Twenty-seven! That's how old Greg Dawson was when he began working as Director of Public Relations for the 1964/1965 New York World's Fair Corporation at the Fair's Administration Building just a few doors down from the office of Robert Moses. What an incredible opportunity and exciting job for someone so young.

Mr. Dawson graciously shared some thoughts on his experience with nywf64.com. We hope you'll enjoy his insight into the workings of the World's Fair Public Relations Department.

Sadly, Greg Dawson passed away on October 25, 2007 at the age of seventy-three. He was an amazing man who contributed much to the success of the 1964/1965 World's Fair.

nywf64.com: Thank you, Greg, for taking the time to answer some questions about your role in the Fair. I'm curious how a guy so young got to be a part of the biggest event the world had ever staged. What was your background before coming to the Fair?

Greg Dawson: After my graduation from Yale in 1955 I came to New York City with a "project." I had been very active at Yale with college radio and in my senior year headed up the Ivy Network, the college radio stations of the Ivy schools. My project was called "West Meets East: Student-to-Student from the Other Side of the World," and was to send me to all Asian countries (but not China in those days) to interview, discuss and hold panel discussions with students there, return to the U.S. and turn them into a series of 26 half-hour programs for college radio stations throughout the country. I spent the summer of '55 seeing dozens of people in foundations, corporations, radio and TV networks, to raise the necessary funds. I think my six-month budget was something like $15 thousand. I was not successful in raising the money, but in the process I met some incredible people many of whom offered me jobs.

By fall I'd run out of money and took a job offered by Tex McCrary who with his wife, Jinx Falkenburg, had some 20 hours per week of radio and television time on NBC, mostly local New York City but also a bit on the network. It was an incredible experience. I learned an enormous amount and pre-interviewed dozens of guests from William Faulkner to Tallulah Bankhead, Mary Martin and Ethel Merman. The Tex and Jinx show specialized in interviews. My coworkers at the time were Bill Safire (now one of the senior columnists for The New York Times) and Barbara Walters (just before she got the job writing for The Today Show).

In the fall of '56 I was drafted. I spent the next two years in the Army stationed in New York City with the Radio and Television Public Information Office where, among others, I met Major George Kennedy who was stationed in the Air Force Public Information Office acting mainly as liaison between the Sergeant Bilko show and the Pentagon. (A few years later I went to the movies one night and up there on the screen was none other than the actor George Kennedy, the same George Kennedy I had known - later becoming quite famous and an Oscar winner!)

nywf64.com: How did you get the job of Public Relations Director?

GREG DAWSON: After the Army and for a little over two years I did a great many public relations free-lance jobs until one night, while attending a meeting of the Television Academy, I bumped into an old friend from NBC days, Bill Berns. We went out into the hall for a cigarette and he told me he was working on the new World's Fair headed by Robert Moses, in charge of all Public Relations and Communications and maybe, if I wasn't tied up, I might like to put together a very special event that they wanted to stage in six weeks called New York World's Fair Preview Day. This was in 1961 and Preview Day was to celebrate three years to the opening of the Fair. I said "yes" and that was the beginning of my Fair journey.

After Preview Day Bill asked me to stay on working for him as his right arm and eventually as Director of Public Relations. At the time I joined the Fair, Bill's staff numbered himself and Bill Adams, a nice but bumbling kind of guy who had been a friend of Mr. Moses somewhere down the line. Later, combined with the Donoghue and Deegan forces, we had a staff of some 75, increasing year by year as we got closer to the Fair opening.

William Berns, vice president for Fair Communications and Public Relations, addresses a recent Exhibitor Public Relations meeting prior to introducing other members of his staff who discussed various aspects of the Fair's Public Relations program. [Greg Dawson sits to the right of Bill Berns in this photo.]

 

SOURCE: NY World's Fair Corp. Progress Report No. 8

: April 22, 1963

My initial title was Director of Special Events for lack of any other idea. Bill had actually asked me to give myself any title I wanted, and that sounded good to me and vague enough so that I could get involved in everything. Which I certainly did! About a year later Mr. Moses hired Mary Jane McCaffery who had been secretary to Mamie Eisenhower and Mr. Moses bestowed upon her the title of Director of Special Events ... because he didn't know what other title to give her. He had actually hired her because he was impressed with her prior connection to the Eisenhowers. Anyway, I didn't really care about titles so Bill said to pick another and I picked Director of Public Relations.

nywf64.com: Here's a nosey question: How did the Fair Corporation treat you in terms of compensation?

GREG DAWSON: My pay? When I started with the Fair I received $20 thousand a year which, at the age of 27, I thought was very good indeed! I just checked the web's "inflation calculator" and found that would be equal to something over $100 thousand today. The Vice Presidents at the Fair were paid $35 thousand and Mr. Moses' pay was $75 thousand. Everyone, secretaries, clerks, etc. were paid far above market rates because the Fair had a very definite cut-off time. Everyone knew that by the end of 1965 they'd be out of a job. So the money had to be a better deal.

nywf64.com: Tell us something about Bill Berns. How did he become Vice President of Communications and Public Relations for the Fair?

GREG DAWSON: Bill had been at NBC when I came there with the Tex and Jinx show. I really don't remember exactly what he did but I believe he worked on various programs and special events and such things. When RCA (which at the time owned NBC) sold Yugoslavia all the equipment they needed to set up Yugoslav TV, they were obligated to also supply a consultant who could help them set up their programming activities. Bill was selected to go over there. He did and loved Yugoslavia and his time there. When he came back in 1960, he did some work for Robert Moses whom he had gotten to know, prior to going to Yugoslavia, through Guy Lombardo. Guy was a close friend and associate of Mr. Moses and Moses turned over all entertainment planning and producing at the Jones Beach Marine Theater to Guy. Bill worked as a liaison between Guy and Mr. Moses and Jones Beach which Moses ran along with his many other jobs. When Mr. Moses accepted the Presidency of the Fair in 1960, he asked Bill to come aboard as Vice President of Public Relations and Communications.

Bill Berns was a really wonderful person. Doing this interview and remembering the times of the Fair again brings back a string of memories and a bit of sadness that he only lived a few years after the Fair. I don't think he was more than in his early forties when he died of a brain tumor. When I joined the Fair in 1961 I was 27 and I think Bill was, perhaps, 35.

nywf64.com: Could you give us some of idea of what Robert Moses expected of Bill Berns and his staff?

GREG DAWSON: Mr. Moses liked Bill a great deal, I think. I mean, RM wasn't exactly effusive with emotion, but he didn't seem to berate him as much as he did some of the other Fair Vice Presidents, such as Joe Potter. And Bill actually served a very important purpose. As Vice President of Communication and Public Relations, which was his title if I recall correctly, he served as a buffer between Mr. Moses and the media, which Moses truly mistrusted. If RM had had his way, and if Bill had not been there to run interference, the job of the whole Communications Department would have been not only difficult, but
perhaps impossible to do. Bill was able to get Mr. Moses to approve things, spending on advertising, staffing, all sorts of areas that Moses would have just ignored or dismissed. Not that he wasn't aware of the importance of communication. He was in many ways a genius at it. The Progress Reports were his (Moses) idea and actually stemmed from his work on all his other many, many projects. His technique with any public works project that he championed, such as Jones Beach, or the various bridges and tunnels that he built, was to prepare copious reports and very glossy and glitzy booklets that explained what would be accomplished, with renderings and paintings and drawings and models and maps and graphs, long in advance of any groundbreaking or construction. The purpose was to get politicians and news people and money people behind the project. Sometimes he would spend tens of thousands of dollars on a prospectus that might actually only go to a handful of people, a few dozen or so, or even, possibly, one or two. He might print up hundreds, but the [distribution] would be only a few [to] the key ones that he needed to make it happen. So in that way he understood communication. But he really did not like the press and, like so many people in public life, felt that they misrepresented him and twisted the truth ... his truth. By the time the Fair came about he was truly at odds with the press. So Bill had his job cut out for him and what Bill accomplished was to let the rest of us do our job.

nywf64.com: You mentioned Deegan and Donohue Associates. Tell us something about them and how were duties split between the various Public Relation firms hired by the Fair and the Fair's own PR staff?

GREG DAWSON: Tom Deegan was, as I'm certain you know, one of the people who thought up the idea of doing a World's Fair in 1964. He had a successful PR firm and was somewhat plugged into New York City politics. He formed a committee of influential New Yorkers, got then Mayor Wagner to endorse the idea and tried to rally civic folk around his effort. He was initially the President of the Fair effort. But he soon realized (smartly) that he couldn't pull it off himself. That was an enormous job and only one man could do that: Robert Moses.

Moses was at the time the head of some ten or so City and State agencies; something quite unheard of but, then, so was Robert Moses. Deegan went to Moses who initially said no. But after thinking about it, realized that the Fair would be quite useful in accomplishing some things that he probably would not be able to get done without the Fair; things like finishing his plan for the so-called Kissena Corridor, highways and parkland down the center of Long Island. He also wanted to finish Flushing Meadows, a park he had created at the time of the first World's Fair in 1939. And he wanted to improve and enlarge the expressways around the Park. So he accepted Mr. Deegan's invitation. Although Deegan stayed involved principally through his PR firm which became the PR firm for the Fair, it was naturally Mr. Moses' show from the day he took over.

One of the major reasons Deegan wanted Moses to take on the Fair job was because he knew that Moses, and no one else, could get people to buy Fair bonds, and [Moses] did. In his career Moses had made many many people and organizations very very rich, especially banks. Because everything Moses did ... bridges, tunnels, everything ... required raising money, which he did through banks with New York State backing the bonds. Many people got rich off those bonds. So Moses simply went to them and told them they were going to buy Fair bonds, and they did.

Cutting the ribbon of dedication ceremony for the World's Fair Press building are Thomas J. Deegan, Jr., chairman of the Fair's Executive committee; Presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger; Fair President Robert Moses; William J. Donoghue, director of Publicity and Press Relations for the Fair; and William Berns, Fair vice president in charge of Communications and Public Relations.

 

SOURCE: NY World's Fair Corp. Progress Report No. 9

: September 26, 1963

Deegan's main accomplishment was in getting the Vatican to become involved in the Fair and to bring the Pieta over. He was a high mucka-muck Catholic. Knight of Malta, that sort of thing. But Moses never really liked Deegan and treated him something of an irritant. At the end of the first year of the Fair they had a famous falling out.

Bill Donoghue was a rough-and-tumble old-timey newspaper guy and an old buddy of Mr. Moses who decided at some point to quit the newspaper business and start a politically oriented publicity firm. He hired mostly ex-newsmen. I liked Bill a great deal and I didn't much care for Tom Deegan who was a very remote person.

So many people in the Fair's PR Department were hired ostensibly by the Deegan Company although they worked for us and reported directly to us. The same was true for the Donoghue people whose job, primarily, was to deal with day-to-day press people. The Deegan people were in the so called "PR" end of things. The Donoghue people were in publicity; a fuzzy line and things did overlap a bit.

We hired staff too, directly on the Fair payroll. On looking back I get a bit confused as to who was paid by which group although, in the end, it didn't matter since the Fair paid everyone.

nywf64.com: Did you ever feel your youth was a problem in working with so many senior people with so much experience?

GREG DAWSON: It was fun, but a bit awkward at times, since I was 27 and many of the people who reported to me were 5, 10 and 15 years older.

We had many young people, early twenty-somethings, who worked at the Fair as Press Aids and Protocol Aids. Most were the sons and daughters of well known people or people who Mr. Moses knew. They weren't paid very much, and all of them were pretty and smiled a great deal (sort of like Disneyland) and wore blazers with the Fair logo on them. Arlene Francis and her husband, Martin Gabel, had a son, Peter, who was about 21, and was a Press Aid. And some of the sons and daughters of Fair Board of Director members worked at the Fair. Sort of the same idea, I guess, as all those interns who have become famous in Washington!

nywf64.com: Tell us about that first assignment for the Fair.

GREG DAWSON: It's funny but I just went through my Fair files and I have a pretty complete dossier on Preview Day. I even have the original invitation. About a thousand people were invited. They included press, of course, newspapers, TV, radio, magazines, the whole mix. Also exhibitors and potential exhibitors because the event was to create excitement and hopefully generate some people making the decision to come into the Fair. So all the Consul Generals in New York were invited and people from the U.N. and many City officials like the entire City Council, the Mayor and the Deputy Mayors and State officials.

It was a huge gathering. We took them out to the Fairgrounds by the Circle Line Boats (the ones that go around Manhattan Island) out to Flushing Bay and then, from there, a short hop by bus over to the Fairgrounds where Restaurant Associates had been hired to set up tents and tables for lunch. It was April 22, 1961 which was a Saturday. The props consisted of a few models of some of the pavilions that had already been committed but there really weren't all that many. Also we had a model of the Fair as it "might be" but the buildings were only general type model buildings -- total imagination.

The major "prop" if you will was a wooden tower that we had built right smack where the Unisphere was going to be placed where you could climb up to a platform and look over the Fairgrounds and see the bulldozers working, clearing the land, enlarging and improving the reflecting pool where eventually there would be fireworks, and the reflecting ponds leading from the Unisphere to the Pool.

I can't remember exactly what was in the Press Kit, but I believe I have one somewhere in my files. Probably a statement from Mr. Moses, a list of exhibitors that had already committed and some pictures of some artist's renderings of various buildings that were scheduled. The only building completed at that time was the Administration Building, a supposedly temporary structure (it still stands, as a park police station, I believe, and it's pretty shabby) that Mr. Moses had erected in six weeks -- all prefab. That's where all our offices were.

Gregory Dawson, William A. Berns and Rube Goldberg confer during visit of cartoonists to the Fair.

 

SOURCE: NY World's Fair Corp. Progress Report No. 7

: January 24, 1963

nywf64.com: You must have met some pretty interesting people in your position.

GREG DAWSON: Yes. I met Walt Disney. He came to the Fair prior to opening to see the progress on his works ... Pepsi, Ford, Illinois and General Electric. He was quite friendly and told everyone to "Call me Walt!" No one did as I remember. I also met JFK the day he came out to see the Fairgrounds in the spring of 1963. Mostly he saw the large model, walked around it, posed for pictures and had lunch with Mr. Moses and then left.