Audition (64 page)

Some of the stories I did back then were big scoops. For example, in October 1979 when Jimmy Carter enraged the Iranians by allowing the deposed and cancer-ridden shah to come to New York Hospital for treatment, no journalists were permitted to see him. It was rumored that the shah wasn’t really sick and indeed wasn’t even in the hospital. Because of my past relationship with the shah, I was given permission by his aides to visit him in his hospital room. He looked very pale and ill. Over his bed was a big poster of a gorilla clinging to a branch of a tree with the caption “Hang in There.” I wondered who among his aides had the courage and the humor to put the poster up.

I was not allowed to bring a television camera or even a tape recorder. All I had was my own Polaroid camera. I asked an aide to take my photo with the shah and we got just one picture. It was a Thursday.
20/20
was then aired on Thursdays and so, photo in hand, I raced to the studio and we showed the proof that the shah was indeed in the hospital in New York and exactly how ill he looked. I still have the tiny Polaroid photograph.

Twelve days after the hospital meeting, on November 4, 1979, radical Islamic students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took more than fifty Americans hostage. (My photo of the shah had nothing to do with it. The new Iranian government was well aware he was in New York.) The hostages would be held for 444 days and lead Roone to create
Nightline
, hosted by Ted Koppel, to chronicle the crisis. The hostages would finally be released in January 1981, six months after the shah died in Egypt. (I caught the wrath of the fundamentalist government as well, though on a greatly reduced scale. While pillaging the shah’s offices, the revolutionary students found a taped interview I’d done with the shahbanou and declared me persona non grata.)

Another early story for
20/20
was one of the strangest interviews of my career. It took place on a lake in upstate New York in the middle of the night. The subject was Abbie Hoffman, a former anti–Vietnam War activist turned fugitive from the law. Hoffman had been arrested in 1973 for selling three pounds of cocaine, a charge that could have brought him a life sentence. He had jumped bail the next year and been in hiding, under an alias, for six years. In September 1980 he decided to surrender, but in style. Several of his friends had called me in whispered conversations to ask if I would like to meet with Hoffman. It would have to be kept secret until he actually appeared.

His appearance, it turned out, would be at dawn on a lake near the tiny town in which he’d been hiding on the Canadian border. At the appointed hour my camera crew and I were in one boat, waiting, as Hoffman gradually emerged out of the early morning haze in his own boat. It was like a slow-motion dream, all very mysterious and theatrical. I did an interview with him at his hideout on land, in which Hoffman spoke about all the good works he’d done for the local environment while using an assumed name. He obviously thought it would help his case—and it did. He turned himself in the next day and ultimately served two months in prison, followed by ten months in a work-release program at a drug rehabilitation center in New York.

By the time I did that interview,
20/20
had been on the air for two years. It had been doing reasonably well with Hugh as the genial and well-informed host, and his number one correspondent in those days, Geraldo Rivera. Geraldo did strong investigative pieces full of high drama. He and Hugh did a good many outdoor adventure features as well. But Roone evidently felt that the program could do even better if I, instead of just contributing pieces, joined up as Hugh’s cohost. This time I agreed. I wouldn’t be doing the program by myself, and it was time for me to find a “home” at the network. Most important, I was fond of Hugh and knew I would not have another Harry Reasoner experience.

For all our friendship and mutual professional respect, however, Hugh didn’t want me as coanchor. He didn’t want
any
coanchor. He’d been doing the show solo from its outset and, he felt, doing it very successfully. So at first he resisted Roone’s insistence that the show would be better with me there. To his credit, Hugh told me exactly how he felt. But Roone was the boss and Hugh finally agreed. Once he did we never had a bad day.

As with the
Today
show, I did the tough booking of the high-profile guests and Hugh continued to do the kind of lower-key and easygoing but often dangerous features he did so well—very popular features like swimming with sharks, maneuvering a glider, or instructing viewers on how to sail a small boat.

Hugh wanted and got top billing. That was fine with me. (I remembered Bing Crosby’s advice.) Hugh therefore opened the program and I closed it. “We’re in touch, so you be in touch,” was our warm and cozy sign-off. The show was undeniably stronger with the two of us. “I don’t know when I’ve been happier to have been wrong,” Hugh told me.

In time
20/20
became one of ABC’s most successful weekly programs. On occasion we even topped
60 Minutes
in the ratings, although
20/20
, first on Thursdays, then on Fridays, was in a much more competitive time slot.

I also continued to do four prime-time
Specials
a year. They were so time consuming that I wanted to fold them into
20/20
, but they were too popular for ABC to give up. Instead Roone took them away from the entertainment division and put them under ABC News, where they remain to this day. This meant increased revenue in Roone’s budget.

My permanent place on
20/20
and the continued
Specials
meant more hard work. But at long last I felt I could stop auditioning week to week or, more often, day by day.

Things were smoother professionally, but they were more complicated at home.

Heartbreak and a New Beginning

M
Y MOTHER AND MY SISTER
continued to live in Miami after my father died. Their life without my father should have been peaceful, but they were more and more alone, totally dependent on each other, and, I think, frightened as well. My mother worried constantly about what would happen to Jackie when she died. Jackie, I think, worried too, and the unspoken question was whether I would take her to live with me.

I ached, knowing that I just couldn’t do to myself what my sister, unwittingly, had done to my mother. The two women, instead of cherishing each other, constantly argued—tears from Jackie, doors slamming, phone calls to me, each complaining about the other. Their discontent tore at me. One of the problems was their isolation. My mother would not go out without Jackie, which meant she was rarely invited anywhere. Other widows and single women lived in their building in Miami, and I urged my mother to make some coffee, buy some danishes, and invite a few of them to the apartment to watch my
Specials.
She’d reply, “It’s too much effort,” or “They want to play cards,” or “They don’t want to come.” So she and my sister would watch the
Specials
alone.

There’s an old joke that every woman in television knows: You do an interview with the president of the United States and your mother says, “I didn’t really like your hair.” My mother was true to form. But to her credit, she was no stage mother. As proud as she was of me, she never said to friends or acquaintances, “Did you see my daughter on TV last night?” or told me that “so and so wants a picture for her niece.” She never used me to enhance her life.

I did my best, however, to enhance her and Jackie’s life. I visited them whenever I could, and if I went to Florida for work I would try to include them in whatever I was doing. I was a guest on a show Phil Donahue did in Florida, for example, and I took my mother and my sister. They had a wonderful day, and Donahue could not have been kinder to them. I enjoyed opening the world up to them, even if just a little bit.

I also invited them regularly to New York, but that was often a trial. My mother didn’t want to pack and make the trek for less than three weeks. So this meant a stretch of almost a month of hearing them argue and cry, while I became the unwilling referee. They were each right. They were each wrong. And they were both so sad. I hated to come home at the end of the day.

At least we had more room at home. In 1978, thanks to the job at ABC, I bought an apartment on Park Avenue and Sixty-second Street and hired Angelo Donghia, a brilliant and much-sought-after interior designer, to decorate it. Since my old apartment had been so dark, I asked him to make everything white—my bedroom, the living room, everything white. The apartment was lovely and airy and bright, except for the kitchen. The prior owners had painted the kitchen bright orange. It would have taken four coats of white paint to cover it up, and I didn’t want to spend the money. So orange it stayed.

It was the first home I’d ever owned and, the kitchen aside, I loved it. My daughter, Jackie, finally had a proper bedroom, and there were large rooms for Icodel and Zelle. We also had a guest room where my mother and sister slept when they visited.

The high point of everything for my mother was seeing her granddaughter, whom she adored. By 1981 Jackie was entering a very troubled adolescence, but to my mother she could do no wrong. Where some people talk about the problems or complications that may arise with adopted children, I never, ever, heard my judgmental mother say anything but the most wonderful things about Jackie. This was her grandchild. Period.

It was during one of my mother’s visits to see us that she had a terrifying health scare. She woke me up in the middle of the night because she was having difficulty breathing. We rushed her to the hospital to discover that her heart was failing and she had fluid in her lungs. She spent some time in the hospital and eventually recovered, but for a long time she was frail and depressed.

When she was released from the hospital, I couldn’t let her go back to Florida, so I experimented with putting her in what I thought was a nice home for senior citizens in nearby Riverdale, New York. She and my sister had their own little apartment and any supervised care that was needed. The bonus was that the director of the facility found work for my sister at the nursing home on the grounds. Bless him. He told Jackie that she was to be a “secretarial assistant,” and she seemed quite happy spending a few hours a day running errands, filing, whatever she was capable of doing.

I thought this might be a perfect solution for my sister in the future. If anything happened to my mother, Jackie could continue to live in the residence. All her meals were served in the dining room. She had begun to make friends among the women she worked with. She would have a life there and still be close to me. I never discussed this with my mother, but I hoped she would realize the possibilities on her own. She didn’t. My mother disliked the home, and that killed any chance for the conversation to take place. She insisted there was no one there with whom she had the slightest thing in common. What she really wanted to do was live with me and, in retrospect, perhaps I should have found them a small apartment nearby. But then, what would happen to Jackie if my mother died?

Then came the second health scare. My sister had a small lump in her breast, and it turned out to be malignant. My mother and I decided not to tell Jackie she had cancer. The diagnosis would have terrified her. We told her that the lump was harmless but should be taken out. Jackie was fine with that and asked very few questions. I took her to the best doctors to determine the course of treatment. One suggested a mastectomy. Another said a lumpectomy would be just as effective, and there seemed to be growing evidence that that was true. I could not discuss any of this with Jackie. I thought it would have frightened and confused her. My mother left the decision entirely in my hands, so I decided on the lumpectomy.

It was terrifying to hold my sister’s health in my hands. My decision could literally be a matter of life or death for her. To my everlasting relief the treatment worked out. Jackie had the lumpectomy at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the world-renowned cancer center in New York, and followed it up with radiation. The hospital suggested a very fine and understanding radiologist in Riverdale near where Jackie and my mother were living, and my mother took her there every day for the many weeks of the treatment. Things went smoothly and Jackie never realized that she had had breast cancer.

My mother continued to be unhappy in New York, though I suspect she would have been unhappy anywhere. What she saw as the burdens of her life had robbed her of any joy. She had been such a loving mother when I was growing up, and I still loved her dearly, so I kept trying to find things that would give her pleasure. It was a difficult task. One Thanksgiving I put together a dinner at the Friars Club. There were twelve of us at the table: my daughter, some cousins, and a few of my friends who were alone for the holiday. I had bought new dresses for my mother and sister, and they looked lovely. Henny Youngman and Red Buttons, two comedians who were old friends of my father, came over to our table and made a big fuss over my mother. I thought she was having a good time until I suggested that everyone at the table tell the rest of us in turn what he or she was most thankful for. When it came to my mother, she looked around the table and said: “I have nothing to be thankful for.” My heart sank.

My mother missed the warm weather in Florida and, after Jackie’s radiation treatments ended, they returned to Miami. I found them very nice accommodations at a small spalike residence that provided meals and social programs. Jackie loved it and happily attended painting and dancing classes. My mother, too, seemed more or less satisfied.

Although I often thought, when I heard them arguing with each other, that I would never be free, I felt now that perhaps I could relax. But over the next months, when I telephoned my mother, she often seemed disoriented. Sometimes she didn’t recognize my voice or even my name. My sister said Mother was often like that, and spent more and more time in bed. I called Aunt Lena, my mother’s sister, who was still living in Miami Beach, and she confirmed that my mother was forgetting things. She did not even want to get up for meals and seemed to be losing track of time and place. My aunt had been worried but didn’t want to bother me, hoping that my mother would get better on her own.