Your Public Best - Lillian Brown [1]
—Meg Armstrong, former Executive Director,
Women Executives in State Governments
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am very grateful to Hy Badler, former Vice-President of Operations and Engineering, CBS Washington, for his invaluable advice on the technical information in the chapter “Appearing on Television.”
I would like to thank my daughter Kristi Brown for her contributions to the book, which include editing and typing the original manuscript, and my other daughter, Carla Gorrell, who has worked with me professionally for more than two decades.
FOREWORD
by Edwin Newman
It’s a little late in the day for me to be thinking of running for office, or as it might be more pompously put these days, offering my capacity for citywide, statewide, or national leadership. If, however, I did decide to make that leadership capacity publicly available, I would ask Lillian Brown to join my team. Many who have run for office and made it have done just that, and with good reason. Lillian Brown gives them sound advice, often on matters they themselves have never thought of, advice based on decades of experience and also on much wisdom and common sense. (If you want to see what I mean by “matters they themselves have never thought of,” just glance at her table of contents.)
It is not that she would recommend anything intended to be misleading. What she does help people do—people in many fields, not only politicians—is to present themselves as they are, but with a degree of confidence and comfort necessary to be at ease before a camera, a microphone, or an audience. She helps make sure they exhibit no distractions, such as a tie of the wrong color, a dress that is too flashy, a gesture that is too large, a delivery that is monotonous or one that is extravagant and overdone, a smile that is too practiced, an earnestness that is excessive, or a detachment that suggests that the speaker himself or herself is not much interested. What she strives for is reminiscent of a line from one of the early television serials: “Just the facts, ma’am,” coupled with a still older exhortation: “Put your best foot forward.”
I mentioned the word camera. The world in which we live is increasingly a television world. It is, of course, no secret that many disparaging words are spoken about television. During the 1988 election, for example, we were told over and over again how it had reduced the contest to a battle of sound bites. The term “sound bite” was represented as somehow contemptible and was spoken, as often as not, with a sneer.
In fact, the sound bite is not quite that bad. Much depends on how well-chosen it is, how accurate, how revealing. In any case, if the sound bite is the way of the world today, denouncing it is pointless and self-defeating. Learning to live with it—or better, to master it—is a more sensible course.
That is where Lillian Brown comes in. For more and more of us, a tremendous amount depends on how we present ourselves, how well and how convincingly we speak, what impression we convey, whether we get our message across. Why not rely on an expert for help? Why not present our public best?
I met Lillian Brown when I was working on “Modern Maturity,” the television program of the American Association of Retired Persons. With Lillian in the makeup room there in the Washington studio, I knew that I would go on looking my best, without looking phony, and so would the guests I was to interview. As these guests came in, I would introduce them to Lillian—when it was necessary. Most of the time it wasn’t, because the majority of them had been made up by her before, or had been advised by her, or had appeared on programs she had produced. You see, she is something of a legend in Washington.
And not only in Washington. When I was in some other city for a television program and mentioned her name to the makeup artist, there was instant recognition.