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- [00:01]
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- [00:08]
Kate
Big deal.
- [00:08]
Wayfair Announcer
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- [00:11]
Kate
Big deal.
- [00:12]
Wayfair Announcer
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- [00:28]
Kate
Wayfair.
- [00:29]
Joan London
Every style, every home.
- [00:37]
Kate
Well, it's that time again for the bookcase with Kate. And Charlie. And I will cut the intro very short since Kate last week went on for about six minutes at the intro before she got to me. So I'll get right away to Kate, I'm Charlie Gibson.
- [00:51]
Charlie Gibson
And what a great way to work. A guilt trip like that was so passive aggressive. That was masterfully passive aggressive. And I'm from Minnesota, so I should know. Hi, I'm the Cape part.
- [01:01]
Kate
We have this week an author somewhat well known to me and actually to millions of people, Joan London. You may have heard of her. She hosted Good Morning America for a long time with David Hartman and then with an absolutely brilliant co host. For 11 years, she worked with this masterful co host named Charlie Gibson.
- [01:22]
Charlie Gibson
Oh, I was going to say Elmo. I was going to say Elmo, not Elmo then.
- [01:25]
Joan London
Okay.
- [01:27]
Kate
No, it was me.
- [01:27]
Joan London
Okay.
- [01:28]
Kate
And she has written a book, a memoir called Joan. She had to struggle to come up with that title, I think, and she was, she was able to do it. And there's a very glamorous picture of her on the COVID of the book. And you should, you should tell the story about Jack, your son.
- [01:46]
Charlie Gibson
So my son knows I'm reading this book. He always sort of goes, have you finished this book yet? Have you finished. So he says to me, if you finish your book yet.
- [01:52]
Joan London
And I said, I haven't.
- [01:53]
Charlie Gibson
And he said, who is Joan? And I said, joan hosted a TV show with your grandpa Charlie for a long number of years. They were good friends and co hosts and whatever. And he goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The woman on the COVID And I said, yeah. And he said, so the woman on the COVID is the same age as Grandpa Charlie? And I said about, yeah. And he goes, mmm, how did that happen? So, you know, seven year old called you out, my friend.
- [02:24]
Kate
Yes, he. Yes, he did. Somehow I. Well, actually, you know, you look at that picture of Joan on the COVID of the book and you think, well, somebody touched this one up. But no, no, she looks like that.
- [02:36]
Charlie Gibson
Looks like that.
- [02:37]
Kate
She looks like she's 40 years old
- [02:39]
Charlie Gibson
and I'm not her age yet, and I'm already bitter about it.
- [02:42]
Kate
Like, she's glamorous. And I'm, I'm. Whenever I ask him, you're sweet. How did that happen?
- [02:50]
Charlie Gibson
You're sweet. And brought it up again later, was like, really? That woman is the same age as Grandpa Charlie. Like, I think it was a little like Ripley's Believe it or not for him.
- [02:57]
Kate
And anyway, the book is Joan, as we say, and it is the story of her life. And Kate asked her a lot about why she wrote the book and for whom she wrote the book. And I think it's written primarily for women, although we had a lot of male viewers of the show who I would think would be interested in it. But Joan, while she's lived a wonderfully star crossed life, has gone through some tough times. A battle with cancer, for instance. She lost her dad at a very young age, et cetera, et cetera. So she writes about hurdles that she has overcome. But she writes a lot of the stories about GMA as well, which I appreciate.
- [03:34]
Charlie Gibson
But I would pose this question to you, though, because one of the reasons she says she writes the book, as you guys will hear in a minute, is that when you're living life, and I thought this was a very good explanation, when you're living life at a breakneck speed, as you were when you were hosting Good Morning America, it is really hard to take a moment and say, I just had a once in a lifetime experience. And so I ask you, did you feel like you had time to sort of slow down and snatch the moments, or did it all feel like a big blur?
- [04:01]
Kate
No, you're always working. I always tell people, for instance, we did a week of shows in the Netherlands and we lived right next to the Rijksmuseum, and I never got in it. You're working all the time, and the audience actually sees because we send groups. We used to send groups to shoot pieces long before we got there. And the audience would see more of the country that we were featuring than we did. And so in the case of the Netherlands, for instance, we went back as a family right after the show. I got to see the Rijksmuseum, and I had a lovely time touring the country that we had just been showing off.
- [04:37]
Charlie Gibson
You missed the first time around. I remember that when I was doing, I produced and directed for a number of years, Diners Drive Ins and Dives. And by the end, I was on the road 300 days of the year. And there were moments and you didn't mean to be rude, but you would, like, meet restaurant owners, and they would say something, and you'd be like, thanks for having us. And they'd be like, how are you enjoying Hawaii? And there were times where you could turn around with a dead straight face and go, is that where I am?
- [05:00]
Kate
Well, we did bus trips, bus trips in various parts of the country when we took these buses that were mainly leased out to country music acts. They had beds on them, and they had a room to work in the back. And they had very comfortable chairs and a little refrigerator to keep snacks, of which we had a lot. And we went from city to city, and then we would do the show in the city that we traveled to that day, and we'd get into a country, and people say, what do you think of our city? Well, we just got here, and we haven't seen anything. Anyway, Joan tells a lot of the stories in the background of Good Morning America. She's very nice to me, which I truly appreciate. She didn't need to be as nice as she was, so that's why I like the book. But. But it is. It's a really interesting story. She's really an interesting life. And she was a very improbable person to follow the course she did, because women, you know, we. We think. We don't think twice about it anymore. But women were a rarity in shows like Good Morning America. They were a very secondary role. Barbara Walters had. Had sort of plowed the ground and set the course. As a matter of fact, Barbara was a very, very influential advisor to Joan.
- [06:11]
Charlie Gibson
Barbara was the trailblazer. But Barbara was not a mom on the air. She was very like. What she was off the air was very separate from who she was on the air. Whereas Joan, I think, was the first woman to say, this is my daughter, and guess what? I'm pregnant, and we're gonna talk about breastfeeding. Cause it's important to me. And I think she was really the first person. And again, my generation now and generations after me will take it for granted. But this was not something that was done back then, and she did it well.
- [06:37]
Kate
The name of the book is Joan. We had a terribly difficult time booking her for the podcast. We had to really twist her arm.
- [06:44]
Charlie Gibson
We had to get her a bowl of just the blue M and M's. I had to sit there and pick out all the other M and M's and the. No, I'm just kidding.
- [06:51]
Kate
She's loving Anyway, our conversation. Joan London. Was her last name. Joan London? Yes, Joan London. Foreign. It is a pleasure to have you in the bookcase. And you should explain Joan Blunden, as you do in the book.
- [07:10]
Joan London
Ah, yes. I was born Joan Blunden. And when I was a little girl, my. My dad was a cancer surgeon. And we would go to restaurants and. And they take your name and then you sit down and when the Hostess would say, Dr. Blunder, Dr. Blunder, your table is ready. Because it's very easy when you write out Blunden for it to look like a blunder. And my dad was like, a doctor can't be a blunder. So when I went to New York City at the age of 25 and started working at ABC in New York, the news director said, I think we need to change your name. And I said, really? And he said, yeah. He said, because when you write it fast, it looks like it can look like blender. And the critics could have a heyday with that. And I couldn't argue with him because it had happened. So then I had to, like, come up with a name. And I remember one of the other reporters that Eyewitness News said, why don't you just drop the B? That's easy. Be London. It's easy for people to remember. It's like London, the city. It's like at the time there was a star, Julie London, singer or actress or something. Yeah, it's easy. It's easy to remember. And this all happened like I. I literally on the third day on the job, I was sent out on a story, and I walked in and said, I just got sent on a story, but we gotta settle my name. And this guy was sitting there and said, drop the B. It's easy. And I said, do you like that? To the news director? And the news director said, yes. And I left. That's how fast my name changed from Blunden to London.
- [08:39]
Kate
You got a whole new Persona in five minutes.
- [08:42]
Charlie Gibson
I wanted to ask. There's such a philosophy and memoir writing about owning your own story. And after I finished this book, I thought, how much of this is Joan owning your own story versus inspiring women that are like her? How much is for inspiration for others? And how much is self reflection?
- [09:00]
Joan London
Well, I think it's total self reflection and a hundred percent sharing the story of your life. But at the same time, I'm just one of those people that I always hope that it will always inspire others, maybe give them hope. Usually when you think about writing a memoir, where do you start? And normally people start at the beginning of their life is their child. Da da da da da. So as I was writing this book, I. I went to read someone else's memoir, I guess I should say. It was Barbara Walters. And in the beginning, she.
- [09:34]
Kate
Who's she?
- [09:34]
Joan London
Who's she? And, like, the first few chapters were all about her relatives from Europe. It was. And I. That's not why I was reading the book. And I had a hard time. In fact, I don't think I ever finished the book because I put it down. So I decided to start with something compelling that would take them into a moment in my life that's kind of extraordinary about my life. And then I thought about it.
- [10:00]
Kate
Wow.
- [10:01]
Joan London
Since I was 23 years old, almost all my life has been captured on videotape. Well, in the old, old days, on film. But how could I incorporate that? So then I got the idea of putting QR codes all throughout the book. So that first chapter, what I decided to start with was my flight being at 75,000ft above the Earth in a spacesuit in the backseat of a U2 spy plane and having a major emergency happen. I'm going to turn the sound up on my phone, and when you come to these, all you have to do is put your phone over it and it will open up declaring an emergency.
- [10:45]
Kate
At this time, I got a landing gear malfunction and an electrical malfunction. I've got about two hours of fuel on board, two souls on board.
- [10:52]
Joan London
So all these different moments in my life, I was able to tell the story and then let you open it up and see the story.
- [11:02]
Charlie Gibson
I got to see videos of my father with hair. I got to see. I got to see videos of my father when he was. What were you, like, five then?
- [11:10]
Joan London
Dad?
- [11:11]
Charlie Gibson
Five, six.
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Kate
Yes. It was just post puberty, but your
- [11:16]
Charlie Gibson
voice had changed, so, you know, thumbs up.
- [11:21]
Kate
So who came up. You came up with the idea of the QR codes? Because I've never seen that in a book before. I thought that was really very smart.
- [11:28]
Joan London
Well, I hadn't never seen it in a book before, but I just had this desire to be able to share my life with the reader. And my life has been on video, and it's been being put in these extraordinary situations of, you know, landing on aircraft carriers or flying in U2s at the edge of space, or dancing on a stage as a ballet showgirl or whatever it is. And I. I just wanted to be able to somehow also share that. And I figured it out that I could do it with the QR codes and as soon as I got the go ahead, I said, all right, I'm going to do something that nobody else has done. Not that that's anything in particularly unusual about me.
- [12:12]
Kate
Joni, as you wrote this, who were you thinking about would be the readers? Who'd you write it for?
- [12:17]
Joan London
Oh, maybe the 26 million people that saw us every morning on Gmail, but others. I hope that moms might buy it, especially for young women. You know, when I was coming up through the ranks as a young woman in my 20s, my parents really encouraged me to think big, see the world. My mom sent me, you know, around the world on world campus afloat. Cause I was 16 when I graduated from college and was graduating from high school. And I was going into college, and that was 1967, also known as a year of free love. And my mom's like, you're not going to go to a college campus at 16 years old in a. In the US that's not happening.
- [12:59]
Kate
She put you on the Love Boat instead.
- [13:01]
Joan London
Yeah, no, sorry, but, but there was way more oversight of the students on the ship. Okay, not only on the ship, but in all these countries, 15 countries as we went around the world. And I wanted people to take from this, and I hope young people too, of, I don't know, believing in yourself, believing you can do something bigger than maybe even you think you can do, of saying yes. Like my husband always says, if there's. If you're going to take a page out of the Joan London playbook, it is whenever someone asks you if you can do something, just say yes and then go figure out how to do it. You know, I hope that it's motivational and inspirational for people in addition to getting the opportunity to share my life. Legacy memoir.
- [13:53]
Kate
That's one of the things that, well, you and I talked about it. You mentioned Barbara Walters. Barbara really paved the way. Yeah, but you did some things that I thought were very interesting. You put your pregnant stomach above the desk, not below it. You used. You talked about breastfeeding on the air
- [14:09]
Joan London
when you couldn't say breastfeeding on Television in 1979. I don't know if young women realize today how different life was for women when I was a young woman, and that wasn't that long ago. And I think it took me until this point in my life to be able to look back and a really appreciate what transpired because of the path I walked. You know, how it was supposed to be the best kept secret when ABC said, yeah, sure, fine, bring the baby to work. We just Want your tush in that chair? And because the last co host didn't really get along with David and they just, I don't think that they understood what they were saying yes to. But the positive reaction we got from the audience and the, the positive reaction we got from the press and the, the ripple effect that it made on corporations across the country and how it changed life in somewhat a significant way for women. My husband always says, you had such an extraordinary life, but you don't understand that because to you it was ordinary. And so it, it takes getting to this point where you can stand back and look at it through a much more appreciative way lens.
- [15:27]
Charlie Gibson
I want to go back to trailblazing for a second because one of the most vivid moments in the book for me is when you get the call finally from GMA saying we're going to put you in the anchor chair and five or ten minutes later you get a call from your gynecologist that says you're pregnant. I mean, this is a time in our culture where you had to sort of choose between the two. That was very stark. Reality was you could either have the job or the baby. You couldn't have them both. So I wonder if you wouldn't mind talking about those moments after you hung up with your gynecologist because you must have been like, well, this is a whole new game plan. And how did you get up the guts to then call ABC and say, yes, I'm going to take it. But guess what?
- [16:06]
Joan London
We had to tell ABC and ABC at that point. They had gone through several years of a lot of kind of not the warm and fuzzy morning that you would want on GMA because David Hartman and my predecessor, Sandy Hill, had not. There was like not a lot of love, loss. And so they were dying to get kind of the show back on track. And so they kind of just said, okay, fine, whatever. And so now it's July and I'm going to have this baby. They've got me scheduled to start in August and I had done like Leche League interviews forever and said, I, you know, I know I have to breastfeed this baby. And I remember calling my mother and telling her that and she's like, you're crazy. How are you going to do that? I said, well, I'm going to ask ABC if I can take the baby to work with me. Oh, and you're going to get up at three in the morning and take a baby into work to do a national broadcast. That's what you think you're going to be able to do. I said, well, I don't know what else I can do because, by the way, there weren't all these breast pump things that there are now. And I said, I called my agent and I said, would you go in and ask them if I can bring my baby with me because I'm breastfeeding? He was like, silence for 30 seconds.
- [17:17]
Charlie Gibson
And he said, we didn't start with, well, first of all, congratulations on that.
- [17:22]
Joan London
I said, you have to do it. You have to go in and ask them and tell them, you know, I'll have a baby nurse come in with me and she'll take care of the baby while I'm on the air. So he did. And lo and behold, and I have to give kudos to ABC for saying yes. I do not think they knew what they were saying yes to.
- [17:45]
Kate
I would tell the story when I came to gma. I don't know how old Jamie was at that point. She was at least 10 or 9 or 10. But there was a long hallway upstairs above the studio. GMA and all of our dressing rooms were off the hallway. And then there was one of the dressing rooms had a little plaque on the door and it said, baby Jamie's dressing room. She was still remembered after all that time.
- [18:11]
Charlie Gibson
Actually, speaking of how different it is, I have a bone to pick with my father on page 237. I know. Big, big surprise. So you said to Joan when you arrived, I want us to make a deal. Let's promise each other that we'll work as a true team. 50 50. No one pulls rank on the bigger interviews. No one tries to overshadow the other. Let's show America that a man and a woman can work together as equals. I didn't get a speech like that. I got.
- [18:35]
Joan London
Those are the best words I ever heard. Except when we, when Charlie and I got together at the 50th anniversary, we're going to share this. Charlie, he, he informed me, and I'd never known this, that when he walked into the office that day with his, you know, his box of books to go move into his office, that the executives called him in.
- [19:00]
Kate
Oh, yeah.
- [19:00]
Joan London
To have a little meeting before he came in and sat down. So what did they tell you, Charlie?
- [19:05]
Kate
Well, they said the show needs an alpha host and it has to be the male and it has to be the male. And you're going to have to. This is a true story. You're going to have to exhibit not dominance wasn't the word they used.
- [19:21]
Joan London
Establish yourself.
- [19:23]
Kate
Yes.
- [19:23]
Joan London
He walked out of that office after that conversation and walked into my office and sat down on the other side of my desk and said, let's be equals.
- [19:34]
Kate
So we're going to interrupt Joan for a few moments. When we come back, we'll tell some of the stories, our favorite stories that we remember about things that happened, untoward, things that happened at times on gma.
- [19:45]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, plus you don't want to miss it. I once again make fun of my father for being old. It's.
- [19:59]
Kate
Nine one one. Where's the emergency?
- [20:00]
Juju Chang
It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey shore. Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge. A search gets underway for the missing driver, 19 year old Sarah Stern.
- [20:13]
Charlie Gibson
Is it a missing person?
- [20:14]
Joan London
Is it a suicide? At this point, nobody knows.
- [20:17]
Juju Chang
Old friendships, buried cash, and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie plays out in real life. I'm juju Chang from 2020 and ABC Audio. Listen now to Bridge of Lies, wherever you get your podcasts
- [20:38]
Charlie Gibson
from.
- [20:38]
Kate
30 for 30 podcasts. Brian Pata, senior defensive lineman from Miami, gunned down the key to this case. It's Brian. An hour before he died, he was on the phone arguing with somebody. This might be a hit. You want the truth? They just want a conviction. Being placed under arrest.
- [21:04]
Charlie Gibson
We had a killer amongst us.
- [21:05]
Kate
Murder at the U. Listen now.
- [21:08]
Wayfair Announcer
From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy gold to relationship fails. Amazon Music's got the most ad free top podcasts included with prime. Because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today.
- [21:38]
Kate
A question that, that I probably shouldn't ask, but I've never talked to you about it.
- [21:42]
Joan London
Okay.
- [21:43]
Kate
And as I read the book, I thought about it. Did you face, as you came up the ladder, did you face what would be now called MeToo Moments?
- [21:51]
Joan London
Did you read the chapter Fire island fiasco?
- [21:55]
Kate
I did, but I don't remember. I. I should remember, but I don't.
- [21:59]
Joan London
So, yes, before I ever came to New York, when I was at kcra, the owner of the station, the brother of the one who put his wife on the air, but the other one asked me out and you know, I'm smart enough. First of all, he was like, I don't know, 15 years older than me, 20 years, I don't know. And I said no. And he called the news director and said, fire her. And the news director said, no. Like, what's, what's your beef with her? Oh, she just thinks she's like some little hotshot. I asked her as she would. She said, no. And he said, I'm not firing her for that. And if you want me to fire her, you're going to have to fire me. I mean, that's the kind of thing I got. But the Fire island fiasco was my immediate superior at Eyewitness News, who was very much a mentor in the beginning and helped me learn a lot about structuring my field pieces. And if only it could have just stayed that way. But, you know, guys want to try to take it further, and if it had been a guy, this would never have happened. I don't know if I want to tell the whole story and ruin the chapter, but, I mean, should I tell the story?
- [23:07]
Charlie Gibson
Go ahead.
- [23:08]
Joan London
I wasn't welcomed with open arms at Eyewitness News either, because it had been put together as this very ethnic group of people. This guy, El Primo, when he was brought into Eyewitness News and everything was bland, white, male, he said he walked through from his hotel to the station every day and said I should do a newscast that looks like what the streets of New York look like. And he hired, you know, Gloria Rojas, Roseanne Scamardella, Geraldo Rivera, all these different people, and put together this very ethnic group that had formed this incredible tight bond to which I was dropped into this little blonde from California. And so I now have this mentor in my mind saying, there's going to be a big Eyewitness News party out on Fire island, and you should go. And I get there, and there's another reporter there who's a CBS local reporter and his girlfriend. But it's still, like, you know, like 6ish. And I'm waiting for all the other Eyewitness News people to arrive. And as time goes on, I said, like, what's going on? We're. And he said, oh, you know, it turned out that the others couldn't come. So it's just, just. Just us. Like you, me, and this other couple. Is that what you're saying? I did not sign up for this. And finally, you know, the other couple goes off to the bedroom. And he said, all right, let's go to bed. I was like, I'm not going there. This is not happening. I sat on that sofa with no pillow, no blanket. And when the sun started coming up, I got outside. I went. I found. Where do you go to get the ferry? And I made my way back. And the following Monday, he was so angry that he started killing all of my stories. And I finally had to put on my big girl pants. One day he was. I heard him walking by the office that I shared with three other females, but I was the only one there at the time. And I called him in and I told him that I had met with my attorneys and we had put together a suit, sexual discrimination against WABC and against him. I said they want to initiate the suit. Very much against their recommendation. I'm going to give you this one opportunity to apologize and to never do this again. Never kill a story of mine. Never look at me sideways. And he realized then and he apologized and he just said, I'm sorry and it won't happen again. And he walked out. Now if looks could kill, I would have been dead many times over. I hope when this book comes out. I obviously didn't name him. He still is in the business. So if he's out there and he reads this book, he will learn at the end of that chapter that I was bluffing.
- [25:59]
Kate
So let me get to the thing that really pisses me off about the book. Oh, I'm not mentioned until page 236.
- [26:09]
Joan London
You're all throughout, I don't know chapters,
- [26:12]
Kate
what you're going to be through.
- [26:14]
Joan London
28.
- [26:15]
Kate
You're very nice to me and in some cases probably not deserved, but you are very nice to me.
- [26:22]
Joan London
And lots of videos of the two of us also.
- [26:25]
Kate
So what stories do you best remember about gma? When somebody says, tell me about your years at gma, what comes first to mind?
- [26:33]
Joan London
Okay, I'm going to share one with you. Kate will appreciate this. It was when I first went there and I was still breastfeeding Jamie and I was on the set with a senator, some senator. I was obviously David Hartman was the co host then or the, the host, excuse me. And I was interviewing the senator about Ronald Reagan, who was president at the time, about his trickle down economic theory when all of a sudden I experienced inflation and trickle down personally. See, Kate gets the story. Come on, Charlie. I do, I do. And I was fortunately wearing like a silk print blouse so you couldn't see it. And you know, the hairdresser came down with the hairdryer and the show must go on. Those are the kind of, those are the kind of things that you never forget.
- [27:28]
Kate
I remember when we were hosting the show in Australia and we were in sight of the opera house in Sydney and I was on the stage, it was an elevated stage, probably three feet up in the air and I jumped off the stage to go to the next set and my pants split right up the back. Not just, not just a little bit. But a lot. And my assistant, Grace Wong noticed it, as I think everybody else would have, and we were doing a fashion piece on Australian long coats and sheep herders coats. And she had. One of the moms was there, she ran over and grabbed his coat, the thing he was going to wear in the fashion segment, gave it to me and said, wear it for the rest of the show.
- [28:14]
Charlie Gibson
Now you're a sheep herder. Ready, go.
- [28:16]
Kate
That's right, exactly.
- [28:18]
Joan London
Oh, wait, I'm surprised. I'm surprised. Think you know Australia that you didn't say that. That big moment. This would be my other big moment when we landed in southern New Zealand and we got on this bus, they picked us up on a bus to go to the hotel and we're going through the little town and you're seeing whitewater rafting, bungee jumping and all. And you said, I get what this place is about. A hundred different ways you can kill yourself. And I said, yes, and let's get together tomorrow morning at 8 o' clock in the lobby. They've given us a day to like, you know, kind of assimilate to the time change. And you agreed and you met me in the lobby the next morning. We went and got a film crew and we left and didn't tell anybody where we were going because we were going to do this power split spinning boat and down this whitewater rafting thing. And then we went to the top of a bridge that we bungee jumped off of. And I think we ended up so mad. Oh, my God, your wife was so angry at me.
- [29:21]
Charlie Gibson
I remember watching the show with her that morning and he did that thing where he said, I'm Charlie Gibson and I hope this isn't the last night. And she looked at me and she goes, what's he doing? What's he doing?
- [29:30]
Joan London
Where's he standing?
- [29:31]
Charlie Gibson
Why is he standing?
- [29:32]
Joan London
And then he jumped the camera out and he jumped off the bridge.
- [29:37]
Charlie Gibson
She was so mad.
- [29:38]
Joan London
I know, I know. She was really mad at us. Do you remember that?
- [29:43]
Charlie Gibson
I know. Dad. I know. Dad got a call from mom that day.
- [29:46]
Joan London
Kate, you're in like this part. So we get up on top of the bridge and you have to literally climb out through this scaffolding onto this little square piece of wood. That's maybe, I don't know, Charlie, two feet by two feet. Yeah, maybe.
- [30:01]
Kate
Yeah, yeah.
- [30:02]
Joan London
And so now you're on this thing. But be. And now they wrap a towel that looks like they got it from the hotel around your ankles and then they put the, the, the bungee Rope around that so that it doesn't hurt your ankles. And now you have to like scooch out, like to get your toes out to the end of the board. And like, I wanted to put my toes just a tiny touch over. And then they keep saying, don't look down, don't look down. Just don't look down. Because if you look down, you see the guy in the river that looks like he's about this big with a pole that you're going to, eventually he's going to get you out of the water. And this guy behind me with the best Australian accent and I've got, I've got a hold of him and I said, would you just push me? He said, we're not allowed to do that, but if you keep holding on to me like that, I'd like to take you to dinner tonight. I'd never heard that.
- [31:01]
Kate
She reminds me of a story when we were, we took bus trips and we were doing the 17 mile drive around Monterey, California, and we went by the tee box of a golf course, Spanish Bay, that was right on the 17 mile drive. And there was a foursome about to tee off. And so I went up to them, we got off with the cameras, and I went up to these four golfers and I said, I'm going to shoot your tee shot and where it lands. And that's the only shot you will ever hit on national television. Go. And before they did it, one of them engaged Joan and said, are you a golfer? And Joan said, no. He said, let me show you. And he put his arms around her. And I thought, this is going to get ugly. So, so I had to call this guy off. Right, exactly. He had his arms around Joan. He was not, he was not going to take the shot until he had a chance to give Joan a good hug. And I, I, I felt we had to call this. Whoa there. Down boy, down boy.
- [32:01]
Joan London
When David Hart was leaving the show, I went through a period of about, I don't know, a couple months where they had me with a different guy every week. From Regis Philbin to Frank Gifford to John Force.
- [32:17]
Charlie Gibson
My favorite. Yeah, exactly.
- [32:19]
Joan London
Who was like, had the big star on Dynasty. I guess it was.
- [32:22]
Kate
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:23]
Joan London
And, and, and like that's hard. That is hard. Having to have a somebody on with you. Different week after week after week. I remember there's a guy, I think his name is either Dan Sullivan or Jim Sullivan. He was blind. And I mean, it was like this two months and Charlie knows this. I was a huge proponent of Charlie. I Met Charlie in the rotunda, if I remember correctly, at the Cafe, Reagan's
- [32:50]
Kate
second inauguration, when it was so cold
- [32:53]
Joan London
that none of us could, that they made everybody come inside. And the place I was sent to was the rotunda. And he was on the other side. And that's when we first met, I think. And then after that several times when David was gone and we had a news guy, Steve Bell, and he always wanted to come in and sit in for David, but whenever he was gone too, I was like, then bring in Charlie Gibson.
- [33:17]
Kate
Yeah, that's true.
- [33:18]
Joan London
We brought in Charlie. And I just felt that Charlie, like David always as an actor, I think, always presented himself as every man's man, but Charlie was everyman's man. Charlie was just like a normal guy who happened to be incredibly bright, who was incredibly well versed with government politics, all of the, the politicians in Washington and really. And yet he didn't wear it. He just, he, he had this wonderful little kind of self deprecating humor about him. And I, to me, that was what was really going to be the perfect guy to sit there. And I pushed hard for him. I don't know if there was anybody else that was up there at the top of the running. I had other, other men calling me who wanted the job, who I was friends with. But meanwhile I, I just thought Charlie would be perfect. And of course he was perfect.
- [34:22]
Charlie Gibson
You were like, let's go for the self deprecating nerd.
- [34:27]
Kate
That's the respect I get from my daughter. I get much more respect from my co host and you should remember that. Kate,
- [34:35]
Charlie Gibson
I really enjoyed this region. I love getting to know your life in a different way and I loved your stories of resilience and reinvention and they're very personal stories and I really enjoyed this book. Thank you so much for sitting with us.
- [34:49]
Joan London
It's my pleasure.
- [34:55]
Kate
So once again, the name of the book is Joan. We thank her and we'll bring you up to date on who makes this podcast possible every week. And then a final thought from Joan London.
- [35:06]
Charlie Gibson
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Arielle Chester at Good Morning America and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Follow the Bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we
- [35:32]
Joan London
have them linked in the episode Description I love quotes. I mean, I'm impacted by quotes and I keep them in a collection. Chapter 36 in this book is called Finding the Good in Goodbye and this was Leaving Good Morning America. The quote is actually by Winnie the Pooh. How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
- [36:11]
Kate
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- [36:33]
Joan London
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