Jodie Peeler – Page 9 – Garroway at Large

(Almost) making a splash

As one of my (many) duties where I work, I oversee the campus radio station. That means I have to deal with a lot of technical equipment. Most of the time it works fine. Sometimes, things go wrong. Seriously wrong. And one of those instances happened over the weekend. We had a very serious storm blow through town. It did some damage and took out the electricity for a good long while. One casualty was our radio station, which remained off the air even after power was restored. A component in our studio console had gone kaput, and the soonest we could get a new one was today. Fortunately, the new component solved the problem and we’re back. (And because of this, I’ve not only ordered in a second one of those components as a backup, but I also did some mild system reconfiguration to provide further safeguards.)

All of this got me thinking about some times in Dave Garroway’s career when things didn’t go exactly right, either, and it made me think it might be time to share one of those moments with you.

In mid-1938 Dave reported to KDKA in Pittsburgh, having worked hard to make himself an announcer while working as a page at NBC in New York. KDKA had hired him not only because he was a good announcer, but because Dave could ad-lib like few others. In his audition, Dave had been asked to imagine he was on the 18th green of a golf tournament, and ad-lib what he would be seeing. Garroway (who happened to be a very good golfer) ad-libbed for more than an hour. The next day, he learned he wasn’t going to be an announcer, but would instead become Director of Special Events – when something interesting was going on around town, Dave would be sent out with a remote unit and his reports would be sent back to the station.

For Dave’s first remote, he was sent out to the Allegheny River to interview two men who were following the Lewis and Clark Trail. They had built a large dugout canoe, and Dave was to interview them while they were out on the river. Unfortunately, the portable transmitting equipment was so large that they had to empty the equipment out of one half the canoe so that Dave could get in with the equipment on his back. One of the two men also had to stay behind. While all this was happening, Dave had to keep transmitting back to KDKA on a live basis.

Finally, the canoe was ready. Dave got in and he set off down the Allegheny, interviewing the one man who was still in the canoe. The man who was left behind paddled on the left, so the poor guy still in the canoe had to paddle on both sides while being interviewed. And all of this was happening in the midst of a swift current. “We finished in the middle of the river because he didn’t have the ability to have the canoe steered adequately over to the side,” Garroway remembered in a draft of his unpublished memoir. “He had to paddle and dig like murder to get that thing to shore on the far side of the river, the wrong side of the river.” Before it was all over with, a tugboat had to come out to pull them to the correct side of the river.

As if that wasn’t enough, Garroway remembered, he flirted with a momentary temptation that could have been memorable for the wrong reasons. “I was tempted to make a great splash on my first broadcast by falling overboard,” he said, imagining it would be a big sensation…until he remembered that the river was deep and he wouldn’t be able get that heavy transmitter off his back in time to save himself. Thankfully, temptation vanished as fast as it occurred, and Dave lived to broadcast many a new day.

Remembering Phil Hymes

Last week we lost another longtime NBC crewmember. Phil Hymes, a lighting director whose NBC career began in 1951 and spanned decades, with a credits list including everything from Your Hit Parade and The Bell Telephone Hour to Late Night with Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, passed away last week at age 96.

In reading the obits for Phil Hymes you find phrases like “the best” and “creative” (mixed in, of course, with comments about how opinionated he could be – “brutally honest,” Fallon said, and that’s a recurring theme. Yes Please by Amy Poehler includes one such story of Phil being extremely candid). But as you read, you’re also struck by the span of the man’s career, how much he saw, and how many shows he worked on. Some of them didn’t last, some of them are forgotten, but some have endured. His most famous work was helping light Saturday Night Live, and as I work my way through the DVDs of the first five seasons, more often than not I see Phil Hymes among the familiar names on the credit scroll at the end of each episode.

And one of Phil’s first jobs at NBC? Lighting Today. That’s right, he would have been responsible for making Garroway and company look good from the very earliest days of Pat Weaver’s morning experiment. I don’t even want to know what had to go into figuring out how to make the interior of the RCA Exhibition Hall look so presentable on television (especially in those early days), but he somehow helped get it done.

People like Phil Hymes – and I’ve said things like this over and over, but I do so because it’s a point that cannot be overstated – are the people who helped carve a medium from the wilderness. They arrived as television was on the way up; they helped figure out how to make it work; and so much of how it’s now done, they wrote the book on. So many of them stuck around for so long, leaving their mark on generation after generation of programs. Along the way, they not only became part of the institutional history, but they retained so much of what they did and what they witnessed. Every television industry veteran with whom I’ve had a conversation…oh, the stories they can tell, the bygone eras they bring back to vivid (and sometimes hilarious) life, and what understanding they can help you reach about how it really was and how things worked back then. And every time we lose another one, we lose their stories, their perspectives, and so much more.

It’s inevitable that we will lose these people. But it also makes me thankful for initiatives like the Television Academy’s interview project, for the work of people like Stephen Bowie and Kliph Nesteroff, and all the others who work with industry veterans to record their memories and stories and perspectives. But it also makes me think about all those who vanished before we could get their contributions down for the record. And it again makes me think I need to do more than I have to help this cause.

Phil Hymes was a giant. And now, here’s hoping that what Lorne Michaels said has come true: “If God has him now, despite all the arguing, heaven will be much better lit.”

Archives, and the moments in them

In this screengrab from the July 16 webstream of the CBS News coverage of the Apollo 11 liftoff, Arthur C. Clarke talks with Walter Cronkite. (CBS photo)

As I write this, we’re observing the fiftieth anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11. There’s a list of on-air commemorations as long as your arm, airing on all kinds of channels. Some of them are good, even if some of them have hit the same beats that every documentary already has. A handful have been truly excellent, unearthing new material and new perspectives (see the wide-ranging, unexpectedly moving Chasing the Moon or the outstanding Apollo 11).

But one media organization did something truly spectacular. On July 16, CBS streamed its live coverage, as originally aired that day 50 years before, of the launch of Apollo 11 (and made it available afterward on YouTube). It wasn’t just the highlights, either – the stream began with the start of that morning’s coverage, at 6 a.m., and carried you through until the astronauts were in Earth orbit. It was nearly four and a half hours of coverage. Better still, you truly saw it as it aired – with network commercials still there (a young Ali MacGraw wearing a paper bikini in an ad for International Paper; a bizarre minimalist ad for Maxim freeze-dried coffee; a really mod commercial for Corn Flakes with a multi-picture montage straight out of Saul Bass; Western Electric musing that this new innovation called a laser could revolutionize communications). Not only that, but the CBS Morning News from that morning was also included, and there you could find glimpses of what else was going on in the nation and the world that historic morning. And since the recording originated at the CBS O&O in New York, you even got local breaks and station IDs from WCBS-TV. All in about as good a transfer from the original videotape as you could ask for, looking vivid and colorful.

To me, what CBS did was like Christmas morning. It hit so many sweet spots for me: my love of spaceflight history, my love of broadcast history, my love of those little time-capsule moments that let you experience how a moment must have felt. It lets you realize that even in historic moments, life isn’t a highlight reel. There’s a lot of waiting. Sometimes the most interesting thing is Wally Schirra, retired astronaut who’s there as the color guy, pointing out to Walter Cronkite that a clock in the little studio at the Cape isn’t working. Sometimes it’s dull. But so did it happen in real time, in 1969. There’s no narration, no editing beyond what the director called during the broadcast that morning.

CBS gave us all a wonderful gift by putting this coverage out there, as it aired. Yeah, so it has those banners across the bottom, but to me the wonder of seeing so much that I’d only heard of, but never been able to see, could make me overlook that. Streaming this coverage was, in many ways, the perfect way to observe this anniversary. It’s fun. It generated a lot of happy buzz around the Interwebs. And it makes me wish we saw this kind of thing more often.

I think, for instance, about the archival Garroway material that I’ve seen and heard. I remember how much of it was listed on the old NBC News Archives site, some of which was actually posted for viewing in screener form. There was no better way for me to understand the tenor of Garroway in any given period than to watch some of that footage. But then NBC’s archive changed its website, and its policies, and what was there is no longer accessible. A valuable resource to my research was suddenly gone.

I know that network archives can be extensive, and are understaffed. I also know it takes effort and equipment to digitize old media, and that it costs to do it. I also know that in some instances you get into various licensing issues, too. But I also know there’s a lot of it out there that’s already been digitized – and I know this because I’ve seen it, from official network sources. And sometimes that’s the rub. The material exists, but you can’t see it, and not unless you’re a documentary or feature film producer with deep enough pockets will you see it.

The archives are valuable properties for licensing. And I get that. And this footage is the property of the networks, and it’s theirs to do with as they wish. But I also think about the value to history that exists by making this stuff available for people to view and to experience once again, in all their imperfect splendor. If you want people to experience a moment, there’s no better way.

That’s why I applaud CBS for what it’s done with its Apollo 11 coverage. It was a bold thing to do, but it was the right one, and it’s an example of the flexibility the online streaming platforms allow these days. May we see more networks follow the lead of CBS, crack the doors of the vaults a little wider, and share more widely the moments from the past, exactly as they were back then.

Happy birthday, Old Tiger

On this day in 1913, our Dave Garroway was born. On this day in 2017, our website went live. In the time we’ve been on the Internet, we’ve had quite the adventure. We’ve met new and interesting people, gone places and done things, and even had the privilege of befriending members of Dave’s family and enlisting their support on the book.

Today I can say it’s all continuing to be worth it. The raw manuscript is very close to the halfway point. New material is coming in on a routine basis, and I’m constantly learning things about Garroway that leave me interested and amazed and amused. He was a man of many facets, and he packed a lot of living into his 69 years. He was many things, but “boring” was never one of them.

There’s a lot to look forward to. In the coming year there’s going to be at least one, and probably two (if not more), major research trips on behalf of the book, to sift through archives and conduct some extended interviews. There’s still a ton of newspaper archives I need to sift through – although that first draft of history can be imperfect, it’s still invaluable for understanding things in the context of a moment in time. And, of course, there are always the little discoveries that come completely by surprise, and that leave one astounded.

There is a lot to be done, and it will be a challenge finding time in an already busy life to get it all done. But I find myself in a happy place with this project. For a long time I dreaded the possibility that the farther I got into researching Garroway the man, I’d find something about him that would turn me against him, as can so often happen when you dive into the life of a celebrity. That hasn’t happened – at least, not yet. Has everything I’ve learned been positive? Of course not. But none of it has put me off. I haven’t discovered any kind of weird secret life or untold stories of evil or anything. Instead, I’ve learned about an interesting man of many interests, a man who had his flaws as any of us do, but who tried hard to do his best. I’ve learned some stories about Garroway that are sweet, some that are heartwarming, some that are bizarre, some that are funny, some that are heartbreaking. And none of it discourages me from moving ahead. All these stories are vital if I am to understand Garroway, and if this project is going to give you a full measure of the man. But if where we are now is any indication, you’re going to enjoy reading about him when this book is a reality. He was quite a guy.

Mr. Garroway, this is quite the journey we’re on, but it’s never, ever a boring one. Happy birthday to you, sir.

Quick housekeeping notes

If you tried to get on this site in the last 24 hours, you probably got a White Screen of Death. That’s because a plugin pushed an update that didn’t get along with the rest of the website. It is (I hope) contained for now, and I’m running a lot of updates on things, so that should be the last we see of it. Until, of course, another update gets pushed and something breaks. It is all part of life’s rich pageant.

:: I had promised a longer post by now, I know. But some renovation chores at work have eaten my time and brainpower, both on-site and at the house. By the time I’m done spending six hours doing renovation work in the television studio, or six hours in our garage working on the largest furniture construction project in history (in high-90s heat and humidity, no less), my energy – not to mention my enthusiasm for just about anything – is gone. The good news is, on all fronts there is light at the end of the tunnel. So, don’t worry – I am still here, and I’m using some of the calm morning hours to write a little about Garroway in the manuscript, and at some point soon there will be an actual post that’s something beyond all the trivial reasons why I presently don’t write anything more than housekeeping posts and other meta stuff.

:: For the last two years I’ve visited the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, and last year even got to co-present a seminar. It’s been a great time each visit, and I’ve enjoyed being there, being with friends, and meeting some nice folks. But this year I won’t be at the convention; some people I had been hoping to be with again won’t be there, a seminar I proposed didn’t make the program, and some rule changes at work would cramp the trip. On top of that, some additional duties I’ll begin in August would probably mean my absence would lead to chaos. It’s probably best for all involved that I stay here. That said, the convention’s still well worth attending if you’re going to be in the Baltimore area in mid-September. I hope all my friends who will be there will have some fun on my behalf. I’ll miss seeing you.

Assorted updates

There’s something that’s been chewing on my mind of late. It was prompted by a minor online rhubarb that erupted the other day over a matter related to Dave Garroway’s life, and I found myself in the midst of it, and it left me…not really happy, I’ll put it that way. I had planned to have an essay about it for you by now, because in amongst my venting would have been some perspective. But not only have I not had time to string my thoughts together, I also realize my view is a little too charged still to write clearly about it. Bear with me, and I’ll have something to say about it soon.

Instead, this might be a good time to offer some updates about various things in my orbit, most of them related to this project in one way or another, and to use my little soapbox here to extend a personal note of grace to someone I’ve never met (in person, anyway), but still care about.

:: After what seems like forever, things are moving once again on the Garroway manuscript. My muse has apparently returned from sunning itself on the French Riviera (or perhaps sunning itself on the hood of a Buick Riviera; I don’t know) and I am now sorting through some marvelous recollections provided by Dave Jr., weaving them into a chapter on what life was like with his dad. I can promise you a perspective on Dave Garroway that’s unlike any other. I’m having fun going through these stories, and it adds so much substance to what Garroway was like as a person. I believe you, lucky prospective reader of the finished book, will enjoy what’s to come.

:: I’ve also just returned from a most enjoyable working lunch with Brandon, my collaborator on this project. I feel very fortunate to have him aboard, not only for his love of our subject but also for the keen perspective he brings. Plus, Brandon is just plain fun to be with and work with. It makes me think this project is headed for some truly great things.

:: I’ve made occasional reference to another biography I’ve been writing, and the process of turning it into a book. It is with great pleasure, and no small amount of relief, that I can announce it’s now listed in the publisher’s new catalog, and it’s scheduled to go on sale in October. I don’t like making sales pitches, but if you were to buy a copy of my book…well, it’d sure be swell.

:: This last note isn’t about books or about biographies or television, or any of that. It’s about the human beings you interact with, and care about, in these communities we build through the things we love. (And if you think this next isn’t appropriate for this blog, well…I’m the one who pays the bills here. You’re always welcome to get your own blog.)

Back in the day I followed the AV Club rather fondly and was among the community of commenters. There was a great group of writers at the AV Club. They’d often interact with us in the comments, and over time they went from being writers to people we cared about, and sometimes when we found out something was personally going with them, it felt like something had happened in our little family.

Time has passed and so many of those writers have gone on to other things, but you still see their names and you realize how much you still care. Which is why, when one of my favorite writers from the AV Club days shared this deeply personal essay a few weeks ago, it was…well, it was poignant. Emily, I am very happy for you, and I wish you all the luck in the world.

“Kickoff 1953”

Thanks to the Middlebury College Archives (and thanks to my collaborator Brandon for discovering this!), there’s some further vintage Garroway to enjoy: about ten minutes of a program titled Kickoff 1953, a program introducing the college football season (and promoting NBC’s efforts to cover said season, a hosting job that perhaps was tied in with appearance obligations in his NBC contract). It’s not the complete program, but it’s still a treat. Here you see Garroway in fine handsome form, at the height of his easy charm, his voice still a purr, able to make hosting a complicated program with a lot of scripted lines seem as spontaneous as a warm conversation with a friend. There’s plenty there in this wonderful time capsule, so go check it out.

:: We’ve been silent of late, I know. It’s for good reason: I’ve been busy overseeing about a dozen day-job things (it’s our summer break, but the work never ends) and about a dozen other demands on my time. The good news is that my muse has apparently returned from sunning itself in Boca Raton or whatever, and I’ve begun again to chip away at the manuscript for the book. Good things are happening. Stay tuned.

The other side of the set

Today‘s first home, the RCA Exhibition Hall on 49th Street, is an ongoing fascination for me. Unfortunately, among the buildings of Rockefeller Center, it’s too often lost as an obscurity.

The building itself is still there – it’s now occupied by Christie’s auction house, which extensively remodeled the place but kept those big windows – but good luck finding much about its past. Which is why a find like the one you’re about to see is something else.

Let’s take a moment to look back on that first day of Today, January 14, 1952:

This is as far to the viewer’s left as the set went, and it’s where the big newspaper board was set up. But in some shots you can tell there’s something more back there, and it looks like people are looking on from behind the newspaper board. Why is that? Because only a portion of the RCA Exhibition Hall was used for the Today set.

Thanks to the January 1954 issue of RCA’s house publication, Radio Age, we can get an idea of what you would have seen on the other side of that board.

That panoramic view shows you the remainder of the RCA Exhibition Hall, which continued to serve its original function. (There wasn’t really a big white line; that’s an artifact from how the magazine printed the photo across two pages.) On the right-hand side of that panorama, look at what you see:

Just up that set of steps is the Today set. Which, believe it or not, was incorporated into the Exhibition Hall as a display in itself. When the building opened to the general public in late morning, after Today had gone off the air for the day, visitors could get a look at it as an example of how RCA technology was involved in the production of a daily news program.

Many thanks and much gratitude to the folks at American Radio History for digitizing this and hundreds of other vintage broadcast industry publications. You can check out this issue of Radio Age – and dozens of others – here.

From the Kuklapolitan Opera House, it’s Dave Garroway

The battle over color television – the RCA “compatible color” system against the CBS-developed mechanical color system – is an epic in itself, and has been ably chronicled by others. (A great place to start is here.) That said, the years-long effort left us with some interesting artifacts, and if you’re fortunate you can find some surprises.

Some time ago, some good people compiled and restored a whole lot of kinescoped episodes of Kukla, Fran and Ollie.¹ The restored episodes have been released on DVD, and they’re a fun way to visit the gentle world Burr Tillstrom created. They have a time-capsule quality to them, and not just because the commercials are still in them. Sometimes famous people from the era make guest appearances: Dennis Day, Jose Greco, and even a certain bespectacled former disc jockey we know and love.

Burr Tillstrom and Oliver J. Dragon with our Dave. (NBC photo)

In the third disc set is a special treat: a compilation of footage from experimental color broadcasts, as well as footage of some of the Kuklapolitans goofing around before a performance recorded for the 1964 World’s Fair. (All, unfortunately, are only in black and white. The color tests were not preserved on color film.) The first color test, done in 1949, is a simple affair that was done as a limited broadcast to the FCC and RCA officials. But the 1953 color test, which was aired over the network as a real test of compatible color², pulled out the stops. For this special broadcast, NBC presented Kukla, Fran and Ollie in a production of “St. George and the Dragon.” They had performed it in Boston on June 7, with Arthur Fiedler conducting. It had been received very well. So NBC decided to stage a repeat performance as part of a color test, and it aired August 30. For one afternoon, the Colonial Theater in New York – where NBC learned how to work in color – became the Kuklapolitan Opera House. Arthur Fiedler would again conduct for this very special performance, this time leading the NBC Summer Symphony.

Really neat title card. I bet it looked great in color. (NBC photo)

And they’d need a host. Someone who could lend the appropriate dignified whimsy to the proceedings. Who might that be?

“How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?” (NBC photo)

There he is: our Dave, speaking to us from Box 44 at the Kuklapolitan Opera House in New York³, from which point NBC is about to bring us another afternoon of fine opera.

Dave’s doing his imitation of Metropolitan Opera radio host Milton Cross as he introduces the performance. You may not be able to tell from the screen grab, but he’s having fun with the Milton Cross style, too. The broadcast was sponsored by the Society For Improving Relations Between Dragons and Other People.

And at the end of the performance, of course, it wouldn’t be Dave without his trademark benediction. “From the Kuklapolitan Opera House, we bid you good afternoon…and peace.”

Really classy closing credit card. That was NBC, though, back in the day. (NBC photo)

To find out how to get your own set of these priceless compilations, go here. They’re highly (and warmly) recommended.

“I Lead a Goofy Life”: Dave Garroway, 1956

My colleague Brandon alerted me to a nifty flashback item on the Saturday Evening Post‘s website. In February 1956, the Post published an article under Garroway’s byline (well, an “as told to” byline, at least) titled “I Lead a Goofy Life.” In it, Dave talked about the strange occurrences that happen when you host an early-morning program, set in a big fishbowl of a studio, in which your assistants include a Miss America and a young chimpanzee. Better still, there’s a link to the entire article, viewable in its original layout, at the bottom of the entry. It’s a fun article. Go check it out.