THE UNKNOWN ALISTAIR COOKE:

AN INTERVIEW WITH BIOGRAPHER NICK CLARKE

At the age of 91, Alistair Cooke is an institution in the world of American and British arts and letters. For three quarters of a century the tall and distinguished broadcaster and author has personified intellectual sophistication and trans-atlantic cultural exchange.

Perhaps best known to Americans today as the long-time host of Masterpiece Theatre , and to an earlier generation as host of Omnibus, Cooke has in his career worn many hats.

As a young man at Cambridge University, he was a dramaturg--producing, directing, and acting in plays in England, studying at Germany's Volksbuhne Theater, and working on Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club shows while studying in America as a Harkness Fellow.

He was a personal assistant to Charlie Chaplin, who at one point had been invited to be best man at Cooke's wedding to an American socialite. Cooke even wrote a screenplay based on the life of Napoleon for the Little Tramp.

Later, Cooke became a film critic for the BBC, and wrote monographs on film culture for the newly formed motion picture collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Another identity for Cooke has been that of reporter. He covered the abdication crisis of Edward and Mrs. Simpson for NBC so skillfully that CBS ordered Edward R. Murrow to move to London to counter his coverage. He was long-time American correspondent for the Manchester Guardian as well as working for the Times of London and the British Daily Herald.

His coverage of the opening of the United Nations, and the Alger Hiss case, gained him international fame for his book A Generation on Trial , one of eighteen books he has either written or edited.

As a television personality, Cooke took Americans on a tour of the nation's history to celebrate the Bicentennial in 1976. The NBC program, Alistair Cooke's America, made Cooke a millionaire through sales of almost 2 million copies of the companion volume. It is his favorite program, and most heartfelt.

To audiences of the BBC for the past 50 years, however, Cooke is legendary for his weekly broadcasts of Letter From America, currently available on the internet.

Now Cooke has a new book called Memories of the Great and the Good, in which he profiles exemplary lives.

At the same moment, a stunning book entitled Alistair Cooke: The Biography by Nick Clarke, himself a BBC radio host (of the daily news show The World At One), has appeared in Britain. While not quite a "tell-all" account, the 547-page product of five years' work reveals an Alistair Cooke who is far more complex than the controlled and debonair star of radio and television.

Clarke's Cooke is a brooding and introspective author who has experienced most of the dramatic developments of the 20th Century firsthand, from the Depression and Second World War (Cooke had predicted the attack on Pearl Harbor based on a conversation with a traveller to Korea), to the sophisticated 50's (where he hosted Omnibus and was known as "the Liberal Voice of America" due to his book on the Hiss case) to the turbulent 60's (he was a friend of Jackie Kennedy, present when Robert F. Kennedy was assasinated, his son John was Janis Joplin's manager -- who discovered her death from a drug overdose -- and his daughter belonged to a strange cult), through Cooke's soothing presence in the 70's and 80's on American television as host of America and Masterpiece Theatre, and eventual retirement from American television to his slot on the BBC, the longest running show in the history of broadcasting.

Nick Clarke's Alistair Cooke is a mesmerizing, strong-willed figure, a self-made man of epic proportions who rose up from a modest beginnings (his brother became a butcher) to reach the heights of American and British society .

From Clarke we learn that Cooke has been psychoanalyzed, divorced, called a coward (for becoming an American citizen in 1941 while London was being bombed by the Nazis), a ladies' man, overcome being unemployed for periods, shunned and blacklisted by the BBC brass, and worse.

To read Clarke's biography is to discover a fascinating account of the life and times of a man who is surely deserving of the word "legendary."

The Idler spoke with Nick Clarke at the Chukka Bar of London's Langham Hotel (formerly the site of the BBC club), across the street from BBC World Service headquarters.

IDLER: Do you have an American publisher for your Alistair Cooke biography?

CLARKE: I don't have an American publisher yet. The original UK publisher went bankrupt, and when the book was re-sold, we split out American rights. This version won't be published in America.

IDLER: What led you to write this book?

CLARKE: I'm the host of The World At One on BBC radio and an old BBC hand. I used to host Newsnight. A friend - a literary editor - had dinner with the man who had the original idea and between them they came up with my name as a possible writer. The subject is close to my heart as a radio journalist who started out in newspapers. My father was a journalist, too, -- same vintage as Cooke. It is a book about my father in one sense.

IDLER: Is Cooke a father figure?

CLARKE: Not really. I've always trying to keep some distance from Cooke. We had an informal contract that he wouldn't interefere--and he hasn't read the book. Indeed, as far as I know he hasn't read anything I've written.

IDLER: Did you have good cooperation from sources close to Cooke?

CLARKE: Yes. One of my best sources was Lady Holly Rumbold, Cooke's stepdaughter by his second marriage. She lives in England now. She has always been affectionate towards Cooke, but quizzical, too. I tended to use her as a touchstone. And I could rely on her to soothe his feathers whenever they became ruffled.

IDLER: How would you characterize your book? Is it an expose?

CLARKE: Certainly not. I'd say it is sharp, but not unfair -not hagiography, but not carping, cynical, or cruel either. I tried very hard not to attitudinize, but to take Cooke's qualities and faults as they came, and leave readers to make up their minds. There is certainly more to Alistair Cooke than meets the eye.

IDLER: In what sense?

CLARKE: Cooke is often pictured as a superhuman, supremely competent and well-organized. But he is far more interesting than that.

IDLER: What sort of sources did you have available.

CLARKE: I used the BBC and Guardian archives. At the BBC, so long as one has the subject's permission in writing, the files are open. I had his permission, and I took a look at the files. The same was true for his college at Cambridge. Cooke made his personal archives available to me, too, and I spent a long time at the Mugar Museum's Department of Special Collections, at Boston University. They hold the bulk of his professional papers.

IDLER: What was your approach to using the documents?

CLARKE: I had to take it as it came to me: it was hard to be methodical, since he often drip-fed documents as he came across them. In any case, the personal material - in the case of a journalist - an observer - has to be seen in the context of the relationships he forms, the setting, time and place.

IDLER: How long did it take to write the book?

CLARKE: I started my research in June, 1994. I finally persuaded him to help in January 1995. I started writing in the Fall of 1997. I should have finished by last year, but didn't finish until March or April of 1999. One reason that I've continued my broadcasting work throughout. Originally, the book was half as long again, and I had to leave a lot of material out, mostly his quotations.

IDLER: Did you have any challenges with the research?

CLARKE: My son Tom read most of the letters in Caversham (the BBC archives). He summarized 2,500 Letters from America and from the summaries I chose 750-1000 to be printed out. Cooke published three books of selected letters. Reading through the letters they seemed quite repetitive. I was looking for new information, recurrent themes, and stories. Some years ago, Professor Ronald Wells, a professor of history from Grand Rapids, Mich, put together an anthology of Cooke's writing in the Manchester Guardian. He also wrote a learned introduction based on his conversations with Cooke. For me, however, the Letters and the newspaper work - however brilliant - needed to be distilled to find the essence of the writer.

IDLER: What are the 3 most surprising things about Cooke?

CLARKE: First his sense of mission is extraordinary. He once said "Missions are for Bishops" but in the 30's he sensed there was a lack of understanding about America. His work started as pure reporting information, then covering the War (WWII) , then in relation to a succession of events disturbing the "special relationship" between Britain and America. There is always something that makes the British people feel badly about the United States. The former ambassador to London, Raymond Seitz, told me that Cooke had managed to make British audiences feel better about what was 'ramshackle, impetuous and bizarre' about American life. It has been a 60-year effort to try and stop the chafing, the rough edges in the US-UK relationship, to try and keep it smooth.

Second, his difficulty in getting established. He had a number of setbacks until he was 40. It was not all that easy for him. He was unemployed for a while.

Finally, his fabulous memory. It is 93-98% accurate. The trick is finding the missing bits. It is astonishing that he hasn't got into more trouble.

IDLER: How much time did you spend interviewing Cooke?

CLARKE: I have recorded 40-50 hours on tape over the last four years, most recently in the Spring of this year. I interviewed him in New York, England, and San Francisco. It was a stream of conciousness experience with him. At the end, when he would repeat stories, I would say "Heard That!" and we moved on.

IDLER: Did anyone refuse to talk to you?

CLARKE: Almost nobody refused to talk, with one exception. Bill Burrows, an old friend, 90 years old, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida did. I arrived in Florida and he changed his mind. He wouldn't see me for love or money.

IDLER: Was Russell Baker helpful?

CLARKE: Russell Baker didn't have much to add, since he only met Cooke a couple of times after his appointment. He walked into Cooke's apartment at their first meeting and thought, 'My God, he looks just like Alistair Cooke, the host of Masterpiece Theatre!'

IDLER: Did you find Omnibus producer Robert Saudek?

CLARKE: I interviewed both Bob and Betty Saudek at their home in Washington. Bob showed me the tape of the first walk-through Cooke did for Omnibus in 1952 - a virtuoso performance, done without notes or teleprompt. Sadly, Bob Saudek - like a number of those to whom I have spoken in the past five years - has now died. Inevitable, I suppose - given the age of my subject.

IDLER: What about Walt and Eugene Rostow?

CLARKE: I talked to Gene Rostow, and his wife Edna. They had marvellous stories, dating from Yale days in the 1930s through to the present day. Both have been very important to the Cookes.

IDLER: Anyone else of interest?

CLARKE: I interviewed the distinguished Boston surgeon, Frannie Moore, author of 'A Miracle and a Privilege': he acted with Cooke for Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club, though strangely our interview took place in Paris.

IDLER: What was Cooke's special role for the BBC?

CLARKE: The Anglo-American relationship. He turned himself into a specialist in a subject that many people took for granted. There has often been mutual suspicion in the 'special relationship.' For instance, many British people still regard Americans as loud, brash, overly assertive, lacking in culture. And Americans view the British as stuffy.

IDLER: And what is Cooke up to today?

CLARKE: Work is the key. In recent Letters from America, he has been waging a one-man campaign against "Cool Britannia." He has been telling the English that people from America don't want the English to give up their traditions, to fall in love with America and be totally modern. England will be losing something by junking history. In his spare time, he still plays golf at the San Francisco GC.

IDLER: Who listens to Cooke in England?

CLARKE: He's broadcast on Radio 4, which is an older audience, more conservative - perhaps two million people a week, for the Friday night broadcast and the Sunday morning repeat.

IDLER: Did Cooke start out his career as a socialist of sorts?

CLARKE: Cooke was never a socialist. He was a rather conservative figure from the start. There is a Radical-Liberal tradition of social conscience, advancement and betterment of all, but he is conservative about a lot of things. You must remember that he came from an Edwardian household.

IDLER: What about his life in New York of the 50's, his friendship with Adlai Stevenson? Didn't he say he voted for Stevenson?

CLARKE: His friendship with Stevenson was personal rather than political -- it also broke his self-imposed injunction against consorting too closely with politicians. It was the only time, in fact. Despite being a Democrat by instinct, Cooke was definitely tempted to vote for Eisenhower, and perhaps for Reagan in 1980.

IDLER: Some observers think what seems to be Cooke's current conservatism was in reaction to the events of the 1960's. How do you respond to that?

CLARKE: He hated the 60s, which began the process -- as he saw it -- of undermining the institutions of the US which he so admired. He preferred social order, and respect -- took a hard line on national security -- and has been 'unsound' on race from the start, believing that civil rights campaigners were often naive.

IDLER: Are you saying he is a racist?

CLARKE: Not at all. He liked Jazz and Afro-American culture, but he regarded the civil rights struggle as an unwise rush which would cause unrest, as black society sought to make up centuries of lost ground all at once. He was a gradualist. He did not accept the tenet that as a matter of natural justice America had to do what it did regarding civil rights as quickly as it did.

IDLER: What is Cooke's greatest strength, in your view?

CLARKE: His Bible is "objectivity." He would allow every situation to speak for itself. In his book "A Generation on Trial" he was evenhanded regarding the Hiss case. He was similarly evenhanded regarding McCarthy and Watergate. He wanted to see both sides and was slow to jump on the bandwagon. His belief in objectivity was old-fashioned and unfashionable even in the 1950's. He wanted to get to the bottom of the story, however inconvenient his findings might be.

IDLER: What about his relationship with Charlie Chaplin?

CLARKE: I think he was starry-eyed at first, and critical on looking back. At the time he worked for him, he was bowled over.

IDLER: How did you hear the anecdote about Chaplin and his failure to appear at Cooke's wedding as best man because Paulette Goddard was not socially acceptable since she was living in sin with him?

CLARKE: Cooke's first wife told me the Paulette Goddard story herself. The problem was that her father, a great-nephew of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was very respectable, and she feared that there might be an awkward atmosphere. I think she was right!

IDLER: What have you learned from Cooke?

CLARKE: I was used to people taking a view or coming from a political direction in their journalism. I think Cooke appeals because he is a representative of an openness of mind. I try to adopt an attitude that if a thing is worth looking at, it is worth a frsh pair of eyes. Otherwise, what is the point? It is hard to be as objective as Cooke. I am still a residual liberal on some things. Doing the book reinforced the view that objectivity is an imperative with journalist. As Cooke says, if you have an opinion, put that in a comment column.

IDLER: Did Cooke practice what he preached?

CLARKE: Cooke carried it to an extreme. Sometimes took objectivity too far.

IDLER: Was Cooke difficult to work with?

CLARKE: Cooke is at times quite difficult to work with. People put up with it because he has an amazing ability. He is quite egocentric. I never saw him lose his temper, though he has been called short-tempered.

IDLER: Is he as serious about golf as he seems?

CLARKE: Golf is indeed his real passion. He begn to play in his mid 50's. I play golf, but I'm not a golfer. Cooke is a golfer, though he is not that good. He works at it, he cares. The appeal is that it is a gentlemanly sport and he loves sport, always has.

IDLER: Why does he love sports?

CLARKE: One reason is that politics never has an outcome, and sport does.

IDLER: You write about Cooke's health problems and interest in doctors.

Since he is over 90 years old, one might ask, is he a hypochondriac?

CLARKE: I call him a valetudinarian, not a hypochondriac. He certainly has had ensured that he has doctor friends nearby, wherever he goes.

IDLER: What do you think of Alistair Cooke�s new book Memories of the Great and the Good ?

CLARKE: For anyone unfamiliar with Cooke's work, this is an excellent introduction - since it draws together extracts from the BBC 'Letter from America', writing from the Guardian, and glimpses of other less familiar sources, like his conversation with General Eisenhower. There are also two original pieces, on George Bernard Shaw (with whom Cooke served on a Committee in the 1930s) and James 'Scotty' Reston. The portraits are touching, vivid and they show off Cooke's elegant style to good effect. They are not intended to be psychological surveys, since Cooke has always found such attempts at amateur analysis tiresome in the extreme.

Read Alistair Cooke on Winston Churchill.

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