Show private as on the home screen? To find out more about one of television's most enduring personalities 1 visited her on the set of Today Petite and slender Pauley is as pretty in person as on TV The most noticeable difference is her obvious sense of humor Whether throwing herself against a w all at the prospect of Bryant Gumbel appraising her in print or crossing her eyes at a joke Pauley is relaxed and when the tables are turned and the questions directed at her We sat in her tidy office decorated with photos of her husband and children the Today show staff and Prince Charles whom she had interviewed early in her career I asked her why when so many other TV personalities had come and gone she had lasted lor so long “I think one reason for my success is my wearability" she said leaning back in her antique rocking chair “Over the years there have been a lot of new races ‘golden girls’ in this business I’ve never been that golden girl But when you’re too hot you risk being cold the next year So Jane Pauley never went in and out of fashion I think the reason for that is that 1 strike a familiar chord with a lot of people It’s not something I have cultivated I'm not an actress But people can easily identify with me I think that’s probably because there are some pretty fundamental American values dial I represent “I had a very stable nurturing home life” she recalled of her childhood in Indianapolis Her father was a salesman for a milk company her mother a housewife and she has an older sister Ann now a manager for Westinghouse (the first woman in the job) who remains her best friend “I come from a history of strong women" Pauley said “My grandmother was a nurse at the turn of the century who lived away from home even as a girl to go to school and I have an aunt who's in her 70s and is still gallivanting all over the world as a tour guide “There was no pressure for my sister and me to go be professionals but my parents did expect us to bring home straight A's and blue ribbons Not aspire outrageously but just be the best in your class" she added with a laugh “I was prone to anxiety” Pauley remembered "I could make myself sick the night before a test I even got migraine headaches” Though her earliest unself-conscio- us speech on it” Her chief the foture actress Shelley was competitor Long from nearby Fort Wayne "Most often she beat me” Pauley admitted "But when Shelley graduated I had a clear field By my senior year 1 was state champion And I made it to the semifinals of the national competition The six girls who were ranked ahead of me are probably all arguing cases before the Supreme Court —they were terrifying So I did find out my limitations But in my smaller pond I was a big fish And I can't imagine better seven-minu- te were having trouble getting the equipment into the fields because of the very rainy fall They faced losing an entire crop I was wearing these multicolored suede platform shoes and I went out trudging around in the mud I ended up being queen for a day because the story made me wires I became the unofficial farm reporter there for a time Also that was the year of die high price of beef I did a lot of beef stories That took me from die farm into the supermarket Jane emerges the consumer reporter" remember I didn’t buy any furniture — not because I knew I was moving on but because I was not making a life there” Ann Pauley recalled that the attacks were very hurtful to her sister "The way we were brought up you never said nasty things about people in public so she wasn’t used to it Also she living away from home for first time living by herself and ithout j so-call- ambition was to be eitherConnie Stevens who was then starring on Hawaiian Eye or an interior decorator it was her failed ambition as a cheerleader that ultimately influenced her “I didn’t make varsity cheerleader" she said “At the age of 14 1 felt my life was over 1 ended up joining the speech team instead And within a year I became real good “My event was Girls' Extemporaneous Speaking They would give you a later you made a topic and a half-hour MJUDC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 20 19S7 Jaat 3 with pareatsaad sister tea (r) Left: Jana interviews teat Martha (her parents at left) dnrtaf Today' 1935 visit ta Mtaaapelfs t preparation for what I do today” Pauley attended Indiana University where she majored in political science and considered going into law "Everybody who was in speech was going to be either a lawyer or broadcast journalist” she recalled "Although broadcasting really was not in the forefront of anybody's mind It hadn't happened yet for women When I was in nigh school Barbara Walters Marlene Sanders and Nancy Dickerson were really the only prominent women on television Them in 1972 television stations began feeling the pressure to get women on the air Connie Chung Lesley Stahl a lot of us started around then The door just kind of creaked open and there I was standing in the doorway" in Pauley’s first job was at WISH-TIndianapolis where she was a street reporter covering crimes and fires She laughed remembering her first week on the air when she had no definite assignment and was expected to enterprise a stray: "I had a friend whose father was a fanner and I knew they PACE S V Pauley worked her way up to anchoring die noon and weekend news "But like anybody I wanted the evening newscast” she said brushing the hair out of her eyes "After a while it was clear that it wasn’t going to happen to a woman I had nowhere to go but out And then the phone rang” Ibe caller was from WMAQ in Chicago which hired her to do exactly what she wanted— the evening news However Chicago did not exactly welcome its first female coanchor Before she had even arrived Pauley read scathing reviews of herself in the paper She was attacked for being too young and too attractive One critic wrote that she had the IQ of a cantaloupe How did she react to such criticism? "I tried to make lame jokes about having the skin of a cantaloupe" she said smiling "Well Dorothy this isn't Kansas anymore I think to the degree that it was upsetting” she added turning serious "it was probably reflected in my persona life of which there wasn't any I kind of suffered by myself 1 co-anc- any friends in the area" Fortunately for Pauley she did not stay long in Chicago "Three months after I started” she said" I was filling in for Barbara Walters on the Today show while she covered President Ford's trip to China I was the first person ever to substitute for her” But Pauley was far from the only one considered to replace Walters when the popular Today host defected to ABC "There was said to be a master list of 230 names" she explained "although there were prob- ably only about 20crious contenders I doubt that I was even one of them until I auditioned They were auditioning a lot of NBC on-a- ir women: Linda Hler-be- e Rollin Cassie Mackin who Betty has since died Just as a courtesy perhaps they asked me to come have a continued |