This is Tuesday, July 30th 2002. And we are here at the A SU visitor
Information center uh doing a his uh interview for the Arizona State
University Retirees Association uh Living history video project. And I'd
like to have you introduce yourself. So we get your name pronounced
correctly for posterity. OK. Nick Salerno or formerly Nicholas Andrews
Salerno.
And what years were you at A SU I go back to 1953
because I was an undergrad student here first. So I have a B A from
Arizona State College, an ma from Arizona State University
and then started teaching in 1962
and retired in 1991.
So I had 33 years in all Don Dots and I were classmates,
we interviewed him.
Then you go back even further. I'd like to start at the very beginning and
ask you when and where you were born? OK. Chicago, Illinois, the son of
Italian immigrants, I'm first generation American grew up actually
speaking Sicilian before I ever spoke English. And my father with as
little English as he knew, taught me to read English from the newspapers.
I tracked World War I I across the headlines and that's how I learned to
read English. Even before I got to school. I thought that was remarkable
for immigrant to be able to do that for his Children were born 1936 June
21st, the first day of summer, it was Flag Day and it was Father's Day. It
became a very memorable day altogether.
My father was so excited over having his first son. He got sick. He had a
nervous breakdown. I'm serious. He was in bed two weeks longer than my
mother,
Italian fathers for you. So how many Children were there in two? And I'm
the only son, one sister. And we lived in Chicago until 1948. Moved here
for my father's health in those days. If you had asthma, you came to
Arizona because the air was still clean. Um Did you hear stories about how
your parents came to America? Oh, sure. I know the whole thing. And I
spend approximately four months a year now in Italy and most of it in a
little town called Prizzi, you may remember a novel in a film called
Prizzi's Honor. That's the town except it's only a family name in the
novel in the film. But I interviewed Condon the author and I asked him how
he had ever chosen that name. He said he wanted to talk to somebody, he
wanted to choose a name that nobody had ever heard of. So I said, well, I
got news for you. My parents were both born there. He was dumbstruck. Just
dumbstruck. Why did they come to America? Uh, because it was the land of
opportunity. Uh, for a while, I'm told that my father kept putting money
away to go back. He thought he would make his fortune here and go back.
And after I was born, he told my mother that there was no point in going
back that we could never accomplish as much in Italy. The Children could
never accomplish as much in Italy as they could in the States. So that was
the end of it. They never thought about going back again. You're telling
us about learning English um and learning to read and talk a little bit
more about growing up in, in Chicago when you were young. Well, I was
really uh we lived in a tenement. Uh It's hard to believe, but the first
live animal I saw was a rat in the alley. It was that kind of an
environment not us. My mother was so meticulous. We had a grocery store,
we lived in the back of the grocery store, pot bellied stoves in two of
the rooms to warm the place. I used to actually check out customers when I
was perhaps seven years old. My father worked in a hat factory. My mother
took care of the store. My mother got two after she got uh Tuesday night
and Sunday afternoon. Off and we went to the movies and we saw double
features and she learned English, she learned English at the movies. I
learned to think that what was on the screen was real life. I was in for a
surprise later on. But, but II, I tell people I grew up in the dark when
they ask me how I know what I know about the movies. It's not like uh I
mean, it's been my whole life.
The earliest movies that first scene I can remember is Lassie jumping out
of a second story window and breaking her leg on the way home to Roddy
mcdowell and The Wizard of Oz. But The Wizard of Oz you see came out in 39
I couldn't remember it. So it must have been a reissue later on. I
remember seeing Snow White on its initial release. No, again, that had to
be re released because that was 37 Kit Carson, South of Pango, Pango. You
name it? I saw, it was remarkable to live in Chicago. I think looking back
now, I saw British films that great expectations in the Red Shoes. A
Russian film called The Long March about Stalingrad and I mull it over.
And what must my mother have made of those films because she could barely
read English. And these, you know, are subtitled. But we saw four movies a
week together.
A unique childhood memory. I was quite,
I still have the dishes Tuesday night was dish night at the movies and
they gave you a dish. It's a set. It's made by Lee Pottery. It's called
Maroon Emperor's Gold and it has 24 karat gold on it. And I have most of
the set.
I'm not going to have 12 people over to dinner any time soon. But I have
this complete set of 12 of this rather valuable collector's item. Now,
Tuesday night was dish. So that's probably why she arranged it that way.
Well, that's probably why Tuesday and we had vaudeville still. I mean,
it's hard for me to believe. I actually saw vaudeville. But yes. And then
we go downtown and see the stage shows that preceded the films and who
would be on stage, Frank Sinatra or Perry Como or Milton Burl. I mean,
hard to believe it's a long time that long ago. But it is.
Um, are there any other childhood stories you wanna share with us in, in
Chicago? And then we'll bring you to Arizona. How about school? Um, did
you speak good English by the time you started school? Yes, I did. Well,
you're gonna edit this. Right. Uh,
I don't want to sound like bragging is my problem. I mean, I could tell
you stories about school. I mean, I skipped two grades.
Ok. Ok. Well, um, let's go back to my father who could barely read English
, teaching me to read English before I got to school. You would not think
that that son of that father would end up an English professor or do that
well in school. But I skipped the second grade and the fifth grade for
that reason, I was basically a social misfit all of my elementary school
because I was always physically further behind everybody else. I don't
regret it a bit. I was told I was a real troublemaker in school because I
got bored so fast. There was one teacher who was always pulling my hair,
they could do those things then. And it took uh finally the uh fourth
grade teacher who caught on and she set up a bookcase in the back of the
room, put me in the last seat in the first row and said, you just read all
day. Don't pay any attention to what's going on in class. And I just went
on from there.
I've been singularly blessed all the way through. Even phd work. I had
teachers who were interested in me except for the one who pulled my hair.
I had teachers who were interested in me always. I don't know if I hope
there's that kind of dedication still today between teachers and students.
But I don't know the public schools anymore. Pretty much. You were in an
Italian neighborhood. You went to the public schools. I was first in an
all Italian neighborhood. And then we moved to the west side, we sold the
grocery store and moved to the west side and I was in an all Jewish
neighborhood on a typical Jewish holiday. There were quite literally seven
kids in school, me and six girls. So that, um, my ethnic tastes, if
they're not Italian are generally Jewish, I can tell you as much about
Jewish food or as Italian food. Although there were, it was a, a Syrian
population too and, uh, eating grape leaves at eight years old, stuffed
grape leaves is probably unusual for a non Middle Easterner, but I take
Middle Eastern food for granted too. Chicago was that kind. At least my
part of Chicago was that kind of an environment.
I look back at it and seems kind of glorious. But that's because I had
such wonderful parents, I think because I know that we didn't, we weren't
poor for sure, but we didn't have money either. I never sensed it. I never
sensed it. Not for a second. What was it you growing up during World war
two? The younger years? Sure. Um, we had a Victory Garden.
I still have a ration book.
There were certain products that were rationed tires, anything made out of
rubber, canned goods. Sugar
can't remember what else right now. But you had to have a ration book and
each book had so many stamps of a certain color blue was canned food. So
if you didn't have a stamp left, you couldn't get the product. Now we had
a grocery store. So it didn't much matter, but people would change stamps.
There were families that didn't eat canned fruit but they needed tires
and they would find a family without a car and exchange their, their books.
We had paper drives, we would, uh, get a baby buggy, borrow somebody's
baby buggy and go door to door and collect the newspapers for the drive.
Uh, each house had a, uh, generally an empty coffee can on the stove
whenever you were done cooking whatever you collected the grease and
poured it into the coffee can when the coffee can was full, you took it to
the, the butcher and that went to making, that was, you know, uh, like
petroleum that went to making whatever went to making rubber. For the most
part, I was told, uh, I, I don't remember
sensing that there was a war on, uh, until towards the end of it when I
had, I asked one day why that house had, uh, a little flag with a star in
the window and was told that the son had died. And then I remember looking
around the neighborhood and there were lots of families that had sons who
had died and had the flags up. And then they built a flagpole in the
neighborhood and put them down at the bottom. A, uh, a stone with the name
of all the names of all the, the men who had died in the war. I remember
Roosevelt dying, but I was happy in a way because school was dismissed. I
had no real feeling for who Roosevelt was but school was dismissed. So we
had a holiday. Uh even somehow the memories of World War Two turn into uh
you know, pleasant trees in their own way except for the flag in the
window. I remember that very well. We also put signs in the window for ice.
There was a four sided sign had a different number on each side. 1020 etc
and you put it up. If you put up the 10, you wanted £10 of ice delivered.
We didn't have a refrigerator. A few people did. So you had ice boxes or
as Italians called them boxes.
Uh We had ice delivered. There were those signs in the window. There were
men who came,
you could purchase just about everything off of a cart on the street. The
vegetable man came, the egg lady delivered eggs to your house. There was
the milkman milk in glass bottles where the cream rose to the top.
It was different. You said your, your family had a grocery store. Did you
help and work in the store too? I I did check, check in or what do you
call it now? Check out, I guess cashier, right? What actually what I would
do is because of my memory when you went into a grocery store, it was all
behind the counter. So you would ask, I want this, I want this. It was all
put down on the counter. Then I would take the things and tell my mother
17 cents and put it over here because I knew the prices of everything on
the shelves. To that extent, I did work in the grocery store. Why did your
family get rid of the grocery store?
We didn't need it in a sense. They had made enough money to buy two homes
on west side, Chicago.
And so we moved to the west side. My father was still working. I mean, he
worked, he was a cutter in a hat factory. So he was still working. But my
mother finally wasn't working. The store was open from 7 to 11 in the days
before we had stores called 7 to 11. And, uh, we gave credit. I don't know
if stores give credit anymore to anybody. Uh, customers would run up a tab
and at the end of the month, most of them would pay it. Some of them
wouldn't, but they didn't need the stores anymore.
So that must have changed your lifestyle somewhat. In CRE we even got a
refrigerator when we moved. Uh, it was a big event when that refrigerator
was a Westinghouse, came in the door, kept the ice box in the basement
still for overflow. My father made wine. He had, I mean, a gigantic wine
press with a thing like this at the top and you poured all the grapes in
and uh we had barrels of wine, which strikes me as amusing because none of
nobody in the family drank any wine. I think it was just for company. Uh
uh company drank it. Uh Sometimes it all turned to vinegar and we'd have,
everybody in the whole neighborhood would have vinegar for three years
after that. I remember that in the basement there would be hanging salamis
and cheeses and things of that sort. I really did have a very
stereotypical Italian upbringing except that I loved going to school. I
thought a lot about Martin Scorsese, the movie director who has exactly
the same kind of history that I do. Sicilian American parents. Sicilian
parents, first generation. He grew up in New York and I grew up in Chicago
with alley rats, but his view of the world is so dark, whereas mine is
still so bright. I wonder what made the difference? I did meet him once,
but it was in an interview situation. So I didn't want to ask him that,
but I've been very curious about what turned him, what makes him see the
world so darkly now, theoretically, I look at the world as he does or he
ought to look at it as I do. But we, we live in, in opposite parts in two
different ends of America as, as near as I can tell. Maybe it was you
coming to Arizona? Well, that I was 11 then. So, you know, I was formed
already. Well, tell me what, what was that like, what did you think at 11
when your family said they were gonna leave Chicago and come out into a,
I think, uh, I, I don't remember too much, actually. I don't remember
feeling I should or shouldn't. But when I got, when we got here, we lived
in central Phoenix 14th Street in Roosevelt.
I remember walking. I, it sounds odd but since I was, you know, 11 years
old, but I would walk as much of the day as I could, looking at the sky
high. I could not believe that skies were blue that there was sun, that
there were actually oranges growing on trees. Although most of the oranges
then were those decorative sour oranges. Uh I was in the days over
the
what we would now call the environment and how clean the environment was.
I didn't have the vocabulary to say that, but I, I really literally would
walk around like this, looking at the sky and the trees and the sun. What
time of the year did you come here? March March of 1948 I went to Whittier
school for three months and then Edison opened. And so I got switched to
Edison for one year and then to Phoenix Union from there. Still, if you
show me one of those sour oranges with the funny skin, I'm 11 years old
again and I can smell the air and see the sun. What did you think when it
got to be summer? I love the heat. I, I think I must have loved it then.
We only had swamp coolers. Uh We, my, my parents bought four little frame
houses on the corner of 14th Street in Roosevelt. We rented three and
lived in one. The total income was 100 and $80 a month. My father could no
longer work. He was too ill from asthma. So the houses were the, the
income and uh we had two swamp coolers, one that they each blew straight
down one half of the house in the days when you had to change the straw
every year and wrap the straw in cheese cloth. Now you buy that stuff
already made or they don't even use that anymore. I don't know. But then
we'd have to change it. Um, I don't remember feeling it was especially hot.
I'm sure it was uh for heating. Even in that house, we had a little floor
gas heater, but I don't remember ever being cold. I look back at childhood
and it seems golden. And again, I have to blame it so to speak on my
mother and father because whatever problems I now realize they had
financially. I never sensed it. I was somehow, never allowed to sense it.
Did you ever work for, for money for a short time in the summers? There
was
a furniture company or two or three furniture companies owned by Alfonso
Garcia, but the stores weren't called Garcia as one was called. At least
not at first made, man. You remember quality furniture or Garcia's
furniture. They lived right across the street from us. Yes. Exactly.
Exactly. I worked at quality furniture. Sanding furniture wasn't very good
at it. I mean, you give me a table that started with a flat top and when I
was done it looked like this. But Mister Garcia didn't say too much about
it and he paid me whatever it was. I was paid that. I also worked at a
credit bureau. Another neighbor across street opened the first credit bill
collector, bill collection agency in Phoenix. And I was their errand boy.
I remember that they would send me on errands and I had a bicycle and this
time I do remember a heat story in the middle of the summer. The store was
, the shop was right where Phoenix Union was Taylor and Third Street or
something like that. Told me to take this delivery over to some place near
the state fairgrounds
in July or August. I got on the bicycle and started this trek over there,
but halfway over realized this was not any fun, stopped and got a drink
out of some hose from some house, turned around, drove back, threw it on
the desk and said I quit. Uh, so I, I guess I do have a heat story to tell
you. I do remember that. Uh, I never worked anywhere else though, just at
the furniture company and the credit bureau. Interestingly enough. Now,
the people who own that credit bureau. Oh, I did babysit. I did a lot of
babysitting. I babysit. I babysat the two Children in that credit bureau.
Now they went to Rome in the early sixties they went to, but first they
went to Israel, they lived in the kibbutz but the Children didn't like it.
So they went to Italy, they never came back, they came back actually only
to sell the house. And then they've lived in Italy in Rome all that time
when I go to Rome. Now I have the use of the apartment. Any time the
Children that I babysat are in their sixties now,
the long since dead and they have owned all that time, an English language
bookstore right in the center of Rome. It was the only one when they
opened that. Now, there's lots of competition from international chains
that specialize in English books. But that friendship goes all the way
back to 1948. Was that a lot different when you came to move to Phoenix?
You were used to growing up in Italian neighborhoods and you said you
moved to a Jewish neighborhood, but Phoenix was a whole different kind of
neighborhood, wasn't it? Yes, I had never thought about that. Well, it, it
wasn't an ethnic neighborhood of any sort.
I mean, I could tell you I can still tell you who all the neighbors were
and probably what nationalities they represented. But it wasn't, it was an
American neighborhood. It wasn't an enclave in the middle of a larger city.
I did know a few Italian kids, but I knew as many Hispanics and Polish
Children and Middle Eastern Children as anything else. It was, it was
definitely an integrated American neighborhood. What about the theaters
here? Did you, you said your mother really loves going to the movies. Did
you continue that when you move? Uh I, I was too old to go to the movie
with my mother. By that time, my mother continued to go to the movies on
Monday afternoons. She would cook, uh she would make chicken soup and take
off and go downtown and she, we didn't have a checking account. So she
would go to the one by one to the utilities and pay the bills and then she
would go to the Woolworths at the corner of Washington and
Central 1st, 1st. Yes, first and have a hot dog and then go to the movies
. I went to the movies on Saturdays when school was out and I would
frequently see six features in a day. I would just go from one theater to
another. I could probably, I can still tell you in which movie theater in
Phoenix I saw which film our um first film I saw in Arizona was, uh, you
were meant for me with Janie Crane and then it was High Wall with Robert
Taylor and neither one of them distinguished movies. But yes, I continued
, I was already, without even knowing that I was already stuck in the
movie going or out. You know, a lot of people that we've interviewed,
talked about their memories of the theaters in, in Phoenix, the movie
theaters and movie theaters. How did, what did you think of them as
compared to where you were from in Chicago? Well, only on rare occasions
that I get to go to a big theater downtown in Chicago. So uh they our
local movie theaters were comfortable up but nothing special. But the, the
Orphe and the Fox here were particularly impressive because they had
incredibly, the orpheum still has the original murals. But the Fox and the
Orphans had skies that moved, there were stars and clouds that were
constantly circulating above you. I mean, these were really movie palaces.
Uh they were, they were, but there were dinky movie theaters too, like the
Rialto and the Strand and the Ramona and the Rex, there was another
interesting theater on Central Avenue, the vista, uh not terribly big but
very nicely put together. Uh Once it booked The Sound of Music, The Sound
of Music ran three years in that theater and it changed the whole makeup
of movie theater business in Phoenix because movie theaters until then
changed their program three times a week, there was a Sunday, Monday, a
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then a Friday, Saturday and two features.
Once The Sound of Music did what it did not only at the vista locally but
nationally, the pattern for movie exhibition changed all over the country.
Sound of Music is single handedly responsible for that. Or I could take
if I wanted two buses transfer, there were two bus lines, the metropolitan
and the city and I could take the metropolitan to one point and transfer
to a city bus and go up north central to the Palms Theater, which was the
really elegant theater. And they always showed MGM movies and I was in
love with Elizabeth Taylor very early. So I would have taken six or seven
buses if I'd had to, to find an Elizabeth Taylor movie. But fortunately
only two were necessary and how far you have to go well, uh to just short
of Thomas, I guess it's, it was on Virginia and you, isn't that south of
Thomas, right? Uh Which today is not north at all. No, not at all. I
didn't have a bike. Uh when I got a bike, then I just biked it. And then
of course, I got into high school and I felt I was too important to ride a
bike. So then I would take the bus everywhere. You know, kids get these
even kids can get be snobbish and uh I was too old. I would not go to the
theater with my mother anymore and I wouldn't ride the bike anymore. I
would do something like bike, take the bus. I also remember how important
it was for me when, um, I was, um, student correspondent to the Republic
for the, uh, for Phoenix Union, I remember we were paid five cents an inch
for the stories. And I remember also making up to $50 a month at times
until the management got upset because I was making so much money and
Phoenix Union was getting all the coverage in the paper that they limited
me. But as soon as I had money like that, I would, uh, instead of bringing
my lunch to the ca to campus, I would eat in the cafeteria and that was a
big step up for an Italian kid. Uh, my freshman year I wasn't doing that.
And at Phoenix Union, two people would share lobster lockers
and there was this very nice but very American boy who one day took my
lunch by mistake and I ended up with his, well, I didn't know when I
opened and found I had a cheese sandwich that was ok for me, but he opened
his and found an eggplant sand, eggplant Parmesan sandwich. He didn't
quite know what to do what, he didn't know what it was when we finally met
again later in the day. Uh, he went lunch less that day. Uh, but when I
got to eat in the cafeteria I had made it, this was American.
Tell me about the schools when you came here. What grade were you in?
Seventh grade, seventh grade and the eighth grade at Edison. And I can
remember the, uh the moment in fact that I became an English teacher. Our
eighth grade teacher was a woman named Lucille Tuy Touhy. She read us
Lamb's tales from Shakespeare. She got to the Winter's tale, which is not
a good play at all. But it has the husband has, has falsely, has assumed
wrongly that his wife has been cheating on him. So he decides to have her
killed, but she doesn't get killed. She is spirited off and hidden until
he finally sees the light of day and realize she's innocent, but it's too
late. And then he's told that they have uh created a statue
so that he will always be able to see his wife. And then when he goes to
see the statue, it's actually his wife and she starts moving and play has
a happy ending. But when that statue came to life, I became an English
teacher. I was just so entranced with this happy ending based on uh this
trick of telling him he's going to see a sculpture and then it ends up
being his wife from then on, I was an English teacher. It doesn't sound
like the kind of thing we do. Well, she read every single one of the plot.
She was a remarkable teacher. So, is school a lot different from Chicago?
Well, I don't know how to explain this but it was a lot easier in Chicago
. I knew that I could be the best but I had to work at it. I got here and
maybe it was because everybody else was interested in the outdoors. I
could, I could just coast through and get A's without it. It was simple.
It was almost simple minded. I don't know, maybe it wasn't that maybe I
had just learned better study skills. I'm not sure when I went to high
school, there were very few West High opened when I was a freshman, there
was a Phoenix Union and North High ST Mary's Catholic School. Phoenix Tech
for those who didn't feel they wanted a liberal arts education. Phoenix
was segregated, there was Carver High School for the blacks. Carver did
not close until 1953.
The closing of that and the first black white dance at a high school in
Phoenix was so big an event that it made Look Magazine. There was an
article on it in Look Magazine because Phoenix had finally seen the light
and had been willing to take the risk of putting white and black Children
together at a high school dance and nothing untoward had happened. Uh
There were very few high schools, others all came after that. Phoenix
Union had uh 5000 students. It was one of the top 10 in size in the
country. We had a graduating class of over 1000 in 1953.
So, what year did you start? High school? 49 the fall of 49 and finish in
the spring of 53.
I was in the mask too. I was in the mask. Mask of the yellow moon was a,
uh, an outdoor pageant about the history of Arizona. Every year. A
different part of the history of Arizona was, was dramatized. Although
that's a strange word to use because it was scheduled in Montgomery
stadium in the football stadium so that everything was orchestrated so
that it could make sense if you were, you know, half a mile away from what
was going on down there. The woman was named Cordelia Perkins. She was the
founder of the mask and it didn't much survive her death. But I was a
pilgrim one year. I was a cowboy another year. Uh I was in a three years.
I don't remember the third year. I did a little bit of, of dramatics in
high school. I did a little dramatics in uh in, in elementary school. Now
, don't laugh when I say this because it always comes out wrong and it's
not meant to be a dirty joke. But
in elementary school we did Hansel and Gretel, the Humperdink opera. Our
room was assigned the trees in the forest. So I became a pine tree. I held
a pine tree. Now I was the only tree that had a woodpecker on it. And now
whenever I tell that story, people always crack up, but I don't know how
else to tell, tell the story. I was a really special tree because I had
this red bird pasted on me. I played George Washington in elementary
school. I only remember that one recently but in high school I played
pretty boy Floyd the Gangster. But basically high school was journalism
for me. I was editor of the yearbook on the newspaper for many years. I
ask you what your favorite subject was? English. But I didn't have a non
favorite subject. Oh, yes, I did. Algebra. The teacher was wonderful, Mrs
Brecker Baumer. And she worked as hard as I did for me to get my a but
algebra did not come easy for me. Geometry was ok. That was more fun. But
algebra, it's not that I didn't like it. I just couldn't do it. I didn't
really much care about the storekeeper who had coffee at two different
prices and was going to mix them up and you had to figure out how much he
should sell it for. I couldn't get into that or two trains coming from
different directions and how, when would they meet? And you know, at 66
now nobody's ever asked me about the price of coffee. It's just never come
up once grocery store that would have been, but we never mixed coffee, our
coffee was pure grade.
You knew all the prices. Phoenix. If it wasn't for that part of algebra,
the word, the word problems, the word problems. Right. I could figure them
out but they were so dumb. I just couldn't make any sense out of why we
were doing. This. Phoenix Union was very big though. And you could study
anything you wanted. But I was in the Mass June. Yes. Did you go to
Phoenix Union? Well, they were in the mask too. It was city wide.
You mightn't have been in it but the mask was city wide. Each school was
assigned a certain, a certain part of it. Well, Manny is too young, I
think, I think by the time I got
Manny is too young for it.
I have very extensive scrapbooks for all of my high school years. I have
all the programs from the Mask and the plays. Eventually I'll give them to
this Phoenix Union Society. But since they don't have, uh, a place for
them, I'm holding on to them until I hope they get some stability.
That's a good idea. June. I hadn't thought of that because I have all
sorts of,
but I do have to find a place for them as U is taking all my scrapbooks
from the ASU years. I'm annotating them now because I've got so much of a
U history in them. But the Phoenix Union ones are older and the Phoenix
History Museum might, well, be the place for it
to
senior year, 1953 time to start applying. It was never a possibility that
I would go out of State. I don't think I applied to go out of state. I
mean, we just couldn't afford it. In fact, I wouldn't be able to go to
college. Probably if I hadn't had my way paid through. I, uh, my father
died, um,
when I was a freshman in college. And this is an example of what the
mentality of the family was. Like. The last person my father spoke to was
my sister and he said, make sure Nicky finishes college. Those were his
last words. That was what the whole family emphasis was on. So in high
school, I applied for money to a SU and one, what was then the most
prestigious scholarship that a su had the Phelps Dodge scholarship. So I
was put through, I never paid, I never paid a cent for any of my college
education from B A right through through phd. Uh, that was the only really
that it's, it was the scholarship that had the most money attached to it.
It was, I think 1500 a year. And that was a lot of money in 1953. And I
went straight through on that. Uh, I, I, my first trip to campus, I took a
bus from Phoenix. It dropped me off on Mill on Seventh Street. I walked
down Seventh street towards college, that street with all houses and I can
still see it. I don't even have to close my eyes to see it. Gigantic trees
that nearly met. That seventh street is pretty wide. But those trees came
like this and shaded that whole street. There's hardly any of it left now.
Maybe that portion where tricks is today. But that was a beautiful street.
Uh We, uh and that was for the inter interview interview part of the test.
And I remember being interviewed by uh Herbert Stony who was in biology,
the, the professor who became internationally famous for what was called
the um ligature cryotherapy method of curing of, of uh preventing people
from dying from snake bites. It had to do with cutting, not cutting, it
had to do with freezing to keep the poison from spreading. I was
interviewed by Stankey Jo Grimes who was the head of the College of
Education, Dorothy Schilling, who was in the English Department.
HD Richardson who was vice president then. And the fifth one, I can't ever
remember somehow that one name escapes me. May I tell you a Dorothy
Schilling story or two Dorothy Schilling was probably in all my education.
The best teacher I ever had uh
an old maid. That's what we were, they were called a incredibly, I had her
for both undergraduate and graduate work, incredibly
probing in the sense that your exams for her were not answers but
questions now that you've studied, for instance, all the poetry of John
Dunn. If you were given the money to do research on him, what problems
would you attack? That was the kind of question she had, she was funny,
brilliant beyond belief. OK, English building right now, the university
club then had an outside stairway that was attached on one of the
departmental members and I won't mention his name. He, he drank a lot. Um
on and off campus, Schilling was very formal. Miss Schilling was always
Miss Schilling. Incidentally, you wouldn't even when I became colleagues,
I never would have called her Dorothy, my God to call me Schilling,
Dorothy. So Miss Schilling is making her way down the outer stairway and
the other professor is at the bottom, we'll call him Mister Smith and the
Goodyear blimp just happens to be at that moment above the fountain. You
know, they're in front of old man, et cetera. So Mr Smith decides to tease
Miss Schilling. She gets to the bottom and he says, Miss Schilling there
is a flying saucer above campus. She says that's very interesting, Mister
Smith and I was there. I mean, I saw this on my own. Doesn't skip, doesn't
step up. It keeps moving steadily. Very interesting, Mister Smith. But
Miss Schilling there may be some little men in it.
Pray do not let them land here, Mister Smith. There are enough little men
on this campus already.
I think that's so classic.
Remind the Churchill story. It's like just pray. Do not let them hand here
, Mr Smith. I went into her office once when I was already teaching and uh
she summoned me. You went to Miss Chili when she summoned you. Even if you
were faculty member, we were actually close friends that I took that kind
of a chair and I turned the back to her and I straddled it and my pants
split up the back.
So I got up and I, she didn't know what had happened. I got up but I said
, I have to excuse myself. And here I am backing towards the door and she
says, whatever is the matter. And I said my pants just split. She said,
sit down, you'll be as safe here as you will anywhere.
That's what she was like.
First time I saw her buying a loaf of bread at a grocery store. I couldn't
believe it. I didn't think that the Gods bought stuff at the grocery store
and she taught 17 th century British poetry.
How long she was here forever. She was chair during World War. I, I most
of the men were drafted or like I think Mac Myers worked as a code breaker
during World War Two and she was the first I believe Dorothy Schilling was
the first female head of any department ever on campus. But that was only
by default because of the, the Warriors. So she was here somewhere you
know, in the forties and retired somewhere in the seventies. You did too.
Yeah, she sounds like she was legendary. She was, but there were, there
were some, there were such great teachers around here, John Ratliffe. J
Montague Mac Myers, Louis Taylor and Dave Conlin. So, when you came to a
su what was your major at that time? I, uh, journalism, I did a double
major in journalism and history and, um, journalism in English and a minor
in history. I, I was enrolled in the College of education. I got a B A in
education and, uh, then an ma in English later I, I, um, I got, I was ROTC
, I got commissioned in ROTC, ROTC. I mean, um, at that time there was no
war. I got my B A in May. I went to two summer sessions and got 12
graduate credits. Went into the army in August for six months of active
duty as a second lieutenant. I was out in February because my six months
were up as a first lieutenant, came back and enrolled in the second
semester. And I had, and what I'm getting at is I graduated one year with
a B A and the next year with an ma and spent six years in the six months
in the army in between and then spent 12 years in the Reserves after that.
But that was an ROTC commission in the days when, again, when ROTC was
not considered a bad word. And, uh, what was required to begin with? The
first two years were required of all male students. But the second two
years I did by choice and then the reserve, it was by choice too, wasn't
it? Or were you required to stay in? Uh, I was required to stay in for
another year and a half, but I stayed in for close to 12 years after that
. I ended up as a captain,
actually ended up as a major. What happens often is the army is in the
army is when you resign,
when they say goodbye, they give you the next rank as a farewell gift
since there's no salary attached to it. So I actually was a captain but
got de mobbed, you might say as a, as a major about my freshman year, I, I
haven't thought much actually what I was going to talk to you about. But
one thing I remember very, very, very well, the building that is now, I
think the archives is, is the president's house, is the archive now, right
? Ok. Ok. That was where the damages lived and they held a reception for
all freshmen students. Now contemplate that today, the president trying to
personally shake the hand of the students and their parents actually. And
that house has a big, then had a nice big lawn and sheltered gardens and a
wonderful series, a Night Blooming series in front of it. Uh
Well, again, I guess I, I had a kind of privileged life. I started, you
might say my freshman year in Gamma's house and as a student, I was often
at Gamma's house because they entertained
groups of students. I was state press editor. So I was always a Trump,
Katherine Gamma. Kay Gamma used to say that when Grady would come home
looking particularly peaked, she'd just look at him and say, what did Nick
write today? I had some editorial in the paper. I think she just liked to
tell the story that way. I don't think it was true, but the relationship
between faculty and students was certainly very different. Then. It was in
many ways more formal. You would never think of calling a professor by his
first name. And yet in many ways, much more informal in that uh
undergraduates
would be invited to faculty homes, president's homes, et cetera. Whereas
today, I think it's mostly graduate students who have that kind of a
relationship with faculty members.
You might be able to correct me on this. But my, my memory is that there
were 4000 students when I enrolled and 4000 freshmen. When I graduated,
there's a lot of growth, a lot of growth, a lot of growth.
What year did you graduate? 57
I graduated from Arizona State College. The name change officially
occurred while I was in the army when I came back, it was Arizona State
University. But I do remember Jim Crean and the name change and the
petitions when I was editor of the State Press which was 5556 Don dot was
editor of 5657.
After me, he was my sports editor. Actually, I had started using Arizona
State University in the State Press as the what I call the university,
what I call this place, the U of a
newspaper got wind of that and didn't like it protested to the regions and
I was officially ordered to cease and desist using the word university for
Arizona State. So from then on, I just referred to it as Arizona, I was
told not to say Arizona State University. So from then on, I simply called
it Arizona State. I did it my way anyway, but the name change was
traumatic for the U FA as you can. Well imagine. And some others have
probably talked to you about it. Have they? I mean, it had to be done by,
by uh a voter of the public because just like today, the legislature
couldn't, the legislature did nothing then to either some things don't
change, right?
Uh What, what difference did it make when you came back? And it was now a
university? None at all. None at all. Uh I wasn't tied into, I wasn't the
prof yet. So I don't know if it made any different in budget or not. I
don't know, I never sensed that we were we were suffering when we were as
c but there certainly was a lot of prestige connected to it. We did seem
to have an awful lot of buildings. I don't know if anybody has told you
that the standing joke was that Grady Gammon had an edifice complex
because he always was another building going up every time you turned
around. Uh I, I don't know that we suffered but we certainly did not have
many partisans, many A S Arizona State College, university partisans in
the legislature. Uh, that was, uh, the main thing that kept us back was
that most of the legislature was pro U of A, I mean, the people who went
into the legislature were not teachers. You see, and we were a teacher's
college all that time. Uh We didn't have the clout, our graduates weren't
going out to do anything but teach in the schools. It also explains, I
think why the alumni association had so much trouble raising money at
first because they were raising money from elementary and high school
teachers.
Part of what surely one of the benefits of the university status and the
various colleges, a law school of this and that. But now at least we had
an alumni with a monetary base that they could draw from.
Then. I don't know, I never was part of the politics of it as an
undergraduate. I was interested in all the things undergrads were
interested in the student government, all that stuff. Um, and I, I made,
uh, I got two B's in college, one from Ann Pitman who is a good friend of
mine in, what was it? School? Community health and the other in an ROTC
course in math. Reading where, where if I, maybe if I know more algebra I
could have gotten an a because it was all, all mathematics.
So, what were your goals as you were going through college? You were
writing for the State Press and I was going to be a high school journalism
teacher. I had no doubt, not at all. I had no intentions of getting
anything beyond a master's degree.
Shakespeare teacher, John Ratliff, who is still my closest friend when I
was in the army wrote me a letter about, I said, I'm looking forward to
getting back and finishing the degree and I knew that I could teach
journalism at Phoenix Union High School. I was going to go right back to
where I started. He wrote me a letter and he said, don't do it. He said
high school teaching is not for you. I remember very specifically. He said
you will settle down into a life of vague prudish disaffection.
And he said you must apply to grad school. So I applied to,
I wasn't gonna fool around was I applied to Harvard Yale, Berkeley, UCL A
Pomona Graduate School, University of Colorado and Stanford. And every
single one of them offered me money and I picked Stanford because it was
Ratliff's school also because you don't have to wear winter clothes. And
so the money would go further. Uh, I,
you know, you look back at things and decisions you have made and you
wonder how did you ever have the guts to do that? You were, I guess you
were just too young to know any better. So I asked Harvard to pay for the
education of a kid from Arizona State. And they did, I mean, they would
have, and curiously, when I got to Stanford, which gave only two graduate
fellowships in English, the other one was from the University of Arizona.
We had an Arizona State and the U of A, we had both fellowships, Dennis
Moran. He actually joined the faculty here later on too. And so your
bachelors was in journalism. Yes. Journalism, English double major,
history minor was in liberal arts, English. And the phd was in 19 th
century British Lit. And I took a minor in Latin language and literature.
I didn't, I was very snobbish about American Lit. I wasn't going to study
American Lit. So I chose Latin Lit instead. And what did you plan to do
with that DD? Oh, I knew exactly what I was gonna do with it. I was gonna
come back here and teach that it, uh the either the stupidity or the
innocence. I'm not sure which word you'd want to apply to it. Uh I, I was
at Stanford two years. I did the degree in two years. I taught as well as
wrote my dissertation. The second year they offered me a tenure position
at Stanford and II, I think I really said you must be kidding. I'm going
back to TP.
Uh, I'm, I, I, I'm almost positive those were my words to the chair of the
department. I don't regret it at all. But I do wonder what route my career
would have taken if I'd stayed at Stanford. I know for sure. I never would
have taught film history
that it was hard enough getting film courses added at Arizona State.
Stanford. Much more traditional would have taken another 10 years. I just
don't know what direction
career would have taken, but I knew I was coming back here. There wasn't
the slightest doubt in my life and you never considered like a career in
journalism or always teach. Why do you think that is that you always
wanted to teach rather than to? Well, I don't think it was in a sense it
was an either or because for a while, as I said, I wanted to teach high
school journalism,
but I'm, I'm not exaggerating when I, I say it was that heist that eighth
grade homeroom teacher who read his lamb's tales from Shakespeare. I felt
so exhilarated
by this strange
world of, of the English language that she opened up that I, I wanted to
do the same thing.
And then I always had great teachers and I realized that, you know, good
students get paid more attention to them so that
I'm not sure that other people around me would say they had great teachers
all the way through. But mine seems to be my teachers from elementary
school through phd. I was their life. That's the way I looked at it
because they were, they would do anything that anything I wanted, they
would do. Uh the money kept coming through. I always, I wanted to teach, I
wanted to give Shakespeare to other people.
I still, I mean, for all the time I've spent teaching film. It, it annoys
me when people in public even now. Remember me only from cinema classics
and don't have any. I don't seem to have any idea that I ever taught
literature. II, I love film. I think The Godfather is every bit as great a
work of art as Van Gogh's Starry Night or Beethoven's fifth Symphony or
anything of that sort. But given my druthers, there's nothing as great as
a printed page with English used the way it was meant to be used. First
teaching job here. I taught four classes of freshman English for $4000.
Took me a number of years before Calise Portnoff allowed me to teach a
literature course. She gave me, Calise Portnoff was the chair of the
department. Good friend of mine. And then one semester I had a literature
course and the schedule came out, I didn't have a literature course. So
one of my few sleepless nights I spent the whole night preparing my speech
for her. Either you give me this course back or I'm quitting. And I had
all my arguments laid out and I go into her office the next day and I said
, Calise, you must give me back my English literature C she said fine.
That was the end of that. She, she didn't even know that I was upset.
What year did you come back? 6161
I was hired by Grady Gamage. But by the time I came back, Gamage had died.
And so HD Richardson was the first vice president that I worked for was
the first president I worked for. But Richardson had interviewed me when I
had come up for a Phelps Dodge scholarship. And because of the State Press
, I knew all of the administration
that was working for a close friend in a sense. But after the State Press
, they weren't like, oh, no, he's back again. I, I think Kay just like to
tell the story. So what was it like here in the sixties?
Because of time, I want to jump straight to the campus unrest. I think
there are some things I know about it because I was so close to John Ryan
who was academic vice president and George Ham who was dean of students.
I'm sure you've already had been told stories about campus unrest. And do
you know about the petunias and the flagpole?
They were actually petunias. But you know that story? Ok. Ok. Have you
been told about the takeover of the ROTC building?
Ok. A handful of students no more than 10 taking over the RTC building is
the wrong way to describe it, but that's how it was described. They just
sat in, they just decided to sit there and they would not move. We're not
this. Well, I don't know how I can get to the date early in the late
sixties
protesting ROTC. They wanted ROTC off campus. It was pre Kent State, but
it was an anti ROTC demonstration and it was the old main then was the
home for ROTC. So that's where they had settled in. Now, this is the kind
of thing that wasn't public. There had been campus unrest on and off
because it was all over the country. And one of the methods that the
administration used to keep it calm was they irrigate it every weekend. So
that all the lawns were that deep in water and you couldn't have
demonstrations on the lawns. I mean, there, it wouldn't be possible is
what I'm saying. Uh John Duffy was head of campus police uh before gay
Schumann took over George Hamm by uh Dean, Dean of Men and John Ryan,
academic, vice president. And these kids are sitting in the ROTC building
I didn't know any of them but I had good rapport with students and
students knew that what nobody, except a very small handful of people knew
was that the campus was surrounded by National Guard. The government had,
the governor had called in the guard. The guard was armed and they were
prepared to shoot if necessary. Uh, they were gonna get those kids out of
that building that day or else, uh, that's what I wanted to tell you. I
don't think has ever been made public before.
The rest of it is kind of irrelevant in a sense. I went in there. I sat, I
remember sitting on the floor with the students. I don't remember what I
told them except that I promised them that there would be no repercussions
afterwards if they just got out that they wouldn't be. I had no right to
say that because nobody gave me permission to say it. I just felt so I was
really nervous about the guns.
How many students were there? About 10?
Ok. Anyway, I talked him out of the building and I think it's so ironic
that have only made the front page of the Republic once and that was in
because of a student demonstration, but it was dangerous. It was dangerous.
We had the whole campus surrounded by armed National Guard, never hit the
papers. I never heard that. Who was the Governor Williams? I think
the incident is clear, but I'm sorry that I should have looked up the date
because I did want to tell this story about the National Guard is the only
thing I pre planned. Uh, it was a scary, scary incident. There's another
thing connected with the 60 si wanted to bring up again. Something that it
doesn't much matter. Now. You've probably been told about Morris Starsky
and the Starsky case.
Well, Starsky was one of the most obnoxious men I've ever known in my life.
He was a loud vulgar crude.
He was a vulgarian, but he was a scapegoat.
Faculty members, miss classes all the time. Sometimes for good reasons and
sometimes for not Mari happened to be, uh, a communist
and the university used the excuse that he had dismissed classes to go
down to the U of A, to give a, uh, a revolutionary talk. I was told very
recently by another member of his department that he had had permission to
give that talk. I don't know that. But when the university fired Starsky,
the, uh, I, it, it wasn't, I want, I'm gonna use the word trial but you
have to understand that it's a university procedure, not a courtroom trial.
The university's
prosecutor was Richard Landini, very, very close friend of mine. Now,
Starsky and I had tangled in a number of ways. We just didn't have the
same kind of personality. We were friends strangely, but we would give one
another hell regularly. I wrote him a letter, a personal letter about his
behavior at a faculty meeting in which had totally disrupted the whole
proceedings with the four letter words which then were not common.
So he wrote back a letter in which she said I could go to hell using much
stronger words than that. And he was going to do everything he could to
bring down the university administration as far as he was concerned, the
federal government too, by any means possible.
And I showed that letter to Landini and Dick wanted to use that letter in
the hearings to demonstrate that Mori was indeed a communist and that we
had good grounds for dismissing him.
I said, you can't have the letter. I said when he asked for it later, I
said you can't have it. It's a personal letter
even beyond that. I don't like the whole, I just don't think Starsky
should be fired for speaking his mind. Much to my amazement. Dick
respected my wishes. He knew the letter existed. He was the official
prosecutor. We were close personal friends, probably if he had pushed it,
I might have given it to him, but he didn't push it. He respected my
wishes. I gave the letter to the university archives. It's still there
somewhere. I gave them two or three letters of the sort that are still
sealed. Starsky is dead now. So it doesn't much matter. Uh But though Mari
was
as, as, as much of a Vulgarian as Maury was all Maury's crime was, was
speaking his mind. And one assumed that on a university campus, if nowhere
else in the world, one should be allowed to speak one's mind. There was no
, it was totally unjustified.
It was an emotional time, wasn't it during the sixties? Well, uh I another
story mentioning Landini, have you talked about Litchfield College with
anybody? Ok. G Homer Durham as president
and Richard Dick Landini is his assistant, the hatch a scheme, so to speak
to form a branch of as in the East Valley. The legislature of course is
very pro U of a not pro as this was going to be however, something
different, this was going to be a liberal arts college. No major, he
majored in liberal arts period. Uh and it was called Litchfield College.
OK. Dick was appointed the president of it. He was going to be the
president of it when it opened. Of course, we have a Su East and I don't
mean east, I mean West. It was going to be a U where a U West is now, we
have them because the legislature is on our side for the most part. Anyway
, it's the Vietnam war.
We're having a silent vigil in front of the language and literature
building there. The long line of fact students now, you understand in a
silent vigil, you're supposed to be silent.
Well, Dick Landini is one of the most colorful characters. I've ever known
in my life. State press editor, state press reporter came by and wanted to
interview people. You're supposed to shut up in a silent vigil. Landini
decides to talk to this reporter.
So the reporter ends up with a story that makes the Republic about this
college Landini who's supposed to be going out to head litchfield college
standing in an anti Vietnam war vigil in front of the language and
literature building. The next week, Landini was summoned to the
legislature and in the legislature was someone who may or may not be alive
now. But John Conlin, a senator whose name will probably forever go down
in Arizona State history as John Bircher of the most conservative kind.
Well, he started in on Landini and by the time he was done, Litchfield
College was abolished, it was just as simple as that
the Vietnam war protest were you involved in? I was involved in the, in
the confusing ways that most of us were. Uh I started out pro and I
started out in favor of the war and with a number of other professors
circulated a letter which we intended to have published in the newspapers
supporting the war. And it wasn't really in the matter of supporting our
forces the way we talk about things today, we were actually supporting the
war. The letter did get published,
the more the war went on, the more I realized, uh it couldn't, it
shouldn't go on I was wrong. And so I end up in silent vigils and in
various protests, I was not involved in any of the
clashes between on campus. Uh But I, I did a total about face before the
war was over. The letters I know got printed in the papers. I'm sure
they're still there signed by hundreds of faculty members. I, I would bet
that 90% of them eventually did the about face. What made you change your
mind? I didn't even know enough about the war when I hate to admit it, but
it was total ignorance and what was going on there that made me be pro war
to begin with. Uh as it went on, you could see that if, if the simplest
way to answer, that would be to say we couldn't win. But the better way to
answer is what really were we there for? What were we trying to accomplish
and the tremendous drain
of uh of American kids being killed there in many ways. It was, uh you
might say a war fought by American blacks, so many American blacks being
killed in that war. The longer, I mean, day by day, the more I learned
about it, the more impossible that war uh that, that war should continue.
It just shouldn't continue. Uh I think I'm a good example of the confusion
that that war caused in the country.
Did that have any impact on your career at a su No, no, not at all. No.
Except for, uh, uh, poor Murray. I don't think anybody's, uh, of vowing
that they were pro or con, that war was ever, uh, ever affected them. I
was involved in, um, I, I was, you know, I was such a, uh, you know, kind
of a Dudley do right in some ways and in other ways, uh, more student
oriented by far than, than faculty oriented. So, like, when sds was
sitting in and blocking buildings, I was always continuing like that ROTC
thing, I was always the one that had to uh get them out of there. I was
constantly bailing SPS students out of jail. Uh They had done something
like block a doorway or something of that sort. None of them ever skipped
town. So I never ended up losing my bail money. But, uh
you know, I come to think of it. I never talked about any of that before
either.
They were, they were parlous times because the students
have the right ideas and the wrong methods.
They really, many of them seem to think especially in sds that violence
could solve the problem
or, or would get them their way and, and it, and it wouldn't,
but they were, they were perilous times.
I can envision so clearly that that part of the campus around the fountain
where Old Maine is what yet still called Old Maine and the University Club
are and thousands of demonstrators shouting and screaming in there. And
the students on the upper stairways at the English building, other than
our OTC building, actually, uh they're not gonna get out of the building,
you know, a more cheerful thing here where the English building currently
stands now was the other original building in the quad. There was the, the
science and administration building became the English building, became
the university club. The college of Education became all main While going
around one more building was the auditorium.
Same kind of red brick construction with a balcony which collapsed at one
point in a performance. Fortunately, it was a performance. Nobody wanted
to see. So nobody was hurt. I was editor of the State Press and they were
going to tear down the auditorium, they tore down the auditorium filled in
the foundation. The foundation of the original building is still there
with the language and lit on top of it. But I saw one of these big trucks
, you know,
gigantic truck come and it was chained to the wall. And the idea was that
the truck was to pull the wall down. Well, the truck strained and strained
and strained and then went like this. It just, you know, it was flat and
it just the truck folded in half. And the building, the wall stood
straight now being an English major. I saw great metaphorical significance
in this, that the, the the auditorium where all the arts were performed
would stand no matter what and it had survived the attack of the
mechanical age. So I got the news, I was editor. Of course, I got the
photographer. We got pictures that all exists somewhere. But it, it is,
it's funny. Now I really saw it in metaphorical terms. The mechanical age
had come right up, head to head with the arts and the arts had won this
battle.
They apparently did eventually, they got it down, right. They got a bigger
truck in is what they got it on a lighter note since we're running out of
time. Why don't we talk a little bit about the thing that you say that
you're best known for? Oh, television.
Ok. You, you've talked to Bob Ellis, I think already probably,
uh, he was the general manager, but the guy who ran the station was Joe
Zesbaugh. They, they bought for airing a package of Ingmar Bergman film.
Well, actually what they did was call me because people knew that I was
this film nut and said they had been offered a package of Bergman films.
Should they buy it? Would anyone watch it? And I said, well, isn't that
your job to put things on that, uh, that you would not be able to find? So
they bought the Bergman films and aired them. Then they were offered a
package of 20th century Fox films and remembering the Bergman thing
Zesbaugh called me and asked me if I might want to introduce these films.
And so the show started very quietly with just local shows of uh not
terribly good films. Actually, first film we showed was young Mr Pitt.
But for whatever reason, the show caught on, there were a couple of times
in its history, for instance, when it had the highest uh Nielsen or
Arbitron ratings, whatever they are in the market, which is phenomenal for
a public television station. One was for the Marco
and the other was for the Blue Lagoon, the original Blue Lagoon with Gene
Simmons. The show just somehow built in popularity part of it. I'm sure
had to do with
the interviews.
I interviewed, for instance, Raul Castro, who was the governor and now he
had never done a television interview on campus before and I was showing
uh Juarez the Bette Davis Paul Muni film. And I thought it would be
interesting to have the governor comment on another, uh Mexican leader. I
had to get permission in order to invite the governor to the campus to do
this interview. Well, it wasn't, you might say the most exciting of
interviews, but uh it was the governor after all. And then we started
adding interviews and I got connected up with the press, the local pr
agencies so that when names came into town,
they would want to appear on the show because the ratings were high enough.
And then pretty soon I was being invited to press junkets all over the
country one time, I also took a camera crew over to, over to L A and
interviewed couple of dozen people. I mean, brand names in a very short,
uh, two week period. Jack Lennon, for instance, um,
either they came to me like bow bridges and Sally Fields or I went to them
, uh, in New York. I would do, uh, Dustin Hoffman and James Mason and
Terry Garr for, for Tootsie. Uh, The interviews I think were part of the
reason why the show got so popular. It got so popular that the station
decided to try to syndicate it. So for three years, it went into national
syndication on PBS with a series of Goldwyn films. It was then called that
three year Period was called Cinema Classics, The Golden Touch, The
Goldwyn Touch. So that instead of being on just twice a week, Saturday at
10 Sunday at one right here on channel eight. Now we had the Goldman Touch
series in addition to that. So it was on four times a week. Uh People
still are telling me they used to go to bed with me, meaning that they
would watch this show on Saturday night because it was always Saturday at
10 Sunday at one. So we had three years of national syndication and the
way it worked was if the film uh were 91 minutes long, I had to fill to
the next half hour. So I had 29 minutes if the film were 100 and 19
minutes, I had one minute the film. So I was basically filler but the
interviews attracted the films, of course, got to be wonderful. I got to
pick them. We paid good money for them. No commercials,
good prints. I would send the prints, but I would preview them. If I
didn't like the print, I would send them back. So we did offer something
that wasn't available anywhere else on local TV. And this was in pre cable
days. The interview certainly helped. But the fact that we could do Zorro
in a pristine black and white print without a commercial interruption, uh
I certainly had a lot to do with it. And what were the years that, that 70
to 8210 year? I've always had this funny thing about doing something for
10 years and then quitting it. I do kind of switch my life around every 10
years. And when I started, I said if it will last 10 years, I'll do it.
Now, when I went off air, I went off air in a kind of scandal. The
Republic entertainment editor uh, wrote an article saying that I was about
to be fired, which was interesting because I wasn't paid to begin with.
This was volunteered work
and because my 10 years were up and I had already given notice that I was
quitting and then I did go off the air the way the press looked at it is
Bud Wilkinson was responsible for this whole thing. So, unfortunately, I
didn't go out in as calm an atmosphere as I would have wanted to. Although
I was, they did the cover story on the, uh, the parade magazine that, that
weekend with, with the show.
It, it, it took over my life, but there is not a day goes by yet that
somebody doesn't bring it up and I'm not complaining. I think my answer is
standard now. Thank you for remembering. And I do mean that it's more than
20 years after all. I mean, you've got to have been pretty young to
remember that show at this point. Uh But uh it, it took over my life. It
gave me uh for better or worse, an identity not connected, whatever to, to
the English department. I loved every minute of it. It's not, there are
not many English professors that get to interviewed Dustin Hoffman or uh
interview Gene Simmons. I had this crush on Gene Simmons. And in the
middle of the interview, she put her knee, her hand on my knee because she
could see I was nervous and she put her hand on my knee and I went like my
body levitated and that's all you could see on camera was my body going up
like this. It made an interesting life for an English professor. How much
time do we have left?
We need, we need college bowl. I didn't talk about just about. Was it
Betty Davis at G that there was some? Oh Yeah. And you got up to ask a
question, she opened it to the audience and you got up to ask a question
and I remember that the audience, the audience all cheered when I asked
this question and she says, who are you?
And she said, I told her my name, she said, I want to see you in my
dressing room after the show. So I went back to otherwise I wouldn't have
met Betty Davis. That's true. June. Right. I, I find it interesting. You
mentioned that you were a volunteer that whole time. I'm sure people must
have thought that you were a highly paid. Exactly. I got paid for the n
the three years on national, I got paid 5000 for the three years, 5000
each year, no, 5000 for the three years. But the other, the rest of it was
, I, to me it was volunteer work. It was, it was PBS. And so you did it. I
had fun. Of course. And you didn't get the bug that you wanted to continue
on. No, I really didn't. In fact, this is the first time I've allowed
myself to be filmed in about 10 years. Uh, I loved being recognized in
public and I probably would have been terribly depressed if I hadn't been
, but I couldn't go out. It wasn't like I could throw on a pair of Levi's
and go out looking any old way. I had a public, they were gonna recognize
me. I had to do, I had to live up to this. I couldn't eat a meal in a
restaurant if you can. I, I thought about, I was a very big fish in a very
small pond, but I can understand why Redford and Streisand would rather
not deal with the public because what I had on a very small and never
unpleasant, never unpleasant basis, they must go through hell dealing with
the public. So, are we going to feel sorry for Robert Redford? I don't
think so. I mean, but still it, uh, you say people recognized you from,
sign off, uh, for a while it's, sometimes it's ok, sometimes it's not ok.
Do we have time for the bow? I had, I had two of the, well, I know we have
to have everything out of here for 330 meeting if you can hold off those
people. Right at 330. Well, let, let, let, let it go. It's, it's, uh, it
was only a one year in a su history. So, doesn't it, can you tell it
quickly? Sure. College Bowl, is it still going? College Bowl was a
nationally syndicated show in which each week two colleges or universities
competed. It's like jeopardy except they were four and four from two
schools and we were invited to be on it with Ernie Parker. Who was a great
friend of mine and a great, great man, a man who had literally run across
Europe escaping the Nazis and ended up at Arizona State as a poultry
professor. Anyway, we coached the college bowl team. We picked them, we
ended up with our four team members and five alternates. We tried out
various contests, they always beat the faculty members, they beat the
rotary club, etc. We went on national TV. The night opened, I missed, I
had tickets at gamma since the day it opened the same seats. I missed the
opening performance of the Philadelphia Symphony because that was the
first college bowl show. We actually went to five weeks. We lost the last
game on a quirk. And the question was uh a Greek
uh form of architecture and a book of the Bible are. And at that 0.1 of my
team members pressed the button and said, Corinthians
and Bob Earl looked over at the judges
and he said, I'm sorry, that's not the correct answer. Let me finish the
question. A book of the Bible and a form of Greek architecture were named
after a Greek, what is the name of the city? And the correct answer was
Corinth. And so we lost that championship game by the five points. The
poor boy who did that did nothing wrong, nothing that he wasn't trained to
do, but he never required, he never recovered from it. The kids were so
attractive and so brilliant and so unexpected in the sense that here these
kids are from this cow college in the west, come to New York and knock off
these teams. One after another, they made all the New York newspapers.
There were feature stories on them in all the New York newspapers
somewhere. I don't know where, but there is in the archive. The, you also
got to put on t on before the show. Uh a three minute film showing the
college. Now that film is somewhere in the archives,
there's a lot of memorabilia that I have still from college ball that I'm
going to turn over to special collection. 1964
1964. That should be mentioned. It was a big step in Arizona State's
recognition, primarily outside of state, but also waking the valley up to
the possibility that we really could produce some extraordinary students
here. I was told the year after that the,
the request for admission, the application forms for admission almost
tripled from out of state because of that.
Right. I don't know if we accepted them, but they applied anyway. Well, I
think we need to do another hour sometime.
I'm sorry. That's ok.