The Russian Jew who founded the CBS television company
12/16/2022
He gave us television shows and soap operas. And he built his empire from scratch - the CBS television company. William Paley worked with Roosevelt, was friends with Chaplin, and drank like the great Gatsby.
He started out running a cigar factory that was going under, and ended up founding CBS, one of the largest television networks in the US. “Mr. Paley is to American broadcasting what Carnegie is to steel and Ford is to automobiles,” journalists wrote about him.
But in fact, it all started before cigars - at school. William Paley was short, round-faced and slightly squinted. Because of this, he was teased as "narrow-eyed" and put at the last desk - "a place for fools." His mother grumbled endlessly that he was worse than other children in everything from studies to appearance. All the love of the parent went to his sister Blang. Paley later said that it was this that aroused ambition in him: he decided to prove to his mother and classmates that he was capable of much.
William S. Paley was born in 1901 to Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His father, Samuel Paley, built his fortune in the tobacco business. He was the owner of the La Palina cigar brand, once very successful, but by the mid-1920s it was rapidly losing ground to the new "tobacco miracle" - cigarettes. Cigarettes were more accessible, cheaper, and took the smoker less time. Cigars were a thing of the past, their sales were falling.
William Paley, who graduated from the elite Wharton School of Business at 22, decided to realize his ambitions at his father's cigar factory. By that time, his father was in trouble: he had previously tried to rebuild the business from a cigar to a cigarette, but the idea turned out to be a failure. The taste of cigarettes was spoiled by cheap paper. Samuil returned to cigars, but a successful advertising campaign was needed to bring them back to their former popularity. He hired his graduate son as vice president of advertising - and he did not lose.
What William Paley did today can be called a "successful publicity case." He invested part of the money in the development of the WCAU radio station in Philadelphia - it was in this city that the factory was located and the family lived. In return, he flooded the air with advertising messages and even created a separate program “The Hour of La Palina” “accompanied by cigars”: tobacco was advertised there in an unobtrusive form - with an orchestra and to popular songs. Sales doubled, and Paley Jr. believed in the power of radio. Soon he persuaded his father to buy the radio network Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. William became its leader. By 1929, he had turned the ex-bankrupt into one of the nation's largest broadcasters. Paley eventually shortened the name: he simply left Columbia Broadcasting System. Or CBS.
Paley's tactic was simple: more variety - so that both concerts and radio series, more stars - in his grid stood next to the performances of popular comedian Jack Benny and singer King Crosby, well, more advertising. But such that it was also interesting to listen to her! Before Paley, radio commercials were read in monotonous voices, while he began to use jingles and musical intros. “My friends thought that I was out of my mind, since I decided to quit my father’s cigar business and go into radio. But I felt it was worth it,” Paley later recalled.
In 1931 he met Dorothy Hart Hurst, an actress and socialite. She was married, but this did not bother Paley - a year later, Hurst, having received a divorce, became his own wife. Thanks to this marriage, Paley gained access to high circles - among others, Hurst introduced him to US President Franklin Roosevelt.
Meanwhile, the threat of World War II loomed over the world. Against this backdrop, Paley decided to open a news-only division of CBS News. But then he ran into an unexpected problem: newspapers, which had a well-established working network of journalists around the world, logically perceived his radio station as a threat to business - and refused to provide it with news reports. Saved acquaintance with the journalist Edward Murrow, who became famous for reporting from London during the Battle of Britain in 1940. Together they began to create a staff of their own journalists in order to gain independence from newspaper publishers. And they succeeded. Later, it was Murrow who headed the CBS News division.
During the war, William served in the Office of War Information. Together with President Roosevelt, he developed a plan to expand broadcasting to Latin America to combat Nazi propaganda. In 1943, Paley became an adviser to General Eisenhower, coordinating radio operations in North Africa and overseeing the restoration of broadcasting in Europe.
If William Paley was lucky in his work, then family life cracked. The reason was his betrayal and conflicts in everyday life. “I never behaved as if the world revolves around him alone. Perhaps that was the problem,” Dorothy Hearst recalled after her divorce in 1947. However, Paley did not grieve for a long time. In the same year, he married Barbara "Babe" Cushing Mortimer, a style icon and America's first beauty, according to Time and Vogue magazines. Mortimer was friends with the writer Truman Capote: it is believed that it was she who became the prototype of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
In her marriage to Paley, she had two children and, in her own words, "turned her life into the service of the family." But the relationship was again difficult. Paley continued to have affairs on the side. In addition, he hoped to get into high society with the help of Babe, but membership in Long Island country clubs was not approved because of his Jewishness. To spite his haters, he built a house in New Hampshire, where he hosted parties in the spirit of the Great Gatsby.
In parallel, Paley was preparing for the coming era of television. Having drawn up a plan for the transition to a new format, he built two film studios and began creating television shows of various genres - from comedies to westerns. Early hits included programs with artist Arthur Godfrey and journalist Ed Sullivan, as well as Gunsmoke and I Love Lucy. When the popularity of a show fell, Paley immediately canceled it. This did not affect only the western Gunsmoke - this series was still on the radio, and Paley fell in love with it so much that when its coverage fell, he demanded to continue shooting.
CBS prospered, but the desire to lose its nose to competitors led to financial losses. Back in the 1930s, Paley opened a laboratory whose chief engineer was the famous inventor Peter Goldmark. In 1940, he introduced a color television system - the problem was that it was incompatible with black and white televisions. Paley then acquired Hytron, a radio tube company. But again he failed: the market was flooded with RCA black-and-white televisions equipped with a color broadcasting system.
Paley promptly liquidated his own production, incurring losses. In part, he managed to recoup them by investing in dozens of shows. One of them was the musical "My Fair Lady". In 1962, Paley sold the film rights to Warner Bros. for a record amount at that time - $ 5 million. At the same time, he managed to agree that the rights to the film would pass to CBS seven years after its release. In 1965, the picture received eight Oscars.
Paley has always had an amazing flair for soap operas and TV shows. Under his leadership, The Hillbilly of Beverly Hills, 60 Minutes, The Waltons came out - endless shows, 200-300 or more episodes each. The Waltons ran on CBS for nearly ten years, from 1972 to 1981. One fact speaks eloquently about the impact this story of an ordinary American family had on the country: in 1992, President George W. Bush mentioned the series in his keynote speech. "We will continue our efforts to strengthen the American family and make it more like the Waltons than the Simpsons," Bush said.
CBS was even nicknamed "Tiffany's Network", comparing Paley's show to Tiffany's jewelry. However, the reason was not only the quality, but also the star cast - Frank Sinatra, Charlie Chaplin, Bing Crosby and many others managed to light up here. “I think I was born with an understanding of what is important to American society,” Paley said in an interview right before his death in 1990.
Anastasia Moreva