CHAPTER 3
The Third Life
I
RVING KAHN HAD BEEN INDICTED BY A FEDERAL GRAND
jury but not yet convicted and sentenced when Jack Kent Cooke
attended a TelePrompTer board meeting in October 1971 and
put some hard questions to Kahn about the company’s future. The
meeting did not go well. Kahn insisted on remaining in control of
TelePrompTer even as its stock value plunged, and Cooke abruptly left
the meeting. Cooke was no doubt angry with himself, too, for having
agreed to Kahn’s demand back in September 1970, when H&B
American Cablevision merged with TelePrompTer, that he surrender
his voting rights to Kahn. Cooke held about 15 percent of
TelePrompTer’s stock—500,000 shares to Kahn’s 168,000—but he had
surrendered the voting power that normally came with it. “We were
all flabbergasted that Jack would agree to that,” recalled Bill Bresnan,
“but Jack fell in love with this deal because it was a chance to add pizzaz to a kind of dull cash cow. Jack loved excitement and he wanted
to do that deal.”1
But Cooke had an ally in a fellow stockholder, Howard Hughes’s
Hughes Aircraft Corporation, which also had surrendered its voting
rights to Kahn. Hughes Aircraft wished to hold onto its TelePrompTer
stock and restore its value, and supported Cooke’s effort to convince
the FCC to refrain from interfering with Johnstown’s awarding its
local cable TV franchise to TelePrompTer, despite the taint of Kahn’s
Jack Kent Cooke
A Career Biography
43
CHAPTER 3
legal problems. Kahn resigned as chairman of TelePrompTer on
November 12, 1971, following his conviction in October on bribery
and conspiracy charges. Cooke and Hughes Aircraft then moved successfully to enforce a New York State law that denied stock voting
rights to convicted felons. Now Cooke and his attorneys, led by Jay
Ricks of Hogan & Hartson in Washington, D.C., took on the FCC
challenge when the regulatory agency moved to block the franchise
award on the grounds that due process could not have been followed.
One of the reasons Cooke had found the cable TV business attractive was its relative exemption from the kind of government regulation
that had given him headaches in Canada and the United States. The
FCC left control in the hands of the local government entities that
awarded franchises as long as the process was fair and the cable systems didn’t dilute or interfere with regular network broadcasting. But
the egregious behavior of Kahn in Johnstown—though he always
maintained that he was the victim of extortion by local officials rather
than the instigator of bribes—proved irresistible to the FCC’s instinct
for regulatory responsibility, despite its prior hands-off approach to
cable TV. Cooke’s position was that the FCC was not following its own
rules. The case ended up in the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of
Columbia Circuit, where attorney Ricks and a colleague, appellate
attorney E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., won a victory for Cooke and
TelePrompTer. Now Cooke was free to take care of a minor remaining
matter—saving the company.
In the early weeks of 1972 Cooke named Bill Bresnan president of
TelePrompTer and installed former Pennsylvania governor Ray
Schafer as the company’s board chairman. But on March 8, 1973,
while Bresnan and others labored to diagnose TelePrompTer’s financial ills, Cooke suffered a serious brush with his own mortality. Earlier
that day he had completed his annual physical exam at the UCLA
Medical Center. It had gone very well, he thought, and afterwards he
gleefully boasted to Bresnan that he had the blood pressure of a fourteen-year-old, despite smoking four or five packs of cigarettes a day for
over forty years. In the evening he met some friends for dinner at the
Forum Club prior to attending a Kings game. But just before dinner
44
A Career Biography
Jack Kent Cooke
the third life
was served, he felt an odd sensation in his throat and lower jaw. He
excused himself from the table and headed for his office. He was having a heart attack.
As with so many other things in his life, luck favored Cooke that
night. On his way out of the restaurant he noticed Dr. Robert Kerlan,
team physician for the Lakers, sitting at another table and motioned for
him to come with him. In Cooke’s office, Kerlan took over, or tried to,
for Cooke was busy barking orders to his staff about keeping the press,
radio, and TV people away. At last Kerlan yelled, “For God’s sake, Jack,
lie down and shut up!” Cooke was fortunate. His recovery was excellent, and after two weeks in the hospital he retired to Raljon, his ranch
in Glennville, about 150 miles north of Los Angeles. Named after
Cooke’s sons, Ralph and John, Raljon was a working, sixteen-thousandacre cattle ranch that Cooke had purchased in 1969 for $1 million. In
the comparative isolation of a spacious lodge that Cooke himself had
designed, the reluctant patient managed to relax and recoup. He quit
smoking, composed songs, read books, and experimented with a meatloaf-like hamburger recipe he dubbed “Hamburgers Raljon.”
Back in New York, Bill Bresnan had trimmed costs. He laid off
nearly five hundred TelePrompTer employees and even had the company’s annual report printed in black-and-white. But investors
seemed unconvinced and the company’s creditors were getting nervous. The appointment of former governor Schafer as TelePrompTer’s
board chairman had failed to provide the hoped-for lift in stock value.
On September 7, 1973, the Securities and Exchange Commission halted all trading of TelePrompTer stock pending submission of a detailed
report on the company’s finances. The next month, just six months
after his heart attack, Cooke’s concern for TelePrompTer’s future
spurred him out of Raljon’s pastoral calm and into an apartment at
the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in midtown Manhattan, where he organized
a fiercely determined campaign to revive the wilting cable company.
Jim Lacher recalled the diligence with which Cooke had protected
his recuperation period at the ranch. One day, though, Lacher had visited Cooke to have him sign a contract for Jim McMillian, the Lakers’
forward. “I went back to the office,” Lacher recounted. “The next
Jack Kent Cooke
A Career Biography
45
CHAPTER 3
morning he called me up and said, ‘Can you get back up here? We’ve
got a heck of a mess at TelePrompTer.’ Cooke and Lacher flew to
Manhattan, where they discovered that the company’s books were six
months behind and numerous construction projects were under way
that TelePrompTer could not afford. “They had just underestimated
what they were doing,” said Lacher. “Nobody had planned things out.”
Cooke ordered all construction stopped. Not a penny more was to be
spent without Lacher’s direct approval.2
Retaining Bill Bresnan as TelePrompTer’s president, Cooke took
over the CEO and chairman positions from Ray Schafer. He set an
ambitious goal of raising the number of TelePrompTer subscribers
from 750,000 to 1 million in just one year. To head this sales effort, he
hired twenty-seven-year-old Marc B. Nathanson, a fledgling cable
executive from California, whom TelePrompTer chief financial officer
Jerry Green had recommended. Nathanson’s initial job interview was
a classic experience with Jack Kent Cooke. Nathanson showed up at
Cooke’s Waldorf apartment at 11:00 a.m., where a pajama-clad Cooke
welcomed him inside. After talking about his own—that is, Cooke’s
own—background and career for an hour, Cooke suddenly asked
Nathanson, “Would you want to come and work for Jack Kent
Cooke?” He had asked Nathanson nothing about himself. “Well,”
Nathanson replied, “I’ll have to talk to my wife.” He and Jane had two
small children, and it seemed only right to discuss a move all the way
to New York.
But Cooke was in full command mode, impatient and querulous.
“You have to talk to your wife?” he growled. “Then you’re not the kind
of man who would work for Jack Kent Cooke!” Nathanson flew back
to California, stunned and disappointed. A week passed. On Sunday,
at midnight, Nathanson got a call from New York. “Have you talked
to your wife?” Cooke asked. Nathanson had. Jane, a native New
Yorker, was willing to return to her home state. “Can you get on a
plane tomorrow morning and fly to New York?” Yes, he could.
Once again Nathanson met Cooke, in his pajamas, at the Waldorf.
“I have one question for you,” said Cooke. “Are you smart?” Tough
question. What was Nathanson supposed to say? He told Cooke that
46
A Career Biography
Jack Kent Cooke
the third life
he thought he was pretty smart. Having baited the trap, Cooke then
opened the door wide. “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not a millionaire? I was, at your age.” That wasn’t quite true; it had taken
Cooke until his early thirties. But Nathanson walked right past the
trap and into a job when he responded, “Well, I hope to become one
working for you, Mr. Cooke.”3 It was only after he reported to Bill
Bresnan that Nathanson learned Cooke had hired him to be vice president of marketing and programming at TelePrompTer.
Cooke worked Nathanson and his sales staff hard. They were
expected to be available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
There would be no let-up, no relief, on the way to the goal of 1 million
subscribers. But Cooke also paid his top people well, giving
Nathanson nearly triple what he had earned at his previous job. At
one point during the sales campaign, some of Cooke’s bankers
demanded to know just when TelePrompTer would turn itself around.
“The bankers were the ones giving us a hard time,” said Lacher. “We
had a big meeting coming up and Jack told us, ‘Just go in there, and if
they give you a really bad time and they don’t want to extend the loan
and give us the seed capital, just hold up the keys and tell them to
come take ‘em.’ So that’s what I did. We had the meeting and we laid
out the plan. Some of them were quite difficult to deal with, so finally I just held up the keys and I said, ‘Gentlemen, if you think you can
do it better than we can, come and get these keys right now and we’re
out of here.’ Of course, that made them get cold feet very quickly.”
With help from some bankers, such as Bill Thompson at First Boston,
Cooke and his team were able to obtain the necessary financial leeway.4
At last, one hectic year later, Nathanson’s door-to-door sales campaign achieved its goal of 1 million subscribers. Cooke and his carefully, if eccentrically, chosen staff had saved TelePrompTer. Six months
later, in April 1975, Nathanson decided to leave the company. His exit
experience was as revealing of Cooke’s style as his hiring had been.
Thinking that Nathanson was going to work for a competitor, Cooke
blustered, “If you leave Jack Kent Cooke, I’ll make sure you never work
in the cable business again!” “Jack,” replied Nathanson—Cooke, a traditionalist in matters of etiquette, recently had granted him the privi-
Jack Kent Cooke
A Career Biography
47
CHAPTER 3
lege of addressing him by his first name—“You told me there were two
types of people in this world, operators and entrepreneurs. I decided
I want to be an entrepreneur like you. I want to go back to California
and start my own cable company.” Reversing gears, Cooke immediately answered, “Oh, why didn’t you say that? I’ll invest with you.”
Nathanson’s new company, Falcon Cable TV, soon became one of
the nation’s largest MSOs, or multiple system operators, while
Nathanson himself came to be widely regarded as a leading cable TV
pioneer. In the 1990s President Clinton appointed him to the United
States Broadcasting Board of Governors, and from 1998 to 2002
Nathanson served as that body’s chairperson.
Cooke’s strategy as commander-in-chief of the TelePrompTer rescue operation resembled his approach to professional sports team
ownership. Though always firmly in charge, he banked on finding the
best talent available and supporting it with all the resources needed to
win, without any direct meddling or interference. His detailed knowledge of all aspects of his businesses, combined with his clear expectations of superior performance, usually were sufficient motivation for
those who worked for him.
Though Cooke’s cable TV business problems took up much of his
time between 1971 and 1973, the sportsman-owner still managed to
fine-tune his Los Angeles Lakers to championship pitch. All-time
greats like Walt Hazzard, Gail Goodrich, Elgin Baylor, and the phenomenal Jerry West had propelled the Lakers into the NBA finals in
the 1967-1968 season, under former Princeton coach Bill “Butch” van
Breda Kolff. It was van Breda Kolff ’s first year with the Lakers and the
team’s debut in the Forum.
Years later van Breda Kolff recalled his first meeting with Cooke,
when the two were negotiating his salary. At one point Cooke tried to
throw the prospective coach off balance, declaring that the money difference he and van Breda Kolff were debating was “minuscule.” But
van Breda Kolff knew what “minuscule” meant and replied, “It may be
minuscule to you but it’s not minuscule to me.” Cooke then challenged van Breda Kolff ’s pronunciation, repeating the word but with
the accent on the second syllable instead of the first. Van Breda Kolff
48
A Career Biography
Jack Kent Cooke
the third life
Cooke bought the Los Angeles Lakers franchise in 1965 and began building the team
for NBA championship contention. Wilt Chamberlain joined the team in the 19681969 season. This photo is of the 1968-69 Lakers.
Seated: (L to R) Elgin Baylor, Mel Counts, Coach Bill van Breda Kolff, Jack Kent Cooke,
Fred Schaus (General Manager), Wilt Chamberlain, Jay Carty.
Standing: Johnny Egan, Cliff Anderson, Keith Erickson, Bill Hewitt, Tom Hawkins,
Freddie Crawford, Jerry West, Frank O’Neill (Trainer).
countered with his pronunciation, which accented the first syllable.
That sent Cooke into his desk for his dictionary, but van Breda Kolff
objected. “I want a dictionary, too.” Cooke produced another, and the
two parties agreed that the word could be pronounced either way.
After repeating the exercise with the word “secretive,” to the same
result, van Breda Kolff got his salary. “We had fun with that kind of
stuff,” he said.5
The team opened the 1967-1968 season in the old Los Angeles
Arena but soon moved into the just-completed Forum. “The team
played well there, and the fans came out,” said van Breda Kolff.
“Instead of having 10,000 for a game we had 15,000 to 16,000, so I
liked it.”6 For the 1968-1969 season, Cooke made a truly fabulous
Jack Kent Cooke
A Career Biography
49
CHAPTER 3
The 1971-1972 Lakers team not only won the NBA championship but also won a record
33 consecutive games, the “Longest Winning Streak in Pro-Sports History.”
Seated: (L to R) Keith Erickson, Happy Hairston, LeRoy Ellis, Coach Bill Sharman, Jack
Kent Cooke, Fred Schaus (General Manager), Wilt Chamberlain, John Trapp, Elgin Baylor.
Standing: K.C. Jones (Assistant Coach), Gail Goodrich, Jim Cleamons, Pat Riley, Jim
McMillian, Jerry West, Flynn Robinson, Frank O’Neill (Trainer).
trade, coaxing 7' 1" superstar Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain away from
the Philadelphia 76ers. Chamberlain’s dominance near the net helped
assure the Lakers a repeat show in the NBA finals, but once again the
team lost to the powerful Boston Celtics—this one a one-point heartbreaker in the seventh and last game of the series.
Unfortunately, Chamberlain did not get along well with van Breda
Kolff, who recalled “a year of frustration, anger. While we won our
share of games we worked for every one of them. We didn’t have any
fun.”7 Van Breda Kolff knew that the team needed Chamberlain’s
rebounding capabilities, and the Lakers were winning games despite
the fact that the fun seemed to have gone out of it. So he told Cooke
he was leaving. Cooke had “hung in there with me” for two seasons,
said the coach, but now the Lakers’ owner graciously accepted his resignation, and van Breda Kolff moved to Detroit to coach the Pistons.
50
A Career Biography
Jack Kent Cooke
the third life
In the 1969-1970 season, under new coach Joe Mullaney, the
“always a bridesmaid, never a bride” Lakers reached the finals and lost
the NBA championship for the seventh time in nine years, this time to
the New York Knicks. The Lakers made a respectable showing the next
season with an NBA Pacific Division championship, but it was in the
1971-1972 season that Cooke’s investment in time and talent brought
home the ultimate prize. Not only did the Lakers beat the Knicks for
the NBA championship, the team also set an American professional
sports team record with 33 consecutive wins. Cooke later said, “One
of the happiest times of my life was when the Lakers were on that 33game winning streak, a record I dare say will never be broken in the
history of professional sports.”8 Coach Bill Sharman, who had
replaced Mullaney that season, was voted NBA Coach of the Year, and
Wilt Chamberlain was named the Most Valuable Player of the Finals.
During the next season—when Cooke suffered his heart attack—
the Knicks took the title back from the Lakers, and within two years
both Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain retired. Basketball’s stop-andstart, full-court racing was grueling exercise for over-thirty-year-old
ankles, knees, and hips. But Cooke’s eye for new talent and his willingness to support it financially kept the Lakers in the top rank of the
NBA for years to come. In 1975 Cooke lured UCLA alumnus, 7' 2"
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, from the Milwaukee Bucks. The Lakers’ new
star center stayed with the team for fourteen years, winning the NBA’s
Most Valuable Player award six times and setting records for points
and field goals made, as well as for games played. Four years later
Cooke brought Earvin “Magic” Johnson to the Lakers. Johnson also
won multiple Most Valuable Player awards and helped the Lakers win
five NBA championships before his retirement in 1991.
The Lakers had superstar players and championships honors, but
the Kings were probably Cooke’s sentimental favorite. He had grown
up playing hockey and had developed considerable skill at the game.
Indeed, he had built the Forum primarily to win the Kings’ NHL franchise. But hockey was still an unfamiliar sport to Los Angelinos, and
though the Kings’ popularity increased over time, during the 1970s the
Forum was seldom full during Kings games. Cooke often joked,
Jack Kent Cooke
A Career Biography
51
CHAPTER 3
In 1966 Cooke acquired the National Hockey League franchise, the Los Angeles Kings,
and promised to build a new sports arena for their games. Cooke is front and center
in this photo of the 1971-1972 Kings team. Coach Larry Regan is two seats away, on
Cooke’s left.
“There’s half a million Canadians in Los Angeles and they all moved
here because they hate hockey!” Much the same was true for the
Wolves soccer team, too, at least at that time. But never mind. Cooke,
the “indomitable optimist,” also had the Lakers, the Forum, a sizeable
share of TelePrompTer stock, and a growing interest in the Redskins.
Cooke had first invested in the Washington, D.C. National Football
League franchise in 1961. When the team’s majority owner, George
Preston Marshall, died in 1969, the conservator of the estate, attorney
Edward Bennett Williams, sold Marshall’s 52 percent share back to the
team. The remaining 48 percent now became the sum total of all the
stock in the team, effectively doubling Cooke’s share as well as a smaller share held by Williams himself. In 1974 Cooke acquired additional
stock, cementing his majority ownership at 86 percent, with Williams
holding the remainder.
That year Williams, who had been named president of the Redskins
in 1965, succeeded in bringing legendary Green Bay Packers coach
Vince Lombardi out of retirement and into the head coaching job with
the Redskins. Lombardi’s intense, competitive pursuit of winning—
“contest living,” he called it—inspired others rather than putting them
52
A Career Biography
Jack Kent Cooke
the third life
off, because Lombardi coupled it with a rare genius for leadership.
The extraordinary coach galvanized the team as it prepared for what
proved to be its first winning season in fourteen years. Then, in July
1970, Lombardi was diagnosed with colon cancer. The tumor spread
rapidly, and on September 3 the great coach died. Few people had
reached heroic stature in Washington, D.C., in so short a time.
Back in Los Angeles, Cooke and Williams offered George Allen, head
coach of the Los Angeles Rams, the Redskins’ head coaching job. Over
five years Allen had led the Rams to two NFL playoff appearances, but he
and owner Dan Reeves did not get along and Allen was ready for a move.
Cooke and Williams offered Allen a cornucopia of rewards and benefits
that made him the highest paid coach in NFL history. As part of the
package, Allen got a new practice field, Redskin Park, near Dulles
International Airport in Washington, D.C.’s, Virginia suburbs.
Allen’s first season featured an assortment of gritty veterans like
Billy Kilmer, Sonny Jurgensen, Jack Pardee, Diron Talbert, Ron
McDole, and Richie Petitbon, who became known affectionately as
“the over-the-hill gang.” With no small help from younger players like
Larry Brown, Charley Taylor, and Jerry Smith, the Redskins made it to
the playoffs in 1971 for the first time since the end of World War II.
The team soon was eliminated from championship contention, but
Allen was named NFL Coach of the Year by his peers as well as by the
Associated Press. He wasn’t always popular with players, or with
Edward Bennett Williams, but he led the team to the playoffs for the
next three seasons.
The Redskins neared the pinnacle of the sport at the end of the
1972 season when they played the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VII
in Los Angeles on January 14, 1973. The team lost, but its very appearance in the championship confirmed that Washington had a winner,
not only in the Redskins but in the team’s new head coach. The following season, after a victory over the Rams in Los Angeles, Cooke
reminded a reporter just why he had become involved in professional
sports. He insisted that it wasn’t for the money. “I have said many
times, and I mean it,” he emphasized, “that the return on investment
in pro sports is dwarfed by the return on the same investment in a sav-
Jack Kent Cooke
A Career Biography
53
CHAPTER 3
Cooke with George Allen (R), head coach of the Washington Redskins from 1971-1977.
Under Allen, whom Cooke helped recruit, the Redskins achieved their best winning
record since the end of World War II.
ings and loan association.” Cooke paused for one of his disarming and
charming asides. “Are you getting down all these precious pearls of
wisdom?” he teased the reporter. “Fine. The return in pride, however, is slightly different. And I couldn’t be more proud of the Redskins
and George Allen.”9
Allen’s intense work ethic put him in Jack Kent Cooke’s league, but
he lacked Cooke’s leavening effervescence. He often worked late,
spending the night on the couch in his Redskin Park office. His wife,
Etty, once said that he liked to dine on ice cream so he wouldn’t have
to waste time chewing.10 After the team’s loss in the 1974 Super Bowl,
Allen paid Cooke a visit in Los Angeles. He found him having dinner
at the Forum and walked up to the table, looking awkward and feeling
embarrassed about the Super Bowl defeat. Cooke tried to console
him. “Dear George, don’t be ashamed of a thing. Be proud of what
you have done,” he said. Allen looked up. “Let me just say one thing:
we will be back,” he grimly assured his boss.11
Allen’s commitment to winning was unassailable, but the aging
frames of his “over-the-hill gang” were not. Though talents like quarterback Joe Theismann and fullback John Riggins joined the team in
54
A Career Biography
Jack Kent Cooke
the third life
1974 and 1975, Allen’s coaching express, and perhaps Allen himself,
had run out of steam by 1977. The team boasted an overall winning
record but failed to make the playoffs in 1975 and 1977. Allen
returned to California, and former linebacker and “over-the-hill gang”
member Jack Pardee replaced him as the Redskins’ head coach for the
1978 season.
The mid-1970s were rough on more than George Allen and his
gutsy old-timers. Jack Kent Cooke also saw hard times, not financially but personally. Cooke had been close to his father, Ralph, but had
accepted Ralph’s death in 1962 as a loss to be expected in the normal
course of events. However, his mother’s death of a heart attack in
April 1976 was a different matter. It could not have been called unexpected—Nancy was eighty years old—but rarely are a mother and son
as close, or as alike one another, as Nancy and Jack had been. She had
been a supporter, cheerleader, and advisor all his life. She often sat
courtside with Jack at Lakers games in the Forum, sharing her son’s
triumphs and defeats and showing the world that the family always
stood together. They had shared a boundless enthusiasm and respect
for each other—so much so that Jack tended to assume that the whole
world would, or could, feel the same thing if only it gave him the
chance to talk about it long enough.
The bright horizon toward which Cooke sailed was a grand destination, full of eternal sunshine and opportunity, rich with success,
tirelessly interesting and exciting. His ship was on a perpetual beam
reach for the next port of call, the crew just as happy and privileged to
be aboard, and nearly as hard-working, as the skipper himself. It was
hard for Cooke to see his world in any other way. It had never been
any other way.
In July 1976 Cooke’s wife of forty-two years, Jean, filed for divorce.
The combined losses of his mother and his wife stunned Cooke.
Adding to the sense of loss were the deaths that same year of Eddie
Parr, Cooke’s chauffeur and companion of twenty-six years, and Roy
Thomson, Cooke’s friend, former mentor, and business partner in
Canada. Cooke and Thomson had remained friends after Cooke emigrated to the United States, and Thomson had served on the Forum’s
Jack Kent Cooke
A Career Biography
55
CHAPTER 3
Cooke called the famed Chrysler Building the “crown jewel” of his assets. He acquired
it in 1980, then renovated it, including the installation of dramatic lighting on the
skyscraper’s distinctive tower. The lighting had been intended in the original
construction but had never been put in place. For one year, 1931, the building enjoyed
the status of being Manhattan’s tallest skyscraper until the completion of the taller
Empire State Building, shown next to it at night.
board of directors. In 1964 he was honored with the title Lord
Thomson of Fleet for his contributions to communications and journalism in Great Britain. He had helped launch Cooke’s career and
now he too was gone.
Later on Cooke confided to some close friends that the end of his
marriage had been the biggest regret of his life. Every one of them
described Jean as an attractive, gracious, and kind woman. The
divorce was granted in October 1977, and in March 1979 Jack and Jean
agreed on a settlement that divided Jack’s assets in half and effectively
liquidated the California businesses.
Despite his losses, Cooke held onto his sense of humor. As a gesture of friendship he had asked Jerry Perenchio if he wished to make
the first offer on the Forum, the Lakers, and the Kings. When
Perenchio suggested $45 million, Cooke replied, “Jerry, I would be
highly insulted if that wasn’t coming from you. I want $75 million.”
56
A Career Biography
Jack Kent Cooke
the third life
A couple of months later Cooke called Perenchio to tell him that he
had received an offer of $67.5 million from former chemistry professor, now real estate developer, Dr. Jerry Buss. “Don’t let him out of the
room!” quipped Perenchio.12
Cooke completed the sale and division of his California assets,
including the Raljon ranch, in the summer of 1979 and moved to the
Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. The sale was completed on
August 31 in a complicated tax transaction. Cooke received the
Chrysler Building, a fifty-year-old landmark skyscraper in Manhattan,
along with the nearly adjacent Chrysler East Building, soon renamed
the Kent Building, in a tax-free exchange of the Lakers and the Kings.
At age sixty-six he began what he called his “third life,” the first having
been in Canada and the second his twenty years in California. “I
might as well start over,” he told a reporter.13 From then on, Jack Kent
Cooke and the Washington Redskins became one and the same to the
public eye—the ultimate fan of the ultimate edge-of-your-seat NFL
team, in the nation’s ultimate power center. Once again, Cooke asked
his son John to join him, this time in Washington as the Redskins’
executive vice president.
The special relationship between Cooke and the Redskins, and
between Cooke and the larger Washington, D.C. community, took
time to develop. As it grew, so did the business world that Cooke
reconstituted from his new base in the well-cultivated horse country
around Middleburg, Virginia, beyond the outer edge of D.C.’s sprawl.
Cooke loved the ambience of Virginia’s rolling countryside, but he
referred to the Chrysler Building as the “crown jewel” of his assets.14
The skyscraper’s 125-foot, Art Deco, stainless steel spire, designed to
resemble layers of Chrysler hubcaps used in the 1920s, edged it slightly higher than a rival New York skyscraper and at least for one year
made it the world’s tallest building. In 1931 it surrendered the title to
the new Empire State Building.
The Chrysler Building’s distinctive spire, though panned by contemporary critics, eventually won the admiration and affection of
New Yorkers and, indeed, the world. The graceful structure expressed
in steel and stone the confident aspirations of the modernist spirit and
Jack Kent Cooke
A Career Biography
57
CHAPTER 3
became a source of pride for its newest owner, who could look at it
with pleasure from a window in his apartment at the Waldorf Astoria.
In his Toronto years, Cooke often had been listed among Canada’s
best-dressed men. He extended that appreciation of style to his homes
in Toronto and Los Angeles, and to his business investments. Whether
it was Saturday Night magazine, the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball
club, or the Fabulous Forum, a Jack Kent Cooke operation always had
flair. Where they were lackluster he brought out a shine; where they
had grown dull he honed a new edge; where they were old and worn
he grafted fresh, new additions. The Chrysler Building was no different. Its seven-story steel spire included numerous, triangular-shaped
windows that had been rigged for illumination, but no one ever had
installed the lighting. Cooke did, adding a delightful wedge of warmth
and color to the upper tiers of New York City’s nighttime skyline.
Cooke’s appreciation of the Chrysler Building’s aesthetics extended
to the structure’s interior as well. During the building’s renovation,
Cooke brought some of its extra elevator door panels, exquisitely
carved from a variety of woods, to his new office in Virginia. He also
transferred some seats and tables from the skyscraper’s now defunct
private luncheon club, the “Cloud Club.” The Cloud Club’s custommade tables (only certain tops would fit on certain stands, and only if
turned the right way) wound up in his office and in the Lombardi
reception room at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium.
Shortly after moving from the West, Cooke had purchased some
land in Virginia from U.S. Senator John Warner. On a hilltop on that
property, with a view that went for miles into the Blue Ridge mountains, Cooke built a modern, California-style home he called Far
Acres. There, with his office and stables nearby, he was able to ride
almost daily one of a small number of Tennessee walking horses he
kept on hand.
Cooke always had loved horse riding. He had enjoyed going to the
races at Hollywood Park, next door to the Forum in Los Angeles, but
he was no gambler in the usual sense of the word. “He was flamboyant,” recalled former L.A. Kings coach Larry Regan, “but he did his
homework down to the last detail. Jack wasn’t a gambler.”15 Once a
58
A Career Biography
Jack Kent Cooke
the third life
Toronto radio announcer
asked Cooke if he’d like to buy
an Irish Sweepstakes ticket.
“You might win $140,000,” the
announcer exclaimed. “No
thanks,” Cooke declared, “I
already have $140,000.”16 On
another occasion he lost four
quarters in a slot machine in a
Las Vegas airport while waiting
for Edward Bennett Williams.
The pointlessness of it all, the
fact that he had done nothing
useful and had got nothing
Cooke was an enthusiastic horseman who
enjoyed riding at his Raljon Ranch in
back, bothered him so much
California and, later, in the beautiful
that he never did it again. Like
countryside around his home in
yacht racing on the Great Lakes
Middleburg, VA.
back in the 1950s, thoroughbred racing appealed not to
Cooke’s gambling instincts but to his appreciation of stiff competition, excellence in performance, and a sense of style. In 1984 he
bought one the nation’s most prestigious thoroughbred breeding facilities, the 525-acre Elmendorf Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. There he
gambled not so much with money— Elmendorf eventually proved to
be a poor financial investment—but with intense hope for each season’s brood of colts and fillies. Who knew? Among them might be the
next Triple Crown winner.
Cooke started a new life on the East Coast in 1979, but he brought
with him from his former world substantial holdings in the
TelePrompTer company. TelePrompTer stock had increased in value
through the latter 1970s. In 1973 Bill Bresnan and TelePrompTer had
put together a traveling demonstration of the benefits of satellite communications, convincing many in the industry to get behind the new
technology. And in 1975, when Home Box Office started broadcasting
movies by satellite, TelePrompTer led the competition in its commit-
Jack Kent Cooke
A Career Biography
59
CHAPTER 3
ment to construct sixty-five receiving stations. The company was “the
largest non-military, non-government organization to use satellites,”
noted Bresnan’s brother, Pat, who also had come out to Los Angeles to
work for Cooke and TelePrompTer.17 A new era had arrived. Now
cable TV could offer something more than just clearer reception or
pay-for-view sports events in large arenas. It could deliver something
different than—and competitive with—the programming fare of the
Big Three network broadcasters.
But by the early 1980s, when fiber-optic technology was clearly the
next in a rapidly cresting series of technology waves, TelePrompTer
faced another period of major capital reinvestment. Bresnan and
Cooke both saw that their company, big as it was, would not be able to
compete with some of the corporate giants entering the lucrative communications field, so at the top of the wave they opted to sell. In
August 1981 Cooke completed negotiations for a merger of
TelePrompTer with the Westinghouse Corporation. “He had really
shaped TelePrompTer up,” recalled Dan Ritchie, a former
Westinghouse executive, now chancellor of the University of Denver.
“For Jack it was more of a business than anything else, and a day
arrived when it was no longer interesting to him.”18 The deal netted a
tidy $650 million for TelePrompTer stockholders, and Bill Bresnan was
named CEO of the new Group W Cable operation. Though he served
as chairman of Group W Cable until May 1985, Jack Kent Cooke
retreated to the sidelines of the cable TV business for the time being.
The Redskins, never far from the center of Cooke’s attention, now
enjoyed his full concentration. Cooke’s expanded role with the team
left little room for Edward Bennett Williams, who decided in August
1979 to buy the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. Williams’s purchase
put him in conflict with a National Football League rule prohibiting
team owners from owning other sports franchises. The intent was to
ensure that NFL owners were not mere figureheads but responsibly
involved with their teams. True, Cooke owned both the Lakers and the
Kings, but the NFL had not adopted the rule until after their purchase,
so he suffered no more than a slightly arched eyebrow from NFL officials. Besides, Williams’s role as president of the team had freed Cooke
60
A Career Biography
Jack Kent Cooke
the third life
from the obligation to be directly involved on a daily basis. Now, however, Williams surrendered his role to Cooke, who no longer owned
the Los Angeles sports franchises.
As a courtesy, Williams kept his formal title while Cooke became
chairman of the board and chief operating officer. But at last, in
February 1985, Edward Bennett Williams sold his shares to Cooke, who
became the sole owner of the Redskins. Cooke organized the entire
Redskins operation as a subsidiary of Jack Kent Cooke Incorporated, the
parent company for all Cooke’s businesses.
Washington, D.C., always attuned to the orbits of power and influence within its own galaxy, noted the changes in the owner’s box on
the mezzanine at RFK Stadium after 1979, as Williams’s guests—typically Democratic establishment stars like Jack Valenti, Joseph Califano,
Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie, and Art Buchwald—made room
for other people whom Cooke liked or found interesting and invited
to join him at the games.
Though largely indifferent to politics as such, Cooke was sensitive
to the politics of his mezzanine box at RFK. Attorney Jay Ricks
recalled an encounter one Sunday afternoon with Ethel Kennedy,
Robert’s widow, who asked Ricks how he had come to be invited to the
game. “Well, Jack Cooke invited me,” he explained. “Who is Jack
Cooke?” she asked. “He owns the Redskins,” Ricks replied. “He does?”
Ethel said quizzically. “Ed Williams told me he owned the Redskins.”
Ricks then told Cooke the story, thinking it would amuse him. It didn’t. “Isn’t she poorly informed?” was the offended host’s arch reply.19
Neither Williams nor Cooke had been meddling owners and both
were busy men. But Williams, one of the nation’s premier attorneys,
had even less control over how he spent his time than did Cooke.
Unless there was an emergency, Williams had been inclined to leave
the team’s affairs to Coach Jack Pardee and his staff. But Cooke,
despite his multiple business involvements, had always made time for
his teams and the Redskins were no exception. Now the franchise
needed the attention of an experienced owner. During the 1978, 1979,
and 1980 seasons the team had broken even on wins and losses and
failed to make the playoffs.
Jack Kent Cooke
A Career Biography
61
CHAPTER 3
Aggravating the players’ on-and-off performance was the deteriorating relationship between Bobby Beathard, whom the organization
hired in 1978 to be the team’s first general manager, and Coach Pardee.
Previously, the coach had served as general manager, overseeing hiring
and firing and player trades. Now it was up to Beathard to undo the
effects of former coach Allen’s tactic of trading away future draft
choices for other teams’ veteran players. Perhaps it was the novelty of
the arrangement, but Beathard and Pardee didn’t see eye to eye. Their
disagreements filtered down through the ranks, sapping players’
morale and hurting on-field performance. “We were splintering pretty good,” recalled former Redskins receiver and Hall of Fame member
Bobby Mitchell.20 It didn’t help when John “Riggo” Riggins, the team’s
eccentric but exceptionally talented and popular fullback, decided to
sit out the 1980 season in a huff over his salary.
Late in 1980 Cooke met with Beathard and Pardee, allowing each
man to present his case. Whatever merits lay in Pardee’s position—he
had been named Coach of the Year for his work with the Chicago
Bears in 1977—he could not articulate them to Jack Kent Cooke.
Beathard could. Said John Kent Cooke, “Jack (Pardee) was extremely
quiet, almost recalcitrant, and it was very difficult for Dad to communicate with him.”21 At the end of the 1980 season Pardee left, reluctantly, and Cooke and Beathard began searching for a new head coach.
62
A Career Biography
Jack Kent Cooke