FogHorn February 1, 2018  - BONNIE REMSBERG - Brushes with Fame, TV, and Real Life

Her talk would recount her brushes with fame and lessons learned along the way, she said.
She spoke of the power of community and of puppet shows she had done for the American Society of Journalists and Authors (in my notes I'm going to call it ASJA) national meetings. She began with two word-based jokes, one being about a man who went to Boston and heard of the great seafood there. So he gets into a cab and asks the driver where to get scrod (a kind of fish); the driver tells him "one so seldom hears the past pluperfect of that word." The next joke was about the Pope going to heaven, and Saint Peter rewarding him for his work. The Pope wanted to go back to look at original church writings, so Saint Peter gives him the key to the old archives. The Pope is gone for days and when he emerges, he's very upset. When asked what is the matter, the Pope replies, "There's an R, there's an R, the word is CELEBRATE!" The Rotarians in the audience  greatly appreciated the jokes.
She also recounted the time she was to present an ASJA award to Betty Friedan in New York.
She revealed some amusing truths behind the "fame" of being on television, such as the time she made an appearance on television in  Cleveland, where she had grown up, and had to wear dark green lipstick since that would show up on the black-and-white television picture whereas regular red lipstick would not. She spoke of an FCC requirement pertaining to public affairs program stations and religious groups, and of her own work with a series of Catholic programs, Jewish groups and rabbis, all of which earned her the nickname of  "Miss Ecumenical."
In her well-paced talk she discussed well-known people she had interviewed or had dealings with in the way of "TV and real life." Those included: 
Betty Friedan, to whom she was set to present an ASJA award;
Ruth Dayan, wife of Moshe;
Opera singer Beverly Sills, the mother of two children with disabilities. Bonnie pointed out that Sills had said to her, "By the time I became famous, I knew what mattered;"
Elie Wiesel, Holocaust chronicler, who commented to her that "you read," which she said she took as a compliment;
Teddy Kolleck, the mayor of Jerusalem;
Sam Levenson, humorist; they had talked about anti-Semitism;
Myron  Cohen, also a comedian;
Isaac Bashevis Singer;
the Netanyahu family; Bonnie touched on the book "Self-Portrait of a Hero" based from letters by Jonathan Netanyahu, and the raid on Entebbe and movie of the same name, which she said the Netanyahu family disliked though they did like her show;
Margaret Truman, daughter of Harry, whom Bonnie was not crazy about;
Oprah Winfrey: Bonnie told the story of how, at one point, she had proposed a show with a black sportscaster but the idea was nixed because they could not have a show with a black man and a white woman. She spoke of her sympathy with civil rights and the civil rights movement. She recalled how at one point both she and Oprah Winfrey had auditioned for a Chicago hosting position and Winfrey was picked because she is black.
Leonard Nimoy: Bonnie met him when she was the writer of a documentary that he was hosting and funding on a  progressive girls' school in Chicago, in which one of the teachers, a nun,  wanted to teach a course based on and around the original "Star Trek" series. Bonnie mesmerized the roomful of Rotarians when she recounted the time when they were mobbed by fans, how Nimoy calmly walked her to her car, walked around it and got into the passenger side while she was shaking in terror due to the mob, and talked her through starting the car and heading out. She asked him, was it always like this? He said yes, and told her of the time he and his wife were in a Parisian cafe. At the time, "Star Trek" and "Mission: Impossible," though on the air, had not yet played in France, and so Nimoy went unrecognized. Bonnie said a light bulb went off in her head at that moment, about fame.
She also spoke of shows she did with people who would later become known, such as a husband and wife who were Auschwitz and ghetto survivors respectively; Bonnie said she did not want to stop interviewing them. 
She ended with her belief in the old line "No one, on his or her deathbed, ever said 'I wish I'd worked more.'"
"This is where I want to be," she said in closing, referring to the great life by the sea, children and grandchildren she now has.
When Irwin Cohen mentioned Bonnie's "great podiatrist," she wholeheartedly agreed.

Feb. 8    Shop Talks: Susan Kealey; Dick Charnock

Feb. 15 Speaker: Stephen R. King, Ph.D., Hunting in Jungles for Medicine

Feb. 22 Speaker: Jennifer Williams Taylor, Every Students Roadmap to Higher Education