Where it all began…and ended

Of all the historic studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the most famous is Studio 8H. Since 1975, 8H has been famous as the home of Saturday Night Live. For that reason, it’s the studio everybody hopes to see on the NBC Studio Tour. There’s no question SNL is the chief tenant of 8H; there’s an elaborate permanent set, the corridors are lined with photos of previous hosts and cast members, and Lorne Michaels has a ninth-floor office with a glass window overlooking the studio.¹ Outside the balcony entrance there’s a display case where costumes from famous SNL characters are on display.²

But that’s not all 8H is known for. If we could look at a cross-section of the big studio’s history, we’d find all sorts of history. We would see, for instance, the many times NBC News based special events coverage – election nights, space missions – from the big studio. We would see live drama and musical programs from the early days of television. Going back into the days of radio, we’d learn about stars like Fred Allen hosting their series from 8H.³ We’d learn the studio has had several names over the years.⁴ We’d learn that 8H had seen innovation, and in itself is something of a marvel.⁵

And, of course, you cannot talk about 8H without talking about its most prestigious resident. For next to that display case near the ninth floor balcony entrance, there’s another case that preserves for posterity the music stand used by the great Arturo Toscanini. RCA president David Sarnoff persuaded Toscanini to head up a symphony orchestra for NBC, believing the radio medium needed to improve its commitment to cultural and artistic programming. From 1937 to his retirement in 1954⁶ Toscanini headed NBC’s symphony orchestra, which performed regularly for the network, and performed for many of those years from 8H.⁷

By now you’re no doubt asking what all this has to do with Dave Garroway. Well, I had to tell you those stories to get to this story. In a way, 8H was where Dave Garroway’s NBC career began, and ended.

As a 24-year-old NBC page, Dave got to know the RCA Building very well. As a tour guide, he had to know the studios very well in order to explain their purpose to visitors. Sometimes he was in proximity with dignitaries and celebrities; directing Lowell Thomas to the correct studio, or after a tour he led drew particular praise, being chosen by David Sarnoff to lead tours for distinguished visitors. And sometimes Garroway would watch history unfold. When Toscanini was hired to lead the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Garroway saw the preparations that were being made to keep the notoriously temperamental maestro happy: the tour routes that were changed, the corridors that were set up, all to minimize the chances of Toscanini getting annoyed.

Sometimes Garroway would get to perform page duties during Toscanini’s rehearsals, during the months before the first concert. As the “stand-in” page, Garroway guarded the door of 8H so no one could get in or out while the great man conducted. And in time, Garroway assisted with the live broadcasts. Years later he would remember all the special considerations; for instance, the programs given to audience members were printed on silk⁸, so the rustle of audience members turning pages wouldn’t spoil the performance or irritate the great conductor.

But not all was perfect even then. One evening, in the middle of a Brahms symphony, a woman in the audience began to retch. She could not leave; the studio was too full. Garroway remembered how the smell filled the studio. It soon reached Toscanini, who looked back just long enough to glare at the audience. During an intermission the pages brought in buckets of sand and cleaned up as best they could, while the unfortunate woman was taken away in a wheelchair, a bag over her face to hide her embarrassment. Other memories of 8H would dot Garroway’s memory, such as being there when a guest on Fred Allen’s show literally endangered his safety by flubbing his lines.⁹

Over the years Garroway’s duties would bring him through 8H. But there would be none so poignant as June 15, 1961.

As programs sometimes do, Today had shifted from its usual home in mid-June 1961. Studio 3B, the program’s usual home, needed to be vacated for a while, so Today was shifted into 8H, which was spacious and available. Framed correctly by the studio cameras, no one would really know the difference.¹⁰ But bigger changes were coming. The biggest was that on May 26, Garroway had requested his release from Today. There were several factors behind this. Dave’s wife had died the previous month. He was wearing out after years of a grueling schedule. He was at loggerheads with NBC, which wanted to move Today under the control of the news department, change the format, and greatly reduce Garroway’s role and influence on the program. The management of the news division didn’t see Garroway as a journalist, and this irked him no end.¹¹

For these and other reasons, Garroway wanted out of his Today obligations. And it happened that on his last week, Today was originating from the studio where some of his most memorable page duties had taken place. During one segment in that final week, Garroway donned his old page jacket and took viewers on a tour of 8H. The tour featured photographs and recordings of those Toscanini performances, of Fred Allen’s programs, and of other stars of a bygone age.

On Garroway’s last live program¹², he took the last two minutes to say farewell, although he insisted it wasn’t really a farewell. “I’m leaving television very temporarily,” he said, “for enough time to find out what’s going on, listen to people instead of talk – when you talk a lot, you don’t hear much, you know, and you don’t read much either when you do the Today show.” Garroway expressed his desire to learn more about the world so he could come back through television “and do more to preserve that in which I hope you and I believe, this system of government, and the human individual.” He thanked viewers for all the letters they had written and said they would each be answered, but it may take a while, “so let me thank you right now, very much, for them.” And one final time, Garroway wished the audience “much love…and peace.”

A decade and a half later, Garroway would recall his last day as the most memorable of his career, as he walked “slowly and regretfully” from the studio…the studio that had figured so often in so many vivid memories from his career at NBC.

:: While we’re talking about NBC’s famous studios, may I please recommend you treat yourself to a copy of William Bartlett’s splendid book NBC And 30 Rock? It is thoroughly researched, well-written and lavishly illustrated, and I guarantee you’ll find some happy surprises therein. Seriously, treat yourself to one.

1. Here you can enjoy Tina Fey giving you a guided tour of the place she called her work home for many years. Enjoy.
2. For instance, on my first visit to 30 Rock many years ago during a public studio tour, the Church Lady costume was one of the items in the case.
3. On a quiet Sunday morning a few summers ago I had the privilege of roaming an empty 8H during a private tour with a pal who worked for NBC. It was an incredible moment. As I stood on the studio floor next to that famous stage, you’d think the temptation would be strong to shout out the famous seven-word phrase that starts each Saturday’s hour and a half of mischief. But all I could think of was a moment in 1940 and a considerably irked golden eagle who refused to come down from the rafters of this very studio, expressing his opinions all over the studio audience of Fred Allen’s program.
4. When NBC converted the studio for color television in the early 1960s there was a thankfully short-lived effort to rename 8H the “Peacock Studio.” But an alternate name, going back to the 1930s, was the “Auditorium Studio.” The smaller nearby Studio 8G, by the way, was referred to as the “Guild Studio.”
5. Think about it: a giant auditorium, spanning the width of a city block, built into the eighth and ninth floors of a building in the middle of Manhattan. What kind of engineering genius not only dreams that up, but makes it work?
6. Although not continuously; for a few years, Leopold Stokowski was principal conductor during a dispute between Toscanini and NBC.
7. When 8H was converted for television in 1950 many performances shifted to Carnegie Hall. Many of the concerts that were released on records were recorded at Carnegie Hall, whose acoustics were reportedly superior to those 8H offered.
8. You can see an example here.
9. It involved a guest appearance by a renowned flagpole sitter who demonstrated…well, flagpole sitting. When he got distracted and flubbed his lines, comedy ensued. I’ll tell the story in the book.
10. This happens more often than you would think. For instance, one summer David Letterman’s NBC program originated from 8H while some technical upgrades were made to Studio 6A, and unless you knew what to look for (or saw Letterman’s tour of the studio during one episode during this time) you couldn’t tell the difference on the screen. Today also used 8H as an alternate studio for similar purposes at least once during the Bryant Gumbel years.
11. In spite of his fame as a hep disk jockey, Garroway had done some serious reporting during his time at KDKA and with NBC prior to World War II. And his record on Today showed he could be an incisive interviewer. Garroway may not have fit the classic profile of a hard-nosed reporter that News might have wanted, but he had demonstrated he could hold his own. Management’s attitude comes across as more “he’s not one of us.” Then again, there were plenty of tensions between NBC and Garroway by 1961, with enough blame to share between them. More than one person has speculated NBC, having had enough, wanted Garroway to leave. More on that in the book.
12. On Today‘s 25th anniversary program, Garroway remembered that his last day on Today was June 19, 1961. That would have been a Monday. However, Today went back to live Monday shows in November 1960 and Thursday shows went live in June 1961. This dates the live video as being from Thursday, June 15, and if it was Garroway’s last live program, it would rule out appearing on June 19. Garroway makes a reference to “we’ll be on tomorrow morning, on tape,” which squares with the Friday shows still being on tape. So Garroway effectively gave two goodbyes to the Today audience. However, he could have been in the studio to introduce John Chancellor as interim host on June 19. None of the contemporary newspaper coverage says anything about the latter, and the NBC program cards I have on Today don’t say, so until a videotape surfaces we may never know exactly when Garroway’s official leave-taking happened.