Original subtitles

dramatic music

[Jim] In the early '90s, gossip became very hot.

[A.J.] Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.

John Wayne Bobbitt. The Menendez brothers.

There were these fantastic stories.

Michael Jackson.

[Jim] The nation was becoming obsessed with gossip,

and the gossip columnists of New York were gossip royalty.

[A.J.] New York Magazine did a shoot,

"The Gossip Mafia,"

where they put every columnist on the cover.

[Michael] I was chosen to be on the cover.

I wrote a weekly column called "La Dolce Musto"

with The Village Voice.

[George] I did a column

with my wife, Joanna, at the Daily News

called "Rush & Molloy."

[A.J.] Richard Johnson, "Page Six."

He was number one.

Liz Smith. I grew up reading Liz Smith.

She was everything.

Cindy Adams, the New York legend.

Liz Smith, Cindy Adams, "Page Six."

They're the tippy top.

The rest of us did what we did,

but we didn't have that big cachet.

[Jim] Cindy gets to the photo shoot.

And then she notices, lo and behold, Linda Stasi,

who was the main star of the Daily News,

has not shown up, but her two junior deputies have.

I was in Utah, so I told A.J. to go.

[A.J.] I went down for the shoot.

Me and Michael went down.

Cindy refuses to sit for the portrait.

She raised a stink and said,

"I don't want him in this shoot.

He hasn't earned it yet."

Later they said, "Well, we're gonna put you

and Michael inside the magazine."

But I took it really hard that I wasn't allowed on the cover.

And I got pissed.

And I said some very choice things to her on the set.

I made fun of her age, that kind of shit.

At this point, I was working with the Daily News part-time,

and I was also working at a newspaper called Our Town.

That day, we didn't have anything really hot.

And I called A.J. Benza and Michael Lewittes

just when they returned

from that humiliating experience to say,

"Hey, I need an item. I need something to go.

Do you guys have any throwaway stuff?"

And they said, "Now that you mentioned it."

Probably one of the biggest mistakes

of my early career.

Cindy set out to destroy me.

She called Mort Zuckerman, the owner of the Daily News,

insisted that he fire me.

And she called the owner of Our Town, Jerry Finkelstein,

to demand that he fire me.

The final hit from Cindy was, she wrote a column about zeros

who had tried to cross her over the past year.

I was one of the zeros.

I went up against the queen of the hill

and got sent

tumbling back down.

[Cindy] No matter what anybody wants to say about me,

I'm not mean. I'm fun.

My column was to entertain.

At New York, you don't like it, go screw yourself.

Buy another paper.

I mean, they're not gonna read me

in Roanoke, West Virginia.

[interviewer] I think it's Roanoke, Virginia.

What's the difference?

dramatic music

lively music

[Ben] When I was working at "Page Six,"

I thought that gossip columnists

would be radioactive.

Complete opposite was true. People would seek you out,

and you were very welcome in these spaces.

And people love talking to you.

Anyone who was anyone was reading "Page Six."

And if you were in "Page Six," that meant,

"Hey, we should be paying attention to you."

When you are a powerful

gossip columnist in New York City,

you're about as powerful as the mayor.

You can make or break careers.

You can make or break restaurants.

We would set this dinner every day

where you could have politicians and financiers,

and hookers and mobsters and supermodels

and quarterbacks,

and they would all gossip with each other.

A good column makes you laugh,

makes you cry, and shocks you.

But there's hardly any gossip columns left.

Now, the only people that really do juicy

is "Page Six" and Cindy Adams.

She's 90 years old,

and she's still in the game, doing it every day.

[phone rings]

Look, I'm going to get a scoop.

-Yeah. -[indistinct chatter]

What is it? Okay.

Everybody gossips.

It comes in underneath the door.

It comes in in packages. It never stops.

I started 39 years ago,

and I had all the top stories,

like, 500 front pages.

It should have been in the Guinness Book.

Giuliani. He's back again.

Then there's the Monica. She's there.

There's Trump again. Mr. Fix-It, I got this one.

I don't know what it's about, but I got all these things.

Imelda. Woody, I--Woody.

I had dinner with him two nights ago.

Everybody wants to tell.

It doesn't make any difference.

They can end up saying, "You didn't hear it from me,"

or, "Please don't mention my name."

Durst. I was in jail with Durst.

Oh, of course he killed him. Yeah.

So I didn't stay long. [chuckles]

Yeah.

But they all wanted to let you know

they know something that nobody knows.

That's why you talk to them at another restaurant

where you'd ignore them mostly.

It's because they had something to say.

[Robert] Cindy Adams is the one person

who really writes her own column.

She's got her own sense of style.

Relies on humor.

Cindy Adams is with us now,

and you can bet she's had her nails done already.

Hey, Cindy.

I've had everything done, sweetheart.

She still has her, of course, her scoops.

What's your definition of good gossip?

Good gossip is the kind that you can get away with.

[laughter]

[Rick] She's tough, glamorous.

The energy of New York, she channels.

And at the New York Post, she was right at home.

Sensationalism and gossip came to stand

for the New York Post brand of journalism.

And it was a brand of journalism

brought to us by Rupert Murdoch.

[bell rings]

[announcer] Tonight, the presses are rolling

on a rapidly expanding newspaper, television,

and publishing empire.

The man is sitting on top of this empire is Rupert Murdoch.

inquisitive music

[Auletta] In the early '70s,

there was 11 or 13 newspapers here.

It was the Times as the legitimate paper.

Then the Wall Street Journal, a legitimate non-tabloid.

And then Newsday.

And mainly, the Daily News and the New York Post.

[Chandler] The city was in financial crisis.

It was bankrupt.

Numerous papers fell by the wayside.

They went out of business, and everybody said,

"Oh, the New York Post will be the next to fail."

It was a very boring tabloid.

It was a very, very liberal newspaper.

It was slow reading. It looked awful.

It was owned by Dorothy Schiff,

who was a banking heiress.

And Dorothy wanted to sell.

And so she decided that she would sell the paper to a guy

I never heard of at the time named Rupert Murdoch.

[Auletta] There was some relief in the sense

that there was a worry

that the Post would go out of business.

And when Dorothy Schiff sold the paper,

Murdoch assured her,

"I will keep it a liberal newspaper."

So there was that feeling that he was savior.

There was also a sense of, "Who is this guy?"

[announcer] Multimillionaire Rupert Murdoch

is at the center of a journalistic empire

that includes close to 100 newspapers and magazines

in Australia, Britain, and the United States.

He is also at the center of a swirl of controversy

involving his business deals

and the kind of publications he puts out.

He was seen as this crude upstart

that had arrived from Australia.

I mean, you look at The Sun in England.

The Sun on page three always had a semi nude woman.

He said, "This is what attracts readers," and it did.

[Chandler] You had, like, 10 seconds to grab

someone's attention as they walked past the newsstand.

Everybody was very attuned to packaging stories

in a way that they would grab people's attention.

And Murdoch understood that.

[Rupert] I'm not ashamed of any of my newspapers at all.

And I'm rather sick of snobs who tell us

that they're bad papers.

Snobs who only read papers that no one else wants.

I doubt that they read many papers at all.

And whereas on most issues, they consider themselves

liberals or radicals or something,

they-they think they ought to be imposing their taste

on everybody else in the community.

[Steve] December 30th, 1976.

The day before New Year's Eve.

And everybody's got New Year's Eve parties on their mind.

But no, no, the new owner, the boss,

is coming to the newsroom,

and he's gonna address the staff.

[George] Murdoch stood up in the newsroom

to introduce himself,

and he said nothing would change.

When I first heard that, I said,

"Uh-oh, things are gonna be really changing here."

upbeat percussive music

It was like a total transformation.

It was like an earthquake.

[Rupert] Is that front page gonna sell any newspapers?

I think so; I wish there was something a bit sexier around.

Rupert felt that the paper didn't have any pizzazz,

and he needed to juice it up.

[Peter] The agenda was to sell newspapers

and to come up with salacious things

that other people might not have.

[Chandler] It could be crime. It could be politics.

It could be show business. Nothing was off limits.

Gossip attracts readers.

Scandalous headlines attracts readers.

[reporter] We have lots more pictures

of women in bathing suits.

I think everyone was in shock.

[Pete] You have pictures of

Dinah Shore kissing an elephant,

side by side with 30 dead in South Africa,

so that the sense of balance between the importance

and non-importance of news gets to be confused,

and the package itself

tends to feel insubstantial.

And then he did this shocking thing.

He transformed the Post into a conservative newspaper.

So he not only reneged on his pledge to Dorothy Schiff,

but he-he went seemingly

against the grain of New York politics.

A lot of people were upset. The politicians were upset.

But guess what?

The circulation started to increase.

Post [indistinct].

[announcer] Murdoch clearly is in the United States to stay.

A powerful but highly controversial new force

in the publishing industry.

[interviewer] Can I show you this?

My God.

What's that from? What year?

[interviewer] It must be--

Cindy Heller--oh God.

"Cindy Heller, the attractive--"

attractive is not a great word.

"The attractive model who has garnered more queen titles

than anyone else,

including the girl the police reporters

would most like to be found dead with."

[interviewer laughs]

I don't remember that one.

I was born in 1930.

We were not wealthy. I mean, we were simple people.

Grandma washed the outdoor stoop steps

down on the Lower East Side.

Grandma took in boarders.

Then my mother became an executive secretary.

My mother then made me who became whatever it is I am.

So with each one of us, we moved up.

I was a sickly child. I was an anemic child.

I was not a good-looking child.

But my mother was good looking, and she said,

"I will not have an un-good-looking child."

So she fixed me up.

She had my nose done when I was 15.

My mother moved back my hairline

'cause she didn't like it.

She sent me to dramatic schools.

So I learned how to walk. I learned how to talk.

Grandma improved my mother.

My mother made sure that I was to be improved.

bright music

In those days, there were contests,

and I was Miss everything.

I was Miss Upswept Hairdo.

I was Miss New Jersey,

and I'd never been to New Jersey.

I was Miss Bagel, which I would've liked to outgrow.

I was Miss Bagel

by the Brooklyn Better Bagel Bakers Bureau.

I mean, is that one of the wonderful things

you wanna have on your gravestone?

So, but nobody will let me forget it.

They always bring it up.

Like you were about to bring this up.

I can tell.

But that's what I did.

And that's how I met Joey.

[Roger] I knew about Joey Adams

before I ever met Cindy

because he was known in New York City

as the unofficial toastmaster general.

It didn't matter whether it was the Catholic archdiocese

or the Smiling Sons of the Friendly Shillelagh.

Joey Adams was always the guy you asked to emcee.

[laughter]

Joey was a comedian. He was not number one.

He was not a Seinfeld,

or, back in the old days, a Bob Hope.

He was number two.

But he had a number-one lifestyle.

Joey was in the Stork Club in those days,

and he knew the Frank Sinatras and the people of the world.

lively music

Ronald Reagan was president of the actors on the West Coast.

Joey was president of all the variety performers

on the East Coast.

So he had the telephone number

and the address

of every celebrity there is.

The world opened up to me at the age of 17.

I had married into a good life.

I had a husband who was comfortable.

I had money.

What I did was marry my mother.

Joey was the same age as my mother.

It was someone who would love me,

take care of me, like my mother did.

Do you know what that does? That gives you security.

That gives you the backbone so that you're not scared.

That's why maybe you can write things or say things.

What's gonna happen to you? Nothing.

melancholy music

[reporter] If there is a revolution

in the newspaper business in New York,

this is the barricades of that revolution.

This is the city room of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post.

It is where the calls are made,

the stories typed, the headlines written.

But it is not where the power is.

The power is wherever Rupert Murdoch is,

and he is everywhere at the Post.

[Rupert] I've said in all our newspapers,

"You have to report all the important news.

That's your basic responsibility."

We're not frightened to entertain as well.

[Steve] When Rupert takes ownership,

gossip was a moribund business.

There was no energy, no passion.

[Chandler] The biggest gossip column at that time

would have been Liz Smith's column

in the New York Daily News.

She had great contacts,

but one of the reasons she had great contacts

was there was really no bite to her column.

She very seldom wrote anything negative about people.

Murdoch wanted to have a page

that would talk about the rich and famous

and wasn't afraid of publishing negative stories

about these people if necessary.

[Peter] They were trying to come up

with a name for it, and they had decided

they were going to put it on page six.

They came up with the idea, "Let's call it 'Page Six.'"

[Steve] Page Six was a new kind of gossip column.

It didn't look like a gossip column.

It was a sort of square boxy affair

with a cartoon in the middle.

It's written not by a single individual.

It was a team effort.

"Page Six" is a column by committee,

which is great, because you think

if you have six or eight reporters going everywhere,

you have better chance to get more stories.

[Chandler] Murdoch really knew

exactly what he wanted on "Page Six."

The idea was to really get at what was going on in the city.

It's basically a page of in-depth gossip.

It tries to get out the stories that the network flaks,

company PRs, don't want to get out.

[Steve] It was a gossip column for the new New York City,

what Rupert famously dubbed the corridors of power.

Chief executives of banks on Wall Street.

I remember once they found that Punch Sulzberger,

the chief executive of The New York Times,

kept his own loaded revolver in his desk.

New York Times had always been

a staunchly gun control newspaper.

And I don't remember how we found out about that,

but it was one of the great, you know, scoops of the time.

[George] Its reputation was fierce.

A call from "Page Six" was to be dreaded.

"Page Six" has-- I wouldn't call it a knife,

but, you know, I would call it, you know,

maybe an acupuncture needle.

I mean, "Page Six" was, "Ooh, oh."

You know, like, oh, a divorce. 50 million, 100 million.

You know, it's about shock and awe.

[Chandler] Murdoch always wanted any gossip I had.

Sometimes he would pass on gossip that he'd heard to me.

Sometimes give me stories for "Page Six."

He knew that what sells the paper is gossip.

And in those days, there was nothing more powerful

than-than newspapers.

[announcer] Rupert Murdoch is now unquestionably a force

to be reckoned with in the newspaper business here,

and potentially, he's also a political power broker.

[Auletta] When Murdoch bought the Post,

he knew it was losing money.

But for Murdoch, it wasn't about money.

It was about power.

[Cindy] Right after Rupert bought the Post,

he wanted Joey immediately.

Joey wrote a column of jokes,

and Rupert bought Joey's column.

That's how it all began with us.

Rupert Murdoch and his editors,

they were very smart.

You can't get nobody smarter

than those guys,

but they didn't have the Rolodex.

We had the Rolodex.

[George] Joey knew everything

that was going on in local politics.

He used to take reporters for drinks

with elected officials, key elected officials.

You always knew that Joey either knew

or could get you the information.

[Cindy] If they wanted the ten worst judges,

they didn't know who the ten worst judges were.

So they would come to Joey and me.

We gave them phone numbers, and we gave them things like that.

In other words, we were the beginnings of their New York.

And so we grew up with the Post.

This is my friend Donald.

He's been my friend for 50 years.

Donald. Hillary.

These are all the presidents. Hillary, Clinton, Johnson.

Rupert is not a president, but not bad.

Mayor Bloomberg, who thinks he'll be president.

George Bush.

And that's illegal.

That was in Thailand.

Sukarno, who was president of Indonesia at the time,

sent it to his embassy in Washington,

where upon we then backed up a truck.

And that's my illegal--

do you think they can do anything to me now,

50 years later? That's that.

delicate music

By the '60s, I was still a nobody.

I was just a little girl

that was schlepping around with Joey Adams.

But that was about to change.

Joey knew John F. Kennedy,

and President Kennedy asked him to head

the first cultural exchange unit

to Southeast Asia as a goodwill ambassador.

We went to places that I've never been to before

in my life.

We went to Sa'dabad Palace in Tehran,

and we were received by the Shah of Iran.

We met the king of Cambodia,

the queen of Thailand.

All these kings and queens, you know, that's different.

They became accessible to me.

And that's when I met Sukarno, president of Indonesia.

Sukarno was a character.

He should have been in a play.

He always wore a uniform, and he had medals on his chest

for battles he never fought.

And I remember asking him, "Why do you wear the uniform?"

I remember this exactly.

And he says, "Because I am the Supreme Commander of--"

at that time-- "110 million Indonesians."

And I said, "I don't think so, honey.

"I think you wear it 'cause you damn well know

you look handsome in it."

And he started to laugh.

And he loved me from that moment on.

Sukarno told the American ambassador there,

"I want that lady to come back

and do my life story."

-Do you ever argue with Joey? -Yes, sir.

Yes, no.

Sometimes I argue also with her.

But you have said repeatedly

that you don't like intelligent women,

and yet you married a very intelligent one.

Dewi Sukarno was his fourth wife.

Japanese. Gorgeous.

We sort of, in some bizarre way,

looked a bit alike.

Sukarno's big joke

was that I looked more Japanese than she,

and she looked more Jewish than I.

It was obvious that he liked me,

and I liked him.

And it was sort of undercurrent,

was a nice-looking lady and a smart guy in a uniform.

It was there.

When other people were present,

I was extremely proper.

But when we were alone, I was me and he was him.

It's hard to explain, because everybody would think

automatically there has to have been an affair.

There was no affair.

I did my job. I just did my job.

The name of the book is Sukarno,

an autobiography as told to our next guest, Ms. Cindy Adams.

Welcome.

[applause]

And how much time did you spend in Indonesia?

In Indonesia, between 1961 and 1965.

And actually, the last 1963, 1964, 1965,

about five, six, seven hours a day with President Sukarno.

You were there for three years?

Yes.

I was valuable for an hour

because everybody was writing about me or talking about me.

So they came to me.

Level. Is that--is that okay?

Oh, let's kill the radio.

You're running the bloody camera?

Oh, for God's sake.

It opened the door

to get me onto ABC television.

Libby, are you for real that a woman should learn

to striptease for her husband?

I believe--release. Indeed, it would add

a great deal of amusement to their lives.

They said, "Do what you want. Do something."

So I did New York.

Knight, honey, you are filthy.

Well, you see, I usually have someone come in

and dust me twice a week, but I've been very busy here.

And I did such hard-hitting, thought-provoking, incisive,

in-depth pieces as police posing as women.

Do you ever feel like a jerk now in your new role?

As a store detective, you know,

they don't try to pull anything in front of a male.

And I found things about New York that nobody else knew.

For instance, there was an apartment in Queens

only for midgets.

And what do you prefer?

Do you prefer the term little person or midgets?

What do you like?

We prefer to be called little people.

That's what we are.

cheerful music

[screams, laughter]

And let us listen.

-Namaste. -Namaste.

I never tasted a plate before.

Another taste test.

Well, I didn't exactly become a newscaster.

[laughs]

It's the best plate I ever ate.

[laughter]

dramatic music

[bell rings]

[announcer] At election time

in any of the three continents

where his presses roll,

Rupert Murdoch strives to be there.

And for his journalists in New York,

elections have proved to be a time of reckoning.

[reporter] During the election campaign for mayor in 1977,

there was a wide field of candidates,

and Ed Koch caught Murdoch's attention.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Ed Koch, running for mayor.

[George] Rupert liked power

and liked to get involved in politics.

Newspapers in those days had huge influence

on who won an election.

They could make or break a candidate.

[Ed] When the phone rang,

the voice at the other end said,

"Congressman, we're gonna endorse you today

"on the front page of the New York Post.

And I hope it helps."

I said, "Rupert, you've elected me."

Ladies and gentlemen,

the mayor of the city of New York.

[cheers and applause]

Ed Koch brought tremendous energy and devotion

and dedication to the city.

There's a new mood on the streets,

and the city seemed fun again.

If you've been glancing at People magazine

or almost any gossip column in recent months,

perhaps you've heard the name Studio 54.

Studio 54 was started by the Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell.

Oh, you're not shaved.

There's no way anyone here is gonna get in.

It doesn't matter, if you're not shaved.

Listen, just go home.

upbeat music

Studio 54 was obviously a source of great stories

for our gossip column like "Page Six."

This strata of society and showbiz

and business people kind of merged after dark

at Studio 54.

I went to Studio 54. Gave my "Page Six" card.

Stevie Rubell came running out,

whisked me inside, told the bartender I was a VIP.

And told me,

"I can't breathe in the morning without reading 'Page Six.'"

Steve had this instinct about the press.

Ilie Nastase had punched somebody out at Studio 54,

and it was, like, front page.

Steve said to me,

"You have no idea how good this publicity is."

"Page Six" wrote about so many celebrities

there actually became a "Page Seven,"

which was the photographs of celebrities at Studio 54.

I didn't cover it. That was before my time.

But did I know Studio 54?

Yes, because I knew Roy Cohn.

[Myra] Now, I remember Roy Cohn

would come to Studio 54.

You know, all I knew about him was that he was scary.

[Peter] Roy Cohn was one

of the most powerful attorneys in New York.

And he was--

I think "Page Six's" number one source if I had to guess.

[Cindy] Roy Cohn was somebody

who was always interested in being political.

And Joey was useful to him.

If a priest became a bishop,

if a mayor became a governor,

he gave a dinner, and whenever he had a dinner,

Joey was the emcee.

He was...an evil man.

[announcer] "Don't mess with Roy Cohn"

has become a motto Roy wears with pride.

The man who wrote the Esquire cover story,

Ken Auletta, is a reporter

who regularly measures Roy Cohn's impact

on politics, business, and the law.

People come to him because, as I called him in that piece,

they think of him as a legal execution.

I thought Roy Cohn was the single worst human being

I've ever met in my life.

I've never met a more reptilian character.

Law is an adversary profession.

You win or you lose. I don't like to lose.

[Roger] Roy had an extraordinary understanding

of the news cycle and the value of tabloid news.

And to help his clients,

he used gossip outlets

like "Page Six" of the New York Post.

[announcer] Internal Revenue Service agents,

more than 20 of them, swooped down on Studio 54

at about 9:30 this morning.

A federal judge had signed a warrant

allowing them to search for and seize

the disco's financial records.

They have an internal revenue audit going,

which is the same thing that happens

to 10 million American taxpayers,

except it's a little bit unusual

when you send 23 agents up

and come tearing into a place at 9:30 in the morning.

Roy Cohn was defending Stevie Rubell and Ian Schrager.

They both got indicted for tax evasion.

Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager were so awash in cash,

they didn't know what to do with.

In fact, they were hiding it under the drop ceilings.

It was only a matter of time, of course,

before the IRS caught up with them.

Roy tried to stave the IRS off.

[announcer] The White House says its chief of staff,

Hamilton Jordan, is the victim of false

and sensational charges,

charges raised by the owners of a jet set New York disco club.

The owners, who are under indictment,

charge that one night last year,

Jordan sniffed cocaine in the club's basement hideaway.

Roy was throwing out the story about Jordan,

for which he may or may not have had a source or a witness,

in an attempt to signal the government,

perhaps they should back off,

or there might be major embarrassment

to the president's chief of staff.

[Myra] The Hamilton Jordan story had already been

in The New York Times.

But nobody could prove it was a true story.

I got a phone call at my office

from someone who identified himself as a top PR agent.

And he said he saw Hamilton Jordan,

who was then Jimmy Carter's chief of staff,

in the basement of Studio 54, asking for cocaine.

Who was this guy?

He said, "Just print it, just print it."

So I said, "I'm not gonna print it."

I don't know who at the Post decided

they were going to print it,

but on the cover of the New York Post

in small print, top PR person said,

"Ham Jordan asked me where he could get some cocaine."

And once the Post ran that headline,

papers that in their right mind wouldn't have touched it...

The story of Hamilton Jordan...

[Peter] ABC news, NBC news, CBS...

Chief of staff Hamilton Jordan...

New York Times, all had it because the Post had it.

[interviewer] So Hamilton Jordan

asked you where he could get some cocaine?

That's correct.

This is all a mystery to me. Coke is a mystery to me.

And the whole thing is a mystery to me.

And I'm just gonna be the guy who has to try the case.

Justice Department officials in New York

have reportedly said they are dubious

about the quality of the allegations.

They've also reportedly said that if the motivation was

to negotiate reduced charges, then no deal will be made.

People often plant stories with gossip columnists

as a way to create leverage for their client

because sometimes it works.

I don't think it worked.

Both owners of Studio 54 went to prison.

[Peter] A grand jury investigated Hamilton Jordan.

Unanimously exonerated him a year later.

Prosecutor in that trial said,

"This was all nonsense."

I subsequently learned at the time that the top PR agent

who had called me worked with Roy Cohn.

Without even proving anything,

that story ran and destroyed a man's career.

How do you think you got into this big mess?

Well, I think the American press

and the public will have to judge how big a mess it is.

People told stories about Hamilton Jordan,

and a thorough investigation

found that the allegations were not true.

But for a time, it was a-a highly publicized case,

which damaged Hamilton Jordan quite a lot.

[reporters clamoring]

[cheers and applause]

[reporter] Carter was running against Reagan

in the 1980 election.

Are you and your family more secure

after four years of Jimmy Carter?

[all] No!

[Roger] I was sent to New York to organize the state

for Reagan's presidential campaign.

Reagan was viewed by the New York Republican establishment

as too conservative to win,

an outsider, and so on.

We very much had to run a guerilla-type campaign.

I would take support where I could get it.

The New York Post became my focus,

'cause getting Murdoch's endorsement

of Ronald Reagan was crucial.

[interviewer] Couldn't the day come when you take

a particular political stance here in New York

and impress that on your papers here?

No, well, that would certainly be the case

with the New York Post.

[Roger] I had this, like,

recipe card box of index cards,

and each card had the name and phone number

for people who were friends of the Reagans in New York City.

Joey Adams was on the list.

[reporter] Joey was very close

to many of the Republicans.

And he really wanted to get

the Post involved with Reagan.

[reporter] Rupert Murdoch is very ecumenical

about supporting candidates.

He'll support a liberal or conservative,

whoever he thinks is gonna win.

[announcer] Ladies and gentlemen,

Governor Ronald Reagan.

Good evening.

I know that tonight, the fate of America's 52 hostages

is very much on the minds of all of us.

Like you, there's nothing I want more

than their safe return,

that they be reunited with their families

after this long year of their imprisonment.

soft dramatic music

[reporter] The whole election campaign in 1980

played out with the Iran hostage crisis

in the background.

[announcer] Good evening.

The U.S. embassy in Tehran has been invaded

and occupied by Iranian students.

The Americans inside have been taken prisoner

and, according to a student spokesman,

will be held as hostages

until the deposed shah is returned from the United States

where he's receiving medical treatment for cancer.

[reporter] What happened was, the shah of Iran

had been overthrown.

[Roger] The shah had been put in power

with the backing of the U.S. military.

The problem for the United States

is that it has had a series of presidents--

and Richard Nixon may have been chief among them--

who so loved the shah,

relied so heavily on his powerful presence

in the key part of the world,

that they were blinded to his excesses

and to the forces against him.

He was a butcher. He was a torturer.

He was a despot. All these things.

[reporter] He'd been driven out of the country

by an Islamic revolution led by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

[reporter] When the shah was sent off to exile,

it turned out he had terminal cancer.

[Peter] The shah was looking for a landing spot,

and he found that landing spot in the United States.

It was very controversial, and it enraged the Iranians.

And that's when students

who'd supported Khomeini seized the embassy.

[announcer] Tonight, while the hostages

in Tehran await their fate,

the shah of Iran awaits his in a New York City hospital.

Death to the shah!

[all] Death to the shah!

[George] Protesters were all over at the hospital,

supporting the Khomeini regime.

chanting in Farsi

He had guards all around. No one got to see the shah.

[Cindy] The New York journalists

were surrounding the hospital,

hoping a bedpan carrier from two floors away

could give them a piece of information.

Nobody could get near him.

And I get a call

from the shah's twin sister, Princess Ashraf.

"Your Highness.

Yes, well, His Majesty is in the hospital."

"Yes, I know.

And His Majesty has asked to see you."

Cindy, knowing every royal family on the planet,

suddenly had access to this controversial figure who was--

everyone wanted to talk to.

dramatic music

[Cindy] The shah was my friend.

I mean, I--it's not like he invited me over

for Passover or anything, but he was my friend.

We met him in 1961 on the tour to Southeast Asia.

We loved Tehran.

We used to come back every year

and visit the shah in his palace.

So now it's 1979.

When the shah's sister called me,

you have to understand

that I wasn't the number-one journalist in captivity.

But that night, we were having dinner

with the editor in chief of the New York Post,

and I had to call him to say I couldn't make dinner.

[Chandler] The editor, whose name was Roger Wood,

said, "You know, why are you canceling my dinner?

I was looking forward to it."

And she said, "Oh, I have to go

and see my friend the shah in hospital."

Then there's a thud, you know,

he, like, dropped dead, actually.

He says, "What are you talking about?"

So I said, "His Majesty asked to see me."

He says, "Could you-could you do something

about it for us after?"

I said, "I don't know." He says, "Well, go, go, go, go.

Go see His Majesty and call us after."

[reporter] So Cindy somehow makes her way in

through crowds who want the shah to die.

[Cindy] His Majesty was in a huge two-room suite.

He was sitting in white pajamas,

and his skinny legs

were hanging off the bed on slippers

that were falling off.

He had lost everything. He had lost his kingdom.

He had lost his power.

He was losing his life.

Having seen him in such enormity,

and now seeing him sitting alone on a hospital bed...

...that's what I remember.

Nobody--it was just His Majesty and me, the two of us.

Okay, so we're talking. I was there for two hours.

I thought, "If I don't get out of here, I'll kill myself."

How much conversation can you have with the shah?

So I call the editor in chief, and he says,

"Well, darling, are you able to write this?"

I wrote it.

The story went around the world.

We couldn't get a camera into the hospital.

They wouldn't allow it.

So the front page is me

sitting with the shah, Mrs. Shah,

the empress.

It said, "New York Post's Cindy Adams."

World exclusive.

My first time on the New York Post.

[Col] The idea that this desired interview would fall

into the hands of the New York Post was stunning.

That was enough for Roger to grasp quickly that,

"Wait a minute, this woman is something else."

And so soon came the order to meet Cindy

and get her going on a column.

[Cindy] They knew I had to know something

because I'd been on television, and I had done Sukarno.

But I didn't wanna do it.

I was A, scared.

B, I didn't know I could do it.

Finally, Joey said,

"We'll try it for a couple of weeks.

You don't like it, you don't have to do it."

And then I-- and then it happened.

What-what could I do?

brisk dramatic music

What I did was the three or four people

I was having dinner with, I would write about.

I mean, I lived next door to Jackie Kennedy.

I was already having dinner with Frank Sinatra,

who said to me,

"How do you get through the night, kid?"

I said, "I go to sleep.

"That's how I get through the night.

How do you get through the night, Frank?"

He said, "Johnnie Walker Black."

There were people who made news.

They were people on television,

on radio, on movies.

They were our friends.

When Ronald Reagan was running for president,

the Post said, "Hey Joey, bring him down."

[Peter] I got to meet Reagan.

He came into the "Page Six" office.

He walked over, shook my hand, and I said,

"I'm not voting for you." He goes, "I don't care."

[Roger] Of course, the Post did endorse Reagan.

I mean, my God,

New York City newspaper supporting Ronald Reagan?

It was quite amazing.

PS: Reagan carried New York state

by a slim margin.

dramatic music

[Cindy] There is a certain amount of power

that you have if you're on a newspaper.

Once I got the column,

I was hungry to make my mark.

And I went after the big, big stories.

[announcer] It's the tale

that's wagging the whole country,

a marital split between the billionaire builder

and his foreign-born bride.

What about Woody Allen?

I mean, I just think he's a pig and a dog

and a rat and a skunk.

[Chandler] Sex, crime, scandal.

It was a gossip reporter's dream.

We're not naive. We know we are being used.

[Jim] What are you gonna do for me?

That's the lifeblood of gossip.

-Say hi to my friend Rob. -Hi.

[A.J.] Harvey knew what people to keep close to him

because of our influence and our power.

[reporter] We were all addicted to the attention

that we're getting, that we were giving each other.

[Ben] Gossip is frequently disparaged,

but the trashy stuff connects to the bigger picture,

and we ignore it at our peril.

This is Cindy Adams, and this was our first show.

Thank you for watching it this far.

I promise you one thing, if you ever do a show,

I'll watch this far for you. See you tomorrow.

dramatic music