Last week I talked a bit about unreliable narrators, the importance of verifying information, and the process a historian must go through to make sure what’s written is as accurate as possible. This week, let’s take a look at this in action with a couple of examples, one that’s kind of related to Garroway and one that isn’t. We’ll handle the non-Garroway example first as a warm-up to how these kinds of myths begin.
Ask anybody about women in 1950s television and the name Betty Furness comes up past a certain point.1 Betty became a presence as a spokesperson for Westinghouse, famously demonstrating new appliances and opening refrigerator doors and so forth on live television. That mention of “refrigerator door” will inevitably get people talking about the night Betty Furness couldn’t get the refrigerator door to open and what a fiasco that was. And it’s a great story…except that Betty Furness wasn’t in town that night, and another lady (June Graham) was filling in for her:
And just so you’ll see the difference, here’s Betty Furness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3r2uq9ulRU
Now, let’s take a look at a story more directly related to Dave Garroway. And since it’s a story involving J. Fred Muggs, I will have to tell it carefully2, but I will tell it regardless.
There is a story that involves J. Fred Muggs biting Martha Raye. Since it involves Muggs, the assumption is automatically made that the incident happened on Today, and it’s kind of become part of the program’s mythology since many stories are out there of Muggs’ less-than-likable antics as he grew older.3 But what does the evidence tell us?
Well, do a little digging in the stacks and you find the story’s more complicated. You find out that Muggs, who was often a guest on other programs, was doing a guest spot on Martha Raye’s own television program. The incident happened April 17, 1954, as this wire service story published in the following Monday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune (among other papers) outlines:
And Life magazine provided photographic evidence, as well as a write-up, in this article (there are more photos of the Muggs incident a couple or three pages in).
What’s the lesson of it all? It’s that you have to check these things out. And it’s not just in regards to television history; it’s in any form of history.4 Just because a story sounds great doesn’t mean it’s true. It is the job of the historian to sort through all the available evidence (and seek every bit of it humanly possible), then write from that.
- Betty Furness – who was an awesome, take-no-crap person who was a little ahead of her time in some ways – also comes into Garroway’s story. At several points, stories circulated that they were an item. Furness was also said to have knitted socks for Dave.
- Stories regarding Muggs must be told carefully. It’s safe to say his caretakers have been diligent about protecting his reputation.
- There are accounts of Muggs being less than polite to Today guests, getting smacked or bitten by him. But none of those incidents, at least any we know of, involved Martha Raye.
- In one of my other areas of interest, there’s a long, drawn-out story about President Nixon’s request to have the Navy band play “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” as the Apollo 11 astronauts stepped from the recovery helicopter. It’s a great story; Nixon told it in his memoirs, and just about everything since written about the recovery says that was the song playing when they did. But it wasn’t, and the videotape tells us the real story: “Columbia” played during the recovery, while the song played when the astronauts left the helicopter was an uptempo medley of “Hail Columbia” and “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” See? I told you it was a long, drawn-out story. I bet you’re sorry you clicked on this endnote now.