Of all the historic studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the most famous is Studio 8H. Since 1975, 8H has been famous as the home of Saturday Night Live. For that reason, it’s the studio everybody hopes to see on the NBC Studio Tour. There’s no question SNL is the chief tenant of 8H; there’s an elaborate permanent set, the corridors are lined with photos of previous hosts and cast members, and Lorne Michaels has a ninth-floor office with a glass window overlooking the studio.1 Outside the balcony entrance there’s a display case where costumes from famous SNL characters are on display.2
The Auditorium Studio in its original configuration. (NBC photo)
But that’s not all 8H is known for. If we could look at a cross-section of the big studio’s history, we’d find all sorts of history. We would see, for instance, the many times NBC News based special events coverage – election nights, space missions – from the big studio. We would see live drama and musical programs from the early days of television. Going back into the days of radio, we’d learn about stars like Fred Allen hosting their series from 8H.3 We’d learn the studio has had several names over the years.4 We’d learn that 8H had seen innovation, and in itself is something of a marvel.5
Maestro at work in 8H. (NBC photo)
And, of course, you cannot talk about 8H without talking about its most prestigious resident. For next to that display case near the ninth floor balcony entrance, there’s another case that preserves for posterity the music stand used by the great Arturo Toscanini. RCA president David Sarnoff persuaded Toscanini to head up a symphony orchestra for NBC, believing the radio medium needed to improve its commitment to cultural and artistic programming. From 1937 to his retirement in 19546 Toscanini headed NBC’s symphony orchestra, which performed regularly for the network, and performed for many of those years from 8H.7
By now you’re no doubt asking what all this has to do with Dave Garroway. Well, I had to tell you those stories to get to this story. In a way, 8H was where Dave Garroway’s NBC career began, and ended.
As a 24-year-old NBC page, Dave got to know the RCA Building very well. As a tour guide, he had to know the studios very well in order to explain their purpose to visitors. Sometimes he was in proximity with dignitaries and celebrities; directing Lowell Thomas to the correct studio, or after a tour he led drew particular praise, being chosen by David Sarnoff to lead tours for distinguished visitors. And sometimes Garroway would watch history unfold. When Toscanini was hired to lead the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Garroway saw the preparations that were being made to keep the notoriously temperamental maestro happy: the tour routes that were changed, the corridors that were set up, all to minimize the chances of Toscanini getting annoyed.
Sometimes Garroway would get to perform page duties during Toscanini’s rehearsals, during the months before the first concert. As the “stand-in” page, Garroway guarded the door of 8H so no one could get in or out while the great man conducted. And in time, Garroway assisted with the live broadcasts. Years later he would remember all the special considerations; for instance, the programs given to audience members were printed on silk8, so the rustle of audience members turning pages wouldn’t spoil the performance or irritate the great conductor.
But not all was perfect even then. One evening, in the middle of a Brahms symphony, a woman in the audience began to retch. She could not leave; the studio was too full. Garroway remembered how the smell filled the studio. It soon reached Toscanini, who looked back just long enough to glare at the audience. During an intermission the pages brought in buckets of sand and cleaned up as best they could, while the unfortunate woman was taken away in a wheelchair, a bag over her face to hide her embarrassment. Other memories of 8H would dot Garroway’s memory, such as being there when a guest on Fred Allen’s show literally endangered his safety by flubbing his lines.9
Over the years Garroway’s duties would bring him through 8H. But there would be none so poignant as June 15, 1961.
As programs sometimes do, Today had shifted from its usual home in mid-June 1961. Studio 3B, the program’s usual home, needed to be vacated for a while, so Today was shifted into 8H, which was spacious and available. Framed correctly by the studio cameras, no one would really know the difference.10 But bigger changes were coming. The biggest was that on May 26, Garroway had requested his release from Today. There were several factors behind this. Dave’s wife had died the previous month. He was wearing out after years of a grueling schedule. He was at loggerheads with NBC, which wanted to move Today under the control of the news department, change the format, and greatly reduce Garroway’s role and influence on the program. The management of the news division didn’t see Garroway as a journalist, and this irked him no end.11
For these and other reasons, Garroway wanted out of his Today obligations. And it happened that on his last week, Today was originating from the studio where some of his most memorable page duties had taken place. During one segment in that final week, Garroway donned his old page jacket and took viewers on a tour of 8H. The tour featured photographs and recordings of those Toscanini performances, of Fred Allen’s programs, and of other stars of a bygone age.
On Garroway’s last live program12, he took the last two minutes to say farewell, although he insisted it wasn’t really a farewell. “I’m leaving television very temporarily,” he said, “for enough time to find out what’s going on, listen to people instead of talk – when you talk a lot, you don’t hear much, you know, and you don’t read much either when you do the Today show.” Garroway expressed his desire to learn more about the world so he could come back through television “and do more to preserve that in which I hope you and I believe, this system of government, and the human individual.” He thanked viewers for all the letters they had written and said they would each be answered, but it may take a while, “so let me thank you right now, very much, for them.” And one final time, Garroway wished the audience “much love…and peace.”
Dave’s farewell, June 15, 1961. (NBC photo)
A decade and a half later, Garroway would recall his last day as the most memorable of his career, as he walked “slowly and regretfully” from the studio…the studio that had figured so often in so many vivid memories from his career at NBC.
:: While we’re talking about NBC’s famous studios, may I please recommend you treat yourself to a copy of William Bartlett’s splendid book NBC And 30 Rock? It is thoroughly researched, well-written and lavishly illustrated, and I guarantee you’ll find some happy surprises therein. Seriously, treat yourself to one.
One of Today‘s most famous features in the early years was the big window along 49th Street. Not only could people watch Today as it was being produced live, but often the people on the street became part of the show. The RCA Exhibition Hall became kind of a tourist magnet in those years, and there are many stories of how some onlookers used that window and the chance to be on television for purposes sweet (a man who stopped by the window and greeted his mute mother in sign language) and sneaky (a man who used the window to plug a competing show).
But the window didn’t last forever, and Today moved out of the RCA Exhibition Hall in July 1958. Part of it was practical – putting the show in a storefront had brought challenges, and there was only so much space. Part of it was because a rival television manufacturer had charged that it was unfair competition for NBC to put on a television show in its parent company’s glass-fronted exhibition hall, where RCA’s products could be seen on television.
So came the move across the street, and on July 7, 1958 Today began to originate from Studio 3K13 in the RCA Building14 Although there was some amazement at how much more spacious the new studio was (associate producer Mary Kelly marveled to a reporter that the new control room seemed as big as the old studio), there were things the show missed. A lot of memories and a lot of history had been made in the Exhibition Hall. Betsy Palmer15 would remember that the window provided a form of connection with the audience, and the audience with the show. It was live and spontaneous. “When we went into the third-floor studio,” she said, “all of a sudden it was like losing the air.”16
And it didn’t take long to realize something was missing. That big window had provided more than just a trademark for Today; it also had a practical function. When there was time to fill, or when there was a cutaway to a break, that window and the people on the other side were a convenient and interesting visual. Now, inside the studio, that was gone. This became obvious the first day. Stage manager Fred Lights17 would later remember a gap of about thirty seconds they had to fill with something. “No one had thought about a replacement for the window,” Lights said. “We had nothing to shoot. You should have seen the shock, the chaos, that first morning in the studio. It looked like the chariot race for Ben Hur.”
And immediately after the show was finished, they solved the problem. A fish tank was brought into 3K. Now, when a visual was needed, the camera would linger on sights aquatic. Sometimes this would be built into the show’s rundown; during the five-minute “co-op” made available to local stations, those remaining with the network might see Garroway and the rest of the cast chatting, or they might get the fish swimming lazily along as music played behind.
Other tactics were employed to bring back some spontaneity. In January 1959, bleachers for a studio audience were set up in the studio, and 40 people each day were allowed to watch the show (but were not provided with coffee).18 But that experiment proved short-lived. The fish tank remained, but it couldn’t take the place of what had been left behind on the street below.
Inside the Florida Showcase. (NBC photo)
In 1962 Today took another try at capturing the spontaneity of a decade before. Through an arrangement with Florida’s tourism board, NBC originated Today from the Florida Showcase, the state’s tourism office on the ground floor of 30 Rock, with big display windows along 49th Street. For three years passersby could look in, watch the show on the air, and occasionally be captured by the cameras. But this came at a price, as each day the set had to be taken down and all the television equipment stowed away so Florida’s tourism office could conduct business. Plus NBC, going full-color, couldn’t justify keeping several precious (and HUGE19) color cameras down on the ground floor when they were needed in the main studios upstairs. So once again, Today lost its window on New York. For nearly three decades, the views of New York from within the Today studio would be through graphics.
In June 1994 Today went back to where it all began – or, at least, next door. A building on the corner of Rockefeller Plaza and 49th Street was converted into a modern television studio known as Studio 1A. With large glass windows along two sides, Today had gone back to its roots. And just as happened in the days when Garroway held court in the Exhibition Hall just down the street, it didn’t take long for the people outside the window to become part of the show. And, once again, a big window on 49th Street has become a must-see for tourists visiting New York.
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 50th20 – 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.”21 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)22 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.23
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.”24
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, 1961.25 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.”26
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 songs27 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.”28
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.”29
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!”30
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.31 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.32 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.
All too often radio history seems to end in about 1950, when (as popular culture would have you believe) television roared from the cradle to the living room and never let go. Not only is that overly simplistic concept inaccurate in a lot of ways (and oh, how I could bore you to tears describing those inaccuracies), but it also sells way short some truly innovative attempts to keep radio vital and relevant. And one of those efforts involved our very own Dave Garroway.
On this blog you will often see me sing the praises of Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, the visionary NBC executive whose mind and clout shaped so much of what we now know – the Today and Tonight programs, magazine-style sponsorship of network programming (allowing sponsors to buy small segments of ad time during a show instead of sponsoring the whole thing, which opened up television sponsorship to dozens of smaller clients), and so forth. But while Weaver’s vision for television is often discussed, it’s sometimes forgotten he had concepts for the radio division as well.
Network radio was still going in the early 1950s, but it was obvious that within a few years television was going to dominate the landscape, as more stations signed on and as television receivers became more affordable. Radio had to adapt or die. It was against that backdrop that in 1955, Weaver – now NBC president – ripped apart the NBC Radio model33 to inaugurate a weekend radio service called Monitor.
This new concept called for NBC to provide 40 continuous hours of programming, starting at 8 am on Saturday. During those 40 hours, the program would hop from story to story, event to event, depending on what was going on. One moment you might hear a live remote from an airplane crossing the Atlantic. A few minutes later the program might have an interview with an author. A few minutes after that, you might hear a live band performance from a Manhattan night spot. At the top of each hour, there would be a news update. Holding each block together, your guide as the program hopscotched from feature to feature, was someone who wasn’t called a host, but styled in Weaver-ese as a “communicator.” And the program’s signature wasn’t a piece of music – or, at least, not music in a conventional sense. Instead, it was a distinctive, layered series of beeps, blips and boops performing their own strange tune – the tones of the Monitor Beacon.34
NBC photo
And who should be one of the first Monitor communicators? None other than our own Dave Garroway. When Monitor started, Dave was coming off a long-form weekend radio program called Sunday with Garroway (later in its run, Friday with Garroway). Dave’s easygoing style wore well in long-form programming, and thus he was brought in on the new Monitor concept early on. He hosted a run-through of the concept that was shared during a closed-circuit pitch to affiliates in April 1955. And Dave was also there on the very first Monitor segment on June 12, giving the latest news headlines.35
Garroway stayed on Monitor during its first five years, most often occupying a Sunday night slot. He was an excellent, easygoing choice for Sunday evenings. And sometimes he had some memorable moments – for instance, his famous 1955 interview with Marilyn Monroe. But as easygoing as Dave sounded, his Sunday night duties on Monitor added yet another layer to his complicated, over-scheduled life, which included hosting Today and another Weaver innovation, the high-concept Sunday television series Wide Wide World.
Monitor adapted with the times. It cut back on its hours as the industry changed. Its content became less ambitious; although live remotes could still happen, by the mid-1960s its staples were recorded segments and the pop hits of the moment.36 By the 1970s it was fairly well removed from what it had been, and in an effort to find new life NBC brought in such on-air personalities as Wolfman Jack and Don Imus.37
In 1975 NBC pulled the plug on Monitor, and on that final weekend the program looked back on nineteen and a half years of memories. Among the moments recalled on that final program were some involving Dave Garroway, who took part in a farewell interview. Monitor is long gone, but its influence lives on – for instance, I can’t help listening to NPR’s All Things Considered without noticing some of Monitor in its DNA.38
Happily, Monitor also remains with us in a vibrant online tribute. Dennis Hart (who literally wrote the book on Monitor) maintains the terrific Monitor Tribute Pages website. There, you can not only see some neat photos and read terrific recollections from Monitor‘s staff and listeners, but you can listen to dozens and dozens of preserved Monitor segments. And luckily for us, there’s a few clips from Dave Garroway’s reign as a Monitor communicator. Do yourself a favor and spend some time there – but if you end up spending hours on end enjoying all that splendid audio, consider yourself warned.39
:: Manuscript progress: you’ll be happy to know the manuscript is approaching 54,000 words. And I haven’t even started digging into the really big sources of information! But even with what I have done so far, I can promise that this book will give you a perspective on Dave Garroway unlike any you’ve ever before read. It’s a tale that’s well worth the effort to tell, and I believe you’re going to enjoy it – and you’ll be puzzled why it hasn’t been told before. Stay tuned.
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.
via Science History Institute
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:
NBC photo
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.
RCA photo
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:
RCA photo
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.
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.40 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 color41, 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 York42, from which point NBC is about to bring us another afternoon of fine opera.
(NBC photo)
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.
You knew it was coming. (NBC photo)
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.
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.
By early 1954 Today was doing well. Part of it came from the program finding its focus. Part of it came from the addition of J. Fred Muggs to the program. But to the executives whose decisions meant life or death for a television program, what mattered was the revenue. And thanks to a talented and motivated sales staff, Today had become a solid and successful buy for advertisers of all sorts – many of whom wanted Dave Garroway to do the commercials for them.43 And thanks to Sponsor Magazine senior editor Charles Sinclair, who was given an unusual assignment in early 1954, we have an inside glimpse into the advertising aspect of Today – and of what it was like on the inside during an average day’s routine.44
Sinclair’s boss had assigned him to spend time with the Cunningham and Walsh agency45 and write about what the average agency man went through in a week. His very first assignment? Assisting with the live spots that the E.R. Squibb company had purchased on Today. So at 5:30 on Monday morning, he was shivering outside the Exhibition Hall46, waiting for the account’s supervisor, Tom De Huff, to arrive. When he did, a few minutes later, the two entered the building. “Garroway had just arrived and was surrounded, like a Queen Bee, by a covey of production coordinators, sports writers, newsmen and technical men,” Sinclair noted.
Garroway with Charles Sinclair (center) and agency rep Tom De Huff. (Sponsor Magazine photo)
Sinclair and De Huff walked down the long ramp to the downstairs reception room, near the control room. He noted “a long table around which sat half a dozen people drinking coffee poured by a white-coated waiter everyone called ‘Major.'” De Huff, who knew the program’s customs, explained that this was known as the “Telop One Club.”47 Over coffee and cigarettes, they discussed the spots Garroway would do for Squibb products. Dick Jackson, the network’s senior unit manager for Today, soon joined them and said the spots for Squibb appeared to be simple enough. “That’s a break for us today because we’re loaded to the top,” Jackson said, naming at least seven major clients who had booked time on the broadcast.48 “We think Garroway works best when there are no elaborate gimmicks, no tricky cues and no fancy art.”
When De Huff was a little concerned how the package would look on television, Jackson took the package upstairs and the two ad men went down the hall to a nearby viewing room to watch the camera check. In the room were a couple of representatives from other agencies. One of them, a pretty young girl, said she thought the whole thing was a lot of fun. “Not if you have to come in from Westport,” grumbled the other ad rep, fighting off drowsiness at ten after six. Over the monitors in the screening room the men watched Garroway rehearse each commercial in the lineup. He soon got to the Squibb spots, and they noted with approval the way Garroway read the copy and displayed the products.
At seven the program began, and after a news break the Squibb commercial went as scheduled, with no surprises. Sinclair told De Huff that he’d hate to be up at 4:30 each day “just to play nursemaid to a minute’s worth of commercial.” De Huff replied that he only had to be there about two times a month, when Squibb had a new product or a new pitch. “The rest of the time we let Garroway do the commercial in his own style.” He then suggested the two adjourn for some breakfast. “It was 10 minutes after eight,” Sinclair wrote. “The sun was up, people on their way to work were staring through the huge glass windows at Garroway; the Telop One Club was in full swing.”
Today is Election Day here in the States, and all of us here at Garroway at Large World Headquarters are gonna go to the polls and do our civic duty. (We certainly hope you’ll do the same.) I’ll be spending the evening helping some students put some local election returns on our little radio station. My hope is that the local results will come in fairly quickly, we can wrap up our coverage at a reasonable hour, and we won’t end up with our own version of what happened on the night of November 8, 1960, when – as many of you know – things literally went all night and into the next day.
Many years ago the A&E cable network (back when you could tell the name stood for “Arts and Entertainment”) carried a two-hour highlights package of NBC’s coverage of that election. It’s really interesting to watch; you get to see Chet Huntley and David Brinkley in prime form, broadcasting from their perch above Studio 8H; you get to see John Chancellor and Sander Vanocur and Frank McGee and Merrill Mueller anchoring the regional desks; you get some really cool Hjalmar Hermanson set design, including the trademark X-shaped anchor desk; and you get all sorts of period-appropriate fun, including Richard Harkness minding a snazzy RCA computer that’s worked into the coverage as a neat bit of corporate synergy. It’s a good way to spend a slow afternoon. And as it becomes apparent the story’s not going to end any time soon, you get to see the anchors and correspondents deal with the fact they’re getting tired and nothing is happening.
But when the story stretches into the next morning, there’s a really nifty surprise, because look who stops by the aerie high over 8H:
(Bonus content! For another view from a little later, here you go.)
Our journey through TV Guide‘s examinations of Dave Garroway continues on. Today’s piece examines a big and slightly controversial change at how his flagship broadcast was produced.
TV Guide photo
“Garroway No Longer Will Work By Dawn’s Early Light” read the headline in the August 1, 1959 TV Guide. “Thanks to tape, Dave will be able to live like most of us,” read the sub-head. NBC would begin videotaping each Today program the preceding afternoon starting in September.
Producer Bob Bendick told TV Guide the change would allow more scope. “There are more things happening at 4 in the afternoon than at 7 in the morning,” he said. “We’ll be able to cover many stories that we could never do before, including activities on the West Coast.”
Garroway and most of his staff were reportedly happy with the change, though they would miss the amusing little things that could happen when guests had to be awakened to be on the program. Dave told a story of when production assistant Estelle Parsons was sent to pick up Ava Gardner at her hotel, only to find Gardner had locked the doors and refused to answer through any means Parsons tried. “So Estelle returned to the studio and we put her on camera to impersonate Ava,” Garroway said. “She did a beautiful job.”
TV Guide photo
In another instance, Garroway remembered when the United States Olympic weightlifting team appeared on the program. Before the program, they asked for some coffee. Five minutes later, one of them “sheepishly” asked an attendant for help…because he couldn’t pull the stopper from the coffee jug. The attendant popped it right out. “At least we won’t be serving so much coffee when we move to afternoons,” Garroway laughed. Other incidents, including the morning George Jessel foiled an invitation for Harry Truman to come in, were mentioned.49
Bendick explained that an afternoon taping would allow the staff to keep a better grip on what’s going on. He explained that at 7 a.m., they could never get a good report on what was going on in Congress. “At 4 p.m., Congress is in session. We hope to be able to move our cameras someday right into the Senate corridors, into committee rooms.” Afternoon tapings might also open opportunities for Garroway to go on location – for instance, to a Broadway theater to talk with performers while an afternoon rehearsal was underway. Likewise, they could drop in on baseball or football games in progress, with Jack Lescoulie covering them. “And if we want to interview a baseball personality such as Casey Stengel or Yogi Berra, think how much better it will be for Jack to talk to them at Yankee Stadium. Until now, we had to invite them to visit our studio at 7 a.m,” Bendick said.
While the bulk of the program would be taped, the periodic news reports from Frank Blair would continue to be done live. Bendick promised that if a big story broke during the night, “we’ll be prepared to go live with the entire show,” with the entire staff notified to show up and go on live.
The article stated Garroway and the staff saw the benefits of videotaping during Today‘s visit to Paris. They also learned that it was better to do the entire program straight through, as if being done live, rather than taping segments out of sequence and assembling them for broadcast.
One more issue Bendick hoped the move would solve was the search for a new “women’s editor.” Betsy Palmer had left the show some months before, and the early hours played a role in her departure. Several women had tried out for the role after Palmer’s departure. Bendick hoped an afternoon taping might make an aspirant more likely to stay on, which meant “her personal and professional lives will not have to conflict.” He noted, however, that “no girl who has auditioned has complained that the 7 a.m. starting time was too rough.” Bendick also said they’d know when they’d found the right girl: “All the meters in the place will go ‘boing’ at the same time.”
