by a group of men with shotguns, who said, “Get your ass off of here.” And I said, “Well, wait a minute. You know, we’ve got our rights.” And so on and so on. While our cameraman— PRESS: Shooting it?

SCHULMAN: Shooting it. And so, we did find our way out, but used it of course. And it was that year’s Sigma Delta Chi “Year’s Best Television Editorial.” PRESS: Hm.

SCHULMAN: Yeah.

PRESS: Of course, you haven’t been back. [laughter] SCHULMAN: No. No. That’s true. The, the woman who did that now lives in, in 134:00with another husband in, up near Arizona. And we saw her briefly when we were out there. She wanted to know what was going on, [ ].

PRESS: The woman who did what?

SCHULMAN: Huh?

PRESS: The woman who did what?

SCHULMAN: Who took me.

PRESS: Oh.

SCHULMAN: One of those who took me out to the strip mine.

PRESS: Oh, oh. Oh.

SCHULMAN: Yeah. Vicky Maddox was her name. Well, you, you know, it’s a fantastic opportunities for influencing the course of what went on in the community. And I never once, as Len would expect, never once was there any suggestion at inhibition about what subject I should choose or what position I should take.

PRESS: Were those newscasts sponsored?

SCHULMAN: The newscasts were, but not—no. 135:00“One Man’s Opinion” was never sponsored. No, no. Nor was it offered.

PRESS: No, right.

SCHULMAN: No, of course not. So, I’ve got, I’ve really need to, you know, one will get to know people under those circumstances. Wendell Ford and his people come, Tom Preston, his ever faithful, ever present AA. Every time I see Wendell Ford, even these days, he will say, “’One Man’s Opinion’—there’s Schulman who taught me how to get up out of a chair without breaking my back.” Because of my long experience with back trouble. And Wendell used to get up like this, you know, and kill his back 136:00without the simple business of leaning on and he learned that. [laughs] By the way that was another story I did on the Magazine, while I was still on it—I mean, on the Sunday Courier-Journal and Times—“Oh, my Aching Back.” PRESS: Can you remember one or two or three particularly memorable first man— SCHULMAN: OMOs?

PRESS: “One Man’s Opinion” pieces that may have, may have— SCHULMAN: Ah, gee.

PRESS: That either stuck in your mind or stuck in the community’s mind.

SCHULMAN: Maybe Louise can. We got to calling it— PRESS: Well, maybe, maybe, we can, we can got back. We can go back.

SCHULMAN: We got to calling it OMO. And— PRESS: OMO.

SCHULMAN: Louise, whom I met earlier on. The, we were married in ’76. I was divorced in ’74. 137:00Gave me a set of cufflinks, OMO.

PRESS: OMO. Yeah. “One Man’s Opinion.” So— SCHULMAN: Uh-huh. By the way, by the way— PRESS: This may be a good place to—go ahead. Go ahead.

SCHULMAN: It’s not in response to your question, but—well that’s jumping. That, that’s—I shouldn’t leave it yet. But in ’74, the reason OMO didn’t continue is that primarily at the behest of Mary, Junior, but joined in by Mr. Bingham, Barry, Sr., and Cy Mackinnon, I was called to the other end of the block and they said they wanted to have a column that would evaluate press media performance. There was really none such of that kind 138:00yet in the country. And— PRESS: Media critic?

SCHULMAN: Media critic. Yes. And to have guaranteed space twice a week in the Times and one Sunday a month in the Courier-Journal. They would make financial adjustments, recognizing that if I were to really use this new franchise, I would have to give up my hopes of being the most popular guy on the block. And so they made arrangements, not only in terms of finance then, but for when it would run out, which is a big help these days, and that was when I left, that was why I left “One Man’s Opinion” and started what I called “In all Fairness.” PRESS: Oh, yes.

SCHULMAN: And that lasted from ’74 to ’81. 139:00PRESS: And nobody followed you in “One Man’s Opinion?” SCHULMAN: Somebody tried. Peter Kahn.

PRESS: Oh, yes. I remember Peter Kahn. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SCHULMAN: I mean, you know, bright guy. I don’t know.

PRESS: Well, if he were smarter, he wouldn’t even have tried to follow you.

SCHULMAN: [laughs] Oh, that’s a nice comment. But I don’t know, you know.

PRESS: Yes, I remember Peter. Yeah.

SCHULMAN: I’ll have to look through. I mean, it, what occurs to me, of course, is, it was then, it was in that guise that I met Ted Broida . When Louie Nunn quit, Ted Broida was running the Spindletop research. Do you remember that?

PRESS: Sure, of course I do. You?

SCHULMAN: Well, 140:00Wendell Ford came on. And Wendell Ford was determined to scotch—this was a splendid and well-equipped think tank of the, of the North Carolina, Durham, Chapel Hill variety. And Broida had hired a very considerable staff of very accomplished analysts and planners and a whole beautiful new set of buildings and so on. And this intrigued me. And I was free to take some time to go look at it and so on. And Broida was in trouble. And got to know WT Young and took me to lunch at the Idlehour. Nobody asked me about 141:00my antecedents, either. [laughter] PRESS: Well, you were only a guest.

SCHULMAN: Yes. True. True. [laughs] Asked Ted, according to him, what I had to say, you know— PRESS: Helped him..

SCHULMAN: Helped. Yes. But in the end, and there are other—Sammy’s old one, one-eyed quit. Remember, he was the head of the— PRESS: Labor union.

SCHULMAN: He was very complimentary. Louise— PRESS: Why don’t we, why don’t we pick it up— SCHULMAN: I’ve just got to ask her.

LOUISE: Yeah.

PRESS: All right. [END OF INTERVIEW]