As we wrote in our recent send-off to Robert McNeil, hard journalists are generally outside of our biographical wheelhouse on Travalanche. But celebrity journalism is a horse of a different color. We’ve certainly written about a dozen or two newspaper columnists and critics from back in the day, and the occasional character from the TV news divisions, such as Barbara Walters or Dave Garroway and others, professionals who were primarily broadcasters (as opposed to comedians who sometimes did hard interviews, of which there are many more, i.e. David Frost or Dick Cavett). Anyway, no journalist was more substantive than Edward R. Murrow (Egbert Roscoe Murrow, 1908-1965), yet even he was such an American institution he could spend down a little of his gravitas capital in the more frivolous precincts of show business.
Murrow’s was (and remains) one of the most revered names in broadcast journalism. Born to Quaker parents on a farm in Polecat Creek, North Carolina, Murrow spent most of his later youth in Washington State near the Canadian border. He majored in communications in Washington State College (now WSU). In the crucial year of 1935 he was hired by CBS radio (which had not yet established its news division) and married Mayflower descendant Janet Huntington Brewster, who also became an on-air personality. In ’37, Murrow was promoted to the network’s Director of European operations. There he built up a team of journalists who assisted him in covering the build-up to World War Two and then the war itself. Among them were William Shirer (whose books on those years are still considered among the most authoritative and widely-read), Eric Sevaried, Howard K. Smith, Charles Collingwood, and others, informally known as “Murrow’s Boys”. Wartime coverage was both hazardous and (to audiences) glamorous, and with his catchphrases “This is London” and “Good night and good luck”, Murrow became one of the most recognized personalities in radio.
After the war, and nearly a decade abroad, Murrow returned home, where he created the weekly news interview program Hear it Now in 1950, which then became See It Now in its television incarnation (1951-58). His biggest coup on that show was his 1954 Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy, which marked the beginning of the end of the Second Red Scare. Another of his famous pieces, his last for CBS, was Harvest of Shame (1960) about the plight of migrant workers.
Murrow had died six months before I was born, but his name lived on legend as broadcasting’s greatest journalist. (The living lion when I was a kid was Cronkite). The legend was burnished by cameos in movies like Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and Sink the Bismarck! (1960). There were also high-profile bio-pics such as HBO’s Murrow (1986) starring Daniel J. Travanti, then at his height as the star of Hill Street Blues, and George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck (2005) starring David Strathairn.
And then there was Person to Person (1953-1959). As if See It Now wasn’t enough to keep Murrow in front of audiences, there was this second, lighter show, on which he did remote hook-ups with newsmakers in their actual homes. While Murrow interviewed them long distance from a studio set, the celebrities would show the audience where and how (and sometimes with whom) they lived. Naturally, there was a certain amount of p.r. craft on the interviewee end — it was a charade, in other words. But the show was live, and the camera doesn’t lie, so you can learn tons from watching these old shows, and so I have. A great many, perhaps a majority, of the people Murrow interviewed on Person to Person were showfolk. And Murrow, though a completely serious and substantive guy, gamely played along with his subjects, playing straight man to their sometimes silly presentations, chuckling over their self-indulgent shenanigans.
Murrow hosted 211 episodes of Person to Person. His protege Charles Collingwood took the show over during its last two years through 1961. Some of the many celebrities Murrow interviewed during his tenure on the show included Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, Phil Silvers, Bert Lahr, Beatrice Lillie, Billy Rose, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Maurice Chevalier, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, Buffalo Bob Smith, Paul Winchell, Ed Sullivan, Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Robert Q. Lewis, Sid Caesar, Red Buttons, Faye Emerson, Gertrude Berg, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Marlon Brando, Orson Welles, Jack E. Leonard, Liberace, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, and scores of others. Some from outside show business included Gloria Vanderbilt, Salvador Dali, Mickey Spillane, David Sarnoff, Leonard Bernstein, and Toots Shor.
Murrow also interviewed JFK and Jackie on Person to Person. After leaving CBS, Murrow joined the Kennedy administration as head of the U.S. Information Agency, which, among other things, oversaw Voice of America. By the time of Kennedy’s assassination, Murrow was already ill with what turned out to be lung cancer. (Have you ever seen a picture of him when he wasn’t smoking? I haven’t). Murrow quit USIA in early 1964 due to his condition, and passed away about a year later.
For more on show biz history, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous and stay tuned for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.
(Travalanche) 
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