The call came in November 1979. It was the secretary to Joel Goodman, a producer at CBS News. “Look,” she said, “we just wanted to give you a heads up. John J. O’Connor reviewed the show in the Times today and he wasn’t kind. But he never likes anything we do.”
“Okay,” I said. I was 20 years old, my photograph was in the New York Times and the accompanying review described me as “nervous but determined.” I was pretty blase about it.
But you probably need to know more.
In my first two years at Northwestern, my part-time job was babysitting for the daughter of journalism professor Emily Soloff, who had worked at CBS. In the spring of my sophomore year, a producing team that had worked on CBS Special Reports and “30 Minutes,” the kids version of “60 Minutes” launched a nationwide search for a show called “Going Places,” which was to be the kids’ Charles Kuralt. Emily asked if I wanted to interview; she had been impressed with my rapport with her daughter. (Believe me, no one in the Medill School of Journalism was going to recommend me based on my schoolwork.) I assumed it was a P.A.’s job and I bopped down to Fiske Hall, where I met producer Pattie White. We talked for a while and she asked if I wanted to audition. “Audition for a P.A.’s job?” No, to be a co-host, she explained patiently. They wanted young, college-age hosts, male and female. Sure, why not? I had the afternoon free.
It was a cool, rainy Chicago spring. I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, they pointed a camera at me and I chattered away. I said I wanted to explore the country to find out what other people took for granted about their lives and regions. “I’m from Maryland,” I said, “so I assume everyone has steamed crabs and crooked governors.” I said that if I didn’t get the gig, I was going to spend the summer waitressing in a French restaurant in Winnetka. At the end, I said as I had been instructed: “I”m Laura Lippman and I’m Going Places!” Patti’s producing partner, Michael, said: “You sure are.”
A month later, I was in New York with Jim Stewart, chosen from the open auditions at the University of Missouri. They took was to Elaine’s, where I saw Philip Roth. We did some more taping, so they could be sure we were camera-ready, and headed home. That summer, I spent two weeks on the road, going from Mesa Verde to Missoula, driving a white van emblazoned “Going Places.” The hardest part? Trying to drive a van at a steady 5 mph while looking out the window at the camera following me from another vehicle and speaking scripted lines.
The show’s premiere was fun. My roommates and I borrowed a color television set and watched it with a group of friends. Most people said I did not seem particularly nervous or determined, just natural. And the show was generally well reviewed. But it was shot on film, which was expensive, and the gas crisis was under way. The show was simply too expensive to produce. I met with Dan Rather’s agent, who told me to go get a couple of years in newspapers and then break into television. I went to Waco, Texas, where I watched a young television reporter comb and spray her hair when arriving at a breaking news story and thought: No way. That was it. I turned my back on television and stuck with newspapers.
And I never spoke of it. The experience was simply too odd. Plus, it doesn’t come up in conversation that often. (“Ever been chosen from a nationwide search to host a television show?” “Who hasn’t?”) So the story somehow became a secret — until I readily confessed all to Anthony Mason of CBS, when he inquired about doing one of his CBS Sunday Morning reports on me. My hunch was that the discovery of that old show would provide such hilarious footage that it would be irresistable.
So there I was, on national television 20 years later — “I’m Laura Lippman and I’m Going Places!” My secret life was outed. With absolutely no consequence, although I did get a lot of inmate mail for a while.
Anyone here have an accidentally secret life, a story too weird to tell? Ready to out yourself? Go for it.
It used to be a somewhat embarrassing secret that–for 2 summers many, many years ago–I spent Tuesday evenings barrel racing in the local youth rodeo. I particularly loved my white rodeo outfit with embroidered roses twining up and down my pants and across my shirt. I wore it in the end-of-summer finals when I was 5 years old.
The rodeo was the only sport I ever participated in where I won a prize. I was particularly proud of my many green ribbons. My sister was kind enough to wait until I was 7 or 8 years old and no longer racing to explain to me that every one who didn’t place first, second or third got a green ribbon for participation. But I also won spurs one year and the littlest chaps you’ve ever seen another.
I don’t recall ever being outed as a cowgirl but at some point I began to enjoy leaving the spurs on a shelf at work and waiting to see who asks about them. On more than one occasion a conversation begun by the spurs eventually came around to ‘Wow, you don’t sound like you’re from Texas!’ But that’s another story.
Barrel racing at 5! Ohmigod, I’d be unabashed about trying to shoehorn that into a conversation. It’s so macho. Macha? And the costume sounds to die for.
Ballroom dance camp, three summers running, including one at BYU.
And assistant instructor, National Cotillions, for a few years.
I can still do your basic box steps (and clog steps) and correct a gentleman’s floppy left elbow, and if you’re good at it, you never forget how to lead–but I married a girl who doesn’t dance, so the rest is mostly gone.
Let’s see, biker babe for about two weeks. The pig roast and brawl between the other biker babes made me see that I would never fit in.
I worked as a Life Drawing art model (yes, that means sans clothing) for a year as an undergraduate. The job paid almost $2.00 above minimum wage and turned out to be one of the most interesting things I’ve done. I learned how physically painful it can be to hold an articulated pose for 15 minutes. I learned how much poetry I remembered by reciting it in my head waiting for time to pass. But best of all, I got to watch the students draw and, even better, to watch the teacher take flat, boring charcoal sketches and bring them to life with a few strokes of his pencil. Pure magic!
Easiest money: at the end of the semester, students worked on their portfolios, producing a set number of drawings using a variety of techniques. My only requirement was to sit still, so they brought me a big easy chair and I spent several days drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and reading a novel (it was just a matter of not turning the pages or whatever whenever someone needed my hands to be still).
Hardest money: The studio was a cavernous cement building with huge skylights. The college turned the heat off the Tuesday before Thanksgiving; by Monday morning, the place was *freezing*, and the blue oils the students used that day were particularly appropriate . . .
Can women be macha? I love it. Pushes macho all the way around the circle to the other side. Like the question, “Do ducks have lips?’
Honestly, though, I was a tragically girly-girl and ‘racing’ is probably an exaggeration. I didn’t poke around the barrels like Toy Gray whose horse barely broke into a walk. But then I didn’t reach any land speed records either. I thought I was flying but suspect such was not the case.
The spurs and chaps were awarded for ‘horsemanship’ which basically meant I didn’t fall off my horse during the Grand Entry–a parade of all the contestants that circled the arena before the rodeo began.
Competition in rural setting like a youth rodeos, or county fair is miles away from Little League. Go the the Greater Frederick County Fair and watch the cow raising shows, the alpaca training event or, my favorite, the pig melee/competition. If you can figure out what the rules are for the pig event you’re a better woman than I. Probably mas macha.
Worst. Interviewee. Ever. If my agent finds out about my two previous interviews – both in print, thank God — from twenty years ago, he’ll never let me near a reporter or a microphone. And for good reason. I swear I have a special kind of lunatic Tourette’s that only comes out during an interview.
�Ah, s�! La <i>macha chica</i> es un tipo de voz baja en mujeres.
Or something to that efecto.
Keith? You and me, next convention we’re together. If I can stand, I can dance and I wanna cha-cha with you. Okay, maybe bossa nova.
Let’s see , given how my life’s an open book (with really wide margins, and big type), how about 3 days in the slammer with several hundred other women. It wasn’t technically the slammer but a gym but i was locked up. And it took me a long time to decide to risk it – so “nervous but determined” is a pretty good description of my state of mind.
Andi, it would never work. Basic American cha-cha <a href=”http://www.eijkhout.net/rad/dance_specific/chacha4.html”>breaks on 1</a>, and I just can’t bring myself to do it.
2, 3, cha-cha-cha.
Like Weird Al, I lost on Jeopardy. To a housewife from Valparaiso, Indiana, who had, yes, a PhD.