showing crooked teeth I was perfectly willing to forgive, and lugged me down two steps to the right, through a doorway into a book-, paper- and keepsake-arrayed study where the air was riddled with the machine-gun rat-a-tat-tat of typing. To one side of a wide, wooden desk, at a typewriter stand, his back to us, a large (not fat) bald man in a maroon smoking jacket was hammering away at the keys.
The blonde looked at me gravely and held up her hand, in case I was thinking of speaking: the boss was not to be interrupted while he was creating.
A window fan was churning up air. Off to the right of the fairly small room, visible (and audible) through the open doorway, a desk-cluttered workroom bustled with two men and a trio of women typing or talking on the phone or attending the clattering wire-service ticker or putting something in or getting something out of one of the endless gray-steel filing cabinets lining the walls. While these secretaries were not unattractive, they—unlike my blonde escort—had the businesslike apparel and bespectacled, pencil-tucked-behind-the-ear manner of professional women. Depending on the profession, of course.
Drew Pearson’s profession was journalism, or anyway a peculiar variant of his own creation. At one time just another Washington newspaperman covering the State Department for the Baltimore Sun, Pearson had taken the gossip-column style of New York’s Walter Winchell and Hollywood’s Louella Parsons and grafted it—to use a fitting term—onto the Washington political scene.
The column—“The Washington Merry-Go-Round”—initially had not been solely Pearson’s. The Christian Science Monitor’s D.C. correspondent, Robert S. Allen, had come up with the idea for a hard-hitting book that would expose both the personal peccadilloes and political chicanery of our country’s leaders, particularly those in the Herbert Hoover administration.
Bob Allen did most of the writing, but brought his pal Pearson aboard as a collaborator for a few chapters because Drew knew the social scene, his mother-in-law being the powerful newspaperwoman and socialite Cissy Patterson. The book, published anonymously in 1931, was a huge best-seller and made tidal-type waves that started in Washington and splashed across the nation; the pissed-off President sicced the FBI on the case, to ferret out the identities of the contemptible authors.
Exposed, Allen and Pearson were fired by their papers, but Pearson—giving himself top billing—took the notion of the book to a newspaper syndicate, United Features, which snapped it up. The column was a sensation, and Pearson hogged the spotlight, and became the country’s best-known crusader for liberal causes. With World War Two imminent, Bob Allen left the column to enlist in the Army; Pearson took that opportunity to remove his partner’s name, refusing to pay Allen, or his wife, a dime while he was away. When Allen returned, a colonel who’d lost an arm in combat, he found he’d lost his column, as well.
The man at the typewriter stopped typing, yanked the page out of the machine and, without turning, tossed the page on the desk, on which paper-filled wooden intake boxes were lined, a regal black cat sleeping quietly in one of them.
“Get that added to the script, Anya,” he commanded in a rather harsh, clipped baritone. Pearson had trained himself to sound like a more dignified Walter Winchell when “Washington Merry-Go-Round” had become a radio show as well as a column.
“Yes, sir!” The blonde leaned over to snatch up the typed page, and the plump globes of her behind under the blue-striped nurse’s dress tilted up invitingly.
“That’s a good girl. Now shut the door behind you.”
“Yes, sir!”
And she scampered out.
He scooted over on his chair till he was behind the big desk, and twisted around like a kid on a soda fountain stool, to where I could see him. His rather large head was shaped like—and had only a little more hair
The blonde looked at me gravely and held up her hand, in case I was thinking of speaking: the boss was not to be interrupted while he was creating.
A window fan was churning up air. Off to the right of the fairly small room, visible (and audible) through the open doorway, a desk-cluttered workroom bustled with two men and a trio of women typing or talking on the phone or attending the clattering wire-service ticker or putting something in or getting something out of one of the endless gray-steel filing cabinets lining the walls. While these secretaries were not unattractive, they—unlike my blonde escort—had the businesslike apparel and bespectacled, pencil-tucked-behind-the-ear manner of professional women. Depending on the profession, of course.
Drew Pearson’s profession was journalism, or anyway a peculiar variant of his own creation. At one time just another Washington newspaperman covering the State Department for the Baltimore Sun, Pearson had taken the gossip-column style of New York’s Walter Winchell and Hollywood’s Louella Parsons and grafted it—to use a fitting term—onto the Washington political scene.
The column—“The Washington Merry-Go-Round”—initially had not been solely Pearson’s. The Christian Science Monitor’s D.C. correspondent, Robert S. Allen, had come up with the idea for a hard-hitting book that would expose both the personal peccadilloes and political chicanery of our country’s leaders, particularly those in the Herbert Hoover administration.
Bob Allen did most of the writing, but brought his pal Pearson aboard as a collaborator for a few chapters because Drew knew the social scene, his mother-in-law being the powerful newspaperwoman and socialite Cissy Patterson. The book, published anonymously in 1931, was a huge best-seller and made tidal-type waves that started in Washington and splashed across the nation; the pissed-off President sicced the FBI on the case, to ferret out the identities of the contemptible authors.
Exposed, Allen and Pearson were fired by their papers, but Pearson—giving himself top billing—took the notion of the book to a newspaper syndicate, United Features, which snapped it up. The column was a sensation, and Pearson hogged the spotlight, and became the country’s best-known crusader for liberal causes. With World War Two imminent, Bob Allen left the column to enlist in the Army; Pearson took that opportunity to remove his partner’s name, refusing to pay Allen, or his wife, a dime while he was away. When Allen returned, a colonel who’d lost an arm in combat, he found he’d lost his column, as well.
The man at the typewriter stopped typing, yanked the page out of the machine and, without turning, tossed the page on the desk, on which paper-filled wooden intake boxes were lined, a regal black cat sleeping quietly in one of them.
“Get that added to the script, Anya,” he commanded in a rather harsh, clipped baritone. Pearson had trained himself to sound like a more dignified Walter Winchell when “Washington Merry-Go-Round” had become a radio show as well as a column.
“Yes, sir!” The blonde leaned over to snatch up the typed page, and the plump globes of her behind under the blue-striped nurse’s dress tilted up invitingly.
“That’s a good girl. Now shut the door behind you.”
“Yes, sir!”
And she scampered out.
He scooted over on his chair till he was behind the big desk, and twisted around like a kid on a soda fountain stool, to where I could see him. His rather large head was shaped like—and had only a little more hair
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