The Mary and Bill Story

Off the business page and onto the front page, a new soap opera

A television camera was panning the crowd at the Republican National Convention in Detroit last July when it zoomed in for a closeup of former President Gerald Ford. But wait, who was that handsome couple smiling fondly at each other nearby? Knowledgeable viewers recognized them as William M. Agee, 42, soon-to-be-divorced chairman of the Bendix Corp. in Southfield, Mich., and Mary E. Cunningham, 29, his rapidly promoted vice president for strategic planning. That TV image was the first journalistic glimmer of a story that has gathered enough momentum in the past five weeks to eclipse national interest in who shot J.R.

The story broke Sept. 24 when Agee told 600 employees at a company meeting that his friendship with Cunningham was not a factor in her swift rise. As of last week, the Mary and Bill story had rated coverage in practically every major newspaper and magazine, several sober editorials, a FORTUNE cover and, the crowning touch, a gossipy, five-part series sold to some 50 newspapers by the Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate. Written by New Journalist Gail Sheehy (Passages), the series unblushingly depicts Cunningham as an angel, awesomely gifted, scrupulously moral and out to improve the world through humane capitalism; it is laced with enough mawkish prose and gratuitous personal detail to make Harold Robbins blush. As the scandal mounted, for instance, Sheehy reported: "Mary Cunningham sat in her hotel room at the Waldorf. She could not eat. Every so often, she stepped into the bathroom to vomit." Also: "The mildew of envy is a living, corroding organism in the corridors of power." Chairman Agee, Sheehy discloses, is currently taking Catholic instruction from Monsignor William Nolan, Cunningham's guardian since she was five. (Agee heatedly denies this.) For her part, Sheehy says that her story was based on 30 interviews, including three hours with Cunningham two years ago for another project, several follow-up chats and one hour with Agee. Said Sheehy: "This is a kind of case history for the '80s."

The Sheehy series touched off minor competitive dramas in several cities where it appeared. In San Francisco, where the Tribune Syndicate's regular customer is the Examiner (circ. 159,000), the rival Chronicle (circ. 507,000) snatched the series instead. "There was a bleep-up," said an angry Reg Murphy, the Examiner's editor. Murphy struck back with a survey of Bay Area business executives, all of whom said they would hire Cunningham on the spot.

In Washington, the afternoon Star (circ. 346,000) bought the series and was putting Part 1 to press when the Tribune Syndicate suddenly canceled the deal, insisting that the larger morning Post (circ. 601,000) had first-refusal rights. The Star, arguing that it had a valid contract, went ahead and printed the three segments it already had and, it claimed, borrowed copies of the final two from friendly editors in other cities. Thus the entire series appeared simultaneously in both papers, contrary to industry canons. Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, suspecting that the Star was lifting the series from early editions of his own paper, laid a trap. He had the text of Part 4 changed slightly; the Star's version repeated the changes. He also altered Part 5 so that the first letters of the article's opening paragraphs spelled out HI MURRAY, a gibe at Star Editor Murray J. Gart. That trick did not work; the Star's version began with the letters YHMMDMYW.

By week's end even the most jaded of editors had to agree the Cunningham saga was getting out of hand. Bendix public relations men were taking calls offering TV and movie deals for Cunningham's story. Some 60 top executive positions had been offered, Sheehy said, including the directorship of a Harvard Business School study of women in the executive suite. Cunningham was reported to be holed up in Agee's private Idaho hideaway, or walking the beach in California, or at home in Bloomfield, Mich.

A few news organizations tried to point out the more serious issues involved. Had Cunningham been a young man with the same credentials, editorialized the New York Times, "no newspaper would dream of publishing the tale ... In the upper ranks of the FORTUNE 500, unfortunately, women are more visible as receptionists, secretaries and charwomen than as makers of policy." Said the Boston Globe: "When a young woman makes good, her colleagues get suspicious... they make excuses: sex favoritism, affirmative action, window dressing." Pulitzer-prize-winning Globe Columnist Ellen Goodman found the Mary and Bill show to be "absolutely ripe with hostility toward uppity women." Asked Goodman: "If women can sleep their way to the top, why aren't they there?"

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