Don Hewitt liked to say that his success in television news boiled down to this creed: "Tell me a story." It was the title of his autobiography, and the raison d'etre of his great invention, the CBS news show 60 Minutes, and yet ironically he was never much good at telling his own story. Listening to Don talk about the show was always a disappointment, because he never seemed to give verbal or literary life to the extraordinary thing he'd invented.
At times, he seemed so stiff in his account that it seemed intentional, as if he might be suspicious of trying to explain the thing that had grown to such magnitude under his guidance. 60 Minutes started in 1968. A decade later, it was the most watched show on television, and it remains in the top twenty to this day. What other show has been so popular for so long?
Don Hewitt died this week from complications related to pancreatic cancer. He was 86.
The real explanation for his lack of panache in relating his own saga is probably simple enough. Hewitt was a man of action par excellence. I don't mean that in the abstract, in the sense of the cliche. I mean it literally. Thinking back on Don, I always see him in movement. When he came into the screening room, ready to vet a new segment, there was seldom a moment of repose or ritual, unless it was the sight of Hewitt picking up the script and reading it even before the room went dark. It drove the correspondents crazy, but his motor didn't seem to permit the simple act of watching a narrative unfold.
He had to read and watch at the same time, and as soon as the lights came, he had to burst with his response. "Here's what you gotta do!" Or "That's great!" In my memory, Don is an exclamation point. He's a superlative. His words move with the force of an instant conviction that could be turned on a dime with a few changes, even if his first response to a piece was absolute rejection: "This will never air on 60 Minutes!"
When a correspondent, editor and producer made the changes, and Don's prescription turned out to be right--and so often it was--he'd go off like a small sun and the once banished segment would be back on the show. Maybe it would even lead.
I worked at 60 Minutes for five years, from 2000 to 2005. When I showed up on the 9th Floor of the building on West 57th Street, I didn't know a thing about the medium of broadcast news. I learned everything I know on the subject in the shop that Hewitt led for three decades. As a print journalist and novelist, I had expected to have to throw out most of what I'd learned about the craft of storytelling, but I was wrong. Hewitt's dictum allowed room for a wordsmith. He may have subordinated words to picture, but Don cherished the right line, which is why the show sounded even better on radio than it did on television.
A few years ago, I wrote a vampire novel called Fangland in which the denizens of a show not unlike 60 Minutes come face to face with the ancient horrors of a forgotten history. My intent was never to pillory the show, though some critics took it that way. On the contrary, I considered the book an homage to the true spirit of the place under Don. It could be hard and mean, but it was also vivid and unforgettable, a last magical place in the media universe, where legends of broadcast walked the halls and told their stories, where producers behaved like gunslingers and rock stars and acted as if the world lived or died by their interviews.
Don created an atmosphere of relentless competition that was the basis for a weird camaraderie. People survived Don's screenings and lived to talk about it afterwards in the bars up 57th Street. Producers had almost incredible tales of loud and angry fights between Hewitt and the correspondents, and I saw one or two of those, but also recognized the genius for narrative that could sometimes come out of the guy, even in the later years when he wasn't always at his best.
My favorite personal memory is this. Don and Morley Safer let me produce my first piece, a story about an Islamic school in Brooklyn. I had been on the ninth floor for almost a year and a half at that point, but I recognized that my first story as a full producer would be a sort of coming out party. After it had its first screening, and I'd made the changes that Don suggested, he turned to me and said, "Welcome to 60 Minutes."
When he said it, he had an infectious grin on his face, and he made those words sound like an abracadabra on the greatest job in American journalism. The work had its ups and downs for sure, and the show stumbled on occasion, but it was a place where a journalist could do excellent work with smart people. If things got crazy, well, the stress was profound, and the temperaments excitable. It was journalism, but it was also show business. If Don's original conceit of mixing entertainment and information bore some poisonous fruit in later years, his last and greatest contribution has been a high standard. 60 Minutes is one of the last news shows on television to honor the highest ideals of the profession.
If Don never told his own story about 60 Minutes well, he didn't have to. The show was his story, week in, week out. I don't know if he had much of an inner life, but he did, I'm willing to bet that it came in 15-minute segments and ended with a tick-tick-tick.
By John Marks, who blogs at http://john.purplestateofmind.com/
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