Remembering Beryl Pfizer

Women have always been an integral part of Today, from the very beginning when Mary Kelly and Estelle Parsons were among the first hires for the program staff and even did some on-camera work. And women even served sometimes as substitute hosts when Dave Garroway was elsewhere. But when women are mentioned in the context of the first decade of Today, it’s often in reference to the Today Girls, the sort of little-sister/next-door-neighbor member of the on-air staff whose role was to bring a little light and a little beauty to the morning’s proceedings. Several famous women carried the Today Girl title, among them Lee Ann Meriwether, Betsy Palmer, Helen O’Connell, Florence Henderson.

But one Today Girl’s path to the seat next to Dave Garroway wasn’t through a pageant, a movie studio or a singing career. Instead, she was promoted from the program staff because Dave Garroway considered her “the perfect woman.” She was a writer, producer, and a keen observer with a sharp wit – and she left us with witty and candid recollections of her eight months on the air and her time working for Dave Garroway. And after she left Today, she went on to a brilliant career as an award-winning writer and producer for television and radio. Today, let’s meet Beryl Pfizer.

A New Jersey native, Pfizer graduated from Hood College with a music degree in 1949. She then moved to New York City to fulfill her dream of living there. Pfizer worked on the staff of Arthur Godfrey’s CBS programs, then joined NBC and worked as a writer on Home. In 1960, she was assigned as a writer on Today. Before long, she ended up getting more than she imagined.

During this period, the Today program was going through writers, producers, and Today Girls at a rapid pace. Things looked placid to the viewers at home, but behind the scenes was what staffers characterized as chaos and uncertainty.1 Dave Garroway’s power and influence as host reached their height just as his personal life was itself a handful (and that will be discussed more in the book, of course, but let’s say that Dave’s tendency to burn the candle at both ends was catching up with him). If the ratings slumped, or if Garroway decided someone didn’t have the magic, that person might find themselves replaced. Author Robert Metz, in his history of Today, wrote that Garroway’s high expectations, forged after years of carrying the show on his back, left him “always looking for someone who could bring perfection to the show.”

The Today Girls were no exception. Pfizer wrote years later that her tally of Today Girls came to 30 during the Garroway years. Sometimes they had left for personal reasons, as Florence Henderson had when she was expecting a child. But other times, “whenever Dave grew restless with the show, or there was any dip in its sales or popularity, they threw out the old Today Girl and got a new one.” And it was under that kind of circumstance that Beryl Pfizer would become one of those thirty.

Dave Garroway and Beryl Pfizer, 1961. (NBC photo)

Dave Garroway had long been fascinated by her. According to one account, he had first seen her on a bus in Manhattan one day and thought she was the perfect woman. But before he could walk up and introduce himself, she disappeared into the crowds walking along the city’s streets. Which left him surprised the day he was in the studio and saw that “perfect woman” show up – turned out, she worked for Today. And before long, that “perfect woman” experienced the glare of the spotlight, promoted to Today Girl.

Pfizer later wrote about her experiences on Today, praising Garroway as a gifted communicator and an observer with an offbeat point of view. But she also remembered his “great ability to inspire rage, just as he had a great ability to inspire loyalty in those around him.” She remembered him as “a disorganizer” with “an incredible ability to create chaos out of order…he would arrive at the studio at the last minute and find fault with everything.” Sometimes he’d reorganize the program at the last minute and have the second hour’s guests on during the first hour, which prompted a frenzy of staffers hurriedly reshuffling things at the last second.

Years later she wrote of the daily journal she kept, recording Garroway’s daily eccentricities, sayings and claims. Sometimes she never knew how to take what she saw and heard: for example, his claim that during his transit from his home to his studio, somebody or something turned his undershorts around backwards. Or the morning “DG came back to desk, dipped hairbrush in tea, brushed hair, then drank some of the tea.” Pfizer wrote that staffers sometimes called him “Big Spooky” because of his fascination with strange happenings.

If Garroway’s antics weren’t enough, Pfizer found being an on-camera personality its own handful. She wrote a 1961 TV Guide article about how her seven-month on-air tenure was marked, from beginning to end, by others’ constant obsessions with how she looked on television. Everyone from the makeup man to the producer, the lighting director, and others on the staff had some idea of something she should change: make her upper lip appear thicker, change her hairstyle, make her chin look less pointed or her cheekbones less prominent. If it wasn’t that, others were suggesting changes to her wardrobe. The publicity photographer even suggested she wear a set of falsies that he kept in his desk. And as if the comments from program staff weren’t enough, the viewers’ mail brought complaints and suggestions of their own.2

And, she wrote, one day she took all this to heart, and the day she was doing everything properly, in came a letter from the NBC Talent Department notifying her that she was being dismissed from the program. She said that although it was well-known that Garroway made those decisions, he hated to be the bad guy and wanted someone else to pin the blame on. She remained on the show for a few weeks after she had been served notice that she wouldn’t be renewed. As she remembered, “General David Sarnoff3 was a guest in the studio one day. Dave turned to me and said, ‘Want to meet the man who fired you?’ I did meet the General, who winked at me and said, ‘My wife and I have coffee with you every morning.’ It was obvious he not only hadn’t fired me, he didn’t even know I was fired.”

But her dismissal from Today didn’t slow Pfizer’s career, and she worked elsewhere for NBC News as a writer and producer, working on convention broadcasts, on NBC Radio’s Monitor service, and even wrote and produced a Pink Panther series for NBC television. Her NBC Radio series The Women’s Program was awarded a commendation from American Women in Radio in Television in 1979, and the following year she won an Emmy for producing Ask NBC News with John Chancellor. Outside broadcasting, she wrote the “Poor Woman’s Almanac” feature for Ladies Home Journal. She also loved being physically active, and was an avid runner and tennis player. She also did volunteer work for a local hospital.

When Dave Garroway died in 1982, she was approached about saying something about him. She found herself choked up “not with sadness, but with rage,” she wrote, for Garroway’s suicide shook her to the core. Recalling how he would turn broadcasts upside down at the last minute, she likened his suicide to “his final act of defiance…here was Old Dave again, taking us off-guard, refusing to let thing go along in any normal, orderly fashion.” She wrote of her belief that his famous benediction of “peace” was “more a personal plea than a political one. After two hours of jousting with his own peculiar talents, his intellectual curiosity, his restless need to depend on gimmicks, his insecurity about his own abilities, he must have said that word in a plea for some inner peace for himself.”4

Beryl Pfizer (right) with Estelle Parsons at a 60th anniversary celebration for Today in 2012. (NBC photo)

Beryl Pfizer lived a long and active life, and stayed in touch with her friends from the broadcast world, attending Today‘s 60th anniversary in 2012. Her friendships extended throughout the industry, and she helped establish a scholarship at Hood in honor of her friend Andy Rooney.

Well into her 80s she remained active, continuing to do volunteer work and being active in her community. She even ran a race only a month or so before she passed away in February 2016 at age 87.5

This entry is a little far afield from our usual focus on Dave Garroway, and Beryl Pfizer was only in his orbit for a brief period. But it’s through her that we get an unusual, perceptive, and unique view of what he was like. Besides that, her story means something to every woman who’s working in mass communications today. It was the Beryl Pfizers of the world, blazing a path in times that weren’t the easiest, that made it possible for all of us to do what we do. All of us owe something to her.

SOURCES:

  1. Gossip and industry columns in newspapers of the period picked up on this, occasionally printing brief lines about rumors of chaos behind the scenes. It’s an instance of the gossip columnists being proven right by history.
  2. Anyone who’s ever been on television on a regular basis knows all about this. Especially women who are on-air talent. Some things never change.
  3. Chairman of RCA, which owned NBC.
  4. Pfizer’s 1984 TV Guide article remembering her time working for Dave Garroway might read to some like score-settling. But a close read reveals sadness behind it, a mourning that someone so gifted was so tormented by insecurities and all the other things that made his life difficult. There is a tone of weary compassion, that Pfizer felt affection for the man but also exasperation. All of us have had at least one such person in our lives at some point, and we thus know how complicated those feelings can be. It’s all a part of being human.
  5. More from the “why you should never wait to pursue an idea” file: Although I’d played with the idea for a while, not until April 2016 or so did I commit to the idea of writing a Garroway book. I was scouting about for ideas on people to interview. Having remembered Pfizer’s TV Guide article about Garroway, which I’d read when it first ran and was the first really good glimpse at the man behind the image I’d read, I thought she would be an excellent interview, so I started looking for her contact information. To my chagrin, I found her obituary. I’d just missed her. Folks, the lesson here: when you have an idea like this, never put it off until later.