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- [00:01]
Podcast Host (Ad Reader)
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- [00:39]
Tom Junot
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- [01:07]
Interviewer (Tommy)
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Tom Junot
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Interviewer (Tommy)
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Tom Junot
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Interviewer (Tommy)
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Tom Junot
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- [01:34]
Interviewer (Tommy)
by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Mishke. Tom Junot is currently a senior writer for espn. He was previously a writer for Esquire and for gq. I know about him personally because of two specific pieces of work. A feature I read that he did called the Falling man, about a man who fell from the World Trade center towers. One of the most acclaimed pieces of journalism from the aftermath of 9 11. It's one that still stays with me, actually. And also, I know about Tom through a piece he did on Fred Rogers that was ultimately turned into It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the film featuring Tom Hanks. I think the highest praise I've heard directed at Tom Geno is by Esquire's John Hendrickson, who profiled him, and he put them on a list of the 10 most important writers in Esquire's history. And that's quite a long, distinguished history that includes people like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe. So clearly there are magazine writers and then there are magazine writers. And I think the list there tells you the esteem in which Tom's work is held. But I'm having him on my program today for writing that is not magazine writing. He has a book out and it's a memoir. And much of his experiences growing up I can relate to, at least in terms of the times. Sometimes when I'm reading memoirs, I say to myself, I don't understand why this person thought their life was all that interesting. In this particular case, I was glued to everything I was reading, start to finish. I wanted into this world, and it was quite a world to spend some time with. The book has a 16 word title and I cannot imagine shortening it. It's called in the Days of My Youth, I was Told what it Means to be a Man. And if those words sound familiar, they are the first words from what I believe is the first song, the first track on the very first album by Led Zeppelin. And when you hear Robert Plant sing those words, you can feel in his tone and in the music that there's much being said there in those lines. Something both true, untrue, something bittersweet. It's a title that caught my eye and I right away knew I would probably like this book. Just the title. In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. I welcome him to the show now, the author of this wonderful book, Tom Geno. Thank you for joining me today, Tom.
- [05:15]
Tom Junot
Thank you for having me on. Tom.
- [05:17]
Interviewer (Tommy)
I want my listeners to know your father. The only way to know him as well as I know him right now is to spend some time with this book, which I highly recommend. But I found myself wanting to have them get to know him at the start of this show in some way. And I thought of three ways to do it. And I'm going to have you look at your father through these three perspectives. First of all, how was he viewed by other men?
- [05:46]
Tom Junot
My father was the same as everybody else in that he served in World War II and was seriously wounded in Normandy fighting in the hedgerows a month after D Day. But then he was like no other man in that. Like, after he was wounded, he was on his way to being sent back to the front after he got out of the hospital. And then somebody, a lieutenant, heard him singing and he became a big band crooner that traveled all over Western Europe singing to the troops as like the Frank Sinatra of Western Europe. So that was like already a distinction between him and all the other GI Joes that we knew growing up and that distinction continued through his life. Men were in awe of him, men were afraid of him, men envied him. He had categories of friends, he had worshipers, he had rivals, he had wingmen and he had enablers. The enablers got him in trouble, the wingmen got him out of trouble. The worshipers were the crooning chorus and the rivals were in and out of friendship because it was very difficult being a rival with my dad. He didn't like it. He didn't accept any rivals.
- [07:10]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Actually, you have to throw in here his physical appearance. When these men encounter this guy, for instance, if you imagine him, you say the Frank Sinatra of that overseas world going around singing. He looked like he belonged in that role. He looked like he came out of Hollywood. He had not only the appearance of a movie star, but the charisma of a movie star.
- [07:37]
Tom Junot
He was a very, very good looking man. He had the greenest eyes I've ever seen and the darkest skin. I'm sitting in a hotel room right now in Albany, New York, and I'm looking at the. The fake mahogany table where my computer set up. And my father's skin was darker than this table. And he had these green eyes and a physique. He was built like Charles Atlas and he looked a little bit like Sean Connery.
- [08:08]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Now, someone listening right now could think your father was Hispanic or a black man. He's dark skinned from being a sun worshipper.
- [08:18]
Tom Junot
He worked on his tan continually. It never went away. I have reports of him. He worked in New York City like so many other people. But at lunchtime in New York City, he would sit out on Fifth Avenue with a reflector.
- [08:34]
Interviewer (Tommy)
He carries himself as though he is a celebrity and he's viewed by other people as though he's a celebrity. But it's important to note here that after the war, the whole singing thing is over.
- [08:49]
Tom Junot
It's over.
- [08:50]
Interviewer (Tommy)
That was just something he was able to do and it may have saved his life. Certainly saved him from having to go back to the front. But he wasn't the greatest singer in the world. He was just pretty good. And he had this role to play that was needed. And it's not like you could find a dozen other great singers in nearby cities. This is World War II Europe. So he doesn't have the opportunity when he comes back to pursue this. And here's the most intriguing thing to me as far as getting people to understand this guy. He comes back to America after the war and becomes a Ladies handbag salesman.
- [09:29]
Tom Junot
He sold ladies handbags.
- [09:30]
Interviewer (Tommy)
And what I want people to understand is a. You can sell ladies handbags and still come across as though you're a movie star, depending on the kind of personality you are and what you look like. Number two, you can make one hell of a lot of money selling ladies handbags. He was, in my mind, a very wealthy man at his peak.
- [09:54]
Tom Junot
Yeah. At a time when most of the people that I knew in Long island, most of the dads I knew, were making $25,000 a year. And that was fairly good money. My father, at his peak earnings as a handbag salesman, was making $250,000 in the early 70s. That's a lot of money.
- [10:15]
Interviewer (Tommy)
That translates into a couple million today.
- [10:18]
Tom Junot
Yeah, yeah. He was making at the time as much money as bond salesmen on Wall street did.
- [10:26]
Interviewer (Tommy)
So now we have a guy who appears to have the world by the tail. Good looking, charismatic, obviously one hell of a salesman. But now I want to move. The three ways I wanted to look at your dad was one through men, one through the eyes of women, and then finally through your own eyes. As a child, how did women view him?
- [10:48]
Tom Junot
Women viewed him as he said they viewed him. He would go out in New York City and take out his female buyers, and he would take him to clubs in New York like 21 and El Morocco and Copacabana. And he would always come back with tales of female celebrities. Liz Taylor was there at El Morocco the other night. Couldn't take her eyes off your father. That was his announcement. And the thing. That was the thing that made the whole thing work. And that made me both in awe and just completely baffled was that everywhere I went, I saw the exact same thing, except that they weren't Liz Taylor. It wasn't Zsa Zsa Gabor. It was the hostess at the local steakhouse. It was buyers, it was women that were part of my life, you know, just fawned all over my father.
- [11:46]
Interviewer (Tommy)
I don't know anyone like that. There are multiple sources who have talked about how women threw themselves at him. And I don't know if part of this is the times he's not really a celebrity. Back home after the war. Right.
- [11:59]
Tom Junot
He was just a Joe, really, in a lot of different ways, he was a handbag salesman, but it was that he built himself. So he came from Brooklyn, and a lot of the guys I knew came from Brooklyn. Talk like Brooklyn guys. Yeah, D's and do's. My father spoke with exquisite diction that he learned by watching celebrities. I mean, he would when he was a kid. When he was a teenager, like back in the 30s, he learned how to dress from Fred Astaire, he learned how to talk from Cary Grant, and he learned how to relate to women from Clark Gable. These were his role models. He didn't have a father that he admired or even accepted in any way, but he schooled himself at the great school of celebrity. So he inhabited two realms at the same time. He was the guy who came home on the 519from on the Long Island Railroad like everybody else. And he was the guy who went to the El Morocco and had this other life.
- [13:05]
Interviewer (Tommy)
The first truly fascinating thing to me about his early life is. Would you call it a dysfunctional family life growing up?
- [13:14]
Tom Junot
Yeah. But I didn't know about the level of dysfunction until much, much, much later. The way that I knew of his life was that he had this heroic mom, my grandma, who we just called, you know, grandma, and who was like the unquestioned matriarch of the family. And then he had four rough and tumble sisters who did speak exactly like Brooklyn people spoke. You know, my Aunt Liz, do you got to go to the toilet? Do you want me to borrow some water? I mean, she had that kind of Brooklyn accent. And then there was my father speaking with this perfect diction. So there was always the core family, which was Grandma, my dad, who was the man of the house, and his four sisters. I knew a lot of secrets about my dad when I was growing up, but I didn't know the secrets of his family until I started this book.
- [14:10]
Interviewer (Tommy)
If you grow up with no real relationship with your father, you look for mentors, everybody does. And sometimes it'll be unconscious, but you'll look for people who you can measure yourself by or use for inspiration. And it intrigues me that your dad landed, and it makes perfect sense, landed on what Hollywood presented. Of course, Hollywood presents something that is beautiful, that is attractive, and draws us all in. But ultimately, there's something also superficial there. They are just acting. It is an act. So much of your dad's life, to me, had the feeling of a guy who walked out his front door. Lights, camera, action. Showtime, folks.
- [14:58]
Tom Junot
It was a non stop performance. Just the way he spoke was different from anyone else I knew then or even to that extent, know now. He had all these different maxims about what it meant to be a man or how to be a man, like how to dress, how to shake a man's hand, how to look a man in the eye. But the way he said it mattered just as much as what was being said. He didn't just say, the turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear. He would say, the turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear. Every sentence was sort of measured by the beat for diction, emphasis. It was just remarkable just to listen
- [15:45]
Interviewer (Tommy)
to him, the view of him that you had as a child. So you are in a family with twin older siblings, 10 years older than you. You had the younger kids view. You had an extraordinary quality as a kid, one that I don't think I've encountered before in a memoir. You had such an inquisitive mind and such a desire to know more and such an intuitive sense that more was going on below the surface and almost an adult investigator's quality that typically you don't see in kids. And I'm talking about you having this very, very young. It was not in your brother and sister. This was something you had. You were very different from them. And as we learn in the book, there was much to uncover and much to investigate and much to know that wasn't being told. But the fact that you had that quality, combined with not having your father's charisma, not having your father's. I've got the world by the tail view. You change over the years and you see that in the book as you grow. But as a little kid, you kind of describe yourself as the antithesis of your father as far as what you present.
- [17:06]
Tom Junot
I was a crybaby. I couldn't sit at the dinner table without risking tears. I was a blubberer, really, for no obvious reason. Just the presence of my father left me feeling powerless. I think it left everybody feeling powerless. But, you know, I was 3, 4, 5 years old. So it wasn't just that I felt powerless. I was powerless. And I was super attuned to my mother's moods, like, super attuned. And so when my mother cried, and she cried often, I would cry as well. I felt it inside to such an extent that it. I couldn't sit in the presence of my dad without breaking into tears. It was really rough. Was I aware that I was sort of not living up to the standard that he set? Yeah, I was acutely aware of it.
- [18:06]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Your father worried about you in the days when men wanted their children to be manly men, he was worrying that you weren't going to be one.
- [18:15]
Tom Junot
Oh, yeah. There was a boy down the block who was effeminate, and he was a friend of mine. And, you know, my father did not want me to Hang around with him. Because you don't want to be a fairy, do you? I mean, I got that from my dad when I was, like, five.
- [18:32]
Interviewer (Tommy)
In sports as a young kid, you weren't a great athlete. Later in the book, you actually became a pretty good athlete, didn't you?
- [18:40]
Tom Junot
I was a total, you know, I was eight years old and a terrified Little League player. I was one of those kids that when you got up to the plate and the kids would say, he's no better, he's no better, I'd be like, yeah, you're right. I'm no batter, you know. But then later on, I discovered football. And, you know, I ended my football career finally after sitting on the bench for most of my high school years. I was the starting quarterback at high school and threw three touchdown passes in my last game and all that kind of stuff. I could throw the ball. I was never a really good athlete, but I could definitely throw the ball. And that was just. That was all strictly just work. I just, like, threw myself into that as hard as I possibly could in a little ways in order to sort of redeem myself in my father's eyes.
- [19:25]
Interviewer (Tommy)
So now we've seen him through the eyes of other men, other women, through your eyes. I do want to make it clear that when he was around, he was the show. And you liked taking in the show. You liked his stories.
- [19:42]
Tom Junot
I loved his stories.
- [19:43]
Interviewer (Tommy)
You liked hearing him talk at the dinner table. You were a bit in awe of him. He had a power in that family that I have a tough time describing. He was a dominant figure. There was a line in your book. I'm just going to try to remember it. I thought it was something along the lines of, he didn't belong to you, you belonged to him.
- [20:05]
Tom Junot
Yes. He would go on the road for five, six, sometimes even seven weeks. My mother would always say, like, how hard your father's working. And yet when he came back, he was darker, more burnished, more on fire than when he left. And that's when it always struck me that he doesn't belong to us. He belongs to the world. We belong to him.
- [20:31]
Interviewer (Tommy)
This was kind of a haunting thing in the book, his returns from these trips. So he's constantly going on these long, five, six week trips as a salesman. And the way you described him coming back was as if he had gone to a spa. The sense I had was he just took six weeks off. Not that he's working hard, but he just took six weeks off, went to some resort rest and relaxation, and is returning looking better. Than ever. And some part of you, this investigative part, this part of you that always wanted to know more, that must have been one of the ingredients of what's happening here.
- [21:10]
Tom Junot
I always knew that there was something. Something else happening, always. My dad was one of those guys who very directly tried to teach and influence his sons, learn my secrets. But I always took that in both senses of that phrase. I would learn his secrets, you know, the. The handshake, the how to dress, all of those things. But I also went about learning his secrets, and he had many of them. And I think when I look back on, it was like, well, why did I start doing that at such a young age? I think it was my only way of having power. And so I went and investigated my dad.
- [21:57]
Interviewer (Tommy)
You were so attuned emotionally to your mother, and your mother was so attuned to what was up with your father in terms of other lives he's living that she is not invited into. I can't help but think that your need to investigate ties into picking up so much of what your mother's picking up just by being so connected to her.
- [22:23]
Tom Junot
Yeah, you know, my mother was a extraordinarily beautiful woman. When you look at the pictures. I mean, my father was not the only one in that family, in my family, who looked like a movie star. My mom did, too. My dad. My dad looked like Dean Martin. My mom looked like Doris Day. It was that. It was that kind of family. But she suffered at the hands of my dad. And it wasn't that she. You know, it wasn't that she was abused physically. She was humiliated, she was embarrassed. Because my father carried out countless affairs and made very little attempt to hide it. I look at old home movies now, movies that were shot when I was 3 and 4 and 5 years old. And my father is obviously having intimacies with the women in the movies. I mean, obviously, there's no mistaking it if you look at it, especially from the modern point of view. And so my mom had to live with that. And because my mom had to live with it, I had to live with it.
- [23:28]
Interviewer (Tommy)
The only other time that I felt the way I felt reading your book, when it comes to this part you're talking about right now, was when I read about the relationship between John and Jackie Kennedy. That was their vibe. A beautiful woman with a beautiful man, and he needs a lot of beautiful women, and she accepts it. And that always was something that I found mysterious, strange. Part of it speaks to another time. Part of it speaks to another kind of person. What your dad had in common with John Kennedy is, in both cases, insatiable sexual appetites.
- [24:05]
Tom Junot
There's a point in the book where he actually talks to me about it, and he tells me, at one time in my life, I couldn't walk down Fifth Avenue without being propositioned. I was a journalist by this time. I had a tape recorder on for half of these conversations. But when I asked him, gee, dad, did you take any of them up on it? His answer to me was, not all of them. And the minute he said that, I knew something was up. And so I eventually asked him how many. He said he wouldn't tell me. I said, give me a percentage. And he said, 25%. I was like, 25%? And he was like, is that too little? I was like, no, no, dad, that's a huge, huge number. 25%. Oh, my God.
- [25:02]
Interviewer (Tommy)
The fact that he was telling you this, There must have been this sense, if you're a guy's guy, certainly you understand, son, that all men would take advantage of this if offered in a few instances. And I'm a 25 percenter. There is, of course, throughout this book, this whole Mad Men vibe. For those folks who took in Mad Men so many times, your dad reminded me of. Is it Don Draper?
- [25:28]
Tom Junot
Don Draper? I'm one of those guys. I've watched Mad Men any number of times.
- [25:33]
Interviewer (Tommy)
You have actually talked about it as if you were Don Draper's son.
- [25:39]
Tom Junot
Yeah, that was my first pitch for the book when I was talking to my publisher. My first short pitch for the book was three Words, Bobby Draper's memoir.
- [25:48]
Interviewer (Tommy)
And I get that. I mean, Don Draper in Mad Men, there was something to be admired there. There was something abhorrent there. There was also kindness there. There was also cruelty there. One of the reasons that's such a well received show is because they are able to deliver the complexities. Your father is complex, and everyone is ultimately. But in this book, his complexities fascinate me even more. I think every kid I grew up with had a story. When we were sitting around a tree house of. Yeah, I went into my dad's sock drawer and I found all these girly magazines that he had. And. Wait, what? Yeah, my dad. Can you believe that? I barely even want to think of my mom and dad having sex, let alone looking at this stuff. In your particular case, as this investigator, as a child, you know, something's up. You want to learn more. But the first thing you discover that really is dramatic is. Is the Joy of Sex, a book that was very popular back Then along
- [26:54]
Tom Junot
with two vibrators, when I first discovered my father's. His leather. Because he sort of carried a man bag when he went on the road, and it was always full of his toiletries. And then one time he came home and the man bag was missing, and I went looking for it, and I found it in the basement, and it had Joy of Sex and two vibrators in it. And so I was so sort of hoping for a good result from this investigation that I actually thought that having the joy of sex and having these two vibrators meant that my dad and my mom were actually intimate, that they were in love. And then shortly after that, that case disappeared and was replaced by a locked briefcase. And I took it upon myself to look into that as well.
- [27:47]
Interviewer (Tommy)
I put myself in your shoes, on the locked briefcase. And the fact that you decide I can start playing around with combinations and possibly get into this thing. As a kid, there was just. I mean, if I were writing a novel, I don't know that I'd throw that in there, that a kid would think he could come up with a combination. But you did. Now you do eventually get into it. And when you get into that. We're going a bit further now down the road beyond discovering your dad has Playboy or Penthouse in a drawer. Now you come upon boxes of. Are they Super 8 porn films?
- [28:26]
Tom Junot
Yeah, Super 8 porn films. But really, it wasn't even, like, Deep Throat or Behind the Green Door or any of the famous porn films of that day. I mean, they were really. The porn films that I discovered in my dad's case were really extreme.
- [28:44]
Interviewer (Tommy)
You do a wonderful job of giving us a sense of just how extreme without giving us a sense of how extreme. But it's enough for us to realize, okay, okay. He's getting into some pretty weird stuff here. And I found myself wondering at that point in the book. We don't know people. We know parts of people. There's this common thing you hear where we have these four selves, the ones we show strangers, the ones we show friends, the one we show family, and the ones we show only when we're alone. I believe that. And you got into a part of your dad's world he wanted to show. Well, I. I don't know who Ollie wanted to show that to.
- [29:27]
Tom Junot
To this day, I don't.
- [29:29]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Yeah. Also in that briefcase were two dildos,
- [29:34]
Tom Junot
huge rubber D.
- [29:43]
Interviewer (Tommy)
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- [30:55]
Tom Junot
Company member fdic equal housing lender
- [31:00]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Smokey the Bear.
- [31:03]
Tom Junot
Then you know why Smokey tells you when he sees sees you passing through.
- [31:08]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Remember, please be careful.
- [31:10]
Tom Junot
It's the least that you can do.
- [31:17]
Interviewer (Tommy)
After 80 years of learning his wildfire prevention tips, Smokey Bear lives within us all. Learn more@smokeybear.com and remember, only you can
- [31:26]
Tom Junot
prevent wildfires brought to you by the
- [31:28]
Interviewer (Tommy)
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- [34:13]
Tom Junot
It was one of those things that was never discussed within the family and was always, as it turns out, discussed outside of the family. Since the books come out, I've been told by people like everybody knew, everybody knew your dad was this way. It was. The people who didn't know were really not me because I did know and as it turns out, so did my mom. But it was not, you know, it was not discussed, you know, at the dinner table. So I, I took it upon myself to find out. And you know, finding out was, was not something that I was particularly proud of. I wasn't proud to have, have cracked my father's briefcase. I didn't think, I didn't think of that as accomplishment. I mean it was a, it was a dread secret. It was the nuclear codes to my parents marriage. I had gotten, I had in one. The minute I opened that briefcase I had the power to end my parents marriage. It was tough to live with. I mean I never spoke about it to anybody really until now.
- [35:23]
Interviewer (Tommy)
I want to compartmentalize this part of your dad momentarily here. So for the listeners Multiple affairs. It's important to state here that in some cases his treatment of women is such that you would understand why they wanted to be around him. Wining and dining and being the ultimate gentleman and being incredible in bed. Absolutely incredible in bed. He came through for a lot of women. He knew how to treat a woman on certain levels. Yeah, except your mother wouldn't be necessarily included.
- [35:58]
Tom Junot
Except my mom. My mom spent a lot of time crying in the house. And she was also, like a lot of other women at that time, addicted to pills.
- [36:11]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Oh, God, did I see plenty of that growing up. And actually, she was also similar to women of her time in that there were so, so many marriages I was aware of that were not great marriages. But the women didn't feel they had a way out. The way out was a wilderness of the unknown. There weren't a lot of people you could turn to to see the obvious way out of this.
- [36:35]
Tom Junot
Right. I tried to figure out whether my mom had a confidant when I was growing up or did she have to go through all this alone. And so I called my Aunt Seal. My Aunt Seal is my mother's brother's wife. She was my mother's sister in law. And I called her, you know, did my mother talk about this? Did she know about my dad? Did she know about his affairs? Did she know that even maybe he had other children out there? Other, like. Like almost like another family. And one of the most important parts of this whole search that I undertake is when I go to An Seal's house and she tells me, yes, that she did talk about it, that she did talk to Ann Seal about it
- [37:26]
Interviewer (Tommy)
in particular, in a lot of ways. And this is where I wanted to compartmentalize your dad in a lot of ways. Your dad didn't fit with the fathers that I grew up with. In this way, he's extraordinarily affectionate to you. He expresses his love for you. I never heard those words from my dad. And my friends never told me their dad's ever said it. So I didn't even feel that out of place that I never heard my dad say he loved me. That just seemed the norm. Also, I got hit a lot. So did all my friends get hit a lot. That was common. You didn't. There are so many ways in which you have this wonderful relationship with your dad. He goes to your games, he's involved, he likes you, he enjoys spending time with you. Again, that's not typical of that era. Mostly what I heard a lot and saw a lot is they Worked. They worked. You need anything else, you go to your mother. Now, your mother, despite the fact that he does this, really wants it known that she raised you because she doesn't want this guy, that she doesn't care for too much to be the guy. She wants to be the one. Because, well, part of it is she fears if you're raised by him, you'll be like him.
- [38:48]
Tom Junot
My mother's greatest fear was that I was going to wind up like my dad. My mother not only raised me, she, you know, she revered me much. To my, you know, my brothers and sisters annoyance, she would actually say to them, tommy poops gold. So you can only imagine the eye rolls that followed that. But, I mean, my mom, you know, taught me how to read poetry. I don't know if I'd be a writer without my dad and his use of language and the secrets that he kept. But I wouldn't be a writer either if it wasn't for my mom and the support she gave me. So it's a really important part of the book for me is that my mom. What my mom represented and what she still represents to me. There's a point where I write a story about my dad for GQ in 1996, and it was an extremely popular story at the time. And it was called My Father's Fashion Tips. And it was definitely a case of me printing the legend. I mean, at the time, my dad was. He was sinking. He didn't have money anymore. He was losing his charm, he was losing his looks, he was. He was fading. And I decided to give my dad the gift of celebrity and gq. And people just loved that story. All except for one. I called my mom at one point because she didn't tell me what she thought of the story. Like, a week or a week and a half later, I had to call her to figure out what she actually thought of it. And I said, mom, did you read the story? And she said, yeah, I read it. I said, well, what did you think? After about a five second pause, she said, exactly what you mentioned before. She said, don't forget who raised you, kid.
- [41:02]
Interviewer (Tommy)
And it's important to realize that that's true. What she's saying there is true and that this quote from your book is also true. When I respond to the world now, I am often responding through him, for better or worse. He taught me how to live. He gave me permission to enjoy life. He might not have been a good man, but he was an elemental one. And I feel his presence when I eat, when I Drink when I make love when I breathe.
- [41:32]
Tom Junot
I.
- [41:33]
Interviewer (Tommy)
And this is important. We haven't spent a lot of time talking about the things you took from your father that you maintain to this day. Going back to the title, in the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. You mentioned this GQ article. Those are the fashion tips for being a man. What are some of the ones he told you?
- [41:54]
Tom Junot
Always look a man in the eye, always have a firm handshake. Then you got to the ones about dressing. The turtleneck is the most flattering thing a man can wear. Always wear white to the face, show plenty of cuff. All of those things, everything that I just named, I do. It's not like I reject that example. And yet there are parts of, there are parts of my dad that I think were at odds with the vision that he presented of himself and masculinity. And those had to do with his secret life.
- [42:34]
Interviewer (Tommy)
The firm handshake and the look him in the eye is what you might have heard from other dads. But fashion wise, he was a metrosexual at a time when there weren't very many, certainly not of this World War II generation. I mean, he had, he had the fashion sense of guys who would come along decades later.
- [42:56]
Tom Junot
Well, he would tell you that he had the fashion sense of the guys who came decades before. He had certain sartorial idols and I can name them. Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, a now forgotten actor named Walter Pidgeon. He loved the way Walter Pidgeon dressed though. He would warn me, but he was a little bit gay.
- [43:23]
Interviewer (Tommy)
You mentioned at one point that in the arena of self adulation there probably was no one who competed with your dad. He thought pretty highly of himself in terms of what he presented physically. Was it in the bedroom where he's looking at himself in the mirror while he's working out?
- [43:40]
Tom Junot
I would go when I was like in high school, you know, I'd go because we lived in for all of the, of the. The grandeur of my father's aspirations. We lived in a fairly small house. We lived in a Long island split level that was no different from any other Long island split level. And so there was three bedrooms and they were all packed together upstairs. And so my parents bedroom was right next to mine. And in the morning I would go to see my dad and he would be standing, you know, in all of his bronze splendor in front of this enormous mirror that just sort of occupied like half of the room. And he would be standing there in his, in his black bikinis. He wore these black bikinis either to the beach. And also under his clothes, they were like these skimpy bikinis. And he would be there in front of the mirror and he would say, look, look at this body. Have you ever seen a body like this?
- [44:47]
Interviewer (Tommy)
That's a character in a movie. You don't believe anybody ever talks that way, but he did. And that you were around that and around that for years. And again, I don't know what goes through your mind when you see your dad just really, really digging himself, just finding himself pretty damn wonderful.
- [45:06]
Tom Junot
In the beginning, it was fear, which, which sort of became confusion, which sort of became awe, which sort of. At one point in my life, for some reason, it became humor. No one before or since has made me laugh as hard as my dad did. Because at some point in my life I realized that he wasn't just fearsome, he wasn't just awe inspiring, he was ridiculous. And the, the thing that, the saving grace of my father was that depending on who did the laughing, he could take a joke about himself, he could laugh at himself. There were definitely people who, who were not permitted to laugh at my father. Like cabbies or like soda jerks or something. I mean, if one of those guys sort of laughed at my dad, my dad would, would literally. I mean, my dad was known for pulling cabbies out of their cars through the windows of the cars. I mean, so he, he wasn't like, he, he didn't, he wasn't like a guy who could always take a joke, but he could take a joke from me and he could take a joke from my brother. And you know, my brother and I stayed still laugh at my dad.
- [46:31]
Interviewer (Tommy)
There is an extraordinary story that I only learned about through another interview I took in. It was not in the book. And what I learned by reading about the writing of this book is thousands and thousands and thousands of words were edited out of it. I mean, you, you had a massive amount of, of information at one point, and I'll never know to what extent I would have liked to have read the stuff that wasn't included. But your editor took out close to 40,000 words. I heard you tell a story about something taken out and I thought, holy smokes, that story's incredible. How the hell did that get taken out? It was the story of your dad as an older man, now in his mid-60s, at the beach where he loved the beach. He loved how he looked at the beach and he loved looking at people at the beach and, and there's Some woman decades younger than he is that he takes a shine to and goes up to her. And instead of being told to get lost and instead of being told, old man, what are you doing? Get away from me. This woman, as so many women did, takes a shine to him, at least as someone to hang out with. Nothing happens between them, not for want of trying.
- [47:51]
Tom Junot
He invited her many times into the New York, into New York City. And I mean, the other detail of that is that when my father approaches her at the, at the hot dog stand in Jones beach, He's in his mid-60s, she's in her mid-20s and eight months pregnant. And he walks up to her and says, you are the most beautiful woman on the speech. And as she's told me many times, she was like, that was it for me. She was like, I was hypnotized.
- [48:25]
Interviewer (Tommy)
That's extraordinary. You can't appreciate this story fully until you realize that this wasn't just one day. He then spent the next two years hanging out with her on the beach.
- [48:37]
Tom Junot
Yeah, and her husband was there. Her husband was a lifeguard in Jones Beach. And so he would come over to see his wife and my dad sitting there on the sand and he would walk over and my dad would say, here he comes. The poor man's Cary Grant.
- [49:03]
Interviewer (Tommy)
What the hell was the guy thinking? I mean, he clearly never pulled his wife aside and said, would you please shake this guy? Would you get rid of him, please?
- [49:15]
Tom Junot
When her husband would walk away, he would touch her hand and say, 20 years ago he wouldn't have stood a chance.
- [49:28]
Interviewer (Tommy)
There's another wonderful moment that has sort of the same effect on me. It's a memorial for him after he has died that your mother does not attend. The first one that's held she's at. And there's another one that takes place up north that she does not attend. And someone who does attend is one of the many women he had an affair with for a long term affair, 11 years. And it's an extraordinary woman on so many levels. Number one, she's African American. Number two, she sounded more like a woman I might run into today. And the way she was dressed and, and how she presents it doesn't have the vibe of the women of that era. She's like this charismatic, strong, bold. Well, the fact that she went to his memorial and wanted to get up and speak and the first words that come out of her mouth are extraordinary. You don't even see it coming because you don't have it where she's going to be speaking. You gave the talk. And all of a sudden, at the end, she wants to say something.
- [50:35]
Tom Junot
My dad's Long island funeral was planned by me, choreographed by me, orchestrated by me. I mean, I hired a jazz singer from New York City to come in and sing I'll be seeing you. Instead of singing Christian hymns, we sang Frank Sinatra songs. I gave the eulogy. I mean, the whole service is there for me to have the last word on this flawed, extraordinary man. And you know, he's there in his urn. You know, he's been. He's been. He had. He was cremated. And then this woman stands up at the very end and is, as you say, is extraordinary in every way. And she walks up to the lectern and she brings her hands down on it hard like a preacher and says, can we all just agree that this was a man?
- [51:52]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Hey, msp, can you hear me? I'm singing your praises constantly. Msp, can you hear me? It's Mishke. I'm singing your praises constantly. MSP, Minneapolis St. Paul. Plumbing, heating and air. The people I turn to for what? Plumbing, heating. Right now, of course, they have that $49 furnace tune up special. Call them before April 17th for a furnace tune up and you will enter a drawing to possibly win a brand new Weber grill from Fratelloni's Hardware. Here's the thing. Your furnace has worked hard all winter and needs a tune up. So it needs that $49 tune up anyway and it'll be all ready to go for next year. So you're getting something done you need to do. And it's only 49 bucks. And you could win a brand new Weber grill from Fratelloni's Hardware. I would kill for that Weber Grill $49 special. Mishke. I will. Thank you, MSP.
- [53:02]
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- [53:40]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Fury, Fury Motors, Waconia Forest Lake, still Water, South St. Paul. Gotta get those four locations in your head. One day soon, you will be dead. Get yourself a new car. Mishke said, go, yeah, like Fury Motors. Because what I believe is whatever you need in the way of a vehicle, it's there. You need a brand new Chrysler, they got it. Brand new Dodge, brand new Jeep, they got it. Brand new Ford, they got it. Brand new gmc, brand new Buick, they got it. And if you don't like new cars, they got used cars in every kind of make and model. And they all look brand new. And they drive brand new and they smell brand new. And you feel brand new driving off that lot. It's the brand new you. It's the you that tools down the road in the spring with the sun shining, saying, yes, this car is me. Thank you, Fury. Fury understands who you are. They match people with cars, the right cars, the cars that suit you. They're problem solvers. You come to them and you say, this is what I'm gonna need. See, I'm not just gonna need a steering wheel and some gasoline and an engine. I need several things that I don't know if you can put together in a way that'll make me happy. Oh, we can put it together in a way that'll make you happy. We've been doing it since 1963. Feel good about where you buy your next automobile. Go with Fury. Fury Motors. You say at one point in the book that you know he was a master seducer in every way that one can seduce. As a salesman, as a father seducing a son into believing he's a wonderful, wondrous, magnetic man and you ought to be lucky to have him as a father. He could seduce anyone. But there were times when the veil came down, and obviously your mother saw that often enough where that act wasn't working on her anymore over the years. But you have a description at one point in your book where you say. When he says, shut up. When the charismatic seducer is gone and the guy there, the dad who's been entertaining everyone at the table isn't there anymore. When all of a sudden the veil's down. And it's very real moment of this is also who he is.
- [56:12]
Tom Junot
My dad would have fit in in a 1930s or 40s gangster movie. In those gangster movies, there was always these sharp, fast talking guys in pinstripe suits, these guys who dressed who, you know, slick back their hair, you know, and really tried to present themselves to the world. And yet you knew and you watched because you knew that behind that behind the veil, as you say, there was palpable menace. And that was my dad, for sure. And every once in a while, the veil would come down, particularly with my mom. And he would say, shut up in a way that forced him to lose not just his pretense of civility but his diction. He would sound different when he said that. And did it cause us to shut up? You bet it did. I mean, it was. It was terrifying.
- [57:17]
Interviewer (Tommy)
I mentioned early on that your dad operated like a celebrity without really being one in the classic sense. And he wouldn't allow you to get autographs from other people because they should be asking you for an autograph.
- [57:32]
Tom Junot
You know, I would say, dad, you know, can. Because he always talked about, like, the stars. The stars that he met and how the stars regarded him. Like Dean Martin. Cary Grant, you know, regarded him as an equal by instinct, regarded him as one of them. So, dad.
- [57:50]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Dad, can you.
- [57:51]
Tom Junot
Can you get Cary Grant's autograph? Never ask for an autograph. They should be asking you for your autograph.
- [58:01]
Interviewer (Tommy)
And what's extraordinary to me is this is not bluster. He did find himself. And this must speak to either the women's handbag industry or the east coast because I don't think this is typical of dads. I know in the Midwest, he did find himself in the company of superstars of celebrities. He was around them. I'm not entirely sure always. How can you tell the Cary Grant story?
- [58:27]
Tom Junot
Cary Grant, you know, was one of my dad's idols. But one of the things that my. My dad would say about him he's a little cheap, he's a little tight. And so apparently he went up to. When he was filming A Touch of Mink in New York City he went up to one of the handbag showrooms to look for free handbags to give his gifts. And he was there eating an egg salad sandwich. And my father walked in and Cary Grant said, hello, Lou. And my father, without batting an eye, said, hello, Carrie. They had found something in common. My dad also had something in common in a much more intimate way with not one, but both of the Gabor sisters.
- [59:20]
Interviewer (Tommy)
He slept with both Gabor sisters?
- [59:22]
Tom Junot
Yes.
- [59:23]
Interviewer (Tommy)
And that's where people assume by running into him that he's their equal as a celebrity. He carries himself as one. He looks like one. People in restaurants give him the best table every time. He and your mother are a beautiful couple and they act like celebrities and thus are treated like it. And then other celebrities see that and they treat them like equals.
- [59:45]
Tom Junot
One of the things that the book sort of underscores. Is that real celebrity or sort of simulation celebrity like my father had? It depends not just on looks and on talent, but it depends on the indefinable essence of charisma. And I think that that is something that has been part of the human equation since time began. Some people have it, some people don't. For a while, until things sort of began to go the other way. My father had it, and that changed everything.
- [60:27]
Interviewer (Tommy)
You make the point that your father was not someone built for aging, that he would have been better off to have been one of these guys who just enjoyed his peak and checked out. Because old age and all that comes with it was torture.
- [60:47]
Tom Junot
And that's what his friends would say. He was never supposed to grow old.
- [60:51]
Interviewer (Tommy)
That is the great equalizer, that thing coming for all of us and all that it takes down and dismantles and what that would do, that dismantling to a man like your father. The last thing I want to ask you about is really one of the only parts of the book that I felt I needed explained a little further. I wasn't 100% sure I was grasping it. I got a sense that I was, but I'm not certain, and it's important. There were always songs. Songs he whistled, songs he sang, songs he turned up when they were on the radio. And he wanted me to listen, too. He didn't just want me to like them, he wanted me to learn from them. As though they were short sermons sung not by men, but by the voice of manhood itself. There was, of course, My Way, which I played at his memorial service. There was Smile, which he called the only good thing Charlie Chaplin ever did. There was Matt Monroe's Walk Away, the stiff upper lip lament of a lover who finds his true love when he's already spoken for. And then at last, there was Sammy Davis Jr. S version of Once in a Lifetime. Just once in a lifetime. A man knows a moment, one wonderful moment when faith takes his hand. My father believed this, espoused this, lived by this. What is that? What are you saying there? Though the word was not in his vocabulary, he was at heart an existentialist and wanted me to be one, too. He wanted me to open to the transformative potential of the moment mastered the moment during which everything is up for grabs and after which everything is changed forever.
- [62:43]
Tom Junot
You know, my dad was not a believer. My dad was not a Christian, as far as any sense of the word that. That I know of. But he was a man of. Of certain beliefs, and those beliefs he came by through movies and music and all of those songs that you named just now, they're sort of rock and roll before rock and roll even comes. I mean, my dad was one of those guys that like to his dying day believed that rock music was a fad. But those songs celebrate in a really almost Whitman esque American way, the value and the power of the individual. And it was his creed, it was his religion. That's why, that's why at his funeral service I played my way. It's why we sang instead of I'll Fly Away, we sang the Summer Wind. It's why I had a, a singer come in and sing I'll be seeing you. These songs were my father's religion. The whole swelling American mid century sense of self. He believed in himself, he believed in his own masculine ideal and that was his religion.
- [64:24]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Here's what I would need explained. Imagine him saying to you, if you. I want you to be open to the transformative potential of the moment mastered the moment during which everything is up for grabs and after which everything has changed forever. And you would say to him, pop, could you explain what the hell you just said? Because this is something your father is passing along in some way. Not in the exact way you're articulating it, but what does that mean? Be open to the transformative potential of the moment mastered the moment during which everything is up for grabs and after which everything has changed forever. Because within a few sentences you write, he was right. And like a lot of other men, I have sought out transformative experiences in the belief that I need to be transformed. I have found them while trying to find out the truth about my father. That's a very important part of this book. And I don't think I fully understand what you're saying.
- [65:26]
Tom Junot
There was a word that my father used to describe the flip side of that, the other side of that, when you didn't live up to the moment. And that was the apple, the dread apple. My father had a chance to. He auditioned for Arthur Godfrey in the late 40s, early 50s as a singer. What happened, Dad? I got the apple when I was a freshman in high school. I was a kick returner and I got the ball kicked to me once. It scooted along the ground. I had trouble picking it up. And then once I picked it up, I didn't know what to do with it. I just sort of ran back and forth until I got tackled. And you know, when I came home and I was so ashamed, he was like, don't worry about it, you Just got the apple. And so my life has been an effort to sort of. When you have an opportunity to not get the apple, being able to live up to the opportunities that you've been handed. So at the end of my high school football career, I finally got to be the starting quarterback. And in the last game of my life, I threw three touchdown passes. I didn't get the apple. And I can tell you that the confidence that I got from that moment has lasted me my entire life. I don't know if I didn't do that, whether I'd be later on be able to interview Nicole Kidman or be able to stand in front of an audience and speak or sing. It's all a matter of being. Being up to the moments that life hands you. I think that was my dad's creed, and I think it's the thing that I've tried to live up to as well.
- [67:24]
Interviewer (Tommy)
So Seize the moment would be a shorthand version, but you'd have to add to that, master the moment, because that's what's in these words as well. And then you'd have to add to that. If you do, you will potentially be transformed. And there's the game right there. Grab it, own it, master it, and watch what happens to you afterward. Right, I get that. I get that now.
- [67:52]
Tom Junot
You get it. Okay.
- [67:53]
Interviewer (Tommy)
And in what way would you say he did that most dramatically where he seized it, mastered it, and it changed him, transformed him.
- [68:03]
Tom Junot
So I think that that is the most difficult part of my father's legacy, because I think that for him, he didn't master the moment when it came to sort of conventional opportunities. My father was an incredibly unlucky investor and gambler to the extent that he lost most, if not all, of his money. He got the apple. Where my father did live up to the moment was in a place that you couldn't see and weren't supposed to see, and that's when he was in bed with women other than my mom.
- [68:44]
Interviewer (Tommy)
It's an extraordinary book. I've kept you a long time. I want to encourage people to go out and find it. I do want to say that the audio version involves you reading. I think I would just be laughing my ass off every time you imitated your father in the audio version. In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. Tom Junot, the author thank you for all this time you gave me.
- [69:11]
Tom Junot
Tommy, thanks so much for talking. I mean, this is really one of the best interviews that I've had. It's been so wide ranging and in its own way, joyful.
- [69:20]
Interviewer (Tommy)
Thanks again. You take care. I hope to talk to you somewhere down the line, so sometime.
- [69:24]
Tom Junot
All right, Tommy, thanks. Thanks so much.