Those of us who drive never forget our first car. For a lot of us, it was a car that was already in the family and handed down to us (as was the case with the cars that got me through college and graduate school). But how many of us can say our very first car was custom-made for us?
Dave Garroway – a lifelong lover of all things automotive – could.
As Dave told it, he was five years old when he spied a Chandler automobile that was owned by a neighbor, and was smitten by it. His Grandfather Tanner, who had owned a bicycle shop before getting into the roofing business, had a basement full of tools and metal-forming equipment that fascinated young Dave. So Dave enlisted his grandfather’s help in building a car from wood, parts from a wagon, sheet metal bodywork, and four wheels (depending on when Dave told the story, the wheels came from a baby carriage or a shopping cart). “It had a top speed of about six miles per hour if you fed the motor – me – two Eskimo Pies,” Garroway would recall in 1962.
Five-year-old Dave Garroway sets out on another adventure on the streets of Schenectady. (Garroway family photo)
This first car would later inspire Dave to build another one, this one pedal-powered. He would remember it as “my first automotive adventure.” And from there, a love affair was born. (And all the years he spent constantly tinkering with his beloved Jaguar can be traced back to that little car he built with his grandfather.)
One regret of the recent lapse has been I haven’t acknowledged a neat contribution that reader Bryan Olson recently found (thanks, Bryan!). This ad is from 1957, when Dave Garroway was presiding over a Today program buoyed by sponsors that clamored for the man himself to pitch their products.
On the other hand, here’s an item from a Dorothy Kilgallen column in late July 1952. If it was true, then that sounds like our Dave.
As I go through the decades of newspaper clippings I’ve compiled, there’s a lot of information to sort through. And, on occasion, you’ll find things that while you can’t neatly use them, they’re too…interesting not to use somehow. From time to time I’ll share some of them.
For one, here’s an April 1948 ad from the Chicago Tribune in which a certain radio personality is trying to downsize his car collection. When you read the description (including the interesting upholstery), there’s no doubt who that car belongs to:
And then there’s this, also from 1948, right when Dave was getting noticed and starting to draw serious attention from sponsors. Now, I’ve never seen any pictures of Dave from this era in which he looked like he needed this kind of treatment. Was it really that good, or was he just that skilled a pitchman? You be the judge.
You’ve read my musings before about how I wish more of the video and audio treasures of yesteryear would be preserved and made available through the Internet for those of us who care. And in that regard, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting is working miracles at a steady pace. But a few weeks ago, I found something that made me very happy, and I think it will make you happy too.
In 1962 Dave Garroway, seeking a new mission after leaving Today and NBC, became host of a series titled Exploring the Universe. This series, produced for National Educational Television (the forerunner, of sorts, of what we now know as PBS) with a grant from the National Science Foundation, explored different realms of the scientific world, explained various scientific concepts to viewers, and featured in-studio visits from renowned scientists who talked with Garroway about science.
I could try explaining it, or I could just let you see it for yourself, as the AAPB has brought us a collection of episodes, for you to watch at your pleasure. And what better way to begin than at the beginning? Enjoy.
— It has not been my intention to disappear as I have of late. Unfortunately, I have been suffering from something called “demands exceeding available time and attention,” a condition not uncommon to those in my line of work, especially at this point in the academic year. Be that as it may, I am happy to report that new research materials have been coming in great quantity, thanks in particular to a reader who has been extremely helpful. The materials are here, as are the ideas – I just need to free up some time to turn them into something tangible. But it will get done. As Frank McGee would say, “Don’t go far.”
January 14, 2020 is the 68th anniversary of Today, and to mark the occasion let’s not look at the program as it is now. Instead, let’s go back to the morning of January 14, 1977 and see how Today marked its 25th birthday. It was something really special.
I’ve seen several of the anniversary programs – the 25th, the 30th, the 35th, the 40th and 50th1 – but of them all, the 25th anniversary was the one that put the most effort into calling back to those first years. And while the others may have been a little more stylish, or might have even spawned a prime-time retrospective, there was something special about the 25th anniversary special that none of the others fully matched.
NBC photo
We see this special theme from the very beginning: the screen is black and white, there’s an in-studio reproduction (though not exact) of the original communicator’s desk from the RCA Exhibition Hall, and the first voice you hear is that of Jack Lescoulie re-creating a version of that very first morning’s open.
NBC photo
And there’s Dave Garroway himself, happy to see you. “Hello, old friend, and good morning, too! As I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted myself, seventeen years and thirty-eight days ago, we’re about to give you the news of the morning.”2 Garroway recounts the major headline of that first day in 1952 – the captain of the freighter Flying Enterprise is about to receive a hero’s welcome – and then throws to news editor Frank Blair.
NBC photo
It’s Blair (who wasn’t on the show that first morning, of course)3 who breaks the spell. “You know, they really used to call me that, Dave, 25 years ago?” Blair pretends to read a bulletin that what you’re seeing is not a dream, but let’s go across the studio to Tom Brokaw.
Tom Brokaw, captured in the warm tones the RCA TK-44 rendered so well. (NBC photo)
And with that, we’re in color and in 1977, and everyone has a good laugh. Brokaw explains the concept: they have turned the studio into a time machine so they can revisit the last 25 years. It’s a birthday party to which we’re all invited.
The first “Today” set I remember seeing. (NBC photo)
Brokaw explains that when Today first went on the air, he was living in a place where they could barely get television, and that co-host Jane Pauley was trying to learn how to walk. “And I was bald,” she adds. (Gene Shalit, asked where he was in 1952, said he wasn’t bald.)
There’s no way he could have been. (NBC photo)
The real headlines of January 14, 1977 are presented by the current news editor, Floyd Kalber. The big stories of the morning: the death of Anthony Eden, winter storms across Europe, a good part of the United States under extreme cold, and the following week’s inauguration of Jimmy Carter as president.
The Tuna. (NBC photo)
There’s then a short local break, during which the weather from across the country scrolls on the screen, along with the affiliates’ call letters, while music plays. Keeping with the morning’s throwback theme, the music selections are big band standards as re-recorded by Enoch Light and The Light Brigade.4
Nifty anniversary version of the bumper. (NBC photo)Today’s weather scroll was soothing when it would come on and music would play behind it, a handy little break in the action. I picked this particular location on purpose because it’s not far from where I grew up. It’s a long story, but WJBF-TV had switched to ABC from NBC in 1967, but was allowed to carry “Today” in a market where the NBC affiliate (WAGT-TV) was a UHF station. There’s a lot about affiliate history that’s like trying to sort family trees in ancient mythology. (NBC photo)
After the break, Kalber revisits the top story of January 14, 1952 and we see newsreel footage of the stricken Flying Enterprise and the hero’s welcome for Captain Carlsen. Kalber then throws to Lew Wood, who does the morning’s weather.
NBC photoLew Wood fascinated me when I was a kid. He seemed like such a nice man. (NBC photo)
There’s another break, then the party begins. Brokaw is at the old desk replica with Garroway, Lescoulie and Blair.
Not the best re-creation of the 1952 set but they at least get points for effort. (NBC photo)
Brokaw begins by calling Garroway “a heroic figure to a generation of young people who grew up wanting to get into broadcasting.”
Something about Garroway in 1977 reminds me of an aged lion, worn and scarred but still proud. (NBC photo)
He then introduces a clip from October 1955 to show what the program was like back then. The clip has Garroway throwing to Frank Blair for that morning’s headlines (which, strangely enough, also involved Anthony Eden). From the vantage point of 1977, the men laugh at what they’ve just seen. Lescoulie says of Blair, “He was a little nervous in those days. It took him two Bloody Marys to get the top off his Miltown bottle!” Blair ruefully says, “That came later. That came later.”5
Hard to believe Brokaw turns 80 this year, 17 years older than Garroway was in the scene you see right here. (NBC photo)
Brokaw asks Garroway how confident he felt about the program’s prospects when he agreed to join the show. Garroway recalls that when he met the people he was going to work with, he took out a four-year lease on a penthouse apartment on Park Avenue. Prompted to recall his most memorable moment: “June 19, 1961.6 Walking slowly and regretfully out of the studio.” Common questions follow: did J. Fred Muggs really bite? Blair instantly warns Garroway, “You’re gonna get sued!” Garroway claims the NBC dispensary has multiple reports in its files of vaccinations he received after chimp bites. This prompts recollections of various incidents involving Muggs, as well as the lawsuit Muggs’ caretakers filed against Garroway, Lescoulie and NBC. And with that, we see a clip of Muggs attacking Jack Lescoulie’s desk one morning.
NBC photo
Blair also mentions that all three of them are working on books. Blair promotes the upcoming publication of Let’s Be Frank About It (and the title draws a howl from Lescoulie). Garroway mentions that he is writing “sort of an autobiography” with the working title “Garroway At Length.” Asked for a publication date, Garroway replies, “As soon as possible!” Lescoulie says he isn’t working hard on his because Blair’s would be out first. “Mine will be meaner than his,” Lescoulie says. In the meantime, he leads a good life with a lot of golf and a little writing, and he and his wife had never really given up the bright lights: “At least once a week we go over to the A&P if it’s open at night and do our shopping.”7
NBC photo
During the optional local break the discussion continues, for the affiliates that didn’t air a local news break at :25 after. Garroway tells Brokaw he didn’t feel television had lived up to its potential, that he had hoped the programming we would get would be more truthful and informative than what we ended up with. There’s also a brief discussion about lighter moments. We see a clip from the color era with Lescoulie disguised as Superman…
NBC photo
…then Lescoulie talks about a circus pantomime act he once did that stretched nearly ten minutes and left him completely spent at the end of it. Suddenly Garroway interrupts Lescoulie and tells him to smile at the camera. Lescoulie asks why. Garroway replies, “Jimmy Carter!”
The resemblance is uncanny. (NBC photo)
Brokaw asks about embarrassing moments. “The day I sat down and there was no chair there,” Garroway says. Blair remembered an event when Garroway didn’t realize his fly was open. “That didn’t embarrass me at all!” Garroway replies, deadpan. In the background, you hear the studio crew cracking up.
Network break slide. I love Rockford. I’m there, baby. (NBC photo)
The next half-hour begins with another clip from October 1955: Lescoulie introducing the segment, interrupted by Gertrude Berg:
NBC photos
Then Brokaw and Pauley preview the upcoming segments, followed by news from Floyd Kalber and weather from Lew Wood, who shows a clip of how the weather was done in 1955.
Garroway with “Today Girl” Lee Ann Meriwether. (NBC photo)
We then see a segment on all the places Today has been and the technological innovations of the last 25 years. Then Jane Pauley introduces a 1955 clip observing National Doughnut Week, in which Garroway demonstrates a series of accessories for your coffee-and-doughnut habit: a pinkie rest, a cup for retrieving your doughnut if it falls in the cup, tongs for retrieving a doughnut, and a spoon for stirring your coffee. Of them all, Garroway likes the pinky rest the best. He says it makes you feel strong all over.
Dave’s smile in the final frame sells it. (NBC photos)
Gene Shalit then introduces Lionel Hampton and His Jazz Inner Circle. They perform a medley of the program’s various theme songs8 under a montage of famous guests.
Always a good morning when Mr. Hampton provides the music. (NBC photo)
At the end of the hour is what Brokaw calls a “family portrait” – the current staff with Garroway, Lescoulie and Blair.
NBC photo
Brokaw asks Garroway to give his famous sign-off. Garroway obliges, talking about something “that we have a great deal of and need so much more of…peace.” A few seconds later, Blair softly says, “God love you.”9
NBC photoNifty shot of 3K as the hour ends. Note the top of the cyclorama, the floor director at right with hand raised, Lionel Hampton and his group to the right. The kinds of details people like me love. (NBC photo)
The next hour begins with another simulation of that first day. This time, Lescoulie introduces the Master Communicator with “here’s old four-eyes himself, Dave Garroway!” Garroway wishes the audience good morning – “Once more we meet after a quarter of a century and we’re still making it, aren’t we? You and me. And so is Today, after a quarter-century.” Garroway forgets to give a cue to Frank Blair, and there are several seconds of silence. When they realize what’s happened, everybody cracks up. “Nothing’s changed!” Once it’s all straightened out, Blair introduces “the new boy on the block, Tom Brokaw.”
Oops! (NBC photo)
After the news and weather, Brokaw conducts a desk interview with Garroway and Pat Weaver.
The Master Communicator and his most important advocate. I love this screen-grab, for their respect and regard for each other is unmistakable. (NBC photo)
The former NBC executive talks about the idea behind Today. He had known for many years there was a morning audience with a lot of potential, and he wondered if he couldn’t do something better than another morning “gang” show – instead, a show that had information, but had enough showmanship to attract an audience. And here Brokaw introduces about thirty seconds of a promotional film NBC had put together to sell the Today concept to affiliates. Over a montage of clips of Churchill, Truman, Stalin, Eisenhower and other important figures, as dramatic music plays behind, a narrator talks about how “a program like this is a magnificent use of the tool of television in its ultimate social responsibility,” and that the viewer would get information to be a responsible citizen in a free society. “His horizon will be limited by neither time nor place.”
Not that we’re trying to make an important point in this scary atomic age, but…. (NBC photo)
As the film ends and its music swells to a conclusion, we see the enormous water vapor cloud from the second Bikini atom-bomb test, and a primitive (almost frightening) Today logo. “This is the real secret weapon of free men,” the narrator says. “To know, to understand, so that John Smith is ready for today…whatever it may bring.”10
Back in the studio, Brokaw gives credit to Garroway for his talent in helping make the show succeed. Weaver recalls how Garroway came in from Chicago and asked to do the show, and that Weaver quickly realized that Garroway’s “command and serenity” in the midst of the show’s chaos would work well. Brokaw asks Weaver how he would change television in 1977. “Oh, you’ll need an hour for that,” he replies with a verbal eye-roll.
Yes, he’s Sigourney’s dad – all the more reason to love him. (NBC photo)
The discussion continues into the local-option break. Brokaw introduces a piece by Paul Cunningham on how the Today model has been adapted worldwide. After the piece, Brokaw muses that in Britain they’re called “presenters” and Weaver insisted on the title “communicators,” and now Brokaw’s title was “host,” which made him feel like he should be serving breakfast to his fellow on-air personalities. Weaver didn’t like that title. “I’d knock that off fast!” he said. Garroway informs us that to this day, he’s still remembered for Today – for every one person who remembers Garroway at Large there will be two people who know him from Today. What fascinated him, he recalled, about the Today job was that at that hour, people’s minds were open. “It’s almost a blank slate.” Brokaw thanks Weaver and Garroway for what they have done to make Today last. Weaver replies, “See you on the fiftieth!” Garroway follows: “Amen!”11
The final half-hour doesn’t have a lot about Garroway and Lescoulie and Blair, but it does begin with a nod to the storefront studio window and a simplified version of the move inside 30 Rock for the move to color broadcasting.12 There’s news, and then after a commercial we get a live spot for Alpo with Gene Shalit:
NBC photo
And Lew Wood does a spot at the desk for True Value Hardware Stores.
Lew’s telling us about a special on white paint that keeps your walls easy to clean. (NBC photo)
Then there’s a discussion about what the preceding 25 years have meant for society and the country. The panelists are Daniel Boorstin, Pulitzer-winning historian and Librarian of Congress; Charlotte Curtis, editor of the op-ed page of the New York Times; and Martin Marty of the Christian Century, who is also a professor at the University of Chicago.13 It’s a lengthy and thoughtful discussion of the sort you would never see on the modern Today program.
A sign of a far different time indeed. I shudder to think what they’d use this segment for now. (NBC photo)
After a break, we get another Lionel Hampton performance. This time, the music plays behind a montage of photos of Today‘s people from the last quarter-century. It’s a simple but really cool tribute.
After the final break, Tom Brokaw stands with the morning’s guests and the show’s current staff. He says that two prominent television critics of the day gave Today bad reviews and shares some of the more pointed quotes from them. Then Brokaw points out that both those newspapers are no longer around, but Today still is. “While much has changed over 25 years, one hope that has been with this program from the very beginning has not changed.” At which point, Brokaw nods to Dave Garroway, who says, “That hope is some love…and peace.”
NBC photoNBC photo
As the cameras pull back, you can just see Garroway move over to the giant birthday cake and pretend to give it a karate-chop, much to everyone’s amusement.
And that’s how Today celebrated its 25th anniversary: a little silly and a lot sentimental, but all of it memorable.
…but it’s especially embarrassing when you’re a highly-regarded young announcer who’s only a few weeks into your new gig as a director of special events broadcasts for a large radio station.
And it’s even worse when it involves a local hero. As the Pittsburgh Press of July 14, 1939 was not about to let our Dave Garroway forget.
You can see more about the July 13, 1939 Billy Conn-Melio Bettina match here.
Once upon a time newspaper columnists would often compile jokes and stories told by radio personalities of the day. This one from the Sept. 17, 1950 Chicago Tribune (a joke that reads like the work of Dave’s favorite writer, Charlie Andrews) made me laugh more than usual, so here we go.
I’ve made mention a few times of another book project I’ve been working on. It just went on sale, and you can read about it (and order a copy, please!) here. No, the topic isn’t Dave Garroway, or even related to broadcasting at all (although Ed Murrow does make a few appearances), but it’s a story I feel privileged to have told. And if you want an idea of how I’ll tell the Dave Garroway story, you can consider this book sort of a prototype (although the Garroway book will be much larger because I have so much more source material to work from).
Speaking of which, work on that project continues in between day-job obligations, and the draft manuscript is a healthy size, although I expect it to grow even more. I continue to work my way through the newspaper databases, where I constantly find hidden treasures. The only problem is the short supply of time in each day, but I work around that as I can. One way or another, this will get done. Stay tuned.
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.
