Word: cunninghams
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...when it zoomed in for a closeup of former President Gerald Ford. But wait, who was that handsome couple smiling fondly at each other nearby? Knowledgeable viewers recognized them as William M. Agee, 42, soon-to-be-divorced chairman of the Bendix Corp. in Southfield, Mich., and Mary E. Cunningham, 29, his rapidly promoted vice president for strategic planning. That TV image was the first journalistic glimmer of a story that has gathered enough momentum in the past five weeks to eclipse national interest in who shot...
...story broke Sept. 24 when Agee told 600 employees at a company meeting that his friendship with Cunningham was not a factor in her swift rise. As of last week, the Mary and Bill story had rated coverage in practically every major newspaper and magazine, several sober editorials, a FORTUNE cover and, the crowning touch, a gossipy, five-part series sold to some 50 newspapers by the Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate. Written by New Journalist Gail Sheehy (Passages), the series unblushingly depicts Cunningham as an angel, awesomely gifted, scrupulously moral and out to improve the world through humane capitalism...
...Examiner (circ. 159,000), the rival Chronicle (circ. 507,000) snatched the series instead. "There was a bleep-up," said an angry Reg Murphy, the Examiner's editor. Murphy struck back with a survey of Bay Area business executives, all of whom said they would hire Cunningham on the spot...
...week's end even the most jaded of editors had to agree the Cunningham saga was getting out of hand. Bendix public relations men were taking calls offering TV and movie deals for Cunningham's story. Some 60 top executive positions had been offered, Sheehy said, including the directorship of a Harvard Business School study of women in the executive suite. Cunningham was reported to be holed up in Agee's private Idaho hideaway, or walking the beach in California, or at home in Bloomfield, Mich...
...news organizations tried to point out the more serious issues involved. Had Cunningham been a young man with the same credentials, editorialized the New York Times, "no newspaper would dream of publishing the tale ... In the upper ranks of the FORTUNE 500, unfortunately, women are more visible as receptionists, secretaries and charwomen than as makers of policy." Said the Boston Globe: "When a young woman makes good, her colleagues get suspicious... they make excuses: sex favoritism, affirmative action, window dressing." Pulitzer-prize-winning Globe Columnist Ellen Goodman found the Mary and Bill show to be "absolutely ripe with hostility toward...