Columbia Broadcasting System Inc. - In all his glory: the life and times of William S. Paley and the birth of modern broadcasting

T he one they all wanted to see arrived late, as was his custom. To most of them he was Mr. Paley or The Chairman. To a select few he was Bill. But to everyone in the room, he was CBS, the Tiffany Network, the tycoon who seemed to have invented the idea of style. Although the party was to honor 60 Minutes, one of televisions most successful shows, center stage belonged to William Paley, now just a few months shy of his eighty-sixth birthday. On this cool spring evening in 1987, all eyes turned to the man who had led the Columbia Broadcasting System for nearly sixty years.

Over a hundred members of New Yorks broadcasting and corporate elite circled the ornate Louis XVI Room on the second floor of the St. Regis Hotel on Fifth Avenue that night. Executive wives, anxieties masked by smooth skins and firm chins purchased with their husbands fortunes, sipped Mot et Chandon, and caught their reflections in the gilt mirrors on the white-paneled walls. Girlfriends and daughters, leggy and sexy in their new short dresses, made small talk, eyes constantly darting to inspect each new arrival. The men, mostly middle-aged and beyond, wore tailored dinner clothes and stood in small knots, balancing their champagne glasses, nibbling pt, and trading gossip and opinions about their business. I wouldnt give a nickel for Fox Broadcasting, Laurence Tisch, president of CBS, confided to RCAs former chairman Thornton Bradshaw.

Tisch was doubtless the richest man in the room; his fortune, an estimated $1 billion, was double Paleys. But Tisch lacked Paleys panache. He was a money man with a shiny bald head and deceptively amiable manner. Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes would later tell the audience, I went to work for CBS in 1949 and I have met William S. Paley maybe thirty times during those years and tonight was the first time I ever called him Bill. Funny thing is, I met Laurence Tisch only twice and I called him Larry both times. I dont know what the hell to make of that.

Paley, whose title was little more than an honorific now, had spent much of the day in his elegant office on the thirty-fifth floor of Black Rock, the CBS headquarters four blocks away on Sixth Avenue. In the late afternoon he had taken a special express elevator to his waiting limousine, a maroon Cadillac Fleetwood with a television and a Sony compact disc player, and been driven to his duplex apartment on Fifth Avenue by Charles Noble, his chauffeur for eighteen years. After an hour with his exercise instructor he dressed for dinner, assisted by his valet, John Dean, once an equerry to Prince Philip. Then Paley had headed out the door, timing his arrival to miss the cocktail hour. The pain from a lifelong back ailment had become so persistent that he could no longer stand comfortably.

After some quick photographs with Tisch and the 60 Minutes contingent, Paley made his way to one of the Versailles Rooms round dining tables. Standing at his dinner place, he grasped the back of his chair for support. His thick white hair gleamed in the candlelight. (Truman Capote, a onetime friend, said that Paley dyed his hair to brighten it, to make it more blond than gray.) His deep tan had been a Paley signature since the 1920s, when irreverent colleagues began calling him Pale Billy. Purely a trick of transposition, Time magazine once explained, adding, He likes hot countries and bright sunlight. His face was creased with age, his small brown eyes nearly overwhelmed by pouches of skin. But the eyes still glittered with life. His pug nose lent him an air of toughness, somewhat softened by his smile, a slightly crooked little-boy grin that promised mischief and mirth. He was not classically handsome, never had been, but his face was virile and sensuous.

Age and a slight stoop had reduced his nearly six-foot stature by several inches, but the dinner clothes (by Huntsman of Savile Row) were impeccably tailored. The small paunch of his later years was gone. On his surprisingly small feet, custom-made evening shoes shone like blackened mirrors, and the air carried the scent of his musky Givenchy cologne (a scent created for him in the 1960s). Despite his advancing years, he appeared nearly as vigorous as twenty years before, when Capote had once murmured: He looks like a man who has just swallowed an entire human being.

Paley, Mister Paley. He is to American broadcasting as Carnegie was to steel, Ford to automobiles, Luce to publishing and Ruth to baseball, the New York Times had once written. The New York Daily News had called him an electronic Citizen Kane. His reign at CBS, wrote Washington Post television critic Tom Shales, could be summed up as more than five decades of brilliant brinksmanship, salesmanship, statesmanship, and showmanship.

Once while he was touring in Los Angeles, an aide had been assigned to follow Paley with a chair. When he paused to sit, he didnt bother to glance back; he knew the chair would be there.

Paley had an insatiable appetite for power. But he was not outwardly dynamic in the style of Chryslers Lee Iacocca or the late Charles Revson, the tyrannical founder of Revlon. Paley didnt stride through the corridors in a commanding way or pound tables or bark orders. He was much more subtle. His office didnt even look as if it was intended for work; it seemed organized for fun, with an antique chemin de fer card table as its centerpiece instead of a proper desk.

Like Alices Cheshire Cat, who lingered only as a wide smile, Paley was often a shadow presence. He had the disconcerting habit of going away and letting others manage CBS for long stretches of time. But somewhat paradoxically, his absences reinforced his power. No one knew exactly when he might appearor to what effect. He was rarely absent from programming discussions where he exercised his authority through nuance and calculated obliqueness. Since programming is an instinctive, almost mystical, process, Paley was viewed by many underlings not so much as an executive but an oracle.