Word: spivak
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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...
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...
...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...
...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...
...recent months there seems to have been a certain mellowing in Spivak's manner, on the air and off, which is perhaps the result of a heart attack he suffered last year. He has added a nap to his daily schedule and withdrawn from the position of lead-off questioner on the show's panel, taking over the more detached role of moderator. Still, flashes of the old Spivak occur. To Edmund Muskie, fence-straddling on the challenge to McGovern's California delegates at the Democratic Convention: "Senator, why is it so hard for you to come...