Katherine Beebe Harris: Interview #4

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[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Biagi: I wanted to start today's discussion talking about your experience being asked to leave AP, essentially, because of the mandatory retirement age there.

Beebe: I wasn't asked. That was another thing about it. [Laughter.] I think it was before I went to Europe, when I was just working along there, that I got a pamphlet. Once in a while, the AP would put out one, you know, about policies and stuff. Buried down in it was this little paragraph about the policy for women to retire at 55. I was sort of startled. Of course, nobody in my office had ever heard anything about it.

Biagi: About when did you get this pamphlet, do you know? Had you been there for a while?

Beebe: Oh, no, nothing was said when I came at all. Never. I think it was probably shortly after my husband's death and I just came back and was working there. It startled me, and I asked around did anybody know about this. Nobody did. Of course, there wasn't any other woman. I was uneasy, but really I kind of put it aside, because I always was confident that if you were good, you didn't really need to worry, you know. [Laughter.] If they wanted you, if you were really good, they needed you, and it was probably an outdated thing, anyway.

However, when I was taking stock of career, I had it in mind and thought if it should turn out to be true, I'd better hurry to do something, because who knew? There wasn't an awful lot of time ahead. Then the only notice I got was from the business office in New York. You see, that's automatic. You do give them your birth certificate when you come, and therefore, when Joe or whoever, no matter what he does in the AP, you just get this notification that your pension will be so and so and you'll be doing it at this time. So then, of course, I did get busy about it. We had a new national executive. I didn't know any of the New York people by that time, or very few. I said, "I realize there's probably a transition time that this would be changed." He didn't know that there was any change. I said, "Well, is it taken into consideration at all a person's record?"

He said, "Well, you know, I've talked to lots of men at retirement time, and they always think they're as good as they ever were." Of course, he didn't know anything about me or anything, but that was pretty discouraging.

Biagi: So you were approaching 55?

Beebe: That's right. I was 47 when Edwin died. Then it took me quite a long time, this campaign, to get to Europe. I decided that I'd better move and do something. I was just treading water there and perfectly content to do it. The stuff kept coming.

Well, the head of the Guild came to me and said, "You know, if you'd consent, we'd really like to make a case of this, because you're a good subject, you see. You've got a good record, and we'd like to do it." I was mortified, of course. I had read stories about women who were fired and made a fuss. I always privately thought they probably weren't much good, anyway. [Laughter.] I just didn't want to be in that position. So I said I'd really rather not.

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Biagi: Sure. What was your salary then?

Beebe: You keep asking me that, and I can't remember. I have these two—the things that I got out there. It will give you some idea about how they—that's what the "great god" would do to newcomers, but you never saw him thereafter. Here. Is there a date on that?

Biagi: Effective September 15, 1942.

Beebe: 1942.

Biagi: Your salary was increased by six dollars to $63.50 weekly.

Beebe: Yes, we had it weekly. It was this long before—$100 a week was considered pretty top stuff.

Biagi: So in 1947, October 9th, it says you were making $100 weekly.

Beebe: Yes.

Biagi: So by the time you were ready to retire, then, or they were ready to retire you, I should say, what would you say your salary was, if you had to guess?

Beebe: I suppose—I doubt if it was more than $125. Meanwhile, I think, they had changed to monthly. The Guild figured out they could cheat us out of a couple of days. [Laughter.] You know, the Associated Press has a bad reputation for being very chintzy, and it's because their organization is different, you see. They are a co-op and their big bosses are the directors of big papers who want them to keep expenses down, and they also want their own stars to be not eclipsed by the AP.

In fact, I think this might be interesting. Leonard Milliman was very active in the Guild, and he was a wonderful guy. I was rather proud of his union activities. He said that in New York the executive at the time, Wes Gallagher, had privately told him to put lots of pressure on them to bring the salaries up. He said, "We want them up. We want to get the better people, and we need this pressure to counteract the pressure of our board, which is trying to keep us down," which I thought was quite interesting. But my relations with the AP people I worked with were always very pleasant, and whenever I was in any need, they always made a great effort, you know, to do whatever I wanted. And it was a very pleasant atmosphere, too, because we were all—there was pretty good equality there. Senior journeyman newsmen, you moved from spot to spot. There wasn't this hierarchy much.

Biagi: So you were going to go, then, from roughly $500 a month to $88 dollars a month.

Beebe: I don't think it was $500 a month. Oh, no!

Biagi: If it was $125 a week, it would have been $500 a month.

Beebe: Well, maybe. Maybe so.

Biagi: Something close to that. It was a big cut.

Beebe: It was a big cut. Of course, I just considered it impossible. I just knew that I would have to be on a payroll somewhere. Because you asked if I had any other money. I can't even remember.

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because they were made to keep me on. Of course, I don't think I would have stood that. I hope I could have broken out of it. But it would have been hard, because that label would have been on you.

Biagi: Enumerate now your six careers after AP.

Beebe: I can do that. That was a legislative session, and I didn't know about that. I hadn't even studied political science. I didn't know how the government really worked.

Biagi: So you did move to Sacramento?

Beebe: Oh, yes. Well, I got a place up there. I commuted weekends back to this home in Westridge. My fixer said, "I think we can get quarters for you in the Capitol." I'm working with the Republicans, so they each one had. So I was led to my quarters in the Capitol, and it was a cloakroom of one of the legislative hearing rooms, you know. Into it I went, and here was a large urinal and a coat rack and one table. I don't think there was a chair. He was going to get a chair. And there was a filing case, empty. They said I'd get a phone in here.

Biagi: How did you cover up the urinal?

Beebe: I didn't! [Laughter.] My back was to it.

Biagi: You didn't put plotted plants in it or something?

Beebe: It didn't bother me. I wasn't receiving people, anyway.

Biagi: What were your responsibilities?

Beebe: Well, I was to get out a newsletter, a weekly newsletter for the Democrats, who were at that time on the rise. The Senate was evenly divided, Democrats and Republicans, and the Assembly was still dominantly Republican. No Democrat could get elected except by being sort of a maverick. The proposal made to me was, "We want to lift the party. We want to get better people as candidates. Now we go to some promising young men and we say, 'We want you to run,' and they say, 'No way! That thing?' We're trying to get better people. We think if we get together and have a voice, this is what we're going to try to do."

They had a weekly caucus, from which the press was excluded, but they would take a stand on something. After the caucus, the press always jumped to me, you know, if I could give them a program, which was good.

Biagi: What year is this, now?

Beebe: This was '57, '58. Goodwin Knight was the governor, and I was a hatchet man. I gave him a bad breakfast many mornings, when we put out releases. I didn't do any of the investigative work; I was simply to put out releases with what I was given. I found it was rather fun, because my newspaper friends up there—of course, I had them—had said that they just felt that Knight was really very poor quality, California deserved better. So I felt all right about it. I felt if we could get him out, it was good. [Laughter.] I've wondered now since, if I'd been a little older, if I would have done it. People would say, "Oh, that's great stuff!" They evidently loved this "bang-bang," kind of old-fashioned things that they could get on him. Then it was a grind to get out that weekly newsletter that was distributed to the legislators so they could use any of it or say it was theirs and send it to their papers at home, or take anything out of it. So it was a busy time.

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Beebe: That's only for $500 a month.

Biagi: $584 a month.

Beebe: That is about $8,000 a year, was it? I think.

Biagi: Yes, roughly.

Beebe: You see the associate professor ranking.

Biagi: Yes.

Beebe: He said, "You have to have that."

I said, "I'm not going to. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to face classes and lecture."

He said, "That doesn't matter, but you have to have at least that ranking or they won't listen to you around here."

Biagi: You were associate professor, one, second step in the Language Arts Division. Good to know.

Beebe: [Laughter.] Let's see now. So that would be '58. Back to AP for the summer. Then nothing happened. I didn't get a job. The legislative session was coming again, and then I found that that job that I had had was going to go to an INS [International News Service] man, and did he need it. The INS died about that time, and he had covered for INS at Sacramento. He had a family and kids, so they gave him that job. Meanwhile, we did it. Knight was gone! We had a Democrat, you see. Pat Brown had come in. His press secretary was Hale Champion of the [San Francisco] Chronicle, whom I knew. He was a prince of a guy. I liked him very much. He was terribly apologetic about this when I went up to see what was going. He said, "Well, never mind." I went home and decided that—I'd made some money, by the way, with this little money Mother had left me, in a tip of a friend, on an oil stock. I thought, "Well, I'll just get out of there, because I just spend too much money here at home." So I went to the Caribbean, where my old college roommate was, and I spent some months down there, had a lovely time—Puerto Rico and got around to several of the islands, went to Martinique to polish up my French a little bit. I wrote to Hale and said, "Now, don't do me wrong. Just because you 'done me wrong,' don't hate me. Keep seeing what you've got there."

So then I came back and, I guess, went back to AP. Oh, no. Dumke would have made a job for me, but I didn't want to be with the new man between us. I thought it would not be a good thing. I thought I might have to take it, but I was looking around various places. But back at the AP in the summer, all of a sudden, somebody told me that Hale Champion had been trying to find me. This had been going on for ten days and nobody told me. So he asked me to come up and be press aide there.

Biagi: This is 1960?

Beebe: Yes. Well, late '59 when my summer job ended.

Biagi: But you went to the Caribbean when?

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Beebe: Oh, yes. By '60, I came to Stanford. That was the last job I had. But there were the two political campaigns, there was state college, and the two jobs at Sacramento different, you know. The one with the legislature with the enemy in charge, and the one when we were on top, the governor's office.

Biagi: With Pat Brown.

Beebe: With Pat Brown and Hale Champion. Then Stanford. That's six, isn't it?

Biagi: Yes. So in 1960, now, you came—it would have been in 1960-61 you came to Stanford?

Beebe: Yes.

Biagi: '60 or '61?

Beebe: I think it was just about at the turn of the year. I suppose somewhere I have those records. Stanford has them.

Biagi: So you stayed here?

Beebe: Six years at Stanford.

Biagi: What was your job then?

Beebe: Again, I did very well with money, because I learned that I was getting—see, they had to pay something for this campaign. They had to get professional people. Stanford's academic salaries were just terrible. They wouldn't even give the statistics on it to the AAUP [American Association of University Professors], because they sold their climate here, you know, and they could do pretty well to loyal old Stanford people, but it wasn't happening. After the war, you see, there was no money and things had gone down.

So I got a double appointment to the Development Office, in other words, the fund-raising, then in the news service, too, because they were somewhat related, although the news service here is very, very, very independent and very different from most places, very good. I loathed the fund-raising. This, I thought, was a job I could do with one hand tied behind me and would be easy, and I never had a worse time. Stanford was terrible about women! It was the worst job that I had had anywhere in that regard. When I came there, I thought, "Oh, dear, they're very arrogant around here, and it's going to be stiff and formal." At the state college, you know, I was sitting in with the top group, with policy, my car parked next to the president, and I knew everybody, first name. So somebody called me Katherine, and I thought, "Oh, isn't this nice?" And I discovered, no, women were called by their first names, and middle-aged women were bringing coffee around to these little pipsqueaks just out of Stanford Business School. [Laughter.] "What man do you work for?" they'd say.

Of course, in a campaign, it's, again, like a campaign. Everybody is new and everybody is trying to sort of pretend he's more important than he is. We had a New York firm coming to tell us how to do it. It was, again, my campaign experience was useful, but I didn't like any part of it.

Biagi: Were there any other women in the office, professional women?

Beebe: Yes, there were art people and all very nice, very nice people, but everybody was more or less swallowed in the campaign. Of course, the faculty resented it, you know.

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friend of mine, and I depended on him a lot of times when I was with AP. As the Sacramento people would come down and hold a meeting in San Francisco, I guess they wanted to get away from Sacramento. So of course, Behrens would be there, and he knew all the background and everything about it. He would say, "You'd better check in on this meeting," and I didn't know the background at all. He was always helpful and good.

Biagi: Let's turn over the tape.

[End Tape 1, Side A; Begin Tape 1, Side B]

Beebe: There was a group in the corridor with some issue that I cannot remember now, but the press was all going for one of my Democratic legislators on this subject, and they asked him this question and I answered it. I felt as if I was one of them. [Laughter.] The answer, you know. The poor legislator, who was not one of our brightest, grabbed my reply and said it. Behrens turned to me and said, "If you ever do that again, we'll never speak to you. We're not asking you! We want what he says." [Laughter.] That taught me, of course. I realized I shouldn't, but you know, I was so newly there from the press and sort of felt as if I was one of them.

I also had other experiences. I did the Stanford fund-raising one time. I remember I was talking with a local newspaperman whom I knew, and I was telling him about how we wanted to get a good crowd for this occasion, whatever it was. I didn't think he was quoting me by name. He quoted me by name as if I was trying to pretend that we had a bigger crowd than we did, which upset me a little. I thought, "I forget. I must remember. I should look to the real PR people who know how to do this, and learn how to do it, because you can't just be big buddies at all with your old friends. You're in a different position," and it's one, of course, that I had never wanted to be in. But if you're in it, you'd better do it and do it as you should. So you learn. I was learning all the time, I guess. As I say, I guess it was really good for me in the end.

Biagi: What was your relationship with your former colleagues in the new position?

Beebe: It was good. It was very good. Mary Ellen Leary, by the way, was covering up there and they asked her about me. She said, "Well, bring her up. You're going to be lucky to get her." Oh, yes, very good. Morrie Landsberg, of course, from the AP, I was an old friend of. In fact, he had soothed my feelings because when I went up there, Hale Champion was putting me on without really the budget to do it. So they pulled a fast one, as, I guess, often. My official job was in the employment department, and I didn't like that. I said, "I don't like that kind of thing."

He said, "Well, it's done, and we need you and the salary is good." And I certainly needed the job, but I never did like it. I wanted to get off of it, and he thought he could arrange it, but then he went on to another job, and I guess I never did get off of it. That's one reason, too, I think I was glad to leave and come back to Stanford.

Biagi: What's your recollection of Mary Ellen Leary, working with her up there?

Beebe: I saw very little of her, you know. Our ways were different. I was working hard and so was she.

Biagi: Is that where you first met?

Beebe: Oh, no. I'd known her, of course, because she was on the San Francisco News, and we'd meet on stories. I was the outside man. At AP, I knew everybody. That's what Hale

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Beebe: It's an '86. It does have room in the trunk and it does have a back seat that two people—that I could take a couple to the movies or somewhere, two friends, if I have to. I wouldn't take a long drive.

Biagi: Let's talk. I love your stories about that car. Let's talk a little bit about two things we haven't touched on, which is your second marriage, first, and then the group that you came to live with briefly in Westridge.

Beebe: I was with them for 60 years on and off, really close friends. I don't think we want to—I mean, do we want too much time?

Biagi: Tell about the relationship that you had with them and how you came to live with them.

Beebe: That was how I came to California in the first place. Haven't we covered that?

Biagi: Yes, you told me all about that, how you came to—

Beebe: So this group of Stanford people stayed close together always. They had taken me into their bosom. I was somewhat younger. Elinor Cogswell and Harriet McCausland were kind of the center of the group and friends on the periphery were there a lot. When I came back to California in '33, I went to live with Elinor and her mother, and I was living there when I got married to Edwin. So when he died, I went right back there. Harriet McCausland—there were two only-daughters whose mothers were widowed, and they supported them and they didn't marry. They had little houses about a block apart. So it was kind of a community thing. We were together a lot. Then when Edwin died and I had that house and we were going to have old age, we decided this Westridge was opening up and we would live together. Why not? Sell our houses and go there.

Biagi: This location, what was it?

Beebe: Up there?

Biagi: Yes.

Beebe: Oh, it's beautiful. Westridge is—now you couldn't touch it, you know. It's million-dollar estates there now. Our house is probably worth half a million now, and we built it for about $50,000.

Biagi: When did you build it?

Beebe: In '52.

Biagi: You had two and a half acres?

Beebe: Yes. The land alone, now, is way, way up there. In fact, we sold the place for $75,000.

Biagi: In what year?

Beebe: In 1970, when we had to break up and they went to the Sequoias retirement home. Elinor always saw what was coming. She was very smart about it, every move. And we would

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But I had all this to do after Mother's death. I came and said, "Well, I'd better pay my third of the house." I'd been living there, anyway, and paying expenses, but "I'd better do that first." Elinor said, "No, Mother's—we're going to have to have a nurse in the guest room, and I think you'd better get your upstairs built, anyway, and pay for it as you can."

So with the proceeds from the Atherton house, I had the studio built over the carport. "We ought to have an architect for that, because we don't want it to look like a sore thumb." He did indent it into it, and I had a lovely aerie with fireplace and books. It was altogether comfortable. And I knew that would mean that that was always a place to come to, and it really was.

Biagi: How did you meet your second husband?

Beebe: Well, I'd known him since 1924. He was part of the periphery of the group. I knew his first wife better than I had known him. He was in history, and he went to Washington and the State Department during the war. She was in bad health, and she died there in Washington. Then he met a second wife there, very wonderful gal, red-headed, warm, just what he needed, and she was a scholar. She was in the State Department.

The first thing he did when he brought his Eastern red-headed wife, everybody came to Westridge, you see, and we knew them and liked them, and they had a big place in Los Altos Hills. We were there at parties.

Biagi: Was he teaching here then?

Beebe: He came back to teach here, because they couldn't stay in the State Department because her field was Near East and his was Middle Europe, and they were about to get assigned apart. They could see that wouldn't work. The Hoover Institution made a place for her, and actually, I think she was the only full professor they ever had. They didn't have professors there. I had to argue with them about that at Stanford when I was writing something about David. I knew he was right.

Biagi: For the record, so we'll have it on tape, his name was?

Beebe: David Harris.

Biagi: Middle name?

Beebe: Well, he didn't like it. It was David W. Clancy Harris, but he didn't like that. He wanted to be David Harris.

Biagi: He was a historian?

Beebe: Yes, and a real scholar. He read everything in the world. The deference that was paid to him by his colleagues was a pleasant surprise to me, because he was a very modest person, but very professorial. He had studied in Europe. He had come from Texas. He didn't want to talk like a Texan. When he came home from Europe, he had what Elinor called "a god-awful accent." [Laughter.] And it sounded affected to some people. I think newspaper people thought he was, and I'd thought he'd gotten awfully professorial. He seemed to be very, very formal.

After retirement, I wanted still to get to Europe. There was a good bargain to England. Of course, I'd been there on the coronation and seen just a little, not much. So I wrote to them and said, "Don't you want to get your noses out of books?" They had just retired.

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Christina, David looks pretty sound, better than you do." And she said, "I've had the flu and it's been bad, but I think it's going to be a nice spring. I'm going to be all right." But it was cancer, and she died within a couple of months.

David then came back here and went to Channing House, because he felt his health was not good. His old friends all rallied round, and I was freest of anybody, so I "rallied" a lot and felt very much at home with him.

Biagi: Channing House is?

Beebe: A retirement home in Palo Alto. It's 15 floors and it has all the things. So he put his money into that, because he knew he might need care. But we took some trips in California. He was delightful, and he was delightful in Europe, too. On a trip, they both had bad health, and part of the time she'd say, "I don't want to go tonight," and sometimes he'd say he didn't want to go. I said, "I will do the driving, and you will show me what I'm looking at because you're the scholars and I'm the ignorant person." He took me to cathedrals and Christina to castles, and we really had a nice time.

Biagi: So how old was he then when you got married?

Beebe: Well, I was 72 and he was 73. So he wasn't at all formal. I found that he was just delightful. And to my surprise, you know, in 26 years, I was still Edwin's wife, and so I just thought I was consoling him. So after two years, when he suddenly wanted to marry me, I was bowled over, and I think he was, too. But we did, and it was just simply incredibly delightful. I was incredulous the whole time. Every single day, it seemed to me, I found out something new and nice about him, and he seemed pleased, too.

And the aneurism. He wanted to get it taken care of before we got married.

Biagi: Where was it?

Beebe: It was right close to the heart, an aortic aneurism. I said, "Well, I suppose I'd feel that way, too, if I were you, but I hope not." They wouldn't operate in London. They said it was fairly stable and was very dangerous to operate, and they'd rather not. So he wanted to do it, and I said, "Well, it's yours. You don't have to do it, but if so, please let them know that I'm not just another lady at Channing House. I want to have access to get to you in the hospital." That was after we knew we cared, but we hadn't thought much about marriage particularly. But it just kind of had to be, because as we said, in our circles, you know, people were all living together if they wanted to, but it wouldn't be with us.

So we went to the doctor's office, and he said, "Now, I'll talk to him and then I will call you in and introduce you and explain that you are pretty special." So I sat there and sat there, and pretty soon he came out and motioned this way [to the left]. I said, "What's the matter?" He said, "He won't do it." I said, "Thank God!" He said, "It's pretty stable." So he said, "We'd better get married right away." I said, "Why don't we just do it? We talked about a little wedding. There's no such thing. It's a nuisance! Let's just do it. Let's just go to Nevada."

Christina's family was there, that is, the son's wife. The son's wife had been deserted, but Christina's grandchildren and her new family were up there, and he wanted to take some of her jewelry. I said, "That's a good excuse. We'll go up there and we'll just get married. Then you keep your place." He had his apartment and all his money at Channing House.

We hunted, before we went, for a little place right close down near Channing House. I said, "I can't say, 'Dear, I will take you out of all this,' because I can't run a home now." We got this little place about a block away, so we had a split home. I said, "If kids can shack up without

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Biagi: Now, it's not a dump. Let's be clear. It's a very pleasant place.

Beebe: Well, it is very pleasant. It is a pleasant place, a very good place to land, and it's kind of half and half. I have automatic watering, and the neighbors are very nice, and we have the pool, which is great.

Biagi: You're really on the Stanford campus.

Beebe: Yes. I thought I'd be going over to all kinds of things, but I find I don't much. For a while I had bad back trouble, and I couldn't walk without pain. Much better now.

Biagi: Well, that's good. What I'd like to do now is kind of go over the global issues and talk about your perspective on things, and talk about Lorena Hickok. I hear you pounding on the book.

Beebe: [Laughter.] Yes. I think I'd like to get that on the record.

Biagi: Let's do that. Okay. We went through last time and talked about Lorena Hickok and that relationship and your knowledge of her. I want to go back to it. You are feeling strongly that you want to go back to it, so let's do that now.

Beebe: Well, as I outlined to you briefly before, while I was at the AP, Edwin had suggested that Mrs. Roosevelt would be a very unusual person. He had known her when he was covering the Smith campaign and Roosevelt was still governor. He said she was a very unusual woman. At that time, Roosevelt was a handsome, rich man, rather lightweight in politics, everyone thought, although Edwin found more there and wrote some pieces that were later considered very perspicacious. So I suggested it to the AP, and I did go and interview her, and we got a good story, because she said she hoped her husband wouldn't run for president, it was so bad on the family. She said it was bad when he was governor, because her youngsters were teenagers, and you couldn't get into their heads that they mustn't take privilege, you know. "Oh, come and park right here." "Don't do it!" "Why not?" You know. [Laughter.] She said, "You are not the governor! He gets these privileges, but you don't." She said, "All the time I'm having to try to tell them that they must keep down, that they're in a special position. With the president's office, it would be much, much worse." And she hoped that he wouldn't run. That was a good story. There were other things that she tended to ask that I thought would be worth going into. She said, "Come to Hyde Park." I interviewed her in her New York apartment, and I had the date made.

But meanwhile, I had decided suddenly, when I found that Edwin was ill and had left the Star and gone to California, I thought he had left his family, too, I just decided I would come out here. I couldn't get transferred to San Francisco.

Biagi: So that would have been in what year?

Beebe: That was in '32. I was in New York in '32, and it was in the fall of '32, near Christmas, that I came out here. Lorena, then, got the assignment to go to Mrs. Roosevelt, and some of the people in the office.

Biagi: Lorena was working with you then at the AP?

Beebe: Yes. Oh, Lorena was established. She was a star. She was covering politics, very unusual, and she had covered football when she worked in Minneapolis. She was a very mannish-looking gal, but everybody liked Lorena, and I did. I had seen quite a little of her.

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Beebe: Yes, E.R.'s friend, by Doris Faber. I got a phone call from Boston, from a man who said he was an AP man in Boston. His wife was going to write a book about Lorena Hickok, and he'd like to introduce me to her, and understood that I had known Lorena and would I talk to her about it. And I did. I said, "You're going to write a book about Lorena? She's a very interesting person." "Yes." Would I write her a letter about her? Well, of course, I now hate to write anything, but I sat down and wrote a letter about Lorena and how she was. She asked me a lot of questions about her, so I wrote. Of course, I said she was very mannish-looking and always kept her hair long because she thought she'd better.

So then she phoned me again, and she said, "I'd like to know more about this. You kind of skirt over it. You talk about her being mannish. Was she a lesbian?"

And I said, "Well, she had lesbian friends." I then did tell her about—of course, Lorena was dead and had no family. I did tell her about that incident on the Lindbergh assignment.

After she got this out of me, she said, "Now I've got it!" She said, "I wasn't able to pin this anywhere, that she was a lesbian. Now I've got it." Then she told me she had these letters. She'd gotten interested in her letters to Mrs. Roosevelt, and she had found these letters which were very hot.

I said, "You are going to make a book about this?" I said, "Of course, I suppose you can. It'll make you some money, if that's the way you want. You'll get notoriety out of it. But you didn't tell me that was why you were getting this." I was furious.

She said, "Well, somebody else will get it if I don't. It's there, and I'm going to do it." She said, "My husband doesn't want me to do it, either." Well, she went ahead and did it, and then she sent me the book. I will have to say that it could certainly have been much worse. She did work on the book, and I'm sure she did, and she didn't, thank God, use my name. I said, "If you mention any of the stuff that I've told you in my name, I think I'll sue you. I'll say it isn't so. I'll back out." So what she did was put this section in there.

Biagi: Page what are you—

Beebe: On page 78, about, "A younger reporter, half a century later, would insist on not being identified if her recollections were to be recorded, so we'll call her Barbara Hanson." Then she goes on with this. There's a little truth in it, but—

Biagi: Do you feel she quoted you accurately?

Beebe: Well, yes, some of it. Yes. I told her how Lorena said, "Baby, I'm going to teach you to play poker and swear." I said, "Well, I don't think I'm going to need it." I just chatted, had chatted to her, and I had told her, too, that I was carrying around The Well of Loneliness one day, and she saw it. She said, "I wouldn't carry that book." I said, "Why? I think it's interesting." It was about lesbianism, and it was new to me, and it was popular at the moment. So I realized that she was very ticklish about the subject. That was, of course, before the Lindbergh case, so I didn't—she hadn't made for me. I did then tell her—I had told her about this incident. But as she relates it, it's just not right.

Biagi: What's wrong with what she says here?

Beebe: "Hick, upon arriving, felt symptoms of the flu, and Barbara left their room rather late at night to purchase some aspirin and a toothbrush from the hotel's drugstore." [Laughter.]

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Biagi: Did you wonder about the ethics of it?

Beebe: Yes! I don't think she—if she had told me, I guess maybe I probably would never have told her about the lesbianism. If she wanted it for her book, okay. Then there's your ethics problem. But I certainly felt betrayed. So I never acknowledged the book. I think perhaps I should have, because, of course, she could have used my name and she could have done it even worse, I suppose. But I think the liberties she takes with details makes me doubt her performance, although I have these clippings about the book. I read them with some interest.

I have been glad to note that in future, as you get the references to these letters, there's never any mention of her name at all or of the book or the author, although it got its publicity. I'd like to know. I'd very much like to know what the sales were and whether they dropped off. I think everybody's glad to forget it, because Mrs. Roosevelt's image is so firmly good, that people don't, I think, want it besmirched. And I think that's happening, and I'm glad whenever I see evidence that that's just as you gave it to me, telling about the people in the White House who think that she didn't have proof.

Biagi: You mean Eleanor's [Roosevelt] press corps.

Beebe: Yes, her press corps, and also some of these reviews say that, well, they're all kind of glossing it over. Mrs. Roosevelt I had good relations with, too. She always remembered me when she came out here. She was really just a marvelous person. I asked her about Lorena and how she was, and she always remembered. What have I got on that page? Something that I thought might be of interest.

Biagi: You rode along with her to the airport.

Beebe: Oh, yes. She was so casual with everybody. That's when I was working for the Democrats. I don't know how it came about, but she had gotten away from her Secret Service people, and I guess I took her there. No, because there was a driver. But anyway, we wound up we were alone, talking in the back seat. She found out that it was about the time I was 55, going to be retired. She said, "I think the AP is just dreadful!" [Laughter.] I think she'd gotten some of it from Lorena, too. But I see why the press did like her. She was so very frank, and she was so very good to the corps. She was a good person. So I just resented this whole project.

Biagi: Let me ask you two things that are related to that. About the issue of ethics and the press, was there any kind of standard of ethics that you see observed throughout your career in the press among reporters?

Beebe: Well, I think everyone had his own. It varied with people. We had terrible people who would do anything, you know, and you were working with them. And there were people who were very fine, just very fine. I remember George Wallace with white hair on the Kansas City Star. They said his hair turned white trying to be a newspaperman and a gentleman. [Laughter.]

When the Guild was organized, I went with the group that was organizing it, and said that I was interested in standards and morality of the press. I thought if the Guild would take a stand on this, it would be a good way as we were trying to get our feet on the ground, and they thought I was talking about love nests. [Laughter.] They looked at me strangely. I found out later this was a communist cell that was already working with the Guild, that we had to throw out later.

Biagi: But you never did, at that point, establish a standard of ethics?

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had done it. Some of them kidded me. They said, "You convicted him on his moustache." [Laughter.] I made him look pretty awful.

Biagi: By implication.

Beebe: The next day they discovered that they had the wrong man. So I felt bad about that, but not responsible, because it wasn't my assessment that he was guilty, and I had my directions. I was sure he was. But I felt bad about it, all the same. I don't know. I knew people—I think newspapermen, as a rule, are always sort of for the good guys in their hearts. I told some professors at Stanford one time that I thought that the newspapermen's standards were a little bit higher than theirs. They were sort of shocked. Someone had said to me, "Never mind. You want statistics, I'll give you some. It's only for the press." And I said, "Well, we wouldn't do that."

Biagi: Wouldn't do what, now?

Beebe: We wouldn't make up statistics. We'd get facts. But he thought as long as it was the press, it was all right. But I liked the newspaper people. The character of them changed, of course. They were roustabouts and always out for a free meal, but likeable and usually pretty brilliant and interesting in the old days. Then when things got more secure, it brought in a much better standard there. People wanted education. Didn't want it when I came. "I suppose you went to some journalism school? We'll have to teach you all over." [Laughter.]

Biagi: When people talk about ethics in journalism, they typically use the word, for instance, "fairness." Was there an ethic of fairness, would you say, in your career?

Beebe: Oh, well, of course, the Bridges case was an outstanding one, when the papers all ganged up on him.

Biagi: Harry Bridges. Because the waterfront employers were trying to get him out of their hair and deported to Australia, and they would have used any means. The papers backed the employers up, and Bridges would talk to nobody but the AP. And that is one reason I liked the Associated Press. They said it was dull and so on, but we didn't ever have an editorial policy. I had a friend who would say, "What does the AP think?" [Laughter.] I burst out laughing, because, of course, we were a headless horseman. We served papers of all complexions, and they didn't want any ideas from us; they wanted the facts, please, as they were.

So for all of almost 25 years with the AP, nobody ever suggested, you see, that that be done. But the papers did it. They did it and they did it in their news columns. Very often Hearst papers would get people who were of like views, so putting their chauvinistic and "ra-ra" views in came easy to them.

Biagi: Let's go to another issue, then, that's related to Lorena Hickok and what you were talking about there. That is the issue of women working with men in a man's world. Would you say that's an accurate description of your career: you were a woman working in a man's world?

Biagi: Oh, certainly was. I suppose—I remember a chap I didn't care for, nobody did. He said, "When you were a newspaper woman, you managed to be a lady." [Laughter.] That's a term that I don't—my mother said they talk about washer ladies; let's not talk about ladies. But yes, I never saw any reason that one had to be particularly tough. I mean, I wanted to get the facts, and people like to talk about themselves. Sure, I'll tell you what I have done, yes. I have urged people to talk, but I have never promised to keep a thing out that I didn't. But I certainly have gotten them to talk very freely. Then when it's come out later, they have been upset by it.

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Beebe: Oh, you'd better! Yes! I do. Yes, because they always thought, you know, the women could do little side stories and whatnot. You were usually assigned because, "God, we haven't got anybody else." And then you'd turn it in.

I remember the first story I brought in out here in San Francisco. It was on a rate hearing, you know. The boss said, "Well, that was a good story." I thought he had a note of relief in his voice. I guess I told you he probably thought I'd have a ruffle around every paragraph. [Laughter.] You see, the nice part is, once they find you can do it, they have to each one find out, and that gets a little bit monotonous after a while, to meet the same attitude and have to convert one after the other. Then every new job, you have to do it all over again, because it's set in their mind.

I think there must be change now, because women have taken over. They're in there; they're in all the jobs. So I don't think it is the same at all. I'd be very interested to know how some of the younger men do feel about women. But you know, there were no women allowed in the Press Club in San Francisco. Well, there were a lot of floozies going up and down Powell Street, and they felt if they let women in, they'd be in there. There were living quarters in there, you see.

Biagi: So you were never a member of the Press Club?

Beebe: No! I was never a member of the Press Club. I was invited with one other, Jane Conant, when this woman war correspondent, Maggie [Marguerite] Higgins, came and spoke to the Press Club. They called her and called me to see if we'd go, because she would otherwise be all alone. Jane and I said, "Are you going to go?" I said, "I don't know. What do you think?" [Laughter.] She said, "Well, I will if you will." So when we went in, there was applause all over the room. I guess it wasn't long before they let women in. Of course, I left before that was done. There were no women in the Press Club. There were no women in the Washington Press Club, as you know.

Biagi: No, for a long time.

Beebe: But I knew other women that were very much respected. I met a number. Usually they were settled in the job on the paper and had families at home, and they established themselves as capable workers and not sexpots. [Laughter.]

Biagi: Looking back on your whole career and all the things that have happened to you, what do you think was the happiest time of your life?

Beebe: Of course, I was delighted on the Oakland Tribune. I thought I was big stuff. I got to be rewriting all the crime and yelling, "Boy!" and they would come. But the Star was the best, I think, until I got involved personally and it was not comfortable for me at home or anything. But the Star was a family paper. There were wonderful people there, and we had a lot of fun all the time in the work and in the place. It was a whole community, and it stood for good things in the community. Of course, there's always another side to this, always clay feet, but on the whole, it did what a paper's supposed to, I think. It covered the city and stood for good things and promoted them. The people were fun to be with. We had parties and dances. It was a camaraderie which I think you get nowhere else.

When the Washington correspondent Roy Roberts came home to become managing editor of the Star, his wife was very unhappy. She liked the newspaper crowd and had liked them in Washington. So she came home. In the new executive job he had, she had to go to all kinds of functions with what she considered very stuffy people, so she would give a lot of parties for just the press, because she liked them better and they were more fun.

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Beebe: I thought I had.

Biagi: Tell me briefly, if you could.

Beebe: Well, when I was working in New York, a friend of mine from Kansas City, a woman, had been on the Star for a while doing some special things. There was an oratorical contest she was running, and she was a very good person. She wanted a job. I asked about it, if there was any place. I had heard in the office, something that there might be a place in Washington, and they said, "Well, we have a place. Could Frances fill this Washington slot?" He'd known her and he didn't want her. He said, "But I'll send you to Washington."

Biagi: What was the job?

Beebe: Well, it was sort of women's affairs in Washington.

Biagi: Would this have been in the thirties, then?

Beebe: Yes, that was in '32. I always had spent my time getting away from the women's affairs, and I said, "Well, I can see that there's a future there, but I've never liked women in herds." [Laughter.] "I don't think I'd want to spend my time working just with women's things. I know it's all right, but it's just not for me." And besides, I wouldn't take the job that I'd been asking for her. I would have felt, "Grab it myself?" You know. So I didn't go.

Biagi: So to be associated with just one kind of reporting.

Beebe: Yes. A friend of mine, who was a very fine newspaperwoman from Kansas City [Vina Lindsay], did go to Washington and she had the women's page on the Star, and she did things with it that lifted it up quite a bit. I think I have a hint in here at the end of what I wrote there about ideas on—

Biagi: I don't have anything else.

Beebe: You don't? Oh, I know where. Here it is. This is when Wilson Hicks wanted me to go to Hollywood.

Biagi: That's in 1933?

Beebe: Yes. I had come out here. I was then working in San Francisco. I didn't want to go to Hollywood, of course, particularly on account of Edwin, but I didn't want to go down there, anyway. But then they said that this job in Hollywood was with this new service of SNS, and they told me something about it. So I said, "Why couldn't it be done in San Francisco?" And I wrote this letter about that. Down here is where I said I wanted to be in the news, and I also said I had ideas about the news.

[Reading] "Of course, this would be in the feature field. I'd enjoy working on a full-time basis for a while, but I'd never want to get too far away from the news report, which is always my real interest. I have some theories about that in relation to women readers I'd like to expound some day, if it wouldn't be thought presumptuous. I believe women are actually repelled by the phraseology and treatment of the important stories of the day, though they really would like to be informed about them." I found that out when the Republican Convention was on in Kansas City, I was talking to some women friends and telling them informally what was going on that I was finding out about. I was a neophyte. They said, "We never were interested in politics, but this is interesting."

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Biagi: We had time to think now. Do you want to add any names?

Beebe: I've been talking instead of thinking. I did say Scotty Reston, because he managed to stay a reporter and still be up there. I'm trying to think. It's a very good thing to do. I think lots of men are spoiled. Good writers are spoiled by being shoved into executive positions that they're not fitted for. They think they have to because their wives want them to get ahead. So I think that more prestige to the people who have made it in writing, whose writing is outstanding, should be accorded. I guess perhaps it is now, but that comes more through television, I think.

Russell Baker, I said, on the Times, I enjoy. But my mind seems to be a blank about people I admire.

Biagi: Your contemporaries that you admire? Were there reporters that worked with you really liked and admired?

Beebe: Yes, but they weren't spectacular. I remember a man named Knickerbocker, who was of the New York Knickerbockers. He came out and was covering a beat in San Francisco, and he had the most beautiful English. With all the Press Club casual group, his English just sounded like a drawing room always. It was perfect. He was a real patrician, but he couldn't write very well. His writing was rather pedestrian, but his speaking, he should have been in the television age. He would have been wonderful.

Biagi: You often said that you loved Edwin's writing. What was it you liked about it?

Beebe: Well, he had humor and great knowledge, and he was called the best political prognosticator in the country. But he wrote with a—why is it the things you care about, you don't find words for? I remember a story he wrote about Andy Mellon. You know, he was a stingy old guy. What he said was, Mellon would stroll through the park and the squirrels would come up. "They think he's going to give them something." [Laughter.] That kind of delicate thrust, you know. It's all you needed to say.

Biagi: If you could describe the world of a journalist and why you became involved in it, what is it that you liked about the profession?

Beebe: Well, I liked being able to see a variety of the human scene. You get to do that. You see the very rich and the very poor and the very brilliant and the very stupid, and all the drama that there is in life, you have a ringside seat to the world. It seems to me that that's a very good job.

Biagi: Is it the future you ever envisioned for yourself as a child?

Beebe: No. I can't say that I did. I came into journalism because I had to pick a major as a junior when I went to the University of Wisconsin. [Laughter.] I remember reading Louisa Alcott, and there was a picture of her shaking her fist at the bird, saying she was going to be somebody some day, she was going to be a writer. That had sort of impressed me, but I don't think I yearned to be a writer particularly. Of course, I'm not a creative writer. I know the difference. I was married to two of them. [Laughter.]

Biagi: We'll stop.