David Sarnoff

"The elegant and suave William S. Paley, CBS’s chairman, would never have introduced himself to a new employee in the public elevator, because Paley had his own private elevator. Also, he was a time-honored snob and would have looked at my unruly suit and bad shoes and wondered what the hell I was doing in his classic Eero Saarinen building. At NBC, I would never have been greeted by Robert Sarnoff, its leader at the time and son of the founder, David Sarnoff. I would have quivered in the ornate lobby of the grand RCA Building, wondering which of the fifteen elevators I was supposed to take."

"He did this, in part, through a network of carefully cultivated connections in business and government. His was an international circle that included President Lyndon Johnson of the United States; Jean Monnet, the father of the European Common Market; Gianni Agnelli, chairman of Fiat; Eugene Black, president of the World Bank; David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank; General Lucius Clay, the mastermind of the Berlin airlift; David Sarnoff, the head of RCA; and Bill Paley, president of CBS."

"General David Sarnoff, the chairman of RCA. Two of the general’s cousins, Steve Ross and Eddie Rosenthal, wanted our help with an acquisition. Through their company Kinney National, the Rosenthal family owned funeral parlors as well as garages, parking lots, and building service concerns. As part of their funeral business, they also operated a fleet of limousines and were now hoping to acquire Avis Rent-A-Car. The fit, the Rosenthals were convinced, would be a logical one for Kinney."