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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

An Ode to Charles Kuralt and Edwin Newman

   

A look at my two favorite old-school TV news reporters, after the jump ……  

For many of my peers, it was either Walter Cronkite, or else Chet Huntley/David Brinkley as their touchstones in TV news reporters – and worthy choices. For me, it was Charles Kuralt of CBS – who had a full career at CBS – and Edwin Newman of NBC – who was a utility newsman, adaptable to seemingly every situation. Later in their careers, the two men showed sides of themselves we had not seen before, yet which only served to endear their work to me even more. Let’s have a fresh look at their careers … Oh, and and by-the-by: I liked them both long before I began to lose my own hair.

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While he is perhaps best known for his human interest “On the Road” series, the CBS newsman Charles Kuralt had a prior career first as a newspaper reporter, then as a foreign correspondent plus covering major national news stories in the 1960’s. If all of the above wasn’t enough: he founded what is – still – one of my favorite TV shows, CBS Sunday Morning. After his death, a surprising revelation came out about him, which sullied his reputation in the eyes of some. Yet he remains one of my all-time favorites … more than seventeen years after his death.

Born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1934, he took to journalism at a young age: winning a children’s sports-writing contest for a local newspaper by writing about – presaging his later career – a dog that ran loose on the field during a baseball game.  He moved with his family to Charlotte (when his father was named director of Public Welfare for the county) and at that city’s Central High school was voted “Most Likely to Succeed”. He was named one of four National Voice of Democracy winners at age 14, earning a $500 scholarship which he used to attend the University of North Carolina.

Once there, he became the editor of the Daily Tar Heel – the University of North Carolina student newspaper. Charles Kuralt said that in the wake of that landmark case that he wrote some editorials criticizing the slow pace of integration. He concluded one editorial by asking North Carolina legislators that – if it would take as long to desegregate the elementary schools as they said it would – “Why not start by opening up this flagship university to all of the people of this state – after all, it belongs to them”. And Kuralt felt pride when he was denounced by name on the floor of the state legislature – albeit only as a pawn of Communism – not as a full-fledged member.

After school, he became a reporter at the Charlotte News, eventually writing a column – also presaging his later career – entitled Charles Kuralt’s People which earned him an Ernie Pyle Award for 1956.

This led to a job as a writer at CBS, where in one of his audio books he mentioned reviewing a script that Edward R. Murrow was to deliver. He (very gingerly) asked Mr. Murrow about what Kuralt thought was a minor grammatical error, and then related his great delight (and great relief, too) about Murrow’s response: “Good catch”.

He then began to hit-the-road: at age 24, Kuralt was made a CBS news correspondent – the youngest in the history of the organization. He began in Latin America, and also on the West Coast. And he had his share of big stories – held at gunpoint in the Belgian Congo, ambushed in Vietnam, covering the civil rights movement, the Kennedy-Nixon campaigns. Eventually, much of his work appeared on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

And yet: “I had known, from the beginning, I was better suited to feature stories than wars, polar expeditions, politics and calamities”. In addition, he did not like the competitive nature of the news correspondent business. “I was sure that Dick Valeriani of NBC was sneaking around behind my back— and of course, he was!—getting stories that would make me look bad the next day. Even though I covered news for a long time, I was always hoping I could get back to something like my little column on the Charlotte News.”

And that is how he was able to convince CBS to let him go On the Road just for a 3-month trial back in 1967. Walter Cronkite was initially … well, less-than-enthusiastic. “I objected to doing the On the Road pieces at first … but with the very first one he did, I was convinced that we better get them on the air”.

It turned into a quarter-century feature, with more than six hundred stories (from every state in the union) and with its initial success due (in no small part) to being a break from the late 1960’s reports of riots, Vietnam stories and the like. “Two-minute cease-fires”, as Time Magazine referred to them. They included weddings, a vigil for a returning Vietnam vet and other stories that would ordinarily would receive little attention … yet seemed indispensable if Charles Kuralt and his travelling crew came upon them. I recall from his audio books about his stumbling upon a whittling contest(?) in his native North Carolina and – upon approaching the organizer – Charles Kuralt was told, “I thought you might find us”.

Along the way, Charles Kuralt wrote several books (most of which he narrated personally as audio books) about the USA and wonderful places he has visited …. although (for all of the rural, unspoiled areas he loved) he had a soft spot for New York City, which would seem strange for others … but not for Charles Kuralt. His 1995 memoirs, A Life on the Road even had travel tips, coming from someone who spent a life on the road. One memorable tip: bring a large safety pin when staying at a hotel/motel … because the window curtains never quite close completely at night, and you risk having a blast of sunlight in your face before you may want it.

For many of the younger people reading this, you may best know him as a TV host – in January, 1979 he began with the words, “Here begins something new. I’m Charles Kuralt and this is SUNDAY MORNING, a 90-minute CBS News program that starts right now”.

CBS Sunday Morning was designed as a Sunday newspaper magazine: with the headlines (and some breaking news) yet also film/book/TV reviews, feature stories, travel spots, and some over-easy commentaries. Even their lead story – which can involve some controversy or hot-button aspects – is done gently: I have seen pundits who normally appear on the shout-fests … and yet, speak like normal human beings on this show. And it always concludes with its Moment of Nature – a silent film of natural life from across the country (and even the world).

Charles Kuralt announced his retirement from CBS in 1994 (at age 60), saying he wanted to be able to travel more and I recall watching Bernard Shaw announce it on CNN with words that went something like this:

If I could add a personal note: I began my career at CBS and was lucky to have met this man who helped me find my way in the news business.

When it came time for his final appearance in April, 1994 I was quite apprehensive. Sunday mornings would no longer be the same, and what if they replace him with some doofus? I cannot tell you how happy I was to see CBS radio host Charles Osgood appear on-screen as his replacement: having heard many of his radio essays, I knew he was the perfect choice. And while I have not liked some of the changes made since (the features are often too short) it still seems like what Charles Kuralt built .. remains.

   

Charles Kuralt died just three years after his retirement (from a heart attack that may have been aggravated by lupus) ….  on the 4th of July, 1997 – quite apropos for such a chronicler of the American experience. He was buried at a University of North Carolina cemetery in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

And yes, it would not be right to close without acknowledging a bizarre aspect of his life. In addition to his (second) wife Suzanna (“Petie”), who always waited for him to come home from the road, he had a mistress named Pat Shannon who lived in Montana (and who knew Kuralt was married). Due to his travels (and his wife knew he had a fishing cabin in Montana), Charles Kuralt almost had a “second family”, giving Shannon and her children (from a prior marriage) a great deal of money saying, “Don’t worry, we’re rich”. But the public only knew of this double-life existence due to his mistress contesting his will.

You can read more at this link – and I’ll admit it gave me pause. Yet in-the-end, I could not let this erode the admiration I had for him, and this USA Today editorial felt the same.

Over the course of his career, he won three Peabody awards and ten Emmy Awards for his broadcast journalism, plus two Grammys for Best Spoken Album recording.

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By contrast with the seemingly always-warm (or your favorite uncle) Charles Kuralt …. I did not get the warm-and-fuzzies from NBC’s Edwin Newman at first, who seemed to be of the “no-nonsense” variety of reporter. Yet the outer veneer hid an equally erudite man who took issues seriously, yet never himself – and one always felt calm hearing the news from him. Next, news anchors and others referred to him as “Ed” on-screen ….. and anyone named Ed is a plus in my book. And his sense of humor would eventually emerge, leading him to even be a guest host on Saturday Night Live – yes, it’s on NBC, but they didn’t honor every reporter this way.

Edwin Newman was born in Manhattan in January, 1919 (less than a month after my father was born there, as well) and had a brother named Morton who became a longtime reporter for the Chicago Daily News. He was a 1940 political science graduate of the University of Wisconsin, and was a writer for The Daily Cardinal newspaper.

He worked for (what is today) the United Press International wire service, and heard the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor while listening to a radio concert. When he called his office to see if he was needed, *”Hell, yes!”* was the response: and he took dictation for nearly twelve hours. He served in the US Navy as a signal officer (though he served mostly stateside). Following the war he returned to UPI before working for CBS Radio as an assistant to Eric Sevareid.

From 1949-1952 he worked freelance before joining NBC full-time, where he remained for thirty-two years. He spent the rest of the decade as a bureau chief (in London, Rome and Paris) and years later won a Legion of Honor award in France for his work covering France: from the Algerian War to the ascension of Charles de Gaulle as president and his 1970 funeral.

As noted, he could best be described as a utility man for NBC when he joined the television side of NBC. One saw him as a correspondent, studio anchor, guest host or narrator of investigative documentaries, and on the Today Show, Huntley/Brinkley, Meet the Press and other NBC news programs. “I think I worked on more documentaries than anybody else in TV history“, he once said.

He covered the Republican and Democratic conventions from 1960-1984 and at the 1968 Chicago conventions, he and his colleagues were outfitted with electronic backpacks, enabling them to roam freely and conduct impromptu interviews on the convention floor with delegates.

He was also there for breaking news: announcing on NBC radio the assassination of JFK and he anchored NBC’s television 1968 coverage of the slayings of both Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. When RFK’s funeral train was en route, Edwin Newman improvised his coverage, citing historical facts pertinent at several stops along the way. He was also the only journalist to interview Japan’s Emperor Hirohito before his 1975 visit to the United States, which was part of a pattern: he conducted numerous interviews with newsmakers for NBC from 1967-1976.

He also spent time away from radio and TV: hosting some Boston Symphony summer concerts from Tanglewood and also was a part-time Broadway theater critic from 1965-1971.

He hosted two presidential debates: the first very Ford-Carter debate in 1976 and most famously in a 1984 Reagan-Mondale debate … when Ronald Reagan overran the time limit for his closing statement ………      

As time ran out, Mr. Newman stopped Reagan in mid-sentence, or “in mid-piety,” as Washington Post television critic Tom Shales put it.

“Reagan had launched into an ode to American youth,” Shales wrote, “when Newman, according to the rules set down by the League of Women Voters, cut him off. The president never got to his shining city on a hill.”

Yet he did not truly achieve fame away from the newsdesk until the publication of his first book, 1974’s Strictly Speaking – that reached #1 on the NY Times best-seller list – in which he took people to task for their misuse of the English language. He took on some tough battles: believing that the word “hopefully” was a misuse (rather than using either “it is to be hoped” or “in a hopeful frame of mind”) and was said to have had a sign echoing Dante in his office, “Abandon ‘Hopefully’, All Ye Who Enter Here” … which not everyone saw being as cataclysmic as he did. He also wrote of lunchtime chats with NBC higher-ups who use the phrase “you know” excessively … and then retorted, “If I already know, why are you telling me?”. He continued, “However, after eating lunch alone for awhile … I decided to end this practice”.

He followed-up with A Civil Tongue in 1976, which enabled him to serve (for a number of years) as the head of the usage panel at Houghton-Mifflin’s dictionary panel.

But lest-one-think he was all seriousness: in time, he showed his sense of humor by appearing as himself in numerous TV/film roles. These included The Pelican Brief and Spies Like US (in film), plus Newhart, The Golden Girls, Murphy Brown and even The Hollywood Squares (on TV).

As mentioned: he retired in 1984, followed by a guest host spot on Saturday Night Live. Joe Piscopo (portraying Tom Snyder) would not accept Newman’s explanation that he was retiring ‘voluntarily’, saying with a smirk “Yeah, you retired voluntarily, just like Nixon!”. One of the show’s sketches portrayed a distraught woman phoning a suicide hotline – which Newman answers … and corrects her grammar.

   

In his later years, he conducted interviews on some cable networks and moderated panel discussions at universities. Last decade, he and his wife moved to England to be closer to their daughter and it was there that Edwin Newman died in August, 2010 at the age of 91. In addition to his Legion of Honor Award from France, he also won an Overseas Press Club Award in 1961 and a Peabody Award in 1966. When Brian Williams announced his death on the NBC Evening News, he spoke for many by saying:

“To those of us watching at home, he made us feel like we had a very smart, classy friend in the broadcast news business”.

I cannot find it on video, but Edwin Newman sang(!) during his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live. Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone was written in 1930 by Sam Stept (with lyrics by Sidney Clare) and is an admonishment between parting lovers: where the singer asks the other to either speak nicely of them (or not at all).

In lieu of Edwin Newman, below you can hear Willie Nelson sing it, to close this essay.


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