Elizabeth L. Dribben

Liz and Dan used to look just like this, honest.
I’m temporarily unable to post an excellent photograph of Liz in a Buffalo newsroom much like this one. Check back for updates, but in the meantime, Michelle Pfeiffer will serve our purposes. Liz always hoped that “Miss Pfeiffer” would portray her onscreen.

To hear Liz Dribben tell it, she was never anybody’s mentor. The record shows she was wrong, for not only did she foster and promote the careers of younger reporters both at CBS News and at Columbia’s School of Journalism, but she continued to do so even in retirement. I never came away from even the briefest conversation without a list of five or six contact names and numbers and Liz’s encouraging sign-off, “You never know.” Some thrilling project was always just around the corner for me, Liz was certain.

Still, when I told her that a couple of my female colleagues at CBS, in particular, considered her a mentor, she demurred. “No, no, no,” she said, “I never have had protégées. I’ve always looked out for myself.”

This was the only known instance of dishonesty in her long career, and yet it says something about Liz as a pioneer (which, as she would sometimes acknowledge, she indisputably was). When you’re blazing a trail, you don’t often look back to see who’s following you.

The Real Liz

Hired by CBS News in 1972 as part of a network-wide campaign to bring women into what had always been a male-dominated industry, Liz clashed often with her supervisors, who were, of course, men. She had been raised by a single working mother (an attorney, no less), and certain kinds of fights were in her nature: Liz wouldn’t back down on questions of fairness. She felt lonely and insecure sometimes, I know, but she seldom expressed those self-doubts outright; about other people’s prospects, her optimism was unshakable, and trumpeted from the rooftops.

This is a valuable quality in a producer of broadcast news, where the on-air talent may be privately anxious and publicly attacked. The reporters with whom Liz worked (including Charles Kuralt, Charles Osgood, Lesley Stahl, Ed Bradley, Douglas Edwards, and Dallas Townsend) always knew that she had their backs, and the two with whom she worked most closely, Mike Wallace and Dan Rather, never had a more loyal ally. Even when those two big tigers disagreed, Liz remained squarely in both men’s corners.

For his part, Dan recognized the depth and sincerity of Liz’s confidence in him, and he tried to respond in kind. Long after she’d left CBS, he continued to hire her to write radio scripts for him on a freelance basis, and because I’d inherited a lot of Liz’s former duties as writer–producer, she and I worked together and became friends during this time. The result was a kind of nuclear fallout of loyalty, and the feelings Liz had toward Dan extended to me, as well. (Thanks for that, boss.)

Born to wield a microphone.

Although she was initially turned down for on-air work at CBS (her speaking voice was too deep, the ostensible experts told her), she was a born radio star since her college days at the University of Buffalo. Sitting down to the microphone with greater frequency as time went by, she eventually hosted her own program, One on One, for several years. Here she was able to conduct in-depth interviews with newsmakers, especially actors, playwrights, and composers.

She approached her subjects with impeccable manners (“Mr. Sondheim,” “Miss Hayes”), thorough research, and matchless enthusiasm: the theater was her great passion, and she reveled in the opportunity to talk with artists she admired. (I’ve tried in some small way to follow her example in my own work.) She was one of the world’s great amateur authorities on Porgy and Bess, Irving Berlin, Paul Robeson, Elvis Presley, and her fellow Buffalo natives Katharine Cornell and Michael Bennett — but she never stopped asking questions, and she was always learning something new.

With some of her subjects, she also forged friendships, which is frowned upon in political reporting but permissible in arts coverage. One interview with French novelist Romain Gary turned into something very like a lengthy, unconsummated love affair. (She even took him home to meet her mother.)

Liz was a stickler for old-fashioned values:
Checked sources, good writing, nothing but the facts —
and flawless manners.

Once, when I was at Opera News, she interviewed me on WEVD radio, where she was a substitute anchor, about the upcoming Metropolitan Opera season. Afterward, she inquired knowingly whether I’d used talking points and note cards. No, I replied, I hadn’t.

I was startled by her vehemence. “Would you ever let Dan do a promotional interview without notes?” she demanded. “Why, with all his experience, would he need help that you didn’t?” She never interviewed me again.

Declining health meant that she couldn’t go to the theater anymore, but she insisted that I bring her the program for every play, opera, and concert I saw — and when possible, could I please bring a spare copy, for her personal collection? She told me plenty of stories about her family (including the legendary “Fighting Jew,” Sam Drebin, about whom she hoped to write a play), about her early days on local television in Buffalo, and about the people she’d worked with and interviewed at CBS. But mostly, she wanted to know what I was doing, and how she might help me to do it better. Years after blazing the trail, she was still clearing brush for those who came behind her.

The real Liz, seen here in an interview with Phyllis Diller in the late 1960s, is credited as the first female broadcaster in Buffalo.

She remained an obsessive clipper of newspaper articles, reading five papers per day and stubbornly squirreling away bundles and bags of print for future reference; when she was in form and still using the Internet, she’d send links to six or seven stories “of interest” every morning. Friends declared that she’d founded the Liz Dribben News Service, broadcasting around the world from the confines of her apartment, but the reality was that she never stopped planning for her next big story.

Toward the end, she slept a great deal and didn’t say much: when I observed that she’d been a more scintillating conversationalist in her time, she rolled her baby blues and gave me a rueful smile but didn’t snap my head off, as she might have done only a few weeks earlier. Then came days when I couldn’t wake her at all, but one morning, seeing her cell phone on the table beside her, I tried an experiment.

Being a pioneer ain’t easy.
In 1969, Liz was co-host of Buffalo’s top-rated local news program, host of her own interview show (Conversation with…), and a local celebrity. But when she asked for equal pay for equal work —
she was told to leave the station.

I dialed her number, and true to form, the hardnosed reporter couldn’t let a telephone ring unanswered.

“Sweetheart pussycat darling!” she said, a bit groggily but no less enthusiastically. “What’s the latest news? Are you in Paris?”

“I’m standing right in front of you. I’m going to hang up now so that we can talk.”

“Okay, sweetie. Keep me posted.”

Yesterday morning, when I saw her for the last time, she was sound asleep: dreaming, gesturing and murmuring, with long pauses while she seemed to hear an answering voice. I’d like to think it may have been the start of a new chapter in her career.

After all, she has waited a long time to ask George Gershwin about Porgy and Bess, and now at last she can.

And yeah, it’s true:
She looked just like this when she smiled.


“To be continued!”

-- Liz, at the end of almost every conversation
I ever had with her.