Letter to David Susskind
After an Open End appearance Mailer thought 'pretty bad,' he proposes to Susskind the one show he would really like to do: a two-hour televised 'mano a mano' with William F. Buckley, Jr., recalling that their 1962 Chicago debate sold out Medinah Temple and grossed $8,000.
To the television producer David Susskind, following Mailer’s early-November appearance on Open End (which he “thought… was pretty bad”): the one show he would really like to do is “a mano a mano with Bill Buckley, just you, me, and Old Bill,” over two hours. He cites the box-office of his 22 September 1962 Buckley debate in Chicago — a sell-out at Medinah Temple that grossed $8,000 — as evidence of public interest, and notes that any taping must fall the week after he hands in a monthly installment. Lennon’s annotation notes that the lag between Mailer’s dictation and his secretary Anne Barry‘s typing explains the absence of any comment here on Kennedy’s assassination four days earlier.
Related pages
- Norman Mailer's Letters on An American Dream, 1963–1969 | David Susskind | William F. Buckley Jr. | An American Dream