Last year, as you may recall, I was in Philadelphia and had hoped to visit Dave Garroway’s grave in Bala Cynwyd. As you may also recall, I didn’t make it there because of a rather hilarious navigational mix-up. (And if you don’t recall, or if you do recall but you just want to relive my humiliation, the post is here.)
As fate would have it, though, a couple weeks ago I had to get to the suburbs of Manhattan to meet with a network retiree friend. For various reasons, I decided to drive, which would also let me make a wider-ranging tour of it all. When my original plans fell through, I reworked them and ended up spending the night in Camden, right across the Delaware from Philadelphia. It was on the way home, and it let me do a little sightseeing while I was there. (The old RCA plant, anyone? The battleship New Jersey?) And, wouldn’t you know it, I’d have a little time the next day, so why not?
After all my errands were done on the New Jersey side, I dialed up the route on my phone’s navigation app and followed the instructions to the letter. Never mind, of course, that it was noontime traffic on I-76 through Philadelphia…I had a promise to keep. After a not-too-distant but still invigorating drive, I was going through the gates of Laurel Hill Cemetery. A little bit of a hike over, a little detective work, and there he was.
It was quietly powerful to stand there. “Quietly powerful” in one way because the cemetery isn’t that far away from the very busy freeway off to its east, yet is very effectively shielded by some significant greenery that keeps things peaceful. But it’s also quietly powerful, I think, because the site seems so humble, especially in a cemetery with so many big and ornate monuments to families of means. Here’s Dave Garroway, who at one time carried so much of the fortunes of NBC on his back, who was first behind the desk in the infancy of morning television and demonstrated how it could not only be appealing but a money maker…and he lies beneath this very simple grave marker, and you could very well miss this grave if you didn’t know what you were looking for. (Which is funny, since I walked right past it the first time around.)
If you’re ever in the area, it’s worth the few minutes to stop by and say hello. Please do. This may have been a little out of my way, but it was very much worth the trip.
In the couple months since I was last with you, much has happened. A whole lot of it has to do with the day job, mainly that I have become executive producer of a television program that, while it’s a complete gas to work on, has consumed much of my time and nearly all of my brain. That said, it’s going well and everybody seems to be happy with it (well, thus far, anyway), so there’s that.1
Life hasn’t been completely all that, and my perambulations the last few months provided some connections with Our Dave, fleeting though they may have been. In mid-July, a chance opportunity to visit the ocean liner United States fell in my lap, and so I made a very quick weekend trip to Philadelphia.2 My plan had been to stop in Bala Cynwyd and visit his gravesite first thing that morning, and I’d timed everything out and planned my route and everything. Well, everything went well except the execution. Since everything went well except the part where I relied on dead-reckoning and memory instead of, you know, programming a route into my phone and letting the thing guide me there, I missed the exit off I-763 and didn’t realize I’d missed it until it was too late. I’d have tried to turn around, but since my report time for the visit to the Big U was fairly well set, I had to press on. I’m sorry, Dave. But since Philadelphia is one of my favorite cities (and since there are family connections in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area), I’m pretty certain I’ll be back.
There was a consolation prize on the way back, though: I spent the night in Durham, which meant a visit to another friend in Chapel Hill the next morning was a quick hop away.4
It turned out the Philadelphia adventure wasn’t the only adventure ahead for me with a Garroway-themed sidelight. In early September a throwaway comment on a pal’s Facebook post led to an invitation I couldn’t refuse. Three weeks later I was on an overnight trip to New York City, and early on a Sunday morning I walked over to the ABC broadcast center and spent three hours watching my friend and his colleagues overseeing the production of that day’s Good Morning America and inserting updates, fixes and other edits into each hour’s feed.5 Plus my friend gave me the grand tour of ABC’s studio facilities on 66th, which now means I’ve done the behind-the-scenes trifecta.6
I had gotten into town on Saturday afternoon, which meant I had to use up a lot of time and had no particular plans. After I’d spent a little time resting in my hotel room, I went on a little amble around Midtown and visited some familiar haunts.7 But I decided while I was out that I should try to find something else. A rather vigorous walk northward took me right to it.
And there you are: 48 East 63rd Street, also known as “Garroway’s Narroway.” This was the house where Dave moved after he married Pamela, the house that was supposedly haunted by poltergeists that were driven away in an exorcism. I don’t know who lives there now, and I didn’t want to do the “look, tourists!” thing, so I paused only as long as it took to get these quick photographs. It’s been renovated inside, but the outside looks much the same, right down to the gargoyle by the front door that Dave reportedly hid a microphone inside.8
After all these years, to finally see this place (if only fleetingly) was neat.9
— Thanks to our friend Mitchell Hadley, I became aware of the Random Access Television podcast a week or so back. And while there’s several episodes on which I really need to get caught up, one is of immediate interest: their longform examination of a Garroway at Large episode, which captures their sense of discovery and wonder. Give it a listen – it’s really sweet. (And there’s also a mention or two that certainly caught my ear and made me happy. But, I digress.)
I’ve written on here before about the importance of preserving television history. That’s not just in writing books about people like Dave Garroway, but also in preserving the things that remain. Some of those things are easy to preserve, like books and documents. Other pieces are a little more substantial, but still manageable. And then there’s some that require some effort. That’s what led to an adventure last week.
I’ve been friends with Bobby Ellerbee for several years, and on a few occasions I’ve visited him and his dogs at his home in Georgia. Over the years Bobby amassed a collection of television cameras that spanned a good half-century of the medium’s history. The first time I visited, two rooms were awash with just about every studio camera you could imagine, and his garage had just about enough surplus equipment to start a network.
Over the years, some of Bobby’s collection found new homes at museums or with film prop companies, but his camera room was still nicely populated. Recently, though, he bought a new house. It’s a nice house, but it doesn’t have the display area of the house he’s vacating. Bobby had to make some hard choices. To make a long story short, I got a phone call, and last week I rented a box truck and drove over to his house.
The more the truck filled up, the more I realized this was real, and I started to think about the two happiest days in the life of a boat owner.
In the space of about two and a half hours that Thursday, Bobby and three movers and I loaded four cameras and pedestals, a few boxes of equipment and books, and some other stuff we could put to work in our building. Bobby had told me to rent a truck with a lift gate, and it’s a very good thing I did. Camera pedestals are heavy. By 11 that morning the truck was loaded up and I was headed back home. I spent the afternoon and evening unloading the truck at the office, and that night I drove it back and reclaimed my car.10
The brave rental truck at the end of its travels with me. This was a happy moment, likely for both of us.
So, let’s see what we have.
Longtime readers will be familiar with this: the RCA TK-47. I already had one, but I certainly was not going to pass up another. Unlike mine, the internals of this one are still intact, and as I was cleaning it up I was interested to look inside.11 Bobby had installed vinyl lettering on either side to honor NBC’s flagship stations in New York and Los Angeles. Inside is a property tag from WISH-TV in Indianapolis. Part of me thinks it would be fitting to restore the WISH-TV livery, but I’m awfully fond of the genuine NBC stickers on there, especially since I associate the TK-47 with Saturday Night Live and David Letterman’s late-night NBC show.12 Fortunately, I’ve got a while to decide what to do.
A contemporary of the TK-47 is the Ikegami HK-312, which Bobby had decorated as an ABC camera of the 1980s. It’s appropriate, because ABC used Ikegamis a lot. The Ikegami doesn’t get recognized a lot but it was one of the workhorse cameras of its day, and you’ve watched a lot more television that was brought to you through these machines than you may realize. This particular one has some interesting labels inside about its history, and the box lens has an ABC property tag on it.
Now, here’s a rarity: a Marconi Mark VII. This one actually did belong to Tele-Tape Productions back in the day, which meant it spent a couple years at work in the early days of Sesame Street. What looks like sheet metal damage in the photo is really the reproduction logo, printed on vinyl, separating from the side of the camera. I’m going to replace that as soon as I can get the printing done (the design is pretty much done, but I just need to find someone who can print it to my specifications). In the meantime it’ll wear a rare and very interesting livery that a few Mark VIIs wore for a short period.
No, that’s not the pedestal they used under these when they were in service. Although, given their weight, you can sort of understand it.
And this stylish beast is the RCA TK-42. I’ve seen it described as RCA’s attempt to combine the color of the TK-41 with the sharpness of the monochrome TK-60. Unfortunately, ambition didn’t match execution and the TK-42 was not a hit. NBC itself really didn’t want anything to do with them, so TK-42s and TK-43s were often what brought local stations into the color era.13 The TK-42 was soon superseded by the great and durable TK-44. This one somehow made it to modern times, and even has the proper RCA pedestal and head most often seen beneath them. Unfortunately, it’s missing a few of its internals and has to be balanced with some weights inside, but from the outside you couldn’t tell. The black-and-gold RCA logo disappeared from the right side somewhere along the way, but a very helpful designer with a 3D printer was able to print up a replacement that looks just like it’s always been there, and I’m very happy.
We look much happier wearing the General’s lightning bolt. Now imagine how we’ll look once we’re back on our big ol’ pedestal and we can get a good all-over clean-up and shine.
There’s plenty left to do on these cameras. I’ve done some initial clean-up on them, but when I have time I want to give each one a good going-over to make them look as good as they can.14 There’s also a few things I may do as I find period-correct hardware for these machines. But all that’s down the road. Right now, what matters is that these old machines are safe in their new home, where young eyes will be able to see the equipment that helped make possible what they now take as a given.
On January 31, 1987 NBC gave over a prime-time hour so that Today could celebrate its 35th anniversary. As you’ll see, this is a fascinating special, particularly because of one feature.15
A word of warning: This is a very image-heavy retrospective. This special was fast-paced and used a lot of archival footage. I didn’t include everything I had wanted to include, because otherwise I’d still be editing photos this time next week. Anyway, here we go.
“Hunter takes a detour tonight so we can help our friends at the Today Show celebrate a special anniversary.”16 This six-feathered version of the Peacock that we know so well? When this airs, it’s less than a year old.
We open with Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel, who just happen to be walking along 49th Street in front of the old Exhibition Hall. Gumbel points out where they are and how it was where Today began. “I think there’s a bank there now,” Gumbel adds mid-sentence, in that parenthetical way of his. Jane Pauley sets the scene for what television was like in 1952 – only 15 million sets in the whole country, with most viewership in the evenings, and the thought of an early-morning television show was unusual. “In fact, only 26 stations carried that first Today show,” she says.
The people on the sidewalk just keep passing by, paying no heed. There’s no way you could do this now, not when everybody wants to mug for the camera.
Then we go to a montage of classic moments, with a simple and very pretty rendition of “Sentimental Journey” in the background. And, sure enough, the first clip we see is J. Fred Muggs with Dave Garroway.
The focus in the opening montage is on lighthearted moments. You’d almost get the feeling Today was a comedy revue. The only really serious moment is Pope John Paul II holding hands and praying with Gumbel and Pauley. Then we dissolve to the dignitaries gathered for the evening, and the velvet voice of Fred Facey introduces the show.
“Welcome to Today at 35, and our family reunion,” Gumbel says, teeing up the introductions as being like a family album. We’re introduced to the returning family members with archival footage, followed by a shot of them in the studio. One neat touch is that the NBC logo appropriate for the start of their tenure is shown alongside their names.
The entire gathering was introduced in alphabetical order: Frank Blair, Tom Brokaw, John Chancellor, Hugh Downs, Betty Furness, Joe Garagiola, Jim Hartz, Florence Henderson, Jack Lescoulie, Lee Meriwether, Edwin Newman, Helen O’Connell, Betsy Palmer, John Palmer, Willard Scott, Gene Shalit, Barbara Walters, and Pat Weaver (“all of this is his baby – which he enjoys now from retirement,” Gumbel says). Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel round out the introduction.
“Our beginnings were humble,” Gumbel says, teeing up the obligatory clip of the first morning. “Dave Garroway and a staff of 35, working in a storefront with people looking in the window. The critics all laughed, and said it wouldn’t last even 13 weeks.”
I think there’s some kind of written regulation at NBC that they have to show this clip at least once in every special.
When we rejoin the present, Bryant Gumbel is sitting at a re-creation of the original set – “this is NOT the original,” he takes pains to point out.17
Gumbel is joined by Hugh Downs, Tom Brokaw and Frank Blair there to recount the early days of Today. Gumbel asks Blair if he felt like a pioneer. “Definitely,” Blair says. He noted that being up early and doing this unusual thing bound them together. Blair notes that producer Mort Werner was asked once what makes Today click: “It’s a matter of chemistry.”
Downs remembers being on the NBC staff in Chicago and watching the first Today program from the booth – “I was duly amazed, but I didn’t think people would be up tuning in.” Brokaw muses, “As I sit here thinking about it, these are my heroes! I was growing up out there in South Dakota, and television was truly my window on the world.” Downs remembers moments that, looking back, he called “golden.”
Garroway sits, bemused, as an entire marching band winds through the Exhibition Hall…and watches a flea circus perform on the air.
Blair notes the program was criticized “when we brought the chimpanzee in,” but the reasoning was that kids would turn the program on to see the chimpanzee, and the parents would realize there was a news program going on. “So we all owe a great debt of gratitude to J. Fred Muggs…wherever you are,” Blair says with mock solemnity.
I guess I owe the little guy this much.
Gumbel asks all three if one appreciates Today more after you’ve left it. Brokaw is grateful for having done it; Downs makes a lighthearted but appreciative comment. It becomes clear that Frank Blair never really let go. “If I were younger, I would love to still be doing it. I would boot John Palmer right out of here and take over. But you reach a point of no return. You run out of fuel, and it’s better that a younger man has my job now.”
As they go to break, there’s a clip of John “Skid” Chancellor and Frank “Checkers” Blair running the first Today Show Grand Prix, a go-kart race inside the studio.
There’s a commercial. Soft piano. A woman’s voice, over shots of a bedroom: “Silk always makes me feel sensuous.” And when the woman in the commercial wears pantyhose that glistens like silk and feels like silk, “I feel wonderful…all over.”18
Then GM, in a Very Important Commercial, talks about its commitment to building better cars, culminating in a new six-year, 60,000-mile warranty “that tells you each and every GM car we build today is the best-quality, best-value GM car ever.”19
When we come back, Jane Pauley leads off a segment with Barbara Walters, mentioning her ascent from being hired by Dave Garroway as a writer to becoming co-host. There are clips of her interviewing dignitaries and statesmen and other VIPs…followed by the obligatory clips from a segment in which Walters went undercover at a Playboy Club in 1962, complete with the bunny costume.
Walters remembers the “bunny dip” used to serve patrons their drinks.
They segue into how Walters’ role evolved from writing women’s features to doing general features. Then there’s another clip, a 1965 segment where Walters spends an evening with the information telephone operators in the 50th Street office, and tries it herself, only to be greeted by the voice of Jack Lescoulie on the other end of the line.
Pauley asks Walters who she looked up to growing up. Walters replies that someday Pauley herself would hear young women say what Walters heard: “I grew up with you.”20 And Walters says she was very proud that when she left, Pauley took her place. “I think it’s a great credit to me that someone like you followed.”21
From there Pauley segues to talking about the role of the Today Girls. And four of them – Lee Meriwether, Helen O’Connell, Florence Henderson and Betsy Palmer – regale us with a cute song about what it was like and the people (and chimpanzee) they worked with, complete with more clips.
Edwin Newman is mentioned only in passing in this song, but I love this clip during the montage – from the end of a special he did long ago. He gives the NBC News disclaimer at the end, while taking a long-awaited bath, then squeezes the sponge over his head and lets out a satisfied sigh.
At the end, Jane Pauley comes over and has a little fun with how they sang her name. She then asks Bernie Wayne, who wrote the song and played the piano, to play a few bars of his most famous composition.
It turns out to be “There She Is, Miss America.” Which, of course, Lee Meriwether came to Today after her reign as Miss America, and there’s a moment of warm reminiscence. That’s promptly disposed of in the throw to break, with the famous clip of Harpo Marx22 chasing a Today Girl around the studio.
Then a bumper, with an RCA TK-11/31. Always a lovely thing to see.
Commercials: A UPS ad looks back on the company’s history through old black-and-white photos. Then lots of fast-paced, high-energy scenes of modern UPS operations. Lots of 727s and 747s. “We run the tightest ship in the shipping business.”
Great airplanes. I loved flying on 727s, back when you could. I miss them.
That’s followed by a commercial for a very personal thing women use. Somehow, clear blue liquid is supposed to demonstrate how effective it is. Right. (No, I’m not showing a picture.)
Then Ann-Margret and Claudette Colbert in “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles,” coming February 8.
“Sir, does this mean Ann-Margret won’t be coming?”
Followed by a Saturday Night Live promo with host Paul Shaffer being heckled by the Church Lady.
Back to the anniversary show, it’s time for a look at the entertainment greats that have been on Today. Some neat finds in the montage, including this exchange between George Gobel and Dave Garroway, when the entire morning’s show was done outside the studio:
Gobel: “The whole show? Out here in the street?”
Garroway: “Yep.”
Gobel: “Well, see now, that’s television for you. You know, just one bad week and you’re out.”
There’s also a glimpse of the famous/infamous “Caesar and Cleopatra” sketch with Jack Lescoulie and Jayne Mansfield.23
Gumbel is at the desk, this time with various occupants of the sidekick role: Willard Scott, Gene Shalit, Joe Garagiola and Jack Lescoulie.
The first anecdote has Lescoulie telling the story of the day Ava Gardner was supposed to be on Today, but didn’t show up. The quick-thinking Garroway summoned staff member Estelle Parsons to the desk. “You be Ava Gardner.” And Garroway conducted the interview. This dissolves into a discussion about how humor is tough to sell in the morning, which leads to playful bickering between Joe Garagiola and Gene Shalit. “Did you ever have hair?” Shalit asks. Garagiola replies, “I think you’re overdressed!” Without missing a beat, Willard Scott leaps up, his toupee in hand. “I think we can correct that!” And he plonks the toupee atop Garagiola’s head.
“This is the dignified Joe Garagiola look….”
…and then Willard turns the toupee. “Now here’s the Hippie Joe Garagiola look! Give him a guitar and watch him go!”
Lescoulie tells a story about a day he was late getting to the studio, and how in those days the tradition was to cut your tie if you made a mistake. Up against the segment clock, Gumbel asks Lescoulie to tell about the ring he wears.
It’s a duplicate of the one Garroway wore, Lescoulie says, and he gave it to him in 1953. “The inscription inside is typical Garroway,” he says, “And it says ‘To Jack from Dave, for being just what you are by the dawn’s early light.’ And I’ve worn it ever since.” Lescoulie then looks toward the camera. “And, old partner, thank you, and peace to you.”
There’s then a montage, introduced by Jane Pauley, about the versatile but lesser-sung members of the Today family.
The very first clip in the montage is the only glimpse you’ll get all night of the forgotten Jim Fleming.
Then there’s an interview with Betty Furness.
Betty mentions that she was a friend of Garroway’s24, so she watched the very first show, and when they began to have women on the show, she wanted to be on the show. “But nobody would talk to me!” She notes that she continued to be snubbed even after she was no longer doing commercials at CBS. What finally got her a role on Today was her work as a consumer reporter for WNBC-TV, and a chance meeting at the elevator with a Today producer led to a substitute hosting job. Then Gumbel crashes the interview25 to show a clip of Jane Pauley bogarting his cigar at a political convention a few years before.
Then more ads.
AT&T is going to combine computers and communications so we can get the right information to the right people at the right time. Reckon how that’s gonna work out?
Smart Cat. Ask any cat and they’ll tell you they’re smarter than humans, anyway.
A slow sweep of the newsroom on that first morning forms a neat bumper for the local throw.
Remington Steele is back! Tuesday!
Peak ’80s. (And, yes, Today did originate from Australia starting the following Monday.)
Back from the break, it’s time to talk about Important News, the big stories, the world leaders and presidents and aspirants and such who have stopped by. This leads in to a discussion with Barbara Walters, John Chancellor, John Palmer and Edwin Newman.
Chancellor starts the discussion with a self-deprecating joke about the montage that led the segment off.26 The comments from the panel speak of the influence the morning shows have gained, to the point that the White House kept track of the shows’ ratings and decided where to deploy their spokespeople accordingly.
Back at the 1952 desk, Jane Pauley takes note of the changes in technology, and notes that Today has featured new technologies right from the first day:
Garroway shows off a wirephoto machine on the first day. “We’ll show it to you mere minutes after it was taken. The print we show you will still be wet, but you won’t be able to feel it at home. I hope.”
Then Mufax shows the home audience grainy stills of the Queen’s coronation.
Hugh Downs and Jim Hartz join Pauley to talk about the change in technology, particularly in how microphones have grown tinier as time has passed. Downs predicts that at the rate they’re shrinking, microphones will disappear altogether in August 1991. Pauley disagrees: “No, I think it’ll be implants, Hugh.” They then discuss how Today has been around the world, buttressed with a quick montage of the many places the program has visited: Paris, Romania, Ireland, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, at sea aboard the liner s/s Norway. Jim Hartz suggests that the audience may have become jaded, because they have become accustomed to “whatever you can imagine, you can do.”
We go to commercial with a look out the old 49th Street window.
Other side of the TK-11/31. I want one.
A sentimental spot for Amtrak. “There’s somethin’ about a train that’s magic.”27 Followed by a spot for this new pain reliever called Advil.
“The ritual of Oil of Olay.” Get you some of this stuff and some of that silky pantyhose from the first half-hour, and you’ll be at full-blown Mystical Womanhood before you know it.
A really neat spot for college basketball, with live action giving way to animated pastel renderings. Really beautiful, really classy. I wish we still saw stuff like this today.
During a brief interlude Pauley, Gumbel and Scott talk about what it’s been like, with all the stories and anecdotes and good times. Willard notes, “Everybody really seems to like each other.”28 Then Pauley says they’ve been wondering what Today will be like in the future, so through the magic of computers, they’ve sent Mike Leonard ahead 35 years…to the year 2022. Yes. To this year.
So this is what this year is like. Where’s the Snake logo, then?
“The cameras are robotic. Just stick to the script,” a robotic voice tells Leonard. Well, we do have robotic cameras now, I guess. Anyway, in this version of 2022, there’s a cure for the common cold.29 And they’ll talk live with some of the moment’s biggest celebrities:
The news is sent through absorption. Commercials are two seconds long and subliminal. And weather forecasters can actually do something about the weather: as a robocam hovers nearby, a blizzard in Buffalo gets sent to Los Angeles.
But there’s time to look back to 70 years ago, when Garroway tried out Mary Kelly’s electric typewriter.
This compares to the “rather large” portable television of 1986.
“But give them credit…they knew what the future held.”
Yeah, they got that one right.
And in a disturbing twist, digital facsimiles of yourself can be sent anywhere around the world. Which leads to several Mike Leonards ganging up on him.
This disturbs him. “Because that’s what made the Today show. All the human touches.” Garroway pops in every now and again, a patron saint of the program’s humanity.
Especially as he roars at a telephone receiver.
Leonard’s had enough of this technological dystopia. “Send me back 35 years.”31 So he clicks together his ruby-studded shoes…only to be trapped inside a computer screen.
A more serious look at the future comes in a brief visit with Pat Weaver. “It’s good to be back,” Weaver says, “and particularly on such an auspicious occasion.” Weaver doesn’t think the future will be like Leonard’s fanciful journey. “It’ll still be people. But the future will change, a lot.” Weaver hopes the future will bring fulfillment of the first promise of broadcasting: that you can sit at home, in your comfortable chair, and be somewhere else in the world, at the push of a button and the speed of light. Although he’s disappointed that the promise has yet to be fulfilled, he is optimistic “that with the new technology that we’re getting, we will finally be able to be a world without privilege” – that it won’t require family connections or wealth or aristocracy to enjoy the best things there are. Gumbel reminds Weaver of something he wrote in 1952: that the goal was to enrich life and make the common man quite uncommon. “That’s right!” Weaver says. “Glad to see you’re still consistent,” Gumbel says.32
We go to break with Garroway using his long microphone cord like a whip, to the amusement of the crowd outside.
As they say good night, they remember a couple of family members who have gone onward.
Frank McGee, who joined Today in 1971, “and before his death three years later, the quiet man from Oklahoma made a lot of new friends.”34
…and Dave Garroway. Gumbel closes: “We want to remember Dave Garroway tonight as we always remember him: on some weekday morning, sometime in the ’50s, in living black and white, slightly bemused by the world around him, and believing that a little whimsy never hurt anybody.”
“The environment you live in inevitably influences your personality…I wonder how ours is gonna get influenced, living as often as we do, many hours of the day, in this strange and unique room. This is the only room in the world like the one we live in. With many lights, and…I wonder if we’re gonna have lights growing out of our heads someday.”
It’s Garroway who sees us through the closing credits…and bids us good night, in his familiar way.
All of us, at one time or another, have the urge to go back to places we remember. Sometimes we wish we hadn’t. Last December, after the last day of classes, I took an overnight trip to North Carolina just because I needed to get away. As part of that trip, I retraced the route we’d take to visit my grandfather’s summer home. There are so many memories I have of that old house, full of neat stuff he’d accumulated over the years, where time seemed like it had stood still since about 1965. It was full of neat books and gadgets and stuff from an age slightly older than mine. In an odd way, I felt at home in that time capsule of a house.35
There have been times the last few years when I’ve daydreamed about striking it rich36 and buying my grandfather’s old place, fixing the house up and making my own memories there. And last December, there was a “for sale” sign in front of the house. That night, in my hotel room, I looked up the listing. It didn’t take me long to wish I hadn’t. Very little of the interior of that house was still as I remembered it. Everything that made it special had been gutted at least 20 years back and replaced with stuff that looked identical to what you’d find in any other house anywhere else. Some parts of the house appeared to have been damaged. Much of it had been renovated to the point that I couldn’t recognize which room was supposed to be which. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it hurt regardless.37
This kind of heartbreak happens to all of us, in time. It’s the nature of the world. As Dave Garroway was reminded in 1954. During a summer respite, he happened to be near his hometown of Schenectady, New York, and decided to drive through for old times’ sake. He found his maternal grandparents’ old home place and drove out to see what it was like now. Garroway rang the bell, met the family that lived there now, explained that he had grown up there and asked if he might have a look around. It didn’t take long for the realization to hit him, either. “The deer stag’s head was off the wall, and the lamp with the beaded fringe was gone,” he recalled. “Grandfather’s rose garden was now a concrete garage…which all goes to show, you can’t go home again.”
It didn’t get any better when he went out to the old home place of his father’s family. His father, grandfather and an uncle had worked for General Electric, and during the off-hours they ran a chicken farm that kept them engaged in what Garroway remembered as “backbreaking work.” The young Garroways had lived in a cottage on the chicken farm, and it burned down when Dave was two. “I stopped there last summer, too, and looked at the site,” he said. “Growing out of the old ruins was a poplar tree, so big around that I couldn’t even get my arms around it. That’s how old I am!”
Maybe all of us should heed the words of Thomas Wolfe.38
On any project there are milestones. Sometimes you meet them and you feel unalloyed relief. But other times you feel a twinge of sadness alongside relief. Yesterday had one such moment for me.
For the last three years I have slowly made my way through the Newspapers database, compiling thousands of newspaper clippings through the years of Dave Garroway’s life. And it was yesterday that my search carried me through the year 1982, when Dave’s life ended.
Memorial ad from the July 27, 1982 Hartford Courant.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s been a chore, tedious at times. Although I do have to say it’s nowhere near the chore that going through newspapers was in earlier times. Until not that long ago, going through newspapers meant spending days on end at libraries spooling through countless microfilm reels, with no real search assistance for most newspapers. You had to know what to look for and where to find it. It took forever. My master’s thesis involved a lot of crawling through microfilm, and even though it was a single newspaper over a period of three months, it was a chore. Which makes me thankful for Newspapers.com and how a single search string can return thousands of matches from hundreds of newspapers in an instant.39
Within seconds, a search string pulls up 21,000 results from the year 1953, from dozens of papers around the nation (and in some instances, other countries). Can you imagine the work this would have been in the microfilm era? Sigh.
Be that as it may, it adds up in a hurry. The pile of clippings from the 1950s alone is overwhelming. What’s worse is that every time I have saved a clipping, I have logged it on notebook paper, and that log fills a binder. 40 I have conducted the search in my home, my work office, in countless hotel rooms during my travels the last three years.41 At times it’s been a chore that never seemed to end; in other times it’s been a welcome distraction from whatever was troubling me. And now it’s done, mostly.
There’s still the years after Dave’s death to look through, and I am making my way through those. But as the years pass, the mentions become fewer. You also see mentions of his name when his colleagues and contemporaries pass away. In time, his name fades, brought up only in mentions of anniversaries of Today‘s debut. You do get a feeling of a story ending and fading.
Going through all these articles has given me a great sense of the arc of Dave’s life, and I feel I understand him that much better. It’s closed some open questions, put time stamps on moments that seemed to float in history, and knocked down a myth or two along the way. But it’s also had moments of sadness, as he goes from rising-star DJ of the 1940s to white-hot television icon of the early ’50s to serious presence of the late ’50s…and then his world falls apart, and he vanishes. Oh, he pops up every so often with a new gig, but those don’t take root for whatever reason. Every so often someone interviews him, and his views on television become less hopeful with every interview in each successive year. And then it’s over in a moment, and with each year that passes since, it seems he becomes more a trivia answer than anything else.
I can’t rest too long, because now it’s time for me to take those 3,000-plus clippings and put them to work, and that’s going to be a chore in itself. I can’t say I’ll miss the hours of clipping and logging. But I will miss watching Dave’s story unfold, and I’ll also miss the little discoveries I made along the way.
A lengthy chapter has closed. But many more remain to be written. Let’s do that now.
It’s Dave Garroway’s birthday today – and it’s also our birthday. This website’s, that is. Three years ago today this website officially signed on. What a journey it’s been – and what a journey it continues to be. We’ve made a lot of friends, come to know members of the Garroway family, talked to people who worked with him or whose family members worked with him, discovered new material, given a presentation or two…a lot has happened. All of it has been worth it.
Three years into this project the manuscript is growing slowly but steadily. Much of that has been because so much time is being spent on finding new material, trawling the newspaper archives and conducting interviews in between the other chores we have to do in life. Not to mention that the current conditions have forced the postponement of a couple of research trips. But all of that is to come, and if I’ve learned anything as a researcher and author, it’s that the disappointment of a delay is often offset by discoveries you wouldn’t have made if your original schedule had held.
On this, our third birthday, we thank all of you who have been reading, who have written us, who have contributed items to the project. Thank you not only for your kindnesses to us, but also for helping make sure Dave Garroway lives on.
Happy birthday, Old Tiger.
:: Hugh Downs passed away just after I prepared last week’s post and I didn’t get a chance to acknowledge him then. I plan to write a longer tribute later, since he and Dave Garroway knew one another as far back as their days in Chicago. In the meantime, here is a lovely tribute, and I hope it will suffice until I’m able to write a tribute of my own. Suffice to say, we have lost one of the most versatile broadcasters the medium has ever known.
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.
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.
For whatever reason, the image above – a classic Chicago School photo – just feels appropriate for looking back at the end of a year. Especially one as productive as 2018 was for the Dave Garroway biography project.
During this trip around the Sun, we’ve accomplished a lot. The manuscript crossed the 30,000-word threshold. I received Garroway’s FBI files. Cooperation with Brandon has gone on wonderfully, and in June we met up for a most enjoyable working lunch. Another relationship, with a researcher working on a related project, has resulted in a lot of good things. In September I gave a presentation at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention. And best of all, thanks to some help from a couple of very good folks, I finally established contact with some members of Dave’s family, and that has gone very well and already yielded some great discoveries. There have been other little victories along the way, too, and they’ll pay dividends as we move ahead.
What’s ahead for 2019? For one thing, with my other book project now (mostly) the concern of its publisher, that should free up time and brain power for Dave Garroway. I’m hoping to get out and conduct a few interviews this year. There’s still two or three decades worth of exploring to do through Newspapers.com. The new year won’t have a lack of things to get done.
But the best thing? This year I felt like I started to understand Dave Garroway – that the bits of information I’d collected over the years had finally started to organize themselves, and mystery began yielding to insight. And in its own way, that’s as important as any article or document or piece of film I could unearth. If I’m going to tell his story, I can’t just rattle off the facts or repeat myths. I have to understand him. I owe it to him. And this year it was as if he said from the great beyond, “Wow. It looks like you’re serious. Come inside, kid.” (I’ll do my best to not let you down, sir.)
The new year has the potential to be a great one for this project. There’s a lot to be thankful for when I think of 2018, too. I’m grateful for everything that’s happened on this project, for all the great folks I’ve met along the way, for all the help they’ve extended me. And I’m grateful to those of you who have read along as this adventure unfolds. Stay tuned…there’s more to come.
“Hunter takes a detour tonight so we can help our friends at the Today Show celebrate a special anniversary.”
It’s Dave Garroway’s birthday today – and it’s also our birthday. This website’s, that is. Three years ago today this website officially signed on. What a journey it’s been – and what a journey it continues to be. We’ve made a lot of friends, come to know members of the Garroway family, talked to people who worked with him or whose family members worked with him, discovered new material, given a presentation or two…a lot has happened. All of it has been worth it.
