Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

Moving Up

New York City

1973

After Dena took the job at the local station in New York, she worked for three long years, smiling and nodding at the male cohost of the morning show with the bad wig, and interviewing authors of books about child rearing, interior decorating, and cooking, three subjects in which she had absolutely no interest. Finally, she landed what she wanted, and became cohostess of the network’s morning show. It had been an easy transition. Still, although it was network, she found herself sitting, smiling and nodding at another male cohost with another bad hairpiece and doing more or less the same sort of interviews as before.

It was the best job most women could expect at the time and most would have been satisfied. But she had her eye on the new, hourlong prime-time evening news show that her old boss, Ira Wallace, had created and was now producing. Just as Sandy had predicted, there was pressure on the network to use a woman. Soon Sandy talked the network into letting her do several interviews on the evening show. Although they were fluff pieces used in between hard news, she was good at it and she was meeting some interesting and important people.

And yet, after a year, she continued to be thought of as nothing more than a pretty girl who could fill in and handle a few lightweight interviews. Wallace or any other producer was not ready to assign serious, hard-hitting, news-making interviews to any woman. She knew if she was going to ever get one, she would have to go out and get it herself.

She spent weeks searching, and then one day found her man. Everybody suspected that when Senator Orville Bosley switched political parties and became a Democrat, he was positioning himself for something big, maybe the vice presidency. The press were curious. Reporters had tried in vain to get to him, but he was, uncharacteristically, very discreet and not granting interviews. Ever since Woodward and Bernstein and the Watergate investigations had started, politicians were suddenly leery of reporters and started to turn down many interviews. Luckily for Dena, Bosley thought he was God’s gift to women. Dena thought him a complete and pompous ass, and right up her alley.

She found out he would be at a reception for newly elected Democratic senators and congressmen at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. That afternoon, she took the train to Washington and that night Dena timed her entrance for about an hour after it had started. She arrived alone, wearing a long black dress with a slit up the side. She knew her legs and her hair were her best features. The only jewelry she wore was a gold choker around her neck. She did not want to look like a senator’s wife and she didn’t.

Bosley was over in the corner of the room surrounded, as usual, by a group of men who all had on the same suit and tie. He looked to be puffed up with his usual macho self-importance and was holding forth on trade policy when he glanced up.

She stood in the doorway, long enough to stop conversation, then walked straight through the crowd toward Bosley. People stepped aside like the parting of the Red Sea and she did not stop until she was standing in front of him. Her hair was parted on one side and when she turned her head slightly as she spoke, it fell forward, enough to intrigue him. She looked him directly in the eyes, smiled, and said, “So, Senator, I hear you and I smoke the same brand of cigar.”

Three weeks later he was sitting across from her in the studio with a microphone around his neck, preparing to give his first major interview since switching parties. Ira Wallace was impressed. The regular male anchors were furious Dena had been the one to rope him in and hoped she would fall flat on her Scandinavian face. But the viewing audience at home did not see all the eyes behind the scenes or know that up in the booth they were focused on her as if she were about to jump off a tall building. All the audience saw was this nice-looking young woman in a simple, neat red and black wool suit, with huge, clear blue eyes and a peaches-and-cream complexion, who seemed, when they began, as calm and composed as if she were in her own living room chatting with an old friend. She smiled at her guest and appeared to hang on every word he was saying. She looked sympathetic when he told her about growing up in the Depression and having to eat pancakes for an entire year. She read a quote from one of his grammar school teachers, saying, “Orville was always a leader, even as a boy. I knew he would do well.” They laughed over a photograph they flashed on the screen of little Orville in tattered overalls. After he was completely relaxed, she said with a smile, “Senator, people have said that even though you are a Democrat, your voting record is … actually, more like a conservative Republican’s. Don’t you feel it would be fair to inform your Democratic constituency that, while your party has changed, your position has remained the same?”

Bosley was caught off guard. He thought he would go on talking about his poor childhood and how he had worked his way through college picking cotton and digging ditches and he began to stutter.

“Well, uh … I think that charge is completely unfounded. Everybody who knows me and knows my voting record …”

Dena knew his record cold and she sat back and drew out his position, issue by issue. She was ready for him, carefully prepped by Ira’s team of researchers. When he had finished one, she proceeded to cite his every vote on that and eventually every issue he mentioned, chapter and verse, with the efficiency of a machine gun. The male interviewers’ hopes for her demise slowly faded. His voting record contradicted everything he had just said. She had busted him big time and she had done it in prime time on network television.

It had been a tightrope to walk. She had to look good, be charming, have her facts ready, and yet make it seem as if they were almost a surprise to her as well. And she had done so in less than ten minutes.

After the director had called, “Off the air,” Dena had the feeling she had just scored a touchdown at the last minute.

As she was being escorted off the studio floor, being congratulated by a pleased Ira Wallace, and by Sandy, she glanced back at Bosley. It was only a second, but long enough to see his face. He sat there, completely devastated by what had just happened to him.

A week later when she read that after the interview Bosley probably would not get enough votes to be reelected, let alone make a vice-presidential candidate, a wave of guilt flooded over her. She realized what she had done and understood even more now just how powerful the medium she worked in was. But it was too late. She could not look back, not now; she had to keep moving forward. Ira had hinted that if she played her cards right, in a year or so she might be the first female to be offered a permanent spot on the show.

She was definitely on the way up. Yet there had been a price to pay for Bosley—and for her. His career was wrecked and she started to wake up in the middle of the night with terrible stomachaches.