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The life and career of journalist Charlotte Curtis: A rhetorical biography
Greenwald, Marilyn Sue, Ph.D.
The Ohio State University, 1991
Copyright ©1991 by Greenwald, Marilyn Sue. All rights reserved.
UMI SOON. Zeeb Rd Ann Aibor, MI 48106
THE LIFE AND CAREER OF JOURNALIST CHARLOTTE CURTIS:
A RHETORICAL BIOGRAPHY
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of The Ohio State University
By
Marilyn Sue Greenwald, B.A., M.A.
*****
The Ohio State University 1991
Dissertation Committee: Approved by
G.F. Berquist
J . Darsey Advise P.V. Peterson apartment of Communication Copyright ty Marilyn Sue Greenwald 1991 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Several people have played important roles in the completion of this dissertation, and to them I am extremely grateful.
To Dr. Goodwin Berquist, a true teacher, who encouraged me to start this project and who stayed with me until its completion despite several obstacles; to Dr. James Darsey, for his patience, creativity and insistence on excellence; and to Dr. Paul Peterson, for his enthusiasm and suggestions.
I would also like to thank the Ohio State University
Women's Study Center for its financial contribution.
I am particularly grateful to many of my colleagues at
Ohio University who rearranged their schedules and went out of their way to help me on this project. They include Diane
Campbell, Ralph Izard, Don Lambert and Tom Peters.
And to my friends, for their sense of humor and continual encouragement: Sally Walters, Nancy Lewis, Fred
Heintz, Sam Winch, Dave London and Pat Washburn.
Finally, to my husband, Tim, for his confidence in me and his never-ending patience.
XI VITA
September 15, 1954 ...... Born - Cleveland, Ohio
1975 ...... B.A., School of Journalism The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio
197 6-1978 ...... Copy Editor and Reporter Painesville Telegraph Painesville, Ohio
1978-1985 ...... Reporter Columbus Citizen-Journal Columbus, Ohio
1984 ...... M.A., School of Journalism The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio
1986-1987 ...... Reporter Columbus Dispatch Columbus, Ohio
1987-Presen t ...... Asst. Professor of Journalism Ohio University Athens, Ohio
PUBLICATIONS
"The Consumer Videotex Market: Has It Reached Its Potential?" in Telecommunication. Values and the Public Interest, Sven Lundstedt, ed., Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1990.
"Gender Representation in Newspaper Business Sections," Newspaper Research Journal, Winter 1990, pp. 68-74.
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Communication ii i PREFACE
This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of many individuals who knew Charlotte Curtis and who considered her a major figure in American journalism. I am particularly appreciative to Dr. William E. Hunt for his openness in allowing me to examine the papers Curtis left, and for talking to me frankly about her life and career.
I am also grateful to many of Curtis's co-workers and friends, who also were kind enough to talk with me. They include Marylin Bender, Richard Clurman, Jane Horrocks,
Harrison Salisbury, Liz Smith and C.J. Satterwhite. I was unable to reach Curtis's friend and mentor, Clifton Daniel, but hope to do so in the future.
Curtis's papers are housed in the Schlesinger Library at
Radcliffe College. References made to these holdings appear with the letters "SL" in the endnote sections.
Another important source of information was a lengthy interview conducted with Curtis in 1983 as part of an oral history project sponsored by the New York Times. The tape and transcript are housed at the Times offices in New York. This location is referenced in the endnote sections of this study as "NYT.”
iv t a b l e o f c o n t e n t s
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... ii
VITA...... iii
PREFACE...... iv
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION...... 1 Curtis as Sub j ec t ...... 4 Methodology and Format...... 6 Evidence and Documentation...... 10 Justification and Goals of Study .. 11 Notes...... 12
II. A WRITER'S TRAINING GROUND...... 15 The Private Rhetor...... 19 Pull Toward Respectability...... 28 Scorn for Accepted Social Beliefs . 43 Notes...... 58
III. EARLY YEARS ON THE TIMES...... 62 A New Level of Sophistication...... 64 Part of the New Journalism...... 81 Notes...... 93
IV. CHRONICLING TWO SOCIAL MOVEMENTS...... 95 A Growing Force at the Times...... 98 Impact of Civil Rights Movement .. 108 Coverage of the Feminist Movement 117 Notes...... 137
V. NEW RHETORICAL OUTLETS...... 142 A New Confidante...... 144 Appointment to Op-Ed...... 149 A Personal Setback...... 161 N otes...... 172 VT. CHANGE IN RHETORICAL DIRECTION...... 175 N o t e s ...... 198
VII. CONCLUSION...... 200 N o t e s ...... 209
LIST OF REFERENCES...... 210
VI CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The most important thing to me was the pursuit of truth, and it still is. I'm really not much interested in fantasies, but in looking through fantasies to see where reality is and what the reality is, cind what the reality means.. .Different people have different obligations, obviously, but mine is to at least try to establish what's true in society and then act upon it. ^
When journalist Charlotte Curtis said she was interested in the pursuit of truth, she had a different definition of the term than most journalists. To Curtis, a reporter, editor and self-described sociologist, "truth" meant more than just fairness and accuracy. It meant seeing through the sometimes false motives and actions of her subjects, examining superficial claims and often opposing the prevailing way of thinking. And, perhaps most difficult, it meant conveying her findings using the most mundane of vehicles — the daily newspaper. This meant making even the most unpalatable findings acceptable to readers and her own editors.
1 2 This study is a rhetorical biography tracing the life of
Curtis through her discourse and outlining how her life affected her rhetoric, and, in some cases, vice versa. It is inevitable that one's life experiences to some degree shape one's life work. The biographer of a rhetor, however, faces numerous challenges not met by other biographers. First, the rhetorical biographer must determine how much of the subject's vast amount of discourse was influenced by specific life events; second, the biographer must select from the vast amount of rhetoric to determine what is representative and significant.
Curtis's life is particularly compelling for a rhetorical biographer because of the contradictions that shaped its core. The two biggest influences in her life were essentially at odds with each other: she spent four decades working in the gritty, real world of newspapering, but she was raised in a privileged environment that instilled in her a sense of propriety and respect for appearances.
These two forces in her life created an ambivalence that she tried to reconcile through her rhetoric. She spent much of her career as a women's page and society writer — a job that according to most journalistic conventions meant the benign coverage of weddings and engagements, interviews with fashion designers, and tips on such pragmatic subjects as how to pack suitcases. Curtis, however, turned the job around and mocked the very people and conventions that defined society 3 coverage. It was a way to reconcile her mixed feelings about her own upbringing with her job as one who reveals the
"truth."
Further, as a top editor at a national newspaper, Curtis served as a role model for thousands of women who were
striving to prove that women could rise to the top of their professions; she remained single and childless in an era when such a status raised eyebrows. Yet she was deeply skeptical of the feminist movement, its methods and its beliefs.
This rhetorical biography offers a vehicle to explore the close link between Curtis's life and her rhetoric, and to explain how she evolved as a rhetor based on what was happening in her life. Further, this mode of analysis permits an examination of Curtis's discourse as it is related
to the times in which she wrote. The 1960s and 1970s were
times of upheaval and change in the United States, when
culture and politics were intertwined. These times also saw
the growth of two social movements, and Curtis had a deep personal and professional interest in both of them. These
social movements, also, had a profound effect on her
discourse, as they brought to the forefront the ambivalence
she felt in her own life. Curtis's job and life experiences
instilled in her the belief that men and women are equals
economically, but her upbringing taught her that differences
should exist socially between the genders. Similarly, a type
of noblesse oblige she grew up with taught her to have 4 sympathy for the underclass, As an adult, however, she learned that merely sympathizing with causes and throwing money at them would not solve society's ills.
CURTIS AS SUBJECT
Curtis's interesting life does not necessarily make her an ideal subject of study. The deep influence of her discourse on others in the time in which she lived, and her role as an innovator, however, do make her a worthwhile
subject of study, as does her limited role as a chronicler of history. Throughout her career, her writing and news
selection reached, directly or indirectly, more than half a million readers at the New York Times, a newspaper that is
seen as frequently setting the pace for other newspapers across the nation. Such respected journalists as Times publisher A.O. Sulzberger and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Harrison Salisbury have credited her with
establishing a new type of "women's-page" reporting that
focused on serious political, legal and health issues of
interest to w o m e n . ^ Despite the deadline pressures she
frequently faced, her writing was often carefully crafted and
filled with the nuance and detail that require much thought.
As a woman, Curtis offered a new perspective as to what
was important to women and what were the thoughts of an 5 entire gender whose views and work had rarely been examined.
What she wrote in her new, unconventional way came from a
woman — someone who may have been taught to think, but whose
views were rarely taken seriously. A study of Curtis's life,
as reflected in her work, may help answer a question recently posed by Newsweek magazine regarding the worth of women's
lives: "Until [recently], the question of how much a woman's
life was worth — and whether anyone really cared — drew an
indifferent, double negative; not much — and just about no
one.
As a journalist, Curtis assumes a role of historian,
and this cannot be overlooked in a rhetorical study focusing
on her. To study her life is to study the history of the
times in which she lived and worked.
Martha Solomon said of Emma Goldman that "historical
events and personal experiences... served to 'bring out' her
inherent qualities" and that her "personal development and
professional career are intimately tied to the historical
milieu in which she lived.And, as Joe Munshaw explained,
while a single rhetorical act or person can be studied, the
context or history surrounding the object of study must be
taken into consideration to put that person's actions and
rhetoric into perspective.^ Baskerville and Lucas also debate
the link between rhetorical and historical studies, but it
cannot be denied that rhetorical and historical scholarship
often must work hand-in-hand.® Certainly in the case of 6 Curtis/ her rhetoric and works cannot be separate from the times in which she worked. Much of her writing was, in fact, a response to the happenings of those times.
METHODOLOGY AND FORMAT
This Study is a biography built around Curtis's communicative abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and one that traces the evolution of and changes in Curtis's rhetoric based on events in her life and world events. It is an examination of how events in a life affect that person as a rhetor.
Despite recent calls by David Zarefsky, Martin Medhurst and others for further studies in rhetorical biography, that type of study is not entirely new to the field of public address. Hart's rhetorical biography of Richard M. Nixon attempted to quantify, with the aid of a computerized content analysis, the category of "rhetorical biography."® Most other rhetorical biographies in the field of public address have been qualitative in nature, including Franklin Roosevelt's
Rhetorical Presidency, by Halford Ryan,® Abraham Lincoln.
Public Speaker.10 by Waldo Braden, Robert Underhill's The
Truman Persuasions.^^ Emma Goldman, by Martha Solomon, 12
Bernard Brommel's Eugene V..Debs: Spokesman for Labor and 7 Socialismes and Randall Bytwerk's Julius Streicher; The Man
Who Persuaded a Nation to Hate Jews.^^
These studies all treat the term "rhetorical biography"
in different ways. Some, like Ryan's and Bytwerk's, trace the personal and professional life of the subject based on that person's rhetoric. These are stories of the subjects' lives, with emphasis on their discourse, Still others are arranged by rhetorical era.
The chapters of this rhetorical biography are divided
chronologically with emphasis on Curtis's different jobs and
job duties It should be noted, however, that because her job
duties shaped her rhetoric and the kinds of stories she wrote, these divisions can also be considered rhetorical
eras. That is, they chronicle Curtis's evolution as women's- page reporter, section editor, and columnist, all of which
can be considered rhetorical eras in her life because the
focus of her writing changes with each successive job change.
Chapter headings, in order, are "A Writer's Training Ground,"
which discusses Curtis's years in college and her early years
as a reporter and section editor on the Columbus Citizen;
"Early Years on the Times," which deals with her years as a
women's-page and society-page writer on the Times;
"Chronicling Two Social Movements," which deals with her
development as a respected and innovative Times section
editor; "New Rhetorical Outlets," about her years as Op-Ed
editor of the Times, and, finally, "Change in Rhetorical 8 Direction," which discusses her life and rhetoric while she was a columnist for the Times.
It should also be noted that because her job duties shaped her rhetoric and the kinds of stories she wrote, these divisions can also be considered rhetorical eras.That is, they chronicle Curtis's evolution as women's-page reporter, section editor, and columnist, all of which are rhetorical eras in her life because her writing changes with each successive job change. Subsections within each chapter form stricter rhetorical eras within each chapter, Curtis's rhetorical treatment of major themes in her life and rhetoric are discussed — themes such as the women's movement, her political reporting, her ambivalence about civil rights, and others.
To help define this evolution of rhetorical eras within
Curtis's life, the author used James Darsey's idea that
"catalytic events" can mark or distinguish eras in a social movement.In this case, these catalytic events can be used to "mark" a life. Darsey notes that these events are defined as those which can be historical rather than rhetorical and are of tremendous significance to the movement, or, in this case, the subject. In the case of Curtis, these events are several and include the birth of what is now the modern feminist movement; the spawning of a new type of writing called the New Journalism; and, on a personal level, a medical diagnosis that would change her way of thinking. All 9 of these served as markers in her career, and have a profound effect on her rhetoric. Darsey notes that the concept of such catalytic events allows for the charting of movements across time, and it can also serve the same purpose for the charting of the life of a rhetor.
The charting of catalytic events to define Curtis's growth and evolution as a rhetor was also useful for several other reasons. First, it allowed a microscopic focus on a limited number of texts that were considered representative of a particularly rhetorical era. These texts demonstrate the evolution of Curtis the rhetor, and they tell the story of her life by generalizing about her rhetorical style. Second, pinpointing of these catalytic events allows the integration of the historical and the rhetorical. Curtis's structured career and her interest in two major social movements dictate the structure and chronology of this work. The divisions within chapters, based on these catalytic events, however, essentially rhetorical.
As Darsey notes, Munshaw first proposed looking at history as changes in public discourse rather than as a series of specific, major events.^® The stages of a life, particularly one that is driven ty events in history, can also be marked by such rhetorical division. 10 EVIDENCE AND DOCUMENTATION
Data for this study was drawn from four main sources: 1)
texts of speeches and clips of writings by Curtis, with an
emphasis on the latter; 2) sections and pages on which she
worked as an editor 3) personal interviews with those with
whom she worked at the New York Times and the Columbus
Citizen, and with personal friends and acquaintances; 4)
contents of a set of personal papers she left behind in New
York and Columbus, which were eventually moved to the
Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College.
The papers Curtis left behind paint a picture of her professional and personal life. They include extensive
letters, memos, notes, notebooks, and memorabilia from all
eras of her life. Personal interviews with those who knew
her offered insights into her personality and indicate how
she rose to power at the Times. Both of these sources
illuminated her views on public affairs current to her time,
adding to the explanation of whey she chose to write what she
did.
Analyses of Curtis's writings, the stories that appeared
on the pages she edited, and to a much more limited degree,
her speeches, are included to focus on Curtis the rhetor and persuader, and are the backbone of this work. These analyses
evaluate the form and style of her writing, including 11 arguments, reasoning and language patterns, with emphasis on how Curtis the rhetor emerges through her writing and speech.
It should also be noted that secondary sources such as published interviews with Curtis and an extensive interview with her conducted as part of a New York Times oral history project are also used. These secondary sources were used to supplement the primary source material, and also contributed to the selection of representative texts.
JUSTIFICATION AND GOALS OF STUDY
The role of this rhetorical biography, and of rhetorical biography in general, goes far beyond that of rhetorical criticism. In rhetorical criticism, the text often speaks for itself and in many ways can be considered separate from the rhetor. The history or environment surrounding the text may be known and play a part in the analysis, but the detailed circumstances regarding the life and thoughts of the rhetor are often unknown or unexamined. In rhetorical biography, the text and the rhetor are integrated. Judgments and evaluations
about the text are often made on the basis of the critic's
knowledge of the personal history and life of the subject.
In that way, the author of the rhetorical biography must
frequently make "leaps"; that is, the author often runs into
gaps in data and evidence and must make inferences along the 12 way regarding the link between the subject and his or her work. These leaps, perhaps, make it impossible for the rhetorical biographer to follow conventional, accepted methodologies when analyzing the texts or the life of the subject. As Black, Fisher, and others have noted, rhetorical modes of address other than speeches often fall outside of traditional methodologies.^^
The purpose of this rhetorical biography is to further understand Charlotte Curtis as a rhetor, and, to paraphrase
Solomon, to understand how historical events and personal experiences served to bring out her inherent qualities and how they affected her writing. Its purpose is also to show the significance and value of what might be considered by some rhetorical scholars as unconventional discourse, and, consequently, encourage other similar studies.
NOTES
Charlotte Curtis, New York Times oral history project, June 21, 1983, NYT.
See Sulzberger's comments during the memorial service for Curtis (SL and NYT). Salisbury discussed her influence during an interview with the author on December 16, 1989.
Tom Mathews and Lucile Beachy, "The Lives of Women," Newsweek, November 6, 1989, pp. 78-81.
Martha Solomon, Emma Goldman. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987, pp. 1-2.
Joe Munshaw, "The Structures of History: Dividing Phenomena for Rhetorical Understanding, Central States Speech Journal, Winter 1973, pp. 29-42. 13
G See Barnet Baskerville's "Must We All Be 'Rhetorical Critics?', Quarterly Journal of Speech, April 1977, pp. 107-117, and Stephen Lucas's "The Schism in Rhetorical Scholarship," Quarterly Journal of Speech. February 1981, pp. 1-20, and Stephen Lucas's, "The Renaissance of American Public Address: Text in Context in Rhetorical Scholarship," Quarterly Journal of Speech, May 1988, pp. 241-260.
See David Zarefsky's and Martin Medhurst's comments in Michael C. Leff's and Fred C. Kauffeld's Texts in Context. Davis, Calif.: Hermagoras Press, 1989, pp. 41, 26.
® Roderick Hart, Absolutism and Situation: Prolegomena to a Rhetorical Biography of Richard M. Nixon," Communication Monographs. August 1976, pp. 204-228.
® Halford Ryan, Franklin Roosevelt's Rhetorical Presidency. New York: Greenwood Press, 1981.
Waldo Braden, Abraham Lincoln. Public Speaker, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
Robert Underhill, The Truman Persuasions. Ames : The Iowa State University Press, 1981.
^2 Solomon, op cit
Bernard Brommel, Eugene V. Debs. Spokesman for Labor and Socialism, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co., 1978.
Randall Bytwerk, Julius Streicher: The Man Who Persuaded a Nation to Hate Jews, Briarcliffe Manor, N.Y.: Stein and Day, 1985.
^5 James Darsey, "From 'Gay is Good' to the Scourge of AIDS: the Evolution of Gay Liberation Rhetoric, 1977-1990," Communication Studies, Spring 1991, pp. 43-66.
Munshaw, op.cit.
See Edwin Black, "A Note on Theory and Practice in Rhetorical Criticism," Western Journal of Speech Communication. Fall 1980, pp. 331-336, and Black, Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method, New York: Macmillan, 1965; and Walter Fisher's, "Method in Rhetorical 14
Criticism," The Southern States Speech Journal, Winter 1969, pp. 101-109. CHAPTER II
A WRITER'S TRAINING GROUND
Charlotte Murray Curtis was born in Chicago on December
19, 1928, into a world of privilege. The daughter of Lucile
Atcherson Curtis and Dr. George Morris Curtis, a research surgeon, she came from a family of overachievers. Her mother was a diplomat and the first woman to be a field officer in the Foreign Service. Her father, the son of a physician, was a respected surgeon who specialized in thyroid ailments and research.
In 1931, George and Lucile Curtis moved to Columbus,
Ohio, when Charlotte was three and Mary, her younger sister, barely a year old, so George could take a job on the staff of
Ohio State University Hospitals. George Curtis was a political conservative who lived in Bexley, an affluent suburb of conservative Columbus. As a physician in a
Midwestern city, his political leanings were not unusual, nor was his insistence that his daughters attend the exclusive
Columbus School for Girls near their home, a school that
15 16 prepared its students to enter private colleges in the East.
Charlotte later attended Vassar College, and Mary attended
Smith. The Curtis girls' education did not end, however, in school.
Later in her life, Curtis would often speak about the dinner-time conversations in this household — conversations that forced the two girls to be well-versed in history and current events, and ones that made them defend their points of view and remain unintimidated by those who disagreed with them. Curtis's father, in particular, made sure his daughters were well-versed in science as well as history and current events. On warm summer nights, he would make the girls lie in the grass and identify stars and constellations; at meals, he would have them arrange the food on their plates as internal organs of the body, with the meat as the heart and various vegetables and potatoes as surrounding organs.^
Curtis's upbringing and her close relationship with her family were vital forces in shaping her rhetoric. Knowledge of the nature of this conservative, privileged upbringing is key in understanding what motivated Curtis to develop what was to become a sly, detailed and often brutal style of writing that frequently made targets of the rich and famous.
Through most of her life, Curtis cultivated a voice in her rhetoric that respected no sacred cows. It was one that, early in her career, noted small details of situations that others might not note — details like mannerisms, dress and 17 speech that revealed subtle attitudes and motives of her subjects. Later in her career, it was a rhetoric that used these details as ammunition that, often subtly, would wound and sometimes devastate the subjects of her stories.
Curtis, in fact, was deeply ambivalent about her upper- class roots and upbringing and she developed disdain toward those in her socio-economic group. For most of her life, she felt a sympathy toward those less privileged than she, and this would manifest itself early in her life in a keen interest in civil rights and, later in her life, as an interest in women's rights. She apparently felt that, in spite of the charity work one does and the contributions one gives, a person cannot be wealthy and still have the proper sympathy for the underprivileged. Further, the details she noted and her quick eye made her perceive what she thought was an idleness of the wealthy, and a preoccupation with petty concerns. This eye for detail and the resulting scorn she developed would shape nearly every aspect of her rhetoric.
This ambivalence also affected her personally. Curtis was reared in a world of large society weddings, debuts and
"proper" marriages. A close relationship she developed with her mother would eventually become a dual-edged sword for her. While she tried to please her mother, she was also pulled away from the genteel world the Curtis family inhabited. She was drawn to a profession — newspaper work — 18 that was exciting, but not quite the right job for a well-to- do, proper young woman. She was drawn to a city — Manhattan
— that was far wilder and indiscreet than conservative
Columbus, Ohio, and to personal relationships that might not be accepted in her hometown.
These factors could not help but influence Curtis the rhetor and account in part for what she wrote. Curtis's ambivalence about her upbringing was a life-long force professionally and personally. When she was a student at
Vassar, the first time she was away from Columbus, one can see subtle hints in her letters homeof this ambivalence, although clearer at this point is how her upbringing cultivated in her an eye for the detail of social situations. Her years at Vassar were her first years as a rhetor; hundreds of letters home to her family recount her activities, thoughts and opinions, and foreshadow her writing technique later in life.
As Curtis became a professional and worked on a newspaper, one can see how these details begin to take on a life of their own to subtly mock her subjects, or to insert
Curtis's own opinion into her stories. One can catch glimpses through her rhetoric of her growing disdain for the flower shows, women's lunches and celebrity hairdressers that were so important to the society of which she was a part.
Finally, as she gained confidence as a professional,
Curtis's writing became bolder and her style more savage. 19 reflecting her refusal to be frightened by the well-known figures who were often the subjects of her stories. It may have been her education and upbringing that fostered this refusal to be intimidated, and, ultimately, her particular writing style. It is also her upbringing, however, that cultivated in her the streak of individuality that prompted her to leave Columbus for Manhattan, where she would join journalism's elite on the New York Times.
THE PRIVATE RHETOR
After she graduated from the Columbus School for Girls,
Curtis entered Vassar College, where she majored in American history, and pursued coursework in sociology and political science.2 At Vassar, she continued what was a close relationship with her family by writing them long, detailed letters outlining her thoughts and activities. These letters, which apparently were written once or twice a week, appear directed at her mother, with whom she was particularly close.
The letters from Vassar not only conveyed her activities, but were among the first of thousands of letters Curtis would write to her mother and, to a limited degree, others with whom she was close. The letters later would become important rhetorical vehicles for Curtis, who would use them as an outlet to express her opinions, organize her thoughts and 20 comment about the world. Until this point in her life, she
expressed her opinions and thoughts verbally.
Her education in Columbus, at home and in school, was well-rounded, but included little writing and es^ression.
With her precise reasoning and detailed descriptions, the written form seems like a natural format for her and would
forecast a rhetorical style she would employ in newspapers years later. The letters, some typed and some handwritten in her peculiar left-slanted handwriting, frequently alluded to
current events and to her historical studies. In one typical
letter, she writes of a conversation she had when she and her
fiancee visited his aunt and uncle:
As a banker who really seems to be very well informed, Mr. Fullerton tried to show us that the four depressions of the recent past since 1907 were caused by four different things. He named banks, inventory, stocks and inflation only as the four basic causes...To prevent depression and continued inflation, Mr. Fullerton suggested less government spending on relatively unimportant government jobs — he thought that what Hoover was doing was excellent. Then, he favored enough of a cut of ERP aid so that the money did not get out of the country for which it was intended. He pointed out that Great Britain passes much of her aid to Canada. And Canada in turn uses it to exploit its resources 3
Curtis continues for several more pages about the state
of trade between the United States and other countries,
foreign banking, imperialism and other topics that might have 21 been of little interest to the average college girl of her time. More important, however, was her tendency to describe conversations and the like in detail, rather than simply to employ generalizations: detailing, for instance, that the depressions were caused by four specific causes and relating examples of countries that do not allow money to leave their borders.
Curtis also described in detail to her family the nature of her studies, as is indicated by an excerpt from this long letter about a paper she was writing for class:
My topic was about the motives of Spain's. allying with France in 1779 The topic was done in relation to America's first diplomacy during the Revolution. This first part is difficult as our foreign relations were so completely entangled with the whims of Europe, and it is hard to just walk into any year in Europe and know the whole political, economic and social situation. It took me time to sort out the countries and their relation to each other before I could start on ray simple question of Spanish motives...^
The detail goes far beyond what might be expected of a college girl telling her parents about the subject of a paper.
Curtis's letters home were not completely atypical of a girl her age. In addition to their concern with world affairs, history and international finance, they are also indicative of a student who comes from a well-to-do family. 22 thanking parents for trips to locations like the Bahamas,
reviewing in detail nights on the town in New York City,
dances at Yale University, and complaints about the work she
had to do.
Some of Curtis's letters to her family foreshadowed
themes that would become common to her writing in later years. She apparently had already begun spotting subtle humor
in some situations, particularly those that involved
contradictions in a situation or in a person's character, and
she had a very critical eye.
For example, as she discusses her research about Puritan
Samuel Sewall, she notes that her study of him unveiled some
surprises: "I enjoyed this more as I read the Judge's diary which was simply hysterical and not at all like what I would
have ejqjected from a high-minded Puritan. She does not
elaborate on this comment, b u t ‘obviously this quirk in his personality and the fact that Sewall may not have been all he
seemed appealed to Curtis.
That Sewall may not have been all he seemed appealed to
Curtis. This is a primitive example of what she would expand
upon much later in her life: the contradictions in
personalities, or the differences between images of people
and their actual behavior.
Curtis's critical eye and refusal to be impressed by
accepted role models or celebrities can be seen in these
letters home. In one letter, she writes about a Broadway show 23 she had seen. While she enjoyed the show, she seems less than
impressed lay the stars: “The inimitable Beatrice Lillie and
Jack Haley were good, but as stars they seemed to have passed
their heyday."® As she evolved as a rhetor, Curtis was
rarely intimidated or impressed by those about whom she wrote, and glimpses of this critical nature can be seen in
this and other letters.
When she was in college, Curtis’s letters frequently
alluded to medicine, another keen interest she had. This
interest was cultivated for two reasons: first, because she was the daughter of a physician, and, second, because of her
own ill health, in college, she periodically developed an unexplained high fever and severe rash, which would later in her life be diagnosed as thyroid malfunction and, much later, would indirectly contribute to her death. Her letter to her mother outlining her first bout with this type of illness goes on for pages about her symptoms, the comments of various
doctors and tests run on her. Like a true physician's
daughter, she disputes the final diagnosis of rheumatic
fever:
(The diagnosis) is tommy rot They can't prove it. I have degrees of fever. My pulse is 88 which is not rapid enough for rheumatic fever. My sediment rate is 24 having jumped from 15...It is also just five points above the normal which is not enough for rhumatic (sic) fever. 24 The written detail of the illness, the knowledge of the significance of the clinical numbers and her disagreement with the final diagnosis would repeat itself nearly forty years later when Curtis is on her deathbed conducting research into what by then would be cancer combined with total thyroid failure.
The letter, and others like it, also offer a glimpse into her ambivalent feelings about physicians in general. As the daughter of one physician and later the wife of another, she was drawn to them and respected them, but she also distrusted some of them because, unlike many other laymen, she was aware of their fallibility.
Life on a Newspaper
In 1947, during the summer of her freshman year, Curtis was hired as a summer worker on the Columbus Citizen, one of the city's two daily newspapers, published by the Scripps-
Howard publishing chain. Here Curtis experienced firsthand what she had been discussing with her family and studying in school — history:
I wrote my thesis in political science and history...It seems to me the reporting and what I was doing are all part and parcel of the same thing...It's, again, trying to recreate what happened. I always thought newspapering was the most glamorous thing in 25 the world and I still think it is; it's the most fun. Why would anyone do anything else — ®
Perhaps more important than allowing her to experience and write about history was the fact that the job on the newspaper allowed her to exercise a streak of unconventionality and to participate in a job that was not really acceptable for a woman of her background. As she recalled many years later, "nice" people did not work on newspapers then, and such a job was even more unheard of for well-bred Vassar students. She described in 1983 the image of newspaper reporters when she began at the Citizen;
Certainly in the Middle West nice people — not just nice women, it was men — didn’t go into newspapering. Newspaper ing was a job for itinerants, for cab drivers, for railroad engineers. I'm literally talking about the people I worked with, people who only had eighth-grade educations. If you couldn't get a job doing anything else, you weren't quite respectable, you know. Somehow you were a "downtown" person, you were "fast," male or female. It had nothing to do with whether you were a little girl or a little boy. You were in this crazy business.®
In 1987, at a memorial service for Curtis, Mary 1 in
Bender, a co-worker of Curtis's at the New York Times, remembered how both she and Curtis were proud of their roots in the gritty world of newspapering: "We boasted of our scruffy origins in the school of journalism you found on a 26 stage set for 'The Front Page.‘ A world inhabited by rakish city editors and intrepid reporters with press cards in their hatbands who always got the story fast and got it first and usually transmitted it over a telephone to a rewrite man.
Some small glimpses of Curtis's later rhetorical style can be spotted in these early stories that she wrote while she was still a college student. Most of these stories maintained the somewhat gushy, straightforward style that was common at that time on society pages, one that described dresses and referred to them as “beautiful,” and one where society dinners were usually “delicious. The hint of a more unconventional style by Curtis, one that went against the grain of fashion pages during that time, can be seen occasionally.
In a story about the wardrobe of college students,
Curtis, the Vassar student, seemed to take delight in saying that college girls do not always follow trends, but make their own rules:
The fashion world may be shocked and slightly bruised when it finds out that the college girls have their own ideas of what to wear and when. Too long have designers pushed their styles out front with such taglines as “It’s what the college girl wants.“ How do they know? Have they ever asked? (College girls) are avid in their criticism of what they see in the magazines. They scoff at the 12-inches-from-the- floor for school wear. They are amused when told that hats are the thing this year. They reject taffeta when told to wear it because it 27 rustles — they are not interested in rustling. They do not need evening coats — where can you put them in a two-fcy-four closet when you have a fur coat or simple black coat for evening?i2
The story is unusual in that it takes issue with accepted fashion trends, a point of view not usually found on the pages of most society pages at the time. Curtis is straightforward in her writing, as she interviews several college students and quotes them as being critical of a typical college wardrobe put together a fashion magazine.
She does not employ irony or other subtle devices in conveying this criticism, as she would in later years.
As Curtis continued on the newspaper, her rhetoric did gradually develop an edge. A story she wrote about an annual fall gala in Columbus offers a peek into what would become a major rhetorical technique of Curtis’s later writing: the use of irony that serves to subtly mock her subjects. Curtis uses adverbs at the beginning of sentences to stress that perhaps the women who are planning the event take it a bit too seriously, at least for Curtis's tastes:
Around paper-laden tables, they (planners) sit planning and making decisions so that Autumn Prelude will be the best party of its kind in Columbus. Longingly, they gaze at the Maurice Rentner fashions which have just arrived from New York. Eagerly, they anticipate the arrival of the ten Powers models who will don the high fashion clothes. And happily, they dream up 28 ideas about decorations for the ballrooms at the Neil House.
Curtis’s use of these breathless adverbs indicates the
seriousness in which the planners take the event : ’’Longingly they gaze...Eagerly they anticipate....Happily they dream.”
Curtis’s subtle dig at the women’s attitude about their work is conveyed through the use of these adjectives, which
come off as hyperbolic for an activity as seemingly unimportant as planning for this event. The subtlety is such
that a less-than-perceptive reader, or even one who is
earnestly involved in this activity of planning, might not
even notice the irony.
PULL TOWARD RESPECTABILITY
By the time she graduated from Vassar in 1950, Curtis
had lined up a job working fulltime on the Citizen. She had
worked there each summer during her college years and,
despite her description of newspaper reporters, or, indeed,
perhaps because of it, she decided to make it a fulltime job.
During this period, Curtis’s rhetoric began taking on a
sharp edge. The details she freely used in letters home to
her family and in her early newspaper stories began taking on
a life of their own, and were used in many cases to mock her
subjects. Present was a type of disdain for her subjects. 29 singularly and in groups. The reason for this evolution in style can be attributed to events in her personal life.
A month after she graduated, Curtis did what was expected of most well-bred 22-year-olds: she married her college sweetheart, Dwight “Butch" Fullerton of nearby
Cir de v i l le, Ohio. The two were married in a ceremony at the
Trinity Episcopal Church and took a honeymoon in Europe. The bride had five bridesmaids in the evening ceremony.
Fullerton, a 1950 Yale University graduate, entered Ohio
State University's College of Law shortly after the two were married.
Curtis's “respectable" marriage did not last long, and this, combined with her inability to fit into the mold of typical Columbus society woman, was in part responsible for the scorn she was developing toward the wealthy — the scorn that came out through her writing. The couple was divorced in
1954, and Curtis seldom spoke of the brief marriage later in her career. One magazine article quoted her as saying that he
“assumed I'd be Mrs. Lawyer and do the canapes. I wasn't deceiving him; that was my assumption, too, but I turned out to like newspapering more. " This comment reveals the uncertainly she felt about conforming to her parents' way of life, and how she had indeed tried to do that. Curtis's friend Jane Horrocks recalled the marriage as a “mismatch.“
She said Fullerton had little interest in newspapers and 30 newspaper people, and Curtis had little interest in anything else.^^
The failed marriage only aggravated the tension Curtis
felt between her personal life and her desire to please her parents and her cynicism of that type of life. Through her coverage of society, she had seen firsthand that the role of women was relegated to the women's pages, and that they were viewed primarily as an appendage of their husbands. Ey 1952, however, she had become a prolific and enthusiastic reporter, and was named society editor of the newspaper, a
job that traditionally meant overseeing coverage of the
fashion shows, flower exhibits and wedding announcements that at the time filled the women's and society pages at newspapers. At the Citizen at that time, “society" coverage had a wide scope, allowing Curtis to write about a variety of
subjects. If, for instance, she learned that a well-known designer or a political figure was staying in the home of a wealthy Columbus resident, she was permitted to interview
that person and use the story in the women's section as a
"society" story. This loose policy on who covered what benefitted Curtis as a reporter, since she and her family had
lifelong friends in Columbus and frequently learned of well- known guests who were in town staying with these friends.
The basic style of the Citizen, an afternoon newspaper, also appealed to Curtis. Like other newspapers of its time,
it gave high priority to crime news, particularly to stories 31 where "the beautiful widow" or the "attractive brunette accomplice" were involved. But the Citizen had a personality all its own, primarily due to its emphasis on columnists with whom readers could build up a familiarity and rapport. These theater, sports, gossip and society-page columnists could personalize their writing in a way news reporters could not because they had license that allowed them to be somewhat subjective. Further, the newspaper complemented its opposition, the family-owned Columbus Dispatch, a gray, conservative newspaper which was more hard-news oriented.
Curtis had some feature stories on page one in the early
1950s, but primarily she wrote personality profiles and women's-page stories. In these stories, she continued to concentrate on minute personal details of the subject and his or her surroundings. She started at this point in her career a technique of capturing the subject through direct quotes, even if these quotes did not portray the subject in the most flattering light.
Frequently, this technique led to a brutal honesty in which the subjects indict themselves through their own words.
This style became one of the main features of her rhetoric later in her career. It can be seen clearly in a story she wrote in Columbus about a French hairdresser, in which she mimics his accent. The first paragraph begins: "'I do not like zee styles which make zee weemen look like zee bush- weemen,' observed a Paris hair stylist in Columbus Monday." 32 By mimicking his French accent, Curtis makes the hairdresser
seem ridiculous. A French accent when heard is one thing; when written phonetically, it makes its subject seem
frivolous. Curtis goes on: “He smiles ecstatically at the
thought of 'zee high-leefted bang.'" And, “in spite of his
jealous attention to miladay's tresses, the Frenchman insists
that a woman is not completely attired without a hat. 'Ah, hats,' he sighed. 'Zay are nécessaire comme la lipstick.'"
Here, Curtis cannot resist her own commentary: “Freely
translated," she writes, "this all means that if a woman does not wear a hat, she might as well drop dead."is
Curtis's own aside is humorous, and its brevity and
frank language, when compared to the flowery, French-accented
speech of the hairdresser, serve to make him look more
ludicrous. Further, Curtis is not content to simply quote him as “he said." He smiled ecstaticallv. and "'Ah, hats,' he
sighed." Curtis writes, giving him a breathless, airy quality. It is a subtle way of undercutting him and making him appear superficial. While the story is informative, one cannot help but think Curtis does not take this hair stylist
entirely seriously, so, she implies, neither should the reader. Yet, because it is not pure parody, it offers
information for the reader who is willing to take it
seriously. As was the case with nearly all her writings, she had distinct opinions about her subjects. As a reporter, these were judgments she subtly imposed on her readers. 33 It is ironic that as a society editor, Curtis apparently labeled as trivial many of the activities of Columbus's society members. The conventional role of society pages at the time was to chronicle society events of the times, and to serve as purveyor of information rather than to offer opinions of the events, either in a subtle way or overtly. In one story, Curtis clearly thinks that planners of a flower show are a little too concerned about the event. In this story, she ridicules their activity, making it seem trivial.
She does this in part by giving human characteristics to non human objects — in this case, flowers:
The story begins :
The heat’s on the flower world. The Northwest Flower Show will not be held until April 21 and April 22 and thousands of flowers have to bloom on time, or else. Until then, pressure on the posies will take many forms. Apple blossoms will be heated in the living room and daffodils will get a cool treatment in the refrigerator. Shrubs will be stood in a dark comer. And heaven only knows what will happen to the pansies.
Her theme is how seriously the planners take the show.
The flowers must bloom "or else." “Heaven only knows what will happen to the pansies." Curtis goes on to explain the
frenzied activities of the planners who spend their time hoping everything will work out and coming up with ways to 34 revive droopy flowers. Some find keeping written records helps :
Mr. R.C. Lichty, show treasurer....has kept a diary since 1948 for the dates when crab apples bloom. He has no record of tulips, but from his figures, the crab apples will be at their best in the middle of May. "In 1948, they bloomed April 22," he said. "But it wasn't until May in 1951. Mostly it's in April.
By including this passage in her story, Curtis implies that these planners have nothing better to do than keep detailed records of previous shows — and they are able to recite them at a moment's notice, a meaningless talent,
Curtis implies.
It is the tulips, however, that seem to worry the show planners most, according to Curtis:
"Tulips," said Mrs. Kunkler, visibly moved. "That's something else again. They have to be hardened. You pick them in the morning while the dew is still on them. Then wrap the stems in wax paper. Leave them overnight. In the morning, you can make your arrangement.
As she often did, Curtis slipped in her own views of her subject in the attribution: "said Mrs. Kunkler, visibly moved." Here, images of a trembling lower lip come to mind.
Mrs. Kunkler, Curtis implies, might be a bit overly concerned about her tulips. She expends quite a bit of emotion over 35 them. This particular story drew the wrath of one of the citizen's top editors, who called Curtis into his office to
tell her not to write another story that mocks its subj ects to such an extent. Jane Horrocks, who worked with Curtis at the time, remembered that others who worked on the newspaper thought the story “hilarious." Apparently the Citizen editor received calls from readers who did not see the humor. The reprimand had little effect on Curtis, Horrocks remembered.^®
In the Tradition of Anne O'Hare McCormick
During her early years at the Citizen. Curtis, who had already traveled extensively around the world, persuaded the newspaper to use several stories she had written from overseas. The Citizen, however, did not send Curtis to these
assignments; she paid for the trips herself and then sent
stories from the overseas locations to the newspaper. She
sent stories from the Soviet Union, from Paris, where she
covered the United Nations General Assembly in 1951, and from
a cruise ship.
Curtis's zeal to work even on what was a vacation is not
suirprising. Her parents, as she mentioned, encouraged her and her sister to take advantage of time and never to waste it.
Furthermore, she knew reporting from these locations offered
opportunities that were not available to most young 36 reporters. These trips also allowed her to follow in the steps of a person Curtis admitted was a journalistic role model to her — Pultizer Prize winning New York Times
European correspondent Anne O'Hare McCormick, who worked at that newspaper in the 1920s and 1930s.
It should be noted that Curtis's limited exposure in school to journalism left her with few "models" to follow. No
"journalism" courses were offered at Vassar, and any journalistic role model at that time would more than likely be male. Few women, as Curtis noted later in life, worked outside the women's and society pages. Nowhere in published interviews later in her life, or in documents or correspondence from her Vassar years, are any journalistic role models mentioned. Marylin Bender remembers that she and
Curtis would talk about how they admired McCormick and respected her as a journalist.Bender, in Curtis’s memorial service, recalled those conversations: "We both aspired to the same place, the pantheon occupied hy Anne O'Hare
McCormick. I had no doubt that Charlotte would make it.
Curtis's enchantment with McCormick is predictable, based on McCormick's career. Born in 1882, Anne O'Hare was reared in Columbus, Ohio, and graduated from the private
Saint Mary's College there (now called Ohio Dominican
College). After she graduated from college, she joined her mother, who was women's page editor of the Catholic Universe
Bulletin, a Cleveland-based weekly newspaper. 37 Anne O'Hare married Francis J. McCormick of Dayton,
Ohio, when she was 28 years old, and, as she was planning to accompany him on a European trip in 1910, she received permission to submit stories of her travels to the New York
Times. Reluctantly, editors there agreed to it, provided they could keep McCormick off the payroll.
Along the way, she endeared herself to Benito Mussolini, who granted her an extensive interview. She eventually pried her way into inner diplomatic circles, and became known as an interviewer and someone who could get access to people and write their stories in an interesting and unusual way.
Curtis must have sensed similarities between herself and
McCormick. McCormick, too, was somewhat of a maverick who did not follow conventional women's roles and who aggressively pursued the career she wanted. The two also bore at least a slight physical resemblance. When she was young, McCormick was thin and petite (five-feet-two), as was Curtis throughout her life. Both had red hair. In 1937, McCormick became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, an honor she received for her interviews and overseas coverage.
Reporting Overseas
Curtis’s first overseas stories centered on the U.N,
General Assembly meeting in Paris, and how the meetings 38 affected women’s readers. Curtis was still a college student
during this trip, and the subject matter no doubt intrigued
her: The United Nations, after all, reflected history and
must have appealed directly to Curtis’s interest in the
subject, in contrast to the coverage of mundane style and
fashion shows. Yet in these stories from this trip, she piled
on details without the edge or opinion of some of her earlier
stories. Perhaps her reverence for history kept her from becoming too irreverent. For example, she fills her first
story about the behind-the-scenes people involved in the meeting with details :
It has cost the U-N an estimated $1,750,000 which has been appropriated in the current year’s budget Approximately 500 tons of equipment had arrived at this historic Palais de Chaillot here. This building, which housed the 1948 General Assembly, is stacked high with packages including pencils, paper clips and carbon paper. Some 160 tons of mimeograph paper and thousands of discs for permanently recording the estimated 5 1/2 million words to be spoken were rapidly dispersed throughout the Palais. Preceding the delegates were typewriters, cameras, interpretation machinery and 200,000 feet of film. 22
Curtis continues with more details, apparently to paint
a picture of the wide scope and activity at the conference.
Simply reciting the numbers was not enough for Curtis. More
details were needed: the $1,750,000, for example comes ”from
the current year’s budget.” The building is not just 39 historic, but housed the General Assembly in 1948; the packages include, specifically, pencils, paper clips and carbon paper. To Curtis, the details are what tells the story.
In her third story from Paris, a bit of the later Curtis comes through as she gently mocks a Russian diplomat. She spares him the cutting wounds, however, inflicted on many of her story subjects later in her career and later on the
Citizen. Curtis believes the diplomat, Jakob Malik, is grabbing the spotlight at the United Nations meeting. Malik, she writes, “has his picture taken the most often and frequented the speaker's platform more than anybody else— In fact, he rather dominated the afternoon. “23 a s she might have done later in her career, Curtis does not allow Malik to indict himself through his own words. She does, however, make it clear that she does not understand the reason for his popularity:
By some standards, I suppose, Malik has personality and good looks. He is tall, dark and not really unhandsome,a Humphrey Bogart of sorts. But he doesn't smile much, and most of the time he has what might be called an expressionless face. But to watch the camera boys go to work, you'd think Jake was either marrying Lana Turner or divorcing Jane Russell. What a play he got. About 25 flash bulbs were popping at him in all directions... It's all right with me, you understand, but the American delegation isn't so bad looking, either. After all, one of them is a very attractive gray haired lady named Anita Lord Strauss. She looked pretty charming in 40 her gray wool suit and tailored hat, but the photographers didn't give her a tumble.
Curtis's flip comments, such as referring to the diplomat as "Jake" and comparing him in importance to the spouses of film stars, diminish the importance of the diplomat. The use of first person by Curtis implies a type of intimacy between her and the reader. It is one that allows her to ask conspiratorially who this guy thinks he is. Sure,
Curtis reluctantly admits, he is "not unhandsome," and is even charismatic “ty some standards," but she clearly lets the reader know she does not understand what all the fuss is about. Her style of posing these questions is quite blatant.
The later Curtis, as rhetor, might have quoted Malik in a bland or arrogant statement, or perhaps describe an arrogant move or gesture. At this point early in her career, Curtis spells out her feelings in the story through her own words and not thought those of the sub]ect.
Five years later, in 1956, Curtis arranged a trip to the
Soviet Union and, again, sent stories to the Citizen. This trip would be pivotal to her for several reasons. It not only continued the tradition of McCormick, but it would pave the way for a later trip to Russia to contribute to a book about that country Harrison Salisbury, a respected New York
Times editor and foreign correspondent.
Her first story describes the activities of Leningrad through its description of the city and its people. This 41 description relies more on abstract concepts than simply recounting facts and figures, as Curtis had previously done in stories and in her letters home: "From the grey blue of the dawn, which comes early, to well after midnight when the boulevards and squares are dotted with great white globes of electric light, this famous city is wide awake and walking."25
Throughout the story, Curtis stresses that Leningrad is a city of contrasts.
It is full of people day and night, and has a type of dark nystical beauty about it, but it is not vibrant; its citizens move about joylessly, dressed in drab, colorless clothes. Curtis stresses the bland, dark quality of the clothes throughout the story, creating a sense of depression and hopelessness:
One sees the Russian housewife in low- heeled sandals and shapeless drab dresses...and black-booted old men with grey beards and mustaches that match the gray of their pants. Many wear uniforms both men and women. The uniforms provide a bright blue or khaki contrast to the generally dull picture. Little children are dressed both in colors and dark tones__ The average Russian woman wears a dark dress or skirt with a heavy knit sweater. She may also wear a nondescript crepe dress__
Curtis continues the theme of darkness, particularly in dress and demeanor, weaving the physical appearance of the
Russian people with their morose attitudes: “Women of 42 Leningrad don't seem to care..They may wear a wine crepe
outfit with navy crowns or chocolate velvet...And it doesn't
seem to matter to the men, (who) are dressed in the same haphazard fashion both as to fabric and color."
Curtis's following of a theme, the use of the
description of the colors to convey the drab quality of life,
and the contrasting that to the physical beauty of the city
at dawn, indicates a level of sophistication that was new for her. The repetition of the drab colors ("black-booted," "grey beards," "gray of their pants," "dark dress") drives home the
feeling of drudgery. Curtis, in this second trip overseas,
expanded on the descriptive style she developed as a college
student writing letters home, but she lets the words and phrasing convey the mood and her feelings rather than
spelling them out obviously by stating her opinions. This
subtle change in her use of description, and in its purpose, would become more apparent as she progressed in her career,
and would eventually display the characteristics of what was
to be known as the New Journalism, a highly stylistic method
of reporting that let details convey the motives of story
subjects. Her rhetorical style in this latter group of
stories overseas had matured considerably from that of her
earlier trip. She had begun to develop stylistic themes in
some of her stories, and became less preoccupied with showing
size and scope merely to describe. She also began seeing
herself as a messenger of information for all readers. 43 concentrating less on what would appeal to readers of the women’s pages. This new level of sophistication came about because she was feeling more comfortable as a professional journalist, and she was not afraid to overstep invisible
"boundaries" as a society writer. Her own views about her mission as a society writer may also have expanded, leading her to the opinion that her stories need not just appeal to upper-class women, the socio-economic group to which she belonged. She felt that the women's pages should have stories that appealed to all readers of the newspaper.
A SCORN FOR ACCEPTED SOCIAL BELIEFS
By the time Curtis had traveled to Russia, she had six years of experience as a fulltime reporter and editor, and had become a society/women's-page columnist for the Citizen, writing two periodic columns. By this time, she was twenty- eight and divorced, but clearly felt strongly about her ties to her family, particularly her mother. The subject matter of
Curtis's stories took a subtle turn at this point in her career, a reflection of changes in her life. In addition to feeling a tension between her personal views of the wealthy and those of her family, she was beginning to develop an ambivalence about the social and political roles associated with her parents' social class. 44 This tension manifested itself in two forms: first, in
Curtis's feelings toward the civil rights movement, and,
second, in her attitude about the role of women in society
and in politics. Curtis's mother Lucile, like other upper-
class wives, was active in volunteer and charity work, particularly for hospital, museum and arts groups. Well-to-do young women were members of the exclusive Junior League, a
charity and social organization that, in some cities, limited membership to white Protestant members. Documents found in
the personal papers left by Curtis indicate she was quite
active in the Junior League of Columbus. Later in her career,
however, her ambivalence toward this organization emerged.
After she became an established reporter in New York in the
1960s, she wrote derisively about how some of the most
exclusive country clubs in Palm Beach accepted for membership
only white Anglo-Saxon Protestant members. In 1962, in a
biography she wrote of then-First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy,
Curtis goes into a lengthy explanation of the reasons Mrs.
Kennedy accepted membership into the Junior League. The
reason, Curtis explained, is that the organization does
extensive volunteer work and has made considerable donations
to charitable causes. She writes of Kennedy: "Apparently Mrs.
Kennedy felt that the League's contributions outweighed its
faults.This could be the very reason Curtis herself
stayed a member of the Junior League — or at least how she 45 rationalized to herself, since she must have, at that early age, been effected by its biased attitude.
This sensitivity toward civil rights manifested itself in Curtis's writings in other ways. In one of the most well- known stories of her career, Curtis wrote for the New York
Times a brutal account of a fundraiser Leonard Bernstein and many of his wealthy friends held for the Black Panthers, a radical black organization. The story savages both Bernstein and his friends as well as the Panthers, ridiculing them in their attempts to impress one another by spouting meaningless slogans and cliches.While many New Yorkers applauded the story, Bernstein and the Panthers criticized it, claiming it was unfair and trivialized the radical group. A week later,
Curtis wrote another story about similar fundraisers, commenting about how much good they do. The second story was almost an apology for the first.
Her conflicting feelings about the underprivileged — particularly those active in the civil rights movement in the
United States — would influence Curtis’s rhetoric for much of career. (The Bernstein's fundraiser and Curtis's involvement in it are discussed at length in chapter IV.
Curtis's views of the role of women would also be problematic for her, and her writing in the late 1950s was in many ways schizophrenic. Her ambivalence toward the role of society women had clearly been spelled out to her through her 46 upbringing. Yet her parents also instilled in her and her
sister the belief that women were equal to men
intellectually. Later in her life, Curtis remembered how
there was little differentiation in her home between the
activities of girls and boys, and that the Curtis girls were
not discouraged from playing rough and getting their clothes
dirty.29 it is not unusual, then, that Curtis would hold
scorn for the typical political wife, v;hose job was smile and become a decoration for her husband. Many of her stories in
these later days at the Citizen were interviews with these political wives and accounts of their trips to Ohio.
Still, Curtis relished the freedom the Citizen gave her
in her writing and selection of her story topics. By 1960,
she did a periodic society column, "Charlotte's Ruse," a
compilation of society tiibits and announcements. This
combination of being a society writer and, in some ways political observer, must have led to a schizophrenic
existence. Curtis liked doing the column, however, because it
allowed her to exercise her playful nature and have fun with puns, literary allusions and other clever figures of speech.
It was a habit she would pick up twenty years later when she would be Op-Ed editor at the New York Times. Puns, in particular, were her favorites. Even the name of the column,
Charlotte’s Ruse, mocks the name of a fruity, frilly dessert
found on the tables of the wealthy. In one column, a subhead
describing the purchase of a property called Walnut Ford 47 reads, "I Got Plenty of Nutting"; in the same column, Curtis describes a formal dance of the Bachelors and Spinsters Club with the subhead, "The Black Tie that Binds.
It was Curtis’s profiles of political wives and celebrities who visited Columbus that allowed her to expand on the ironic, bitter style she had been cultivating during her decade on the Citizen (which, by 1961, was the Citizen-
Journal . the product of a merger between two newspapers in
Columbus). These profiles allowed her to expand on her style of using direct quotations to let her subjects indict themselves, and she often mocked her subjects by recording their off-the-cuff comments and observations. Her disdain for the pampered and absurd lives of political wives comes through, as does her scorn for their petty concerns and their exaggerated role as "wife." Curtis mocked these women who were professional wives at a time she was entering what had been a traditionally male realm — that of the political reporter. Curtis may have felt that the male political reporters did not notice the absurdity of the situation in which the wives were involved; she felt it was her job to point out this absurdity to her readers.
Two stories she did for the Citizen during 1960, a presidential campaign year, carried the sly ironic tone that might have been lost on some less-than-perceptive readers, and are good examples of Curtis's rhetoric during these early years of the 1960s. These stories reported on two separate 48 visits to Ohio by Rose Kennedy, the mother of Democratic
Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, and by Pat Nixon, wife of Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate. Unlike many of the conventional stories that appeared in newspapers about the candidates' families, Curtis's stories of these two women had a hard edge and did not just focus on the women ' s taste in clothes or their views of their families.
It is the detail in the stories that at times paints a brutal picture of both women. Both women are portrayed as putting on a front of stoicism as they are forced to put up with the indignities of campaigning. In private, they are whiney, with petty complaints. In the Kennedy story, Curtis focuses on Rose Kennedy's somewhat disagreeable state of mind
detailing her desire to control what was asked of her, and how she was dressed for photographs :
[Mrs. Kennedy] said she was too warm, that someone should turn on the air conditioning and that if there were going to be pictures, she'd like to put on a hat and gloves. She disappeared into her bedroom and returned wearing a white wool toque..."If we're going to be on television, I wish you'd tell me what questions you're going to ask," she said. Her accent is that of Boston. "I don't answer political questions. I talk about the way the children were brought up.
The detail included in the story is also characteristic of Curtis's writing style. In addition to providing description, the detail also reveals certain ironies about 49 the situation. Curtis notes that "the small, dark-haired and smartly dressed mother of nine, accompanied by a personal maid and a traveling companion, registered at the Deshler
Hilton Hotel, home of Ohio Volunteers for Nixon-Lodge, and went to bed." The irony here, that the hotel houses offices of John Kennedy's opponents, is a detail that Curtis does not ignore. Nor does she ignore the entourage with Rose Kennedy, mentioning it again near the end of the story, when the news conference ended and Kennedy is presented with a bouquet of roses: "The maid took the roses into a bedroom. She got the multi-millionairess's black Persian lamb coat, a pillow and a blanket. National Committeewoman Helen Gunsett escorted Mrs.
Kennedy to a rented black Cadillac limousine."
The trappings of her riches — the Persian lamb coat, the maid, the ride in the limousine — are slipped in to show the reader that with her wealth, perhaps Mrs. Kennedy is different from you and me. For those who did not get the message, the reference to her as "the multi-millionairess" is inserted for good measure, as are the inclusion of the pillow and blanket, blatant symbols of pampering. These touches are characteristic of the Curtis "no-one-is-sacred" political profile, and of the subtle understated style she uses when digging the knife into her subjects.
A week before her interview with Rose Kennedy, Curtis interviewed Pat Nixon, the wife of the Republican candidate.
It is perhaps prescient that, as early 1960, Curtis captured 50 the stoicism for which Pat Nixon came to be known years
later. As Mrs. Nixon arrives at tiny windy Burke Lake front
Airport in Cleveland, she is the picture of composure: "She
is a professional, and a shrewd one — a blonde Mona Lisa who sees all, says little and smiles a great deal, and a cool
Gretel who won't be caught climbing into any o v e n s . " ^ 2
With her husband, Mrs. Nixon is later described as she rides the motorcade through throngs of people who spilled over the curb and reach into the car. It is clearly not a comfortable situation, and Mrs. Nixon, like Mrs. Kennedy; is bothered by the temperature and the situation in general:
She was kind to strangers who grabbed her hand. She said the sun was in her eyes but she didn't mind She was chilly, she said, so he (her husband) helped her into her gray cloth coat. She gave him and the crowd a wifely smile...Mrs. Nixon leaned over to shake hundreds of hands, always managing to extract herself before someone yanked her over the side. She said she'd never seen so many people... (After they arrive at the hotel), she and her husband had been mauled by the stampede at the hotel entrance. Fumes from the motorcycle escorts had made her cough.
Curtis's image of Mrs. Nixon is a painful one: she
smiles a "wifely,” or mincing smile, has to "extract" herself
from those who "yank" her, only to be further "mauled" and
choked by motorcycle fumes. Further, Curtis cannot resist bringing up the sub]ect of the cloth coat, a topic that had been made famous several years earlier in Richard Nixon's 51 "Checkers" speech. It is an allusion that could easily be lost on a less-than-perceptive reader, but one that would amuse, or perhaps anger, one who caught it. Despite the cold and the uncomfortable situation, the ever-brave Nixons smile on, with Mrs. Nixon in her modest cloth coat.
Using her story about Mrs. Nixon also allowed Curtis to subtly editorialize about the indignities of politics and campaigning:
Before the Nixons' plane landed, the faithful had gathered at the windy, lakefront airport. They milled about expectantly while a cheerleader rehearsed the "We Want Nixon" song and Cleveland Mayor Anthony Celebrezze, a Democrat, tried to decide whether exposure to some 200,000 voters waiting in downtown streets was worth the indignation of riding in the Republican motorcade. Middle-aged Republicans wore Youth for Nixon hats. Candidates had spruced themselves up for the parade with hair brushes and bourbon. A former United States senator passed out American flags.
Nothing escapes Curcis's eye here: not the "middle-aged"
Republicans who wore the “Youth for Nixon" hats, the
Democratic mayor's weighing of options, nor the spruced-up candidates. Curtis clearly had little sympathy for all those involved and, she implies through her writing, neither should the reader.
Curtis's stories about these two women, as well as those about families of other political candidates, are significant 52 for several reasons. First, they are unique in that they go beyond the sugary one-dimensional “wifely” profiles of candidates' wives that characterized the types of newspaper stories that were done then.
Curtis’s chronicling of the behind-the-scenes activities and the not-so-pleasant demeanor of some of these women was unusual for any women's-page writer at the times. Curtis apparently saw her role not as a publicist for the candidates or their families, but as a chronicler of their behavior.
That included their "onstage” and “offstage" activities.
Second, these stories reinforced her technique of writing stories that offered two “readings" — one that could be construed as a simple profile of the subject, and one that offers a sly, irreverent commentary about the person.
Finally, these profiles and political stories set the stage for many of Curtis's later duties as a New York Times reporter and editor, when she frequently interviewed well- known subjects, yet did not hesitate to portray them in a less-than-flattering light. These early stories showed that the fame of her subjects did not intimidate her, and their professional stature had no influence on how they were treated in print by Curtis. 53 Moving On
After Curtis left the Citizen-Journal and had worked on the Times for a few years, she was the subject of stories in several stories in national magazines because of her unconventional style of covering society. While she was in
Columbus, however, little was written about her as a reporter. Jane Horrocks, her co-worker there, said Curtis ruffled a few feathers because of her irreverent attitude in stories, but that Citizen-Journal readers enjoyed reading her stories and appreciated the unconventional coverage. In 1964 and 1965, a few years after Curtis left Columbus, Newsweek and Time magazines wrote brief profiles about Curtis in their media columns, focusing on how her coverage of society differed from the style at most newspapers at the time.
Newsweek wrote that Curtis "has been serving u p ...delicious slices of upper-crust life in a style that combines a
Fitzgeraldian sense of mood with a reporter's eye for detail...At a time when all too many society pages still offer little more than chitchat about women's club meetings and good grooming, she infuses her reports with a passion for history, acquired at Vassar, and a répertoriai thoroughness. Time noted that society writers were often mouthpieces for their subjects, but not Curtis: "By tradition, practice, choice and affinity, the typical society reporter gossips about her sources in their own terms. The 54 Times * s girl on the beat studies her subjects with the detachment of a professional sociologist."S*
Curtis's brand of society coverage was clearly innovative for newspapers of the 1950s and 1960s. It stemmed from her fearlessness of authority and the tension she felt in her own life.
By early 1960, letters in Curtis's personal papers reveal she was ready to move on and leave the Citizen-
Journal . During an interview nearly twenty-five years later, she said she had outgrown the Citizen and Citizen-Journal after more than ten years as a fulltime reporter and editor on the newspaper. She said she had "done everything I could at Scripps-Howard" and grew tired of what she called the thriftiness and tight budgets of the paper.Her selection of New York City as a desired location is not unusual. After all, during her years at Vassar, she was just a hour-long train ride away from Manhattan and, as her letters home indicated, she frequently traveled there for the night life.
Further, as she related later in her life, she thought the
New York Herald Tribune was one of the best-written newspapers in the country, and she wanted a job there. She noted that she finally decided to apply at the New York Times when the Herald Tribune "didn't have a job for me.
Curtis's correspondence indicates, also, that there was another reason for her desire to relocate to New York. Copies of letters she kept, written between her and a former Citizen 55 reporter, Eugene Grove, show that a romance between those two might have led her to New York City. Grove, whose letters to
Curtis show that he started working at the New York Post in
1960, encouraged Curtis to come to New York to apply for a job at the Post, and he reassured her when she apparently felt insecure about a tiyout. Grove also told Curtis in the letters that he loved her, and indicated that she did come to visit him periodically when he lived in New York and she lived in Columbus. The Jacqueline Kennedy biography she would later write was dedicated to "L.A.C.,” obviously Lucile
Atcherson Curtis, Charlotte's mother, and to “E.S.G.," Eugene
S. Grove. Based on the letters Curtis kept from Grove, he was already married, and the relationship ended shortly before
Curtis's unsuccessful tryout at the Post in 1950.
Curtis was ambitious, and it is natural that an ambitious reporter would want to work in the nation's liveliest city. Her relationship with Grove and the ambivalence she felt about her "proper" upbringing and lifestyle drew her to New York. Further, Grove, meanwhile shared many interests with Curtis, including an interest in newspapering and, as clippings found in Curtis's personal papers show, an interest in the fledgling civil rights movement. He wrote many stories about the topic at the time.
Grove can be considered a symbol of Curtis's restlessness and indecisiveness while she was in Columbus, and of the pull she felt away from that city. It is unknown whether Curtis's 56 parents knew of her relationship with Grove, but it is unlikely. Curtis clearly felt t o m at this point in her life.
On one hand, she was pulled toward a forbidden liaison with a married man, the big city and a more prestigious job; on the other, she was pressed to stay in Columbus to continue the life she lived with her family and friends, and a comfortable job on the hometown newspaper. As an adult and a journalist,
Curtis still wanted to please her mother and, to some degree, live the conservative, respectable lifestyle her mother encouraged. The pull toward Grove and a more exciting life, however, may have been too strong for her to ignore. In late
1959, she began applying for jobs in New York City, and by
January of 1961, she apparently learned of a job opening in the women's section of the New York Times. She went after the job with the same zeal she pursued most activities, writing a letter to Times women's editor Elizabeth Penrose Howkins in which she highlights her versatility as a society and political reporter and even, to a limited degree, a foreign correspondent.^® It is perhaps ironic that Howkins, while impressed with Curtis's writing, felt she might be bored with simple women's news coverage.®® In a letter of response,
Curtis was quick to reassure Howkins that she would be far from bored working as a women ' s-news reporter on the Times.
She was honest in her letter that her exposure to fashion and home furnishings was limited, although she neglected to mention that her interest in such subjects was limited also.'^° 57 In early 1961, Howkins gave Curtis the job, and the Columbus
Citizen society editor who covered events in Paris and the
Soviet Union, who parodied the French accent of a hairdresser, and who conveyed every detail of a recalcitrant
Rose Kennedy's visit to Columbus, became the home furnishings writer for the staid New York Times.
When Curtis started working in New York, she no doubt expected to conform to the style of the conservative Times. which took pride in its no-nonsense reputation as a national
“newspaper of record,“ and one that stressed accuracy and fairness first and writing style second. Times editors, however, would eventually encourage her to develop further her somewhat unconventional writing style — one that often uncovered the foibles of her subjects, many of whom were nationally known leaders in their fields.
What is important is that Curtis's ambivalence about her upbringing may have led to the irreverent style she employed when writing about society and the wealthy, a style of winks and nods that might be lost on some readers. This style was one that was new not just to the Columbus Citizen, but one that would also prove to be an innovation at the Times. it was a style that mocked not only the social group in which
Curtis and her family were a part, but one that included many of the readers of the Times. Curtis's refusal to accept what was then the traditional role of women of her socioeconomic group, a role that included joining the Junior League, 58 marrying an acceptable husband and having children, would lead to a lifelong ambivalence on her part about the women's movement. Curtis's parents encouraged her to believe that women could, professionally, accomplish as much as men, yet her education and work experience showed her that the true role of women was to marry well. Further, if women do work at a job, they were assigned separate female spheres and they had specific roles that differed from those of men.
Inevitably, these personal and professional conflicts formed early in her life would mold her rhetorical style and affect the way she wrote stories and her selection of what she deemed newsworthy subject matter. These conflicts would make themselves known in a more obvious way at the Times because Curtis would become a nationally known writer whose work was read across the country, and one whose subject matter was not limited to a small city but included people from around the world.
NOTES
^ Interview with William E. Hunt, June 5, 1990.
2 Charlotte Curtis, oral history project, SL, NYT.
2 Letter Charlotte Curtis to Lucile and George Curtis, February 7 (year unknown, but presumed to be 1950), SL.
^ Letter, Charlotte Curtis to Curtis family, October 18, 1948, SL.
5 Letter, Charlotte Curtis to family, October 18, 1950, SL. 59
6 Ibid-
7 Letter, Charlotte Curtis to Lucile Curtis, May 5, 1950, SL.
8 A copy of this grade card was left in Charlotte Curtis's personal papers, SL.
9 Charlotte Curtis, oral history project, NYT.
10 Bender made these comments during Curtis's memorial service. May 20, 1987, SL, NYT.
11 See, for instance, Charlotte Curtis's "Sen. Taft Honored at Gala Party," Columbus Citizen. August 1, 1947, p. 6, Curtis's story, "Philharmonic Group is Busy This Season," Columbus Citizen. August 22, 1948, and other Citizen stories written by Curtis.
12 Charlotte Curtis, “College Girls Make Own Style Rules, Columbus Citizen. August 17, 1949, p. 4.
12 Charlotte Curtis, "Enthusiastic Group Plans Autumn Prelude," Columbus Citizen. August 19, 1947, p. ID.
14 Jane-Howard, "Charlotte Curtis: First Lady of the New York Times. --Cosmopolitan. January 1975, p. 60.
12 Interview Jane Kehrer Horrocks, June 18, 1990.
12 Charlotte Curtis, "Stylist Sniffs at Short Hair and Bare Heads," Columbus Citizen. June 6, 1951, p. 7.
11 Charlotte Curtis, "Flower Show Puts Pressure on Posies," Columbus Citizen. April 12, 1956, p. 6.
15 Howard, oo. cit.
12 Interview, Jane Kehrer Horrocks, June 18, 1990.
20 Interview, Marylin Bender, October 9, 1989.
21 Marylin Bender, memorial service for Charlotte Curtis, May 20, 1987, transcript, SL, NYT. 60
22 Charlotte Curtis, "Citizen Reporter Sends Notes on Paris Meeting," Columbus Citizen. November 12, 1951, p. 4.
23 charlotte Curtis, "Malik Tries to Grab Spotlight, Photographers Try to Grab Malik," Columbus Citizen. November 16, 1951, p. 4.
24 Harrison Salisbury, The Soviet Union: The Fiftv Years. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967.
23 Charlotte Curtis, “Leningrad Streets are Alive with Walking, Lifeless People," Columbus Citizen. September 7, 1956, p. 11.
26 Charlotte Curtis, First Ladv. New York: Putnam Books, 1962, p. 80.
27 See Charlotte Curtis's, "Black Panther Philosophy is Debated at Bernstein's," New York Times. January 15, 1970, p. 50.
28 See Charlotte Curtis's, "The Bernstein Party for Black Panther Legal Defense Fund Stirs Talk and More Parties," New York Times. January 24, 1970, p. 21. See Chapter 4 of this manuscript for further discussion of these stories.
23 Ellen Bilgore, “Charlotte Curtis: She Did It Her Way," Harper's Bazaar. March 1981, p. 72.
30 These puns, and many more, are found in Curtis's article, "The Trees are Turning Over a New Leaf," Columbus Citizen. October 18, 1959, p. 49.
21 Charlotte Curtis, "Mrs. Kennedy: Mother Comes to Town," Columbus Citizen-Journal. October 19, 1960, p. 15.
32 Charlotte Curtis, "Pat Nixon: The No. 2 Spot," Columbus Citizen-Journal. October 10, 1960, p. 14.
33 "Upper Crust," Newsweek. September 28, 1964, p. 62.
34 "Sociologist on the Society Beat," Times. February 19, 1965, p. 51. 61
35 Charlotte Curtis, oral history project, NYT.
36 Ibid.
37 See letters from Eugene Grove, August 18, 1960, September 12, 1960, and February 11, 1960, SL.
38 Letter, Charlotte Curtis to Elizabeth P. Howkins, January 28, 1961, SL.
39 Letter, Elizabeth P. Howkins to Charlotte Curtis, January 31, 1961, SL.
40 Letter, Charlotte Curtis to Elizabeth P. Howkins, February 9, 1961, SL. CHAPTER III
EARLY YEARS ON THE TIMES
When Curtis started at the Times in 1961, the "women's" section covered "food, fashion, family and furnishings," as the logo on the pages indicated. Much to Curtis's relief, she wrote few if any home furnishing stories, even though that was the job for which she was hired. Instead, she recalled in
1983, she wrote some fashion but mostly feature stories and personality profiles — the same kinds of stories she wrote in Columbus.i
Curtis often profiled famous designers, artists and entertainers, the same types of "respectable" people about whom she wrote in Columbus. While in New York, however, she felt the same type of tension she felt while working for the
Citizen. She came from a well-to-do background where success in the arts and in business was applauded, yet she continued her style of chronicling the idiosyncrasies of her subjects and, in some cases, placing their accomplishments second to their personal foibles.
62 63 Curtis's rhetoric in the mid-1960s employed the often brutal edge that she cultivated during her latter years in Columbus, although it grew more sophisticated with its use of nuance and word choice. This came about primarily because of the freedom she was afforded at the Times, first by an editor who had worked on magazines and appreciated the value of and the force of the written word, and, second, by an editor who saw Curtis as an innovator. This particular editor saw Curtis as a sociologist rather than a reporter, and he was to have a profound effect on her career as a rhetor encouraging her unconventional style of writing and giving her a free hand in the topics she covered.
Another major influence on Curtis in these years was a new type of writing that was slowly emerging in New York: a free-wheeling, descriptive type of reporting called the New
Journalism. This style of subjective journalism began to appear in some magazines, but, for the most part, was deemed unsuitable for newspapers because of its subjective nature and its tendency toward lengthy descriptions. The New
Journalism, as practiced in magazines during its inception in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was a blend of fiction and fact; writers often did not take notes when interviewing subjects, but instead placed inside quotation marks what they remembered was said by the subject. Further, this brand of journalism stressed details about the subject, his or her personal characteristics, and surroundings. Curtis's writing 64 in Columbus had some elements of this genre, although at that time it had no name or label. The emergence of this style of writing was also to influence her in New York and help
legitimize what was then an unorthodox style of writing for the great, gray New York Times.
A NEW LEVEL OF SOPHISTICATION
When she joined the Times in 1961, Curtis's superior was
Elizabeth Penrose Howkins, the women's editor. As was the
case with most newspapers, the Times' managing editor,
Clifton Daniel, was responsible for overseeing the day-to-day
operations of all sections of the newspaper, including its
women's section. Howkins, of course, influenced Curtis in part because she was her immediate superior. Daniel within
the next few years was to play an even more pivotal role in
Curtis's life and career. Neither tried to mold Curtis into a
conventional society writer who simply reported the who,
what, where, when,why and how of society with little of her
own opinion added. As Curtis gained more newspaper experience
and became a bit bolder in what she wrote, her writing
attained a level of sophistication that both Howkins and
Daniel would applaud.
Elizabeth Howkins both amused and horrified Curtis.
Howkins had been an editor at Glamour magazine and the 65 British Vooue. and, consequently, was concerned primarily with large, open layouts and photos, and slick, succinct copy to go with those photos. She preferred a snappy, slick magazine style of writing to the staid almost boring style which often characterized large American newspapers.
Howkins’s personal style, however, intrigued Curtis, and, twenty years later, Curtis indicated that she had never before met someone quite as ridiculous as her new boss:
Mrs. Howkins was one of the great ladies of anybody's lifetime. She was in her sixties probably, when I first met her, with eternally blond hair that was done precisely, at a beauty shop, at least once and sometimes twice a week. She would arrive in the last word of Paris fashion, or the Orbach's copies of Paris fashions which were obviously much less expensive. She had at least six fur coats that she would alternate. She was given to large topaz earrings, which would be different on different days. A lot of affectation...She really was odd looking. I suppose in the fashion world it would have been considered beautiful but in any other world she would not have been considered beautiful...She never went anywhere without a hat...Full regalia. She would wear mostly turquoise eye shadow and what would be lovely about the turquoise eye shadow was that some time during the day she would run her finger across her eyes, scratch or whatever, and run it down the side of her face. By five o'clock on any given day, Elizabeth Penrose Howkins had turquoise down the tips of her ears. Of course, nobody ever told her about it.2
That Curtis remembered and could recite the minute details of Howkins's physical appearance twenty years later 66 speaks of her abilities as an observer. In her recollection,
Curtis never spells out that Howkins looked cheap but instead notes, for instance, that she wore “Orbach's copies" of Paris
fashions and “full regalia," terms that hardly suggest richness or quality. This passage also shows Curtis's disinterest in and disdain for the “fashion" world, although
she wrote for the women's pages, of which fashion was a major part. As ridiculous as Howkins looked, Curtis notes, "I
suppose in the fashion world it would have been considered beautiful." In other words, the fashion world itself had little semblance to the real world, so Howkins fit right in.
Howkins's personal style, however, was not the only thing
Curtis remembered. She also recalled how the editor "edited" pictures and committed what Curtis called “journalistic atrocities" with photos : "She received from one of the photographers a picture of some great lady with bangs and she decided the woman didn't look good with bangs...She took one of her yellow grease pencils and she X'd out the bangs...and had an artist airbrush the bangs so when the picture appeared, this woman, who always had bangs, appeared without them. “3
Howkins, despite her ridiculous habits and demeanor, was to play a pivotal role in Curtis' career. She did not keep her reporters on a tight leash, as do many section editors at large newspapers, but she let them write in a lively and irreverent way if they desired. "Mrs. Howkins gave us 67 leeway, " said Mary lin Bender, who worked under Howkins with
Curtis. “You could write something that wasn't flattering as
reporting.Bender also remembered that Howkins's top priority when hiring was the ability of the job applicant to write well. Solid reporting skills were not a top priority
and, in fact, Howkins thought of reporters as "the lowest
form of human being," unlike women's-page writers, who were
"tastemakers.In this way, Howkins and her staff strayed
from the tight "paper-of-record" style for which the Times was known, a rigid style that stressed objective chronicling
of events and staid profiles and feature stories.
Curtis enjoyed not just the license given to her by
Howkins, but the fact that she realized she was in some way a historian. Maiylin Bender remembered Curtis sometimes told her that with the changes taking place in society in the
early 1960s, reporters were historians whose job it was to
report on and record those changes and pass them on to the public.^ This feeling that she was a contributor to history no doubt satisfied Curtis, whose letters home from Vassar
indicated she had a serious interest in the subj ect and was
adept in it. 68 Covering the Rich and Famous
While she was in Columbus, Curtis often covered
celebrities who visited that city, although she often had to wait until well-known fashion designers, actors, and writers made stops in the Midwest. After she moved to New York, she would frequently interview and write about world leaders in many fields. The innovative style and subtle mocking of
subjects she used in the Midwest raised some eyebrows in
sophisticated New York, although Columbus readers had become used to it. “She did the same thing here as she did here (in
Columbus)," Jane Horrocks said. “It made a bigger splash in
New York. Curtis made this bigger splash because she
interviewed more “ important “ people in New York than in
Columbus and because of the wide readership of the Times all
over the world.
Her extensive use of quotations high in the stories, the
literary allusions and her own sometimes caustic asides worked for her and enabled her to create the essence of those
she interviewed. Because Curtis did not hold in awe the
subjects of her stories, she did not ignore or not report on
the arrogance or other personal characteristics of those whom
she interviewed. Her bold attitude was interesting in that her upbringing taught her to respect people in high positions
— particularly those accomplished in arts and in business.
On the other hand, Curtis and her sister were reared to ask 69 questions and cultivate an interest in a variety of subjects.
Perhaps this insistence by her physician father to question authority prompted her to take an irreverent attitude in her writing, particularly when she interviewed well-accepted, prominent subjects.
In a story about a New York milliner, Curtis takes license and uses some of her own asides to show the arrogance of her subject:
He admits he is a genius and the greatest couturier-milliner in the world, and he has tried to forget that he was once a boy from New Rochelle named Hans Harburger. And when he talks about himself, which is most of the time, he puts up a colorful and audacious smoke screen of clever phrases, shocking tidbits and big names. "I am Mr. John, " he says over and over again. "Mr. John is the dean of the industry. I. Magnin rolls out the red carpet for Mr. John. Mr. John has been mad at hairdos for years."®
Curtis does not spare the reader the detail that this well-traveled designer was once the mundane "Hans Harburger" from "New Rochelle," even though, she notes, he tries to forget.
The man’s reference to himself in the third person is one that Curtis could not overlook, as it reinforces his arrogance. It might have been sufficient for some reporters to simply ignore it because it did not add to his ability or 70 fame as a hat designer. To Curtis, however, it was much of the story.
After she lets Mr. John speak for himself, she inserts her own opinion in a description of him:
This then is the public image of the man who calls himself John P. (for Pico, a family name) John, the publicity conscious business man who affects a Napoleonic hairdo and matching complex and the designer who has hatted thousands of knowns and unknowns —
By the time this passage appears in the third paragraph, the reader already senses the psychological parallels between
Mr. John and Napoleon. Now that reader can get a sense of a physical resemblance, also. Throughout the story, Curtis lets
Mr. John dig himself deeper as he attempts to pretend he is just a common milliner:
I am an honest milliner. I like coffee and bread, but they must be the very best coffee and bread available. I cannot explain this any more. You either have talent or you don't.
After presenting this quotation, Curtis quickly flips back into describing Mr. John's fame: "Best-dressed women flock to his salon. Other designers copy his work. And the money rolls in by the carload. 'I don't even know how much money I have,' he said." 71 In this story, as with many more of these early women's- page stories, Curtis enlarges on a style of using quotations often to let her subjects indict themselves. Curtis gives the reader a nudge at times, such as the reference to Napoleon, but the core of her technique is letting the subject speak for himself, a method she developed while in Columbus but one she intensified in New York. Often, the subject feigns some false modesty, while his or her actions belie this modesty.
This was seen to a limited degree in Curtis's Columbus stories (for instance, Curtis's description of the good
Democrat Rose Kennedy with her numerous "assistants" and her refusal to be photographed without white gloves), but she enlarged on it in New York.
As Curtis continued on the Times, her style began to mature. She became more careful in her word choice, and many words had double meanings. This can be seen in a profile about designer Emilio Pucci, who claimed to live a dangerous life:
His life has been a mosaic of adventure. During World War II he was a much-decorated pilot, and he continues to shadow-box death by skiing down hazardous mountain trails and racing his sports car about the countryside. "I once terrified four Americans," he explained shucking his dove-gray suede gloves and adjusting his royal blue necktie. "I drove them through Florence. They weren't used to going 120 miles an hour. I wasn't scared. The car can go 150." These Byronic impulses are tempered, however, by an acceptance of some things as they are. He would never, for 72 example, want to live without a refrigerator or television set.®
Curtis does not mention Pucci's designs until half-way though the story, concentrating instead on his quirky and contradictory personality. Pucci, a “much-decorated" pilot now designs clothes, a profession that carries tranquil and even feminine connotations. The "much-decorated" pilot now
“shadow-boxes" death with such mundane activities as skiing and racing his car on empty country roads, Curtis notes, with the implication that Pucci has indeed been put to pasture when it comes to life-threatening activities.
She does not stop there, however. As the designer elaborates on these death-defying activities, he wears “dove- gray suede gloves“ — garments that hardly suggest death and danger. It is here that Curtis shows she has matured as a writer. The subtle connotations associated with the words
“dove" and “suede," which convey softness and gentleness, tell the reader that this man is full of hot air. The image of death comes up yet again in this brief passage when Pucci announces that he “terrified" four Americans with his fast driving, even though he was not scared. This activity comes off as a parody of a true death-defying act, such as that taken on bya war pilot. As she describes the ultimate contradiction in his lifestyle, Curtis is able to insert her own personal aside which trivializes Pucci's comments and makes them seem ridiculous. Her use of a grand term like 73 "Byronic” in particular, implies that Curtis thought Pucci was a big talker, and her inclusion in the story of the fact
that he would never go without modem conveniences diminishes
his self-described daring. The use of Pucci's own words and
stories, combined with her own brief asides, makes the
designer look silly. It is ironic that Pucci's own attempts
to impress and his own words are what give Curtis the
ammunition she needs to ridicule him.
Biography of a First Lady
In 1962, after she had been working at the Times for a year, Curtis published what was to be the first of two books:
First Ladv. a biography of then-First Lady Jacqueline
Kennedy.She wrote the book between early 1961 and 1962.
First Ladv is an unusual biography today's standards
because Curtis did not interview Mrs. Kennedy for the book, nor did she talk to any of her friends, relatives, enemies
and the like, at least for publication. Her quotes from
Kennedy and her acquaintances are taken from previously
published stories and interviews, for Curtis frequently wrote
that Kennedy "has said— “ rather than quoting her directly
as though through an interview.
Jacqueline Kennedy attended Vassar from 1947 to 1948 when Curtis was there, although the two knew each other only 74 in passing and were not more than casual acquaintances. The book is more of a social history of two years in the White
House than it is a biography, outlining in detail such things
as the furnishings of certain rooms at the White House,
ceremonial functions at the White House, and clothes of
Jacqueline Kennedy. Its content is pivotal, however, because
it subtly reveals some aspects of Curtis's evolution as a
rhetor, and of her growing level of sophistication. For one
of the first times in her life, Curtis met with an editor who
did not care for her ironic, cutting style of writing, and
insisted she change that style for her book. The end result
of First Ladv shows how Curtis handles that criticism while
still, to some degree, getting what she wanted.
The detail in the book is characteristic of Curtis, but,
for the most part, it does not contain the double-edged
adjectives Curtis often used to jab her subjects (such as the
"dove-gray suede gloves" of Emilio Pucci). A typical example
of the detail in the book can be seen in the following
passage describing the pomp and circumstance of a formal
White House dinner:
Handgraved invitations, including a card which identifies the guest when he arrives at the White House, are sent out some two weeks in advance. Guests are expected to be punctual. The usual hour for such dinners is 8 p.m. Shortly before this time, guests report at the southwest entrance of the White House, where a guard checks their cards against the 75 guest list. From there, guests proceed to the Diplomatic Reception Room, where they check their hats and coats. They move to the handsome marble stairway that leads to the North Lobby. In the lobby, each man receives a diagram of the seating arrangements for the dinner and the name of the lady he is to escort. Unescorted ladies are introduced to their dinner partners. The party actually begins in the East Room, where cocktails and highballs are served. The arrival of the President and his party— Mrs. Kennedy and the honored guests— always is somewhat ceremonial. It is announced by the red-coated Marine band which breaks into "Ruffles and Flourishes," and by the ranking military aide. The party then appears, piped in by a color guard stationed on either side of the long hallway. The President's party on these formal occasions forms a receiving line which moves briskly —
This description here does little more than offer
glimpses of size and scope — much as Curtis did in many of her early stories for the Citizen.
It is curious that just as Curtis was evolving as a
rhetor since joining the Times, and just as her writing style was growing more sophisticated that she would turn to a style
characteristic of her in previous years. This departure, however, was apparently the result of changes suggested by
editors at Pyramid books, publishers of First Ladv. A
detailed copy of suggested revisions found in Curtis's personal papers reveals that some critical comments about
Mrs. Kennedy never made it into print. Janet Rosenberg, the 76 editor, wrote in a memo that Curtis was far too negative in her treatment of the subject: "She (Curtis) reports what others have said, usually ending up with the negative and thereby leaving only a negative impression. Mrs. Kennedy cannot be blamed for her wealth or her background or the society she lives in...Certainly Miss Curtis has every right to criticize occasionally, but the over-all tone is far too negative and can serve no useful p u r p o s e .
Rosenberg went on to make detailed comments and criticisms of each chapter, many of which deal with Curtis's
"negative" tone. By comparing the comments in the memo to the text of the book, it appears as though the author changed the text in nearly all cases. ("Unnecessarily acid— rework paragraph" or "'the colds she seems to have' implies she was lying..Why not have a more sympathetic view on this?")
Even the details seemed to bother Rosenberg, or make her feel that they portrayed Mrs. Kennedy in an unflattering light. "Are these details necessary? Why make her sound so vain?" Rosenberg wrote. And, "Are all these details necessary? They seem calculated to put Mrs. K in the worst possible light."
Rosenberg said of another chapter that it "is much too negative and petty. I would suggest sweetening it considerably, taking out some of the unnecessary detail, emphasizing the praise she has received..." 77 While any author of a book is likely to face some
criticism of editors, it appears as though Rosenberg was
critical of the very elements that made up Curtis's writing
style, and it is evident Curtis bowed in some ways to the whims of her editor. While First Ladv. with its often-bland
descriptions and innocuous observations, is hardly
characteristic of Curtis the writer, Curtis did, in a very
subtle way, manage to convey her point of view and
characteristic skepticism and sarcasm in the book. She was
forced, however, to do it in a way that was more subtle than
normal, and in a way that apparently pulled the wool over the
eyes of her editor.
For instance, in a passage describing the popularity of
Mrs. Kennedy worldwide, Curtis wrote that the first lady
became “America's number-one goodwill ambassador on foreign
soil, surpassing Coca-Cola in popularity and the United
States Information Agency as a propaganda w e a p o n . while
the flattery may have pleased Curtis's editor, one has to
question how much of a compliment it is to be compared in popularity to a soft drink — it conveys a type of
commonness, and is even humorous. In addition, it probably
did not please Mrs. Kennedy to be labeled a propaganda weapon
that is more powerful than an arm of the U.S. bureaucracy.
Both analogies reduce Mrs. Kennedy to non-human, common
stereotypes. Curtis gets her digs in, but has to be subtle
and careful about what she writes, or her editor may veto it. 78 In another passage, she slyly notes that Mrs. Kennedy has no real sense of style, but tries to enjoy what is considered tasteful by the experts:
With Mrs. Kennedy, it is not so much a pursuit of the arts as simply a natural gravitation toward what the critics agree is the right direction. Her tastes are rarely intellectual and she is not an e:qpert. But she does tend to favor those things that are generally considered to be of significant and lasting value.
This passage, which has a sweet, casual tone, is actually a bitter indictment of Mrs. Kennedy’s leadership as a tastemaker; she has not real opinions of her own, Curtis says, but is more than willing to follow with what is acceptable. This is in deep contrast to the accepted view of
Mrs. Kennedy at the time as a young, hip first lady who was not afraid to go against the grain of her staid, colorless predecessors in the White House.
Curtis's own sarcastic style, which was tempered and reined in for this book by her editor, gives First Ladv a schizophrenic tone. In the midst of the detailed description of the state dinners, the antics of Kennedy daughter
Caroline, and the Kennedys' travels around the world, are passages that subtly insult the first lady and make her appear as frivolous and empty as Rose Kennedy and Pat Nixon did in earlier Curtis stories. One has to ask, however, why 79 the publishing company agreed to have Curtis write the book, based on the style of her newspaper articles. Perhaps her
caustic style, more obvious in the Times stories than in
First Ladv. was lost on editors at the publishing company,
and they viewed Curtis as a competent writer who could write
a fluffy social history of the first two years of the Kennedy
administration. Or perhaps they wanted the stamp of
legitimacy and the prestige they would get from a New York
Times society reporter.
A more interesting question is why Curtis, the rhetor,
agreed to the changes. The answer lies in Curtis’s own
indecision about the validity of her own upbringing.
Jacqueline Kennedy came from a privileged family, as did
Curtis, and Curtis met her while the two attended Vassar.
This would indicate that while Curtis had some respect for
Mrs. Kennedy and in some ways even identified with her,
Curtis also felt toward her the same resentment she felt
toward other wives, who are seen and judged only in the
context of the men in their lives. Curtis may have found
distasteful Mrs. Kennedy's "job" of making sure the proper
protocol of dinners and formal occasions was followed, and of
ensuring that her opinions about arts, decorating and the
like were indeed the proper and acceptable opinions. These
dual feelings may have prompted her to accept some of the
criticisms of her editor. 80 Curtis spells out her ovm feelings near the end of First
Ladv when she writes that critics of Mrs. Kennedy feel the first lady does not participate enough in social causes, and has little concerns beyond presenting an acceptable and fashionable image:
What her critics.... cannot accept is her lack of interest in the social and economic problems that confront the nation and the world. They do not argue that she should join the peace marchers or do volunteer work for the Red Cross. But they want her to be concerned about these problems and do something positive and useful toward solving them. If she were from less wealthy families than the ones into which she was b o m and into which she married, she could probably be excused. If she had less of an education, had not traveled widely and did not have a good mind, these critics would undoubtedly be silent. But she is wealthy, well educated, widely traveled, intelligent, and a member of a political party which has always tried to identify with the underdog. In America, the thought still prevails that such people must accept the responsibilities of privilege ty participating — in community affairs.is
These views, put in the mouths of Mrs. Kennedy's
“critics," were obviously Curtis's own views, reflecting her belief that the wealthy have an obligation to contribute to the betterment of society in ways beyond simply contributing to “proper" causes like the Red Cross. Curtis's resentment toward women like Mrs. Kennedy, combined with her own love and respect for her parents and others of her social class. 81 account for this tension she continued to feel about her upbringing, and one that was reflected in her writing.
PART OF THE NEW JOURNALISM
By the mid-1960s, when Curtis was refining her caustic, detailed style of writing, she was not the only writer who took an often subjective stance in what she wrote, using details to critique her subjects and their way of life. A new type of magazine writing, which would be known as the New
Journalism, was emerging at this time in New York. While
Curtis was not directly influenced by this new style of writing, its emergence served to legitimize her own unconventional style to herself and her editors.
The term New Journalism was used in the days of Joseph
Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst at the turn of the century to describe a new method of news gathering, which at the time concentrated on the sensational, often using play and slant of the news to convey the point of view of newspaper publishers.
The term was picked up again in the early and mid-1960s to describe a type of non-fiction reporting developed at the time writers like former New York Times reporters Gay
Talese and Tom Wolfe, and of fiction writer Truman Capote. 82 Like Talese and Wolfe, many of the New Journalists at the time were former newspaper reporters who wrote lengthy magazine pieces for publications like Esquire and, later. New
York magazine. These writers abandoned standard journalism question-and-answer reporting techniques. As Emery and Emery describe the New Journalism in their history of American journalism, "it generally meant using perception and interviewing techniques to obtain a view of what was happening from inside the source, instead of relying on the standard information-gathering, stock-question approach. It meant focusing on writing style and the quality of description.
Some New Journalists took great license with their reporting. Quoting subjects based on memory rather than actual notes was a common technique,^® although it was a method that was not precise enough to be used in most newspapers. As a Times reporter, Curtis was forced to follow the conventions of traditional journalism when it came to reporting. Her writing, however, had many of the characteristics of the New Journalism, even, to a degree, when she was in Columbus in the late 1950s. Harrison
Salisbury, a co-worker of hers at the Times. noted that she was a reader and admirer of both Escruire and New York magazine.^® By 1963, the genre was new, and it was not until about 1968, with the birth of New York Magazine, that it caught on nationally. 83 In a 1970 story about a fundraising party conductor
Leonard Bernstein had for the Black Panther party, Tom Wolfe
describes the appetizers in a typically New Journalism
tongue-in-cheek style with the reporter injecting his opinion
about the event through details: “Mtnmmmm. These are very nice. Little Roquefort cheese morsels rolled in crushed nuts.
Very subtle. It's the way the dry sackiness of the nuts
tiptoes up against the dour savor of the cheese that is so nice, so subtle. Wonder what the Black Panthers eat here on
the hors d'ouevre trail?"2° To Wolfe, the appetizers carry a meaning far beyond that of mere food. They are symbols of the
trappings of wealth, and are used to illuminate even further
the poverty of the Panthers and how it contrasts to the wealth of the Bernsteins and their friends. The appetizers,
like the details in most New Journalism stories, mix the
facts with the attitude of the reporter toward the event,
just as Curtis's mimicking of the French milliner's accent in
Columbus highlighted her disdain for him. The accent spoke volumes to the reader about the superficiality of the
subj ect. These details contribute to the hidden meaning of
the stories.
It is clear why this particular genre of writing
appealed to Curtis. It allowed her to write in an ironic manner that pointed out to astute readers the superficial
lives of the rich and famous, since the style of the New
Journalism lent itself well to social commentary. Further, 84 the irreverent tone of much of the New Journalism indicated that politeness and manners did not mean much to its reporters, much as it meant little to Curtis.
"Society" as Sociology
It was Curtis's New Journalistic style that caught the eye of Times managing editor Clifton Daniel during Curtis's early years at the newspaper. On the newspaper, the women's department ("food, fashion, family and furnishings") was separate from the society section, with the women's section on the ninth floor and society on third, with the main city room. Daniel had a particular interest in what appeared in the society section, an interest that stemmed in part from his personal situation. He was married to Margaret Truman, and consequently developed many social connections because of the marriage, and he had many friends in the upper echelons of New York society. In the early 1960s, when Curtis joined the newspaper, Daniel believed that society was covered only
superficially at the Times. and that it deserved more
coverage than the obligatory society wedding announcements.
Curtis's dry, mocking style caught his eye, and he saw her as
the reporter her could make real changes in the society
section. In 1963, Curtis moved down to the third floor of the
Times. where she became a society writer. ( 85 Immediately, Curtis's personality clashed with that of
the society editor at the time, Russell Edwards. Curtis later
described him as an "old-fashioned" editor who believed in maintaining the status quo at all costs. He had an almost religious belief in the nine-to-five workday, and insisted on
the same such fervor in his employees.clearly, the workaholic, free-wheeling new society writer and the staid, unchanging society editor did not get along. That did not matter much to Curtis, however, who, informally, reported to
Daniel. The match of Curtis and Daniel was almost perfect; both believed "society" writing was rooted in sociology, both believed strongly that the function of a newspaper like the
Times was in many ways historical, and both believed society news on the newspaper should be expanded beyond simple society wedding announcements. Daniel said frequently that society coverage should be no different than coverage of any other news beat an required application of good journalistic standards,22 a philosophy Curtis had espoused through much of her career.23
He, like Curtis, thought the audience for society news should not just . • be wealthy readers, but all Times readers. Daniel's idea of Curtis as "society reporter" meant she was to travel across the United States and sometimes beyond, reporting about the wealthy in those cities. Beyond that, he gave her carte blanche to do whatever she wanted. 86 Curtis and Daniel also liked each other personally and over the years became close friends. A pharmacist's son from
Zebulon, North Carolina, Daniel was not b o m into wealth as
Curtis was, but as an adult he developed a continental attitude and way of life, a development that was almost a reversal of Curtis's. He became a London correspondent for the Associated Press during World War II, and later continued in that job for the Times. He was also in that newspaper's
Cairo, Moscow and Israel bureaus. Daniel, a low-key personality, missed London after he left and enjoyed the
British way of life and character, according to his good friend, Harrison Salisbury. A profile of the Times written in
1965 notes that Daniel is fond of saying that "the British virtues are the ones I hold most dear: understatement, liberality of mind, an atmosphere for justice. It is not unusual that Daniel would enjoy Curtis's dry writing style and would encourage her to expand on it, particularly at a time when he wanted to enlarge society coverage at the newspaper. Further, the friendship between the two deepened over the years, as a later letter from Daniel to Curtis indicates. The letter, written in 1973 after a series of job changes for Daniel reflected his dwindling influence at the newspaper, is heartfelt in its gratitude for her support and friendship over the years. It also offers a glimpse into
Curtis as the hard-nosed, unsentimenta1 editor: 87 It may be that, professionally speaking, I appreciate you more than any man in the world You are the only one who tells me I must take the hard and rocky road of being a rough, unremitting, unrelenting editor...In any case, I am grateful for your good advice. I do respect your integrity and your wisdom — I like your sass, as we used to say long, long ago when I was a boy in North Carolina. Thank you. 25
Daniel's fascination with society and coverage of it
alienated many hard news types on the Times. who felt society
coverage was frivolous and did not deserve the same space as
hard news. In his widely read book chronicling the New York
Times of the 1960s, The Kingdom and the Power, former Times
reporter Gay Talese noted Daniel’s attitude toward Curtis when she was woman' s-page editor, an attitude Daniel no doubt
developed shortly after Curtis joined the newspaper:
Though Daniel would prefer to be identified with several of the Times recent cultural changes for the better — the expanded coverage of cultural news, the more literary obituaries, the encouragement of flavor and mood in "hard news" stories that formerly would have been done in a purely routine way, he is more quickly credited with, or blamed for the women's page. (Assistant managing editor Ted) Bernstein and other critics say that the women's pages get too much space, and they particularly oppose the publication of lengthy stories ty the women's-page editor, Charlotte Curtis, a five-foot, fast-stepping Vassar alumna, describing the activities of the wastrels from Palm Beach to New York at a time when most of America is moving toward a more egalitarian society. Although Miss Curtis is rarely flattering to her subjects, many of them lack the wit to realize this — but what 88 is more important about Miss Curtis' work is that Clifton Daniel likes to read it
Despite his responsibility for all parts of the newspaper, it is evident that Daniel spent much time thinking about society coverage. In 1963, particularly, he wrote
Edwards numerous memos offering story ideas for Curtis. Many of these alluded to parties he attended, and many dropped names of well-to-do and famous acquaintances of his. Also, some of Daniel ' s memos show that his irreverent attitude about the wealthy was much like Curtis's.
In a suggestion that Curtis do a story about life on a yacht, he wrote that he heard that such a life can be
“rugged": "One millionaire I heard about...escaped from the slums to find himself living on a yacht. Just like a tenement, there was no room to turn around in the bedroom, you threw garbage out the window, and there was only one bathroom...that was used by everybody aboard. He must be a fairly poor millionaire.
Daniel's interest in Curtis's writing and his view of the society page as sociology were important to Curtis. Much of what she wrote during this period of time would pave the way for the way she wrote for the rest of her career. Curtis discussed her view of of society coverage in 1983:
The kinds of people who were chosen to work in the Society Department [in 1963] were people who either were just exceptional typists with a sense of facts and order, or 89 they were people who were considered genteel enough, polite enough to be doing this — which was really rather amusing because — in the end, manners had nothing to do with it. Manners also don't always produce much quality in the newspaper business; there's not much relationship between manners and quality of reporting or writing.^8
Here, Curtis's refusal to accept the status quo at the
Times is evident. She was not and never had been interested in "manners,“ although her upbringing and education certainly stressed the importance of "polite" society. To her, politeness and manners had no place whatsoever in newspapers, not even in the women's and society sections.
With her new assignment, Curtis did not write the large number of stories she had for the women's pages, but the stories she wrote were much longer and in-depth, and gave her a chance to concentrate on description and New Journalism techniques. A typical example is a story she wrote during a trip to London. She reported on the cutbacks wealthy Britons were forced to make, and about the high cost of maintaining castles. Many owners, in fact, had actually turned to wearing ready-made shirts and suits, and things had become so sloppy that "only a few noble households bother to iron his lordship's copy of the Times of London before delivering it to him,"29 Curtis notes dryly. Here, the sarcasm is clear:
Imagine, Curtis winks to the reader, having to undergo such indignities in one's own castle 1 Or, as she spells out in a 90 cliche turned upside-down, "there are days when a man's castle no longer feels like home."
Many of these society stories written from outside of
New York take on this theme of "poor little rich" families.
One unfortunate San Francisco woman, a mining heiress is reduced to only five servants because of hard times. Or at least she thinks she has only five, Curtis writes : “'All I have is a personal maid, a cook, a butler and a cleaning woman,' she said. 'Well, no. That's not right either. There's the chauffeur. '
Reaction in New York
During her first few years as a society writer, Curtis no doubt raised some eyebrows among readers. Little if any evidence in the form of letters to the editor exists regarding reaction to her irreverent New Journalism style of treating the rich and famous, but an anecdote Times Publisher
A.O. Sulzberger told at Curtis's memorial service in 1987 illustrates what was probably a typical reaction to her stories. Sulzberger said he was playing golf one day with a young reader who clearly "had more on her mind than putting."
Finally, he noted, she spoke her mind:
After the third hole, she couldn't hold back. “That was a terrible piece Charlotte 91 Curtis wrote about my mother-iu-law,“ she exploded. “Why did she have to write abut all those diamonds and furs and the like? I was mortified." “I'm sorry,“ I replied. “But what did your mother-in-law think about it?" That's the terrible part,“ she replied. "She loved it. “31
Sulzberger obviously had to smooth some ruffled feathers of the nation's wealthy after they read Curtis's work, but it was not necessarily because the subjects of the stories were
insulted. In fact, Curtis was not disliked among members of
America's high society, or she never would have received permission to conduct the countless interviews she needed to write her stories. The subjects of her stories, as she noted repeatedly, were very preoccupied with their own lives — enough so to believe that any story Curtis did was positive.
To them, there was no such thing as bad publicity. Further, they led such sheltered lives that it never occurred to many of them that most of the rest of the world did not have to worry about “cutting back" to only five servants. In other words, their concerns, they believed, were the concerns of everyone else.
In A Rhetoric of Ironv, Wayne Booth notes that readers have the most difficulty detecting irony in texts that mock their own beliefs or characteristics: “If an author invents a speaker whose stupidities strike me as gems of wisdom, how am
I to know that he is not a prophet?...If his incongruities of 92 fact and logic are such as I might commit, I am d o o m e d .
Based on Sulzberger's comments and the fact that Curtis had no trouble getting interviews as her career progressed, members of society apparently saw Curtis's writing as straight reporting and did not recognize the irony or bitterness in it.
As Curtis's career at the Times progressed, so did her confidence in herself as a writer. In the 1970s, she was given another promotion fcy Daniel which gave her more authority over the content of the women's pages, as well as allowing her to expand on her society coverage. Although she was able to use her rhetoric as an outlet for her mixed feelings about her upbringing and what she perceived as the idle lives of the wealthy, this ambivalence certainly was not resolved in the 1970s, when she was at the peak of her career. In fact, this ambivalence deepened as the civil rights and women's movements developed during that decade.
Curtis's feelings about both were mixed — she advocated the then-nebulous "goals" of each, but, as her stories indicated, she was wary about methods of achieving those goals and the motives of those involved in those social movements. Curtis's letters to her mother and friends display another conflict — one she felt over her expected role as a New York Times reporter and her role as a private individual. In the 1970s, she would l e a m that these two roles would sometimes conflict. 93
NOTES
1 Charlotte Curtis, New York Times oral history project, June 21, 1983, NYT.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
^ Interview, Marylin Bender, October 9, 1989.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
Interview, Jane Kehrer Horrocks, June 18, 1990.
8 Charlotte Curtis, “Mr. John and Experts Say His Talent is Tops," New York Times. July 12, 1961, p. 20.
8 Charlotte Curtis, “Italian Designer Enjoys His Life of Adventure," New York Times. June 9, 1961, p. 30.
° Charlotte Curtis, First Ladv. New York: Pyramid Books, 1962.
1 First Ladv. on cit, p. 57.
2 Memo, Janet Rosenberg to Charlotte Curtis, April 17, 1962, SL.
3 First Ladv. on cit. p. 131.
4 First Ladv, ot> cit, p. 63.
3 First Ladv, op cit, p. 156.
8 Michael Emery and Edwin Emery, The Press in America. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall, 1988, p. 488.
Ibid.
® See, for instance, Truman Capote's New Journalistic account of the murder of a Kansas family in In Cold Blood. New York: Random House, 1966. 94
19 Interview with Harrison Salisbury, December 16, 1989.
2? Tom Wolfe, “Radical Chic — That Party at Lenny's,” New York, June 8, 1970, p. 27.
21 Charlotte Curtis describes Edwards in a humorous way in the New York Times oral history project, NYT.
22 Marylin Bender, The Beautiful People, New York: Coward- McCann, Inc., 1967, p. 104.
22 New York Times oral history project.
24 Interview with Harrison Salisbury, December 12, 1989, and Roger Kahn, "The House of Adolph Ochs, " Saturday Evening. Post, October 9, 1965, p. 56.
25 Letter from Clifton Daniel to Charlotte Curtis, February 5, 1973, SL.
25 Gay Talese, The Kingdom and the Power, New York: World Publishing Co., 1969, p. 111.
2'^ Memo, Clifton Daniel to Russell Edwards, November 11, 1963, SL.
25 Charlotte Curtis; oral history project, NYT.
29 Charlotte Curtis, “Notes on England's Social Scene: When a Castle No Longer Feels like Home," New York Times, July 17, 1964, p. 41
2° Charlotte Curtis, "Society Glitters in San Francisco," N.ew. York Times, September 12, 1964, p. 39.
21 A.O. Sulzberger, memorial service for Charlotte Curtis, May 20, 1987, NYT, SL.
22 Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Ironv, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974, p. 81. CHAPTER IV
CHRONICLING TWO SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
"Women's pages used to read like something peeled off a sugar-shot cornflake box. Now Charlotte Curtis has changed all that.
— New York magazine, 1969
By 1965, four years after she started at the Times and
two years after she began covering society news, Curtis was promoted to women's-news editor. Her promotion as head of the
"food, fashion, family and furnishings" department, as the pages' logo stated, came on the heels of Elizabeth Howkins's
retirement. At age 37, and with only four years experience on the newspaper, Curtis's promotion would seem to come as a
surprise. First, she had relatively little experience working
for the Times ; second, she enjoyed writing and never
expressed a desire to be a manager (section editors on most newspapers do no writing, and Howkins did little); and third,
some editors at the Times did not particularly appreciate
Curtis's style of writing and coverage.%
95 96 On the other hand, 1965, Curtis had ingratiated herself to many of the powers at the Times. Clifton Daniel, who as an assistant managing editor was responsible for her
assignment as society writer, was named managing editor in
1964. Harrison Salisbury, long a respected voice on the newspaper, was named Daniel’s assistant. Clearly, ty the mid
1960s, Curtis was on the "correct" side politically.^
This alignment with Daniel and Salisbury, along with
confidence she gained from her years at the Times and the
acceptance by the newspaper of her, gave her, the mid
1960s and through the early 1970s, the security to expand on her ironic, biting writing style, and to stand up for herself
to those who criticized her. Further, the unconventional
society stories and, often, wedding announcements, in the women's section caught the eye of other journalists in New
York, and Curtis became the sub j ect of interviews in several publications, and was featured in a cover story in the New
Journalistic New York magazine. This recognition, inside and
outside the Times. gave her confidence that was reflected in her writing and news judgment.
During this period, Curtis's discourse also showed
evidence that she was grappling with conflicting feelings
about two fledgling social movements of the times: the civil
rights movement, and the women's liberation, or, later,
feminist movement. The scorn she developed toward members of
the own social class and their trivial pursuits would come 97 into play here and contribute to conflicting feelings she had
about both these movements.
The tensions Curtis felt about the civil rights movement
could be predicted. Her upbringing instilled in her a noblesse oblige toward the underprivileged, and that throwing money at a cause or holding a fundraiser could solve
society's ills. Curtis the reporter and sociologist knew this was not the case and that “solutions" were much more
complicated. Her conflicting views about the underprivileged, blacks specifically, began playing themselves out in her writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Curtis's feelings
about the growing feminist movement were even more complex.
Like others of the late 1960s, she was unsure of the "goals"
of the movement, and even more skeptical about many of the movements leaders and their emphasis on politically correct
clothing, speech and mannerisms. Through her writing, Curtis
shows that some feminists, in their intense desire to abandon
conventional fashion and glamor, had indeed adopted a look and lifestyle of their own — one that must be followed just as strictly as the uniform of furs and diamonds adopted by
the rich society wives Curtis had covered.
Against this backdrop was the feeling of Curtis that her public and private roles also conflicted. As a professional
editor and writer, she may have felt she had to maintain a
stance of objectivity and show no favoritism toward any
group. As a woman and a citizen, however, she had distinct 98 opinions about the civil rights and feminist movements. As her private discourse would show, she sometimes had to swallow her personal views to conform to her role as a journalist on the New York Times.
A GROWING FORCE AT THE TIMES
Curtis's disdain of authority, as evidenced by her derisive comments about Howkins and Russell Edwards, her previous editors at the Times. came into play when she accepted the job as women’s editor. She also recalled years later that she did not necessarily want the position because she had no desire to become "management," but she did not like the alternative, which would have meant working for yet another boss. Most important, Clifton Daniel promised her that as the women’s editor, she could still write, a promise, she remembers that ultimately persuaded her to take the job:
It was not a job I would in any way seek. I loved what I was doing. I think reporting is more important than any editing job...But indeed, Clifton Daniel did persuade me...I knew who some of the other candidates were, and rather that work for them I thought it would be better to sit in the chair and try and write wearing two hats, than it would be to try to write for one of those other people who were being considered for the job.^ 99 In her capacity as women's editor, Curtis, like Howkins, was the highest ranking woman on the Times. and this clout gave her access to Times publisher A.O Sulzberger, and his mother, Iphigene Sulzberger, the longtime matriarch of the newspaper, and it further consolidated her power at the newspaper.5 Based on thank-you notes and other brief letters between Iphigene Sulzberger to Curtis in the early and mid-
1970s, Sulzberger and Curtis occasionally had lunch together, and sometimes exchanged gifts such as plants. In one particularly warm letter, Iphigene Sulzberger congratulated
Curtis on her appointment to the Op-Ed page, saying that she was "delighted your outstanding talents are being given this recognition...and that you will have this wonderful opportunity to display them."®
Certainly this relationship with Iphigene was beneficial to Curtis. Harrison Salisbury noted after Curtis's death that Curtis's relationship with Iphigene was not always so cozy, and that the elder Sulzberger at times felt that
Curtis's irreverent writing style did not fit the staid conventional Times. It was only in the mid to late 1960s, when Curtis began getting positive feedback through national publicity, that Iphigene felt comfortable with Curtis's style and looked at her as a friend.’ In The Kingdom and the Power.
Gay Talese quotes Pulitzer Prize winning reporter David
Halberstam as noting that Curtis did indeed rapidly get power at the paper. Halberstam notes that he and his wife had spent 100 a week with Curtis overseas and that she is "now one of the most powerful men on the paper, since Daniel values her opinions on everything and reads mostly her section."® His use of the masculine pronoun to describe her is interesting.
The powers at the Times were, with the possible exception of
Iphigene Sulzberger, all male, and even Iphigene's power was indirect. She had little say about the newspaper's day-to-day operation. Halberstam is saying that Curtis's influence at the Times. combined with her toughness, are male characteristics, making her a "man" in his eyes. Also, his comments indicate the powerlessness and softness that the term "women" represented to him and others at the Times. To him, Curtis was not a "woman" in the conventional sense of the word, particularly in the 1960s at the New York Times.
National Acceptance
Curtis's clout on the Times was undoubtedly nurtured by a lengthy 1969 cover story in New York magazine titled "How the New York Times Covers the Beautiful People."® The only city magazine in New York at the time, and one of the few in the country, the slick New York magazine was often critical of anyone or anything considered to be "establishment," and frequently this included the Times itself. This story. 101 however, was hardly uncomplimentary as it reviewed how Curtis revolutionized the women's pages at the Times and made it impossible for readers to pass up juicy nuggets of gossip and humor. Further, the article said, Curtis brought a new honesty to the genre of society reporting: [The pages are known for] unusual treatment of society called honest; the introduction of black, Jewish and exotic society in the traditional definition of the White Blouse Page. The story also notes several "themes" in Curtis's society stories, such as "the $800 Dress Bought for the $100-a-Ticket Charity Ball" and the "We Live Simply with Our Mundane Millions." The story is quick to point out the ironies and contradictions of the
Times' women's-page stories, qualities that also characterized most of the writing in New York.
The New York story relates what it considers the biggest treasure of the women's/society pages: what it calls those
"nippy nuptials" in which Curtis or one of her writers inserts in traditional wedding announcement stories such facts as former suitors of the bride or groom, cost of wedding gown or candid comments by family about the betrothal. Many times such touches are added with a quick stroke of the typewriter keys. For example, in one typical society wedding announcement, the reporter implies that the bride was not exactly a wallflower: "The wedding, which must have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the roster of well-known rejected suitors, will take place in Madrid... 102 In another, the reporter drops a string of names:
"Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, whose name was linked romantically with that of the Shah of Iran and with that of the Bourbon Prince Juan Carlos of Spain, will marry Robert
Thomas Zellinger de Balkany."
What is most interesting about the New York story, however, is that it captures Curtis's own contradictory nature and her ambivalence about her upbringing and her job:
She separated out from her birthright to become the professional alien. Yet, she insists reporters must remain outsiders, but she changes her clothes. While other reporters appear at parties in dresses disrupted at the seat from a day of sitting, Charlotte is wearing silk. It's as though half of her had left to shake a cautionary finger at the other half — to contradict one interview in a second. Vassar, yes, but the girl who could drink any of her classmates under the table.
The story captures some of the overt contradictions in
Curtis's personal and professional behavior: yes, she mocks the perfect clothes of the rich and by doing this, denigrates the high priority the wealthy put on clothes, yet she herself
"changes her clothes" when covering a social event. Yes, the article says, she carries the Vassar pedigree, but did not hesitate "to drink any of her classmates under the table."
The story captures in one sentence the two sides of Curtis:
"It's as though half of her had left to shake a cautionary finger at the other half." The New York reporter apparently 103 got a glimpse of the tensions Curtis felt: those about her well-to-do upbringing versus her own liberal and often earthy
views and her desire to enter the gritty world of journalism;
the scorn she felt for the rich whom she covered, but that
feeling that she would not be well-dressed unless she looked
like them. The reporter capsulizes this pull Curtis felt
between respectability and Curtis's own individuality.
It is clear that the well-bred Curtis, reared in an
environment that respected the lavish society wedding, could
not take such a wedding seriously. Her irreverent attitude
toward the wedding announcements show this, as do comments
she made late in her career that, unfortunately, all brides
are not beautiful, and it is up to the reporter to convey
that if it were indeed the truth. Her rationale for publishing these types of frank wedding announcements was in
keeping with her view that society reporting was the same as news reporting, and that no one should be spared honesty because of his or her birthright. In 1983, Curtis was
characteristically blunt as she explained that women's news was not always pretty:
The story I was used to saying those days is that the notion used to be that all brides are beautiful, and all brides are not beautifulI But it was as though all wedding stories were written, “And the beautiful bride wore, etc." Well, I'm sorry, but that doesn't have anything to do with reality. Some brides, as I said, are not beautiful. 104
It is natural that Curtis‘s view of the beautiful bride
is a literal one, and one in keeping with other journalistic
conventions which stress objectivity and facts. Either a
bride is physically beautiful or she is not, and it is
inaccurate journalistically to assume that “all brides are
beautiful.“
L The Capote Ball
One of Curtis's most well-known stories is her account
of a lavish masked ball held author Truman Capote in honor
of newspaper publisher Katharine Graham. This story gives an
indication of Curtis's power at the Times. and a glimpse of
the type of reporting discussed in the New York article. The
newspaper devoted an entire newspaper page to Curtis's
coverage of the event, complete with photos of the
celebrities who attended.Such extensive coverage of any
event was unusual, particularly one that was not considered
to be hard news. Further, this story shows how her writing
had become bolder, and its edge sharper.
Curtis's coup regarding the Capote story was her
obtaining the names of the 540 people who attended the party,
and the Times' publishing of the entire list, in tiny agate
type, next to Curtis's main story about the event. 105 Publication of the secret list stunned, those in society who were not invited — the fibbers who would have claimed not to have been there because of prior engagements. Further, not to have been invited to such a major soiree would be considered a slap in the face to anyone in New York society. To have everyone know of this would be the ultimate insult. The publication of the list was also shocking because its presence showed that Curtis managed to circumvent the top secrecy under which the party was given.
If the publishing of the list was shocking, Curtis's coverage of those at the party might have been even more so to some readers. Curtis captured all the subtle ironies, including the cost of party to Capote ($13,000) and the cost of the mask worn fcy some, such as Rose Kennedy (”only $85").
What Curtis does best in this story is include detail of the activities, dress and mannerisms of those present, often making them look ludicrous. The story is, in many ways, classic Curtis. It is a story about many well-known figures who obviously have gone to great lengths to impress others.
Curtis does not simply describe the event, but points out the irony and contrasts of the party. No matter how good the subjects want to look, they just succeed in making themselves look silly. More important, she lets the subjects speak for themselves to tell the reader just how superficial they are.
Her use of the detail was something she developed as a college student in letters home, refined during her years on 106 the Citizen, and, ty now, perfected. These seemingly minor facts served as the instrument that often cut deeply into her subjects. It was used specifically to make points about their behavior. For instance, the wealthy Alice Roosevelt
Longworth, in her eighties at the time of the party, flew from Washington D.C. to New York to attend the function. She wore, Curtis noted, a small white mask that had been cut and attached to her head with tape:
Mrs. Longworth's small white mask, which cost her 35 cents and gave her great glee at having beaten Mr. Capote's 39 cents, had the top and bottom cut off. She had fastened it to her temples with adhesive tape.
Curtis notes the contradictions in Longworth's behavior: she took the trouble to travel from Washington, D.C. to New
York to attend the masked ball, but indicated by wearing a cheap, mutilated mask that she carelessly and quickly pulled something together and decided to show up. Further, this wealthy, well-bred woman took great pleasure in the trivial fact that she spent less than someone else — a turnaround of the classic competition among the the rich to see who has the most possessions, but a competition nonetheless. Curtis's obsession with noting the cost of the masks, from Rose
Kennedy's $85 model to Longworth's, shows that the wealthy party-goers had little else on which to spend their money, and had nothing better to do than make a contest out of the 107 least or most money spent. By stating the cost of the masks and the clothes of those who attended, Curtis implies that the wealthy are more than willing to spend vast amounts of money on insignificant items in an effort to impress. It would become an oft-repeated theme in her stories, and is driven home in the coverage of the Capote ball.
In this story, however, Curtis is not content to simply describe the trappings of the wealth of the party-goers. She also ridicules many of them bydescribing their actions with relentless irony. In the second paragraph of the story, she manages to ridicule royalty and paint an absurd picture of intellectuals Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and William F. Buckley:
Mrs. Anne McDonnell Ford hugged her good friend, the Maharancee of Jaipur, who was invited at the verv last minute...Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and William F. Buckley, neither of whom are short men, kept dancing with taller women.
Curtis cannot resist spelling out that the Maharancee of
Jaipur was invited at "the very last minute. " Meanwhile, in the same paragraph, she conjures up an image of the distinguished Schlesinger and Buckley dancing with taller women — an image of smallness that subtly denigrates these men, who are considered brilliant. As she did when she was a society writer, Curtis hammered the theme of the rich being oblivious to the rest of the world, and their misuse of money: guards at the door of the party made sure that guests 108 wore black or white masks. Curtis described how most entrances to the hotel were blocked to prohibit gate crashers. Even the invitations, she noted, were printed late in the week so no one could have the time to forge one. All of these precautions were, for the most part, frivolous, and they are actions taken by those who have too much money,
Curtis implies. In this way, the Capote story becomes social criticism about the wasteful, even empty lives of the rich and famous, who have nothing better to do than spend large amounts of money on simple masks to impress others at the party.
IMPACT OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Curtis’s interest in what would become known as the civil rights movement in the United States had its inception in her childhood, as a social interest her mother had in charitable causes that helped the underprivileged of
Columbus. To Curtis, this evolved into a concern for the
"underdog” — those not as privileged as she — and eventually grew into an interest in the civil rights movement. The discomfort she felt in being a part of a group like the Junior League that, indirectly, discriminated against non-Whites and non-Protestants, developed while she was in her twenties, and can be seen in her writing justifying Jacqueline Kennedy’s participation in the Junior 109 justifying Jacqueline Kennedy's participation in the Junior
League. (In her Jacqueline Kennedy biography, Curtis noted in an aside that Mrs. Kennedy, a Junior League member, was aware that many chapters of that group did not accept non-whites or non-Christians, but the First Lady felt that the good the organization did outweighed its possible prejudicial behavior. Curtis wrote this aside shortly after her days in the Junior League, indicating she might have used the same rationalization.)^® Curtis's interest in and sympathy with the civil rights movement was deep, and it can be seen in a variety of ways. When she would later become Op-Ed editor of the Times. she become a mentor of Roger Wilkins, son of civil rights leader Roy Wilkins, and hired the younger Wilkins as an assistant. Eugene Grove, with whom she had a love affair in Columbus and who remained a friend of Curtis, wrote
frequently of the civil rights movement while he was a reporter at the New York Post. Copies of these articles evidently were saved Curtis, as they were found among her personal papers. These and other stories and clippings, particularly about the Black Panther party, were among her personal papers.^® The conflict she felt about her own involvement with the Black Panther party and her role as a reporter would be seen in a series of stories she wrote about a Panther fundraising event, and, in letters she wrote to her mother about the event. 110
The Bernstein Cocktail Gathering
Curtis decided to cover a Black Panther fundraiser at the home of Leonard Bernstein because, as a society writer, she saw it as an opportunity to cover another ritual of the rich and famous. This party, however, had an added dimension, she knew. Instead of merely chronicling the activities of a cocktail gathering, this fundraiser allowed her to view firsthand the mingling of two unlikely groups: the rich celebrities who were friends of the Bernsteins, and members of the Black Panther party, a militant group of young blacks that formed in the mid 1960s. The Panthers formed ostensibly to announce to the world that the status quo in the United
States regarding race relations, class and economics was not acceptable. While their language was rough and their actions sometimes violent, some upper- and middle-class whites were impressed by their audacity and their attempts to shake the world out of its complacency.Out of this grew a fundraising party for the Panthers in 1970, held by Bernstein and about ninety of his well-heeled friends. The headline to
Curtis's story, “Black Panther Philosophy is Debated at the
Bernsteins," seems innocent enough.The story was not.
Curtis offers a precise account of the absurd, chaotic meeting of the two groups, where it is difficult to determine who comes off as the most ridiculous — Bernstein, Panther Ill Field Marshall Donald Cox or the eclectic group of socialites and celebrities attending. As was her style, Oort is wastes no time getting to the point. In the second paragraph, she notes how Cox and Bernstein dominated the party, and while they talked to each other through most of it, it seemed unlikely either man listened to anything but the sound of his own voice: “The conductor laureate of the New York Philharmonic did most of the questioning. Donald Cox, the Panther field marshal and a member of the party’s central committee, did most of the answering, and there were even moments when both men were not talking at the same time. “
The most telling moment of the event is captured in the fifth and sixth paragraphs when Cox explains calmly that the overthrow of the U.S. economic and class system may be necessary, perhaps using violence, and Bernstein cooly agrees: “'If business won't give us full employment,' he
[Cox] said slowly, ' then we must take the means of production and put them in the hands of the people. ' “ “ ' I dig absolutely,' Mr. Bernstein said."
Curtis ' s retelling of this exchange sums up the event :
Cox, the black, streetwise revolutionary, is telling
Bernstein, an upper-class white who lives in the lap of luxury, how the United States should be restructured.
Bernstein, who has romanticized Cox's underprivileged and sometimes violent way of life, agrees, even to the point of using black jargon: “I dig absolutely.“ Curtis also notes 112 that Bernstein and Cox wore black tnrtleneck shirts, which were part of an unofficial Panther "uniform. “ This manner of dress, she implies, also expresses Bernstein's sympathies with, and perhaps desire to be, one of the Panthers. The very calmness in which the two men discuss the overthrow of the country is absurd, and is captured iy Curtis, as is their attempts to reach common ground through superficial elements such as dress and speech.
The retelling of such snippets of conversation, combined with detailed descriptions of clothes and furnishings, show the hypocrisy of the Bernstein guests, who agree with Panther proposals to overthrow the government and even mimic Panther clothes and speech patterns, yet go home by limousine to their expensive homes.
The Bernsteins and their guests, however, are not the only ones ridiculed in the story. The Panthers, romanticized in the eyes of the party goers, spout out slogans and plans to overthrow the government, but Curtis lets the reader know of their naivete:
Upon meeting Miss Cynthia Phipps, whom he had no way of knowing is a member of the country's wealthier aristocratic families, Henry Mitchell, a Harlem Panther defense captain, smiled and put out his hand. "I hope we can do something to help," Miss Phipps said. "What do you do?" Mr. Mitchell replied. "I work at the Metropolitan Museum, " she answered, going on to discuss last year's 113 "Harlem on my Mind" exhibition, which drew the wrath of black and white liberals alike. Mr. Mitchell listened. Miss Phipps then tentatively raised the subject of Nigeria, which Mr. Mitchell said he really didn't know too much about. She asked if there are any good capitalists and Mr. Mitchell said he didn't think so —
This exchange illustrates the gulf that existed between the wealthy, white New Yorkers and the Panthers. To Phipps, the strain between the races is close to home only because it became an issue to the art museum. Mitchell, meanwhile, knew little about events outside the United States, and both unceremoniously dismiss all "capitalists" in two or three sentences. Curtis's distillation of the conversation into three or four sentences conveys its superficiality and the shallowness of the two participants.
Curtis's final dig is reserved for the very end of the story, when she gives a quick review of the amounts of pledges given:
"I grew up in France during the rise of Nazism," said Mrs. August Heckscher, wife of the city's Administrator of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, "and I think the one thing we must always support is justice." She pledged $100.
Here Curtis sums up what she believes is the insincerity of the participants. Justice, to Mrs. August Hecks cher, has a pricetag. It is worth all of $100. 114 To Curtis, Bernstein's mimicking of the Panther clothing style and speech patterns, the guests' attempts at superficial conversation, and the forced sincerity show the pretensions of these privileged, upper-class people. She subtly offers her point of view throughout her reporting — in this case, that the upper-class found another cause with which to occupy themselves. Curtis also displays the absurdity of the noblesse oblige that the wealthy Bernsteins feel toward the poor, underprivileged Panthers. Her own mixed views about how the socially privileged can help the poor come through here. She spelled out her views in First Ladv that Mrs. Kennedy, like other wealthy people, must do more than just give to charities. Curtis is still unsure, however, whether adopting new social causes or imitating styles of dress or mannerisms of the poor is a way of handling a commitment toward the underprivileged. It is clear through this story that it is not the proper method.
The party at the Bernstein home was not taken lightly by
Times editors, who saw fit the day after its publication to print an editorial denouncing the Bernstein gathering. The editorial stated in an obvious way what Curtis conveyed through the irony in her recounting of the party: that the event was an insult to both the Panthers and the party guests. "Emergence of the Black Panthers as the romanticized darlings of the politico-cultural jet set is an affront to the majority of black Americans," the editorial began. "The 115 group therapy plus fund-raising soiree at the home of Leonard
Bernstein...represents the sort of elegant slumming the degrades patrons and patronized alike.The terms "elegant slumming" and “soiree," with their connotations of superficiality, sum up the newspaper's view of the event. The fact that members of Times management chose to editorialize about it indicated that they did not take lightly the actions of the Bernsteins and the Panthers. The Times apparently did not think the fundraiser was a harmless little society event, but one that had political overtones. The story Curtis wrote drew strong reaction from New York readers and writers, including several letters to the editor, both defending and attacking the story and the Bernstein party. The Bernsteins, meanwhile, told the Times and other publications that they had been misquoted. The story also spawned, months later, a special edition of New York magazine dedicated to “Radical
Chic," a term coined 1^ New Journalist Tom Wolfe to describe the participation of New York's wealthy in radical c a u s e s ,22 using as a starting point the Bernstein gathering and
Curtis's account of it.
The reaction to the story left Curtis unsettled, as she indicated in several letters to her mother, and in a follow- up story she wrote for the Times. In a letter, she told her mother that she supported the Panthers monetarily and that
"I'm officially a member of the Committee to Defend the
Panthers [but] I'm not a subversive, in case you w o n d e r . "23 116 In another, more telling letter, she indicates that her sympathies with the Panthers are so strong that she regretted the negative publicity that the Bernstein story generated, and was frustrated by the newspaper ' s handling of the event :
All goes on here, mostly with the Panthers with whom I seem to [be] spending all my time — if not with the people themselves, then with the story...I cannot get the management to take up the subject in the news pages. There is a strong feeling about the Panthers among our management and they, meaning the Panthers, are not getting a fair break on our news pages. But you win some, you lose some and I did get a little story in Saturday's paper which you'll see eventually [sic]
Here, Curtis spells out her sympathies with the
Panthers, as well as saying that she believes they are not being covered adequately in the paper. In the letter, Curtis referred to a story she wrote that was published nine days later which is in part an apology to the first one. This story states that many New Yorkers are having gatherings like the Bernstein's, indicating that such parties are not unusual. 25 This follow-up story is written in a straight-news style, with none of the asides and detailed descriptions that are characteristic of Curtis's society stories, and that characterized the Bernstein story. In the story Curtis details the plight of one Panther wife, Lee Berry, who talks about how her husband a Viet Nam veteran and an epileptic, was mistreated after being arrested for plotting to kill a 117 policeman. The serious content of the story, along with its timing, shows that Curtis probably did regret the impact of her first story, which some Times readers said trivialized the mission of the Black Panthers. As the letters to her mother indicate, her personal views in this case clashed with her role as a newspaper reporter. Because of the free reign given to her as a society reporter and an editor, Curtis was usually allowed to indirectly convey her thoughts on her sub]ect through her sly, biting style. Her commitment to the goals of the civil rights movement, along with her unsure feelings about what the wealthy can do for the underprivileged, may have forced her to have second thoughts about her handling of the Bernstein story. She was forced in this case to separate her personal views from her professional mission, although she obviously was troubled by the reaction generated by her story. As her treatment of the feminist movement would prove, this incident would not be the only time she would take criticism by those outside of the newspaper.
COVERAGE OF THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT
Curtis's involvement rhetorically with the civil rights movement was not nearly as deep as her involvement with the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. As the 118 women's-page editor at one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country, she was forced to confront the changing status of women and to make decisions on several levels regarding coverage of women. First, Curtis was pivotal in the decision-making process from such major issues as how to cover women's liberation to such seemingly minor issues as whether to address women as "Ms." in the pages of the newspaper, and whether to change the name of the women's section. Because her decisions were made in a fishbowl, they sometimes drew the ire of women across the country. Further, as was the case with the civil rights movement, her personal and professional opinions were often at odds. In some ways,
Curtis stance on the women's movement during these years of the early 1970s was in direct opposition to her stance on the civil rights movement. As her private discourse showed, she had clear sympathy for the Black Panthers. Her sympathy or identification with the women's movement, as her private and public discourse would show, was not so evident. In fact, during these years she was developing a disdain for some aspects of the movement that would become clearer as her career progressed.
By the end of the 1960s, more issues of interest to women, such as abortion, child care and others, began to appear in newspapers across the country, due in part to events of the times, the growth of feminism in the United
States and publications such as Betty Friedan's The Feminine 119 Mystique and Kate Millett's Sexual Politics.^^ While there is
no indication that these publications had a dramatic effect
on Curtis's thoughts, and while there is no evidence that she participated in the various rallies and public forums held by
feminists, Curtis was at this time what her husband, William
Hunt, later called a “practical feminist“ — one with a pragmatic orientation who believed that if women could rise
to managerial positions, they would be in a position of power
and could initiated change. Further, Hunt said, she was a
firm believer that women should attempt to become economic
equals of men and to work for equal pay.^"^ One anecdote that
amused Hunt and illustrates Curtis's practical stance on
feminism involves a promotional poster put out by the Times
in the early 1970s to advertise the newspaper's women's
section. It depicted Curtis next to the words, "Down with
ladies, up with women, off with the white gloves." The poster
angered Curtis, who asked that it be removed from the various
trucks, buses and walls where it had been placed. The reason
for her anger? "I wear white gloves," she said.
The play on words, “off with the [white] gloves,"
combined with the war connotations of "down with [the term]
ladies, up with [the term] women," is obviously meant to
convey the battle women were waging for rights at the time, with Curtis being placed on the front line. Her dismissal of
the poster shows she has not given up white gloves or other
trappings of glamor, as many feminists felt compelled to do. 120 nor did she want to be associated with being a leader in the feminist movement, even though she had strong feelings that women were being shortchanged economically.
This attitude of standing apart from some of the radicalism of the growing feminist movement would stay with
Curtis throughout her life, and it would be reflected in her writing and news judgment. It is first hinted at in a chapter she wrote for Harrison Salisbury's 1967 book describing
Russia during the fiftieth year after the Bolshevik revolution.28 it was the second series of stories she wrote from Russia, the first being about ten years earlier when she visited that country and wrote stories for the Citizen.
During this second trip, Curtis wrote twenty-five pages about the life of women in Russia, focusing on the changed lifestyles which permitted them to abandon shovels and hammers and concentrate on a home life, family and children.
During this trip to Russia, Curtis the rhetor elaborated on the style she used when she wrote from the Soviet Union a decade previously — one that concentrated on details. Only this time, her personal views about her own life were reflected in her writing.
Curtis's contribution to the book consisted of a detailed account of the Soviet woman's views on her lifestyle, her country, her role in life, and even her politics. Curtis gathered the information from talking to about a dozen Soviet women, many of whom were professional 121 educators, physicians and scientists. Curtis makes it clear that her sympathies lie with these women, whose lives had gradually changed and became easier over the last few decades. While the women are seen as intelligent and sensitive, Curtis, characteristically, cannot resist pointing out some of the contradictions in their lifestyles and personalities. She describes Tatyana Fyodorova, a former laborer:
Mrs. Fyodorova worked as a miner and a day laborer. Today she is the fashion-conscious deputy chief of the Moscow subway who indulges her passion for flowers by buying bouquets in the streets and keeping her office window sill full of potted plants. "I love lilacs," she said as she poured us cups of coffee. “If I were weak, I could faint when I see them. "29
The obvious contradiction here is the portrait of the former miner who now exhibits the feminine characteristic of keeping flowers in her office window. Mrs. Fyodorova's comment, however, is what grabs the reader, as she herself describes how physically strong, yet emotionally sensitive, she is: "If I were weak, I could faint when I see them
[flowers]."
Curtis gives many similar examples of the Soviet women's contradictory nature, describing at one point how well- educated professionals have virtually given up reading to 122 watch television, which was then an innovation in the Soviet
Union.
Further, "big city hotels, which have not yet come to
terms with the mechanics of the flush toilet, are quick to announce that guests may rent television sets for their rooms. "31
The most interesting aspect of her chapter about the
Soviet women, however, was that it described Curtis’s own ambivalence and uncertainty about women's rights and the
changing roles of women in the the United States, and it
revealed that she identified with the Soviet woman's pragmatic views about their gender roles:
The Soviet woman wants to keep right on being equal, but she no longer thinks equality involves opening doors for herself, lighting her own cigarettes, pulling out her own chair at a table, being slapped on the back, fighting a man for a seat on the subway...She neither wants nor tries to be coy, helpless or fragile. In fact, she probably is one of the least scheming and most straightforward women in the world — but she wants everyone to remember that she is a woman and that being a woman is a lot different from being a m a n . 32
Curtis's own views on feminism, which would emerge later
in her career as the American feminist movement developed, were forecast here. As time would show, Curtis did not
necessarily believe equal rights meant that women and men
should be treated the same in all ways, but she did strongly 123 reject the view of women as powerless and helpless. Like the
Russian women she describes, Curtis believed that socially, men and women were different.
The Soviet women of 1967, according to Curtis, maintained a practicality that Curtis admired. She describes the goals of the Soviet women:
...She wants the man she loves to pursue her, marry her, and give her security, rather than to live with her in the old casual, free way. She wants contraceptives (the pill is not available) so she can decide when she will have children and not have to resort to the old system of legal abortion, which take more time and money. But she wants abortions to remain legal just the same.
Curtis describes, then, a set of beliefs that appear to be a mixture of those held by American feminists and those opposing the feminist movement : one that seems to advocate a secure life at home with a man, but one that urges convenient forms of birth control as well as safe, legal abortions. As
Curtis describes these views of Soviet women, she appears to be describing a loose form of feminism that is not strident or driven, necessarily, principle, but one that conforms to a lifestyle. It is a view of feminism that Curtis would advocate later in her life, and one that could be seen in her writing and in the stories she chose to place on the pages she edited. 124 The Times Covers "Women's Liberation"
By 1969, Curtis was forced to come to grips with her views about the women's liberation movement for two reasons; first, it was a news event and one that therefore had to be covered in the newspaper; and second, ramifications of the movement — in the form of language and changes in society — had to be dealt with in the newspaper. Curtis had her own distinct views about the roles of women in American society, and often they clashed with those of radical feminists.
Sometimes those views seemed contradictory in themselves. One of the issues the Times as a newspaper was forced to deal with was the matter of the newly formed title, "Ms." to address women. Memos found in Curtis's personal papers indicate that Times editors spent considerable time grappling with this in the late 1960s and throughout much of the 1970s.
Curtis, as she indicated in a 1972 letter to her mother, was opposed to it. She wrote her mother the reasons:
This afternoon, the managing editor is going to have a meeting to take up the matter of Ms., pronounced miz, the new title for ladies. The liberated ones want to be called Ms. I don't. I like being Miss. When we did a story about Betty Friedan, the feminist, we called her Ms. and her mother, who appeared in the same story, we called Mrs., because she doesn't want to be Ms. either. It's going to be like blacks. In the transition days of black liberation, there were blacks, Negroes and colored people. There still are. It will probably be the same with women some will 125 aggressively want to be Ms. Some will equally aggressively insist on Miss or Mrs. Anything that's pronounced miz sounds like poor blacks in the South, and that's very distasteful to me.
Curtis's phraseology, "the liberated ones want to be called Ms. I don't," indicates the rift she felt between herself and "liberated" women. The sound of the title "Ms.," which Curtis says reminds her of "poor blacks in the South," irritates her and apparently conveys to her a sense of powerlessness. Times editors decided against using “Ms.," but editors apparently did not take the terminology lightly.
Another similar issue Curtis and Times editors had to grapple was whether the "women's" pages should still be known as such. In a lengthy 1971 memo to Curtis and Rosenthal,
Assistant Managing Editor Seymour Topping discussed the problem of what to call the pages in the front-page index, noting that “women's news" was unsatisfactory and outdated:
“What is known as the Women's Page is read by readers of both sexes and covers a variety of subjects broader than the present description suggests...Secondly, an increasing number of our women readers are becoming alienated by the use of the term Women's News. "35
Nine months later, on September 17, 1971, the Times officially indexed its "women's news" as "family/style." On 126 the page itself, the logo changed from "food, fashion, family and furnishings" to "family, food, fashions, furnishings."
While the change seems trivial, it meant much to top Times officials and readers, who believed "women’s news" and the emphasis on food in the pages' logo was patronizing to women.
While Curtis opposed the use of the title "Ms." and decried the defeminization of many women active in the women's liberation movement, she advocated the concrete goals of the movement, such as equal pay and passage of the Equal
Rights Amendment. In a letter to her mother, she is upbeat as she describes what the ERA would bring : "... Now we women can pay alimony, carry bricks, serve as bartenders and shoeshine girls, work in mines, work the same hours as men, get the same Social Security and go into any public place we care too
— even a man's bar. I knew you'd want to know all this, although I can't think of any bar you'd want to liberate....The country is busy about its w o m e n . "36 This reference to what the ERA can do is gentle joking, perhaps about Curtis's own beliefs, but it shows Curtis is happy that the ERA would give women and men equal status. This desire to be considered equal to men, combined with Curtis's previously stated beliefs that women and men are in some ways different, sound like the sentiments echoed by the Russian whom Curtis interviewed for Salisbury's book. Still, Curtis could not align herself with the women's liberation movement, as stories she wrote during that period would show. She would 127 label herself a feminist, but believe deep down that a woman must have some conventionally "masculine" characteristics to survive. Late in her life, she said in several published interviews that she was never overtly discriminated against because she was a woman, and that it was hard work and a passion for her job that led to her promotions. She implies, however, that a woman must in some ways act like a man, or at least not make waves to succeed, in one interview published in 1963, she was asked if she used any of her
"feminine charms" to help get her a story. Curtis's reply was flip: “Honey," she told the reporter, "I don’t have any, damn it."^® This rough language, meant as a joke, in itself implies that a woman must adopt certain male qualities to succeed, the same view that David Halberstam noted when he called Curtis one of the most powerful "men" at the Times. In interviews later in her career, however, Curtis was quick to point out that she was a feminist. She recounted once that a woman doctor she met at a conference asked her if she was
"one of those feminists." Curtis replied, that "of course I am, and so are you, whether you know it or not. In other words, she implied, economic and social discrimination affected all women, directly or indirectly, so the goals of what was called the "feminist" movement were the goals of all women.
When Curtis's pages dealt with the women's liberation movement specifically, it often did so in a historical 128 context- On August 27, 1970, the Times printed several stories about women's rights, brought on a celebration in
New York of the fiftieth anniversary of women's suffrage.
Coverage included front-page play of a March for Equality in
Manhattan, a profile of author Kate Millett, an editorial, and, in the women's section, a lengthy story interviewing 50 prominent women and their views about women's equality.
Several days later after the march, a lengthy story that took up nearly three-fourths of an entire newspaper page appeared in the Family/Style section. The story outlined in detail the plight for women's rights — not by contemporary feminists, however, but the nation's early feminists and their fight for the vote.^^ Curtis, ever the historian, was impressed by the women who fought for suffrage. In a memo to the managing editor suggesting ideas for in-depth stories, she mentions the women's liberation movement and describes it ty couching it in historical terms:
[It is] an outgrowth of the old feminism with the daughters and granddaughters of the Suffragettes arguing over goal priorities and how to achieve them and at the same time engaging themselves in everything from street theater and radical rhetoric to serious s t u d y .
Curtis supported the movement's quest for economic and social equality, but was unclear how to achieve those goals.
She knew, however, that it could not be done by large, and 129 what she deemed ridiculous, public displays. As was characteristic of Curtis the rhetor, she was quick to pounce on what she thought was ludicrous or overdone.
The Women's Liberation Fundraiser
A story by Curtis in August 1970, a few weeks before the fiftieth anniversary of women’s suffrage, pointed out that women's attempts for equality could reach ridiculous proportions — or at least Curtis thought they could. Curtis covered the "women's liberation party," a fundraiser, as part of a society story about the wealthy living in the Hamptons.
By 1970, the fledgling feminist movement raised eyebrows; many people were not sure what to make of it. Curtis captures this uncertainty as she scrutinizes the activities of the event. Curtis pulled no punches, starting with the lead paragraph of the story. Here, she hinted that things did not go exactly right at this party: "Everything in the women's liberation party had gone pretty much according to plan. Then
Representative Patsy Mink, Democrat of Hawaii, disappeared when she was supposed to speak, and a woman shed her blue jeans and dived into the swimming pool. After that, things were never quite the same."
The theme of what the participants wore, a common one in conventional society articles, takes a new twist in this 130 story. As was a characteristic of the New Journalism, the details in this story have lives of their own. That is, the details work to offer the writer's commentary about the sub]ect and the situation. Curtis offers her opinion of the people and the event just by her description of them. For instance, feminist author Betty Friedan is described:
She is serious about issues such as abortion on demand, child care centers and equal pay for women. Yet it was her attire, a long red baby dress with teeny white polka dots, puffed sleeves and deep, deep, decoletage, that caused comment. "You've liberated your dress, said Mrs. (Richard) Coulson, author of How Could She Do That, a crime book. "You really are liberated."
Friedan, then the unofficial leader of the movement, is described to the readers in terms that conjure up images of babies. In fact, Curtis is blatant in her description of
Friedan's "baby dress," but she elaborates on this image by describing its "teeny white polka dots and puffed sleeves."
If the reader still manages to take Friedan seriously, Curtis adds one more dig, describing the "deep, deep decoletage" that caused more comment than any of Friedan's accomplishments or ideas.
Curtis uses this plunging neckline later in the story to make Friedan look more ridiculous, as the feminist leader tries to convey her thoughts about feminism to the group:
"'They [women] must be liberated from menial housework,'" she 131 cried, hitching up her plunging decoletage.' The picture
Curtis paints here is an absurd one of the leading feminist,
trying to discuss the long-term goals of the movement while,
in the short-term, attempting the menial task of keeping her
dress up. Curtis uses this theme of clothes as a rhetorical
device.
Much of the conversation and activity at this fundraiser
centered on clothes, or lack thereof. The women judge each
other, for example, by whether or not they wear bras, and the participants seem compelled to talk about what they wore and why. Curtis uses the description of the clothes and comments
of the women to make them appear ridiculous and
insignificant.
Curtis is quick to point out that despite their claim
that clothes should not play an important part in women’s
lives, clothes take on importance for these feminists. One of
the participants, Mrs. Coulson, and her “sisters" (Curtis's
quotes) were braless and “fashionably liberated," Curtis
noted. This term appears to have been a contradiction to most
feminists, who preached against the importance of glamor.
Curtis goes on: "She (Coulson) wore a flesh-colored body
stocking, a long white see-through caftan and no bra. 'I
chucked bras six months ago,’ she explained." Curtis, ever
the society writer, makes sure she quotes this well-to-do
society matron exactly. "I chucked bras," she said, using a
male colloquialism that has hints of crudeness. The language. 132 coming from this wealthy woman at an exclusive fundraising event, is humorous. Because it is humorous, it diminishes the event and its significance to the feminist movement.
The chaos and ridiculous small talk continues, until, in the middle of speeches, a female reporter strips, dives into the swimming pool and begins swimming laps. The swimmer notes how beautiful the pool is and, “I didn't even pay the $25
[donation].“ This reference to money is not unusual for
Curtis. As was her habit, she continued to put price tags on everything, and show how the wealthy convey their true feelings about the moral value of causes through the amounts of money they pledge. As she showed time and time again, the wealthy are far more concerned with their own lives and desires than those of any particular cause, despite their appearance at elaborate fundraisers. In this story, a donor makes reference to his $50 donation after learning that the hosts' mansion is closed to those attending the event: "I paid $25 for liberation and $25 to see the Sculls' house," said Dr. Robert Gould, a psychiatrist, "and the house is locked up." Evidently, liberation and a glimpse of this house are of equal importance to Gould, and both had price tags — much the same as justice and freedom had price tags for the guests of Leonard Bernstein at the Black Panther fundraiser.
Curtis's description of the women's liberation fundraiser is meant to show how superficial and self-absorbed many of the participants are. Her coverage as a whole, then. 133 holds the feminist movement to ridicule. It is evident that
Curtis approved of the message of liberation but did not
agree with the tactics of the participants to achieve many of
the goals. If the women's liberation fundraiser story left
any doubts, she spells this out in a guest radio commentary
she made several days after the event on New York's WQXR, the
Times-owned radio station, in which she says the purpose of
the Hamptons gathering — to raise money — was overshadowed by the chaos. "Many of the women who gathered there are
serious about child care centers, equal employment and abortion, “ she said. "Yet their voices were lost amid the
tinkle of cocktail glasses, the spectacle of a woman ditching her blue jeans and diving into the swimming pool and the disappearance of Representative Patsy Mink.
She ended the broadcast by getting to her major point:
“Perhaps what I'm saying on this anniversary of women's
suffrage is that if women want to be taken as seriously as
they deserve, they will have to get their message across not
just loud and clear but logically and simply. Otherwise, nobody's really going to understand how important this movement is." The broadcast also conveys her thoughts on the
tactics of those involved in feminism: that while radicalism has a place, the attention-getting activities of radicals often obscure the point of the cause.
Curtis's verbal style takes on a different direction
from her writing. She clearly spells out her views — "they 134 will have to get their message across not just loud and clear but logically and simply" — conveying in one sentence what the irony and ridicule did in the fundraising story. Curtis was beginning to realize that written and verbal modes of communication required different rhetorical strategies, a lesson that would be driven home later in her career. The style that characterized her writing would not be appropriate for speeches and interviews. The subtlety and nuances that characterized her stories were not appropriate for an oral mode of communication; they simply did not get the point across, and were much more difficult for the listener than for the reader to grasp. Instead, she had to spell her views out succinctly and abandon most of the irony of her writing.
The qualities of the New Journalism were, for the most part, not appropriate for oral discourse. Further, as she would show later, her speeches were much more personal than her stories.45 she frequently drove points home by drawing from her own life and her own experiences.
What New York’s feminists thought of Curtis's women's pages is unknown, but a letter she wrote to Hunt in 1969 indicates that perhaps the “family, food, fashion, furnishings" section of the Times was too middle-of-the-road for them: "And the Women's Liberation [sic], which is to say the very feminist (I'm still not sure that's right) younger generation, are up in arms over my women's pages. They're calling us Aunt Tabbies, which apparently is women's lip (i 135 didn’t misspell that) for Uncle Tom.Again, the division between Curtis and the "women’s libbers," and her cynicism of the movement, is noted here with Curtis’s characteristics puns, "women’s lip" and the caustic "very feminist" younger generation.
Like other women’s-page editors across the country,
Curtis was in a no-win situation. Some readers wanted pages exclusively devoted to women’s news and items of interest to women. Others felt the existence of such a section ghettoized and trivialized news of interest to women by placing serious stories about such topics as rape, equal pay lawsuits and the like were consigned to back pages instead of up front where some readers believed they belonged. Curtis believed it was in part the women’s liberation movement that turned those pages into a battleground. In 1975, after she was promoted to
Op-Ed editor, she discussed how she tried to satisfy both contingents : "If we ran feminist stories on that page, people would say, ’But you're segregating ly putting them on that page. They belong out in the news.’ If we didn’t run them, and said they should go out in the news section, they’d say,
’You're against us because there should be a page devoted exclusively to feminist problems.’"47
There is no evidence that the criticism radical
feminists that she alludes to in the letter to Hunt affected her editorial judgment. She apparently felt hurt or affected by it enough to mention to Hunt in a letter, but its impact 136 was little when it came to her personal and professional thoughts. Like her reaction to Rosenthal's criticism,
Curtis's reaction to these feminists who criticized her appeared to be nothing more than an annoyance to her. She did not attempt to mollify her critics or seek common ground with them. Curtis was not intentionally confrontational, but she was not reluctant to let her readers know the way she thought about those she covered. Throughout her career, she would not let her critics from within and outside of the Times change her way of thinking or acting.
New Directions
By the 1970s, Curtis's interest in the civil rights and feminist movements, combined with her background and interest in history and sociology would lead her away from women's news and more toward political news while she was at the
Times. As a society writer, she would begin to cover more hard-news and political stories in the late 1960s and early
1970s. She would cover presidential conventions and such national stories as the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the Apollo astronauts.
It was natural, then, that she would earn another promotion at the newspaper, this time as editor of the prestigious Op-Ed page, the page of opinion opposite the 137 editorial page. In this capacity, Curtis became part of the editorial board of the Times. which meant, among other things, that she was part of regular meetings with world leaders in politics, education, the arts and science. In essence, she became part of the power structure at the Times, and, through her selection of the content of the Op-Ed page, a national opinion maker. This appointment to the Op-Ed page, along with her successful marriage to William Hunt, which brought her personal happiness, made Curtis more secure about her political views which, in turn, would lead to a more outspoken attitude about her liberal politics. This security would also lead to a change in rhetorical modes. During the last decade of her life, Curtis found as an opinion maker rhetorical outlets other than the written word. She frequently gave speeches and interviews, and would become a persuader through her selection of the content of her pages.
Her writing would take a back seat to these alternate rhetorical forms.
NOTES
^ Julie Baumgold, "Charlotte: Star Reporter," New York. October 6, 1969, 39-44; 46. 48-49.
2 See Gay Talese's The Kingdom and the Power, New York: World Publishing Co., 1969, pp. Ill, 139.
2 Talese's book goes into detail about the politics at the Times in the 1960s. 138
4 Charlotte Curtis, New York Times oral history project, June, 1983, New York Times. New York.
5 The New York Times has been family-owned since the late 1800s, and Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger was the daughter, wife and mother of Times publishers. Although she never worked at the newspaper, she obviously wielded much influence through her affiliations with its publishers.
6 This congratulatory letter from Iphigene Sulzberger to Curtis is dated July 23, 1973. Other correspondence between the two usually dealt with invitations from Sulzberger to Curtis, often for lunch, or were thank-you letters from Curtis, apparently for lunches. The tone of the letters and notes was warm, and, on Curtis's part, respectful.
^ Interview with Harrison Salisbury, December 16, 1989.
8 Talese, oo cit, p. 468.
9 Baumgold, oo cit. p 41.
Baumgold, oo cit. p. 41.
“Anita Colby is Engaged to Wed Phalen Flagler," New York Times June 13, 1969, p. 54.
12 “Maria Gabrielli of Italy to be Married June 21, “ New York Times. June 13, 1969, p. 54.
13 Baumgold, oo cit. p. 34.
1'* Charlotte Curtis, New York Times oral history project. New York, New York.
13 Charlotte Curtis, “Capote Ball — The Most Exquisite of Spectator Sports, “ New York Times. November 29, 1966, P. 55.
13 This is discussed in chapter two of this manuscript. It is taken from Charlotte Curtis's First Ladv. New York: ïyramid Books, 1962, p. 80. 139
Roger Wilkins discussed his close relationship with Curtis during her memorial service. May 20, 1987, SL, NYT.
18 Many of the clippings found in Curtis’s private papers included lengthy magazine articles about the civil rights movement and the Black Panthers, and numerous columns by Murray Kempton, a columnist and civil rights advocate. SL.
18 See Newsweek. September 4, 1989, p. 27, for a discussion of the Black Panthers and the role of Huey Newton in their development.
20 Charlotte Curtis, "Black Panther Philosophy is Debated at the Bernsteins," New York Times. January 15, 1970, p. 50.
21 "False Note on Black Panthers, " New York Times. January 16, 1970, p. 46.
22 Tom Wolfe, "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's," New York. June 8, 1970, pp. 26-56.
23 See, for instance, letters from Charlotte Curtis to Lucile Curtis dated November 5, 1970 and January 24, 1970, SL.
24 Letter from Charlotte Curtis to Lucile Curtis, January 24, 1970, SL.
25 Charlotte Curtis, "The Bernstein Party for Black Panther Legal Defense Stirs Talk and More Parties," New York Times. January 24, 1970, p. 21.
26 Kate Millett, Sexual Politics. Garden City: Doubleday, 1970,and Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mvstioue. New York: Norton, 1974.
27 Interview with William Hunt, June 13, 1988.
28 Harrison Salisbury, editor. The Soviet Union: The Fifty Years. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.: 1967.
28 Salisbury, oo cit, p. 34.
8° Salisbury, oo cit. p. 43 140
Salisbury, op cit. p. 42.
32 Salisbury, o p cit. p. 35.
33 Salisbury, op cit. p. 34.
34 Letter, Charlotte Curtis to Lucile Curtis, January 28, 1972, SL.
35 Memorandum, Seymour Topping to Charlotte Curtis, et al, January 27, 1971, SL.
36 Memorandum, Clifton Daniel to Charlotte Curtis, September 20, 1971, SL.
37 See, for example, Curtis's comments in Ellen Bilgore's, "Charlotte Curtis: She Did It Her Way," Harper's Bazaar. March, 1981, p. 71, and Jean Tarzanian's "We Can Do Anything a Man Can Do," Editor & Publisher. December 14, 1963, p. 54.
33 Jean Tarzanian, "We Can Do Anything a Man Can Do," Editor & Publisher. December 14, 1963, p. 54.
39 Jane Howard, "Charlotte Curtis: First Lady of the New York Times. Cosmopolitan. January, 1975, p. 160.
40 Judy Klemesrud, "The Issue of Equality: Some Women in Public Eye Speak," New York Times. August 27, 1970, p. 39.
41 Marylin Bender, "Liberation Yesterday: The Roots of the Feminist Movement, " New York Times. August 21, 1970, p. 29.
42 Memorandum, Charlotte Curtis to A.M. Rosenthal, January 14, 1971.
43 Charlotte Curtis, "Women's Liberation Gets Into the Long Island Swim," New York Times. August 10, 1970, p. 32.
44 WXMR radio broadcast, August 17, 1970, SL.
45 Curtis's speeches, and how they differed from her stories, is discussed further in Chapter V of this study. 141
46 Letter, Charlotte Curtis to William Hunt, November 24, 1969, SL.
47 "Charlotte Curtis," voaue. June, 1975, p. 116. CHAPTER V
NEW RHETORICAL OUTLETS
By 1970, Curtis had been editor of the women's-news
section for five years. In addition to supervising those
pages and traveling around the world writing her unique brand
of society stories, she was able, with the newspaper's news
reporters, to contribute to some breaking news stories, such
as the funeral of Robert Kennedy, the 1968 Republican presidential convention in Florida, and the moon launch. Many
of these stories had a political bent, indicating that Curtis
was leaning toward more political stories. The decade of the
'70s was pivotal for Curtis the rhetor. It is perhaps the only decade in her adult life where her personal and professional life would be deeply intertwined. She met and
married a man who would become a confidante, as well as a
sounding board in letters, much as her mother was in
Charlotte's early adult years. The success and happiness of
the marriage helped her resolve to some degree the deep
ambivalence she felt about her upbringing and her family, and
142 143 her own liberal views about the role of individuals in society. The marriage also gave her further confidence professionally, leading to an appointment as a top editor on the newspaper.
It was during the 1970s that Curtis matured a rhetor.
While she never changed her own views to adapt to the opinions of others, any reticence she might have had earlier about her somewhat unorthodox views of the women's movement or the life- styles of the rich, evaporated during this time.
Because of her position as an opinion-maker on the Times, and because of the confidence in her beliefs that she gained during this period, she was frequently called on to speak publicly, and to be the subject on newspaper or magazine interviews. This allowed her to exercise an oral mode of communication, and she had to adapt her rhetoric to this.
More problematic during this period, however, was the diagnosis of a severe illness that prompted doctors to predict she may have a limited time to live. It would be impossible for such a diagnosis to have no effect her life, and her rhetoric, but the way in which this diagnosis affected Curtis is unclear, and appears unclear even to those closest to her. That it did not, at first, seem to touch her at all is fascinating, but time would reveal the effect of this diagnosis on Curtis. 144 A NEW CONFIDANTE
Throughout her early career at the Times, Curtis’s life
revolved around her job and the traveling associated with it.
Correspondence found in her personal papers indicates that
while she had friends, her mother was her closest confidante.
By 1968, however, Curtis and William Hunt, an Ohio State
University neurosurgeon, had become close friends, based on
periodic meetings and correspondence between the two. This
friendship, and later, romance, become pivotal in Curtis’s
professional as well as her personal life. First, Hunt provided a sounding board for Curtis, and she could confide
in him in a way she could not with her mother. Second, he was
a surgeon, the same profession as Curtis’s father, and,
consequently. Hunt was a man Curtis admired and respected.
Third, Hunt was politically liberal at a time when most physicians, including Curtis’s father, were conservative.
This contact with Hunt allowed Curtis to expand on her own
liberal views — views that would find themselves in her writing and editing. Finally, Curtis’s social life expanded
after her relationship with Hunt began, allowing her to
intensify relationships with top Times officials as well as with cultural political and social leaders in New York.
Interestingly, Curtis came to know Hunt through an
article he had written for a monthly publication put out by
the Bulletin of the Academy of Medicine of Columbus and 145 Franklin Countv. Hunt lived in Bexley, where Curtis was raised, and the two had met occasionally at social events, but it was this article that prompted their friendship and eventual romance. Hunt's article stirred controversy among the conservative medical community in Columbus hy stating that "poverty and racial inequality are the two most important challenges to us [the nation] today." He went on to write that the radical and ultra-conservative approaches to civil disorder at that time were ineffective, and urged a middle-of-the-road approach.^ His article, which was construed some physicians as being overly liberal, drew angry responses from three Columbus doctors, which were printed in the following issue of the bulletin. The incident eventually was recounted in an article in the Columbus
Citi zen-Journal.^
Hunt sent a copy of the article, the responses and the
Citizen-Journal story to Curtis, and he alludes in the letter that the two had already discussed the topic of physicians and writing: “Don't laugh," he wrote. "As you have pointed out, all surgeons are frustrated journalists.It was this event that triggered continuous correspondence between Curtis and Hunt, as well as efforts by them to meet when Curtis was in Columbus or Hunt in New York. By the middle of 1969, their relationship had developed into an intimate one, a problem for both of them, since Hunt was married and had three 146 children, two of whom were in their late teens and early 20s.
The third was still in school at home.
Considering Curtis's personal background, it is perhaps predictable that she would fall in love with Hunt. He probably represented to her the melding of her two lives. He had the respectability of her physician-father, yet, because he was married, he was, to some degree, off limits for her
socially. This forbidden romance was repeating itself for
Curtis, since it was her romance with a married New York reporter that drew her to New York in the first place. Her attraction to Hunt may have played itself out in other ways, also. Other than satisfying a renegade side of her, he might have been somewhat of a father fiçrure for Curtis. He was in the same profession as Dr. Curtis and even worked in the
same hospital. Hunt also lived in Columbus, the city Curtis
still thought of as "home." Finally, Hunt was eight years
older than she, and this age discrepancy contributed to her respect and and admiration for him, as well as reinforcing
the respect she had for another older man — her father. It was clearly impossible for Curtis to have a deep relationship with anyone who was not as interested in politics and writing
as she. Her relationship with Gene Grove, the reporter who
initially encouraged Curtis to move to New York, was based on
these mutual professional interests, and she had said her
first marriage failed because of her husband's lack of
interest in journalism.^ She obviously had spoken to Hunt 147 about surgeons being “frustrated journalists" and it was
Hunt's interest in social issues, an interest that separated
him from most other physicians at the time, that drew them
together. Curtis's and Hunt's views, particularly about the
rich in the United States and the Vietnam war, came out
clearly in their letters.
Civil unrest and the war in Vietnam were a personal
issue as well for Hunt, whose son was drafted and threatened
to b u m his draft card, a threat that greatly upset Hunt.
Curtis seemed preoccupied with the discrepancy between the
lives of the rich and the poor in the United States, as this
excerpt from a 1969 letter shows:
Tom Seaver, the baseball hero of what are now known as the Amazing Mets, took part of his World Series winnings and bought his wife a Persian lamb coat with a fox collar. And for himself? Why a mountain lion polo coat, of course. It gets cold in New York.5
Here, Curtis displays outrage at what she considers an
extravagance. The irony and point of view is similar to that used in her stories. The rich are more than willing to spend
vast amounts of time and money on trivial items.
As time went on, the letters between the two grew more
intimate as they expressed fmstration at being separated
from each other. Hunt's letters were more personal than
Curtis's; she seemed reluctant or uncomfortable in expressing her feelings for him.® By 1970, however, she was frequently 148 talking about "Bill" in letters to her mother, indicating that the two had gone public with their relationship. These letters to Lucile Curtis expressed Charlotte's love for Hunt, and were much more lighthearted in tone than any of Curtis's letters since college. They often described activities of
Hunt and Curtis :
At the Sulzbergers up in the country, he [Hunt] took me for a canoe ride in around their lake. And he's a better paddler than Clifton Daniel, somehow, Margaret Daniel fell in the water when she was trying to get into the canoe. Clifton Daniel thought that was funny, but I gather Margaret was furious. Bill wouldn't let me fall. What a joy he is and as I've said before, he handles me very well really. Or at least I find ityself doing what he says, which is new for me, and liking it, which is incredible."?
This letter, relating an incident at a picnic, speaks volumes about Curtis's feelings and attitude toward Hunt. She indicates how protective she feels Hunt is toward her, and she believes that he is accomplished at many activities. "He
[Hunt] is a better paddler" than Daniel; "Bill wouldn't let me fall." Further, Curtis felt that Hunt could handle her headstrong nature, perhaps much as a parent could.
By 1972, Hunt, who was then 51, divorced his wife. He and Curtis, 43, were married in California that summer, and officially began the commuter marriage, with Hunt in Columbus 149 and Curtis in New York, that they would maintain for the next fourteen years of their marriage.
APPOINTMENT TO OP-ED
As the letters between Curtis and Hunt indicate,
Curtis's confidence as a social critic increased. While she always had an interest in politics, her job at the Times limited her in some ways to chronicling the lives of the rich and famous, and having those observations appear on the society pages of the newspaper. By the late 1960s, politics and sociology overlapped, and Curtis began writing stories chronicling and critiquing the lives of political and cultural figures. These stories, often carried on page one or in the news section of the newspaper, would lead to her appointment as editor of the newspaper's prestigious Op-Ed page.
Her honesty and penchant for telling it like it is could be seen in her coverage of several top events of the late
1960s, but it is perhaps best illustrated in a page-one story describing the funeral train that carried Robert F . Kennedy 's body. While Curtis does not mock the Kennedy family, she does not let this coverage of a funeral keep her from describing how deeply ingrained politicking was to the Kennedy family: Joseph P. Kennedy 3d was the first of the Kennedys to leave the railroad car that bore his father's coffin, and after him along the aisles came his sister, Courtney, his cousin Caroline and his mother, Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy. But Joe, the eldest son, was the first. Down the swaying train he went, putting out his hand in 19 of the other 20 cars, saying, "I'm Joe Kennedy," while outside in the early afternoon sun, the old men of Linden, N.J., stood silently in their undershirts and the women held handkerchiefs to their faces. "I'm Joe Kennedy," he said to strangers, his pin-stripe black suit not yet a shambles from the failing air- conditioning, his FT boat tie clip neatly in place. "Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming."®
The repetition in the first paragraph, that Joe Kennedy was the first to exit the train and of the quote, "I'm Joe
Kennedy...", drives home the point that while the train carried Robert F. Kennedy, the Kennedy family used the event to indirectly further their own political careers. The subtle insertion of well-known names and elements, the name Caroline and the FT board tie clip, subtly remind the reader of just who Joseph is — a Kennedy. Here, as was the style of the New
Journalism, the details do far more than just add color to the story. They take on lives of their own and, in this case, conjure up the history behind the event.
Curtis wrote to her mother about the event, and the letter illustrates Charlotte's deep interest in what was happening in the United States at the time of Robert
Kennedy's death, and her personal concern for the poor. Her 151 comments also indicate that she realized she was in a small way participating in a historical event:
I rode the train from NY to Washington with the Kennedy casket and all the kids and it was, predictably, a rare experience in Americana. All those poor people and blacks along the tracks because the trains run beside the homes of the poor. All the inside feeling that this was still California and the campaign and that no one had been assassinated. And still, an Irish wake of the very rich, 1968 variety, with eating, drinking, laughing on board not so very far from the casket.^
Curtis's fascination with the contradictions of the
event comes through in this letter — the wealth of the
Kennedys, contrasted the poverty of the families who lived
near the tracks, and the tragedy of the event contrasted with
the exhilaration of the campaign and the celebration of a
wake "not so very far from the casket." These contrasts did
not form the background of the story, but they did not go unnoticed ly Curtis, who felt them compelling enough to
relate to her mother.
By 1973, Curtis had six years experience as a Times
editor, and had written hundreds of stories about society and
politics. That year. Times publisher Sulzberger was preparing
to find a replacement for Harrison Salisbury, who edited the
newspaper’s Op-Ed page. Salisbury was to turn sixty-five in
1974 and, by Times policy, was to take mandatory retirement. 152 The Op-Ed page is the page opposite the editorial page featuring commentary ly regular Times columnists and guests.
Salisbury, an icon at the newspaper, had created the page in
1970 to allow Times readers to voice their opinions through avenues other than letters to the editor. Salisbury was instrumental in developing the concept of Op-Ed pages nationwide, and had made the position a prestigious one at the Times. The Op-Ed editor was also an associate editor of the Times. a title listed on the masthead of the newspaper, adding to its prestige.
Salisbury, one of Curtis's staunch supporters and friends throughout her years at the newspaper, was asked by publisher Sulzberger to suggest a replacement to edit Op-
Ed, a job that entailed little if any writing, but the selection of the columns that would appear on the pages each day. The Op-Ed editor and his or her staff usually read through hundreds of submissions each week in an attempt to select the ones they believed would be of greatest interest to Times readers. Curtis was Salisbury’s only recommendation, he remembered years later, and, effective January 1, 1974, she was named Op-Ed editor and associate editor of the Times, and, as such became the highest ranking woman in the newspaper's history, and the first woman whose name appeared on the masthead.
Salisbury remembered that he had no one else in mind to succeed him as Op-Ed editor. He admired Curtis's 153 xinconventional writing style and news judgment, and had respect for her personally and professionally. Curtis, he said, wrote "like a composer of great symphonies" and had
"the quickest eye of any reporter I've ever seen.
Curtis's appointment did have elements of controversy, and, as was the case in her previous promotion, she herself was not sure she wanted the job. First, she was a woman and a woman had never held such a high-ranking job on the Times; and, second, she came from the ranks of the women's page, which some reporters and editors did not consider the proper training ground for an Op-Ed editor, who must be aware of the subtleties of such topics as foreign policy, politics and other more serious subjects than the future of the mini skirt. Further, she was replacing Salisbury, a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter, top editor and author of numerous books.
Curtis was aware that the appointment annoyed some people, but that did not surprise her.
“I think perfectly intelligent questions were raised about my qualifications — and not primarily because I'm a woman," she said. "It's quite debatable whether anyone can truly replace a Harrison Salisbury. He established a standard of excellence that is very difficult to achieve.The prestige of the job, however, was not one that immediately impressed Curtis. She noted nine years later that she was ambivalent about the position and, as was the case when she 154 was asked to become women's editor, had to be persuaded to take it.
I really, again, had terribly mixed emotions: in many ways I did not want the Op- Ed page editor, I really didn't want to do it..-I knew I couldn't write, except the occasional piece; but on the other hand, the challenge to go out into the area specifically of foreign affairs, which has interested me since I was a child; to go into the field of economics, which just dazzles me — not that economists dazzle me, but what happens in financial and business circles, and the way corporations run and the theories...
Further, she noted, issues of the 1970s, such as
Watergate and the war in Vietnam, would not be handled on the women's pages. This gave her an opportunity to deal with these issues and events.
These ambivalent feelings were caused bytwo main factors: first, she did not care to see her role as a manager expanded, and second, she realized that her role would be primarily that of an editor, with very little writing. While
Curtis's Op-Ed staff would be smaller than the family/style staff, five editorial employees on op-ed compared to thirty on the family/style pages, she would have more control over staff members. Also, she would not be out of the office on frequent stories, and would be a fulltime manager. It is evident through published interviews and memos that she was never quite comfortable in that role, and never sought the 155 “power" that comes with elevation to a top management spot.
Comments she made during two interviews with Harper's Bazaar summarize her views about authority:
I don't believe in hierarchies. No one is really 'better' than anyone else on our staff except in a particular talent, and most of us are able to switch places with each other when the need arises. It is not my personality, my preferences or my pride of ownership that prevail on the Op-Ed page, but rather our group ' s. “
When Curtis took the Op-Ed job, she also realized that her days as a regular reporter were over. Her authority as rhetor would come solely in her news judgment — in choosing columns and articles she deemed appropriate for the page. As family/style editor, she also exercised this power as editor, but, again, it would be emphasized much more as Op-Ed editor.
Her views, as well as what she saw as important in American society, would not be reflected through her writing, but through the content of the page.
Curtis and the Mission of Op-Ed
While Curtis's appointment to head Op-Ed might have seemed unlikely to some, her interests and philosophy about the focus of the Times fit in well with the mission of the 156 Op-Ed page. Newspapers for many years had printed "guest" columns from readers, primarily government officials, educators and authors. Through the 1960s, however, more readers began writing letters to the editor and more citizens began voicing opinions about current events in the United
States and some editors believed a forum was needed for these voices; primarily a page in the newspaper that ran regular columns as well as well-written pieces by people outside the newspaper. ^5
When Salisbury developed the Times Op-Ed page, his was not the first of its kind in the country, but, because of the reputation and reach of the Times. it set the pace for similar pages across the country. The entire point of the pages was to let readers express their views. When Curtis took over the pages, she had two goals, she said in a 1975 interview: “To get more ordinary people, rather than famous people, writing for the page, and to broaden and lighten the spread of the page.” She added that she wanted pieces reflecting "the ordinary lives away from the East Coast.
This belief that the world did not revolve around New
York City was a repeating theme in Curtis's life, reflected in her own dual lifestyle. She lived in New York but still considered Columbus her home. This was reinforced through her marriage to Hunt, and, at this point, she had two homes : one in Columbus and one in New York. 157 The Op-Ed page under the direction of Curtis clearly did
reflect her eclectic tastes. One of her associates remembered
that when Curtis took over the pages, the shelves in the Op-
Ed office were emptied of Salisbury's stacks of Pravda and
filled with Curtis's Town and Country magazines. The
content of the pages reflects this move. Under Salisbury, the page was heavy with political and social commentary by famous
diplomats, educators and authors. While Curtis maintained
this commentary to some degree, she opened up the pages to more "regular" readers of the Times. and more lighthearted
topics, including, for example, articles about the genealogy
of Mad magazine's Alfred E. Newman, and an attorney's
commentary about why he likes eating at McDonald ' s.
During her first year as Op-ed Editor, she ran articles by, among others, radicals Angela Davis and Tom Hayden, as well as Yoko Ono and Gloria Steinem.
As could be predicted, Curtis resurrected some of her
favorite rhetorical themes while she was editor of the Op-Ed page. Puns, for instance, were always prevalent ("Flower
Smuggler, Drop that Pistil!" over a story about flower
smuggling), a throwback from her days as an editor at the
Citizen. Columns about feminism did not always reflect
conventional themes. Curtis ran an excerpt from a letter written by Nobel Prize winning scientist Rosalyn Yalow about her reasons for refusing a Ladies Home Journal Woman of the
Year award. Such awards for women, Yalow wrote, ghettoize 158 women and demean their accomplishments.^® A column about
abortion by a professional woman, a wife and mother, was not
a call for safe, accessible abortions, but instead was a
compelling account of her heartbreaking decision to terminate her pregnancy.
These variations on themes were common on Curtis ' s Op-Ed
page, and reflected the contradictions in her own
personality. She was not one to print the same run-of-the- mill stories on the same topics that were being discussed in
other publications.
Curtis believed the Op-Ed page should have a whimsical
vein, and that the page should not be aimed solely at
wealthy, well-educated New Yorkers. The irreverence for which
she became known as a writer made its way into the page. The
joys of eating at McDonald's, the genealogy of an Alfred E.
Newman, she believed, were topics of interest to Times
readers across the nation. More important, however, Curtis
enjoyed the contrasts and twists that Op-Ed page allowed her
to exercise. The columns by Yalow, the professional woman who
had the abortion, and the well-heeled attorney who enjoys
eating fast food, all contain contradictions. Further, the
entire idea of the Op-Ed page, which allowed Yoko Ono's ideas
to run next to those of former United States Presidents, must
have appealed to Curtis’s antithetical sense. It was this
same sense that prompted her to write about the enormously
wealthy Alice Longworth Roosevelt wearing a tom, 35-cent 159 mask to the Capote ball, and the same sense that painted the picture of the sophisticated Leonard Bernstein pretending he was a streetwise Black Panther.20 Usually, Curtis illustrated contrasts through the use of quotations and detail that formed the backbone of many of her stories. Now she was conveying contrast through the mix and content of stories she chose to run on the page.
Such a change in the make-up of the Op-Ed page was sure to bring comments from journalists in and outside of New
York. In a Los Angeles Times story about Op-Ed pages, the reporter praised the mix in Curtis's page, noting that lighthearted, sometimes frivolous pieces are “sandwiched among stories written ty U.S. senators, Pulitzer Prize- winning poets, foreign diplomats and university professors, as well as by housewives, construction workers, businessmen and people on welfare, unemployment and Social Security.”
The article also praised the Times page as “the most cerebral of the nation's op-ed pages.. . The change in the pages also drew criticism from journalists.
An editor of the Boston Globe said in 1975 that the
Times's Op-Ed page was “more vital, more provocative“ under
Harrison Salisbury than under Curtis. “It just isn't as
consistently serious as it used to be," the Boston editor
said. 22
The Los Angeles Times profile of Op-Ed pages, which was
complimentary of Curtis and her work on the page, pointed out 160 that the lightheartedness of the page often went too far, as was the case when an article about the federal government's neglect of rural America ran beneath the frivolous headline,
"Nix Fix of Stix as Hix.“23
Because Curtis was willing to take chances, she ran into some opposition from top Times editors regarding the content of her pages. Memos found in her personal papers indicate that as Op-Ed editor, Curtis reported to A.O. Sulzberger,
Times publisher. Sulzberger, a supporter of hers, was not likely to be too critical of her work. At least one editorial decision Curtis made drew the wrath of Max Frankel, who became editorial page editor in 1976. In a particularly bitter memo, Frankel criticized Curtis's decision to run on the Op-Ed page an “Old Codger's Almanac," written a former
Harvard Lampoon editor. Six "pages" of the tongue-in-cheek almanac, done in the style of the Farmer's Almanac, took up the entire page. The modern version of the old almanac was designed as a parody of the original almanac, and as an antidote to the hectic life of New Yorkers.
Frankel, however, was not amused. In a memo to Curtis the day the almanac appeared, he reminded her that she should consult with him when she planned major variations on her page. And he reminded her of the mission of the Op-Ed page:
Whatever the merits or amusement value of today's almanac — and I failed to recognize them — I firmly believe that such a thing does not belong on Op-Ed. There is plenty of 161 space in The Times for magazine features. But Op-Ed is where a large body of readers ej^ects ideas and issues discussed in a serious (which, of course, includes bright and even humorous) way. Most radical departures of format will detract from that mission, no matter what their inherent interest. If we disagree about that we've got a bigger problem than I thought we had.^s
Curtis's departure from Times style and her willingness to defy some top editors there were, indirectly, what earned her promotions at the newspaper. Still, she was reminded by
Frankel, as she was frequently reminded by her previous editor, A.M. Rosenthal, that radical departures in style are not always welcome. As her tenure as Op-Ed editor progressed,
Curtis's main allies and mentors, Harrison Salisbury and
Clifton Daniel, were no longer Times employees, and her friendly relationship with the publisher would not ensure job security for her. This memo from Frankel offers a glimpse into the reaction that some top Times editors had to her maverick nature, and their efforts to fight it. These efforts would be pivotal in shaping the direction of Curtis's career late in her life.
A PERSONAL SETBACK
In 1974, nearly a year after she had taken over the op ed page, Curtis entered Ohio State University Hospital in 162 Columbus for a mastectomy. Her co-workers were aware of the
operation, but they and many of Curtis's close friends did not know that afterward, doctors believed there was an eighty percent chance the cancer would return within five years.
Because of the malignant nature of the disease, doctors were,
in essence, telling Curtis that she probably had five or less years to live.
Such a prognosis would have a dramatic effect on anyone's life, although the true ramifications of the prognosis on Curtis's life and career may never be known.
Although friends and co-workers knew the nature of her 1974
operation, based on conversations with many of her close
friends, Curtis kept the seriousness of her condition and
the prognosis from them. 26
This is predictable, based on her history of separating her personal and professional lives, and her dispassionate
and unsentimental nature. It is likely, however, that she kept it from those at the Times because she felt it might, directly or indirectly, jeopardize future promotions at the newspaper. Further, she may not have wanted Times officials
to believe they had appointed a chronically ill person to a
top position because it might diminish her authority.2? How
this diagnosis affected her behavior at the newspaper is unknown. The only times her illness is mentioned in letters
to her mother allude to specialists she has consulted, or brief comments these physicians regarding her condition.28 163 Her husband, William Hunt, has said that the diagnosis never dampened Curtis ' s spirit or enthusiasm for her job, and that she said even on her deathbed thirteen years later that she considered the last decade or so of her life to be a gift
— years that she did not think she had.^9 He also said that she was determined to outlive the prognosis and to prove the doctors wrong, or at least show that she could beat the odds.
It could be assumed that, because of the diagnosis, she would be more daring with what she ran on the pages, but this is unlikely. Curtis controlled the Op-Ed page for almost a year before her illness was diagnosed, and it is clear she gave the pages a new tone and look, and included stories that were at the time controversial.
It is probable that the illness did give Curtis the impetus to voice her strong opinions about current events in public forums and to become comfortable in what was to be her role as a national opinion-maker. As Op-Ed editor, she was frequently sought out as a speaker and subject of interviews.
The appointment, in essence, made her an "authority" on world events, while she was never hesitant to spell out her opinions in writing to her mother and to Hunt, being direct in her oral rhetoric was new to her, as was the oral mode of communication. Previously, she let her views be known by capturing in writing what was going on around her. Now, she did not have the luxury to be so indirect. The prospect of 164 facing an audience, and the oral mode of communication, had
always disturbed her.
She said once that giving speeches terrified her to the point that she pasted the pages of her talk on cardboard to keep the pages from shaking as her hands quivered on the
lectern. 21
Because she was a writer by profession, she may have learned quickly that the rules changed in an oral medium. Her nothing-is-sacred style, combined with subtle asides and rich details, may have worked for her as a writer, but not as a
speaker. Although her name was known to many Times readers, she was still shrouded by anonymity when she wrote. She did not see her readers face-to-face, and did not have to gauge their immediate reaction.
She had finally obtained the confidence and experience
to realize that her own views were valid, even if they went against the grain of prevailing thought. Curtis always had this boldness to some degree, but expressed it in subtle ways publicly. The new oral format of her rhetoric, combined with
this new confidence, prompted her to develop this new,
straightforward style.
How and why Curtis adapted comfortably to the role as maker of public opinion is unknown. The diagnosis of her
illness may have led her to believe she did not have much time, and must condense what she though would be a long life
into a few more years. Or it may have given her, in the long 165 nin, bigger things to think about, leading her to believe
that fear of public speaking and of publicly speaking her mind were irrational fears.
It is also possible that her fulfilling life with Hunt, which lead to a wider social life, combined with her
acceptance as a competent Op-Ed editor, led her to accept herself as an authority. During her nine-year tenure as Op-Ed
editor, Curtis became a poised and articulate speaker who was not afraid to express her views or take a controversial
stand.
In 1976, she published a compilation of many of her
society columns under the title. The Rich and Other
Atrocities, a title that itself pulls no punches when
describing Curtis's feelings about her subject.32 During
tours and interviews for the book, Curtis spells out directly what, for years, her stories implied. By this time, she
seemed more interested in the political rather than social
implications of the wealthy, and she was not afraid to
express her views in public during book tours. As she told one interviewer, the wealthy "feel neither guilt nor social responsibility, " and that charitable contributions went to
fountains, museums and intensive care units which, by virtue of their locations, serve the rich and their friends. "Do we really need paintings when we don't have jobs?" she asked.33
This view, that the rich are not just idle but downright
detrimental to society, was never spelled out so boldly 166 before in her writing as the wealthy were often made to look silly and frivolous, but not dangerous.
Taking a Harsher Stand Against Feminism
Predictably, Curtis was frequently asked to address subjects relating to women and their changing status in the
United States. In the late 1960s, when she was a society writer and women's-page editor, she was ambivalent about her views of the growing women's liberation movement. Her stories sometimes mocked the leaders and followers of the movement, yet she had expressed support for the goals of the movement and the economic equality it sought.
By now, however, her disdain for the movement was clear.
In the undated text of a speech she gave in the mid 1970s to the American Association of Advertising Agencies in White
Silver Springs, W. Va., she discusses what she considers the arrogance of some feminists regarding jobs, including her own as a fashion/society writer:
In a world beginning to blossom with women philosophers, women neurosurgeons and women plumbers, Gloria Steinem does her very best to say that it's all right to be a housewife, or even a mother. But I've never heard her say i t 's all right to be a society reporter. ^4 167 Curtis went on, tongue-in-cheek to miniitialize her own accomplishments because she did not dress or talk the part of a true feminist:
'My personal vices run to: The weighty decision that goes into the wearing of those ruby and diamond tiaras at the Metropolitan Opera; the energy crisis, which the beautiful people attempted to solve by confining their yachts to but one ocean or refusing to refill their cigarette lighters— I knew how to be appallingly trivial for fun and profit, and in an increasingly troubled and neo-Puritan society, this was no longer permissible.
Curtis went on to say she gained sudden respectability by becoming editor of the women's-news pages, providing she changed the name of those pages to “some euphemism such as
M o d e m Living, Outlook, Trend, or Family/Style" and
"introduced tough, frankly relevant subjects.” Here she mocks the very change the Times decided to make years earlier when they named Curtis's pages “Family/Style. “ The pages were fine, as long as the label was politically correct, she implies. Again, she is stressing that names and appearances mean much to feminists.
She also said that it was the everyday working women — the ones that work quietly in the trenches rather than the perhaps flashy radicals — who were the real “feminists":
I had read Betty Friedan's book when it first came out, and found it as peripheral to 168 life in the Sixties as who was giving which dinner party in New York — and not nearly as much fun. Of course women had a problem, but it was difficult to get excited. If anything — particularly against the backdrop of the civil rights battles and Vietnam — I was annoyed.... Those of us who always worked outside the home, and for whom the job was a top priority, were politely sympathetic. As one middle-aged co-worker — a wife, mother and fulltime newspaper reporter — said at the time, "If I were any more liberated. I'd be dead."
In this speech, it is clear her views about the movement had become more brutal. Her view was that the feminist movement was unsympathetic to working women who did not take an active stand in the movement or those who did not serve in gritty, blue-collar jobs, the very group that made up most of the women in the United States. This cavalier attitude, she noted, extended to clothing. As Curtis had done in the story about the braless women who attended the Women's Liberation fundraiser, ghg pointed out here how clothes seemed to
"make" the feminist, an irony, considering that feminists' at the time decried society's emphasis on feminine glamor and dress: “Well, we were relevant all right. Some women reporters even ditched their mini-skirts and took to looking tough around the office — pants, clunky shoes, heavy sweaters, dockworkers' caps and what in ray mother's day would have been mistaken for uncombed hair." The very words here,
“ditched" and "took to looking tough," connote the hardness 169 and masculinity of the woman Curtis Criticizes. She decries
what she believes is the urge of feminists to "look the the
part, " and to blur completely the distinctions between men ■
and women. Curtis is most brutal, however, when she brings up
Betty Friedan and Friedan's brand of feminism, which.spawned
the movement. Curtis- diminishes the work of this unofficial
leader of the movement when she equates the significance of
The Feminine Mystique with a listing of who in New York was entertaining whom; "[It] was as peripheral to life in the
Sixties as who was giving which dinner party in New York — and not nearly as much fun. " This cutting down of the movement is summed up ' when Curtis quotes a co-worker who indicates that perhaps “liberation" is not what it's cracked up to be, and can be downright exhausting: "If I were any more liberated. I'd be dead."
This speech is pivotal because it indicates Curtis's way of thinking that the feminists, or at least those she perceives had feminists, had fallen into the same trap as the society matrons Curtis wrote about for years: they've become obsessed with trivia and have lost the meaning of their existence and how it relates to others in the world. Curtis would no doubt have appreciated the irony here, although, as a woman, it might have been a sobering realization for her.
The analogy of the activities of Friedan and the feminists with the New York cocktail circuit could not be more blatant. 170 The activities of the feminists, to Curtis, were a variation
on a theme — the theme of the idle rich and their
insignificant interests and pursuits.
It is not likely that Curtis would have offered these
coldly frank views of the feminist movement five years
earlier, for she may have feared the anger it would have
stirred among the feminist community. Further, she might have been unclear back then about what she did think about the
fledgling movement. Although these comments still would have
angered many women, Curtis did not care. She was secure
enough the mid 1970s to speak her mind about a politically
sensitive subject such as feminism. It is likely this
confidence stemmed from her success and acceptance as one of
the top editors of the Times. combined with the development
of a social circle that included many well-respected Times
editors and columnists, as well as social and cultural
leaders of New York. The prognosis of her illness may have
also indirectly contributed to this new boldness in her professional life. While she was determined to prove the doctors wrong and outlive their predictions, she clearly knew, as the wife and daughter of physicians, that her life
span would be shortened as a result of illness. Instead of
forcing her to hold back, the realization that her time was
limited may have indeed had the opposite effect, triggering her to speak her mind in obvious ways. 171 By this point in her life, Curtis had in many ways resolved some of the tension she felt in her life and career.
Her relationship with and marriage to Hunt appeared to please her in many ways. She married a successful physician, a man who was in the same profession as her father, allowing her to satisfy the urge she had to please her conservative parents, yet she was still able to have an independent life in New
York. Hunt, a liberal politically, appeared to legitimize
Curtis’s liberal views and outlook, allowing her to maintain and expand on views and opinions that may not have always pleased her parents. Further, she appeared to be successful at the dual life she led as a New Yorker and an Ohioan. She still considered herself a Midwesterner, but her marriage allowed her to develop a social circle in New York through visits from Hunt, while still maintaining a home and family in Ohio.
Curtis was not able, however, to resolve the ambivalence she felt about her upbringing and social issues. As a successful woman professionally, she still was not able to embrace the goals and tactics of the then-growing feminist movement and saw it as hypocritical. Her sarcasm when discussing the movement revealed either a bitterness toward
it or a failure to understand it. She was still tom, also, between accepting that she, now a well-to-do New Yorker who was b o m to a wealthy family, was part of an upper-class
society that she often criticized. This ambivalence about the 172 wealthy would remain throughout the rest of her career, and, during the last five years of her life, it would take a sharp turn in direction. This change, along with the intensifying of her illness, would have a dramatic effect on her rhetoric.
NOTES
1 William E. Hunt, Bulletin of the Academy of Medicine of Columbus and Franklin County. October 1967.
2 Hess, Wink, “Area Doctors Clash Over Civil Disorder Roots,“ Columbus Citizen-Journal. November 23, 1967.
2 Letter, William Hunt to Charlotte Curtis, November 30, 1967, SL.
^ This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2 of this study.
5 Letter, Charlotte Curtis to William Hunt, November 4, 1969, SL.
^ Hunt's letters were sometimes filled with his drawings and doodling, as well as comic strips, indicating that he missed Curtis. He sent with one letter, for instance, a Peanuts comic strip in which Charlie Brown lies awake at night thinking about “that little redheaded girl." (October 5, 1969), SL.
Letter, Charlotte Curtis to Lucile Curtis, August 18, 1970, SL.
® Charlotte Curtis, “On Train, Kennedy Elan," New York Times. June 9, 1968, p. 1.
9 Letter, Charlotte Curtis to Lucile Curtis, June 18, 1968. SL.
Interview, Harrison Salisbury, December 16, 1989.
Ibid.
12 Harper's Bazaar. “You and Your Job, Bazaar’s Guide to the Executive Suite," August 1978, p. 81. 173
^3 Jane Addams, women on To p . New York: Hawthorn Books Inc., 1979, p. 150.
14 These comments about women and power appeared in two separate articles in Harper's Bazaar: "You and Your Job, Harper's Bazaar Guide to the Executive Suite," August 1978, p. 81, and Ellen Bilgore's, “Charlotte Curtis: She Did It Her Way," Harper's Bazaar. March 1981, p. 128.
15 For a concise but complete history of the Op-Ed pages in American newspapers see David Shaw's "Newspapers Offer Forums for Outsiders," Los Angeles Times. October 13, 1975, pp. 1, 3, 16-18.
15 Shaw, OP cit. p. 16.
1"^ Jane Howard, "Charlotte Curtis : First Lady of the New York Times. Cosmopolitan, p. 158.
18 Yalow, Roslyn, "Thank You But No Thank You , " New York Times. June 12, 1978.
15 "John Doe," “There Just Wasn't Room in Our Lives for Another Baby," New York Times. May 14, 1975, p. A27.
20 This is discussed in in more detail in chapter IV of this study.
21 David Shaw, "Newspapers Offer Forums for Outsiders," Los Angeles Times. October 13, 1975, p.l.
22 Shaw, OP cit. p. 16.
22 Ibid.
24 "Old Codger's Almanac," New York Times. January 19, 1979, p. 23.
25 Memo, Max Frankel to Charlotte Curtis, January 19, 1979, SL.
25 This is based on interviews with Jane Horrocks, Harrison Salisbury, Richard Clurman, Marylin Bender, Liz Smith. 174
27 Many of Curtis's friends said they noticed Curtis was ill due to her lack of energy and pale appearance.
28 One letter from Charlotte to Lucile, for instance, indicates that Charlotte and Hunt went to the United Kingdom for her to see an immunologist, indicating that Curtis may have been having problems with her immune system.
29 Comments of William Hunt, memorial service for Charlotte Curtis, May 20, 1987, SL, NYT.
20 Interview with William Hunt, June 5, 1989.
21 Howard, oo cit, p. 188.
22 Charlotte Curtis, The Rich and Other Atrocities. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
22 Lois Melina, “Times Editor Doubts Social Responsibility of the Nation's Rich," Muncie Star. October 8, 1977, p.l.
24 The text to this speech was found among Curtis's personal papers, with reference to the fact that it was given to the American Association of Advertising Agencies in White Silver Springs, West Virginia. No date was listed, but references in the speech indicate it was given while Curtis was Op-Ed editor., SL.
25 This issue is discussed in depth in chapter IV of this study. CHAPTER VI
CHANGE IN RHETORICAL DIRECTION
As Curtis continued editing the Op-Ed page, she became a
true policy maker at the Times. Through her job, she often
developed contacts with the world's top leaders, diplomats
and cultural and literary giants, most of whom she met at
regular publisher's lunches, where the newspaper's senior
editors met with nationally known public figures. These
contacts, with those she gained worldwide as a reporter,
would pave the way for the Times editors to name her a
general-interest columnist in 1982.
Curtis's return to written discourse as a columnist, however, would be markedly different from that when she was
a society writer. For the most part, the sly, sarcastic edge
would be gone from her stories, and frequently the writing
would be simply slice-of-life portraits of the lifestyle of
New York celebrities. By the 1980s, Curtis herself became more conservative, and, in some ways became one of those she
covered, rather than the detached observer she once was. It
175 176 is possible that she covered the well-known for so long that she gradually became one of them; her friends say, however, that her illness was intensifying, and she lost much of the energy and drive she once had. Her failing health was responsible for what most of her friends consider lackluster writing that was not up to her own previous standards. Her assimilation into New York society and the worsening of her cancer and thyroid problems shaped her rhetoric through the
1980s, until she died in 1987.
News Sources and Friends
Curtis's Op-Ed pages maintained their eclectic, humorous quality as she continued editing them into the early 1980s.
It is evident, however, that her relationship with “sources"
— those newsmakers who periodically appeared in the newspaper on her pages and in other sections — was beginning
to change. Curtis was by this time routinely invited to private book and theater parties, cocktail parties,
screenings and other large and intimate gatherings held by
and in honor of well-known cultural and political figures.
While she did not write regularly during her eight-year
tenure as Op-Ed editor, Curtis the private rhetor emerged.
She kept copious notes of parties, gatherings and meetings
she attended, apparently for a book she was planning to write 177 about the Times of the 1970s and 1980s. Her husband, William
Hunt, said she jokingly had said during this time that she wanted to write a book about the Times with the title. The
■Times' That Trv Men's Souls, but the detailed notes she left about conversations and gossip at the newspaper indicated she may have indeed been serious about the book.^ These notes outline debates and discussions held during Times editorial meetings, and they sometimes offer insight into how and why the newspaper determined its editorial stand on various issues. These notes also detail activities and idiosyncracies of some Times employees and, in general, review the newspaper's internal policies, indicating they might have been designed as material for a book. Curtis also jotted down her feelings and reactions to the guests at the publisher's luncheons, and these notes were also found among her personal papers. Often, she indicated that she was impressed by the subjects of these luncheons, as this note about Moshe Dayan indicates :
Moshe Dayan came to lunch today..He said Sadat is not Nassar, and went on to describe the relationships of the Arab countries and Israel— He outlined his plan for the west bank/Jordan — the Jordanians actually living in Israel and going to their own Parliament with Israel military installations in the hills and the people — Arabs — in the valley. He makes Arabs sound like Ahabs. His English has a slight British accent. His suit must have been Italian — a little too big, his shirt a little too big around the collar. His tie is a little too large. What is 178 remarkable about him, besides a delicious sense of humor about himself and all else, is of course that eagle-bright eye and his workman's hands. They are brown and knar led like a farmer's with a badly twisted index finger.2
Curtis's characteristic detail is here, as is her eye for contradictions. She clearly likes Dayan's intelligence and what she considers a self-deprecating humor, but she is also impressed the idea that he is a physical laborer.
This portrait of Dayan is a bit more detailed than some of the other guests Curtis decribes in her notes, but usually these written thoughts about the lunches are complimentary to the guests. She paints most of those interviewed by the newspaper's editorial board as intelligent, friendly and articulate.
It would be impossible to determine the extent of
Curtis's assimilation into the world she covered, but evidence exists that she was constantly aware that journalists can "become" those they cover. Liz Smith, a New
York newspaper columnist and friend of Curtis's, noted at
Curtis's memorial service that this was a continuing theme to
Curtis, and that she was always reminding Smith to remain separate from the subjects of her stories.^
As a well-known New York Times editor and writer, Curtis may have become a victim of the celebrity journalism that is often associated with television journalists. They become part of the story as well as covering it, so it becomes 179 impossible for them to cover any event unobtrusively. in his book. Chic Savages. John Fairchild, publisher of Women's Wear
Daily, discusses at length what he calls Nouvelle Society — celebrities and the extremely wealthy who came to "power" when the Kennedys entered the White House- Barbara Walters and New Yorker writer Renata Adler were journalists who cracked the ranks of Nouvelle Society from the start, and joined in on their parties, Fairchild writes. Eventually, he writes, Curtis "happily began to mix printer’s ink and after- hours pleasure at society's table tops.It is difficult to measure the influence of Curtis's social ties on the content of the page she edited, since it appeared to change little during her tenure as editor. The effect of her extensive friendships with newsmakers and celebrities would be easier to see as she returned to writing.
Curtis as Columnist
By 1976, after she had served as Op-Ed editor for two years, A.M. Rosenthal, a longtime top manager at the Times. was named executive editor of the newspaper, a job that gave him ultimate control over all of the newspaper's editorial operations. Rosenthal was Curtis's immediate superior during many of the years she was family/style editor, and while the relationship between the two improved slightly over the 180 years, they had never become friends, and, professionally, had little if any respect for each other. Curtis thought
Rosenthal too conservative, authoritarian and provincial.
Rosenthal through the years thought Curtis was overrated as a reporter and editor, and that her unconventional news judgment had little place in the Times. The two often battled over how the newspaper reflected their respective political views, and whether the Times should cater primarily to New
Yorkers, or to a national audience. On this latter issue,
Rosenthal took the strict view that the newspaper should be geared toward New Yorkers. Curtis believed it was a newapaper read all over the world, and that its content should reflect this.
Rosenthal was a hands-on editor who felt he must have control over most aspects of the newspaper, including the Op-
Ed and editorial pages. When one of Rosenthal's allies. Max
Frankel, became editorial page editor, he assumed tighter control over Curtis, who had previously reported to Publisher
A.O. Sulzberger. How much Rosenthal and Frankel influenced
Curtis as Op-Ed editor may never be known. William Hunt maintains that, ultimately, Rosenthal was little more than a pest who bothered Curtis while she went ahead and did what she wanted to do.® Harrison Salisbury, Curtis's mentor and friend, maintains that Rosenthal's undermining of Curtis did, in the long run, affect what she ran on the page and weaken it. While Salisbury said that Rosenthal "couldn't dominate 181 [Curtis]" as he did other reporters and editors, he stifled her creativity. "She didn't run as good a page as I thought she'd run,” Salisbury said."^
It was inevitable that as the powers at the Times changed over the years, Curtis would be caught in the middle politically. She still had the friendship and respect of the
Sulzberger family, who published the newspaper, but editorial changes would still affect her. After a shake-up in several other jobs at the newspaper in 1982, Curtis was removed as
Op-Ed editor and she became a weekly columnist for the newspaper. It was an appointment that was to be a blessing and a curse. She was removed as an editor, but was able to return to her first love: writing. How she felt about her return to writing, however, is unclear. William Hunt recalled that Curtis was happy to do what she felt she did best.
Further, she would keep her title as associate editor of the newspaper, and her name would stay on the masthead.
The appointment also had its drawbacks. First, it was
Times management and not Curtis who decided she would leave the Op-Ed editorship, so she did not make the move on her own. Second, it was decided Curtis's column would not appear on the Op-Ed page, considered a prestigious location for columnists, but in various locations inside the newspaper.
Finally, Rosenthal determined the focus and scope of Curtis's new column, and he did not want her writing about politics — just "society social structure and mores of living in the 182 United States" as he stated in a memo.® Rosenthal goes on in the memo to say that the columns “would be feature-type columns, not editorial or political columns. It’s a question of boundaries, and I think Charlotte fully understands them " It was these “boundaries" that separated Rosenthal and Curtis for years, with Rosenthal believing Curtis had always been given too free a hand in what she wrote and placed on her pages.
Change in Focus
Curtis's columns were, for the most part, profiles of wealthy or well-known men and women, often recounting dinners or parties they attended. They were not, however, the same types of stories she wrote while she was a society reporter that held to ridicule the beliefs or trivial activities of the rich and famous. Her tone and voice had changed over the years, losing their subtlety and the satiric subtext for which Curtis became known in the past. Many of the columns were bland, and failed to make incisive statements about the situation or subject. She frequently wrote profiles of gardening or highway beautification projects — and, as copies of personal letters indicate, became friends with former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson through such a beautification program — and often she wrote leaders of 183 public institutions such as the New York Public Library.®
Curtis as columnist wrote about the same institutions and
topics that a decade previously she labeled frivolous.
During an interview then, she said the wealthy “feel neither
guilt nor social responsibility" because many of their
charitable contributions went to public facilities like
fountains and museums rather than the poor. “ Her views had apparently softened.
Curtis's writing style had also changed. Gone were the
short, punchy sentences, colorful descriptions and personal asides that not only made the story readable, but also
inserted her own point of view. The irreverent attitude
certainly had all but disappeared when Curtis became a
columnist. A column about Alexander Haig, for instance, is a
typical example of the kind of writing and subj ect matter in
Curtis's columns. It describes a holiday dinner at which Haig was a guest, along with such luminaries as Mike Wallace, Mrs.
Yul Brynner, former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin R.
Civiletti, and others. The story begins in this nondescript manner:
Alexander M. Haig Jr., in a dinner jacket and a tan acquired on a recent trip to Israel, was at Alice Mason's elaborate holiday dinner party the other night, and he was in a deliciously good mood. Life has been interesting, he said, since he so preciptiously left the State Department last summer. He likes the Hudson Institute think tank, and speech-making and whatever he does 184 at United Technologies and he is indeed at work on a book.^^
The phrases “life has been interesting" and “he likes
the Hudson Institute" are colorless, particularly in the
first paragraph of of a story, and they lack the descriptive phrasing characteristic of Curtis's writing. The rest of the
story is a hodge-podge of mysterious quotes by Haig,
descriptions of the menu, and a recounting of admiring
comments ty the other guests about Haig. Of then-Soviet
Premier Yuri Andropov and his relations with the United
States, for instance, Haig is quoted as saying, mysteriously,
"I can tell you this. It isn't going to matter that Andropov
likes American jazz." Neither Curtis nor Haig elaborates on
this comment.
The little detail Curtis includes does not give the
story substance, nor does it comment about the subjects. In
fact, much of the story seems to be a recounting of idle
cocktail chatter, reviewing the menu and a stream-of-
conscious recounting of snippets of information:
Mrs. Mehle said the conversation was getting much too serious, and over the pork with wild rice, apricots and prunes, Mr. Wallace brought up tennis and the remarkable Renee Richards, whom he had just seen play. That reminded Mrs. Mason that Miss Richards used to be Dr. Richard Raskind, the ophthalmologist, before her sex change.Mr. Civiletti raised the hope that Senator John Glenn would be the Democrats' 1984 Presidential candidate. Which may be what 185 prompted General Haig to mutter something about Walter Mondale's chances, causing Mrs. Mehle to hoot with laughter.
Much of what is described in the story is puzzling in that it seems to be there for no reason. In the past, when
Curtis offered details, they were there to make larger observations about the subj ect and the situation,. (This can be seen in the descriptions of feminist leader Betty
Friedan's "baby, polka-dotted dress" at the women's liberation fundraiser, or Leonard Bernstein's adopting the
Black Panther street language, "I dig absolutely.")^2
In short, Curtis herself seems taken with Haig, as she appears to be with many of the subjects of her columns. If she is put off by the artificiality of the dinner and the banal conversation, she certainly does not convey that to the reader. She recounts the events at the dinner in a straightforward manner, and in a style that could only be taken on one level. Unlike the Curtis of the past, who often wrote on a superficial and hidden level, depending on the sophistication of the reader, her writing at thiw point was one-dimensional.
In addition to frequently exhibiting a liking for her subjects, Curtis also appeared to alter her views of society's upper class. For example, a profile of Vartan
Gregorian, then president of the New York Public Library, is a variation on a theme for Curtis. As she describes his lush 186 office, she is not disapproving, as she might have been in the past, of this man who runs a publicly supported institution. Instead, she writes admiringly of the office and the man: “For here in the big blond oak table in his brocaded office, beneath the green silk Brooke Astor had installed on the walls above the surrounding bookcases, among the old portraits, there is no escaping the library as a magnificent repository for more than books and as a monument to society's need to preserve its history. Here, the words she uses,
“magnificent repository" and “a monument to society’s need...“ connote the grandeur and noble mission of the library and the man who runs it. This admiration might appear strange coming from a person who once decried what she called the misuse of money to public institutions, and to one who criticized the waste of the world's upper class.
A popular subject of Curtis's columns in the early 1980s was a man who eventually became good friends with Curtis.
Leslie Wexner, a Colximbus resident and founder of The Limited chain of speciality stores, was a self-made millionaire who started a small group of stores in Columbus and expanded the company into a multi-million dollar conglomerate. It is easy
to see how the two became friends. Wexner, who was about ten years younger than Curtis, was b o m and reared in Bexley, as
Curtis was. Further, he lived in Columbus yet made frequent trips to New York for business and maintained a residence there, also. Both were highly successful in their fields 187 despite a resistance to fit into accepted molds of behavior.
Correspondence between Wexner and Curtis indicated the two frequently socialized in the 1980s.
Wexner was the subj ect of two of Curtis's columns — one in which she wrote about his urge to donate money and his growing stature as a New York businessman, and the other about his allegiance to Columbus despite his image as a sophisticated and successful New Yorker.Both are glowing profiles of Wexner, and both describe him as a maverick entrepreneur, and one whose desire to avoid the cocktail circuit go against the grain of New York society.
Curtis's relationship with Wexner is important because it cultivated in her an interest in business people and entrepreneurs, and offered her a close look into the mind of an entrepreneur. Hunt and Harrison Salisbury said that she developed this interest late in her life, and it was one that intrigued her. Many clippings of articles about business and entrepreneurs were found among her personal papers, and it is clear she became curious about the subject during her four years as a columnist. Instead of looking down on these people, as she had on the wealthy, Curtis obviously respected them and enjoyed their company. This new respect for self- made business people may have contributed to a softening of her views in general about the wealthy and socially prominent. 188 Salisbury believes Curtis's relationship with Leslie
Wexner and her interest in other entrepreneurs cultivated in her a political and social conservatism that manifested itself in her columns.This new conservatism of Curtis, who had been politically liberal most of her life, may have been
Curtis's way of reconciling late in her life what had always been a source of tension for her: the conservativism of her parents and her upbringing versus her own liberal beliefs and lifestyle. She was now a married woman and comfortable in her personal and financial situation, and an accepted member of
New York society. The beliefs of her parents, and those instilled in her as a child, may have finally returned.
Failing Health
Most of Curtis's friends and Hunt agree that Curtis's column was a disappointment to her and to them. Hunt,
Salisbury, Bender and others said that her writing did not have the sharp edge it had when she wrote regularly in the
1960s and 1970s, nor did she seem to do the research she did in those earlier years.Most of her friends attributed the decline directly to Curtis's rapidly failing health, and the lack of energy accompanying her illness. Bender said Curtis rarely mentioned the status of her health to even her close friends since Curtis's mastectomy in 1974, when physicians 189 doubted she would live beyond 1979. Bender remembered, however, that Curtis periodically would make references to the fact that she did not have the energy she once had. It is likely that a recurring thyroid problem Curtis had began bothering her during the years she was Op-Ed editor. After the diagnosis in 1986 that her cancer had spread. Bender said, her friends realized the extent of her illness and how it must have affected her work.^"^
Curtis's health continued to deteriorate by 1985, three years after she began her column. By this point, treatment for cancer and her recurring thyroid problems conflicted, with treatment for one illness aggravating the other. Hunt recalled that by this year, Curtis had total thyroid failure, causing extreme fatigue, and physicians later wondered how she made it to work each day.
This would be her final full year on the job, and it would also be a year of goodl^es for Curtis. A colleague and former employee of hers died of cancer that year, and the newspaper that gave Curtis her start in journalism, the
Citizen-Journal. folded at the end of the year. Curtis expressed her sorrow at both of these occurrences through her rhetoric. These two events, coming at a time when her own health was deteriorating rapidly, gave her a chance to express herself in a new way. The speech she delivered at the memorial service for her friend and the column she wrote about the demise of the Citizen-Journal were, in some ways. 190 sentimental and sympathetic, two characteristics that rarely if ever could describe Curtis’s work in the past. These works also contained humor, as was characteristic of her, and were not mawkish, but they gave indications that the writer herself was going through some changes in her life.
Curtis spoke in December of 1985 at the memorial service of a friend and co-worker, Judy Klemesrud, a Times feature writer who worked for Curtis when both were on the women" s- news staff. Klemesrud was about Curtis’s age when the feature writer died of cancer. It is obvious from the speech Curtis delivered that she admired Klemesrud and her drive, humor and - love of the newspaper business:
[In Chicago], she knew and loved the streets, the courts and the blow-hard politicians. She covered everything from the livestock shows to page one murders. She quickly became a star... [In New York], She did her stories in what seemed like ten minutes. She cared what happened to her copy. She battled with her editors. Once in her presence, a tray of type crashed to the composing room floor. The tray happened to contain one of her own stories — a story she didn’t like. Uptown pretensions and la-de-dah left her cold. She had little use for fashion, home furnishings food, social events or any of the other ”junk“ she found on the style pages. But she wrote the ’’junk” dutifully, effectively, and hilariously and sometimes brilliantly...She pioneered in the reporting of teenage pregnancy, displaced homemakers, single women adopting children, the fight to legalize abortion and the increasing number of women in the workforce. Judy is buried beneath the pines in the town cemetery, the second member of her family 191 to attend college, the only one with a master's degree. And somewhere, some day, somebody will open her high school year book and remember that her classmates predicted she would be editor of the New York Times. I heard about the prediction shortly after she arrived. “Is that true?" I said. “Of course," she answered. “But don't tell Punch Sulzberger, “is
This remembrance of Klemesrud may not be as overtly sentimental as many conventional eulogies, but Curtis uses her own brand of humor to convey sentiment. This sentiment is seen through the use of anecdotes, particularly about the crashing tray of type and the response to the year book prediction, and it offers a glimpse of the subject's warmth and energy.
This eulogy Curtis delivered for Klemesrud could have easily been Curtis's own eulogy. She describes the love
Klemesrud had not for the soft fashion news about which she wrote, but for the hard, gritty side of reporting. Like
Curtis, however, she “dutifully" wrote what she was assigned, and did it “hilariously" and “brilliantly.“ These were the qualities Curtis wanted in her own work, and the adjectives
she uses to describe Klemesrud ' s work were ones she strived
for to describe her own.
The similarities between the two women continue.
Klemesrud, Curtis notes, “battled with her editors," and even had the audacity, she implies, to express her views by- knocking over a tray of type. This irreverence, and the view 192 that Klemesrud wrote for herself, could, again describe
Curtis. Finally, Curtis does not overlook Klemesrud's love for her hometown and for her roots as she notes where she is buried and the passage about her in her high school year book.
The poignancy of the eulogy is not conventional Curtis.
She tem. pers it, however, with the light humor that had always been a trademark of her writing. This eulogy becomes particularly moving in light of the severity of Curtis * s own illnes at the time she delivered it. Curtis evidently became accustomed to hiding her physical problems, as a thank-you note from Klemesrud's father, Theo, shows. Mr. Klemesrud told
Curtis he enjoyed meeting her although, “I had been warned that you might not be present since you had been under the weather. Imagine how pleased I was when you arrived — energetic and s p u n k y ."20
Late that year, Curtis was to lose another "friend" and write about that loss. On December 31, 1985, the Citizen-
Journal (formerly the Citizen) ceased publication. A week later, Curtis wrote a column about the paper's demise in which she shows that the newspaper had its own distinct personality. Although it was the smallest newspaper in town and had the cheapest budget, it inspired loyalty and allegiance in its staff and its readers:
The Citizen...was the third paper in a three- paper town, then the second in a two-paper 193 city. Finally, the other day, the paper was gone, dead at the age of 74, and the mourners are legion. It won no Pultizer Prizes. It was not famous for its editors. But it had its share of scoops and exposes. It gave a fair, reasonable and sometimes warmly human account of its community. It offered a less conservative Republican editorial page than its opposition, and it never fought the Catholic Church.21
Curtis admired the newspaper not because it was flashy, but because it served its readers and was human. Curtis felt no anger or rage at the newspaper's closing, but appeared resigned to it. The Citizen-Journal, she wrote, was simply a victim of a changing, technologically advanced society where newspapers are not as important as they once were: "The paper was a buggy whip in a jet age, and a frayed buggy whip at that. The economics, to paraphrase Thomas Mann, were in dead earnest.“
As was the case with her disease, Curtis does not rage against the inevitable in her views about the newspaper's demise. She accepts it rationally, acknowledging the it was one victim of a rapidly changing world. Hunt had noted that she accepted the initial diagnosis of her illness in the same way. Rather than allowing it to diminish her spirit and anger her, she simply decided she would continue her life as usual with the hopes of proving the medical community wrong.
Curtis's familiarity with business and the business community may have also contributed to this resigned attitude about the 194 newspaper's closing. Although she loved the Citizen-Journal and what it offered, her quoting of Thomas Mann shows that she is aware that sentimentality has little place in the newspaper industry or other businesses. Her column about the folding of the newspaper was a mixture of sentimentality and sorrow over its demise, and the realism for which Curtis was known.
Back in Columbus
^ the summer of 1986, Curtis was too ill to work. The cancer had spread to her liver, and treatment for her thyroid continued to aggravate the therapy for cancer. She returned to Columbus at this time, and stayed with Hunt in their home when she was not in Ohio State University Hospital.
Curtis the rhetor remained active despite her poor health and dinimished energy. She wrote lengthy letters to her friends in New York, kept ten detailed diaries of her illness in reporter's notebooks and even found the time to criticize her doctors. Hunt has not released these detailed diaries, but Mary1in Bender remembered the last letter Curtis wrote her on March 1, 1986, six weeks before she died. Bender said the letter voiced enthusiasm at the recent departure of
Former Chief of Staff Donald Regan from the White House, who was forced out, Curtis said, by a "strong Smith graduate." 195 Curtis, ever the editor, suggested that Bender, then business magazine editor of the Times, do a story on business tycoons.22 Her illness had not dampened her interest in politics and what would make a good story for the Times.
Truly a physician's daughter — and wife — Curtis, while ill, pored over medical journals and books about her illness. Hunt said the journals she kept were filled with names and profiles of people she met and consulted with while she was ill in Columbus. He said the notes are filled with graphs and laboratory tests, with times and hours in detail, as well as her personal “critiques" of her physicians.22 This detail is reminiscent of her writing for the Times and the
Citizen, as well as her letters to her family while she was in college. They also repeat a rhetorical theme: her skepticism of physicians and a personal interest in deciphering the detailed numbers and graphics that accompany diagnoses.
Perhaps it was her training as an editor, along with her headstrong nature, that compelled her to orchestrate her own memorial service. Curtis had made plans with Hunt and a few of her closest friends for a memorial service at Lincoln
Center. She gave instructions regarding the people who would speak, the music and the location within Lincoln Center. This planning, literally on her deathbed, also offers an indication of her dispassionate nature. While she was in pain, and with the realization of her terminal nature of her 196 illness, she could still plan such an event. Curtis was someone who, because of her cancer diagnosis twelve years earlier, had faced the prospect of death quietly almost daily. And she was also one who never lost her love for her native Ohio, even though career demands kept her from living there most of her life. So comments she made in mid-April
1987, as she lie in her hospital bed, were not surprising.
Hunt shared them at the memorial service: "She said that the fourth day before she died was one of the happiest of her life because the Ohio spring came in through open windows.
Curtis's comments days before her death, along with the tireless notes and letters she wrote during her year in
Columbus, display her spirit and optimism. Her love of and ties to Ohio, one of the few constants in her life, remained strong until the end. She obviously knew she was dying, but even that did not cause her to become maudlin or complacent.
She was the ever-opinionated rhetor, even at the end of her life.
It is interesting that two of Curtis's finest pieces were written at a time when she was quite ill, and during a time when she knew she did not have long to live. These pieces are in some ways a culmination of her career; they maintain the humor and light tone of some of her previous work, but are poignant in their message. The Klemesrud eulogy showed that she did not mind that some of her finest work 197 would only be heard a handful of people — those who were at the Klemesrud memorial service.
The column about the Citizen-Journal showed she did not feel compelled to write about New York or New York subjects to interest Times readers. Both of these indicate her view that life goes on despite deathand illness.
Curtis was, for more than a decade, able to accept and reconcile herself to the grave medical diagnosis doctors gave her in 1974. Comments from those close to her, and an examination of her rhetoric from this period until the mid-
1980s, show that the knowledge of her precarious health did not have a dramatic effect on the way she did her job.
The reasons for the gradual change in Curtis's rhetoric in the mid 1980s remain unknown. Her friends maintain the debilitating effect of her illness over these last few years kept her from doing her job in the way she was accustomed.
She did not have the drive and energy she once had simply because she was ill, they believe. It is also possible, however, that Curtis's way of life, her stature as an opinion-maker and her social status may have led to more conservative beliefs and, consequently, a change in her rhetoric. She had, indeed, become one of the socially prominent people she had written about for years, and had returned to some of the beliefs and values of her parents. It is natural that her rhetoric would reflect this gradual change. 198
NOTES
1 Interview with William Hunt, June 9, 1990.
2 Notes taken by Charlotte Curtis, June 13, 1974, SL.
3 Comments made by Liz Smith during memorial service for Charlotte Curtis, May 20, 1987, SL, NYT.
4 Interestingly, Liz Smith herself became a part of the story when she covered the marital break-up of Donald and Ivana Trump. She was shown on the cover of the New York Daily News comforting Mrs. Trump. Barbara Walters and other broadcast journalists are sometimes accused of being bigger celebrities than those they cover.
5 John Fairchild, Chic Savages. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 102.
® Interview, William Hunt, June 9, 1990.
7 Interview, Harrison Salisbury, December 16, 1989.
8 Memo, A.M. Rosenthal to A.O. Sulzberger, February 17, 1982, SL.
9 charlotte Curtis, “The Library: It Lives," New York Times. July 17, 1983, p. C-10.
10 These comments, as noted in chapter V of this study, appeared in Lois Melina's “Times Editor Doubts Social Responsibility of the Rich," in the Muncie Star. October 8, 1977, p. 1.
11 Charlotte Curtis, "A Rare Haig, At Dinner,“ New York Times. December 20, 1982, p. C-9.
12 These stories are discussed in detail in chapter IV of this study.
13 Curtis, “The Library: It Lives." 199
14 Curtis wrote columns about Wexner in the Times in “A Restless Philanthropist," April 3, 1983, p. C-13, and “The Elusive Les Wexner," June 16, 1985, p. C-11.
15 Interview, Harrison Salisbury, December 16, 1989.
16 This was discussed during interviews with, among others, Macylin Bender, October 9, 1989, Harrison Salisbury, December 16, 1989, Liz Smith, December 10, 1989, and William Hunt, June 5, 1990.
1'^ Interview with Bender.
18 Interview with Hunt.
19 Comments of Charlotte Curtis made during memorial service for Judy Klemesrud, December 1985, SL.
20 Letter, Theo Klemesrud to Charlotte Curtis, December 20, 1985, SL.
21 Charlotte Curtis, “A Newspaper is Elegized,“ New York Times. January 7, 1986, p. C-14.
22 Comments of Marylin Bender during memorial service for Charlotte Curtis, May 20, 1987.
22 Comments of William Hunt, memorial service for Charlotte Curtis, SL, NYT.
24 Ibid. CHAPTER VII
CONCLUSION
In his discussion of the status of contemporary public address, Stephen E. Lucas noted that because of the close link between thought and language, there will always be an interest and a need for biographical studies of rhetors — studies that "move from the examination of a speaker's idiographic patterns of discourse to judgments about his or her character and habits of mind.
What Lucas is describing is the rhetorical biography, a genre that goes beyond the examination of text and into the mind and life of the rhetor. As Lucas wrote, it is often impossible to separate discourse from the events surrounding it; knowledge of these outside events gives the text meaning and allows for a fuller understanding of it : "The more we know about a speaker's life in general, the more likely we are to transcend what is obvious about his or discourse and to reach a level of insight that produces genuine scholarly breakthroughs.
200 201 In the case of journalist Charlotte Curtis, the examination of her life is vital in the understanding of her rhetoric. It would be difficult to study her discourse without this backdrop. First as a reporter and editor, her rhetoric was profoundly influenced by the times and events in which she lived. After all, it is the reporter's job to write about what is going on in the world. Inevitably, world events shaped her rhetoric. Second, her professional development — the years at which her career was at its peak — came during the 1960s and 1970s, times of turbulence and change in the
United States; times when politics and culture entered nearly every aspect of life.
The rhetorical biography may also be the most effective vehicle to examine a rhetor such as a journalist whose discourse is prolific, and one who is not necessarily politically motivated or who is not overtly trying to persuade. For this type of non-political figure, outside events may take a much more subtle but pivotal role in shaping discourse.
Opportunities and Pitfalls
The rhetorical biography, however, while offering many opportunities for the rhetorical critic, also presents problems. This rhetorical biography of Curtis offered the 202 author a glimpse of some of the genre's possibilities as well as its limitations.
The rhetorical biographer should not be content to have only a passing acquaintance with the era in which the subject lived. Curtis matured as a rhetor in the 1960s and 1970s. For the biographer to read in a history textbook about the turbulence of that era is not enough. He or she must grasp the flavor and essence of those decades by reading magazines, newspapers and books of the times, and by trying in any way to become acc[uainted with the era's culture. By doing this, the subject's thoughts, motives and point of view become clearer. It is important that the biographer remember that most rhetors are, consciously or unconsciously, products of their time, and the content and style of their discourse reflect the times in which they lived. When she was a society reporter, Curtis's writings became widely read in part because they went against the grain of society reporting of the times.
In addition, the rhetorical biographer should not hesitate to use knowledge and experience gained from his or her own life when writing about the subject. For instance, the author of this work spent more than ten years as a newspaper reporter; certainly this experience helped her understand Curtis's job and way of thinking when it came to journalism, as well as her love of newspapers. This insight 203 was valuable when she attempted to piece together Curtis's life and rhetoric.
The rhetorical biographer must rely heavily on primary research materials. Rhetorical biographers must of course become students of the subject's discourse, and they must also study materials recounting the era in which the subject lived. Personal interviews, letters, college notes and essays, memos and other primary materials, however, form the background of the rhetorical biography because they offer insights into the subject's reasoning and motives. If these materials are not available, or if they are available on a limited basis, the rhetorical biography may not be the proper vehicle for analysis.
Finally, the rhetorical biographer should not ignore the value of original drafts or writings and speeches. Revisions and modifications, as well as margin notes and the like, demonstrate the evolution of a work and should contribute to its analysis. These materials should be studied if possible.
When studying so many aspects of a rhetor's life, it is easy for a researcher to take much for granted, or to overlook obvious elements. The rhetorical biographer should be careful to examine primary information and view it with some skepticism. For example, while personal interviews with those who knew the subject are very valuable, one must be aware of the fact that memory is often inaccurate, and friends, relatives, acquaintances and adversaries may have an 204 axe to grind or a point of view; their statements should be checked thoroughly.
The same can be said for primary materials. Rhetorical biographers should be aware that all the letters, memos and written material found among a subject's personal papers are not necessary legitimate. The researcher may not know the background of a particular letter or memo. It may have purposely been written as a joke or parody, for instance, and therefore its meaning may be the complete opposite of what was seemingly intended. Similarly, one cannot assume that all of the unsigned material found among personal papers was written by the subject. What appears to have been written by the subject may indeed have been given to him or her by someone else. Skepticism on the part of the researcher and scrupulous checking of dates and other facts can reduce this type of misinterpretation.
The rhetorical biographer also walks a narrow line of interpretation. That is, he or she, like the historian, must make leaps from data to interpretation. The rhetorical biographer must also make psychological assessments about behavior of the subject. The researchers should be bold in making those leaps and confident in his or her own authority and knowledge as an expert on the subject. The researcher should also be careful not to overinterpret, or come to unwarranted conclusions. Curtis, for example, was the daughter of a physician — a man whom her friends described 205 as stern and imposing — and she was raised in an intellectually stimulating environment. Later in her life, she met and married a physician eight years her senior, who shared her interest in journalism, politics and sociology, and who was born and raised in the same town as Curtis. Can one draw that she saw in her husband a more open, relaxed version of her own father, and that this contributed to her attraction? This is an interpretation that is pivotal when analyzing changes in Curtis’s attitudes and behavior during the latter part of her life. To make this assessment, the researcher must take into account all the data gathered about the subject and come to a conclusion.
Finally, and perhaps most important, rhetorical biographers should not become so preoccupied with details that they overlook the main motivation of the subject. In other words, they should not miss the forest for the trees.
Curtis the rhetor lived a fascinating life and left behind a large volume of writings and speeches. A basic contradiction shaped the core of her life, and, consequently, her work: she was raised in an affluent family where appearances and public behavior were important. Yet she rose to power at one of the most prestigious media outlets in the country because she mocked the the very social group of which her family was a part, and deemed this group’s activities trivial. The pull she felt between her upbringing and her ’’job” to seek the truth behind appearances influenced her throughout her life 206 and anyone studying her rhetoric must .keep this in mind to reach a psychological understanding of her.
An Evaluation
It is difficult to assess the significance of any rhetorical figure, although attempting to gauge the effects of a person’s discourse may help determine his or her significance. How Curtis influenced American journalism may never be known, but major journalistic figures such as publisher A.O. Sulzberger and Harrison Salisbury have said that Curtis's creative, unorthodox approach to women's-page and society coverage was adapted by newspapers throughout the country. In this way, she had a major influence on coverage of those issues nationwide.^ Further, the New York Times has long been recognized as a leader and pacesetter among
American newspapers, and journalistic changes and innovations it adopts are often implemented by other newspapers.
Curtis's legacy, however, may live on in more subtle ways. Professionally and personally, she may serve as a model of one who was not afraid to go against convention and question what had always been accepted form and content on the women's-news and Op-Ed pages of American newspapers. In this way, she helped publicize compelling social issues by 207 placing on her pages sometimes controversial stories about topics rarely discussed in-depth before in the newspaper.
Curtis did not alter her irreverent style of writing to fit the conservative Times,, not did she change her often skeptical views of the growing feminist movement to conform to what was then prevailing thought that the movement was
"politically correct" and that those who did not embrace it sere against women's rights. Her actions in both of these areas earned her respect among editors at the newspaper and propelled her into a position of opinion-maker.
Curtis’s writing style was one of winks and asides that dug the knife into public figures and the wealthy, and allowed them to indict themselves with their own words. This style may seem somewhat passe today in the era of such publications as Vanity Fair, Spy magazine, Esquire and others that target the socially prominent and often hold them to ridicule.
Curtis was among the first to exercise this "nothing-is- sacred" attitude when it came to public figures and the wealthy, and she helped legitimize the form by printing it in a conventional publication like the Times.
Further Studies
Zarefsky, Medhurst and others have called for more rhetorical biographies.^ That genre is an underused but effective form of rhetorical analysis as long as the critic 208 stresses rhetorical criticism over biographical description, and is willing to go into the depth necessary to explore the subject's life and discourse. Because of its depth, the genre also makes itself available to a wide variety of audiences outside of rhetoric.^ Future studies should focus on non political and possibly written discourse. Public address scholars in the late 1960s and 1970s called for a relaxing of the rigid standards claiming that rhetorical studies be conducted primarily on the public oration. But the majority of studies still focus on "public," or political, orators, and work needs to be done outside of this realm.
Medhurst suggests that the rhetoric of such figures as
Lee lacocca, Donald Trump and "even Bruce Springsteen" be studied.
Beyond this, we need more rhetorical studies about writers, who, like Curtis, indirectly have the power and influence to persuade — writers like New York Times columnist Russell Baker, Washington Post columnist David
Broder, and Walter Lippman. As Medhurst implies, persuasion can also occur through songs and other cultural works; playwrights, authors and critics should also be considered.
Rhetorical biographies are also needed about those active in major social movements because their discourse and their private lives often are intertwined. Possible subjects of this type of study wold be feminists Robin Morgan or Betty
Friedan, both of whom are currently active in the modern 209 feminist movement, and were active in its formation in the
1960s.
A rhetorical biographer takes on a mammoth task of studying at length a rhetor’s life and works to come to a psychological understanding of the subject. The result can be a powerful analysis that allows us to not simply appreciate a rhetor’s creative contributions, but also to gauge his or her impact on the audience, and to change lives.
NOTES
- Stephen E. Lucas, "The Renaissance of American Public Address: Text and Context in Rhetorical Criticism," Quarterly Journal of Speech. May 1988, p. 245.
2 Lucas, o o . cit., pp. 245-24 6.
3 Sulzberger made these comments during a memorial service for Curtis on May 20, 1987 (SL, NYT), and Salisbury discussed Curtis's influence during an interview with the author on December 16, 1989.
< See comments by David Zarefsky and Michael Medhurst in Michael C. Leff's and Fred Kauffeld’s, Text in Context. Davis, Calif.: Hermagoras Press, 1989, pp. 41, 26.
= For a fuller discussion of this, see Zarefsky, o p . cit.. p. 19.
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