Quotable Quitters : Going in Style: Those Notable Exits

Going in style: As recent events have pointed up, it’s not always whether you win or lose but how you bow out.

Charged with multiple ethics violations, House Speaker Jim Wright, who formally left his post Monday, didn’t just go quietly; he protested his innocence in a memorable and tearful speech to the House: “Let me give you back this job you gave to me as a propitiation for all of this season of bad will, . . . I don’t want to be a party to tearing up this institution--I love it.”

Going in style.

Humphrey Bogart did it, in the 1943 Oscar-winner “Casablanca,” sending Ingrid Bergman off with Paul Henreid with these parting words: “Here’s looking at you, kid.” And, of course, Clark Gable as Rhett Butler did it in “Gone With the Wind,” walking out on a distraught Scarlett O’ Hara with the immortal exit line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Edward, Duke of Windsor, did it with elegance. Abdicating his throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson, he told British subjects in a radio broadcast on Dec. 11, 1936: “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.”

Richard M. Nixon, on the other hand, having lost the California gubernatorial race in November, 1962, snarled at the press, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

After mounting reports of ethical problems, Rep. Tony Coelho of Merced stunned everyone last month with his resignation, only hours after his press spokesman had said Coelho planned to jump into the race for House majority leader “with both feet.” Instead, Coelho quit, saying, “I don’t intend to put my party through more turmoil. I don’t intend to put this institution through more turmoil. And more importantly, I don’t intend to put my family through more turmoil.”

Gen. Douglas MacArthur did it with style--twice. Forced to flee Corregidor in March, 1942, he proclaimed, “I shall return.” Almost a decade later, fired by President Harry S. Truman in a dispute over conduct of the Korean War, MacArthur delivered a ringing oratory before a joint session of Congress, declaring, “. . . Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”

The late Shah of Iran gets credit for exiting with understatement. Fleeing revolution-torn Tehran in January, 1979, he said, “I am going on vacation because I am feeling tired.”

And former President Lyndon B. Johnson, battered by national divisiveness over the war in Vietnam, scored style points for his televised speech on March 31, 1967, in which he told a surprised nation: “. . . What we won when all our people united must not now be lost in suspicion, distrust, and selfishness or politics among any of our people . . . accordingly, I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President. . . .”

It was election night, 1966, and Dick Tuck, having lost his bid for a seat in the California Senate, stepped to the microphone to deliver his speech of concession:

“Well,” he said, “the people have spoken--the bastards.”

Now, that’s going in style.

In their 1981 book, “Doing it With Style,” international eccentric Quentin Crisp and writer Donald Carroll observed, “There are two distinct groups of people who are virtually precluded from having style: politicians and criminals. Actually, as recent political history has taught us, the two groups are more distinct from the rest of us than they are from each other.”

Politicians, they argue, depend for their very survival on the opinion of others, something a stylist never frets about. But, they concede, “The ability to make a great speech will compensate for just about any shortcoming.”

Former U.S. Sen. S. I. Hayakawa, a semanticist by trade, never did quite get the speech making right. There was his unforgettable pronouncement about the poor not being affected by rising gasoline prices because the poor didn’t need gas anyhow.

Hayakawa, a septuagenarian with a penchant for dozing off during Senate sessions, told an interviewer after losing to Pete Wilson in 1982 that he left with few regrets: “There was too much to do, too much to pay attention to. Very often, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I would be trying to remember what I had been doing that morning. . . .”

A basic tenet of stylishness, in the view of Crisp and Carroll, is the necessity of bowing out of public life with finality. They believe, “You cannot play peekaboo with the world,” though Greta Garbo did, as did Abbie Hoffman, and does J. D. Salinger. “If you want to vanish with style, you must leave behind a vacuum so absolute and so dramatic that the world will be forever tantalized by your withdrawal from it.”

The principle applies, presumably, to retirements and job departures, voluntary and otherwise.

From the annals of sports come some unforgettable exit lines.

Baseball great Lou Gehrig, terminally ill with the disease that would be named after him, told the crowd on Lou Gehrig Day at Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939: “On this day I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Henry Aaron, announcing his decision to retire, explained: “You can only milk a cow so long, then you’re left holding the pail.”

And heavyweight Jerry Quarry hung up his gloves with this explanation: “I want to leave boxing with a little bit of looks and the ability to talk.”

As the old joke goes, “You’re fired.” “I quit.”

In his book of strategy, “The Termination Trap,” psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Cohen, who has worked extensively with individuals caught in the job loss experience, offers practical survival tips for the just-fired.

Among them: Do not pretend to the person who fired you that it does not hurt. Don’t fuel the fire between you and your ex-boss. Do not go to a bar. Avoid acting on the inclination to run away. And: Be aware that “some people, afraid for their jobs, may shrink from you as if you were contagious.”

If you decide to fight for your job, Cohen advises, “Be assertive, do not worry about your trembling voice and hands or your wobbly knees. If you elect this route, you have to go with the drama of it all. It’s fair to beg, plead, cajole, negotiate . . . this is your final card. . . .”

Another expert advises: “Race to the bank” and take out the biggest possible personal loan. Once you’re off the payroll, no bank will touch you.

Does one seek revenge? Usually unwise. Try to keep the firing an ugly secret? Usually impossible.

In the film, “Willard,” Willard, an office clerk, was fired by his mean boss. Willard chose revenge. He returned to the office with a suitcase full of trained rats, which, on command, attacked the boss, causing him to fall, screaming, through an open window to the pavement below. But that’s the movies.

In real life, more subtle strategies may be called for. If your boss invites you to get together at an airport on a Friday, cautions one expert, “You are doomed. Miss your plane.”

Mary Cunningham wasn’t fired; she quit. After a meteoric rise to a vice presidency of the Bendix Corp. at age 29, she resigned in October, 1980, citing the pressure of “unfounded rumors” and “malicious gossip” concerning her romantic involvement with Bendix Chairman William Agee, 42. Agee, for his part, assured his employees that “her rapid promotions are totally justified.” Nineteen months later, Cunningham and Agee married.

Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America, was forced to relinquish her crown in July, 1984, after Penthouse magazine told of plans to publish nude pictures taken of her two years earlier in sexually explicit poses with another woman. Williams, protesting that the pictures were never intended for publication, said: “It is one thing to face up to a mistake one makes in youth. But it is almost totally devastating to have to share it with the American public and the world at large, as both a human being and as Miss America.”

Going in style. Capt. Queeg didn’t pull it off, rambling on during his “Caine Mutiny” court-martial that the trouble aboard the Caine had to do not with any shortcoming on his part but with problems in the ship’s laundry and a sloppily run ship’s mess.

Neither did deposed Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, who on heading into exile in March, 1986, said he left his country because “I have no heart to shed Filipino blood.”

Jack Paar’s departure in a huff as host of “The Tonight Show” in February, 1960, was more puzzling than provocative. Assailing the NBC “idiot” who cut him off the air during an anecdote network officials thought was in bad taste, Paar said angrily, “I believe I was let down by this network at a time when I could have used their help.”

Israeli Premier Golda Meir’s explanation for resigning in 1968 at age 70 was neither eloquent nor lofty. Meir said simply, “I want to be able to read a book without feeling guilty and go to a concert when I’d like . . . but I do not intend to retire to a political nunnery.”

Convicted spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg protested their innocence loudly to the end. In a letter to their defense attorney, she declared, “My husband and I shall die innocent before we lower ourselves to live guilty!” The Rosenbergs were executed.

Heretic Mormon-turned-feminist Sonia Johnson, explaining in 1981 her break with the church, said, “I couldn’t help feeling uneasy that the church was opposing something with a name as beautiful as the equal rights amendment.”

Some of the more stylish ultimate departures are chronicled by Malcolm Forbes in his book, “They Went That-A-Way.”

Consider the departure of John Jacob Astor IV, a passenger on the Titanic on its ill-fated voyage of 1912. Giving up his place in the lifeboat to women passengers, he insisted, “The ladies have to go first.” Then, lighting a cigarette, he waved to his young bride--”Goodby, dearie. I’ll see you later.”

Amelia Earhart told a reporter in 1937 shortly before taking off on her final flight, “I have a feeling there is just about one more good flight left in my system and I hope this is it.” It wasn’t. Earhart, attempting to fly around the world, disappeared in the Pacific.

But Marie Antoinette garners style points for her exit line. It is told that the French queen, moments before her beheading in 1793, stepped upon her executioner’s foot, whereupon she said, “Monsieur, I beg your pardon.”