AN EVENING WITH ART LINKLETTER

Denton is a quiet little city of education, culture, and business, with little going on that is particularly newsworthy. But we do have occasional visits from VIP’s, especially for the annual dinner meeting of the Chamber of Commerce. This is a gathering of upwards of 1,000 of our leading citizens, mostly business people. The price for the dinner is costly enough to bring in a name speaker, and the occasion has enough flair to give the gals a place to wear their best. The visitors this time were Art and Lois Linkletter. Ouida and I probably would not have attended except for the kindly grace of the printer of this journal, Terrill Wheeler, and his wife Wilma, our kind of people to be sure.

lt was a good idea, for we were able to see all in one place a number of former business associates, and of course to see and hear in person Art Linkletter, who is really something else. Besides, it gave my lovely wife a chance to wear some of the accessories that I have brought to her from remote places of the world. Especially elegant was the necklace and earring set, handmade by the ladies of the First Christian Church in Miami. Her black stole, trimmed in gold flake, I bought in a quaint little shop in Hong Kong. I do believe that Ouida was more beautiful that evening than the night I married her 29 years ago. And did she ever enjoy Art Linkletter! But he was barely better than the beef we were served — real beef — and not chicken! — something rare for us these days since we have long since joined the boycott. In fact, we started it! Ouida anticipated the high prices and filled our freezer with beef cuts. She was keeping the hoarders from getting it! But in a family of five what one lays by does not last long.

One of the finest compliments Art Linkletter ever received is one he never heard. When I was at MacMurray College in Illinois, an English professor and I were team-teaching an orientation course for freshmen. We were in a unit on communication, and the professor was giving the kids some tips on how to convey their ideas. “You may not be able to be an …” He paused, as if searching for the right example to place before them “… an Art Linkletter, but you can at least improve.” The reference to Art Linkletter in that context rather surprised me, for I expected him to come out with someone like T. S. Eliot or William Faulkner. Art Linkletter I had associated with radio and TV “house parties” and the ladies. I didn’t realize sophisticated English profs knew about him, and especially that they were “impressed by him.

I thought of that professor as Art got up to speak to Denton’s affluent — an all white audience of course. I readily agree that he is a master at communication, and I found myself in search of his secret. Perhaps he revealed the secret when he said at the outset, “I don’t make speeches, I simply talk to friends.” Ouida says it is his folksy approach, that it is as if he were in your own livingroom. Wilma Wheeler thinks it is what he says, his frankness, that he somehow gets by with what others never could.

I found myself thinking of preachers, of how most of them could learn so much from this guy who really has the cool before an audience. Shouting preachers. Blasting preachers. Judgmental preachers. The declaimers and the orators, and all those that wear out an audience if not themselves. And in an important sense Art Linkletter is a “preacher” — certainly he is a minister to the needs of our ailing society, especially to youth and to parents.

I detect that Art does not change when he steps into the “pulpit.” He continues in the same conversational tone that he had back in the coffee lounge or in the automobile on the way to the auditorium: Only if our preachers would forget about sermonizing or speech making and simply talk to folk about the great truths of the Christian faith! I often think of the wail of a New York businessman, “Must we have sermons?” But that businessman would never say that about preachers who have what Art Linkletter has. The “sabbatical tone” has disheartened many a church-goer.

Art comes through to me as a man who cares. His concern is evident. He is on your side. He may zero in on your shortcomings and point up our national sins, but you find yourself accepting it. And the guy closed his remarks with “I love you,” which somehow seemed appropriate even when coming from a professional entertainer.

One of his secrets is that he teaches his lessons through storytelling, stories about his own experiences and the people he meets. In his talks around the country on drug abuse, he has been approached by many a parent with all kinds of questions. One mother went to him after one of his presentations, insisting that her family was together in the evenings a lot, as he had suggested, and still her kids were getting out of hand. “What do you do together”,” I asked her. “We watch TV together,” was her reply. “But you don’t really share together in serious conversation,” was Art’s reply.

Another parent insisted that they were setting the right example, that their children had never seen them on dope. “Are you sure?,” said Art. “How much drinking do you do? Alcohol is a drug, you know. And how about barbituates and sleeping pills?”

What a wise approach this is! Many, if not most, of the thousand parents that were there could see themselves in these examples. Art did not have to upbraid them for neglecting their kids or setting a bad example by their personal habits. He only needed to add the fact that a recent sociological study revealed that the average family spends no more than 17 minutes a week together in serious conversation. Had we been rebuked we might have left discouraged. But through his folksy storytelling about others he encouraged us to get with it and try to do better. By suggesting that the drug problem, the crime problem, and the “runaway” problem are basically caused by a lack of communication at the family level he laid the crisis of this generation in our own laps — and he had us laughing while he did it!

He reminisced about his long life as an entertainer, which has taken him from such bizarre surroundings as a leper colony (“The most appreciative audience. I ever had”) to the elegance of the White House, where he has entertained four presidents. But it was his stories about his interviews with children that greatly amused Ouida, which she always enjoyed on his TV house parties. His favorite interview was with a five-year old Catholic girl, a doll-like beauty. He asked her about her favorite Bible story. “Edam and Ave,” she said. At Art’s urging she explained that these two had this park with a swimming pool. “But they got in trouble with God.” Art asked her what happened. “Well, God did two things to them.” Art wondered about the two things. “Well, first he sent them down to hell!” Art thought this a bit severe coming from a five-year old, but he asked about the other thing God did to them. “Well, after that, he turned them into Protestants!”

Then there were the kids that were prompted by their parents what to say or not to say during the interview. Art solved that problem by asking the child what his Mother had told him not to say! One boy blurted, “She said I could say anything I wanted to, but don’t tell the whole world that I’m pregnant!”

There were always those children that talk all day, but once on a TV interview they clam up. Art solved this by introducing the one subject that will get nearly any child to talk: their pets. His favorite question was about the pet’s pedigree, a term a child hears but does not understand. “Does your dog have a pedigree?” would bring a yes or no. “How do you know?” really brought the answers. One boy said his dog did have a pedigree, but they had the Vet to cut it off! A little girl explained that her dog must not have one, for it stayed with the neighbor’s dog for a month and nothing ever happened. But the answer that puzzled Art was from the boy who said, “No, we’re Jewish.”

I have long since been convinced that a sense of humor goes with good teaching, but it is even more urgent in human relationships. Families need to laugh together more. And each of us must better learn how to laugh at himself, taking himself less seriously. Art Linkletter, whose own life has been struck by tragedy, is a good example of this. We are all uptight about too many things.

Art Linkletter is a man with a message. The message is that our nation is in trouble because of the breakdown of the home, and an important part of the answer is for the family to be together more in meaningful communication. He says: “The time you are with your family is the most important time you spend.” With the movies and TV assaulting our children with much unsavory stuff, with a fourth of our families on the move each year, and with a large percentage of mothers at work, the family is in trouble. But Art is an optimist. He believes in our people and our nation, despite all the shortcomings. The “work ethic” made our nation great, and we can now cultivate the tenderer virtues of love, joy, and understanding.

I see another message in Art’s life, one especially for the church, and that is that we must enlarge our concept of ministry. Art frequently refers to being the son of a Baptist minister, but is he, really, any less a minister than his father? One certainly does not have to intone religious cliches to be a servant of God, and one of the worst things that could happen to a man like Art; who is out where the people are, would be to confine his labors to the sacred desk.

The modern church must realize that it was not a clerical class that carried the gospel to a lost humanity at the outset, but rather the rank and file of people with burning hearts. Our ministers must be teachers, journalists, plumbers, entertainers, business people, dentists, barbers — everybody from all walks of life — and their message must be the love of God manifest in Jesus Christ.

The first time I heard Art Linkletter in person was in Dallas in the early 1950’s before a large afternoon audience of mostly women. The first thing he said, after casually looking over the feminine sea, was: “Boy, there’s a lot of dirty dishes in the sinks of Dallas today!”

And there are a lot of dirty dishes around these days for someone to wash. It doesn’t help much to fuss about it. Demonstrations, sit-ins, and walk-outs will not clean them, and certainly coping out will not help. We all need to shape up and roll up our sleeves and go to work. Art Linkletter is out where the action is, with his hands deep in the suds, whistling as he goes. Bully for him! —the Editor