Truth Be Told Read online

  LeBron grew up about half an hour away from Cleveland. He’d played his first seven years in the NBA for the Cavaliers. He’d carried the team on his back to the NBA finals. Cleveland hadn’t won a championship in any sport since 1964, and he was seen as a savior. LeBron was beloved in Cleveland and celebrated almost everywhere else. Nobody could hate LeBron James. If you paid good money to see your team play against LeBron, and he beat you with a last-second shot, you weren’t mad. You were grateful that you were in the arena that night to see him make that shot.

  Then he went on the air and said, “I’m taking my talents to South Beach.” He wasn’t even going to be playing in South Beach. He was going to play in Miami—on the other side of the bay. By saying those two words, South Beach, he implied girls, bathing suits, hip. Everything that isn’t Cleveland. So it came off as a put-down. The broadcast had been arranged by LeBron to raise money for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. But by the end, the world saw people in Cleveland burning his jersey.

  It was the first topic of conversation at the breakfast table at Nate ’n Al’s the next morning. Nobody denied LeBron had every right to move. He was a free agent, and he shouldn’t be told where he had to work. Ask any basketball player where he’d rather be in January—Cleveland or Miami—and it’s not hard to guess the answer. Given the emotional ties, you’d have to call LeBron’s decision courageous in many ways. But the way LeBron left made you wonder if he should have stayed. It also made me wonder how people leave, and how I would when the time came.

  When Walter Cronkite came on my show at the age of eighty-six, he was wearing his CBS cuff links. But he was not happy when the network made him give up his anchor spot because of a rule that enforced retirement at sixty-five.

  Dan Rather left CBS in anger after forty-four years of service. This after his reportage on a story about George Bush 43’s Air National Guard service was attacked. The president of CBS told me that everything Dan reported was true, he just didn’t have original documents. Dan got a bum rap, and he filed a $70 million lawsuit against the network that was thrown out of court. I’m sure that’s not the way he wanted to go.

  George Bush 43 has had a classy and gracious departure. He’s been uncritical of the current administration and he wrote a pretty good book. He was honest enough to admit that when he made his decision to invade Iraq, it was more instinctive than intellectual: Damnit, I’m going to go. His approval ratings are higher now than when he was president.

  Bill Clinton hated to leave the White House. During Bush’s inauguration, Clinton was hanging around the podium. He just did not want to leave. The honesty in that makes me smile.

  I remembered Harry Truman walking to the train station after Eisenhower was inaugurated. There was no Secret Service protection for former presidents at the time. Truman just said goodbye and got on a train like a guy who had finished a day’s work and was going home. That’s dignity.

  Sometimes the end can be confusing. There’s a story about the comedian Milton Berle getting called up to take a stage bow at a late age. He could barely walk to the stage. But as soon as he did, he started telling jokes. He did four minutes—had the crowd going wild. My friend George Schlatter was watching and he called Berle the next morning. “Ruth,” he said, when Berle’s wife picked up the phone, “last night Milton was just wonderful.”

  Ruth said, “He came home and was just sick about it.”

  “Why?”

  “He could only remember four minutes of material and he had to get off.”

  Berle thought he’d bombed because he couldn’t go any longer.

  Maybe leaving is hardest on athletes, because they seem to get old so much sooner than the rest of us. Why did Willie Mays have to stay that extra year? Nobody wants to see Willie Mays drop a fly ball. I have great respect for Jim Brown and Sandy Koufax. Jim was maybe the best running back ever in professional football. He left at the height of his career on his own terms to make movies—and he became a star. Boy, did Koufax do it with style and grace. He had arthritis in the elbow. The doctor said, We could treat you, and you could pitch. But any one pitch might leave you with no use of your left arm. That wasn’t worth it to Sandy. He never had the surgery, he simply left, but he still throws batting practice at spring training.

  I remember when Michael Jordan left. I was one of the emcees on the night his statue was unveiled in front of the Bulls’ arena. Michael had conquered everything that had been set in front of him in basketball and was leaving to see if he could succeed at baseball. All great athletes, Tommy Lasorda says, have enormous faith in themselves. But not many would try to switch sports at the height of their career. It was cold that night, and we had to wait until the crew threw it to us from inside the arena. While the two of us were standing by that statue, Michael said, “I hope I can hit.” That was a gutsy decision.

  Maybe the best farewell ever was Lou Gehrig’s at Yankee Stadium. The whole thing must have been bewildering to him, because it was inexplicable to everyone else. He was a hulky guy and all of a sudden, he started to lose it. My cousin Bernie told me he’d swing and you’d expect the ball to fly out of the park but it would only be a pop-up. Nobody knew anything about his disease before he got it. That’s why it became known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. I was eight years old and didn’t hear his famous speech. Most people remember the speech scene from the movie about him starring Gary Cooper. But when you go back and listen to the actual speech in its entirety, it’s surprising. It’s much longer than you think. Gehrig was rather shy and not known as an eloquent man. But he spoke quite a bit about the disease, about his teammates, about hearing from the hated New York Giants. He was eloquent when it counted. Given his situation, his words are about as good an exit as you can make: “I consider myself the luckiest man alive.”

  Then I thought of the worst way to go. Oddly enough, the guy who came to mind was a guy I once replaced—Walter Winchell.

  Never again in the history of the media will anyone be what Winchell was. Young people don’t know him, but there’s never been a more powerful journalist. He had a radio show every Sunday night that all of America listened to. He also wrote a gossip column that was syndicated in about five hundred newspapers. In New York, everybody would buy the Mirror and turn to his column on page eleven. He must have had eight million readers a day. He invented words. If a famous couple was going to have a baby, they were infantesimizing. He discovered stars. He hurt them. Ninety-nine percent of what he reported was true—because anyone who tipped him wrong about a celebrity divorce never got in his column again. He used to ride with police squad cars at night to get stories. Louis Lepke, the gangster who ran the Italian mob’s hit squad, Murder Incorporated, turned himself in to Winchell. He was afraid he would be shot in the street. Through a source, he said, “I will surrender only to Winchell.” And it was Winchell who brought him in. Franklin Roosevelt courted Winchell, gave him entrée to the White House. Roosevelt realized Winchell’s power and used it. So did FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. Winchell became so big they made a special law to stop him from tipping stocks.

  What started to derail Winchell was an incident involving Josephine Baker, the black singer and performer. She went to the Stork Club with some friends, got a seat, but the waiters wouldn’t serve her. She’d call after them, and they’d keep walking by. She got mad, and news of the incident hit the press. Everybody started to rap the Stork Club. One of Winchell’s friends owned the Stork Club, and Winchell came to his defense. In doing so, he labeled Baker a Communist.

  That started his descent. Frank Sinatra announced that he would go to the Stork Club only if Abraham Lincoln made the reservation. When Roosevelt died and Truman became President, Winchell’s access to the White House ended.

  Papers started to drop him. I was the guy who replaced him at the Miami Herald. Down, down, down, he went. It couldn’t get sadder. Toward the end, he’d type a column, mimeograph it, and hand it out on street corners.

  We began to think of guests
for my last shows. So many wonderful and accomplished people were considered for the last two weeks. Many accepted. Some were unavailable. In the end, the lineup worked out almost perfectly because the guests reflected nearly all the subjects that had been discussed on the show during the past twenty-five years. World events. Politics. Film. Crime. Music. Money. Medicine. Technology. The media. In fact, the show’s final two weeks made the perfect table of contents for this book. Each day seemed like another chapter.

  But when it came time to think about the final guest, there was one name that immediately came to mind: Mario Cuomo. The former governor of New York was the best speaker of our time and a good friend of mine. He came to the hospital when I had heart surgery. He invited me to spend a night at the Governor’s Mansion. He and his wife danced in a conga line at my seventieth birthday party at Sammy’s Romanian restaurant on the Lower East Side. So we called him. We said: December 16 is our last night. You were the first guest, you be the last. We’ll fly you out. Mario accepted.

  But then on his show, which led into mine, Eliot Spitzer said something uncomplimentary about Cuomo’s son, Andrew. Andrew was running for governor of New York. Even though Spitzer followed up by giving Andrew his endorsement, Mario never forgave. He canceled. Maybe in his mind he was thinking, This is familia. Hit my family, and you hit me. It must be like The Godfather.

  But why hold it against me? I didn’t do anything. Let me work this out, I thought. I called him. I knew that if I could get him on the phone, I had him. But he didn’t take the call. I left him a long message. Nothing. We tried Andrew. Nothing again.

  It was perplexing. Morning after morning I left breakfast at Nate ’n Al’s wondering: Why?

  And that’s the thing: There were still unanswered questions.

  I remembered an interviewer at a radio station who quit and shifted to management. When I asked him why, he said, “I’ve asked every question and heard every answer.” Not me. After fifty-three years, I’m still not out of questions. Either events bring them up or they just keep popping into my head.

  Why do people close their eyes when they sneeze?

  Do we still make razor blades in America?

  Why don’t you laugh when you tickle yourself?

  Which made me wonder: What was I going to do with all my questions when I no longer had a show to ask them on?

  3

  Riches

  The day after the Putin interview aired was one of the best of my life: The richest man in the world came on my show and then over to my house for a dinner party. Where I came from in Brooklyn, we didn’t have dinner parties. Your aunts and uncles came over for supper.

  After my father died, my family went on welfare—only in those days it wasn’t called welfare. It was called Relief. I can remember an inspector coming over to look in our refrigerator. My mother was only supposed to buy choice meat, not top Grade A. But she bought top Grade A so her children could have the best and took less for herself. Those are the things you don’t forget. And now I was hosting a dinner party for the richest guy in the world.

  It’s only natural to think of money when you hear the name Carlos Slim. Just before I interviewed him, his personal wealth was estimated at almost $54 billion. It was said that he was allergic to interviews, so nobody really knew much about him. To the public, he was not so much a man as he was a gigantic number that you saw in Forbes magazine.

  Someone in our breakfast gang at Nate ’n Al’s couldn’t help but wonder about the interest on $54 billion at 5 percent and started calculating.

  “That’s $2.7 billion a year.”

  “Fifty-two weeks into that is how much?”

  “About $52 million a week.”

  “Seven days in a week ...”

  “Comes to more than $7 million a day.”

  It’s wild to think about it. If Carlos Slim decided to retire and do nothing, the interest on his money would be more than seven million a day.

  Carlos owns the Mexican phone system and the largest grocery store chain in Central America. In 1997, he bought 7 percent of Apple. I can remember a conversation I had with the media mogul Haim Saban about Carlos. Haim is a billionaire several times over too. He runs Univision, the largest Spanishspeaking network in America. “There is such a thing as a billionaire’s club,” Haim said. “We all talk the same language. But every time I hear Carlos Slim’s name I feel like a pauper.”

  It’s only natural for me to be curious about men of great wealth, because money has always been something of a mystery to me. I remember a time when I was a kid when my friend Herbie asked, If you could make $100 a day, how many days a week would you work? I said, “Two. If I could make ten thousand dollars a year for the rest of my life . . . I’ll take that deal. Where do I sign?” That was twice what my father ever made.

  I’m certainly aware of the fascination many people have with money. But to this day, money has never really meant that much to me. All I ever really wanted to do was talk into a microphone. Somehow, money came with it. Not only that, but access to people who’d accumulated fortunes. I’ve always been more fascinated by the singer than the song. So my curiosity lies in the billionaire—not the billions.

  I’ve interviewed many men of great wealth. It’s always intriguing to see how they all came to their riches—because one thing that always struck me was how different their circumstances were.

  Carlos Slim’s father started their empire with a dry goods store and died when Carlos was thirteen—leaving behind $20 million that Carlos would turn into billions. Steve Wynn’s father died just as Steve graduated from college—leaving behind substantial debt. Warren Buffett’s dad was a congressman. Ted Turner’s father committed suicide.

  Kirk Kerkorian and Donald Trump both own hotels. Kirk turned thirteen in the Depression, never went past eighth grade and started out installing water heaters. He is intensely private and would never do an interview. Donald went to the Wharton business school at U. Penn. He puts his last name on everything he owns, and I interviewed him on my show at least twenty times. Art Linkletter was known to everyone in America as a television-show host and interviewer of kids. Few realized that he was an entrepreneur who introduced the motel to Australia, once owned a piece of the photo concessions at Disneyland, and financed the Hula Hoop.

  They’re all so different, yet the same basic qualities seem to run through them. They wonder about things. They’re very strong in their convictions even though they’re open to the other side. They’re loyal. They have a love of numbers. They’re risk takers. And they keep at it, even when the safest move would be to cash out and go home. As the comedian Albert Brooks says: You can sell off everything and move to an island. But the mind of a billionaire wouldn’t do that.

  These are qualities you’d like in your friends. So it’s no wonder I’ve become close with many of them. When you get to know them, you find that money to them is simply a byproduct of what they do.

  Take Donald Trump. He’s in real estate. Real estate is all about cultivating relationships and getting an edge. That’s what he’s great at. There was a well-known moment on the show when I asked him how he gets the edge. He casually continued the conversation and then, out of nowhere, said: “Do you mind if I sit back a little bit? Because your breath is very bad. Has this ever been told to you before?”

  He threw me for a moment . . . and a lot of viewers for longer than that moment. We all thought he was being serious. He took a lot of heat the next day. How could you do that to Larry? They didn’t understand it had nothing to do with my breath. My breath was perfectly fine. Donald was just making a point. He was showing how someone could be put off guard. The concept is: Perception is reality. Which is what Trump is all about. Donald has almost become a caricature of himself. But it works because he uses it to his advantage. The money comes because of his talent and passion for getting that edge. Take it from me—I’m living proof. As soon as I left my show last December, I was free to make endorsements. One of the first companies
to seek me out makes breath mints. Thanks to Donald Trump, I am now an official spokesman for BreathGemz.

  Steve Wynn’s talent is an ability to see the world the way nobody else can. This is ironic because he has an eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, which gives him tunnel vision. Not only can Steve imagine resorts that have never been conceived, but he has a way of looking inside people and figuring out how to get what he wants by giving them what they want. He could be a master psychologist.

  A prime example is how he brought Garth Brooks to the Encore in Las Vegas. Garth was happily retired—he didn’t need money, and he didn’t want to be away from his family. He was simply looking for someone with influence to help out his charity. At the same time, Steve was looking for an act to fill the theater at the Encore because Danny Gans had suddenly passed away. A meeting was set between the two.

  Garth had a plan to get Steve to donate a lot of money to his charity, but also to let him down easy and tell him he wasn’t going to come out of retirement. In the end, Garth jokes, Steve didn’t give him a single dollar for the charity, and Garth ended up working for Steve. The show happened because Steve realized that Garth loved to perform, but had retired simply to be with his family. So Steve got Garth a private plane that could fly him back and forth from Oklahoma. There’s a two-hour time difference between Garth’s home and the Encore—and it’s a two-hour flight. Garth could leave at six thirty after his daughters’ soccer game and arrive in Las Vegas at six thirty—an hour before curtain. He didn’t even need to get made up, he could just walk out onstage in his street clothes and play. No band, just pure Garth and the music that made him who he’d become. Steve gave his audience a show that nobody had ever seen. And he gave Garth the chance to do what he loved and be home with his daughters a few hours after the concert.