Aline Mosby: Interview #1

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[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Currie: I wonder if we can begin at the beginning, when and where you were born.

Mosby: I was born July 27, 1922, in Missoula, Montana, at St. Patrick's Hospital. My father at that time was an electrician. I don't know when he started doing that. Then he started selling electrical appliances, such as refrigerators and stoves and so forth, in Missoula. I think my mother worked with him in the store. I had a sister two years older than I, named Mary Jane. That was the family.

We lived on University Avenue, which is right near the University of Montana, in Missoula. I don't know how old I was when my father began to build a radio station. Being an electrician, he had all the catalogs and sent away for all the material and so forth. He was very much a self-made man. He built the radio station, which was called KGVO, and it was the first radio station in Missoula and only the second in Montana. The first one was in Butte. My father opened his station in 1932.

My father was definitely a self-made man. His parents were immigrants from Denmark and they opened a small hotel in the town of Eureka, which is almost on the Canadian border between Montana and Canada. He managed to get through grammar school, but he went just a couple of years to high school, secondary school, and then decided he wanted to be an electrician in the town of Kalispell, and then he moved to Missoula. In other words, he was full of energy, initiative, and doing things.

I remember the radio station when I got older. My mother was the bookkeeper for the radio station. I remember being on the radio station, singing with other children and acting in radio plays and so forth.

Currie: What fun!

Mosby: Then later on, the station got bigger. I remember it moved to another place. I'm not sure when he started that, but he built the television station in the late 1950s. That was, again, the first television station in Missoula, which was a town of about 20,000 people. But by the time I was in university, it was probably up to 30,000. They claim 75,000 now, but I think that includes the outlying ranches and so forth. It's probably more like 55,000 or 60,000. Anyway, he built the television station. In other words, [he was] very energetic.

He began to acquire real estate in Western Montana. We always had a country home on Flathead Lake. He had a Swedish man build a little log lodge on the lake. The southern half of the lake is on the Flathead Indian Reservation. That's where the house is. I still go there.

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Currie: He wasn't necessarily interested in news-gathering?

Mosby: No. No, no, he wasn't interested in news-gathering. He was just a very lively go-getter, and Missoula didn't have a radio station, and Missoula was full then—and to some extent, still now, though it's livelier now—with very conservative people who just didn't see any reason to change anything and thought that my father was a little crazy.

I remember that the Missoula River, the Clark Fork of the Columbia River, we call it the Missoula River, but that isn't its real name, runs right through Missoula. That's where Lewis and Clark went on their exploration and walked by the river, and there are some small islands in the river. I think my father bought one of the islands or he wanted to, and he wanted to build something there. I forget what it was. I could look into that when I go to Montana. Everybody just said, "You're crazy. You can't do that."

Well, long after he died, this was in the thirties this happened, something like that, and in the 1980s they finally realized, of course, he was right, so they put it up there. I forget what it is, but it was done. [Mosby later consulted with her sister, who said their father wanted to build a park on the island.]

My parents were divorced when I was a junior in college, which was a terrible blow. Later when I was working first for UPI [United Press International] in California, I remember my father came to visit me, and I was living in the western part of Los Angeles, in the Hollywood area where it's all on hills. You've been there; you must remember.

Currie: Yes.

Mosby: Everything is on hills there. Of course, when there's a rainstorm, as you know, sometimes the houses slide down, which is a disaster, but most of the time it's all right. But Missoula is in a valley surrounded by mountains, and some of them are low enough that you could put houses on them, but there was never a house on them because everybody said, "Of course you can't build on a hill."

My father said, "That is ridiculous. They do it in California." He bought great tracts of this land and started a housing project called Farviews. He had a beautiful house built by a very famous California architect. Then he built a few other houses for speculation and had a hard time selling them. He had a very difficult time getting permits for building and everything, because everybody in the city council and the government and in the town said, "You can't build a house on a hill. It will slide down! How are you going to get water up there?" Ridiculous questions. To make a long story short, now the whole hill is covered with houses, as are almost all the hills around Missoula. That's what I mean when I said he was a go-getter. He was a pioneer. Maybe that's a better word. He saw these things as a means of making money and doing things and helping the community. It would never have occurred to him to ever go anyplace else. He loved Montana. He loved Missoula. Everybody else just sat around and said, "Ah, you can't do that."

Currie: But he also persevered.

Mosby: Yes! Yes, that's true. I would say I learned perseverance from him. He just would keep doing something, no matter if somebody said, "You can't do that." He would just do it.

Currie: You were telling me that the radio station turned into the TV station, and your father had a brother named Eck. He was the one who inspired you.

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Mosby: No. I don't remember that. It was frivolous. I'd forgotten all about that.

I wonder what happened to all those other students. We learned quite a bit. I think it was a six-week course. I'm not sure. I remember we stayed in Chicago overnight after this bus trip. When I think of us going, I must have been either fourteen or fifteen, going alone with these two other students. I remember we stayed in a hotel, and I couldn't sleep all night for some reason; I forget what. But for somebody from Missoula, Montana, a town of fifteen thousand or twenty thousand, to go to Chicago!

Currie: It must have seemed like the big city.

Mosby: Oh, it certainly did!

Currie: You said you learned quite a bit at this course. Do you remember what it is that you got out of that?

Mosby: Offhand, no. I'd have to think about it some more. When I go to Montana, I have my scrapbooks there.

Currie: Oh, great!

Mosby: And childhood things like that. I'll look that up.

Currie: That would be great. This was in addition to working on the school paper?

Mosby: Yes. I should maybe check on that Missoula High school paper. I'm not sure what year the Chicago trip was. I think I went back to high school for a year after Chicago, before I went to university, though I'm not positive about that. I think so. I'll have to check on that.

Currie: Do you recall the kinds of things that you did on the school paper?

Mosby: No. The Kaimin was the name of the university paper.* Actually, in the last year or so, people do this. Maybe you might find this true when you get older. The people you went to school with, after you get out of university or high school, everybody spreads in other directions and maybe you still might see one or two of them down the years, especially if you move around a lot. Only when you get to be so-called retirement age do all of a sudden you start remembering your childhood and see these people again. It's interesting that now I'm getting letters from people with whom I went to high school and grammar school that I had not heard from and haven't seen since then. Everybody begins to think, when they're approaching the end of their life, they start remembering all of this.

Currie: Also maybe there's more time to remember.

Mosby: Well, that's it, yes. Yes, that's true. More time to remember. But anyway, one of them will be in Missoula, and I will ask her. People who are still living there would remember a lot more than I would. I don't even remember the name of the school paper.

______________________ * The name of the high school paper was Konah, an Indian word. I cannot remember the meaning. The same for Kaimin, the name of the university newspaper, which was and is a daily.

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The whole auditorium, my parents were there and maybe a couple other people, maybe two other people, and that was all, because that was Sunday, December 7, 1941. Of course, everybody was home listening to the radio and terror-stricken, and it was just horrible. But I went, of course, to do the concert. I felt I should; my parents came. But, of course, everybody else was at home in hysterics. Nobody came.

Currie: You grew up during the depression.

Mosby: Oh, yes.

Currie: What was that like? Do you have any memories of how the depression affected your family or your community?

Mosby: My father was a self-made man. He had his own business. He did very well selling electric appliances. In those days, all those things were new. The town, as I said, was only about fifteen thousand, eighteen thousand people. Of course, I guess that's why my mother worked with my father. He wasn't paying her anything, I'm sure. He was always very stingy with money. Everything, the capital and all that, had to be accumulated.

I just don't remember. I should ask my sister some of these things about the depression. When you live in a small town, your expenses are much less than if you were born and brought up in New York. You walk to school. Of course, he owned the house, but I suppose in those days houses didn't cost very much. He owned the house that I was born and brought up in. I just don't remember. The whole nation was affected, but whether it would have been in a small town, I don't know. There are lumber mills right outside of Missoula. Lumber is the big industry. I guess it probably would have been affected, but there weren't homeless people sleeping in the streets or anything like that.

Currie: It didn't affect your life in any significant way?

Mosby: No. My father owned his own business, so it wasn't a question of being fired.

I remember the first job I had was when I was fifteen. My father, as I said, believed that you shouldn't pamper children. Looking back, I always thought he was tough and he really frightened me. I was a bit terrified of him. But I think he was right. He said, "You have to learn to make your own way," and he just didn't throw money around. He'd give us a quarter now and then, I think, our weekly allowance was pretty small. Of course, in those days, you remember, hamburgers cost five cents. [Laughter.] I finally decided I was going to get a job. I wanted my own spending money.

So for one summer, when I was still in high school, I remember I went to the department store downtown, Missoula Mercantile, to apply for a job selling ice cream cones, which were maybe three cents or something. I remember there was a little outdoor window that led to the street. You could stand on the street outside and order ice cream cones and they'd hand them out. But there wasn't any opening, and I couldn't think of what else to do, so [although] I didn't tell my parents I was doing this, I went to the theater, the Wilma Theater. There were two movie theaters, cinema houses, in the town. I went to the Wilma, which was the biggest one, right on the river, it was very nice, and I applied for a job as an usherette, and I got one. I got my first Social Security card. I lied and said I was sixteen and I wasn't, but I got a Social Security card.

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I remember we had to take economics and the humanities, political science, literature, everything. I don't know what journalism schools do now. I should find out, at the University of Montana, if they still do the same thing. That was, I think, for the first year, when we actually then started taking journalism. I think maybe we took journalism courses, too, but they didn't get intensive until our junior and senior year. Then I remember everybody had to work on the university newspaper, which is called the Kaimin, which is an Indian word. I don't know what it means.

Of course, in those days there weren't computers. It's completely different now. So you learned how to set type. We would go to the basement of the journalism school. The journalism school was in a separate building. In other words, that's one reason I guess it had a good rating. It was a separate college. Forestry was in another building. Forestry, of course, is a big school there, with the lumber industry.

We learned how to set type and to proofread, and we would help put out the newspaper. It was very practical training. You learned a lot about Montana history. I remember Dean Stone was the name of the dean, and he was quite well known. I forget his first name. Even then he was very old.

Currie: How often did the newspaper come out?

Mosby: I think it was a weekly. I could ask about that. I think it was a weekly. [Mosby later corrected this. The paper "was and is a daily."]

Currie: What jobs did you hold on the paper?

Mosby: I don't remember. I think we all covered stories and wrote them and did copy reading and helped set the type. I think everybody did everything. Did I have a column? I don't remember.*

You mentioned the local newspaper, The Daily Missoulian. Did they have two editions? That's not possible. Oh, they couldn't have had. However, it and most of the press at that time in the state of Montana was owned by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, which had big mines in Butte, which is 120 miles away. One of the evils of capitalism, I guess you'd say, they owned the Missoulian and they owned some other newspapers. It was just the same thing as the Pravda in Moscow; there wasn't any difference. They censored everything. They were furious when my father opened a radio station and did everything they could to stop it, because, of course, people would listen to radio news. He fought them bitterly most of his life. I remember that for many, many years, the radio was never mentioned in the newspaper, they never published the hours or programs or anything, and for years they wouldn't even print anything about my father or his family. It was a big deal when I finally got any picture in the newspaper, I think it was for winning that scholarship to Northwestern; I'm not sure.

Currie: I'm going to turn the tape.

______________________ * Mosby later wrote in an addendum that she was "a reporter, not a columnist" on her college newspaper. "The university yearbook that I edited was called The Bitterroot (after the state flower of Montana). I was editor-in-chief, the first woman to hold that position," she wrote.

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came down from Eureka to visit once and screamed and yelled and said, "You've got to stop that [Peter name] instantly!"

Currie: That could confuse a child.

Mosby: Yes! I had a Peter Rabbit doll, but my father might have encouraged that because it was a masculine name. I remember that.

Currie: Why do you think he favored your sister?

Mosby: Because she was prettier than I was and had lovely bosoms and I didn't. [Laughter.] Probably why.

But anyway, about the AP and UPI, I remember that it was UP at the television station and probably at the radio station by the time I was in university. Then I was editor of the university yearbook when I was a senior, probably because by then the war had taken away most of the fellows of the university. The University of Montana was down to something like four hundred students when I was a graduate. They had a big ROTC. Do they still use that?

Currie: They do.

Mosby: The ROTC [Reserve Officers Training Corps] contingent at the university, there always had been a small one, but it was a huge one by then. So almost everybody was in uniform and it was an army atmosphere. There were hardly any men students left.

Currie: What year did you graduate from the University of Montana?

Mosby: In '43.

Currie: Really well into the war.

Mosby: Yes.

Currie: What difference did you see the war bring?

Mosby: The fellows just disappeared from the campus, and I remember my boyfriend, who was from New Jersey, I always looked upon him with awe. There were hardly any out-of-staters there. I don't know why he came out there. I remember he wanted to marry me. I don't know. I wanted to have a career, in the first place, and also he wasn't really a great intellectual. I don't know. His name was Jack Ferris. He went off with the marines, and then my first year out of university, I felt very guilty for having spurned him, because he was killed on Iwo Jima. I can't remember what year Iwo Jima was, but that's where, I remember, he was killed. He was a marine. So it did make a difference. Then the boyfriend I had when I was a senior, the other boyfriend who I liked better, he joined the army.

What other differences? You know, Americans don't really know what it's like really to suffer from a war. I realized that when I began to live in Europe. I feel sort of protective now of Europeans when Americans start to complain about what they do. Americans just don't know what it's like to have your cities bombed and so many people killed and your whole government and everything disrupted. Americans have been very lucky.

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You said something which was interesting to me, which was that you wanted a career. This young man had asked you to marry him, but you wanted a career. Did you always want a career?

Mosby: Oh, yes! I mean, there was never any doubt of it. I wanted to get married, too, and have children, but that man I didn't particularly like. I vacillated, because then I was quite in love with the one named Dean, and he was sent off to the army. I guess I just didn't want to marry. I don't know. I definitely wanted a career. I wanted to be a journalist, but I also wanted to be married. I was torn between the two.

Currie: Did you think you could have both?

Mosby: Oh, yes. Then I decided, when I was in university, I got sort of bored with the whole newspaper thing and radio thing, and I decided that I wanted to be on a magazine. So I entered a contest on Mademoiselle magazine. Do they still have it?

Currie: I think they still do. The "College Editor" program?

Mosby: Yes. They choose a dozen every year or ten or something. I won, and I was the first person to ever win west of Chicago, except for females from Los Angeles and San Francisco, from California, which, of course, are big cities, but nobody had ever won otherwise. They regarded me as quite an unusual thing. I won, and I went. I was a senior when I won, so right after graduation I went to New York to do that, and I had decided by then that I wanted to be a New York career woman and be on a fashion magazine. Of course, then, in the back of my mind was always meeting some glamorous man in New York and combining the two. I never thought of it that much in detail; sort of one step at a time.

So I went to New York and was on Mademoiselle magazine, and I didn't like the whole fashion world. These women in the office wore hats while they worked. I don't know, the whole thing turned me off.

Currie: What turned you off about it?

Mosby: The idea that they sat around in an office in their hats and talked about all these clothes and fashion things. Then I decided, "Oh, to hell with the fashion world. I'm going back to news." Actually, they offered me a job on the magazine.

Currie: After the guest editing?

Mosby: After the guest editing. It was a beginning job, but they did offer me a job. I wasn't interested, and I went to Time magazine. At that time they were desperate for workers, because there weren't any males around.

Currie: How did you get the job at Time magazine?

Mosby: It was sort of a thing they called College Girl Office Girl, CGOG.

Currie: That was the title?

Mosby: That was the title of this group. Again, it was like winning a contest. They picked ten girls or so. You were supposed to do errands and do apprentice work in every department in the magazine. We sat in at the editorial conferences and so forth. Then you were supposed to

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Mosby: Yes. My father was so staggered, because we hadn't been that close before, and I never appealed to him for anything. I just did my own thing, earned my own way. He told me to come back to Missoula. He was just so pleased that I called him. He shouldn't have said that, because for a couple of years afterward I wallowed in self-pity and regret that I didn't stay in New York, because if I had stayed, I thought I could have gotten a good job on Time magazine and found some interesting man to marry, you know, and I should have stayed there.

Currie: So you went back to Missoula?

Mosby: I gave up Time magazine and I went back to Missoula. I remember on the train I thought, "I'm probably doing this wrong." I was admitting defeat and I was really furious at myself for doing that.

Currie: Could you have decided to go back to New York?

Mosby: One reason I went back to Missoula is that my father called up UPI—or UP, it was called then—and got a job for me. He called me in New York.

Currie: In Missoula?

Mosby: No. Oh, no, they didn't have any bureaus in little towns like that. He called me up and he said, "You can work for UP in Seattle." So off I went to Seattle. I remember after spending a few months in Missoula and feeling very—oh, it was a horrible period in my life. Then I thought, "Oh, I should just get married." I was really just frightened. The big city just terrified me, and the world of work. I don't know. Big city work.

Currie: How old were you at that time?

Mosby: I was twenty when I went to New York. I graduated from the university when I was twenty. So I was twenty when I went. Isn't that strange? This is like being psychoanalyzed. I wonder what would have happened if I'd stayed on in New York. In a way, as it turned out, I wouldn't have had such an interesting life.

Currie: It's hard to tell. But you didn't stay in Missoula long.

Mosby: No. I remember I was there briefly. (My father later married. They lived in this beautiful mansion on the river that was the family mansion of my stepmother. It had a swimming pool and horse stables and everything.) I remember I just clung to my old schoolmates there. I should never have done that. That was terrible. I was there briefly before I reported to UPI in Seattle.

As it turned out, two of my schoolmates were already there, so I wasn't so lonesome. We rented a house for $50 a month near the University of Washington. [Laughter.] There were five of us. One young woman whom they had met wasn't from Montana, she was a Seattle-ite or Washingtonian or something. There was Prudy and Mary and myself. I guess maybe there were four of us. Later on, another graduate from the University of Montana came there and lived with us for a while, too, so there were five of us. Four of us had been schoolmates at the university. No, I certainly wasn't lonely then. [Laughter.] Then I still shouldn't have admitted defeat. If I had stayed in New York a while longer, I would have gotten over it. But it turned out for the best. That was my first job with UP.

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Mosby: Just drop it off, then go home. I got home about one, and then I would sit down and eat dinner that my friends had cooked. They were all in bed asleep, and I sat in the kitchen. I remember there was a mouse. Mice were always running around the house, this old house, a small house. [Laughter.] We slept on bunks in two bedrooms. I remember there were two bunks. I always crawled to the upper bunk. Of course, you sleep better when you're younger, I guess. I always went right to sleep, and they all got up and went to work. They were working, I forget where, but they all had good jobs.

Currie: Were they journalists?

Mosby: No. One of them had a pretty good job in an office. Was it a doctor's office? Her father had been a doctor. Where did Prudy work? Isn't this terrible? I can't remember. I don't know. No, none of them were journalists. They were all working, but, as I said, there just weren't any men around, so it was very easy to get jobs. There was never any problem.

Currie: What were you actually responsible for doing at UPI?

Mosby: Writing and putting on the wire everything. I had access to the Seattle Star's copy. Rewriting the Seattle Star copy and putting it on the wire, or going out and covering things. What did I cover? I also had to do the sports, so I got to know the Seattle Star sports writer. His name begins with an E, and he's still on the paper. He's gone up in the world, and he's either on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer or the Times, and he's a very well-known person there. He's a big star. So he helped me. We used to go over to the Press Club for a drink after I got off duty, or maybe it was during my dinner hour or something when things were quiet. I ate dinner at home. Maybe I ate downtown sometimes with him; I don't remember. He was a great guy. He writes a column that's very well known in Seattle.

Currie: So you'd take Washington State sports stories and rewrite them for the wire?

Mosby: Yes. Let me think. Did we have a bureau in Spokane? No, I think there was a person in the bureau in Spokane. I don't remember. I don't know how they work it now. I might have had to take the Spokane stories and edit them and put them on, because maybe we were on the main wire and they were just on a state wire. I'm not sure about that. Then we had correspondents around who would call in stories of two people killed in an automobile accident, or something like that, take dictation over the phone and write that. I wrote a feature story about sports that got some attention in UP. I can't remember what that was. Something about sports. Maybe I've saved these clippings and you can see.

Currie: That would be great.

Mosby: I remember covering some news stories in Seattle, but I don't remember what they were.

Currie: It sounds like you did a little bit of everything.

Mosby: Yes. Then for a while, for a few months, I don't remember what I was making, but it was peanuts, and I got a job in a department store in Seattle helping with window dressing.

Currie: Was this to supplement your income?

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Mosby: I don't know. [Laughter.] I'll have to think about that a while. The only story I can remember writing was something to do with sports, but it wasn't a real sports story. It was something sort of amusing to do with sports.

Currie: A feature, maybe?

Mosby: Yes, a feature story. I can't remember what it was.

Currie: How did you know you were doing a good job?

Mosby: I don't know that, either. I guess maybe the bureau manager had no complaints.

The war in the Pacific was still on then, and they were short of people over there. I was asked if I wanted to go out there.

Currie: To cover the war in the Pacific?

Mosby: Yes. I can't think where would it have been, where was the United States Army at that time.

Currie: I'm going to change this tape.

[End Tape 1, Side B; Begin Tape 2, Side A]

Currie: UP asked you if you wanted to be a war correspondent in the Pacific.

Mosby: Yes.

Currie: They must have thought highly of you, because I think there were other women fighting to cover the war.

Mosby: I don't know. Anyway, I decided I didn't want to go. I can't remember why, but I decided I didn't want to go. I should have gone; it would have been interesting.

Currie: You told me in Paris that you were too timid.

Mosby: That probably is what it was, yes. I remember years after that, when I was in New York, I was asked if I wanted to go out to Vietnam, but I didn't want to do that either. [Laughter.] Sounds pretty awful.

Currie: Do you know why you didn't want to go to Vietnam?

Mosby: I don't know. It just sounded awful. I wish now I'd gone, but I didn't want to go then.

Currie: How did you leave the UP Seattle bureau after two years?

Mosby: I wanted to go to the San Francisco bureau, because I liked working there when I was working there when the United Nations was formed. So I asked to be transferred to San Francisco. They didn't have an opening there, but they needed somebody on the radio wire in Los Angeles, and my mother was living there then, because she was divorced, and my sister was also there. So I went to Los Angeles instead.

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Currie: How large was the bureau in Los Angeles?

Mosby: It was quite big. There was the radio section, and I remember there was a sports section, then a news section. Then after a while, they wanted to expand the film coverage. There was a woman named Virginia MacPherson. I just got a letter from her recently. She married the bureau manager and she wrote to say he had died last year. I didn't know he had died. The last time I heard, he was heading the whole southwest UPI department, but he died, and she moved to Palm Springs. She saw an article that the Los Angeles Times asked me to write, which was just recently published, and sent me a clipping of it. It's interesting, hearing from all these people you knew.

Currie: You said they wanted to expand film coverage.

Mosby: Film coverage, yes. So she was writing for the day wire and I wrote for the night wire.

Currie: On the film industry?

Mosby: Yes, the film industry.

Currie: That must have been interesting.

Mosby: Yes, it was interesting, but I don't know. It was interesting, yes, but not nearly as interesting as the reportage that I did in Europe. I mean, no comparison.

Currie: Tell me what covering the film industry was like.

Mosby: They wanted interviews with film stars. You'd have to call up the studio or a press agent, make an appointment, or if there was a story about a film, the film itself was interesting, go out and watch them shoot on the set for a while and talk to the director and producer and do something about that.

Currie: Was it easy to get these appointments?

Mosby: Yes, because they were dying for publicity. [Laughter.] So I did that for I can't remember how many years, till I really didn't like it anymore. I quit UPI then, because I wanted to go overseas, so I went overseas myself. The vice president for the whole European division, Tom Curran, was someone whom I had known for years in UPI in the States, and so he hired me in the London bureau to work there briefly before going to Moscow. So that's how I got abroad.

I'm getting sleepy. What time is it?

Currie: Yes, we've been at it a while. [Tape interruption.]

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Currie: Was that a story that you originated?

Mosby: Yes.

Currie: Do you remember how you got onto that story?

Mosby: Somebody told me. I can't remember who tipped me off to that. I don't remember. I remember going to the calendar company and they confirmed it. She later told me that she was sort of alarmed at first when she read the story, but then she thought it over and realized it was good for her, which it was, of course.

Currie: Were there any other stories that you did during that period that you remember?

Mosby: I can't remember.

Currie: Someone told me that there was a rumor for many, many years that you were the woman in black at James Dean's funeral.

Mosby: Oh! [Laughter.] No. I didn't go to his funeral. I don't remember. Maybe I did. Maybe I covered it. I don't remember. But I had a very close friend, a photographer named Sanford Roth, and his wife, Beulah Roth, just died, unfortunately, about four or five months ago in Los Angeles, and Sandy died in Rome many years ago. She was the sister of a well-known film writer whose name is lost in my mind. Anyway, Sanford was a very fine photographer, an art type photographer. I have a book of his in Paris of pictures that he took of Man Ray and Picasso and the whole scene. I remember the second time I ever came to Europe, I was with Beula. We went to Paris together. By then Man Ray and Juliet were living in Paris. We spent an evening with them.

Sanford Roth, the photographer, had been photographing James Dean. I don't know whether it was on location for a film or whether it was some other event, but Sandy was driving right behind him, and jumped out of his car when he saw the accident. Like any photographer, not thinking whether a picture could be used or not, of course, pulled out his camera and took several pictures of the wreck and the body and so forth. But then he decided not to ever release them for publication, although it seems to me that now it's been so many years since James Dean was killed, that maybe his widow did release them, but I'm not sure about that. He's dead, too, and I can't ask him. But was I at the funeral? Where was he buried? I don't remember.

Currie: But you weren't the woman in black?

Mosby: No, unless I happened to have something black on. I don't know what the woman in black means. Some female mourning him that was in love with him or something?

Currie: Evidently there was a woman in black, a woman all in black, who was all covered, and attended James Dean's funeral.

Mosby: It's a big mystery woman?

Currie: A big mystery woman. There was a rumor in United Press that you were the woman in black at James Dean's funeral.

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Mosby: Yes.

Currie: The disintegration of UPI.

Mosby: Yes. I talked to the Paris bureau man before I left, and he said that they apparently have a buyer and they were just about poised to make an announcement. Maybe they've announced it by now. He said, "We have the impression that we have several buyers." They'd gotten about ten people to chip in. So I don't know, but it's just a completely different company.

Currie: I've heard this term "Unipresser."

Mosby: Oh, yes.

Currie: What's a Unipresser?

Mosby: That's just an abbreviation. Unipress would be an abbreviation, just used in conversation or informal notes. I don't think they used it officially. That would be the word, a Unipresser.

Currie: So you would have been a Unipresser.

Mosby: Yes, that's right. AP, I don't think ever had anything like that.

Currie: Did you feel particularly competitive with the AP?

Mosby: Oh, yes! And the AP feels—still feels—competitive. Yes, the competition was bitter. I mean, that was the main competition, because the two had so many of the same clients. Now Reuters, the British agency, sells to some clients in the United States, but they don't do much local coverage. They just concentrate on the main stories in big cities. Actually, in recent years that's what United Press has done since they've cut down the staff so much. I think that at least last year (maybe it's changed by now) they didn't have anybody at all in the entire state of Montana. They've cut down in a lot of areas like that, which I think is right. They can leave the local basketball scores to the AP and just concentrate on the big stories the way Reuters does and the way INS used to.

Currie: So United Press or AP, when you first started working, really covered such things as local basketball scores?

Mosby: Yes, the AP would do more, many more than UPI, because they always had a bigger staff. But there are a lot of clients like the clients in Kansas or something, they will hold up an edition waiting for a basketball score. To an agency, those things are very important, and they have to run all sorts of local stories about what the governor is saying, various state projects for a dam here and a new road there, all of that. That's very important to small town newspapers. UPI did a lot of that, but not as much as the AP did, and I don't even know if UPI does that now, whether they have the manpower or womanpower.

Currie: How many women were working at the United Press, would you say, when you joined?

Mosby: I mentioned Virginia MacPherson in the Los Angeles bureau. They had one woman overseas in Europe during the war.

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Mosby: No. What did I learn? I learned—it took me a long time—I learned not to get too involved in areas like that because it isn't really journalism. It isn't really journalism, and when it comes down to it, it isn't worthwhile.

Currie: Can you tell me what you mean by that?

Mosby: You're not really covering world events. Real people are so interesting to talk to, to find out things about. There are a few people in the film industry who would be regarded as worthwhile, contributing something to the arts, but most of them not. A writer would be a more interesting person, really, to interview. I interviewed Robert Graves on the island of Mallorca once, and that was memorable. Or when I interviewed to write stories about Man Ray or Marc Chagall, the artist who died in the south of France. I interviewed Marc Chagall down there a couple of times. With somebody like that, it's fascinating and intriguing.

What you get mostly in talking to actresses or doing stories on films, you're just really doing publicity, free publicity, for those people. I think movie reviews are very needed. Of course, UPI never did anything like that, but film reviews in newspaper are very useful to people and very well needed. I think an occasional personalty piece on an actor or actress is worthwhile if they're interesting enough people. Like Madonna, that rock singer, she always does some curious things and she's almost an example of the modern society that makes her worthwhile to talk to, but otherwise I don't see the value of it; it's really just doing publicity.

I got stuck doing fashion stories in Paris, too. I was the first woman in the European division since they had this Ann Stringer there in World War II, and the Paris bureau gave me that beat instantly, because then they could fire the freelance stringer that they were paying money to do the fashion stories. [Laughter.] I did it as just part of the job. Of course, I covered real news, government news conferences, UNESCO, the OECD, which governs Western economies, strikes, visiting presidents, terrorist attacks, everything, plus fashion. Women like to know what are the styles and which houses are doing great and all that. But sometimes I think those stories are a bit overdone, too. Those are sort of tips on what people buy and what people want. Do you ever look at them?

Currie: I sure do.

Mosby: Do you read all these interviews with film actors and actresses?

Currie: It depends. Not always.

Mosby: It depends. Some of the unusual ones are interesting.

Currie: Did you learn anything there?

Mosby: Yes, that's what I learned.

Currie: Did you learn anything that would help you mechanically in doing your job as a journalist?

Mosby: I don't know.

Currie: For example, like ways to conduct an interview or how to develop sources.

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Mosby: No. Did I have a job? No. Some people talked to me about doing things. I don't remember. The main thing was that I went over for that reason. I went over to go to the Brussels Exhibition in '57 or '58, a big celebration, the big Brussels fair.

Currie: The Brussels World's Fair?

Mosby: Yes. When I was over there, I met some Russians, some Soviets who were there, and it was very, very helpful to meet people outside the Soviet Union. Otherwise, they're afraid that you've been sent to Moscow by the CIA or something, or the KGB. They were very helpful to me in Moscow when I got there. Then in Europe I still saw the UPI people, because they were all friends. Tom Curran, who was then division manager, asked me to go to Moscow. So then I went back to work at UPI. I was not working for UPI only about six months, something like that. Then I was working in the London bureau for six months taking Russian lessons and reading up and so forth.

Currie: Were you taking Russian full time?

Mosby: I remember every day. Not full time, because I was working in the bureau, but I was taking from an elderly woman who was an emigrée. It must have been two hours a day, at least, very intense Russian lessons. Now, of course, in the media, they don't want anybody unless they really are Russian speakers, but in those days there weren't very many journalists who were Russian speakers.

Currie: So they were willing to give you the Russian.

Mosby: Yes. I remember the AP in Moscow, the correspondents knew getting-around Russian, but they weren't fluent. We had a great advantage because Henry Shapiro was super fluent. He was married to a Russian, Ludmilla. She wants to come visit me in Paris. I called her after he died. Their daughter, Irina, teaches at the University of Minnesota. I have to call her, too, when I get to Montana.

Currie: How did Tom Curran get the idea to send you to Russia, do you know?

Mosby: I think it was his idea. I'm trying to remember if I mentioned something about it to him. I'll call him up and ask him. [Laughter.]

Currie: Had you ever thought of becoming a foreign correspondent?

Mosby: Oh, yes. That's why I wanted to go to Europe. Tom Brady of the New York Times, who covered films for the New York Times, the film industry, when I was in Los Angeles, I remember that he would say, "What are you wasting your time here for? This is something ridiculous. There are so many more interesting stories abroad." He didn't like being posted in Los Angeles, either, in that. He finally was able to get a transfer and he went to India. I wonder what happened to him, come to think of it. I haven't seen his byline for years. I wonder if he's still alive. But he was the one who inspired me to go abroad. Since I didn't have a family and none of the romances had worked out, I had never married, so I was free.

Currie: How old were you at this point? Would this be about 1957, '58?

Mosby: I went in '58. I was in the Soviet Union in 1959. I went in the beginning of '59. I was thirty-seven.

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Mosby: Yes, after Berlin, from Berlin. Oh, heavens. I think it was Minsk. Anyway, it was quite a shock to get off the train, of course, a lot of people staring at me, because there weren't very many Westerners around then. I don't remember whom I talked to on the train. I remember taking the pictures. I still have those photographs. I stopped in Warsaw. The train stopped there briefly. A young woman who was teaching school at the American Embassy in Moscow, and who had helped Henry Shapiro out a few times, she didn't have a visa as a correspondent or anything, but he hired her privately on the side to write stories for him. She wound up marrying a big Soviet expert, Shulman. Now she writes under her married name. I think she writes for either the Washington Post or the New York Times, because I saw one once in the Herald Tribune. I remember that she came down to the station to meet me and to give me something to take in to the Shapiros.

Currie: In Warsaw?

Mosby: In Warsaw, yes. I can remember what I was wearing on the train. I just recently gave that suit away. I keep clothes forever. [Laughter.] It was a camel-colored straight skirt, very warm, and the top had a high collar, and a slit here, cap sleeves to here, and it hung straight so that you wore a sweater, a turtleneck sweater. It was very warm that way. I bought it in London. Anyway, then when I got there, Henry met me at the station.

Currie: Was this the first time you met Henry Shapiro?

Mosby: Yes. Oh, yes.

Currie: Can you give me your first impression of him?

Mosby: He was very, very dignified and very correct, very professorial, but, nonetheless, had a twinkle in his eye and would make amusing remarks. I remember we were riding in the office car to the office where I would be living. I lived in the UPI bureau. I was looking at the people, and I somehow expected to see them as you see in the propaganda movies, you know, all sort of very young and vigorous and marching onward to communism, and people bustling around, looking very busy. But I saw these babushkas* and everybody with very heavy, stolid, dull clothes, sort of plodding along. I remember saying, "They just look like ordinary people." Henry said, "Yes, they don't have any horns." [Laughter.]

Currie: How were you getting along in your Russian?

Mosby: Oh, fine. I continued to take Russian lessons there. I don't know how often. But I wanted to keep up. I moved into the office which was the name of a book, which I later wrote on, "Number Thirteen People's Street," and in Russian, Trinadsat Narodnaya Ulitsa. When I was back in Russia last December, I went there to look for it and to look for Tonya, the femme de ménage who had cleaned for me.

Currie: What did you find?

______________________ * Russian colloquial term for an old woman. It means "grandmother."

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develop photographs in the sink, and the translator cooked his meals there. I would cook meals with Tony Austin, the one I mentioned. It didn't last long. Only a couple of months after I was there, Henry had him recalled to the States. Tony was not happy. So he wound up with a very good job at the New York Times, and life worked out fine for him, very successful.

Then the number three man, the next one to come in, was Robert Korengold, who had worked for UPI briefly in Paris. I forget what city he was in when he was transferred to Moscow. He was a very cheerful, terrific guy, and we had sort of a brother-and-sister relationship. He still is a close friend, and he now has a minister's ranking at the American Embassy in Paris. He's in charge of public affairs. He left UPI when he was still in Moscow. He stayed in Moscow a lot longer than I did, because he married a French woman from the French Embassy there and he got a very good job at Newsweek. He was the one and only Newsweek correspondent for many years in Moscow, then with Newsweek in London. Then he went with the American government and has been with them ever since.

Currie: Were you the only one who actually lived in this bureau?

Mosby: Yes.

Currie: Was that by choice?

Mosby: No. There wasn't anyplace else. When Korengold came, there wasn't any housing for him, so he lived in a hotel room. Which hotel was it? The National Hotel, I think. Yes. Henry Shapiro, because he had been there since '36 or whenever it was, always had been allowed to live in a private apartment, not in one of these diplomatic ghettos. These are one of the things guarded by the police for foreigners only. He was living really in Moscow as a Russian, in a private building, with his Russian wife and their daughter, Irina.

He and Ed Stevens, who was there for various U.S. media, he was American, too, also married to a Russian, as Henry was, and Ed lived in that same neighborhood. It's near what they call the Arbat. Otherwise, it's like the sixth arrondissement in Paris. The old houses are very nice. There are some little shops and it has, in other words, a bit of charm to it, which a lot of Moscow doesn't have. Ed Stevens lives in a big house, just like a mansion. He got that by wangling something or other. He also had been there since the thirties. Ed Stevens is still living there. I went to see him, but he wasn't home.

Currie: Who did Ed Stevens work for?

Mosby: I can't remember. I think it was Christian Science Monitor, but I'm not positive. Later he did things for Look magazine or something. I can't remember. They didn't have enough housing for foreigners, so most were in hotels. Korengold lived in a little tiny room in the hotel for quite a while. Then finally they finished, way on the other side of Moscow, quite a ways away, across from the Ukraine Hotel, they built a huge building for correspondents, another one, because there were just getting to be so many diplomats and correspondents. So UPI got moved into that. The AP stayed behind, and maybe I'm wrong, but I think they're still at that old place. They couldn't be. Maybe they are. I'm not sure. When I went there, there were two old buildings for foreigners and diplomats, and AP still might be in that one on People's Street. The other one, where I remember the New York Herald Tribune was there and New York Times is there now, Reuters is in that old one now. Then in the big new one, there are dozens of other correspondents. They have so many now, they let practically anyone in who wants to come in. [Laughter.]