a few awful pictures from a great occasion

 

The below was written when Dick Stolley died in June of last year. This year, Dick's Darling Daughters were able to host a mask-optional party (proof of vax required) for a crowd of some 125 geezers. But I thought I better repost so that I wouldn't have to explain all over again what Dick represented. 

 

There used to be special people whose job was to go into war zones and state houses and theaters and private homes and wild places to bring back information for the rest of us about what was going on in the world. These people were not necessarily smarter or braver than anybody else, but they shared a desire to discover the truth and a nose for falsehood. They had what was called news judgment.

  Yesterday we lost a real journalist. Dick Stolley joined Life Magazine in 1953, when magazines and pictures were important. As a reporter, writer, bureau chief and managing editor, he covered the world, from the civil rights movement on. He is the person who had the news sense—and skill at negotiating—to land the rights to the only film of JFK's assassination. He also hired me for the first issue of a magazine he founded called People, my first job in a career that would change my life, much of it at Life and People. Over the years he hired me back twice, and taught me—and many others—what it was to be a journalist, back when that was a respected job title rather than a word spit out dismissively.

   These days everyone’s a photographer and a reporter, but they are mostly reporting on themselves, from their fixed points of view. Wars from the inside. Protests from the inside. Restaurants. Movies. Professors. Movements. Politics. No objectivity, evenhandedness, factchecking. No attempt to put these feeds of information in context. No editing. No one to look at the work and say, "Un-understand" or "Huh?"  “Wait a minute, can this really be true?" 

    Everyone's a critic, but only a handful have the critical eye. And one of them is gone.

Martha Stolley, the youngest of Dick's Darling Daughters, who seems to have organized the whole shebang at the Century Club, opened the proceedings with a great video and then introduced the speakers, beginning with Jim Gaines (above), former ME of People, Life and Time magazines. The speakers were bookended by Hal Wingo, who worked with Stolley at Life and then the startup at People and I think, til the end, was his best friend. Hal looks like he either didn't want his picture made, or he had no idea who I was. And, granted, many of us looked different than when we met four-odd decades before (red check TK!).

Between the really important People people came me and Cutler. (Photo of me by Donna Ferrato). I did my rap (text below), and Cutler did his standup routine, properly crediting me for having introduced him to People magazine (and Dick Burgheim and Dick Stolley).

The following is the face that we saw over and over: the OMG is that you??? face. This "You (?)" was Irene Neves, everyone's favorite person. 

 

Jim Seymore, editor of Entertainment Weekly and Sally Proudfit, once Dick Stolley's gatekeeper, hung around for the post-program libations. Oh, and caviar and smoked salmon and open bar. Somebody said, "This doesn't look like a Time Inc. celebration—nobody's at the bar!" Well, then there were Steve Dougherty and Lisa Russell. And me. We held up our end.

 A few photographers were present. Harry Benson (above) with notable author Chris Whipple. Henry Grossman with MC Marden (below), photography director who spoke and, not incidentally, grew up about a block from me. 

 

Then there was photog Taro Yamasaki with Life-er Karen Emmons (above). And Russell Burrows, son of reknowned photog Larry Burrows and husband of even more reknowned Life photo editor Bobbie Burrows.

Then there were Kristin McMuran Ewald and Joyce Seymore (above).And Dick Burgheim, my mentor, with the two blonds and his partner Ricki.

 

 The youngest people at the affair were Stolley's grandkids (and partners). They pretty much had no idea what any of us were talking about. After the after party, some of us went out to an after-after party arranged by Ralph Spielman (below with, left to right, Cable Neuhaus, Ralph) Donna Ferrato, Karen Emmons), at Jane Doe Bar around the corner from the Century Club.

At Jane Does were Linda Gomez (my houseguest), of Life and Ron Arias, of People, after my time there. She confessed that as a Hispanic, Ron had been her journalistic hero for years, though they had never met until that night.

 

   And then there was Jim Jerome, whose Rolodex I cited in the rap below. The joke about his Rolodex is that it was completely blank. You would ask him for a number, and he would twirl the thing around, look at a card and tell you the number. But his contact cards were blank. He knew all the phone numbers and extensions by heart. So here is the rap.

 

Like a Boss

Richard Stolley went to LIFE the year that I was three

It didn’t take him long to make some history

Flew into Dallas with the rest of the pack

He got the Super 8, and they got jack.

Journalists were freakin’ but the kid from Pekin

Kept his cool and his class and he kicked their ass

Definition

of the best

RBS

 

Bureau in LA, and in Gay Paree

Following the action at home and overseas

Segregation, generation, civil rights, white flight, head case, space race,

Always running place to place.

When Life-the-weekly lived, he became the AME.

It didn’t last, now in the past, a distant memory.

 

Then Andrew Heiskell, C of the B

Suggested startup People in 1973.

He called on the best, RBS

Mia Farrow in her pearls, cover boys and cover girls

Burgheim, Wingo, Seymore, Gaines, Ewald, Lanny Jones

Farah Fawcett, John Travolta, and Sly Stallone

 

Page Six, paparazzi, Hollywood Reporter

I got deeply into gossip though I knew I didn’t oughter

Birth dates, circ rates, home takes, plate breaks—we had to pay for those mistakes

Copysets, Telex, cigarettes, Atex,

Red checks, green recs, Jim Jerome’s Rolodex

It became a huge success.

Oh yes

RBS

 

(Aside: This was back in the day when a camera used film and a Royal was a typewriter.)

 

Pics and Pans, Star Tracks, Up Front and Chatter

The boss’s approbation, the only thing that mattered

I’d be shaking in my boots when I had to see The Man.

He could throw us all a monkey wrench with un-understand

When Dick wrote “Huh?“ You knew that you were screwed, and it was back to edit ref, copy desk and the blues.

 

He put us to the test

RBS

 

I quit, got hitched, moved to Chi-town, had a kid

Sublet my pad on Riverside to Stolley, when I did.

Ancient couch from Ms. McCall, a mattress on the floor was all

I had the upper hand for once, it really was a thrill

Til back I went, hat in hand, thank goodness he was chill

 

He was back at LIFE, the monthly not the weekly

Where photographers still ruled, and I do mean completely

To Dick a pic was surely worth at least a thousand words,

(To all us writers at the time that seemed a bit absurd.)

 

He took me back in 83, along with Graydon Carter

But making rate base, selling ads, just kept on getting harder.

Mr. Stolley left the building in 1993

It no longer felt like the same company.

We watched the stock ticker and here comes the kicker:

A deal with AOL, and the whole thing went to hell

 

Now everyone’s a star and a web celebrity

There’s Insta and there’s TikTok and it’s all just me me me

Did People make us sheeple, glued to our news feeds?

Or did it simply speak to some basic human needs.

Good golly, Mr Stolley

I do believe you were the original Influencer

 

Public discourse has no class, light years from Zapruder.

No facts, mostly hacks, everything is cruder.

Internet, cell phones, laptop computers

They would have made reporting a major piece of cake.

But no one even leaves the house these days for goodness sake.

When readers get their news from Facebook and from Twitter, can you really be bemused if I sound a bit bitter?

 

Richard Stolley taught us plenty, mostly how to think

Count characters in hedlines, and always write to length

Fine, create, but tell it straight, and always keep it couth

He believed in the news, and he believed in the truth

Wisdom we should pass along today to all our youth.

Like a boss

 Oh yes

He’s the best

RBS

And me and Steve put on our Burberry's and went home. I don't know what time he went to sleep, but for me it was 2 ayem. Like three hours after my bedtime.