Out of the Blue

When Reporter John Campbell Crosby came back from five years service in the Army in 1946 to resume his theatrical beat on the New York Herald Tribune, the editors had no room for him in his old craft. They shunted him off "behind the classified ads" with the suggestion that he try writing a radio column. Grudgingly he did, though he knew nothing about radio, did not even own a set. Last week, ten years later, Crosby's four-a-week observations on the contemporary radio-TV scene were being pored over by some 15 million readers of 103 newspapers--from Paris to Fairbanks, Alaska.

As No. 1 critic in a highly self-conscious industry, Crosby wields enormous influence. "I've caused the demise of some pretty bad shows," he admits, "and I've also helped keep some worthwhile things going." But urbane Critic Crosby, 44, is less known as a crusader than as an erudite, sometimes witty, sometimes coruscating commentator. Sample Crosby observations:

P: On giveaway shows: "I have always felt that giveaways were immoral in preaching this reverence for wealth."

P: On Elvis Presley: "Unspeakably untalented and vulgar. Where do you go from Elvis, short of open obscenity, which is against the law?"

P: On Dave Garroway: "The idea is to be as languid as possible about everything, and this is expressed by little shrugs, little liftings of eyebrows and small flutterings of hands, by a general bonelessness both in physiognomy and in point of view."

P: On Mrs. Arthur Murray: "She reminds me strongly of relentless hostesses who insist that I bob apples when I have other things on my mind. [Once] she scored the newsbeat of the year. There were two questions, she said, which had been agitating the nation for years: 1) Is there an Arthur Murray? 2) Can he dance? Well, there is (she produced him). And he can (they did). For a consistent level of incompetence, the Arthur Murray show is well up there, though Sheena of the Jungle occasionally threatens it."

The Hangover Approach. The best of TV, says Crosby (who gets saucer-eyed after two hours of it) are "the unrehearsed things--conventions, a ball game, the McCarthy hearings, the little bits of history that have gone before the cameras." The worst part: boredom. "Readers who write me are disgusted by programs, horrified by them or outraged by them; their reactions are much stronger than mine."

Like any other critic, Crosby admits that he has more fun writing about bad shows ("warts") than good ones, but he still considers himself a mild commentator. He does confess to an occasional "hangover" column--"when I'm so low I just have to sit down and write something terrible about somebody." (In 1951 he panned a TV show featuring his wife Mary, who filed suit for divorce the following month.)

Born in Milwaukee, Crosby was put through home-town private schools, later went to Phillips Exeter. In his freshman year at Yale in 1932, he was suspended (later readmitted) for smuggling a girl into a "no-sex-after-six" dorm. The incident built up into a Page One story, was fictionalized in a Satevepost serial, later became Howard Lindsay's Broadway play She Loves Me Not, with Burgess Meredith.

A Healthy Thing. After a summer stint with the Milwaukee Sentinel, he decided to stick with newspapers, never went back to school. With his postwar Trib column, Crosby was making $110 a week. Today, from his column and magazine pieces, he earns more than $40,000 a year, lives on the Stamford, Conn, estate of Richard Simon (of Simon & Schuster, which published his book Out of the Blue) with his two children (7 and 9).

Crosby seldom goes into Manhattan, hates nightclubs (but likes a friendly drink), studiously shuns TV people and pressagents; he rarely goes to studio broadcasts. Yet he is gregarious and lives a far-from-humdrum life. In the last decade he has trekked through Mau Mau country, settled a $2 million libel suit over cocktails with Bob Hope, gone to the movies with Egypt's President Nasser ("a lousy picture"), upped many a glass with his friend Humphrey Bogart.

All in all. Crosby feels that his column is a healthy thing. He and his fellow critics "may be misguided, but we make honest attempts at criticism. These attempts have enormous influence on the industry--which suffers from an inferiority complex and is very sensitive to criticism." He finds vast areas of programming still unexplored: "It's easy enough to criticize what's on the air, but I think one of the critic's main functions is to stimulate a demand for what isn't."

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