Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1948)

My Boss, Drew Pearson (Continued from page 29) how my boss's twenty-four-hours-aday job creeps even into his barnyard. It's the work-day of his that alone unnerves me about my job as his assistant. Many's the morning I've rolled over about 6:30 A.M. for another two hours of sleep — when my telephone rings. "Hello, Dave," says Drew's cheerful voice. "Hurry over here— we've got work to do!" ^ This unearthly hour for starting the day's work means nothing to Drew Pearson because he keeps farmers hours— although he lives during the week in a dignified house in Washington, D. C. This house is really three red brick houses locked together; and one wing (or house) is his office. This makes it easy for Drew to roll out of bed and right to the job. It makes it tough for me and his five secretaries. Let me give you an idea of his day: He's up at six o'clock, sipping orange juice and writing the first draft of his column, "Washington Merry-GoRound." At 7:45 precisely, he shaves while he listens to the news broadcast on the portable radio in his bathroom. At 8:00 precisely he eats breakfast — two soft boiled eggs, bacon, milk, and one cup of coffee— while he bends his ear to the radio again, this time listening to his brother Leon who broadcasts from Paris for NBC. At 8:45 he's in what I call his Spartan chair — it's a wooden job with an agonizing back to it — and he's hard at work answering his avalanche of mail with the aid of all his secretaries. This goes on until 12:30 P.M. Meanwhile, three telephones are ringing steadily on his desk. He answers all of them personally. "I live in deadly terror that some day I'll miss a hot news story by not answering some phone call," he's told me on more than one occasion — which is one reason that his telephone number is in the Washington phone book. Anyone with a nickel can call him. And sometimes I think that everyone with a nickel does just that. But I'll admit that often it's those calls — from strangers— that have tipped him off to some of his biggest news scoops. i TAKE the war profits scandal that Congressman Andrew J. May and the infamous Garsson brothers were in — iDrew got the tipoff from a strange telephone call. But let him tell it: "I'd been broadcasting one night about Congressman May's stand against termination pay for veterans," says he, "when the telephone rang right there in the radio station at the end of my broadcast. It was a veteran who'd been listening to me. He told me that his wife had had a secretarial position where she'd learned about the scandalous operations of the Garssons and May, and he advised me to look into ; it. I did — and prosecution for the r crooks was the result." He got his tip about Senator Thomas of Oklahoma's speculation in the cotton market the same way — and long before Stassen pointed a finger at the Washington speculators. An anonymous phone call from a woman came in about Thomas. My boss investigated, and a series of columns resulted. For that matter, as this goes to press my boss is doing a Dick Tracy on a phone call that came in from Michigan the other day. The guy on the other end was an ex-convict, and he gave Drew some hot tips on the murder of Senator Hooper — which Drew is working on right now. But back to Drew's work-day. At 12:30 he rushes off to lunch. It is always lunch at the Mayflower Hotel, and always at his own table in the corner. I am proud to announce that my boss is not a table-hopping columnist. No, everyone comes to him. HE usually lunches with one of his close friends, Senator Sam Rayburn, Senator Ives, Attorney-General Clark, Harold Ickes, or Senator Barkley. But most of his friends don't give him news stories — these come from other people dining in the Mayflower, who come up to tip him off on something interesting. To him the best thing about lunch is dessert — it's the one time in the day when he stops being a Spartan and really lets himself go. He always has something horrifying for dessert, like Baked Alaska, or Crepes Suzette. By 2:30 in the afternoon he hurries back to tus office, shuts off the telephones, opens up his thirty-year-old Smith portable typewriter and goes to work polishing his column and adding news to it. The column goes on the teletype at 4 P.M. sharp. After that, my boss merely works another hour on his mail, and then tours various government offices to pick up more news. When dinner is over, he is often back at his desk to answer still more mail. Dinner for Drew means that he sits down with his attractive blonde wife Luvie, and with her son by a former marriage, who is a 16 -year-old named Tyler Abell. Drew's daughter Ellen, also by a former marriage, moved out recently when she married George Arnold — the son, if you recall, of the famous trust-busting Thurman Arnold. Once a week regularly the Pearsons entertain at a dinner party. It's true that Drew is a Quaker, not only in his religion but in his heart. In fact, he often thinks like a Quaker relief worker — which, indeed, he once was. But let me give you a quick montage of his life — and then I'll prove to you that Quaker blood is truly boiling in his veins. My boss was born fifty-one years ago in Evanston, Illinois. He graduated from Swarthmore College, where his dad was a professor, in 1919 — Phi Beta Kappa, by the way. Right out of college he went overseas as a Quaker relief worker, to Yugoslavia. There he stayed for two years, rebuilding a destroyed Yugoslavian village with the help of its citizens — which village has since been named Pearsonovits in his honor. He came docilely home to teach economic geography at the University of Pennsylvania. But a year later he discovered he had $700 in the bank, and he decided to travel once more. 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