My Remarkable Journey (21 page)

Everything seemed to change around the time of that election. I had Bush on, and one of Clinton’s people, George Stephanopoulos,
called in with questions that infuriated the president. One of Bush’s friends, Robert Mosbacher, called in while Perot was
on and blasted Ross. Interaction like this had never happened on television before.

At one point, Perot even led in the polls. The economy had gone sour and Clinton was navigating his way through questions
about his marital fidelity. But Perot made a couple of mistakes. He spoke to the NAACP and addressed his audience as “you
people.” He didn’t mean it disparagingly. But that’s the way it came out. Then his vice presidential choice, Admiral James
Stockdale, was mocked after a debate with Quayle and Al Gore. Stockdale stammered and wondered aloud what he was doing on
the same stage. It was sad because Stockdale was a good man—a former prisoner of war who’d taught at Stanford.

Ross unexpectedly dropped out of the race, claiming the Republicans were trying to sabotage him. The singer Cher called in
to my show crying about it. Later Ross got back in, but his candidacy was damaged. The week before the election I had Bush
on Wednesday night, Clinton on Thursday night, and Perot on Friday.

It wasn’t a conventional presidential debate. But at the time, it didn’t get any better.

It was during this time period—the late ’80s—that Larry married Julie. I was the best man at that wedding. My recollection
of that marriage is that I thought it happened too quickly and they really didn’t know each other. In fact, I can link the
way I felt to a specific moment at a dinner in New York. Larry and Julie had just gotten engaged. At this dinner there were
five people. Larry and Julie. My wife, Ellen, and I. And Angie Dickinson. Angie was sitting next to me. At one point in the
conversation, it came up that Julie could speak French fluently. Larry said, “I didn’t know you spoke French.”

Angie leaned over to me and whispered, “Do they have a prenup?”

M
Y EIGHT- AND NINE-YEAR-OLD SONS
may hear the O.J. Simpson murder case described as the trial of the century. But they live in a different century. Now nobody
cares about O.J. It would be hard for me to explain to my sons just how big that trial was at the time. The best I can do
is this. Bill Clinton told me that when he went to greet Boris Yeltsin on a state visit, the Russian president whispered into
his ear, “Did he do it?”

O.J. was the most famous person ever charged with murder—anywhere. For years, he’d been an all-American hero to millions.
He had speed, instincts on a football field that couldn’t be taught, and matinee-idol looks. You can argue all day about whether
a sports star is heroic. O.J. didn’t save lives. When you got up on Monday morning, had he changed your life? No. Yet he did.
He made you feel better. When O.J. ran down the field, you were with him all the way. When O.J. hurdled a luggage cart in
an airport, you smiled and wanted to rent from Hertz. O.J. was one of the first crossover stars. Jackie Robinson was black.
Muhammad Ali was black. O.J. was black and white. O.J. had a white life and a white wife.

When I was broadcasting the Miami Dolphins I can remember a particular coach around the league being shocked when he learned
that a black player for the New England Patriots was married to a white woman. It wasn’t prejudice. It was just rare to see
a black man and a white woman together in the early ’70s. But O.J. Simpson could date anybody’s sister. He set the stage for
Michael Jordan. Derek Jeter. Tiger Woods. These guys were no longer men of color. They were seen as gods.

I didn’t even suspect O.J. when reports came in about the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. Not only did it seem crazy, it appeared
impossible. The first story we heard was that O.J. got word of the murder while he was in Chicago. How could he stab his ex-wife
and a waiter, who’d come by her place to drop off a pair of glasses, when they were two thousand miles away? It was only later
that we learned that O.J. had boarded a plane for Chicago after Nicole and Ron Goldman were found dead outside Nicole’s condominium.

Very few people knew that there were two O.J.s. The O.J. I met on a television set always had a smile. A childhood friend
of his told me that O.J. was the captain of every team he played on, the guy a teammate would go to with a problem. He never
argued with a referee, never lost his temper on the field. People who filmed the Hertz commercials said they’d never worked
with a more cooperative star. The shooting was done in airports at 2 a.m., but O.J. never complained.
Need another take? No problem.
O.J.’s secretary said she never heard him swear.

After the murder, you started to hear about the other O.J. There were whispers about drugs, his temper, and his jealousy over
his ex-wife’s lovers. When the name of a certain friend of his was mentioned, you got an idea why he might be jealous. There
was talk of a 911 call made by Nicole and domestic violence.

It’s not hard for me to see how all these different characteristics and complications fit inside one person. Slobodan Milošević
was known as the Butcher of the Balkans. He died while on trial for crimes against humanity. I interviewed him once. A few
years afterward, the same guy who’d been a symbol of murder and ethnic cleansing had a diplomat go out of his way to wish
me well and ask how my kids were doing. Any person who excels is going to have many facets to them; “ordinary” usually isn’t
one of them. Unfortunately, most people have a hard time seeing the complications and depth in others. They see in terms of
black and white. Which is exactly how the O.J. trial played out.

We knew something was up on the afternoon when O.J. promised to turn himself in to the police but didn’t show. Instead, he
left a suicide note that was read aloud on television by his close friend Robert Kardashian. The words “I can’t go on…” made
me shiver.

I was dating Cindy Garvey at the time. Cindy was once married to Steve Garvey, who’d played with the Dodgers. She’d been a
friend of Nicole’s. She hated O.J., and she thought he’d done it. I had her on the air that night along with a representative
from the NAACP. From the very start, this story was about more than murder. You knew that no matter what happened, it was
going to play out in black and white.

The stage had been set in Los Angeles during the previous four years. First, there was the beating of Rodney King. That was
in 1991. King was a black guy who’d been stopped after a high-speed car chase by white policemen. For years, blacks had complained
about police brutality. This time, however, everyone in the world could see it because the scene had been secretly videotaped.
It was a huge story. The biggest stories are always about one person. It’s hard to take in the overwhelming horror of a catastrophe
like Hurricane Katrina. But we can all feel for the guy holding a cat on the roof as the water rises. The Rodney King video
was horrific. It was one guy on the ground in the darkness being kicked and clubbed long past the point of resistance. That
video changed journalism forever. From that moment on, everybody could be a reporter. Anybody could film an event and have
it beamed around the world on satellite.

Without that footage, who would have known the beating had occurred? There was a public outcry and the officers were charged
with excessive force. But it was determined that they couldn’t get a fair trial in Los Angeles after all the media attention,
and the case was moved to Simi Valley. The jury there was made up of ten whites, one Asian, and one Latino—and the officers
were acquitted. What a travesty that was. Riots erupted all over Los Angeles. More than seven thousand fires were set. More
than fifty people died. More than two thousand people were injured. There was a billion dollars in damages in Los Angeles
alone—and the rioting spread to other cities. Numbers can tell a story. But the one sickening image we were all left with
was of a white truck driver being pulled out of the driver’s seat and beaten by a bunch of blacks with a claw hammer and a
chunk of concrete. Reginald Denny, his name was. I would later interview him. The beating he’d taken was filmed from a helicopter.

One thing I’ve always tried to do is allow viewers to see a situation from different angles. The Reginald Denny who came on
my show did not sue the people who beat him. He hugged the mother of one of those men after they were convicted. Denny sued
the city of Los Angeles for not responding to his emergency after repeated 911 calls were made, and he was represented by
a prominent black attorney whom we all came to know—Johnnie Cochran. Johnnie had worked as an assistant prosecuting attorney
for many years and he knew about problems in the police department. So here was a white guy coming on my show, expressing
no anger at the black men who’d beaten him, and hiring a black attorney to file his case against the city. It’s important
for journalism to offer that kind of depth. Without it, people’s minds are left with only the raw memory of a beating they’ve
seen replayed over and over.

The O.J. trial would have been huge in any case. But it was even bigger because everybody watching had fresh memories of Rodney
King and Reginald Denny.

A live feed of the white Bronco flashed on the screen toward the end of my show with Cindy Garvey and the guy from the NAACP.
Helicopter footage showed police cars in orderly pursuit. At first, I didn’t even know if O.J. was in the white Bronco. I
was in new territory. I had never done a show like this. I had none of my usual control over this show, because I had no control
over the events unfolding before me. It was wild. When the show started, I was hoping that O.J. wouldn’t follow through on
his threat to kill himself. Fifty minutes later, I was wishing I knew which way he was headed on I-5. We stayed on the air.
A producer brought over a road map so I could get a grip on the scene I was describing. We got word that O.J.’s friend, Al
Cowlings, was driving and that O.J. was in the back. Crowds lined the road with signs that read: “Go, O.J., go!” They didn’t
want to let go of the O.J. in the Hertz commercial. Finally, the Bronco reached O.J.’s home and he gave up. We were on for
three hours that night.

Events change lives. But this one took my personal life in a direction I never could have predicted: it brought me out to
Los Angeles to cover the trial. I’d visited Los Angeles prior to O.J., but I didn’t know it well before then. What I knew
was the Nate ’n Al Deli in Beverly Hills. I first walked through the door in 1985. Whitefish, corned beef, and pastrami were
behind the glass counter to the left—just as they are today. The halvah was by the cash register. Sid Yallowitz was sitting
in the second booth—the same Sid whose all-star basketball picture is still in the glass case downstairs at the Jewish Community
House in Bensonhurst. I slid into the seat across from him and said, “Hey, Yallowitz.” We could have been in Maltz’s candy
store. Sid had been friends with Asher Dan since kindergarten. I remembered Asher from Brooklyn. But I didn’t know that Asher
had married Iris Siegel, the girl who refused to walk down the steps of Lafayette High with me. Asher was now selling real
estate in Los Angeles and eating breakfast at Nate ’n Al. I sat with Sid and Asher and said to myself,
You
can
go home again
. There was a lot more than Brooklyn at Nate ’n Al. A waitress named Kaye Coleman became your friend for life the day you
met her. What a character she was. She could have been the mayor of Beverly Hills. The kindest woman you’d ever know. But
don’t leave her a lousy tip. I once saw her throw a dollar back at a guy and say, “Hey, fella, you need this more than I do.”
It’s hard to know exactly when it happened, but during the O.J. trial, something inside me began to feel right in the city
the Dodgers now called home.

I can remember asking the TV detective actor Peter Falk about the Simpson case. “Ah,” he said, “it’s a ten-minute
Columbo
.” That’s how long he figured it would take to solve the crime. That ten-minute
Columbo
riveted America for months. I was at the center of it all, right there at Nate ’n Al.

It turned out that Sid had played tennis with O.J. One of O.J.’s lawyers, Robert Shapiro, occasionally came in for breakfast.
So did Rosey Grier, O.J.’s minister. There was a big rumor at the time that O.J. had confessed to him—which Grier denied.
It was the same Rosey who was guarding Bobby Kennedy’s wife when Bobby was assassinated and who succeeded in seizing Sirhan
Sirhan’s gun. I can still remember hearing the tape: “Rosey, get the gun!” Rosey was a friend of the book publisher Michael
Viner, who took a seat at our table. Michael was publishing a tell-all by a fashion designer named Faye Resnick, who claimed
she was Nicole’s best friend and that O.J. had been stalking Nicole. When we set up an interview with Faye for my show, the
judge, Lance Ito, asked us to hold off while the jury was still being selected. We did, and Judge Ito invited me into his
chambers to say thanks. I don’t know why, but I’ve never been very close to guys named Lance. But Judge Ito and I got along
quite well. We talked for almost an hour. When it was time to leave, I walked out the wrong door, straight into the courtroom.
The first thing I heard was, “Hey, Larrrrrrrrrry!” It was O.J. saying hello. The cameras were on because they were about to
resume the trial. I was really embarrassed. “Hey, Juice,” I said. I said hello to Bob Shapiro, then I made sure to greet everyone
at the prosecution bench. I didn’t want anybody to see me leaning one way or the other. That wasn’t easy. When I walked out
of the courthouse, I found myself surrounded by a crowd of reporters, with questions coming from all sides. “Larry, is it
true you are a character witness for O.J.?” I must have said “No comment” about eleven times before I could get away.

As it turned out, I ended up getting very much in the middle of things. I was single at the time, and I began to date the
woman who was the jury consultant for the defense team and another who was the publicist for the prosecution. I don’t think
either one of them knew about the other. But my table at Nate ’n Al did. I’d come in the morning and everyone would want to
know what new tidbit I’d learned the night before. As I look back on those days, I don’t think, “I was dating women on both
sides of the case. What was I doing?” Instead, I think about Bill Clinton’s reaction when he found out. “I admire your flexibility
in women,” he said. It was fun, and I have to admit, it came in handy. We were able to get notes to O.J. through the jury
consultant asking him if he’d like to call in to the show after the trial.