I know someone who has professionally written obituaries and who has said the
New York Times obituaries are the gold standard. They didn't write for the
Times, but did for other newspapers.
So, perhaps it was almost fitting that the day the
Times published an
obituary on Malcolm Toon who had passed away at 92 in 2009 (He certainly wasn't alive yesterday, or even the day before.) I was on my way into the city for some errands and a viewing of the documentary, 'Obit. Life on Deadline' about the obituary staff at the
Times and their way of doing things and of looking at the world.
And being the Gold Standard, the obituary writer, Richard Goldstein, explains why the
Times is now publishing an obituary on someone who has been dead since since the Yankees last won a World Series.
The passing of Malcolm Toon fell through the cracks. There is someone in the film who explains that there are perhaps 10-15 calls or emails a day from people who notify the
Times that they think there should be a tribute obituary written on a family member, or someone they are close to. It is not often that a notice received this way gets the staff to write a piece about a deceased. Every day the staff has new arrivals to consider from their own sources.
Mr. Toon's
obituary was not now being written because someone felt guilty. Apparently, no one thought to contact the
Times when he passed away. Mr. Goldstein explains they even had an advance obit on him, but the file never got pulled. It was when a staff member came across news of his death in an online reference that the trigger was finally pulled.
Mr. Toon was noteworthy enough to rate the maximum six columns, with two photos. He was a career United States diplomat, ambassador to several countries, notably The Soviet Union. He was as colorful as he was respected. He once referred to his Soviet counterparts as "clods," also saying that he thought his job entailed teaching the Soviets how not to act like "some two-bit banana republic."
The fact that he lived so long after retirement, and his words weren't memorialized by the Internet, I'm sure contributed to his disappearance from public view.
The 94 minute film, produced by Vanessa Gould, has been making the rounds nationally and internationally at film festivals for about a year now. I missed it when it was at The Tribeca Film festival, so I had to wait for it to circle the globe and come back to art house distribution.
It works that 94 minutes is just the right dose. The film never gets sentimental, and carries the viewers' interest throughout. As one of the blurbs states, "One of the few great films I've seen about writing." The film, and the writers the film is about, are both great.
Today's take was at The Film Forum on West Houston street, a multi-screen venue that has been around at various locations since 1970. Perhaps even more fittingly was that the best I could tell, every seat in the approximate 200 seat theater has a plaque on its back dedicating the seat to someone who has passed away. It was like the 'Charge of the Light Brigade.' Dead people to the left of me, dead people to the right of me, dead people behind me and dead people in front of me. I did get out alive.
I've been an avid reader of
Times obituaries for quite some time now. I've met some of the journalists that were in the film and e-mailed some others. The best I could tell was that the filming was done on site at the
Times and in the homes of the reporters around 2014. A good deal of the film is devoted to the family interview, heard live from the reporter's end only--Bruce Weber--and the process that Mr. Weber goes through to create a
piece that is as much about the nascent era of televised politics and media consultants, as it is about the fact that William P. Wilson has passed away at 86.
My interest in reading obituaries once produced a link to two brothers I went to high school with, one who was in my home room. Years and years ago I noticed short piece that Dr. Hyman Biegeleisen had passed away. The short obit went on the describe Dr. Biegeleisen as being known for developing sclerotherapy for the treatment of varicose veins. The obit caught my eye because of the last name. It is rather unique, somewhat like my own. And sure enough, he was survived by two sons, Kenneth and Robert, who was in my home room. Both brothers went on to become physicians themselves. No surprise there.
Archival film footage shows portions of the stage being set up for the first televised debate between the 1960 presidential candidates, Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon. I can recognize Don Hewitt in the background as one of the producers for the debate. And as the obits editor William McDonald so rightly points out, an obituary is meant to capture the historical context of the person's life, and serve to transport the reader who might have been alive during that era and how that obituary reminds them of say, their parents.
Volumes of words have been written about that debate. It truly marked the demarcation line between old politics and the new era of politics created by image. I will forever remember being told by a teacher that we had to watch the debate that night and write about it for class the next morning. And I did watch it on a fuzzy black and white TV, with rabbit ear reception that left a lot to be desired, in a dump of an apartment on East 20th Street with my father.
Years and years ago I came across that piece of paper that had my take on the debate. I wrote something to the effect, "they were both very serious about the whole thing." And there in red ink was the teacher's comment, "what was the whole thing? It was much more than a thing."
I'm sorry I didn't save that piece of paper. Jesus Christ lady, I was 11 years old. What were you expecting, the book Theodore H. White eventually wrote, "The Making of the President, 1960?"
I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Weber recounting the story of how Mr. Wilson ran out to a drug store and bought some Max Factor makeup and applied it to Kennedy's face. And given that we all have by now absorbed tales of JFK's (Mattress Jack) extra-curricular sexual activities over the years, it hardly had to be first the first time his face was touched by Max Factor Creme Puff. No wonder the guy looked so cool.
For me, watching and listening to the people talk about their work was like being in the office with them. And the fairly new offices on Eighth Avenue looked well laid out and comfortable. With their seats near the window on Eighth Avenue you could overhear the unmistakable sounds of New York--sirens.
The film takes us inside a managing editors' meeting that occurs later in the afternoon, where the various department editors pitch their best stories and see if they qualify for Page 1 display. The Times is now putting more obits on Page 1, and on one unprecedented occasion put two obits, side-by-side, on Page 1: the comedian Jonathan Winters and the ballet dancer Maria Tallchief in 2013.
A subject might get sort of a consolation prize if they don't warrant a Page 1 display, but are still considered noteworthy enough for any number of reasons by having a "reefer" appear at the bottom of Page 1, pointing the reader to a page further in the paper. William McDonald is seen and heard pitching William P. Wilson's obit for possible reefer placement. It did earn a reefer placement.
The journalists are a clever, seasoned bunch, and as Mr. Weber points out, they are generally older than the average age of the staff in general, so they have all experienced someone's passing in their own lives.
The writer I referred to at the start of this posting is Stephen Miller, who used to write obituaries for
The Sun (now defunct) and
The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Miller now works for
Bloomberg News, and now only occasionally do we get to see something he's written about the departed.
It is a shame Mr. Miller didn't get to transition onto the staff of the
Times. At least not yet. As Marilyn Johnson relates in her seminal 2006 book on obituary writing, 'The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries,' Mr. Miller possess the puckish humor and impish impulses of the legendary
Times obit writer, Robert McG,Thomas Jr. Any man who could write the following about the death of Jeffrey Dahmer, the convicted serial cannibal who was killed in prison by another inmate with a broom handle, would make a worthy edition to the page, even if you had to pay
very close attention to what he was writing before publishing.
"What is every mother's nightmare? Is it squashing junior while on a bender? Is it driving off a cliff with junior in the back? Is it sending junior off to an insufficiently researched kindergarten that turns out to be a front for NAMBLA? It is of course none of these, but they sound like teething pains compared to the nightmare few mothers could have had: junior turns out to be murderous homosexual cannibal. And then come all the inconvenient, impolite questions, because everybody wants to know why."
Certainly time to get a name change.
Having met Mr. Miller, he reminded me of the guy we used to have at work who was a graphic artist who did work for the internal publications. Richie needed supervision. His boss once forced him to confess where he stuck the words "Fuck You" in a drawing, something he did for the corporate phone book. Like an Al Hirschfeld embedded "Nina," Richie was going to hide a message if he could get away with it.
I've met Ms. Johnson and was able to give her an A-Hed piece that appeared in the
Wall Street Journal in the 90s, well before her book, on how the British style of sendoffs differs from the American sendoff. She covers that aspect of obituary writing in her book. The unsigned obituaries in
The Economist, generally written by Anne Wroe, illustrate the British style.
For anyone smitten by obituary writing, Ms. Johnson's book is a delight to have. I was disappointed, but understood why there were only two books, both equally worthy, that were advertised at the theater as being available in the lobby. They both shared a commonality of being products of
Times people. 'Book of the Dead' edited by William McDonald, the current obits editor, and a collection of Robert McG. Thomas's obits, '52 McGs: The Best Obituaries from Legendary New York Times Reporter Robert McG. Thomas, Jr.'
The 'Book of the Dead' is a
doorstopper, both in print, and digitally. The book is subtitled: "320 Print and 10,000 Digital Obituaries of Extraordinary people" The digital part is delivered to you by access to a proprietary website that lets you search for subjects.
And if anyone is truly interested in how the art of the craft has progressed, reading some of those older obits on the "extraordinary people" is an eye-opener.
I purposely read the one on Albert Einstein, and believe me, if the man were to pass away today we would have gotten a completely different view of the fuzzy-haired genius who is currently the subject of a 10-part
National Geographic series on television, 'Genius.'
A one-time editor of
The New Yorker, Tina Brown, once wrote a piece on president Clinton and how when he entered a room of well-wishers there was a sexual spark that he transmitted. Dolly Parton said of Bill, "he's a horny little toad, isn't he?"
I'm sure the
Times wouldn't tells us Einstein was a "horny little toad" but the National Geographic series makes it plain he had urges.
There is a current biography by Marty Appel out on Casey Stengel, the legendary baseball manager who was either a manager or a player for all four of New York's ball clubs, the Giants, the Dodgers, the Yankees and the Mets. I thought I knew a good deal about Casey Stengel, but when I read the book review the writer told us Casey's first name, as we know it, was created from his nickname KC, because he came from Kansas City, Missouri. I told this to a friend of mine whose blood stream is Yankee blue,and he knew nothing about the origin of the name Casey.
Charles Dillon Stengel's given name was not Casey. His 1975 obit doesn't mention anything about this. If he were to pass away today, there is
no doubt that the writers at The
Times would tell us the origin of Casey.
There is a section of Ms. Johnson's book where she describes meeting the editor of the obits page, Charles Strum. We learn of "advance" obits, obits written in advance of a subject's death. This is done so there isn't a complete mad scramble to get something in the paper, or now on the web, when someone of noteworthiness dies. Plan ahead.
The film highlights the story from the custodian of the morgue files who tells of an advance obit that was written for someone in 1931, who it turned out didn't pass away until nearly 80 years later. Elinor Smith, of Freeport, Long Island was 16 when she got her pilot's license. She passed away in 2010 at 98, so doing the math, you can understand why in 1931 there might have been an advance obit on her.
She was from the biplane era, setting endurance records, and barnstorming her way across the country doing stunts at a very tender age. In 1931, when she was thus only 20, someone on the staff at the
Times figured this kid is soon headed for heaven, and not in an airplane, so let's get ready. Obviously, in 2010, there was some updating to do. She was the first woman to appear on a box of Wheaties cereal.
And here is where I register a complaint about 'Book of the Dead.' Despite its claims for what one would assume is comprehensiveness, there is
no online or print entry for
Elinor Smith, The
Times did write about her in 2010, with Dennis Hevesi telling us, "In the days of rickety open-cockpit biplanes seemingly held together by baling wire, 8-year-old Elinor Patricia Ward got her first flying lesson--at her kitchen table in Freeport, N.Y., on Long Island." After her first solo flight she had to hurry from the airstrip because she had to get to school in Wantagh, where I now live.
The editor Ms. Johnson meets, Charles Strum, tells her there are 1,200 advance obits on file. The current editor, a smooth-shaven, choir boy faced William McDonald, tells us in the film there are 1,700 advances in the file drawers.
The custodian of this warren of file cabinets of hard copy clippings and photographs, Jeff Roth, shows us the section where the advances are kept. There is an extra lock on the drawers.
No one is permitted to access these advances other than the current editor. No peeking by other reporters looking for general background on a subject. Do your own leg work.
Ms. Johnson tells us the same thing. Mr. Strum refuses to show her any advance obits. She eloquently describes being touched by how they are guarded: "...so carefully, as if the obits were hearts that Strum will transplant to the obits page after their hosts are declared dead."
Advance obits and their bylines sometimes produce what Ms. Johnson has referred to as the "double down." The subject has obviously passed away, but so too has the writer. The obit of course doesn't tell us this in its text, but there is an editor's note that tells us the bylined writer has passed away.
The first occasion of this "double down" that I can remember was when I was startled to see the day's paper contain a byline by the sports writer Red Smith (who I still miss). Red was writing about Jack Dempsey, the former Heavyweight champion who passed away in 1983, at 87. I knew Red Smith had already passed away on my birthday in 1982.
I wrote to Dave Anderson (who is still with us, but who I still miss as well) and asked if Jack Dempsey, the Manassa Mauler, had someone been shown his advance obit, say dropped off by Red at Jack's restaurant in Times Square, where Jack could be seen sitting in a somewhat elevated chair, allowing himself to be greeted. I remember Jack in this chair, and how he looked like a bear of a man, thick, still with a good of hair, and bushy eyebrows. He still looked capable of doing damage, and did one time when some jerks tried to mug him. The Manassa Mauler flattened both of them. Jim Croce could have sung about him, "you don't mess around with Slim." Mr. Anderson replied that to the best of his knowledge, the obit was not shared with Jack.
Another occasion of a double-down occurred when Elizabeth Taylor passed away in 2011 at 79. Mel Gussow's byline appeared, and Mel had passed away in 2005 at 71. Ms. Johnson herself had written an advance obit when she worked for
Life magazine. It seems the people who she wrote about outlived the magazine, so very few of her advances were ever published. When Elizabeth Taylor passed away, she did post the obit on her website.
Her advance obit on Katherine Hepburn
did see print, with Kate the Great unable to outlive
Life magazine, passing away at 96 in 2003.
In 'Dead Beat' Ms. Johnson tells us of some rising stars in the obit writing world. She mentions Margalit Fox, who she had in a journalism class she taught at Columbia. Ms. Fox is featured in the film, telling us she has been writing obits for about 10 years now. She gives a thorough explanation was to why it seems most of these "tribute" obits seem to fall on deceased white males.
She explains that the window of time is sliding froward, and now we are getting to prominent people in the Civil Rights and Women's movements. My oldest granddaughter is nine, and my daughter tells me she got a little teary-eyes listening to Hillary Clinton's concession speech.
Well, in all great statistical likelihood, Hillary Clinton will pass away before my granddaughter, and if my granddaughter still has an interest in current events, she will probably read Hillary's obituary in the
New York Times, I'm sure prominently placed somewhere on Page 1.
In a reply to one of my complimentary emails to Ms. Fox, she remind me the film was now in art house theaters and that she would be appearing after one of the screenings in the evening at the Lincoln Center Plaza theater. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it into the city last week, instead having to settle for yesterday afternoon.
Perhaps by way of this posting, my question would be does the obit staff edit the paid notices that people take out? Some are quite extensive, a bit flowery, and even are accompanied by a photo. Considering the charge for these is based on lines used, some of these are costing a small fortune. Of course, these do get the the person into the
Times on the obit page. The objective.
The
Wall Street Journal recently did another A-Hed
piece on obituaries describing the trend of the family or friend of the deceased who writes a tribute that often gently pokes fun at the deceased. The headline went: Haze the Dead! More Obit Writers Tell It Like It Was--Warts and All.
The obit writers are not the newspaper journalists, but those close enough to the deceased to tell the world that Wayne Brockey "was an old grump: QVC lost a loyal customer on September 28, 2016," or that Allen Lee Franklin, had nice qualities, but was "probably the biggest tightwad in the mid-Atlantic region." Ouch.
It is highly doubtful the
Times would publish that about a deceased, but I do remember one of those paid notices that told us the deceased's last meal was seasoned with cinnamon, a favorite.
There are writing coaches for seniors to help them pen their own obituaries. Perhaps the best defense against getting roasted beyond the grave is to leave specific instructions and a well-edited text.
My recall is good, and as images of obituaries flash by in the film I realize how many of them I've read. But the best image I take away if that of Margalit Fox, who I have met, and on whom I am willing to wager hard-earned United States paper currency on the fact that she
purposely placed a paper coffee cup in front of her as she was being filmed.
What's so special about a paper coffee cup? Well, left unsaid, but not unnoticed, is the fact that Ms. Fox wrote the 2010
obituary for the man, Leslie Buck who
designed that paper coffee cup, the Anthora, of Grecian design.
As Casey Stengel would tell anyone who listened: you can look it up.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
