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was his great friend and adviser, and Frank Altschul to dine with me in early August of '39. At that dinner I said something about the possibility of his running for President.

This was the first time you had ever mentioned it...

It was the first time I had mentioned it, as I recall. He tacitly expressed interest in the nomination. He didn't say, “Oh, don't be ridiculous,” or “I have never thought of it.” He tacitly expressed interest and I realized that he might be available.

This idea then became stronger in my mind, and time passed, and I was very much involved with Albert Lasker and he with me.

In January of 1940 he asked me if I wouldn't like to have some people to dine with us, and who would I like to have. I said I thought it would be nice to have Rita Van Doren and Wendell Willkie and Dorothy Thompson and a couple of other people who were friends of his and people I knew, because I still had this idea that it would be interesting to see what could be done about Willkie's candidacy. Albert thought he was a nice man and he didn't mind dining with him, but, you know, he thought this idea of his candidacy was perfectly ludicrous. Dorothy Thompson was then a great political soothsayer--do you remember this?--so we invited the people and waited in the bar at Chris Cella's, the steak restaurant, and as we waited there Albert saw a man called Goenthal, who was the head of a very popular radio program called “Information, Please,” on which Franklin P. Adams and other people appeared.