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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

Q:

Sig Mickelson?

Stanton:

Yes, Sig was president of CBS News.

And Sig had not been able to get Gitlin to get going. They were always just -- it was tomorrow we were going to have it. So I said to Sig we had to take it away from Irv. And it was I who said, “Let's turn to Fred to be the producer.” But, Sig, on the other hand, had to be brought along too, because he had had a rough experience with Friendly in those days when Friendly had his -- a third News Department, so to speak. In fact, I think, Sig used to call Fred Friendly “Horace Hostile” as a gag.

But that particular night I outlined my idea for the series to Friendly. Mickelson sat quietly and listened and Ed sat over to the right and listened. And we all participated in how it was going to take off and come to fruition. And after Mickelson and Friendly left the office -- and I think I convened the meeting at eight o'clock in the evening, anyway, it was at night -- but after Mickelson and Friendly left, and Ed was getting ready to go away on his sabbatical, I guess I asked him if he wanted to have a drink. I was dog tired. And we had a couple of drinks. And then I took him up to his house up on the East Side -- it was quite late -- and we talked about all the problems of news and the world and so forth on that night, because he was going. And it was a short time after that that Ed exploded when he thought I had impugned his integrity by my comments in an interview with Jack Gould from New Orleans.

Q:

That interview -- well, we'll return to that because that's a story.





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