7
Sponsorship and a network spot were the first big problems for the Glenda Grayson Show. Cord Productions filmed a pilot program on the Cord soundstages in March 1955, using the format and plot Bat had suggested to his father when he first told him about the idea.
Plot — A Glenda Grayson Show is in rehearsal in a Broadway studio. The guest star is to be Danny Kaye, but three days before the broadcast he is taken to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Glenda's predicament comes to the attention of her fellow nightclub performer Liberace, who rushes in to help her. At home Glenda faces a personal crisis in the life of her daughter Tess, played by Margit Little. Tess's prom date has announced he has been grounded for knocking a fender off his father's car. Glenda's call to the angry father doesn't help. Glenda consoles Tess by letting her do something she has always wanted to do — appear on the Glenda Grayson Show. Tess dances a solo number to the music of Liberace, then joins her mother to dance in the finale. The date calls to tell Tess his father saw her on television and is so impressed by the idea of his son going to the prom with a television star that he has relented.
"A catalog of venerable showbiz cliches," Jonas grunted. "Probably be a big success."
Glenda appeared in a variation on her signature costume, that is in a black body stocking under a lace-trimmed black corselette, with the black fedora atilt over her forehead. On that show she used for the last time her line "Change your name, Golda. Please!" It was worn out now, and she would not use it again.
Sam Stein took a print of the show to New York and offered it to a score of prospective sponsors. They liked it, but — Combining situation comedy with a variety show was a bold idea, and they were not sure audiences would like it. Glenda Grayson was too ... Well, sophisticated for television audiences. ("Y' know, this gets beamed into people's living rooms.") Her costume looked too much like underwear, even though the body stocking covered everything. Anyway, no one had ever appeared on television in a body stocking. Margit Little's leotards rode too high on her hips. One of the lines suggested she had been intimate with this boy she was dating. Some of Glenda's lines could be understood two ways. Too many shows were set in New York. Would people buy a refrigerator Glenda Grayson recommended — any more than they would buy one Sophie Tucker recommended? American housewives would not identify with Glenda Grayson.
And so on.
Without a sponsor, none of the networks could commit a time slot. When Bat returned to California from Northampton, Sam had not yet found a sponsor.
8
Jonas picked up a bottle of bourbon from the rolltop desk in his office — his father's office — in the Cord Explosives plant. He poured into a shot glass, then handed the bottle and a glass to Bat. Bat took a splash, no more; he did not share his grandfather's and father's taste for bourbon.
"We could back off, take the loss, and forget it," Jonas said. He flipped over the pages on which Bat had brought him the numbers. "I've lost more than this on dumb ideas."
"It's not a dumb idea," said Bat.
"Depends on how you define a dumb idea. If an idea is supposed to make money and then can't, it's a dumb idea — by one definition, anyway. The other definition is, it's too damned good an idea, too good for the market. I don't know which this is, Bat. Maybe you misjudged it. The fact that you're screwin' the star hasn't influenced your judgment, has it?"
"Absolutely not."
"Okay. I take your word on it. But be damned sure it doesn't."
"Liberace is a good showman, whatever else you may think of him. He judged it was a good idea."
"Yeah, but he's been paid for his role. He doesn't have anything invested."
"Danny Kaye agreed to allow his name to be used on the first show," said Bat. "He's agreed to appear on a future show, if there is a future show."
"Another guy with nothing invested," said Jonas. "So what are you going to do?"
Bat shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted.
"Okay. I know. Your old man, who plunked seventeen million into the Pacific, as you politely reminded me, will bail you out."
"I can't ask you to pour more money into it."
"You can't? The hell you can't! If you believe in the project you can ask for more money. If you don't believe in it any more than that, then by God I don't believe in it either. Which is it?"
Bat stiffened. "I believe in it," he said. "But I don't know what we can do. If —"
"I know what we can do," said Jonas.
9
ABC broadcast Cord Television Presents: The Glenda Grayson Show for the first time in August 1955 as a summer special, filling a time slot that would be filled in the autumn by a returning variety show. The notices were encouraging:
—"Miss Grayson's exuberant review was a happy relief from bland television variety shows." The New York Times.
—"The youthful cast, led by Glenda Grayson herself, went all out to offer an hour of exciting entertainment." Newsweek.
—"Nothing can rescue television's so-called 'situation comedies' from their hackneyed, overworked cliches, and The Glenda Grayson Special did not accomplish that impossible task. The variety segment of her show is something else again. Television variety may never be the same. Treacle is out! Sophistication is in! Or so we may hope."
The second show aired two weeks later, with Danny Kaye as guest. It drew twenty-two percent of the viewing audience.
A church in Mississippi published a "protest resolution," complaining that Glenda Grayson was indecent and a threat to the nation's morality. "What does it say to our young people when they see this woman cavorting on their television screens in clothing decent women wear under their clothing?" A few editorials laughed at that and won the show more public notice.
A third show was broadcast as a special in November. Two more specials were broadcast in the spring season 1956. The ratings were not spectacular but were not disastrous either. The network decided it had a time slot for the show.
For the 1956-57 season, ABC slotted the show at nine o'clock on alternate Wednesday evenings. American Motors came aboard as a co-sponsor, so the show was no longer Cord Television Presents but The Glenda Grayson Show.
10
The sun rose late in winter, so only a little gray light had entered the bedroom when the telephone rang. Glenda woke and stared at the ceiling as Bat took the call.
It was from Angie, calling from the Waldorf Towers apartment in New York.
"Your father has been taken to the hospital. I don't know if it was a stroke or a heart attack, but he was unconscious when they put him in the emergency-squad ambulance. I'm leaving here now to go to the hospital. I can't reach Jo-Ann. Try to do that, will you, Bat? Then I think you'd better come here."
Reaching Jo-Ann was a matter of knocking on her bedroom door. An hour and a half later the two of them were aboard a plane on their way to New York.
Jonas was in a cardiac unit at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Bat and Jo-Ann were allowed five minutes with him but found him so heavily sedated he could not talk. They found Angie waiting in a solarium. She said the cardiologist would talk with them and went to a telephone to call him. The doctor joined them in a coffee shop.