Page 11
Interview # 5, Part 1
[Begin Tape 6_01]
Currie: Who taught you how to do things?
Asbury: I don't know how I possibly could have forgotten to tell you about Charles Ludwig, a
reporter on the Cincinnati Times-Star. I regarded him as a quiet, elderly person. He was probably
just around 50, but he had all the manner and attitude of an older man. He wore extremely thick
glasses. He had eye problems, and as an indication of how paternalistic the Times-Star was, they
had sent him to Germany -- where you got the best medical services in those days -- for an eye
operation. They sent his wife with him and told him to take a tour of Europe while they were
there at the Times-Star expense. He was a valued employee.
I think he started at about the age of 11 as an office boy in Mr. Taft's office -- I believe, Charles P.
Taft, the brother of William Howard -- who was later chief justice of the United States. He used
to come in, and Mrs. Faulkner introduced me to him as her new assistant, and he would come in.
He was a very benign, smiling, gentle, sweet soul. You never picked him out to be a tough
reporter. He would drop by, and one day he came by and he said, “I'm going to interview…."
Who was it? Maybe President Hoover? I don't know, but a very famous person. And he said,
“Could I take her along to watch how to do it?” And she said, “Certainly.” So, he took me along.
Now, I'm not positive this was President Hoover, but it was somebody very famous and in a way,
I felt sorry for whoever this person was.
They were sitting in the middle of a room and Charlie was interviewing them and here I am over
here in the corner -- beady-eyed and ears flapping in the breeze -- and it must have been
uncomfortable for that person observing how he did this. Frequently, he would stop by and say to
Mrs. Faulkner, “I have an interview. Can I take her along?” And Mrs. Faulkner always welcomed
it and said, “Sure.”
Whatever I was doing, I could drop it, and she would make Dorothy do it, or she would do it and
just send me out with him. I learned a lot observing this expert. In later years, whenever I went
back to Cincinnati, I looked up Charlie and we would have lunch.
Once, when I went there many years later from New York, he said something about the Guild. I
said, “The Guild? One of the organizers asked me about the [Cincinnati]Times-Star,” and I said,
“Don't waste your time going there. Nobody's ever going to organize it at the [Cincinnati] Times-
Star,” because they're too wonderful to their employees.” And he said, “Well, things have
changed.”
I was so shocked they were talking about organizing a guild. Charlie, this gentle, sweet soul, was
a socialist, and he had very advanced ideas. There was nothing aggressive about him. He didn't
go around preaching, but that was Charlie Ludwig.
Now, I'm going to drop him, and I want to go back to something else that I should have said
earlier.
This goes back to Western College.
When I sat down to write my letter -- application for a job -- I sent it to the Cincinnati Post
because that's the one we read every day at home and the only one I knew anything about. My
first published writing had been in the Cincinnati Post when I was in middle school. The paper
was running a contest. The zoo had bought a new gorilla, a female gorilla named Julia. They had
a contest for schoolchildren to write in and say they were teaching Julia a lot of things. Should
they teach her to smoke cigarettes? I wrote this indignant essay, you know, saying what a
horrible thing to visit the bad habits of human beings on a poor, helpless gorilla and they should
not teach her to smoke.
I won third prize in the citywide contest, and they printed a few lines of my letter in a story on
page one. There I was, published in print, and the prize for the contest was a book of ten zoo
tickets.
I promptly went around the neighborhood and invited ten kids to go with me to the zoo on a
certain date. Of course, I didn't tell my parents I had done this. Whenever possible, I did things
first and let them find out afterward because I never wanted to risk being told no. I figured it
would take a couple of weeks for the tickets to arrive. Of course, I was showing off explaining
why I got the ten tickets. [laughter]
Then, the tickets didn't arrive. I was watching the mail and watching the mail and watching the
mail, and then came the morning of the Saturday that I was going to take these ten kids to the
zoo -- and no tickets. I didn't know what to do. So I had to tell my father. I told him I had invited
ten kids to go with me to the zoo, and that the tickets hadn’t come yet. Well, he was just furious,
but he did give me the money to take them. Oh, very furious -- but I guess he couldn't have borne
the censure of ten children.
We all went to the zoo. That was my first publication. I guess I was about 10, 11, or 12. I don't
remember. I've always wanted to go back there and look up that story and copy it.
When I first came to New York, I was living in Brooklyn Heights. I'm a gregarious soul. I love to
be with people and hell around and party around and so forth -- and still do -- and keep very
busy doing it.
Here I am in the city, and I don't know a soul -- not a soul. I had no contacts except people who
might help me get a job. The only person I knew was Lady Albright, who was living next door. I
didn't know anybody else and I got lonely.
So, I'm walking along one of the streets in Brooklyn Heights one day, and there was a sign in a
window. It said, “Do you like to sing?” And I thought, “Yeah,” If so, come in.
I love to sing. When I was a child, we used to sit around the back door and my father would play
the guitar, and we would sing all these old hillbilly songs. When relatives would come, we’d sit
around and sing. There wasn't any radio or TV or anything like that. They remembered these
songs from their childhood and sang them. Then, of course, there was a phonograph.
so I saw this sign, “Do you like to sing? If so come in.”
I went in, and what I learned was that the there was a church. Yeah, I don’t remember the name
of this street. I should know it. It's right there in Brooklyn Heights, just a couple of blocks away
from where I was living.
It was called the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims. It was a combination of two churches -- one
of the churches, which I think was the Plymouth Church and which I think was this building was
an old church. It had a statue in the front yard -- whatever you would call it, in case of a church --
of Henry Ward Beecher and this little slave girl down here that he was selling.
Henry Ward Beecher was a brother, I think of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and he was a famous,
famous, eloquent orator and an abolitionist. He used to preach abolitionism, or anti-slavery
sermons in this church.
Once, Lincoln came to this church and they had a marker in the pew where he had sat to hear
this. He attracted national attention, and then he sold a slave girl in public to show how horrible
this is. This is a little girl. It was quite a historic church.
Well, from previous times, I guess they had a lot of money and endowment from Arbuckle.
Here's Arbuckle in my life again. As a matter of fact, I could smell in the neighborhood the
Arbuckle coffee that was being roasted -- it smelled delicious. The processing plant was near
there.
The Arbuckle family, among others, had given a lot of money to this church in those times when
it was so famous nationally, and he was so famous nationally, that they had a paid, professionally
trained choir director. He had been trained at Princeton, which was the best place for choir
directors to be trained. They had a 50-member choir, where you rehearsed Monday, Wednesday
and Friday. You sang at the Sunday morning service and the Sunday evening service and I think
you sang at the Wednesday evening prayer meeting.
In return for all this, your pay was that you got a free voice lesson from this man who was very
good. His name was Henry Pfohl -- tall, handsome, fairly young, blond man, very pleasant. Once
a year, they had a concert -- a recital -- at which each of us sang a solo. This filled up a lot of
empty time, three nights a week and two services on Sunday. He auditioned me, and I was
accepted into the choir. We wore black robes and sat up in the balcony in back of the preacher.
This was when I first went there and I had no friends, but I had lots of friends from Knoxville
who were always coming to town, and they would call me up and take me to dinner or a
nightclub or something. Of course, they were up here with free time and helling around, and
sometimes the next Sunday morning, sitting up there in my choir robes, I would have such a
hangover that I could hardly hold myself together. And I really felt quite sinful, you know --
having such a hangover sitting there in those black choir robes.
Currie: Now, what denomination church was it?
Asbury: I think it was Congregational? I'm not positive. It was a Protestant church.
Currie: Did you sing in your church when you were a child?
Asbury: No, no. In Knoxville. Well, that's another thing. Let me finish this.
One morning, I'm sitting there with this awful hangover and just sort of drowsy, paying no
attention to the sermon, and then suddenly something caught my ear. I came to and started
listening. This minister was from West Virginia. He was a guest and he was describing meeting
Henry Ward Beecher and Henry Ward Beecher's effect on his life. He said he was a little boy
there in Brooklyn Heights selling newspapers, and one night this man came along, and he bought
a newspaper, and he said, “Come on, walk home with me, boy.”
So, the little boy, with his newspapers under his arm walked home -- which wasn't very far away
-- with this big man. They talked, and then the man went inside and said, ”Goodbye. Thanks for
walking home with me.”
The next day, these newspapers he was selling had a great big picture on page one of this man
who had died during the night -- who was Henry Ward Beecher, this great man -- and he read all
about this great, great, great man who he had walked home with that night. He was so impressed
that he decided he was going to be a minister. And, by golly, he was a minister, and he was down
there preaching today in Henry Ward Beecher's Church.
Well, I thought, “Gee whiz,” that's a story. So, I went over to the [Brooklyn] Eagle the next day,
where Applegate was, the Sunday editor, and I said, “I think this is a story.” He said, “Well, I
think so, too.” He said, “Write it.” He said, “I can't pay you for it, but I'll print it and put your
byline on it. And if you've got a picture, I'll use a half-column cut in it.”
So he did. I haven't got a clipping of that either, but that was my first New York publication -- the
story about this little boy who grew up to be a minister and came back and preached in the great
man's church. Well, the next time I went for my lesson from the choir master, I took a clipping
and gave it to him and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. He said, “How in the world” -- the
Brooklyn Eagle was a big paper -- “how in the world did you get this in the paper?” He said, “We
pay a man to get things in the paper. He never got anything like this in about the church.”
Currie: It must have felt good to see your name in the paper.
Asbury: Yes, it did. This big feature story. The funny thing about that choir -- there were about
50 people in it -- they were all natives, and I didn't make a single friend out of that group. I just
didn't. There was a man -- I forget his name -- who lived in the Firestone's house. We stopped on
the way home one day to have coffee, and then the next time the thing was over, and we started
home, this older man appeared and started bawling me out -- blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. “And I
know about you. I know what kind of person you are. You had called me, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.” And I was so mortified and so shocked, and I didn't know what the hell was going on. I
realize now that that they were gay, you see, and that this guy had gone home and mentioned that
he stopped and had coffee with this girl in the choir, and this other one had just gone off his
rocker about it. I didn't know then about gays or anything, but that's as close as I made to having
a friend.
These people were from all over Brooklyn, and they'd been in this choir a long time, I guess.
They all knew each other and so forth. There were about 50 of them. I didn't make any friends,
but I certainly enjoyed learning all these songs and singing them, and it certainly filled a lot of
empty hours. There's this song -- I don't know what it's called -- but it has a line in it: “I walk the
Kings Highway.” I remember they all burst into laughing when we sang this, and I didn't know
why, but I found out later that's a big broad street in Brooklyn. [laughter] “I walked the Kings
Highway.”
Currie: This sort of wrapping up now what now let me see what else I had here. You thought of
it?
Asbury: This business about music. I always loved music and when I was in college, I could
have taken voice lessons. They had a music teacher there and Western [College for Women] was
very heavy, heavy, heavy on music. They gave a degree in music and they had a voice teacher
named Miss Driver, who was a very heavy. She had an enormous top torso -- just enormous --
and she had dyed red hair, red like that cover over there. She wore purple all the time. She was a
weird-looking thing.
To take voice lessons, I would have had to pay extra -- like another $80, or something like that --
which I didn't have.
When I was a child, we had this piano and I was taking piano lessons. A friend of my father's
from way back -- and as I look back now, she may have been a girlfriend from his youth -- gave
me lessons for free. She used to come and sit next to the bench here and give me lessons, and I
loved it. I was practicing. My mother was tone-deaf. So, when I was there in the house with her,
instead of doing my scales, I was playing by ear and all over the piano and having a great time.
One day, my father came home unexpectedly and heard me doing this, and he said, “Don't you
ever do this again. You practice those scales.” When he wasn't around, I'd do it again, and then
he came home again and caught me at it, and he said, “No more lessons,” which was one of the
stupidest things that I ever heard. I should have been encouraged, or at least I should have had to
do scales, but I shouldn't have been chopped off from lessons. That was always an unfinished
thing that that irked me.
When I was in Knoxville getting a divorce, very depressed, and having a bad time, I went out
and bought myself a piano -- a little upright. I put it in the dining room of my apartment, and I
used to just beat the hell out of that piano -- playing all these things by ear and improvising. I
bought a book and learned some of the songs, which was such a consolation. That's the piano
that I left behind. It was a Wurlitzer upright that I left behind for that little girl to practice on.
Well, getting back to Life magazine.
Currie: We left you just about to go into Ingersoll’s office.
Asbury: So, I went upstairs to Mr. Ingersoll, and it was on a very high floor in the Chrysler
Building. And, of course, the Chrysler Building was one of the tallest buildings in the city at that
time – if not the tallest building. Well, I went in, there was this thick carpet my feet sunk into.
There were these beautiful bookcases all around. It was a big office and I was thinking to myself
bitterly, “So, this is how the other half lives.”
I walk over, he greets me and then he sits down behind the desk. When he started talking, he
began to lisp, and this was amazing. I mean, writing letters for this great guy up here to sign --
and he lisps. And he was nervous.
In my letter, I had said, “It seems to me that in an organization this size, you could find another
spot for somebody who'd been told a week before that she was doing fine and who'd been
selected in competition with 22 other people.” He said, “You're right. We should be able to find
another place for you.” He said, “I've been trying to.” This is possibly a half hour after he got it,
and apparently, he had gotten on the phone and telephoned around. He said, “I've been trying to,
and I just can't do it right away.” He said, “Could you go back to Knoxville and let me send for
you?”
I saw this plot to get rid of me and I stamped my foot and I said, “No, I am not going back to
Knoxville.” He got more nervous, and he was lisping worse, and I suddenly felt sorry for him,
because I realized he was terrified of me -- little old me. I realized that he was just scared to
death that I was going to attack him or jump out the window or do something. He said, “I'm sorry
it happened and I will keep trying, and I will get in touch with you.” I went out and he did.
I was living then in Manhattan in this converted church on Lexington near 40th Street. I guess I'd
already moved out of the Towers. I got a message to go to Fortune magazine to talk to
somebody, and she offered me a job as a researcher for $50 a week. That was a lot more money
than I'd ever made. This is a week or two later. I’d moved out of the Towers, where I was no
longer working, into this room on Lexington Avenue and I had gotten out my scrapbook and I
had gone around to all these people, again.
Among my stops was the New York Post and the editor there was a man named Walter Lister, and
he was kind of a sour, taciturn kind of a person -- very cold. So, I went in there, and he looked at
me, and he says, “You've been here before, haven't you?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Last week,
wasn't it?” I said, “Yes. Last week. Last month. Last year. Two years ago.” He said, “Where do
you live?” I said, “Brooklyn Heights.” He said, “I used to live in Brooklyn Heights. It's a lovely
place to live.” And I said, “Yes, it is.” He said, “I used to have a wonderful doctor out there.” He
said, “Let me give you his name. If you should ever need it.” So he writes out this….. I said,
“Thanks. Fortunately, I'm very healthy, but one never knows.” So he wrote out the name of this
doctor and the telephone number, and that was all that took place in the interview. “Really,” he
said, “we don't have any jobs here.” He didn't even say, sorry -- he's not the type. He just said,
“We don't have any jobs.” So, I went out.
It must have been after that that I moved out of the Towers and into this room over on Lexington,
around 40 th, in the converted church. I got the letter to go to Fortune and be interviewed. They
interviewed me for this job as a researcher for $50 and said they’d get in touch with me. Well, I
got a call from the [New York] Post. It wasn't from him, but they said, “Mr. Lister said to call you
and tell you to come to work Monday, February 1 st ,” I think it was.
Currie: 1930-----
Asbury: 1938. I have no idea why he suddenly decided to hire me. I mean, he was a cold
cucumber, and that was the sum total of the conversation -- to come to work Monday. The next
day, I got a call or a letter or something from Fortune telling me to come to work for this $50-a-
week research job. The job on the [New York] Post as a reporter was going to be $25.
Currie: Half as much.
Asbury: Half as much. But, I didn't hesitate. I called up. I was even a little snotty, and I said,
“Thank you very much, but I have another job as a reporter on The New York Times” -- I mean,
on The New York Post, period.
This job on the New York Post began at 8:00 in the morning. It was an afternoon paper. This is
my first newspaper job after 14 months plus the two years of trudging, trudging, trudging……
Currie: ….. back and forth to Knoxville.
Asbury: Well, no, two years including the trips I took when I was still in Knoxville, but I’d been
in [New York] city the last 14 months, trudging, trudging, trudging from one newspaper office to
the other.
I was amazed because when I went to The Daily [News] on one of my trips -- I think it was the
same one where Berniece was so furious because she didn't get a Thanksgiving dinner. No, it
was earlier. Anyway, The Daily News had a brand-new building, and I went up to the city room.
The Daily News was, I guess, sort of a sensational tabloid then. It wasn’t very old. They had
Captain Patterson as an editor, and he was a rich man from the Chicago Tribune publishing
family -- and he was a socialist. He was a publisher, and he had wild New Deal editorials. He
was the kind who would get in work clothes and ride the subway to see what was going on. He
was a fabulous character in the publishing world and the The Daily News was a very popular
paper. It was part of the Chicago Tribune empire and had gone into competition with The Daily
Mirror, a very successful tabloid in the Hearst Empire. I had gone to The Daily News. I'd been
told that that was the best place to work and that they paid the highest salary to reporters. I think
they paid $50 a week to reporters.
I went there, and I went up to the newsroom floor, and here is a receptionist and two uniformed
guards with pistols. I said that I wanted to see the city editor, and she said, “No, he can't see
anybody. He's too busy.”
I didn't argue with her or the two uniformed, armed guards. I turned around, and I went
downstairs, and on the first floor of the News, there was a huge globe in the lobby, and there was
a ring of lettering around it. It’s metal, embedded in the floor, and is still there. I sit down there in
the lobby, and I was looking at this globe, and it said, “You are 2000 miles ---" I don't know what
distances are; my geography is terrible --but something like 2000 miles from San Francisco,
5000 miles from Egypt, 10,000 miles from India, or whatever.
I stood there and looked at this thing, and I said, “I'm not even a quarter of a mile from the city
editor, and I can't get in.” I said to myself, “It couldn't be any more difficult to see Patterson than
it is to get in the city room past those armed guards to see the city editor.”
So, I went upstairs to Patterson's office. Evidently, people didn't do that, because there was a
sweet, mild-mannered middle-aged woman here as a receptionist who was completely unable to
cope with me. She obviously had no experience with people like me or with anybody who wasn't
just acquiescent and polite, because I said, “I said I want to see Mr. Patterson.” She said, “Do
you have an appointment?” I said, “No, I don't.” She said, “What do you want to see him about?”
I said, “I want to see him about a job.” She said, “You can't talk to him about a job. You have to
talk to the city editor about a job.” I said, “I tried to talk to the city editor about a job, but I
couldn't get in.” “Just a minute,” she said.
She telephoned down to the city editor and said she was sending me down. So, I went down and
sailed past the two uniformed guards into the city room, and the city editor’s name was Frank
Carson. He had been on the Chicago Tribune in the days of MacArthur and Hecht and had a
reputation for being a very tough guy. Now, he's older and he has white hair.
Since I was sent downstairs from Mr. Patterson, he had me sit down, and he was fundamentally a
very sweet guy. He just had a rule: no jobs - don’t let anybody in. So, we talked and he looked at
my scrapbook, and we had a pleasant conversation. He said, “You remind me of Carol Frink.
You looked just like her when you walked in that door.” I said, “Who is Carol Frink?” “Well,
Carol Frink,” he said, “was a wonderful reporter on the Chicago Tribune, and she was married to
Charlie MacArthur before he left her for Helen Hayes.” And I said, “Well, if I look like Carol
Frink, when I walked in the door, you should give me a job. I'm going to be just as good as she
is.”
“She was,” he said, “I can't do it. I just don't have the job. Look out there. I have people sitting
around there doing nothing because Mr. Patterson is too kind hearted to fire them.” This is still a
Depression, mind you. He said, “I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make you our Knoxville
correspondent.”
He gets out this file box -- about three by six -- and goes through the alphabet. He pulls out this
card, and it says Knoxville, and he just tears it up. Well, I didn't know who was on there, but I
thought, “My goodness, what am I doing to somebody?” It could even be somebody I know.
He tore it up and threw it away. Then he took another card, and he wrote my name and my office
telephone number and my home telephone number. He said, “You'll be hearing from me.”
After that, whenever I came to the [Daily] News, I would just send my name in. I could always
go in when I came to the city once a week. I would keep him apprised of various -- and then I
told him about Betts and Betts, and we got to be pretty good friends. That was reassuring to
know that I could always get into the paper that had the biggest circulation, and the same kind of
a relationship developed at the World Telegram. There was a wonderful, sweet man named Bo
McKanney that everybody loved who was city editor there. I got in there because of Tommy
Dowling, the business manager. I discovered the time of the week that he was free to talk was
Saturday afternoon because they didn't have a Sunday paper. So, Saturday afternoon, when the
last copy had gone down and before it was quitting time, I would go in there and he would be
free. I went in there once a week, and there was never any job, but we always had a pleasant
conversation. I kept him in stitches about Mr. Yarrow and Betts and Betts. So getting back to
Fred Carson….
Currie: Did you ever do any stories for the Daily News out of Knoxville?
Asbury: Yes. One day, I got this telegram signed by somebody else, Harry, what's his name? He
was the managing editor asking me to send him a story about something that was happening
there. It was about a young woman who had beaten her father to death with a shoe. When I got
this, I thought, “I don't know whether I can do this story because they wanted it in the news.” It
was a big national, sensational story, but was the [Daily] News a competitor with the World
Telegram, which was part of the Scripps Howard chain of which I was a member. I had this big
conflict and I finally decided, “No, I couldn't.”
It killed me to do it. It just killed me to do it. This is something that hadn't occurred to me before.
As it turns out, I probably could have done it, but I didn't know, the ethics of those things. I'm
just going by the best reasoning I can. I knew I was cooking my goose with this guy, and I sent a
telegram, “Sorry, can't send story.” Oh, what a hard thing that was to write to this guy. I suppose
that they didn't try me anymore. Why should they?
One day, when I went in to see Frank Carson, he said, “Are you all right?” I said, “Sure.” He
said, “You're not broke or anything.” I said, “No, no, I'm doing all right. I guess I was working
for Betts and Betts.”
He said, “I know somebody on…” -- I don't even remember what paper it was. He said, “I think
there's a job there.” And he said, “I'll give you a note to him.” So, he turns around in the
typewriter, and he puts this little piece of paper in there, and then he hands me this envelope. He
said, “You go over there and see him. I think he might have a job.” The envelope wasn't sealed.
So, when I got downstairs, I opened up the envelope and there was nothing written on this paper,
but there were two $10 bills folded up in there. I just about dropped dead because, people didn't
do things like that, and middle-aged editors didn't do that with young, pretty girls without
incurring some kind of trouble, in my opinion.
I just stood there, and I wanted to cry, and there's no place to cry. I can't stand there in this lobby
and cry, and I can't walk up the street and cry. So, I went out, and I went up the street, and near
there was a diner. I went in there, and I went back in a booth, and I ordered a cup of coffee, and I
cried. I was so touched at his being so thoughtful and also so brave.
When Carson died, his secretary, who was a man, called me up. By then, maybe I was working
on the AP. I don't know. I was working someplace. He called me up, and he said, “I found your
name in Mr. Carson's Christmas list.” He said, “I thought I knew everybody on his Christmas
list. I didn't know he knew you. How did you know him?”
I said, “I used to go in there all the time asking for a job.” He said, “He must have been
impressed with you.” I said, “Well, he wasn't impressed enough to hire me, was he?”
Currie: Did you actually take that the note with the money to the paper?
Asbury: To what paper? There was no paper. He had a name on the outside. The letter that was
wrapped around this, was supposed to be a letter of introduction and it was blank.
Currie: I know, but didn't he tell you to take it to------?
Asbury: Yeah, but that was a ruse.
Currie: Just to give you the money?
Asbury: And knowing me, he knew since he left it unsealed that I would open and see what he
said.
Currie: He knew you well enough to know that?
Asbury: That's right. Of course.
Currie: Did you ever talk to him?
Asbury: He knew me well enough not to hand it to me. He knew me well enough to know that if
he left the thing unsealed, I would open it to see what he said about me. He thought I was
probably broke, and I wouldn't admit it.
Currie: Did you ever talk to him about it?
Asbury: I sent it back and I wrote this letter and I said, “This is really very, very sweet of you,
and I appreciate it, but I really can get along without it.
[Tape ends]