Audition (39 page)

The next day our American press planes picked us up, and lunch was hot dogs and hamburgers. Heavenly. Not a tangerine in sight.

The visit was over. I had survived and evidently done well. The word had come through from NBC that my reports from China had been given more airtime than any of our news team. Better yet, the NBC team had beaten the ratings of all the competition. I had even made a friend or two, not among the Chinese, but among my colleagues. Especially John Chancellor, who had changed his mind about me during the course of the week, recognizing the hard work I’d done. He braved the disdain of the male chauvinists on the plane by stopping by my seat and planting a very public kiss on my cheek.

Now it was time to go home and face a different challenge.

Life without Lee.

A Dead Marriage and the Dead Sea

I
CAME BACK FROM
China totally spent but with the knowledge that I had done a better job than NBC or I ever expected. Still, when I opened the door to my apartment, there was no one there to hug me and say, “Welcome home, I am proud of you.” Lee was gone. I had wanted to be free for a long while and now I was. But freedom has consequences. The same person whom you have yearned to leave or to leave you is also the person you miss when you want someone to care and to fuss over you.

Things would have been easier had Lee and I argued or called each other names. But it was never like that. Lee had been there when my on-air career began. I had been there for his Broadway ventures. We had the joy of adopting our baby and watching her grow. Lee was a good father. I, in turn, was a good stepmother to his children, and I wanted to keep that relationship going. I felt sad for Lee and for myself.

I also decided that two marriages were enough, and I vowed never to marry again. (I didn’t keep the vow.)

This was an easier decision for me to make than it would have been for many women. I had enough money to continue living in the same style as during my marriage, and I wasn’t afraid of being alone. If anything, with a very busy career and a young child, I never seemed to have as much time by myself as I wanted; being alone seemed very desirable.

Lee and I had no financial disputes. There was no alimony and no settlement on either side. Lee gave me minimal child support for Jackie. He wanted to. She was, he felt, his responsibility, too. It all seemed fair.

Lee could see Jackie whenever he wanted. We never had a formal agreement about that, and it never caused a problem. Our apartment was a rental. I kept it, and Lee rented a smaller apartment for himself. Aside from the fact that we were tearing a marriage apart (“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”), things were pretty tidy.

My parents, however, were very upset. My father had become especially close to Lee and kept asking me, “Why? Why?” Every answer sounded weak. They felt terrible for Lee but they were also anxious about me. As was Shirley. Shirley, my confidante, my best friend, had always supported my decisions before, and I was sure she would now. But she didn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand how I felt. I had often confided in her my vague discontent which became stronger and less vague as the months and years went on. But like my parents, she was worried about my future. “Lee will be fine,” she said. “He’ll have no trouble finding someone else. But you’re pushing forty. You don’t leave one man until you have another.”

She worried about Jackie’s future—who would pay the doctors’ bills, the school tuitions, college? “Who knows how secure your job is?” She pointed a finger at me. “Right now you’re doing great, but anything can happen in your business. You lost a job in television before. It could happen again.” I listened, but I didn’t change my mind. I would take my chances.

One amusing rumor, at least amusing to me, that started circulating was that I’d left Lee for Henry Kissinger. Kissinger never entered my mind when Lee and I separated. I admired him and enjoyed his company, but there was never a romance. I had also been introduced to his future wife, Nancy Maginnes, whom I liked immediately. They would marry in 1974. But to some of the Washington and New York columnists, for Kissinger and me to be an item made great sense. Certainly Shirley thought so. “Henry Kissinger would be perfect for you,” Shirley said. “He’s nice, he’s smart—and he’s Jewish.”

In those first few weeks after I returned from China, I was not thinking at all of romance. I was much more concerned about my little girl. At first she didn’t fully realize that her father was no longer living at home. After all, he’d often been away at his different theaters. But soon enough, though she was only four, the separation began to have its effect.

Lee couldn’t have been more devoted to Jackie. He saw her often, never missed a school play, and took her away on vacations. He and I spoke to each other many times a week and never said a bad word about each other. But Jackie often protested and began to cry when Lee came to pick her up. I’m not sure she ever really forgave her father for moving out, although I always told her it was both our decision.

As for Lee and me, after the first few months of pain, we began, little by little, to find our way back, and a real friendship developed, in part because of our love for our little girl.

Lee eventually married a very smart and nice woman named Lois Wyse. Lois was the cofounder and president of Wyse Advertising and the author of more than sixty books, including the best seller
Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Grandmother.
I knew Lois slightly. One of the commercials I did for the
Today
show contained a famous slogan she had written for a jam and jelly company: “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.” Lois sometimes came to the set to check that we were doing right by her client. I liked her then, and later, after she and Lee married, we became friends. Lois adored Lee, seemed to love his show business life, and accepted the fact that he and I had an unusual feeling of warmth for each other. I remember being at a party with the two of them one freezing winter night. The party was around the corner from my apartment, but when it was time to go home, I was nervous about attacking the icy streets in the dark alone. It was Lois who urged Lee to walk me back to my building. He and I walked arm in arm, as old friends do.

Lee continued to follow the siren song of Broadway. The last and very expensive musical he would produce in 1986,
Rags
, closed after only four performances. This time more than his heart was broken. Six months later he was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. Lois nursed him devotedly and without complaint through a long siege of chemotherapy. As the disease progressed I visited often. Lois always welcomed me. In the last months of his life, when I am not sure Lee really knew who I was, my visits still seemed to give him some pleasure.

Lee died in March 1988 at the age of sixty-seven. The morning of his death, Lois telephoned me. “Can you come?” she asked. I ran right over and we sat alone and held hands. I realize it may sound strange, but Lois somehow knew, without jealousy, that I meant a great deal to the man she loved and that he continued to mean a great deal to me. For years, until her own death in 2007, we called each other, with a smile, “sisters-in-law.”

But fifteen years earlier, although there was nothing as profound in my life as my separation from Lee, there were also separations in my professional life that were making me sad. In January 1973 my on-camera buddy and off-camera support, Joe Garagiola, left the
Today
show. The given reason, which so many people still use to shade the truth, was that he wanted to spend more time with his family. The real reason, I believe, was Frank McGee. Frank never really understood Joe’s value to the program. To him Joe was an over-the-hill baseball player and something of a joke. Joe was hardly that. He was very smart and, moreover, very wise.

The tension on the set had eroded the spirit of friendship and goodwill that Joe, Hugh, and I had felt toward one another. We had traveled together, had uncountable meals together. We knew each other’s families and celebrated each other’s birthdays. Happy, happy years. But with Frank’s arrival all that had changed.

In contrast, Frank and I never had breakfast or lunch together, and I don’t remember ever having a personal conversation with him. I’d send him a Christmas card or a present on his birthday, but I never received an acknowledgment, let alone a thank-you.

During this hostile period I had felt closer than ever to Joe. We could count on each other for a laugh or help in a tight spot. After all, Joe and I had spent five great years together, longer than some marriages. So his departure caused me real pain. It was even tougher to keep that happy face on camera for two hours every morning.

Enter Gene Shalit, the wild-haired, handlebar-mustached, bow-tied arts critic from
Look
magazine. I adored him from the beginning, though at first the
Today
audience did not. Gene was far more sophisticated and subtle than the down-to-earth Garagiola. And he sure looked different. Joe didn’t have much hair, while Gene had more than enough for both of them. But Gene’s witty and often biting theater and movie reviews soon won over the viewers. He became one of the most influential motion picture critics in the country and we became lifelong friends.

Working with Frank McGee meant having to continue to go outside of the studio to do my own interviews. In August 1973 I went
way
outside the New York studio. The occasion was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. I had an interview lined up there with Prime Minister Golda Meir. This was my first trip of what would be many to the Middle East.

Curiously, although I’m Jewish, I had never had any great desire to go to Israel. I’d never felt any special religious or spiritual connection to the Jewish state, perhaps because my parents and I were not religious and none of our relatives lived there. The closest my father had come to identifying with the tiny country’s beleaguered population was by buying those Israel Bonds. So I had little sense of expectation when I arrived in Jerusalem.

To my great surprise, Israel overwhelmed me and aroused feelings I never knew I had. No visitor, Jewish or not, can fail to be moved by the stunning history in the ancient, walled city of Jerusalem. I couldn’t get over the beauty of the land itself, at once rocky and arid, yet lush where the Israelis had ingeniously brought water to the desert. I felt a startling and quite strong connection. I understood the pride and suffering and the stubbornness that drives Israelis.

While I was there I wanted to interview Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defense minister. A former military commander and chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, Dayan was a dashing and heroic figure in the United States. He was very good-looking, with a strong face and high cheekbones, and an eye patch to cover the eye he had lost to a sniper in Syria. Even though he had been raised as a farmer on an Israeli kibbutz, someone once described him, I think accurately, as looking like an Oriental prince. That’s the dashing part. The heroics were his military past and his civilian role as defense minister during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, which the Israelis won hands down.

The problem, Israeli officials told me, was that no one was authorized to arrange interviews for Dayan. He alone decided to whom he was going to talk, and he usually said no. I put in my request for an interview and prepared to wait.

It was one of the best “waits” I’ve ever had. In the era before cell phones, waiting to hear from a potential interviewee often required sitting alone in a hotel room all day next to the phone. But not in Israel. The government and the NBC bureau in Tel Aviv knew where I was every second, so I took some time to explore Jerusalem. I roamed the ancient city, home to the three major religions of the world, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. I traced the steps of Jesus. I poked my nose into the various nooks and corners of the Old City, where everything from spices to watches was sold. The city, still the ultimate source of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, is one of the most fascinating places in the world.

One memorable night I was planning to go to hear the Israel Philharmonic, but got sidetracked by a very attractive Israeli professor I’d met that afternoon on a tour of Old Jerusalem. “Don’t go to the concert,” he said. “Let me show you the Dead Sea by moonlight.”

The Dead Sea by moonlight. How could one resist? Off we drove that evening to the lowest point on earth, just an hour from Jerusalem. The moon was just coming up, illuminating the still, calm water. I must have brought a bathing suit because I clearly remember going into the very salty, very warm water, which was so dense you could float effortlessly. In fact, that’s all you could do. The mineral-rich water is too heavy to swim in. I calmly floated on my back in the moonlight, thinking how ironic it was to find such peace in such a volatile region. I could see the lights of the Kingdom of Jordan on the other side of the Dead Sea. It was so very close, yet it would be another twenty years before Jordan and Israel made peace.

As I still hadn’t heard anything from Moshe Dayan I gave myself another treat—a few days at Sharm el-Sheikh, then an Israeli resort on the Red Sea. Since returned to Egyptian control, Sharm el-Sheikh would become first a popular resort and later, the target of vicious terrorist attacks at the beginning of the twenty-first century. But in the summer of 1973 it was lovely and quiet. Then the message came in: Dayan had agreed to the interview.

I had no idea what to expect. I heard from our NBC bureau that he hated to do interviews and could be rude and abrupt. Great. And that’s what we became—great friends.

In my living room now, displayed on my bookshelves, are various ancient stone artifacts Moshe Dayan gave me over the years. He was a passionate amateur archaeologist and spent much of his free time on digs in the Holy Land. I, too, collect ancient artifacts, so Dayan and I had a bond. All the pieces he gave me—one of which he was using at the time as an ashtray—are signed by him and are among my most treasured possessions. “To Barbara with all best wishes, Judea
BC 4000
, m. dayan” is the handwritten inscription on the bottom of the “ashtray.”