Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [104]
I had thought our efforts might raise $25,000.
“Nothing of the kind,” Veeck had said. “We’ll get three or four times that much.”
And when the drive was concluded, Veeck had been proved correct. The fund totaled $90,000 – enough to provide for the education of all the children orphaned by the fire, and to cover special hardships besides.
Year in and year out, you are told of crime and violence, and commercial and political opportunism in Chicago. You are also told that entertainment stars are vain and selfish, and that newspapers and newspapermen are cynical and hardhearted.
Through these few modest activities of “Kup’s Column,” however, I hope I have shown that there is another side to the story. I hope I have proved to you that Chicago, show business, and newspaper columns do have a heart – and the heart beats most strongly when it is beating for others.
11. At Random
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another session of At Random . . .”
Each Saturday night since February 12, 1959, these words have introduced a visit to another favorite stop on my Chicago beat, my late-night TV show, called At Random.
As millions of sleepy-eyed viewers know, this is the program on which a distinguished group of serious thinkers and articulate conversationalists in various professions gather for a discussion which literally is “at random.” There is no assigned topic. As host, I leave the conversationalists on their own as much as possible. All they do from midnight to about 3:00 A.M. is sit around a low table and talk.
But what talk!
Listeners have taken to napping after dinner on Saturday night so they can stay up until the early hours of Sunday morning without collapsing. They don’t want to miss a word.
They hold midnight “At Random Parties.” The first three hours are spent in watching the show – and then, for another two or three hours, they continue the discussion they heard on TV.
A Chicago priest has even inaugurated an “At Random Mass.” You can attend it right after the show, then “sleep in” for the remainder of Sunday morning!
We were flattered, indeed, to read in Harold Mehling’s none too flattering book on television, The Great Time-Killer, this passage:
“WBBM-TV has achieved great popularity with Irv Kupcinet’s late-night show, a high-calibre, often controversial, usually stimulating talkathon. Kupcinet, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, tries to select guests who have something to say and aren’t afraid to say it.” (And as an aside to Mehling: I have the nasty letters to prove it.)
Hugh Downs was another who was especially kind to our show in print. In his book, Yours Truly . . . Hugh Downs, he writes: “With the possible exception of Irv Kupcinet in Chicago, Jack Paar has a greater talent for bringing out the real personality of people than any other interviewer I have seen.” These are gracious words, indeed, from a man who has worked at Paar’s side nightly for five years, and only guested on At Random twice.
It is no exaggeration to say that At Random has been one of the wonders in the history of Chicago television. Such shows have been slotted opposite it as David Susskind’s Open End, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Penthouse, and offbeat offerings such as the Caribbean game of jai-alai. But through it all, At Random has thrived. It continues to hold the largest after-midnight audience in the Chicago area – approximately one million viewers.
In its first two seasons, At Random won two Emmy Awards from the Chicago Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. And because of the show I have been awarded two Emmys, one of them as “Television Man of the Year” in Chicago in 1961.
Its popularity has long since spread beyond the boundaries of the Chicago area. Since