One Drunk to Another A Bunch of Actors
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Illustration · A small film studio in the 1960s: a camera on a tripod, its reels turning, aimed at an empty chair lit only from behind. Not drawn from a photograph.

Paris and New York · 1960–1968

In shadow

AA’s first television spots showed its members only in shadow, and a survey found that most of the public had never knowingly met one.

“You’re the only one who wouldn’t admit it!”

A colleague at Eastman Kodak, to Dr. John L. Norris, the nonalcoholic chairman of AA’s board, after the spots aired, as Dr. Jack liked to tell it · Bob P.’s history, 1985

Filmed in shadow

In 1960 a French journalist, Joseph Kessel, came to the United States to study AA with the help of AA’s office, and went home to write a series of articles for France-Soir. A few days after the first appeared that July, Nick H. of the English-speaking group in Paris received a bundle of some thirty letters, all in French. Nick dictated the replies at first; later a secretary who wasn’t an alcoholic, Odette Gerth, answered them herself, for years. Bob P.’s history credits Kessel with doing for AA in France “what Jack Alexander did in America.” (A bunch of actors tells Alexander’s.)

At home, AA’s board turned to television. Its public information committee produced what Bob P.’s history calls the first public service spots about AA, for radio and TV: “A.A. members, filmed in shadow to protect their anonymity, told one-minute stories of their experiences.” The last spot was different. Dr. John L. Norris, the board’s chairman and the medical director of Eastman Kodak, who wasn’t an alcoholic, appeared full face to tell about the program, and a colleague at Kodak took him for the only alcoholic on the screen who wouldn’t own up to it.

In 1966 AA’s office offered local committees a 60-second spot with four members and Dr. Norris in it, perhaps one of those Bob P. describes, at $20 a print, and its soundtrack on tape for radio at $5.

The 1968 General Service Conference put the rule in an advisory action, the first on record, though Bob P.’s history calls it a reaffirmation: “The showing of the full face of an A.A. member at the level of press, TV, and films” would be “considered a violation of the Anonymity Tradition, even though the name is withheld.”

In the late 1960s AA also set out to learn what the public thought of it. Volunteers led by Bayard P., an advertising executive on its public information committee, telephoned at night and found that most people thought well of AA, but saw its members as “neurotic,” “failures,” “weak willed,” and that only about one in four knew anyone in it. AA’s first survey of its own members, in 1968, found that 55 percent had been brought in mainly by another member. If members were AA’s best way in, Bayard reasoned, AA had to make them “more visible without breaking their anonymity”: members had “an obligation to be un-anonymous at the private level.”

Listen In shadow About 1 minute

By AA’s own count

What brought them

What members said had brought them to AA, in its first survey of its members (1968) and its latest (2022).

From AA’s office newsletter, October–November 1968, and the 2022 Membership Survey. In 1968 members named what was most responsible; in 2022, what got them there, as many as applied. Neither set adds up to 100.

Newspapers, magazines, radio or TV1968

12%

Newspapers, magazines, radio or TV2022 (and 1% more for the internet or social media)

1%

Another AA member1968

55%

Another AA member2022

38%

Family1968

34%

Family2022

25%

A doctor1968

16%

A medical professional2022

4%

One in eight, one in a hundred

In 1968 one member in eight gave the most credit to newspapers, magazines, radio or TV. In 2022 one in a hundred named them at all.

For a closer look

Go deeper

A convention film AA kept to itself, a survey that reads two ways, and the year of Kessel’s book.

The film AA kept to itself

AA had its twenty-fifth anniversary convention, at Long Beach in 1960, filmed as a historical record. In 1961 the Conference decided that releasing a short film from the footage, even for local showings, “would not be compatible with the anonymity tradition in view of the difficulty of limiting such showings strictly to A.A. members.”

Bob P.’s history gives the plainer reason: people were shown full face, and the anonymity of the crowd was broken. Seven years before the Conference’s full-face action of 1968, it was already keeping the rule.

The numbers that don’t match

The office newsletter of 1968 gave 22 percent women, 16 percent brought in mainly by doctors and 12 percent by newspapers, magazines, radio and TV.

Bob P.’s history, written in the 1980s, gives “over 11,000 replies,” one member in four a woman, about 15 percent for the press and broadcasting and 12 percent for doctors, as if the two figures had traded places. The feature here uses the newsletter’s.

1960 or 1962

Bob P. tells Kessel’s story twice. In his chapter on AA abroad it is 1960, with the first article in July and the letters in Paris that summer, and the landmarks added to later printings of AA Comes of Age list Kessel’s book under 1960.

In his chapter on the board, Bob P. puts Kessel’s visit among the events of 1962. The other tellings on hand all say 1960.

Sources