Carnegie’s radio program reflected many concerns and proclivities—both his own and his audience’s—common to the early 1930s. Some of the episodes touched upon Depression themes of hard times and success, albeit with an unfailingly optimistic tone. One broadcast, entitled “They Spent Their Lives Keeping the Big Bad Wolf Away,” noted how individuals such as Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln had struggled with debt throughout much of their lives and “didn’t have any more sense than you or I had—back in 1929.” Carnegie surveyed several populist heroes from the era. Walt Disney appeared as a man of the people who dreamed up Mickey Mouse while working in a cramped office above a repair shop where “the grease and gasoline smells of that garage gave him an idea that was worth a million dollars,” while Will Rogers, “a man who never had much education,” climbed to prominence and “wears old, dilapidated clothes and frequently drives into Hollywood without a necktie and wearing boots and old, blue denim overalls with brass rivets in them.”36

  But much more often, Carnegie pursued another theme in his biographical radio sketches: the individual as celebrity. The development of personality had been a longtime concern, of course, but now he elevated personal charisma into the predominant influence in modern life. As he had noted in Public Speaking: A Practical Course for Business Men, “You may possibly bore people if you talk about things and ideas, but you can hardly fail to hold their attention when you talk about people … [and] personalities.” He reiterated this point in the 1930s when discussing radio with a newspaper reporter. “If you talk about an abstract subject, chances are your listeners will begin to yawn,” he remarked. “Talk about people—personalities, human struggles, joys and tragedies—and your audience will strain to catch every word.”37

  So on the weekly broadcast of Little Known Facts About Well Known People, Carnegie spoke almost solely about the personalities of his famous subjects, their private dramas and challenges and triumphs, while giving scant attention to their ideas or public achievements. H. G. Wells became one of the world’s most famous authors when a badly broken leg confined him to bed where “he devoured every book he could get … and developed a taste for books, a love for literature.” Railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, an eccentric and superstitious man, “had each leg of his bed set in a dish filled with salt, to keep the evil spirits from attacking him while he slept.” Gandhi appeared as a saintly eccentric who “has a set of false teeth, which he carries in a fold of his loincloth. He puts them in his mouth only when he wants to eat.” Lenin, dubbed only as the instigator of an “economic experiment,” was portrayed as an “expert chess player,” “happily married,” and a “revolutionist” who wore false whiskers, communicated by letters written in invisible ink that could only be read when dipped in water, and often “slept in a packing box.” In such fashion, the radio host helped usher in a culture of celebrity in this period, where charm and personality were crucial components in the calculus of fame. In such an atmosphere, as Daniel Boorstin once quipped famously, modern celebrities became “well-known for their well-knownness.”38

  Carnegie’s celebrity compulsion became especially evident in his treatment of movie stars. Homer Croy had connections in Hollywood because of several film adaptations of his novels, so the fledgling radio host hired him to conduct interviews and help write scripts on famous actors. “You are my Hollywood expert, you know,” Carnegie wrote, and peppered his old friend with requests to contact various film celebrities. “I shall have only six broadcasts after the first of the year and if you send me Mickey Mouse and Mary Pickford that would mean three Hollywood people. I expect to interview Eddie Cantor here,” he wrote Croy in December 1933. “How about one on Greta Garbo?… How about interviewing Harold Lloyd? What about Lionel and John Barrymore?” After Croy had sent him a series of write-ups on famous actors and actresses, Carnegie asked him to tailor the writing to his own style. “If you would write these broadcasts in the way that I want them so that I won’t have to spend hours changing them, it would be an enormous help to me and I would appreciate it beyond words,” he instructed. “The way I want them may be God-awful, but you taught me not to imitate other people but to roll up my sleeves, spit on my hands and be myself, and that is all I am trying to do.”39

  Once again, with his keen sense of the popular mood, Carnegie captured a powerful trend in the 1930s. Celebrity exerted a powerful pull in Depression-era America. In an age when many were struggling to survive, hosts of working-class and middle-class individuals clung to visions of wealth, glamour, and radiant personalities as a ray of light in the gloom. They flocked to the movies in unprecedented numbers, for instance, to find solace in a darkened theater as film, in the words of one critic, “became the fantasy life of a nation in pain.” Large popular audiences breathlessly followed the exploits of wealthy debutantes such as Barbara Hutton and the difficulties of “poor little rich girl” Gloria Vanderbilt; they devoured fan magazines such as Photoplay and Motion Picture that burnished the fantasy lives of Hollywood movie stars; they imbibed advertising that deployed high-society figures to convey attractive images of abundance to consumers. While escapist, of course, celebrity culture also served another function. It helped to reaffirm the American Dream under duress by “focusing on the endless possibilities for individual success,” as one analyst has put it. Only now it was personality and charisma that moved one forward, not hard work and upright character.40

  Carnegie’s radio show proved moderately successful, running for two seasons from 1933 to 1935. It changed format and backing in its second year, switching to a daily broadcast of five minutes from 1:45 to 1:50 in the afternoon, and attracting the American Radiator Company as a sponsor. In 1934, cashing in on publicity generated by his radio broadcasts, Carnegie collected his first season’s sketches and published them with Greenberg Press as Little Known Facts About Well Known People. The book generated mixed reviews, with some critics finding it fascinating and charming while others deemed it superficial and grating. “It is written in a colorful and anecdotal style which holds the reader’s attention from beginning to end,” said an Associated Press review that appeared in many newspapers. But the New York Herald Tribune disagreed, characterizing Carnegie’s talks as “marred by an artificial intimacy, a straining for conversational idiom, and an assumption of an exceedingly low common denominator of information and intelligence in the listeners to whom they were addressed … A good example is the author’s conjecture of what Caesar said when he first saw Cleopatra: ‘My, my! Oo la la! Why haven’t we girls like that in Rome?’ ”41

  But whatever its merits, the radio show helped make Carnegie himself a minor celebrity by 1935. In addition to the broadcasts and the spin-off book, NBC’s promotional efforts gave a great boost to his national stature. NBC Artists Services, for example, promoted Carnegie to business groups and organizations as “a well-known radio speaker” whose sponsor “already renewed a contract for his services to begin early in the fall. According to the statement which has been made by the Maltex Company, their broadcast program, in which Mr. Carnegie was featured, actually increased their sales thirty per cent last season. May we suggest that you have Dale Carnegie address your employees, sales conference, business convention, or club meeting on ‘How to Win Friends and Influence Men in Business?’ ” Another promotional sheet entitled “NBC Personalities—Dale Carnegie,” sent to various publicity venues, described a vigorous, fascinating chronicler of the human condition: “He has gone to the ends of the earth to interview the great figures of today. He has spent years penetrating long-forgotten archives and memorabilia. And from his painstaking explorations into the past and his far-flung associations and intimacies, Dale Carnegie, celebrated author and lecturer, brings to the microphone new data on interesting personalities of the past and present.”42

  Carnegie’s array of activities in the early years of the Great Depression set the stage for the greatest performance of his career. With a wildly successful class in public speaking, a growing career as a writer, a national radio profile, and, above all, a keen sensitivity to the feelings and values of ordinary Americans, he was poised on the edge of greater success. Even so, few would have predicted the fame, wealth, and influence that would soon come his way from writing one of the best-selling, most influential books in American history.

  “Men and Women, Hungry for Self-Improvement”

  By the mid-1930s, Dale Carnegie’s life had stabilized in every regard. Professionally, his experiments during the previous decade had given way to a steady, lucrative career combining his popular public-speaking course, nonfiction writing, and radio program. Firmly entrenched as a trusted figure in the American business community, yet sensitive to the trials and fears of ordinary people in a threatening age, he had responded to the Great Depression by reaching out to a mass audience with prescriptions for survival, escapist entertainment, and soothing populist injunctions.

  Personally, Carnegie also resolved many lingering problems from the 1920s. He settled into a comfortable home in Forest Hills, Queens, after divorcing Lolita Baucaire in 1932 and ending their stormy, decade-long marriage. While the final break was a relief, Lolita played shamelessly on her ex-husband’s sympathy for years to come. After receiving Lincoln the Unknown, for instance, she replied with a guilt-inducing letter that described how reading it “was a great treat for me, as in my loneliness I lived with you again … It made me think I am sitting on the sofa, and you have a chat with me and tell me interesting things.” Complaining constantly about a variety of physical ailments—carbuncles, rheumatism, chronic fatigue—she elicited regular installments of money from Carnegie. “I just received your letter with cheque,” she noted in one missive from a treatment facility in the Pennsylvania countryside. “Thank you very much, Dale, for helping me to get well.” Eventually Carnegie would purchase a house for her in New Jersey, as well as paying a generous alimony, yet she still annoyed him by appearing at his office periodically and announcing herself as “Mrs. Carnegie.”1

  Harmony prevailed in his immediate family. Initially the dissolution of Carnegie’s marriage had prompted a painful encounter with his pious mother, now age seventy-four, who claimed that he had gone “against God’s will” in marrying Lolita, a divorced woman, and would do so again if he tried to remarry after his divorce. But Carnegie smoothed over this difficulty, lent financial support to his parents, and was pleased to attend their golden anniversary in early 1932. As a crowd of family and old friends gathered to celebrate at their farm in Belton, a local Methodist minister read the marriage ceremony and asked James if he would take the former Amanda Harbison to love and obey. In Carnegie’s words, “father spoke up and with a twinkle in his eye, said, ‘I have tried to obey my wife for fifty years and I don’t believe I care to promise to obey for another fifty years!’ ” With his footloose brother’s family settled nearby in a caretaker role, Carnegie further cemented family tranquillity by taking Clifton’s daughter, Josephine, into his Queens home as an assistant and secretary. The niece would become close to her uncle and remain in his employ for many years.2

  Then a serendipitous event occurred that turned this contented life upside down. An editor from a major publisher in New York signed up for the Carnegie Course and became greatly impressed with the message and manner of its founder. After one class, he approached Carnegie and urged him to expand his presentations into a book. This simple request set into motion a chain of events that would change irrevocably the life of the author and the course of American culture.

  Leon Shimkin, an intelligent, aggressive, and ambitious young man from a Russian immigrant family in Brooklyn, joined the newly formed Simon and Schuster in 1924 as a bookkeeper. Founded by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln “Max” Schuster, this commercial publishing firm rose to prominence by the mid-1930s and the talented Shimkin rose along with it as its business manager (and unofficial acquisitions editor). In 1934, he stumbled across a keen opportunity. He accepted an invitation to attend a gathering of junior executives in a New York suburb where Dale Carnegie, the famous teacher of public speaking, explained his course and invited attendees to join. Shimkin, intrigued by the instructor’s strategy for giving people self-confidence, signed up. Fascination soon gave way to admiration. Shimkin was deeply impressed by the teacher’s ideas about human relations and his practical, “down to earth” techniques for imparting them to students. He decided that “Dale Carnegie had something specific to offer to help people.”3

  So at the conclusion of one session, Shimkin approached the instructor with a proposal. He pointed out that course presentations, no matter how brilliantly done or enthusiastically received, were confined to the physical space of the classroom. But if Carnegie “wrote a book on the art of dealing with people, his voice could be heard throughout the country.” Shimkin proposed that Carnegie write such a book to be published by his company. When the teacher asked whom he worked for, and the young man replied Simon and Schuster, Carnegie immediately cooled and said he would not submit a book to them “because they had rejected two of his previous manuscripts and besides, he was too busy.” But Shimkin persisted. He tried another tack and suggested that a stenographer record some of the lectures and type them up as a basis for a rough manuscript and then Carnegie “could look over the material to see if he agreed that the ingredients were present for a book.” The instructor reluctantly agreed. So Shimkin, along with Verna Stiles, Carnegie’s secretary and researcher, worked together for several weeks on compiling a rough first draft. After seeing the promise of their work, Carnegie warmed to the project and began a serious process of rewriting, refining, and shaping the manuscript in his personal style.4

  The burdensome task of writing a book was eased somewhat by the existence of Carnegie’s keenly honed course lectures as well as principles and examples from Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business. “I didn’t really write How to Win Friends,” Carnegie commented many years later. “I collected it. I merely put on paper the lectures I had been giving people to help equip them for business and social life, and the success hints they had been telling me.” Especially useful—in fact, it became the thematic centerpiece of the manuscript—was a talk that Carnegie had delivered hundreds of time to students, Rotary Clubs, businessmen’s groups, and even college audiences. Originally called “How to Get the Welcoming-In Response,” Carnegie had changed the title by mid-decade to “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”5

  In interludes between his busy teaching schedule and radioshow obligations, Carnegie labored on the book throughout 1935 and into 1936. With plans for a late-fall publication, Simon and Schuster, in the author’s words, was “hounding me daily for the manuscript” even though a final chapter was not completed. “Finally, I decided they could have it as it was,” Carnegie recalled later, and decided to write the last chapter—“it would have concerned itself with the way to handle the few times where human relations would be out of place”—at a later time. The author submitted the text to the publisher in early summer and boarded a train for several weeks of vacation at Lake Louise in western Canada. When he returned to New York in September, the book was ready for publication except for one minor problem. Carnegie had suggested “How to Make Friends and Influence People” as the title, but the designers were having difficulty placing it artistically on the dust jacket. They concluded it was one letter too long. According to Carnegie, he suggested changing “make” to “win,” just like his lecture title, and Shimkin “wasn’t happy with it, but said it would have to do. There was no time to fuss around with it.”6

  Simon and Schuster constructed a skilled advertising campaign. In addition to utilizing traditional bookstore outlets, they launched full-page newspaper advertisements in a handful of major cities. The ad, later praised as among the “100 greatest advertisements in American history,” was put together by the noted agency Schwab and Beatty. Its striking layout featured the book’s title and Carnegie’s photograph, and conveyed, according to one expert, “that here is something important, something well worth reading in terms of reader benefits.” The vigorous text, written by famed copywriter Victor O. Schwab, covered several bases: lauding Carnegie’s experience as a teacher of businessmen; telling the story of Michael O’Neill, a flop as a salesman who became one of the nation’s best after implementing Carnegie principles; listing the major corporations whose executives had been trained in the Carnegie system; and including a plug from Lowell Thomas, who described his friend as “a wizard in his special field.” The ad pointed to thousands of beneficiaries and insisted “What Dale Carnegie has done for them he can do for you,” claiming that the book “will mean more to you than ANY book that you have ever read.” It also included a mail-order coupon. Addressed directly to Simon and Schuster, the coupon read: “Please send me How to Win Friends and Influence People. I will pay the postman only $1.96 plus a few cents postage charges. It is understood that I may read it for 5 days and return it for refund if I then feel that it does not in every way live up to the claims made for it.”7

 

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