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MH: [He] . . . was someone you'd recognize as having
grown up in the West.
BE: Yes, he grew up in the lumber camps and sawmills of the
state of Washington, where his father was a railroad engineer, on a
line that served those lumber camps and sawmills. So he grew up
singing the work songs and the labor songs, and he was familiar
with the migrant workers who worked the fields. He was a
working-class guy with more than working-class ambitions.
So he could combine the two. He was at home in any group of
swells, politicians, princes, whatever, but he was at heart a
working-class guy and was more than comfortable with people who got
their hands dirty.
MH: He had a natural elegance . . . a kind of American
aristocrat.
BE: Oh yeah, the photo I chose for the cover was not an
accident. It was a publicity photo for CBS. The guy is dashing. He
is on the running board of a London taxi. You want to get in that
taxi with him.
MH: You get a sense, looking at this photograph, he's
looking you in the eye. He's sizing you up. He's got his hat at an
angle. He's about ready to climb in, a man of action and of
absolute elegance, too.
BE: He knew that. He was using the visual, too. He was
perfect for television.
MH: Let's talk about the European news roundup.
BE: I read that this had happened a couple of times, but it
took months of planning. The technical capabilities of radio in
those days were such that it was a real feat to get several world
capitals talking with each other. And remember, this is shortwave.
Sunspots could interfere with the transmission, all kinds of things
could happen. This was really difficult to do, and they did it
within a few hours. This was not thought possible. And they did it
on a Sunday, in Europe. Sundays in 1930s Europe were a whole
different deal. They went to church or picnics in the country.
There was no one in the office.
So Murrow had to arrange for broadcasting facilities in four or
five capitals. He had to bribe public officials in some cases to
get somebody there, to clear broadcast through censorship. It was
just an ordeal. And all of it shortwave on a signal through London
to New York. And they pulled it off. When they were through, Paley
said, "That's great, let's do another one tomorrow." And they've
been doing them ever since.
MH: After the Second World War was over, where did that
leave Edward R. Murrow?
BE: He went to New York and became an executive for a time
and hated it. He was responsible for some interesting programming
innovation and prepared the network for television. But he was just
not happy sitting in boardrooms and meeting with sponsors. He would
much rather be on the air and a working reporter.
And indeed I'm glad he did leave it. We wouldn't have See It
Now and Small World and other programs he did on TV.
MH: Was See It Now a natural progression from his
radio broadcasts?
BE: Yes, he had a program that started on radio. Actually,
it started on phonograph records. He was introduced to Fred
Friendly by his agent. Fred Friendly was a guy looking to make
sound recordings of the great speeches and great voices of the '30s
and '40s, through the war-Churchill, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and
all. Apparently, no one had recordings of these great speeches. So
they collaborated and ended up putting out four records. They were
very successful. It was called I Can Hear It Now.
Then they got together on a radio documentary series called
Hear It Now. Only six months later they were ready to go
into television. So naturally they called it See It Now.
See It Now was the prototype of today's 60 Minutes
and all the other magazine shows. Except it was very hard news.
There wasn't a lot of featurette-type material. It was serious
news. In the '50s, that would have been NATO, the rebuilding of
Europe, the polio epidemic, the Cold War, McCarthyism, Korea-a lot
of things to talk about in the '50s.
MH: At that time he wore every hat, in a way.
BE: He was co-producer with Fred Friendly, and of course he
hosted it and was the principal reporter on camera.
Another interesting program they did-they did two shows on the
health effects of smoking. This was 10 years before the Surgeon
General's report. Of course, Murrow smoked through both programs on
camera, as he did every program.
MH: He had bad lungs.
BE: He smoked four packs a day, which I can tell you, as a
smoker, it's just not possible. You would have to light
continuously from one cigarette end to another.
MH: So See It Now ended in a kind of battle, didn't
it?
BE: It ended because Murrow kept doing these controversial
programs and upsetting Paley, who just pulled the plug on it in the
end. It had also lost its sponsor and had been shifted back to what
they then called the Sunday ghetto. It had a brief reign in prime
time, but after the McCarthy broadcast, it went back to weekends.
[That's where] [y]ou put all the brainy stuff that television did
back in those days, like Omnibus, which was a magnificent
art series.
MH: Didn't he feel betrayed? He really thought Paley turned
on him, didn't he?
BE: Oh yeah. He didn't blame Paley personally though. This
is the interesting thing about Murrow. His boogeyman was Frank
Stanton, who was Paley's number two and the president of CBS News.
Paley was the chairman. He could not imagine that Paley was doing
him wrong, so it had to be Stanton.
Stanton's still around, by the way. . .
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