American Experience (1988–…): Season 9, Episode 8 - Around the World in 72 Days - full transcript

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( clock ticking )

( clock chiming )

Narrator:
November 1889 -- A young reporter

prepared to embark on one of the most
publicized journeys of all time.



Her mission: To break the record

set by the legendary fictional
character Phileas T. Fogg.

For the next two
and a half months

the whole world would follow
the adventures of Nellie Bly.

( Steamship whistle blows )

Stephens: This was new and this was
different and this was exciting

and when Nellie Bly
actually decided to go

all around the world

I mean, that was like going up
in the space shuttle.

( Train whistle blows )

Narrator: Nellie Bly became one
of the most famous women in the world

by doing things a woman
wasn't supposed to do.

She posed as an unwed mother to
expose the baby-buying trade...

A thief to experience
a night in jail...



An insane woman to report
on life inside a madhouse

and everything she did
sold newspapers.

Corrigan: There was something
about her voice...

Something about the bravado
that her pieces exuded

that I think really captured
readers' imagination

and really made her the premiere
female reporter of her time.

She seemed to know
how to pick the assignment

that would put her
on center stage.

I think it was
her most remarkable gift.

Nussbaum: "I wonder when they'll
send a girl to travel 'round the sky

read the answer in the stars,
they wait for Nellie Bly."

Narrator: A few years before
her death, Nellie Bly wrote:

"If one would become great,

"two things are
absolutely necessary.

"The first is to know yourself.

The second is not to let
the world know you."

The world never knew

what lay at the heart
of her remarkable ambition.

She never spoke of the darkest
days of her childhood.

Her given name was
Elizabeth Jane Cochran

but everyone called her "Pink."

She was born in the last year
of the Civil War, May 5, 1864

in Cochrans Mills, Pennsylvania.

The town was named
for her father,

Judge Michael Cochran.

He had ten children
with his first wife.

After she died,
he married again.

Pink was his 13th
and most rebellious child.

Great confidence.

Dressed in pink, everyone else
is dressed in brown and black.

Her mother has taught her
to gather attention

and revel in it

and these are lessons
that were never, never lost.

Narrator:
When Pink was six years old

her life changed suddenly
and forever.

Her father died,
leaving no will

to protect the interests
of his young second family.

The elegant mansion they had
lived in for only a year

was auctioned off.

With 15 heirs,
there was little to go around

and Pink's mother felt she had
no choice but to marry again.

She and her mother were thrown
on very hard times

when her father died

and then her mother made
a disastrous marriage

after her father's death

to a man who abused her and
who she finally had to divorce

so I think Nellie saw
a lot of tough times

and a lot of the dark side
of life.

Narrator: When Pink Cochran
was 14 years old,

she testified at her mother's
divorce trial.

The future reporter painted
a devastating portrait

of a marriage.

"My stepfather has been
generally drunk

"since he married my mother.

"When drunk he is very cross,
and cross when sober.

"I have heard him scold
my mother and call her names:

"A whore and a bitch.

I've seen her cry."

Kroeger:
Watching these events unfold

and you're someone
with Nellie's spirit,

what do you say to yourself?

This is not a sure thing.

Love, marriage may be nice

but it is not going to secure
my future or my family's future.

Narrator: Pink Cochran
would depend on no one.

In a Victorian world, she would
be an independent woman.

At age 15, she enrolled
at the Indiana Normal School

in western Pennsylvania

determined to enter one of
the few careers open to women.

She would become a teacher.

But after only one term,
her money ran out.

She would have to seek
her fortune

without the advantage
of a formal education.

"Looking down on the city
of Pittsburgh,"

said a writer for
the Atlantic Monthly

"is like looking into Hell
with the lid off."

Pittsburgh would be
Pink Cochran's home

for the next seven years

and the place where
luck and ambition

would finally come together.

Kroeger:
Pittsburgh was industrializing.

Great fortunes were being made.

It was a place
of opportunity and growth.

Her brothers had preceded her
to the town.

Her mother came
to make a home for them.

They found their way,
they took in boarders.

They made it work.

Narrator: In the lives of
the young working women she met,

Pink saw the dark side
of industrial America.

Girls as young as nine or ten

worked in canneries, foundries,
glass factories.

Their only way out -- marriage.

But Pink Cochran yearned
for more than factory work

or a husband.

She wanted the same
opportunities as her brothers

who landed white collar
jobs quickly

in spite of their
meager education.

Kroeger:
Why can't she be a clerk?

Of course at this time

only young men can be clerks,
not women.

Why can't she be a conductor
on a Pullman palace car?

Why can't she do the same thing?

Simply because she's a woman?

Narrator:
For five years she struggled

helping her mother
run the boarding house

seeking work
as a nanny or a tutor.

Pink was 20 years old
and going nowhere

when she read a column
in the Pittsburgh Dispatch

by Erasmus Wilson, known as
Q.O., "The Quiet Observer."

Q.O. Was a Civil War veteran
with a courtly manner

who looked on the past
with nostalgia.

He said that girls were useless
outside the sphere of marriage.

They should learn
to spin, sew, cook

and raise obedient children.

A woman who tried to make
a living outside that sphere

he wrote, was nothing less
than a monstrosity.

Kroeger:
Nellie reads this column

and just goes into a rage

because, of course, he has not
addressed the question

of the young women who have
really no choice

but to make their way.

They don't have families
taking care of them.

So she writes a letter

that is really imbued
with all this passion.

The editor himself reads
the letter.

He says, "This writer

who has signed herself
'Lonely Orphan Girl'" --

so he probably has an idea
that it's a woman --

"has no style, no punctuation,
no grammar,

"but I see a spirit here.

I see a spirit here."

He runs an ad --

a little snippet on the
editorial page that says

"Lonely Orphan Girl,
will you please come forward?"

And she does.

Narrator: As she later told
the story, Pink Cochran so impressed

the managing editor
of the Dispatch

that he hired her on the spot.

The odds are astronomical
against such a thing occurring.

At the same time,
it was an unsettled age

and amazing things did happen

and her very life
is the evidence of that.

Woman: ♪ Nelly Bly, Nelly
Bly, bring the broom along ♪

♪ we'll sweep the kitchen clean,
my dear ♪

♪ and have a little song.

Narrator: Pink Cochran took her
byline from a Stephen Foster song.

She wasn't the first woman
to work for a newspaper.

There was Margaret Fuller

who wrote for Horace Greeley's
respected Tribune...

Amelia Bloomer who started
her own newspaper, the Lily

filled with editorials
about women's rights...

And Jenny June, who pioneered
the women's page.

But Nellie Bly wanted to write
about what she saw

all around her--
poverty, child labor, divorce.

In one story,
Bly interviewed factory girls

not about their jobs, but about
their lives after work.

Some came home to emptiness
and boredom.

Others went to bars
and got drunk with strangers.

Bly asked one young woman

"Why do you risk your reputation
in such a way?"

Kroeger: The girl says, "I have
no money, I have no books

"I have nowhere to go.

"I work all day
in a miserable place.

What do you want from me?"

And I think that

is a much more powerful
way of telling the story

of the drudgery of their lives

than simply chronicling
what they do hour by hour.

Narrator: But over time,
Bly's editor assigned her stories

about flower shows, fashion
and rubber raincoats.

Trapped on "the ladies page,"
she rebelled

and invented herself
all over again.

Kroeger: She gets the
idea to go to Mexico

become a foreign reporter --

as she put it herself

"to do something no girl
has ever done before."

She writes fantastic letters
back from Mexico

about the food, about the
character of the people.

There's no detail
that escapes her.

When she goes to a bullfight

she describes how
they keep their breeches up --

I mean, things that you might

not even have the sense
to think to ask

she's answered
that question for you.

Narrator:
Bly's reports from Mexico

appeared regularly
in the Dispatch.

Her strategy had worked so well

that now her byline was
part of the headline.

But when she returned
to her old job

and colleagues like Q.O.,

she found herself back on
"the ladies page"

writing stories about theater
and the arts.

Finally, she'd had enough.

She decided to leave Pittsburgh
for good.

Kroeger: She suddenly doesn't
show up for work one day.

This is pure Nellie Bly.

They look around,
they find a note.

It says, "Dear Q.O.,
I'm off for New York.

Look out for me, Bly."

Narrator:
"Who owns the city of New York?

The Devil."

So said a 19th-century preacher.

But for an aspiring
young reporter

this was the place to be.

Bly arrived in New York City,
population: a million and a half,

a year after
the Statue of Liberty

took her place in the harbor.

She had come to America's
publishing capital

where magazines
like Harper's Weekly

displayed the fine art
of engraving.

Tabloids like the Police Gazette
turned vice into entertainment.

And photographer Jacob Riis
exposed the shadowy places

where the other half lived.

On street corners

immigrant boys sold
the great New York dailies

for a penny or two apiece.

If you wanted to be
a journalist in New York

you knew the street to visit.

It was Park Row
right near City Hall

and you could see the Tribune
office was one place

and the Times office
was another

and there was the World
and there was the Herald.

This was an almost exclusively
male crowd.

This was not a particularly
educated group of people.

It was really more like
the Wild West journalistically.

Narrator:
Looking down on Park Row

a brilliant new crop
of publishers and editors

hatched schemes
to sell more newspapers.

The most aggressive and
successful of them all --

Joseph Pulitzer,
publisher of the New York World.

Pulitzer designed his paper

for the immigrants
pouring into New York City.

He entertained them
with sensational stories

about riots, murders
and disasters

educated them
with crusading editorials

and taught them to be American.

The World was Nellie Bly's
kind of paper.

But she would have jumped at the
chance to work for any of them.

For nearly six months

she knocked on every door
on Park Row.

Stephens: I think they must
have greeted Nellie Bly

with her spunk and her desire
to be a reporter

with a rather
condescending amusement --

"Isn't this interesting?

"Isn't this cute

that this woman thinks she can
do these sorts of things?"

But she showed them, didn't she?

She came up
with a wonderful ruse

to actually meet
some of these people.

She decided that she would write
a freelance story

for the Pittsburgh paper
about what it would be like

for a woman journalist trying
to get a job in New York.

Narrator: Using her Dispatch
credentials, Bly made appointments

with every major editor
in the city.

She asked each of them
the same question:

"What chance does a woman have
in journalism?"

Kroeger:
They basically say no chance.

The things a woman
is suited for --

society reporting, for example--

she usually does not
want to do.

No editor in his right mind

is going to send a woman
to police court

or to cover a murder
or a fire

because it puts her life
at peril.

And so basically, why hire
a woman when you can hire a man?

Narrator: One editor told Bly
that women had a problem with accuracy

but her meticulous reporting

impressed some of
America's top journalists.

They called her
"talented, readable

bright as a new pin."

It gave her the confidence
to fast-talk her way

into the office
of John Cockerill

managing editor
of Pulitzer's New York World

and into a bold new kind
of journalism.

I think there were many times
in her life

where she managed to be at the
right place at the right time

and she was the right person
for the moment

and so when she met
with Pulitzer's managing editor

and almost insisted

on getting a job as a reporter
for the New York World

he had this idea
in the back of his mind

which was something of a dare.

"If you really want to be
a reporter

let's see what you've got."

Narrator:
The challenge was terrifying.

Bly would create a new identity,
pretend to be insane

and get herself committed

to the most notorious madhouse
in New York City.

She would experience
all the horrors of the asylum

from an inmate's point of view.

Once released,

she would write an exposé
for the New York World.

If it worked,
she would have a job.

This is actually
a brilliant strategy

because it allows the reporter
to say "I was there.

"I saw it with my own eyes.

"This isn't a collection
of statistics.

"This isn't an interview
with an asylum keeper.

"This isn't even a commentary
by some poor benighted inmate

"that has now been let loose

"who we could
never believe anyway

"because why were they there
in the first place?

You can believe me."

Narrator: The women's asylum
on Blackwell's Island

had long fascinated writers
and reporters.

On his American tour

Charles Dickens visited
the madhouse.

He was enchanted by the spacious
and elegant staircase

but oppressed
by the hopeless atmosphere.

He left in a hurry.

Some years later,
a reporter for Harper's Weekly

wrote a feature story
about the women's asylum.

After his supervised tour,
he concluded

that the asylum was a clean
and comfortable place

where inmates were treated
fairly, even tenderly.

Now, for the first time

a reporter would explore
the asylum

through the eyes
of a patient.

This was her chance.

She was not going to say no
and show any sort of cowardice.

She was not going to do that.

This was her moment
to get hired.

Narrator: Bly herself created the
scenario for her madhouse assignment.

As she later wrote,
she practiced all night

looking dazed and confused
in a mirror.

The next morning

she checked into a boarding
house for young ladies

claiming to be an immigrant
from Cuba named Nellie Brown.

Soon after her arrival

she began ranting incoherently,
terrifying the landlady

who called the police.

They took her
to police court

where she appeared
before a judge.

Kroeger: The judge looked
on her very kindly

and thought that she was
somebody's darling

who'd gone astray,

decided to call in the reporters
from all the newspapers

to see if running a story
about this girl

would help bring forward
her family.

Narrator: The Sun wondered,
"Who is this insane girl?"

The Times wrote
of "the mysterious waif

with the wild, hunted look
in her eyes."

The New York World, of course,
said nothing at all.

At Bellevue Hospital,
three medical experts concurred

that Nellie Bly suffered
from dementia

with delusions of persecution.

They took her by ferry

to the women's asylum
in the East River off Manhattan.

Obviously, it's one of

the first investigative
journalist's escapades

of deliberately putting yourself
in harm's way

to discover terrible truths
about public institutions.

And Blackwell's Island was
a very frightening place.

Narrator: When the doors
of the asylum shut behind her

Bly saw the same staircase
Dickens described

but she didn't have the choice
to leave.

Carr:
It's a very grim place.

The buildings were actually,
probably when they built them,

quite attractive,

but that doesn't change
the air of grimness about it.

Like many other
mental institutions

that have been closed down
that I've seen

there's a real sense of the
suffering that went on there.

Narrator: As a patient,
Bly saw the madhouse as a place

where insanity was
not so much cured as created.

"Take a perfectly sane
and healthy woman," she wrote,

"shut her up and make her
sit up straight

"from 6:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M.

"Do not allow her to talk
or move during these hours.

"Give her nothing to read.

"Let her know nothing
of the world or its doings

and see how long it will take
to make her insane."

Mealtimes punctuated the boredom
with a special kind of terror.

The inmates choked down
stale bread and rancid butter.

Some refused to swallow the food

and were threatened
with punishment.

For Nellie Bly

the most frightful experience
was being given a bath.

( door slams )

Kroeger: To be taken naked
by very unkindly attendants

to a big tin tub
filled with freezing-cold water

to stand there stark naked

have this water poured
over your head

in some approximation
of a washing --

that's the image
that stays with me the most.

Narrator:
"My teeth chattered

"and my limbs were goosefleshed
and blue with cold.

"Suddenly, I got three buckets
of water over my head --

"ice-cold water, too --

into my eyes, my ears,
my nose and my mouth."

"I think I experienced the
sensation of a drowning person

"as they dragged me

gasping, shivering and quaking,
from the tub."

"For once, I did look insane."

Bly wrote of listening to the
screams of a young woman

as the attendants bathed
and then beat her.

The next morning,
the woman was dead.

The doctors blamed her death
on convulsions.

Bly believed that some of the
inmates weren't crazy at all.

They were simply
destitute immigrants

unable to defend themselves

because they couldn't
speak English.

Carr: Anybody who can't
be made to fit neatly

is going to be put away.

I mean, they're going to find
a way to get rid of that person.

That's what's so ground-breaking

about the work
that Nellie Bly did

is that it reinforces
this notion

that, well, wait a minute,
asylums may not be hospitals.

They may be just clearinghouses

for people that
society finds troublesome

and that's hugely scandalous.

Narrator: In a few days,
Bly quit her theatrics

and begged to be re-examined.

But the more she tried to
assure her doctors of her sanity

the more they doubted it.

On the tenth day, Pulitzer sent
an attorney to rescue her.

"There was a certain pain
in leaving," she remembered.

"For ten days
I had been one of them.

It seemed intensely selfish to
leave them to their suffering."

This is, this is one
of the most amazing aspects

of the Nellie Bly story.

I mean, what a difficult test
the editor of the New York World

devised for her.

I think of all the escapades
she went on

this is probably the one

that must have taken
the most courage.

Narrator:
Just days after her release

Bly's madhouse exposé,
complete with illustrations,

appeared in the New York World.

Papers across America
printed the explosive series.

Doctors at the asylum denied
Bly's charges of cruelty,

but couldn't explain how she
had fooled them all so easily.

Kroeger: Joseph Pulitzer,
of course, loved this

and was asked by an old reporter
friend of Nellie's

what he thought of her feat

and he said,
"Obviously this girl

"is very suited
for this profession

and I have given her
a very large bonus."

Narrator: That year, New York City
voted a substantial increase in funds

to improve conditions
at the asylum

and Bly published a book
based on her newspaper story.

As for the reporters

who'd been duped by
the mysterious Nellie Brown

they had no choice

but to recognize
the new talent in their midst.

Bly was only 23
when she pioneered

a new kind of undercover,
investigative journalism.

They called it "stunt reporting."

It was aimed
at boosting circulation

but at the same time it was
very much aimed at investigation

and doing good
and changing society.

It involved, you know, Nellie
posing as a domestic employee

to see how
the employment agencies

were treating women who came
with little education

and little possibility
to find work.

It would have her

posing as an unwed mother
trying to sell a baby

to expose the baby-buying trade
in New York.

We use a million avenues
like this

that really
were about social reform

which, of course,
was such an important part

of what was happening
in the 1880s and 1890s.

Narrator:
Stunt reporting sold newspapers

and Pulitzer pushed for more.

Week after week, Bly filled
the pages of the New York World

with clever, accurate,
fearless reporting.

One of her stunts forced a
crooked lobbyist to leave town.

He never dreamed
she was a reporter.

And she really played up

this aura
of innocence and naïveté

to trap the people

who would have never thought
that she was what she was.

I don't know, they...

People thought that reporters
were hard-boiled men

who drank a lot and swore a lot
and smoked a lot of cigars

and Nellie Bly just didn't fit
that stereotype.

Narrator: By the new year of 1888,
Bly was performing a stunt a week.

At times she played the role
of the town reformer

at others, the town flirt.

She posed as
a chorus girl for a day

and told of dressing
in a crowded room,

tights that didn't fit,

and making a fool of herself
on stage.

While interviewing
the boxer John L. Sullivan,

she felt his muscles, asking:
"Do you take cold bath showers?

How are you rubbed down?"

( series of hard punches )

( fight bell ringing )

Afterwards, according to Bly,
Sullivan told her

"I have given you

more than I ever gave
any reporter in my life."

Always the main character
in any Nellie Bly story

is Nellie Bly herself

and she was very much
a character.

She wasn't modest
about anything.

I mean, this was very much
part of the Bly persona

and part of, I think

what made her reading
so compelling

because you were
just astonished

at what she was willing
to say about herself

including, you know,
her "sparkling eyes"

and her "fantastic smile" and
her "tiny little wasp waist."

We hear about these things
over and over and over again.

Corrigan: I mean,
reporters use what they have

and the fact
that she was a woman

was really a strike against her

so if she could turn that around

and somehow make

the fact of her being a female
interviewer an asset in a story,

I say more power to her.

Narrator:
In a Victorian world

Nellie Bly was a hint
of things to come.

As a new century approached

American women
were breaking the rules.

They rode bicycles,
wore bloomers

smoked cigarettes,
entered politics.

Decades before women
had the right to vote,

Bly interviewed
attorney Belva Lockwood,

the first woman allowed to plead
a case before the Supreme Court

and the second to run for
President of the United States.

Lockwood said her supporters
were neither working slaves

nor society dolls--

"thinking women,"
she called them.

When Bly
interviewed Susan B. Anthony

she wanted to know
if the feminist leader

had ever been in love.

"Yes," was the answer,

"but I never felt I could
give up my life of freedom

to become a man's housekeeper."

Corrigan: And what she seems
to do is involve her reader

in the daringness
of asking these questions.

So there was
a way she had, I feel

of hooking the reader into
the adventure of the interview

that she was conducting.

Narrator: By the fall of 1889,
Bly was working harder than ever

because now she wasn't the
only stunt girl in the business.

Kroeger: Joseph Pulitzer
had a very specific tactic

of always pitting talent
against talent.

He did this among his managers

and he did this
among his best reporters.

He would always
lay on competition.

The World
made copies of Nellie Bly--

picked women, other women
journalists, said:

"Do exactly this,
do exactly what she does.

Write exactly like she does."

We had young women

posing as flower vendors
outside the Union Club

to see who would
come and solicit them

among New York's social elite.

We would have Viola Roseborough
posing as a raggedy beggar

to see what it's like
to be a beggar for the day.

I'm not sure what
the social value of that was

but it certainly made
for good reading.

One of my favorites is --

"Meg Merrilies feels
what it's like to be shot!"

And there's a picture of her

standing against a wall,
very bravely

with an early
bulletproof vest on.

And she was actually shot

and they show a picture
of the bullet before and after.

And completely dangerous,
ridiculous stunts

that really proved nothing

and yet because
they grabbed your attention

these women did them

and it was a way for them
to enter journalism.

What I think stunt journalism
achieved for women

because it was effective

as a circulation booster
for almost a decade--

which is a pretty long time for
a gimmick to stay operative--

was the fact that it
gave women an opportunity

to display that they had the
skills of any good reporter

because you needed all
those skills to do this work.

Nellie Bly, two and a half years
into her tenure on the World

was a goddess.

She certainly did this better,
more sensationally

and to greater effect
than anyone else.

Narrator: In the fall of 1889,
the New York World

laid a cornerstone
for a brand-new building.

It would have a gold dome
and at 26 stories

would be the tallest
office building in the world.

To celebrate his new image

Pulitzer was searching
for a great new stunt.

Bly came up with
a brilliant idea

but she had to convince
Pulitzer's editor

to let her do what no one--
man or woman--

had ever done before.

Nussbaum:
Finally, he comes to her

and he says, "can you leave
for around the world

"the day after tomorrow?

"The steamship Augusta Victoria

"is leaving
for Southampton, England.

Can you be ready?"

And she says, "Yes, I can."

Narrator: It was the right time
in history for a record-breaking stunt.

Jules Verne's
Around the World in Eighty Days

had appeared in English
15 years before.

A spectacular drama
based on the novel

played to sold-out
crowds in New York City

and the fictional Phileas Fogg
was now an American hero.

But no one had even tried
to break Fogg's record.

Most Americans saw the world

through a popular device
called a stereoscope.

The brave few
who ventured around the world

were lucky to make it
in less than a year.

( clock chiming )

To do it in less than 80 days,

Bly would need every break
she could get.

Above all,
she would have to travel light.

She took
200 British pounds silver

and a small amount
of American money

as an experiment to see if
other countries would accept it.

She brought along
a 24-hour watch

and though she had
no room to spare

a bulky jar of cold cream.

She carried most of what
she took in a tiny gripsack.

Dressed in what would become
her signature coat

she was about to embark on

the longest journey
known to mankind

in the shortest possible time.

( foghorn blares )

November 14, 1889 --

Nellie Bly sailed
from New Jersey

on the steamship
Augusta Victoria...

Prepared to travel by ship,
train, carriage, donkey

rickshaw, sampan and catamaran.

She left with ominous thoughts
of killer storms and shipwrecks,

wondering if she'd
make it home alive.

Her editor
entertained no such fears --

"She'll add another
to her list of triumphs,"

said the headlines.

Nellie Bly, "a veritable
feminine Phileas Fogg."

If the goal
was selling newspapers

this was the perfect stunt.

The Augusta Victoria
crossed the Atlantic

in 6 days, 21 hours.

A correspondent
for the New York World

met Bly in England
with an irresistible proposal.

If she were willing to risk
falling behind schedule

she could meet Jules Verne.

A frantic train ride, carriage
ride and channel crossing later,

Bly was sharing wine
and biscuits with Jules Verne

at his home in Amiens, France.

And then he took her out
into the hall

where he had a map
with Phileas Fogg's route

and then on the same map
he lined up her route.

So she was very excited
about that.

( stopwatch ticking )

Narrator:
France to Italy.

Now she had to make
every connection on time

stopping to cable her newspaper
whenever she had the chance.

Day 11, November 25 --

Bly arrived by mail train
in Brindisi, Italy,

and went on a frenzied search

for the nearest
telegraph office.

"It was in a building
down a dark street," she wrote.

"It had one small window like
a shop window in a post office.

but it appeared to be closed."

Bly's arrival woke up the agent.

Before he sent her cable,
he had a question.

"In what country exactly
is this place called New York?"

Bly's cable went from Brindisi
to the main terminal in Rome

then through giant cables

strung for 2,500 miles along
the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean,

reaching New York City
in just a few hours.

But her detailed hand-written
report would travel by ship

and take two weeks.

In the meantime, her editor had
to make a lot out of a little.

Kroeger:
So the World vamped.

They had to keep interest up

so they were
running geography lessons

on the places
she was going to visit.

They were running reports
from other newspapers

about what people were saying

about fantastic Nellie
on the fly.

Robe: Well, it involved
all of the characteristics

of a great thing to watch.

It had unusual places,
unusual people

unusual modes of transportation.

She talked about eating
strange things

all sorts of things that people
who lived in New York

would never have
a chance to see.

It's got to be big,
it's got to be flashy

and Nellie Bly's trip around
the world certainly was.

Narrator: Her newspaper invented
gimmicks to keep the readers hooked.

"Around the World
with Nellie Bly"

became a popular board game.

The Nellie Bly guessing match
offered a free trip to Europe

to the person who came closest
to guessing her arrival time.

Kroeger:
The guessing blanks came in

by the hundreds
of thousands.

Senators were guessing,
judges were guessing

everybody got into the act,
and of course

this also served to keep
interest up in the trip

and to give them
some copy to write about.

Narrator:
Brindisi, Port Said, Aden --

two weeks of heat,
but no crisis.

December 10, Day 26 --

the steamship Victoria
anchored in the bay of Colombo.

Bly rushed ashore
to cable the New York World

that she was
two days ahead of schedule.

She celebrated too soon.

The stopover stretched
into a five-day delay

waiting for the arrival
of the steamship Nepaul.

"It's only fair to state,"
said the World,

"that the elements
are against her."

Delays like this
only made the race more exciting

boosting circulation

and launching the New York World
into a year of record profits.

Day 33 --
11,000 miles to go.

In Singapore, Bly bought
a monkey and named it McGinty.

Singapore to Hong Kong --
a monsoon engulfed the ship.

Bly wrote of her "fear of burial
beneath the angry sea."

Day 40 -- she arrived safely
in Hong Kong

to be greeted by
an unsettling piece of news.

Nussbaum: When she went to
the ticket office in Hong Kong

to buy her ticket to Japan

that's when she learned
about Elizabeth Bisland

who had been sent
by Cosmopolitan Magazine

to see if she
could beat Nellie Bly.

And the man
behind the ticket office says

"Miss Bly, I'm afraid
you are going to be beaten

in your trip
around the world."

So she thinks it over

and she says,
"No, I'm not racing with anyone.

"If somebody else thinks she
can do it faster than I can,

"that's her business.

"I only know what I have to do.

"I promised my editor
that I was going to go

"around the world
in 79 days or less.

May I please have
my ticket to Japan?"

Narrator:
Day 41 -- Christmas.

Nellie was halfway
around the world

spending the morning at
a leper colony in Canton, China

and having lunch
at the temple of the dead.

New Years Day 1890.

On board the Oceanic
sailing for Japan

Bly endured another
brutal storm.

She couldn't
afford to lose even a day.

Kroeger: At the point
at which it appeared

that she might not make it,
her first response is

"I would rather go back
to New York dead

than not a winner."

That's how important
it was to her.

Narrator:
Day 55 -- 8,000 miles to go.

The Oceanic set sail
across the pacific.

Two weeks of dark skies,
wind and water

inspire nothing but worry.

Where is her competitor,
Elizabeth Bisland?

( foghorn blares )

Day 68 -- the Oceanic
docked in San Francisco.

Hearing a rumor about a smallpox
quarantine on board ship

Bly jumped into a tugboat
with her monkey

and headed for land.

20,000 miles behind her --
3,000 to go.

( train whistle )

Nussbaum: Her trip home
was an absolute triumph

from the minute she
arrived in San Francisco.

As she says, "There were crowds,
flowers, cheering.

"The World had chartered
a special train

"to take me as far as Chicago.

"It consisted of one sleeping
coach and one engine

"and that trip
from San Francisco to Chicago

was the fastest on record --
67 hours."

Narrator:
In Chicago, in the wheat pit,

stockbrokers voted Nellie Bly
one of the boys

to the sound of three cheers
and a tiger.

Hallen and Hart
sang a new tune

"Globe Trotting Nellie Bly."

Elizabeth Bisland
had fallen hopelessly behind.

In Pittsburgh, pandemonium --

half the people in the cheering
crowd were women.

Pittsburgh to Jersey city --
300 miles to go.

The only question now --
what will her final time be?

( ticking clock )

( cheering crowd )

Narrator:
January 25, 1890 --

Nellie Bly arrived
in Jersey City

where her trip had begun.

Cannons boomed, timekeepers
stopped their watches:

72 days, 6 hours,
11 minutes, and 14 seconds.

She's beaten
Phileas Fogg by nearly a week.

"The stagecoach days
are ended,"

crowed the New York World.

"The new age
of lightning travel begun."

Around the world, a slender
young woman in a checkered coat

became a symbol
of American pride and power.

Robe:
She was a celebrity

at a time when
the whole notion of celebrity

was beginning
to be invented.

She was an advertiser's dream

because everyone
recognized her name

and everyone assumed that
if her name, Nellie Bly,

was connected with something,
it would sell

which showed
that she was big business.

Narrator: They named a hotel after
her, and a race horse and a train.

At age 25, Nellie Bly was
the most famous woman on earth.

Her moment didn't last long.

The age of lightning travel

ushered in the age of motion
pictures, horseless carriages

and yellow journalism.

In such a world

the stunt girl came to seem
more quaint than daring.

Some of Bly's best reporting
lay ahead.

In 1893, she interviewed

one of the most controversial
political figures in the country,

anarchist Emma Goldman.

When social unrest seemed to be
tearing the nation apart,

Bly went to Chicago to cover
the Pullman railroad strike.

Federal troops
had fired on workers

and she was the only
reporter to tell the story

from the strikers'
point of view.

Nellie Bly didn't want to be

a reporter
for the rest of her life

but she never found anything
else she could do as well.

She wrote a novel
which failed to sell.

At age 30, she married
a 70-year-old industrialist

named Robert Seaman

and for a while, enjoyed life
as a wealthy New York matron.

After ten years of marriage,
her husband died.

She took over
his Iron Clad Factory,

advertising herself as
"the only woman in the world

personally managing industries
of such a magnitude."

When the business went bankrupt

Bly returned to reporting,
using her forum as a columnist

to find homes
for abandoned children.

Kroeger:
I think she was quite prominent,

but I also think she was seen
as more relic than icon.

Young reporters no longer
saw her as a model.

They saw her more
as a curiosity,

as someone who was kind of
left over from another age.

Narrator: Nellie Bly died
of pneumonia in 1922.

She was 58 years old.

"Energy rightly applied
can accomplish anything,"

had always been her motto.

The girl from Cochrans Mills
who could hardly spell

was proclaimed, in the end,
"The best reporter in America."

Major funding for American Experience is
provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

National corporate funding is provided by
Liberty Mutual and the Scotts Company

American Experience
is also made possible

by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting

and by contributions to your PBS station
from viewers like you. Thank You.

We are PBS.

Captions converted to subtitles
and corrected by Mr_Bramble.