Owlish glasses magnify the seemingly perpetual expression of pained skepticism. The mouth is ever pursed in disapproval. The voice ranges in timbre from the crackle of dried twigs under a hostile foot to the rasp of fingernails across a blackboard. Along with these qualities Lawrence E. Spivak conveys the agility of a mongoose awaiting the right moment to strike a superior adversary and the assurance of a man who knows everything worth knowing about the topic at hand. This Sunday, when he clears his throat, adjusts the pillow seat that makes him look taller on camera, and thumbs the stack of index cards before him, Spivak and Meet the Press will be celebrating 25 years on television. At 72, he is the longest-lived personality on network TV, a monument to durability in a field where ten or twelve years can be counted a full career.
Sealed Fate. From its tentative beginning in 1945 as a radio promotion for the old American Mercury magazine, then published and edited by Spivak, Meet the Press moved to NBC television in 1947 and, with its Sunday broadcasts, quickly became a prime supplier of Monday morning headlines. Americans got their first official word of the Russian atomic bomb from an inadvertent remark made by General Walter Bedell Smith on a 1949 program. Thomas E. Dewey used the show in 1950 to eliminate himself from the presidential race and to tout Dwight Eisenhower as the 1952 Republican nominee. John F. Kennedy made his debut on MTP in 1951 as a young, relatively obscure Congressman. "We were looking for fresh faces," Spivak recalls. "He was exactly right for the medium."
The show's early prominence came from Spivak's uncanny knack for snaring newsmakers while they were hot, and from the tough questions he threw at them once they were on the air. An incident this summer suggests that Spivak has not lost his scheduling touch. During the Thomas Eagleton imbroglio, CBS's Face the Nation seemed to have scored a clear scoop by presenting the beleaguered vice-presidential candidate and Jack Anderson, his chief tormentor, on the same program. But that day Meet the Press interviewed Democratic National Chairman Jean Westwood and Deputy Chairman Basil Paterson, who said that "it would be a noble thing" for Eagleton to resign from the Democratic ticket. That not-at-all casual remark undermined Eagleton's position and made his effort on Face the Nation irrelevant.
Spivak's abrasive behavior toward guests has both pleased and enraged viewers. (He once snapped at Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan: "Don't filibuster; we have only two minutes left.") Spivak denies any malevolence in his questions: "I never try to catch a man. I will never try to trick him." But Spivak will hold a guest's previous public statements against him if he seems to be waffling. "A man had better be prepared to justify or explain his changes of position," he says. Such grilling can exhaust its targets. George Meany, no stranger to rough-and-tumble public debate, once grumped: "A half-hour on that show can age you ten years." Spivak is also stern with the reporters who appear. At the cost of a certain spontaneity, questioners must speak in turn on his cue; Spivak hates "overtalk from all those eager beavers."