Television: Sallying Forth

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In a New York magazine profile by Quinn's former Post colleague (and now former friend) Aaron Latham, she was portrayed as a sassy bundle of ambition who was more interested in capital sex than politics. Quinn called the story an "incredible hatchet job" and at tributed it to New York Editor Clay Felker's resentment because she recently turned down a job offer from him. According to Quinn, Felker said, "Sally, you were born to be a star, and you should have let me make you one," then slammed down the phone. Replies Felker: "Sally is a goddamn liar."

Quinn has a penchant for making news as well as reporting it, and her behavior sometimes invites squabbles like the New York magazine one. For four years, she has carried on a rather public liaison with Warren Hoge, city editor of the New York Post. Once, in an interview with another Washington newsman, she proudly described her story about Iran's Empress Farah this way: "It took me four days to get the interview, and then I had to promise my body over and over to the higher-ups."

The daughter of a retired Army general, Quinn's peripatetic "Army-brat" life caused her to attend 22 schools before she graduated from Smith College in 1963. She intended to be "a famous movie star" but gave it up after only six weeks of trying to be an actress in New York. Over the next few years, she worked as a go-go girl, a public relations agent for a Coney Island animal husbandry exhibit, and social secretary to the Algerian Ambassador in Washington. The story of her subsequent hiring by the Washington Post may contain a moral for those who would make too much of her present lack of background in TV. "Can you show me something you've written?" asked Managing Editor Benjamin Bradlee. "I've never written anything," admitted Quinn. Pause. "Well," said Bradlee, "nobody's perfect."