Pete Martin kept the Post going

By David Maurer

Published: September 28, 2008

The white-haired writer got comfortable in his chair before placing his fingers on the typewriter keys.

W. Thornton Martin — Pete Martin to his countless readers — then allowed his memory to carry him back decades to his childhood growing up in Charlottesville. He had been born in 1901, and 62 years later he found himself writing a series of travel stories for Ford Times magazine.

The magazine was a monthly publication put out by the Ford Motor Co. He titled the article he was about to write “My Favorite Town: Charlottesville, Virginia.”

Martin had become famous during a long career as a writer for the Saturday Evening Post. He started with the popular weekly magazine in 1926, and serving as a writer and editor helped its circulation grow to nearly 3 million by 1940.

Eager readers

The venerable magazine ensured it had an eager readership by publishing works by esteemed writers such as John Steinbeck, Rex Stout, C.S. Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Agatha Christie. It also recognized the talent of a young artist, Norman Rockwell, whose paintings would become an integral part of the Post’s essence.

As sometimes happens in life, a completely unanticipated phenomenon arose shortly after the end of World War II that put the future of the magazine in jeopardy. It was called television. By the early 1950s, many people were glued to the tube and not the pages of the Post.

Something needed to be done to stanch the increasing numbers of defectors, and Martin figured out a way to do it. He started writing a column he titled, “I Call On …”

Southern charm

The concept was to call on noted celebrities — “I Call On Zsa Zsa Gabor,” for example — and interview them. His mode of operation was to drop by their homes, turn on a tape recorder, as well as his Southern charm, and simply chat.

Martin called on folks such as Perry Como, Grace Kelly, Groucho Marx, Bing Crosby, Ed Sullivan, Mary Martin, Rock Hudson and Jimmy Stewart. The column became wildly popular, because people would learn things about their favorite stars and personalities that made them as human as they were.

When Martin visited Lucille Ball at her Beverly Hills home in the spring of 1958, the conversation soon took the tone of old friends chatting. She quickly turned the tables on the writer by asking, “Have you ever met anyone who’s bored with his own story?”

When Martin admitted he hadn’t, the star of stage, screen and television laughed and said, “You still

haven’t.” The redhead gave Martin an insight into her childhood growing up in Jamestown, N.Y., that she had likely never shared for publication before.

One humorous account had to do with a skunk joining her and her brother in a tent they had pitched in their back yard. Then she became serious.

The star of “I Love Lucy” told about the chicken coop in the back of her childhood home catching fire. She said she had never gotten over the fact that the hens chose to die in the flames rather than leave their chicks.

At that point in the conversation there was likely a need for a little levity and Ball delivered. She told Martin that when she was 12 she was doing an Apache dance with such enthusiasm that she threw one of her arms out of joint. She quickly added that she finished the performance before seeking medical aid.

Later in the conversation Ball confided to Martin that when she was first trying to break into show business in New York City she was literally starving. She said she’d sneak into cafes and eat leftover food on plates before the waitresses had a chance to come by and clean up.

Ball said she had even contemplated suicide rather than return home in defeat. But she wasn’t a quitter, and she soon landed a job as a model that eventually led to the acting career she wanted.

Martin’s ability to get celebrities to reveal their human side made for great copy. The column was given much of the credit for the magazine doubling its circulation to 6 million copies a week.

Although the magazine was flying off the newsstands, many advertisers were opting to spend their money with television. It continued to falter, and in 1963 Rockwell left the Post to work for Look magazine and Martin joined him.

During that transitional year, Martin started working on the Ford series, and wrote the piece about his hometown. He started by writing that he knew the Charlottesville of 1963 was “ripping up Vinegar Hill.”

Nonetheless, the Vinegar Hill he had known and loved as a “jug-eared urchin” was impervious to the wrecking ball of progress. He wrote that in his mind he could see himself trudging up that hill to “Miss Charlotte Petrie’s or Miss Becky Lee’s kindergarten.”

Or perhaps his childhood steps would take him to his father’s hardware store.

He described the interior of W.T. Martin Hardware Store as “a wondrous place of unforgettable smells — of tarred rope and stove polish, and the metallic smell of nails, barrels and bins of them.”

The author recalled how he would perch on a stepladder in front of his father’s Main Street store to watch the circus parade go by. The ornate, caged wagons would pass so near that he could almost touch the pacing animals inside.

Martin told his readers how the family cook, who made $3.50 a week, had saved a dollar a nickel at a time to buy him his first book when he was 6. It was an English publication for boys titled “Chatterbox.”

The cook had noticed how the youngster always stopped to admire the book every time he passed the front window of Brechin’s Book Store where it was displayed. She gave him the book for Christmas, and he never parted with it.

Martin said the Charlottesville he loved was a “golden, sunny, peaceful, unchanged and unchanging community.” But outside the memory things do change and life moves on toward its inevitable conclusion.

Martin was living in Pennsylvania when he died in 1980. During his lifetime he had not only rubbed shoulders with some of the biggest stars of the day, he also earned their respect.

In addition to being one of the most admired and widely read magazine writers of his era, Martin also co-wrote two best-selling autobiographies — Bob Hope’s “Have Tux, Will Travel” and Bing Crosby’s “Call Me Lucky.”

After graduating from the University of Virginia, Martin had left Charlottesville to make his way in the world. Although he had spent much of his adult life far from his hometown, it never left his heart and was always just a memory away.