Apr 27, 2017 - Sale 2444

Sale 2444 - Lot 259

Price Realized: $ 1,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(PRESIDENTS--1968.) Papers of Nixon publicist and speechwriter Paul Keyes from the 1962 governor race and beyond. Hundreds of items in one box (1.1 linear feet), generally minor wear. Vp, bulk 1962-73
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Paul W. Keyes (1924-2004) was a comedy writer and television producer, best known for his work on the Jack Paar Show and Laugh-In. He served as a trusted consultant for Nixon's 1962 failed gubernatorial campaign. He later engineered Nixon's 1968 appearance on Laugh-In, in which the presidential candidate flashed on screen to utter the show's catch phrase, "Sock it to me!" This humanized Nixon with the youth audience and is often credited as helping him to win a hotly contested election.
This extensive archive relates almost entirely to work Keyes did for Nixon, mostly on the 1962 campaign and in the efforts to rehabilitate Nixon's image over the next two years. The papers are still mostly organized as they would have been found in Keyes' file cabinet. They consist largely of memos Keyes wrote for the campaign, suggesting catch phrases and laugh lines for Nixon's speeches, offering his impressions of campaign literature, and arranging for television appearances.
One folder is headed "Telethon questions, 1962." Nixon held a series of televised events in which he took questions from callers. Keyes proposed on 1 June that the callers be heavily salted with questions that could present Nixon in a more favorable light. Attached is a 6 August memo from Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods, stating that "the Boss . . . completely rejects your suggestion on the handling of the questions. He wants them to be handled as they come in." Keyes has appended a note: "This was a fake memo, in case a copy of my June 1 got out & Brown leaked we were fixing questions." A related list of sample questions includes "I've heard talk about a Democrats for Nixon movement. . . . Can I find out more?" and "Why don't we have a California program to protect our children from Communistic teachings?"
Another folder includes a leaflet titled "Dick Nixon's Pledges for a Better California," with a memo by Keyes noting that "it seems to be in the nature and the blood line of the Mexican and Italian people to react more favorably to this kind of emotional approach than it is the nature of the hard shelled Americans. You said at your house last Saturday that we do want to concentrate on the Mexican vote, and this may be one of the many things we do to warm them to us."
After the devastating 1962 loss to incumbent governor Pat Brown (punctuated by Nixon's famed pronouncement "you don't have Nixon to kick around any more"), Keyes wrote a 23 November 1962 memo to Nixon laying out a "direction for you as a Spokesman for America on Television. . . . In all honesty that terrible Tuesday of 2 weeks ago wasn't an End but the dawn of a Great Beginning. This is all true, sir. I say it in all honesty and candor. I have never said anything as an ointment to ease a wound." Keyes spent the next two years trying to get television placements for Nixon.
The collection includes little from the 1968 campaign, other than a brief memo by Keyes noting the eight direct contacts he'd had with Nixon during the initial months of his presidency. Keyes seems to have returned to active political work in 1973; the collection includes a file of humorous speeches he prepared for Alexander Haig, Gerald Ford, and Henry Kissinger for use at roasts and dinners in 1973, at the height of the Watergate crisis. Also included is a collection of Nixon ephemera (more than 100 pinback buttons, plus leaflets, matchbooks, and more) spanning Nixon's career from the vice presidential campaigns through impeachment. This archive offers a dramatic inside view of Nixon's 1962 campaign from the perspective of a trusted aide. An inventory is available upon request.