Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (15 page)

The next trick was to see where these fit into the general scheme of the article, how best to pare them down for space reasons, and ruthlessly to sacrifice those passages that—hilarious though they may be—might appear to have been dragged in out of context. Then I tried to juxtapose the eminently sane, reasonable advice of the memorial societies (“led for the most part by the clergy,” as I sanctimoniously put it) alongside the apoplectic outpourings of the funeral men. A few startling statistics don’t hurt either (again, provided you don’t overdo it) such as the aggregate savings in one year to 250 funeral society members of $75,000.

A word about style. Rereading the first two of these pieces, I note that I did somewhat tailor the writing to what I perceived as the readership. For the
Satevepost
, with its alleged circulation of ten million—always an inhibiting thought to me, those millions of faceless folks!—I see that I adopted a plonking one-two-three approach, setting the scene for the reader with a number of rather obvious rhetorical questions, and proceeding from there to my eminently logical (if self-serving) answers as furnished by the response of the American public to my book.

The piece for
Nova
, then a trendy English glossy mag, is a good bit more relaxed. The clergy have virtually disappeared to be replaced by cocktail party talk. The Nancy Mitford reference, the young English friend who answered my letters, the generally chatty and personal tone would hardly have struck the right note for the
Satevepost
, whose readers would be looking for solid information rather than jokes and anecdotes. (I had written to tell Nancy about the Jessica Mitford Casket. She replied that an American friend of hers had just died and was expected to be buried in a Mitford: “The
on dit
is that you get ten percent royalties.” But her letter came too late to work it into the
Nova
article.)

“ ‘Something to Offend Everyone’ ” was yet another spin-off from
The American Way of Death
. Again I was called in as an expert on mortuary practices, this time by
Show
magazine, who wanted an article on the filming of
The Loved One
. The circumstances were idyllic: M-G-M put me up in the Beverly Hills Hotel, height of Hollywood luxury, for ten days in which I trailed around with the film company. I was to have an “exclusive”; all other reporters (including, to her displeasure, Hedda Hopper) were barred from the set. From time to time, I even fed the film company lines; Liberace, cast as casket salesman, borrowed the one in my
Saturday Evening Post
article about the undertaker explaining the difference between casket linings: “We find rayon is a lot more irritating to the skin.” All this was most gratifying: being in on the ground floor of a Hollywood production, a childhood dream come true. This time I had no inhibitions about the potential readership of the piece;
Show
was a magazine of the theatre and movie world, consequently I felt pleasantly free of constraint in writing it—perhaps a trifle too free? For the editors cut out one of my favorite passages, the morgue man’s reference to “playing grab-ass” with the corpses.

There is a footnote. After the
Show
article appeared, John Calley phoned my husband’s office. “M-G-M has decided to use Jessica’s title ‘Something to Offend Everyone’ as the sole advertising slogan for the film,” he said. “We’d love to send her a present—how is she off for watches?” “Oh, she’s got a watch,” said Bob, which was true; one of those good old-fashioned tick-tocks, a stout timekeeper on a plain but serviceable band. Calley sounded disappointed, and murmured that he’d been looking at some very nice diamond watches in Cartier.

“I could have bitten my tongue off,” Bob told me later. “How could I face you with this awful lapse of judgment on my part?” But, making swift recovery, he had deftly replied to Calley “... but she is fresh out of brooches.” Calley said that was a great idea, and what is her favorite color? “Blue-white,” said Bob, now fully on top of the situation.

In the course of time a lovely little diamond brooch, shaped something like a funeral wreath, arrived from Tiffany—the only piece of real jewelry I possess, a valued (and valuable) memento of my brief sojourn in Filmland.

DON’T CALL IT SYPHILIS

McCALL’S /
September, 1965

Scene:
Blair General Hospital. Mr. Novak, teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School, enters an isolation room where Paul, a student, is recovering from a suicide attempt
.

MR. NOVAK:
Anything I can get you?

PAUL:
Not a thing. What’re you doing here?

MR. NOVAK:
I had a feeling you might need a friend today
.

PAUL:
You know something, Mr. Novak? I’ve got syphilis
.

What is Mr. Novak doing in Dr. Kildare’s hospital? Why have Novak and Kildare fans never seen this enacted on television?

“A hopeful view of relief from their dangerous malady might be more welcome to the half-million persons in the United States who acquire this disease each year than the veiled obscenity permitted by Columbia in the vaudeville acts of certain of their commercial programs.”

These angry words which today, perhaps because of their forthrightness, have a slightly old-fashioned ring, were uttered in 1934 by Dr. Thomas Parran, Jr., then New York State Commissioner of Public Health. Because it contained the words “syphilis control,” a radio talk he was to give on venereal disease had just been banned by the Columbia Broadcasting System. CBS explained the position: “In deciding what is proper for us to broadcast we must always bear in mind that broadcasting reaches persons of widely varying age levels and reaches them in family and social groups of almost every conceivable assortment. We do not believe that it is either wise or necessary to discuss and sometimes to mention some things....”

Three years later Dr. Parran tried again, this time in the capacity of Surgeon General of the United States, to which office he had been appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. He prepared a speech on the rising incidence of syphilis, particularly among young people, to be given over the NBC radio network by General Hugh S. Johnson. Johnson arrived at the studio, script in hand; three minutes before broadcast time, NBC officials decided to ban the speech. NBC explained it this way: “While the broadcasting company is in sympathy with the objective of the war against V.D., it finds itself unable to contribute to this campaign without seriously embarrassing the family group.” Which moved Dr. Parran to comment, “Nice people don’t talk about syphilis, nice people don’t have syphilis, and nice people shouldn’t do anything about those who do have syphilis.”

In 1964 history repeated itself. Meanwhile, both broadcasting and venereal disease had made enormous strides: two popular NBC television entertainment programs were reaching approximately sixty million viewers, most of them young people, and venereal infection had risen to the appalling figure of an estimated three thousand
new
cases each day, the steepest rise being among teen-agers. The Surgeon General’s Office put these two facts together and proposed that a two-part fictional episode about the dangers of syphilis, designed to reach schoolchildren as well as their parents and teachers, should be given on the
Mr. Novak
and
Dr. Kildare
programs.

The M-G-M producers in Hollywood, who make the films for both programs, were enthusiastic about the idea; and so, at first, were the NBC officials in New York who have the final say about what goes over the air. The two-part script entitled “The Rich Who Are Poor” was written by E. Jack Neuman, a topflight TV writer who won the Peabody Award as executive producer of the
Mr. Novak
program. Then, just as production was about to start, NBC suddenly canceled the project.

This time NBC’s official explanation was longer and murkier. Speaking for the network, Mr. Robert D. Kasmire told the newspapers, “All who took part in the decision recognize the seriousness of the problem of venereal disease, especially among young people. In addition, the subject was not held to be inappropriate for television. In support of both these points, I should like to point out that NBC personnel cooperated closely over many weeks with the producing organization with a view toward arriving at a treatment of the subject that would be consistent with the needs of an all-family audience. Out of this effort and, of course, the extraordinary talent of the writer came a skilled and sensitive treatment for our consideration. In the final determination, however, it was felt that passages within the story, considered by all concerned to be essential to development of plot and theme, made it inappropriate for such a program as
Mr. Novak
, and we decided not to proceed.”

From which it is apparent that the gentle art of double-talk has also forged ahead mightily since the thirties.

Stunned and angry, the Surgeon General’s Office and the National Education Association, whose experts had worked closely with the writer for many months to guarantee technical accuracy of the script, urged NBC to reconsider. When Val Adams broke the story in
The New York Times
, scores of medical groups, clergymen, and educators joined in the appeal. The network’s only response was to reissue Kasmire’s statement and to declare the matter was closed.

What brought on the sudden fit of nerves that led to cancellation of this patently worthwhile and constructive public service project? What sort of reasoning went into the decision? Was NBC really reflecting the wishes of the viewing public when it decided to abandon the two-part drama? And was the public interest (or, as Kasmire put it, “the needs of an all-family audience”) really served? What were the “essential” yet “inappropriate” passages in the story? To find some answers, I read the banned script and talked with those most closely connected with the incident: the writer, his collaborators at M-G-M, public health workers, and NBC’s Official Explainer.

The script of “The Rich Who Are Poor” is innocuous in the extreme, relying as it does on the tried-and-true formulas of this sort of television play. It is a simple moral tale involving tender young romantic love, a lapse into transgression followed by inevitable retribution, a hint of happier days to come. The stock characters are all there—the financially rich yet emotionally impoverished parents (whence the title), the sensitive but confused teen-agers, the decent but worried teachers trying to muddle through to some sort of understanding of the adolescent mind.

Briefly, the plot is this: Mr. Novak notices that one of his best students, eighteen-year-old Paul Stribling, seems out of sorts and nervous. He questions Paul—has he been spending too much time with his steady girl friend Joyce? Is he eating properly? Anything wrong?—but gets nowhere. Meanwhile Paul’s mother, who has also noticed that he seems unwell, has sent him for a checkup to Dr. Quayle, the Stribling family physician. Dr. Quayle comes to see Paul at school and tells him he has syphilis. Quayle lectures him: “I suggest you plan on behaving yourself. If you were my boy, I’d take you to the woodshed,” but assures him that “I’m going to keep it strictly between us, Paul. I’m doing this out of respect for your father and mother.” Paul, shocked and horrified, tries to commit suicide. He is next seen being brought into Dr. Kildare’s hospital, where he is treated for an overdose of barbiturates and where a routine blood test reveals his disease to Kildare and Dr. Gillespie.

The doctors explain to Paul that while syphilis is extremely dangerous it can easily be cured if treated early enough. Dr. Gillespie gives Quayle a dressing-down for failing to report Paul’s case to the health department. Dr. Kildare urges Paul to tell the names of girls from whom he might have caught syphilis—or to whom he might have given it—so that they in turn can be reached and treated. Paul admits to having had relations with two casual acquaintances and after much inner conflict tells Joyce (“a nice girl, not like those other girls”) that he may have infected her. While there is no happy ending, we gather that Paul has learned much from his unfortunate experience.

The viewing audience also would have learned much. Within the familiar framework of the “family entertainment program” the writer has skillfully managed to weave in a great deal of basic information about syphilis. All of the important facts emerge in the development of the story: how the disease is transmitted, how it is cured; the consequences of untreated syphilis (it may lead to insanity and death); the inadequacy of present medical-school training in syphilology; the importance of questioning the patient as to possible sources of infection, and the dereliction of many private doctors in this regard; how public health departments work to break the chain of infection.

The merit of this approach to V.D. education seems self-evident: how much more palatable to tune in to
Dr. Kildare
, to hear that attractive and earnest young man explain these facts, than to read the same thing in a government pamphlet or even to hear it in a speech given by a health educator on the educational channel.

The conception (you’ll excuse the expression), birth, development, and premature demise of the screenplay was poignantly described to me by the writer and the producers who had hopefully nurtured it over many months.

Apparently the suggestion for such a program came simultaneously from a number of public health centers. The Surgeon General’s Office approached David Victor, producer of
Kildare
, suggesting an episode that would call attention to the epidemic of V.D. among fourteen- to twenty-year-olds. About the same time, the New York Department of Public Health wrote to E. Jack Neuman with a similar proposal for the
Novak
show.

“I began fishing around, and visited several high-school principals and some of the Los Angeles Health Department workers,” said Neuman. “To a man, they told me what a frightful thing this is, what a devastating effect it is having emotionally and academically on uncounted numbers of teen-agers. They began plying me with facts and material—exciting, dramatic material.”