ALASTAIR COOKE: MIXED MEMORIES AND CORPORATE COWARDICE

　

　
　
　
　
　
      Someone told me recently that PBS was broadcasting a tribute to Alastair Cooke who -- among his many achievements -- was the host of Masterpiece Theatre for twenty-two years. I knew Alastair -- not as well as I might have -- but always felt privileged to be on a first-name basis with him. That is, until we had a bitter and destructive dispute that ended with him barely recognizing my existence.
     Oddly, we didn’t meet when Masterpiece Theatre was first put together; even though I was heavily involved in its creation. But I enthusiastically endorsed him as its host. He was experienced, urbane, sophisticated and articulate: an elegant patrician who wrote his own material. And he had a sense of humor!
     Them kind don’t come along too regular.

     
     We did meet, finally, two years later when I arranged for Xerox to sponsor ’Alastair Cooke’s America’ on NBC, a thirteen-part documentary series produced and directed by Michael Gill. At the time, Xerox was considered the premier sponsor of ’socially conscious’ programming on the commercial networks. For me it was wonderful and rewarding period. I was representing two major corporations (Mobil being the other) that believed television could enhance, enlighten and broaden peoples’ lives.
     Alastair was thrilled to have Xerox as sole sponsor. It meant the series wouldn’t be cluttered with toothpaste and toilet paper commercials. Xerox commercials would be spaced judiciously so as not to diminish the overall dignity of the presentation. (Remember that word, dignity.) Everything was going smoothly until Alastair told me how thrilled he was that his publisher was printing 15,000 copies (or maybe 25,000. I can’t remember.) of a slick and expensive ‘cocktail table’ book to complement the NBC broadcast.
     Thinking I was doing him a favor, I said that 15.000 copies might be big by book standards, but not by mine. They should be printing five times as many .. ten times! And since he’d be getting fifteen percent of the gross, he should tell his publisher to wake up.
     That was the first time I gave him bad news.
     The publisher, of course, told me to fuck off, thank you very much.
     After the first broadcast, the book rocketed to number one on The New York Times best-seller list. After the third broadcast, it disappeared entirely. Sold out! No books available! It took weeks, perhaps months, for the publisher to catch up to demand. It was a hard lesson, And who knows how many sales were lost.



     After that, I had only peripheral contact with Alastair until a day in 1982 when he phoned to say he was thinking (quite seriously, he said) about suing Sesame Street unless it agreed to drop a character named ‘Alastair Cookie’ on a new segment of the show called ‘Monsterpiece Theatre‘. Knowing I had ties to Joan Ganz Cooney, the head of Sesame Street; he was calling, I suspect, to see if I’d act as a a back-door messenger; an indirect and unofficial channel to deliver his displeasure. Mind you, he didn’t say so. But why else would he call?
     I was horrified. Suing Sesame Street would be worse than suing Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa. It would be as if The Masterpiece Theatre Man was attacking all the little kiddies in America! And their mommies!!
     And clearly, patricians didn’t do parody.
     It took a while, but I managed to pacify his ruffled dignity (that word again) by arguing it was an honor not an insult to be so portrayed .. that satire and parody are almost always reserved for people of fame and achievement. Alastair Cookie and Monsterpiece Theatre were, in other words, a tribute not to be trifled with and certainly not to be threatened. Just the opposite. He should be proud of it!
     Privately I was thinking he was way too full of himself.
     But that was that. Other parodies subsequently appeared on television including Mousterpiece Theatre, Disasterpiece Theatre and even Rastapiece Theatre. And not a peep out of Alastair Cooke … or Cookie. Whatever.

     Then, unfortunately, came golf.
     Without my knowledge, he approached Xerox with an unwritten proposal (a definite no-no in my book) to produce a television special on the history of golf. He was obsessed with the game (really obsessed!!)and was once quoted as saying he thought golf more ’awesome’ than politics. He himself would write, direct, produce and narrate; and he confidently predicted it would be unlike anything ever seen on television.
     The vice-president of advertising for Xerox -- a well-meaning guy rather easily swayed by fame -- bought it; and the Xerox ad agency got an agreement from ABC to broadcast it.
     I was totally bypassed --and kept in the dark -- until a year later when Alastair delivered the final cut. Then Xerox asked me to screen it. With the request came some mumbo-jumbo explanation for bypassing me. So why tell me about it now, I wondered? Had the ad agency -- which probably organized the end run around me in the first place -- somehow screwed up with ABC? Why would they ask me to look at something that was signed ,sealed and delivered: a done deal?
     I called Xerox minutes after seeing it. They’d clearly been waiting by the phone.
     We can’t show that, I told the vice-president.. It’s awful. The critics will kill Cooke and roast us for sponsoring it.
    You really think it’s that bad? He asked.
     It’s worse than bad. It’s way below broadcast standards. Have you seen it?
     Yes, I didn’t think it was very good.
     How about the agency?
     They didn’t think it was very good either.
     (Translation in corporate-speak: Man the lifeboats! )
     And ABC?
     We haven’t shown it to them yet.
     Well, I guarantee they’ll reject it. It’s disjointed, confusing, poorly shot and badly edited .. the works. Alastair’s so obsessed he can‘t see the forest for the trees. I mean .. him standing in a wooden barrel half-naked trying to hit a golf ball? Holy Shit! You’re gonna’ have to eat it because nobody’ll put it on the air.
     Jesus Christ!! he said bleakly. I’ve got six hundred thousand bucks in it!! (which I imagine would be about $1.5 million in today‘s dollars).
     I could almost see him wringing his hands,. As I said, he was a well-meaning guy, but he tried to ignore trouble when he could and usually panicked when he couldn’t.
     And then, finally, the worst and most frightening prospect of all occurred to him.
     Oh my God! he said. Who’s going to tell Alastair?
     I wanted to say: You made the deal, you unmake it. But I’d seen ‘corporate cowardice’ before ( the subject of a future blog) and knew that ugly things sometimes go with the territory. I’d have to be the ’heavy’.

      Alastair was not only stunned when I gave him the news, he was deeply hurt. This was as important to him as anything he’d ever done .. perhaps more so. We argued about it for hours in his apartment on upper Fifth Avenue. He wanted to appeal to higher authority; but I’d already cut him off at the pass. I told him I’d screened the program for top management at Xerox (a lie) and at ABC (not a lie). Fred Pierce, president of the network, had seen it and agreed with our decision.
     So the entire project was scrapped. Alastair felt I was not only the messenger but the message itself. He never spoke to me again. And I couldn’t really blame him.
      I’d killed his favorite child.

     Nearly ten years later, I attended a black-tie gala at the State Department to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of Masterpiece Theatre. With one notable absence, everyone was there: actors, producers and directors, representatives of British broadcasting, ambassadors and cultural attaches, Mobil big-wigs, public broadcasting’s elite, everybody. And as you might expect, Alastair was the principal speaker.
     He gave a lengthy, witty and -- of course -- literate speech in which he indirectly and quite subtly took credit for just about everything except the birth of Christ. Or so it seemed to me. Everyone loved it .. but I thought that poor old Alastair -- like so many other prominent personalities -- had become the victim of his own mythology.
     But now -- grown older and a bit wiser -- I take a different view


     He was without doubt a journalist/broadcaster of monumental stature. He hosted Masterpiece Theatre for twenty-two years, bringing his insights and observations to countless millions of Americans. He was also heard for fifty-eight years by Great Britain and the English-speaking world on his ‘Letter from America’ radio series. He wrote for diverse newspapers, journals and magazines, and produced books and television programs of enlightening quality.
     And he was human. That’s what most tributes fail to penetrate: he was human. And a few mistakes, a few egoistic misjudgments, and an occasional touch of arrogance, in a long lifetime of achievement are not only understandable but inevitable. They make the mythical man palpable and more real; in fact, fallible .. and thus in the end even more admirable
     So now, much too late, I do wish I were still on a first-name basis with him. I would have learned far more than I taught.
　
　

                                                    AFTER DINNER MINTS

Alastair’s cocktail table book eventually sold more than two million copies and made him a rather wealthy man. But with true Methodist prudence, he never gave up his rent-controlled apartment on Fifth Avenue.

The ‘notable absence’ at the Washington gala was Herb Schmertz, ex-vice president of Mobil, who contributed enormously to the birth, growth and health of Masterpiece Theatre. He had apparently become persona non grata at Mobil and the company must have insisted he not be invited.
     It was yet another example of corporate cowardice, with a twist.

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