One of the strange sidelights of my research is that it’s led me to examine the Playboy Magazine archive, since Playboy carried a couple of pieces about Dave Garroway during its early years. Since I was born in the ’70s, there’s a certain image I have of Playboy, so it’s interesting to go back to the magazine’s early years and see when it was about a lifestyle, about being a cool and swinging man, and the girlie pictures play less of a role than you might think (and are also fairly tame by modern standards – if anything, early Playboy makes me think of Esquire in the ’80s and ’90s).
In the ’50s Dave Garroway symbolized several things that fit in with the Playboy ideal. He was a cool character who talked cool. He liked fast cars. He dressed and groomed himself in a unique style. He loved jazz music. “Watching him, you get the idea he doesn’t care one way or the other if he has an audience or not,” a 1954 profile of Garroway in Playboy read. “He’s just taking it easy, doing what he wants to be doing, and if a few million people happen to be looking at him, OK. If they’re not, OK too.”
One other aspect of the Garroway lifestyle that fit with the Playboy lifestyle: Garroway’s skill with card games. Long nights with card games had led to a lot in Dave’s life – and helped launch his career in broadcasting. Even into the Today years Dave kept on playing cards, and in the November 1957 Playboy John Moss wrote about the qualities of a good poker player, hoping to inspire those wanting to improve their game. As an example of the skills a first-rate poker player would possess, Moss cited Garroway as a particularly adept opponent, saying that the master communicator “has won entirely too much of my money.”
Moss wrote that Garroway’s overwhelming characteristic was self-discipline, that he never did anything without a reason. “Calculating, unemotional, a realist, a convincing dissembler – he never beats himself.” Although Garroway had his bad nights, Moss said he never caused his own downfall. “With Garroway you have the sense that everything is going along just fine and your queens-up are going to win with ease, and then about the time you’re counting the pot for the third time and imagining yourself sweeping it in, there’s Dave with a neat little straight he had on the first five cards.”
Moss said Garroway wasn’t being modest in not raising. “He waited until his fourth up-card seemed to wreck him and everyone was relaxed. Then he was set. Then there was the bland, casual, slightly bored, slightly confused manner and the harmless, diverting small talk – all designed to soothe you, quiet your suspicions, rock you to sleep – and the next thing you knew Dave was dragging in your pot.”
According to Moss, Garroway demonstrated that the best poker players were amateurs. Pros played a cold and calculated game that avoided risk, “but their play lacks boldness, flavor and imagination – the very qualities with which Garroway’s game abounds.”