“When the Going was Good: An editor’s adventures during the last golden age of magazines” by Graydon Carter
I had just started reading this magnificent memoir when the news broke of actor Robert Redford’s passing on 16 Sept 2025. What is the connection you may wonder between the two. Well, Graydon Carter was the legendary editor of Vanity Fair. The opening essay in When the Going was Good is about Graydon Carter and his colleagues working for nearly a year in complete secrecy to verify and reveal the true identity of “Deep Throat”. Deep Throat was the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information in 1972 to Bob Woodward, who shared it with Carl Bernstein. Woodward and Bernstein were reporters for The Washington Post, and Deep Throat provided key details about the involvement of U.S. president Richard Nixon’s administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal.
On May 31, 2005, Vanity Fair revealed that Felt was Deep Throat in an article on its website by John D. O’Connor, an attorney acting on Felt’s behalf. 31 years after Nixon’s resignation and 11 years after Nixon’s death, Mark Felt − who at the time had been Deputy Director of the FBI − revealed through an attorney that he was Deep Throat. Felt reportedly said, “I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat.” After the Vanity Fair story broke, Woodward, Bernstein, and Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Post’s executive editor during Watergate, confirmed Felt’s identity as Deep Throat.
In 1974, the two investigative journalists, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, wrote All the President’s Men about the June 1972 break-in at the Watergate Office Building and the resultant political scandal. The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein from Woodward’s initial report on the Watergate break-in through the resignations of Nixon Administration officials H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman in April 1973, and the revelation of the Oval Office Watergate tapes by Alexander Butterfield three months later. It relates the events behind the major stories the duo wrote for the Post, naming some sources who had previously refused to be identified for their initial articles, notably Hugh Sloan. It also gives detailed accounts of Woodward’s secret meetings with his source Deep Throat.
A film adaptation, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, respectively, was released in 1976. Woodward and Bernstein had considered the idea of writing a book about Watergate, but did not commit until actor Robert Redford expressed interest in purchasing the film rights. Redford bought the rights to Woodward and Bernstein’s book in 1974 for $450,000, with the idea to adapt it into a film with a budget of $5 million. In Telling the Truth About Lies: The Making of “All the President’s Men”, Woodward noted that Redford played an important role in changing the book’s narrative from a story about the Watergate events to one about their investigations and reportage of the story and was thus successful in transferring the content from one medium and one genre to another.
The film was nominated in multiple Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA categories; Jason Robards won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Ben Bradlee. In 2010, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
Graydon Carter’s essay is fascinating as it recounts the time and effort it took him and his team to confirm the identity of Deep Throat and till the last minute they were anxious in case the story turned out to be a hoax. Remember this was 2005, a little before the digital boom, invention of smartphones and iPads, and the widespread use of the internet. So, when Vanity Fair broke the news, they had to use traditional methods of publicising the information.
Anyway, for me, the incredible coincidence of reading this memoir and the passing of the legendary actor, Robert Redford, will forever be etched in my mind.
18 Sept 2025
