Pity Party

Abstract

Pity Party David A. Gerber (bio) Paul K. Longmore. Telethons: Spectacle, Disability, and the Business of Charity. Catherine Kudlick, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Illustrations and index. $35.00. During the Golden Age of old-time television, thoughtful observers were understandably impressed by the ability of the new medium, representing a more complete sensory experience than radio, to enter the lives and imaginations of a mass audience. In the two decades after 1950, advertisers, from the largest corporations to local-market used-car dealers, rose to take advantage of the opportunity, and soon those trying to raise money for any number of causes did the same. These decades were the formative age of the telethon. “A distinctly American invention” (p. xiii), Paul Longmore tells us, the telethon is comprehensively explained in a broad array of historical and societal contexts in this remarkable history of a popular cultural phenomenon that was a common feature of the airwaves into the new millennium. In that peculiar way that seems particularly American, telethons combined, in one tightly wrapped package, the best and the worst about us. The first historical treatment of the widespread telethon phenomenon, this book is a significant achievement that goes considerably beyond its distinction of being first. To great effect, Longmore uses the history of disability—the history of assumptions about the normal body and mind and of those whose bodies or minds are different and stigmatized because of physical or mental disability or chronic illness—as a lens to illuminate what we do not know, question what we think we know, extend our knowledge, and generally decenter our assumptions. Sadly, Paul Longmore (1946–2010) died before the book’s publication. He left behind a fairly complete draft manuscript and extensive notes toward further composition and revision. In consultation with Longmore’s many friends and colleagues, who had been following the progress of this project from the 1980s when it was conceived, noted disability historian Katherine Kudlick, now head of the Paul Longmore Institute of Disability at San Francisco State University, finished the book. Yet Telethons succeeds in authentically bearing the mark of Longmore’s exacting intelligence, synthetical ambitions, exhaustive research, and erudition, as well as (and I say this as someone who knew him) [End Page 511] his admirable, occasionally vexing refusal to accept easy answers, no matter whom he inconvenienced by doing so. The larger collaborative effort Kudlick led is nonetheless especially appropriate in this case. While Longmore had to use newspaper and magazine accounts of the earliest telethons, for want of a visual archive of much local network-affiliated TV, during the 1980s and 1990s he convinced friends all over the country to video tape or burn DVDs of telethons, which were simultaneously nationally coordinated and locally produced. Whether international, national, or local, one cause after another found its way to the telethon format: hurricane, earthquake, flood, or famine relief; farm debt; financing the expenses of the 1952 Olympic team; Democratic Party campaign debt; and, of course, disability and chronic illness charities. Telethons provided a mixture of urgent appeals for donations on behalf of a variety of what widely came to enter the popular vocabulary as “poster children”—causes and people alike—with entertainment offered by a gamut of performers from major Hollywood stars such as Zsa Zsa Gabor, Bob Hope, Dean Martin, and Bing Crosby to high school glee clubs and baton twirlers. They often involved thousands of unpaid local volunteers willingly engaged in twenty-four–hour stretches of answering phones to process the calls of hundreds of thousands of charitably inclined viewers. The disability and chronic illness charities developed the telethon into the high-kitsch spectacle that it would become in the 1950s and 1960s, none more so than comedian Jerry Lewis’ Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) marathon extravaganzas on behalf of those he called “Jerry’s Kids.” These were mostly children—especially cute, white, female toddlers—struggling to walk. It was apparently felt that these children would make the most sympathetic and telegenic victims for the majority of viewers. But Lewis also continually referred to adults with neuromuscular disabilities as his “kids.” For decades after the late 1960s, the MDA telethon would dominate the...