City Room

ONEAs I entered the lobby of The New York Timesat 10:30 p.m., normally deserted at that late hour, I found myself in step behind a lissome woman with wavy ash-blond hair, wearing a snug-fitting black dress. It was late May 1944, my first week as a copyboy, the humblest rank on the newspaper's staff. I was on my way back to the city room, second home to a legion of reporters and editors, all collaborators in the daily ritual of getting the paper out in time to meet truck, mail and rail schedules. Sammy Solovitz, also a copyboy, and I-both of us just turned twenty-were balancing bundles of newspapers on our shoulders. They were early editions of competing New York dailies, and the ink, still damp, smudged our hands and clothes. We had been sent to fetch the papers from a newsstand around the corner in Times Square, so that the editors could check whether The Times had missed any important stories. I was uneasily aware of the odd couple Sammy and I made-he an elfin four-foot-nine and I a gangling six-foot-two. Despite the bundle weighing him down, Sammy nonchalantly blew smoke rings, mimicking the soldier in Times Square's bigger-than-life Camel cigarette ad. By contrast, I must have appeared self-consciously earnest as I stared straight ahead through horn-rimmed glasses. My discomfort galloped nearly out of control when the woman we had followed into the elevator turned around, and I gazed into the sapphire eyes of Madeleine Carroll-for me, the screen's most beautiful actress. Among the films in which she had starred were The 39 Steps, the Hitchcock thriller, and My Favorite Blonde, with Bob Hope, and I had spent a good part of my adolescence fantasizing about her. When the elevator door opened onto the reception area of the third-floor city room, I was frozen. Sammy had to tug my arm and lead me out. Instead of following him into the city room, I rang for the ascending elevator and, when it returned, I asked my new friend, Herman, the white-gloved elevator operator, where he had taken Miss Carroll. "Kid, keep your shirt on," he said, and snapped the elevator gate shut. Sharing Madeleine Carroll's aura was beyond anything I had expected during my first week at The Times, but I realized I would have to restrain my curiosity at least temporarily. The last thing I wanted was to do anything to jeopardize my new job on this titan of newspapers. The city room was in full cry, with the paper going into extra editions through much of the night due to the breaking war news. Reporters, virtually all men in those days, unwound with drink and camaraderie in nearby saloons, and wives and girlfriends were expected to understand and not scold when their men broke dates or came home late. That night, after the next edition was locked up, a reporter invited me to join him and two of his colleagues for drinks at Bleeck's, a legendary hangout for newspapermen three blocks south of The Times. While a wide gulf existed between reporters and copyboys, the invitation was my reward for having delivered a note the night before to my host's girlfriend, a chorus girl at the Latin Quarter. Named for its curmudgeonly proprietor, Jack Bleeck (pronounced "Blake"), the saloon, a former speakeasy, adjoined the rear entrance of the New York Herald Tribunebuilding. Odd mementos adorned its walls and a suit of armor stood in an inside room, a donation from the old Metropolitan Opera House a block away. The pub was a warm haven and, at the elongated front-room bar, shop talk resounded into the wee hours. Among the regulars at the bar that night were Wolcott Gibbs, The New Yorker's theater critic, and Richard Maney, dean of Broadway press agents-the only one of his tribe regarded as talented enough to write now and then for The Times's Sunday Magazine. Also present was RalpGelb, Arthur is the author of 'City Room' with ISBN 9780399150753 and ISBN 0399150757.