Quote of the Day (William Talman, in a Landmark Anti-Smoking Ad)

“Before I die I want to do what I can to leave a world free of cancer for my six children.”—Actor William Talman, in a commercial for the American Cancer Society, broadcast a month after his death from lung cancer, quoted in “Legacy,” New Castle News, September 14, 1968

Most viewers of old-time TV know William Talman, born in Detroit on this date a century ago, as District Attorney Hamilton Burger, perennial loser to defense attorney Perry Mason. So did I, when I started watching the classic TV noir based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s classic novels as a child back in the late Sixties. That made it all the more stunning when I first saw this one-minute public service commercial.

Nowadays, it’s commonplace for anti-smoking ads featuring real people, in all their excruciating pain, to air. It was not so at the tail-end of the Mad Men era. You can imagine, then, the extraordinary impact of an actor on one of the most popular TV dramas for nine seasons, not only saying he was dying but announcing his killer: the cigarette habit he had picked up at age 12.

The actor had been able to give up heavy drinking after his third marriage, but not the three packs of cigarettes a day he had reached. In 1967, a year after the end of his show’s run, Talman learned that inoperable lung cancer meant his life would be running out, too.

A November 2001 Boston Globe article by Columbia University historian Barron H. Lerner (reprinted on the History News Network Website) discussed the compelling circumstances behind the commercial’s making: how the actor approached the American Cancer Society with the idea for the ad; then, how Talman, gaunt and frequently foggy from morphine to dull his pain, summoned his strength long enough to warn the public from repeating his mistake (“I’ve got lung cancer. So take some advice about smoking and losing from someone who’s been doing both for years: If you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you do smoke, quit. Don’t be a loser.”).

It says something about the initial seductiveness of cigarettes—then, its tight grip on human biochemistry—that the actor’s family, try as it might after witnessing his final agony, could not take his advice. His son Tim took up the habit before finally quitting. Wife Peggy was more tragic. After quitting at her husband’s urging—and even after speaking out on behalf of the American Cancer Society in the early 1970s—she began smoking again. Thirty years later, she, too, was found to have inoperable lung cancer.

Quote of the Day (Stuart Scott, on How ‘You Beat Cancer by How You Live’)

"When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live."— ESPN anchor Stuart Scott, accepting the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance at the ESPY Awards in July 2014, quoted in Chris Strauss, “ESPN's Stuart Scott Dies After Lengthy Battle With Cancer,” USA Today, Jan. 4, 2015

This past Sunday morning, while channel-surfing, I was stunned to see the normally cheerful ESPN sportscaster Hannah Storm moved to tears. It was unlikely to be by an athlete or coach she knew in a professional capacity, I thought. This must have been someone else she had grown far closer to—a work colleague, even a friend. So it proved to be.

I never had the opportunity to watch Stuart Scott. Now, following his death at age 49, I am sorry I missed seeing him. Under the most excruciating circumstances, it appears, he showed the kind of grace that other sportscasters spoke about so glibly in championship games. His death from cancer on Sunday morning, not long before Ms. Storm went on the air, might have removed him from the athletic scene. But it did not erase the shining example of the way he lived his life.

Mr. Scott was used to arduous struggles with his health—following an injury to his left eye in 2002 while filming a story about the New York Jets, he had to adapt to making his right eye the dominant one. This meant difficulty when he read from teleprompters, but nothing like the debilitation he faced from cancer the last seven years. Amazingly, however, he would go train at a mixed martial—arts gym right after a chemotherapy session.

Despite an intense on-air schedule he still frequently managed to sustain amid his mounting physical distress, Scott never forgot that “the best thing I will ever do” was be a parent. He leaves behind two daughters—Taelor, 19,and Sydni, 15—and an ebullient presence that, it is clear, those who knew him will never forget.

For a fond reminiscence from a onetime ESPN colleague on what he meant to the station, see this article by Jean McCormick for The Huffington Post on his "amazing grace."

Photo of the Day: Cycle for Survival, Times Square Takeover

Between one thing and another, I didn’t get around to posting about a promotional event in Times Square last weekend—and I really should.  The promotion was “Cycle for Survival,” normally an indoor sporting event—but last week it made its presence felt (approximately 100 stationary bikes) in Times Square. The event, now held in 13 different cities, raises money to battle rare forms of cancer—to date, 85 different clinical trials at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

The organization’s Web site includes dates for 2014. It’s worthwhile to check out in order to battle a disease that continues to afflict all too many.