Some years ago I made reference to a 1953 Esquire article by Richard Gehman. This article captured what it was like when Today was young and everything seemed brand-new, and cast and crew were coping with life at an hour that still seemed far too early for television. Back when I wrote about it, the best I could do was give you a summary of the article, for the Esquire archive was paywalled.
As I work industriously on bringing you the finest in Dave Garroway-centric literature1, I come across tidbits that, although they won’t quite fit in the book itself, are too good to let fall down the memory hole. Like this item, from the Sept. 3, 1953 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Wow, would that would be a lot of fun to bring home from the store in the Toyota.
And here’s that big window, with the blinds sporting a nifty logo.
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.
There are times when the work I am doing on the life of Dave Garroway, though those events took place decades ago, has echoes of the times in which we now live. And sometimes, those echoes are for the saddest reasons.
Over the last several weeks, I have been transcribing a handwritten log of articles I’ve saved from my searches in archival newspapers. You rediscover a lot of things you’d put aside in your head when you do that. Some of the rediscovered items are funny, and some are goofy. I had planned this week to write about a few cute little pieces I’d found about Garroway, along with Steve Allen and a few others, making it cool to wear glasses.
But this week isn’t the time for that. Not with what’s going on right now, not with its raw and inescapable sadness and frustration, the vaguely sick feeling it’s provided, and the many reminders of how much we’ve fallen short and how far we have yet to go. All of this has made me think, instead, about some things that echo with disturbing similarities.
In the last few days, I have been working on the late 1950s and early 1960s. By this time Dave Garroway, having hosted Today for several years and being very successful in so doing, had very much made the show his. The program had moved into heavier content as its novelty wore off, and Garroway had not been hesitant in using the program to bring attention to things that concerned him. One of those things was the cause of civil rights.
A few years back I covered an instance when Garroway faced down a bunch of bigots who were heckling a young Sarah Vaughan. To him, such things weren’t a pose; equality, and thinking for yourself, were core values. His father had taught him to get all the facts before judging anyone or anything, and it was a lesson he never forgot.
Garroway’s commitment continued into the Today years, both on the program and behind the scenes. Prominent figures for justice such as Thurgood Marshall would be interviewed by Garroway, as would victims of injustice, such as a black applicant who was denied a job as a page in the House of Representatives. Black entertainers such as Erroll Garner were prominently featured.1 On a March 1961 edition of Today, Garroway devoted both hours to Oscar Brown to help raise support for his his musical Kicks & Co.; within days the musical, which needed backers for part of its $400,000 budget, had received thousands in donations from dozens of viewers, ranging from a music teacher’s check for $5.00 to two separate donations of $5,000.
Oscar Brown with Dave Garroway. (NBC photo)
One day in December 1957, when it was learned that an elevator operator at Rockefeller Center had been the first black military pilot and a World War I hero, Garroway insisted on interviewing that man, Eugene Bullard, on Today. At the end of the interview, the crew spontaneously applauded.
Today‘s commitment to equality didn’t just apply to what people saw on camera; behind the scenes, for instance, Fred Lights became network television’s first African-American stage manager.2
It would be comforting to think Garroway’s take on matters of equality was warmly received. But it wasn’t always. Going through the archival collections from that era, we find signs of those times in sad abundance. Some examples: a South Carolina newspaper editorial accusing Garroway of “dramatizing” the crisis around the integration of a Little Rock school in 1957, or a letter to a Florida newspaper calling Garroway “one-sided” and “out to get the MVP award from the NAACP.” When Sen. Strom Thurmond appeared on Today after his marathon filibuster against civil rights legislation, Garroway asked Thurmond if the filibuster was meant to counter the possibility that South Carolina Gov. George Timmerman might run against him in 1960; Timmerman, himself no friend of civil rights, told a newspaper that if he ran, “I won’t leave it up to a nincompoop like Dave Garroway to make an announcement for me.”
While some of that is rather ripe, nothing can match the venom aimed at Garroway from a couple of states in particular during the period from 1956 to 1961. Going through papers from Mississippi and Louisiana in particular will make you acquainted with some particularly awful editorials and opinion pieces.3 For instance, a December 1956 Today story about prosecutors rebutting a story of bigotry motivating a prosecution was blasted by a Mississippi paper as being slanted. When Mississippi Gov. James Coleman was interviewed in April 1957, an editorial charged Garroway with asking “loaded questions” and displaying a “slight air of holding his nose.” A subsequent editorial accused the press of hating Mississippi and looking for angles to get that slant in.4 Even an item about Lynda Mead being the second consecutive Miss Mississippi to be crowned Miss America found a way to slam Garroway as “one of those northern bigots who likes to lambast the South with innuendo” and hoped he would “change his tune after his audience rating falls off drastically.”5
In May 1961, as the Freedom Riders challenged segregation laws in the South, Garroway aired a piece about one of the movement’s figures, activist James Peck, on Today. Peck, whose long tenure as an activist in several movements had seen him arrested several times, was called a felon by Mississippi Gov. James Eastland in an effort to discredit the Freedom Riders movement. The Peck interview on Today was yet another opening for segregationists to attack Garroway.6 Subsequent editorials called Garroway a “South-baiter” and slammed his impending resignation from Today as a hypocritical act.7 Another editorial praised the mayor of Jackson “for his word duel with TV Communistator Dave Garroway, whose soon departure from the networks will cause no tears to drop in Dixie.” Yet another extended hollow condolences on the death of Garroway’s wife: “Of course we know of the terrible tragedy in his family and we offer our deepest sympathy8 but we believe that his leaving the air lanes will be one of the greatest aids the South could have had, by his absence.” A columnist called “Davie Garroway’s Today show” as “offensive to Dixie” and “due to lose its bigoted star…Dour Dave.”9
Garroway would sometimes wonder if his outspokenness on civil rights had cost him, both in terms of his career and in his personal affairs.10 And there were times when he was at personal risk. Dave Jr. remembered a story in which his dad went to a jazz club in the South and stepped outside for some fresh air. Garroway suddenly found himself surrounded by a group of angry bigots who called him “a (racial slur beginning with ‘n’) lover” and tried to shove him around. The band leader saw this, gave a signal to his band mates, and, still playing, they marched out of the club. Without missing a note on their instruments, they surrounded Garroway and shielded him from the bigots.
There are many things troubling us right now. I hope someday soon I’m writing on more uplifting aspects of Garroway’s life. This, however, was too uncomfortable a parallel with our current moment. As in the times Garroway lived, we’ve got some work to do.
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 3K1 in the RCA Building2 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 Palmer3 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.”4
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 Lights5 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).6 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 HUGE7) 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 50th1 – but of them all, the 25th anniversary was the one that put the most effort into calling back to those first years. And while the others may have been a little more stylish, or might have even spawned a prime-time retrospective, there was something special about the 25th anniversary special that none of the others fully matched.
NBC photo
We see this special theme from the very beginning: the screen is black and white, there’s an in-studio reproduction (though not exact) of the original communicator’s desk from the RCA Exhibition Hall, and the first voice you hear is that of Jack Lescoulie re-creating a version of that very first morning’s open.
NBC photo
And there’s Dave Garroway himself, happy to see you. “Hello, old friend, and good morning, too! As I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted myself, seventeen years and thirty-eight days ago, we’re about to give you the news of the morning.”2 Garroway recounts the major headline of that first day in 1952 – the captain of the freighter Flying Enterprise is about to receive a hero’s welcome – and then throws to news editor Frank Blair.
NBC photo
It’s Blair (who wasn’t on the show that first morning, of course)3 who breaks the spell. “You know, they really used to call me that, Dave, 25 years ago?” Blair pretends to read a bulletin that what you’re seeing is not a dream, but let’s go across the studio to Tom Brokaw.
Tom Brokaw, captured in the warm tones the RCA TK-44 rendered so well. (NBC photo)
And with that, we’re in color and in 1977, and everyone has a good laugh. Brokaw explains the concept: they have turned the studio into a time machine so they can revisit the last 25 years. It’s a birthday party to which we’re all invited.
The first “Today” set I remember seeing. (NBC photo)
Brokaw explains that when Today first went on the air, he was living in a place where they could barely get television, and that co-host Jane Pauley was trying to learn how to walk. “And I was bald,” she adds. (Gene Shalit, asked where he was in 1952, said he wasn’t bald.)
There’s no way he could have been. (NBC photo)
The real headlines of January 14, 1977 are presented by the current news editor, Floyd Kalber. The big stories of the morning: the death of Anthony Eden, winter storms across Europe, a good part of the United States under extreme cold, and the following week’s inauguration of Jimmy Carter as president.
The Tuna. (NBC photo)
There’s then a short local break, during which the weather from across the country scrolls on the screen, along with the affiliates’ call letters, while music plays. Keeping with the morning’s throwback theme, the music selections are big band standards as re-recorded by Enoch Light and The Light Brigade.4
Nifty anniversary version of the bumper. (NBC photo)Today’s weather scroll was soothing when it would come on and music would play behind it, a handy little break in the action. I picked this particular location on purpose because it’s not far from where I grew up. It’s a long story, but WJBF-TV had switched to ABC from NBC in 1967, but was allowed to carry “Today” in a market where the NBC affiliate (WAGT-TV) was a UHF station. There’s a lot about affiliate history that’s like trying to sort family trees in ancient mythology. (NBC photo)
After the break, Kalber revisits the top story of January 14, 1952 and we see newsreel footage of the stricken Flying Enterprise and the hero’s welcome for Captain Carlsen. Kalber then throws to Lew Wood, who does the morning’s weather.
NBC photoLew Wood fascinated me when I was a kid. He seemed like such a nice man. (NBC photo)
There’s another break, then the party begins. Brokaw is at the old desk replica with Garroway, Lescoulie and Blair.
Not the best re-creation of the 1952 set but they at least get points for effort. (NBC photo)
Brokaw begins by calling Garroway “a heroic figure to a generation of young people who grew up wanting to get into broadcasting.”
Something about Garroway in 1977 reminds me of an aged lion, worn and scarred but still proud. (NBC photo)
He then introduces a clip from October 1955 to show what the program was like back then. The clip has Garroway throwing to Frank Blair for that morning’s headlines (which, strangely enough, also involved Anthony Eden). From the vantage point of 1977, the men laugh at what they’ve just seen. Lescoulie says of Blair, “He was a little nervous in those days. It took him two Bloody Marys to get the top off his Miltown bottle!” Blair ruefully says, “That came later. That came later.”5
Hard to believe Brokaw turns 80 this year, 17 years older than Garroway was in the scene you see right here. (NBC photo)
Brokaw asks Garroway how confident he felt about the program’s prospects when he agreed to join the show. Garroway recalls that when he met the people he was going to work with, he took out a four-year lease on a penthouse apartment on Park Avenue. Prompted to recall his most memorable moment: “June 19, 1961.6 Walking slowly and regretfully out of the studio.” Common questions follow: did J. Fred Muggs really bite? Blair instantly warns Garroway, “You’re gonna get sued!” Garroway claims the NBC dispensary has multiple reports in its files of vaccinations he received after chimp bites. This prompts recollections of various incidents involving Muggs, as well as the lawsuit Muggs’ caretakers filed against Garroway, Lescoulie and NBC. And with that, we see a clip of Muggs attacking Jack Lescoulie’s desk one morning.
NBC photo
Blair also mentions that all three of them are working on books. Blair promotes the upcoming publication of Let’s Be Frank About It (and the title draws a howl from Lescoulie). Garroway mentions that he is writing “sort of an autobiography” with the working title “Garroway At Length.” Asked for a publication date, Garroway replies, “As soon as possible!” Lescoulie says he isn’t working hard on his because Blair’s would be out first. “Mine will be meaner than his,” Lescoulie says. In the meantime, he leads a good life with a lot of golf and a little writing, and he and his wife had never really given up the bright lights: “At least once a week we go over to the A&P if it’s open at night and do our shopping.”7
NBC photo
During the optional local break the discussion continues, for the affiliates that didn’t air a local news break at :25 after. Garroway tells Brokaw he didn’t feel television had lived up to its potential, that he had hoped the programming we would get would be more truthful and informative than what we ended up with. There’s also a brief discussion about lighter moments. We see a clip from the color era with Lescoulie disguised as Superman…
NBC photo
…then Lescoulie talks about a circus pantomime act he once did that stretched nearly ten minutes and left him completely spent at the end of it. Suddenly Garroway interrupts Lescoulie and tells him to smile at the camera. Lescoulie asks why. Garroway replies, “Jimmy Carter!”
The resemblance is uncanny. (NBC photo)
Brokaw asks about embarrassing moments. “The day I sat down and there was no chair there,” Garroway says. Blair remembered an event when Garroway didn’t realize his fly was open. “That didn’t embarrass me at all!” Garroway replies, deadpan. In the background, you hear the studio crew cracking up.
Network break slide. I love Rockford. I’m there, baby. (NBC photo)
The next half-hour begins with another clip from October 1955: Lescoulie introducing the segment, interrupted by Gertrude Berg:
NBC photos
Then Brokaw and Pauley preview the upcoming segments, followed by news from Floyd Kalber and weather from Lew Wood, who shows a clip of how the weather was done in 1955.
Garroway with “Today Girl” Lee Ann Meriwether. (NBC photo)
We then see a segment on all the places Today has been and the technological innovations of the last 25 years. Then Jane Pauley introduces a 1955 clip observing National Doughnut Week, in which Garroway demonstrates a series of accessories for your coffee-and-doughnut habit: a pinkie rest, a cup for retrieving your doughnut if it falls in the cup, tongs for retrieving a doughnut, and a spoon for stirring your coffee. Of them all, Garroway likes the pinky rest the best. He says it makes you feel strong all over.
Dave’s smile in the final frame sells it. (NBC photos)
Gene Shalit then introduces Lionel Hampton and His Jazz Inner Circle. They perform a medley of the program’s various theme songs8 under a montage of famous guests.
Always a good morning when Mr. Hampton provides the music. (NBC photo)
At the end of the hour is what Brokaw calls a “family portrait” – the current staff with Garroway, Lescoulie and Blair.
NBC photo
Brokaw asks Garroway to give his famous sign-off. Garroway obliges, talking about something “that we have a great deal of and need so much more of…peace.” A few seconds later, Blair softly says, “God love you.”9
NBC photoNifty shot of 3K as the hour ends. Note the top of the cyclorama, the floor director at right with hand raised, Lionel Hampton and his group to the right. The kinds of details people like me love. (NBC photo)
The next hour begins with another simulation of that first day. This time, Lescoulie introduces the Master Communicator with “here’s old four-eyes himself, Dave Garroway!” Garroway wishes the audience good morning – “Once more we meet after a quarter of a century and we’re still making it, aren’t we? You and me. And so is Today, after a quarter-century.” Garroway forgets to give a cue to Frank Blair, and there are several seconds of silence. When they realize what’s happened, everybody cracks up. “Nothing’s changed!” Once it’s all straightened out, Blair introduces “the new boy on the block, Tom Brokaw.”
Oops! (NBC photo)
After the news and weather, Brokaw conducts a desk interview with Garroway and Pat Weaver.
The Master Communicator and his most important advocate. I love this screen-grab, for their respect and regard for each other is unmistakable. (NBC photo)
The former NBC executive talks about the idea behind Today. He had known for many years there was a morning audience with a lot of potential, and he wondered if he couldn’t do something better than another morning “gang” show – instead, a show that had information, but had enough showmanship to attract an audience. And here Brokaw introduces about thirty seconds of a promotional film NBC had put together to sell the Today concept to affiliates. Over a montage of clips of Churchill, Truman, Stalin, Eisenhower and other important figures, as dramatic music plays behind, a narrator talks about how “a program like this is a magnificent use of the tool of television in its ultimate social responsibility,” and that the viewer would get information to be a responsible citizen in a free society. “His horizon will be limited by neither time nor place.”
Not that we’re trying to make an important point in this scary atomic age, but…. (NBC photo)
As the film ends and its music swells to a conclusion, we see the enormous water vapor cloud from the second Bikini atom-bomb test, and a primitive (almost frightening) Today logo. “This is the real secret weapon of free men,” the narrator says. “To know, to understand, so that John Smith is ready for today…whatever it may bring.”10
Back in the studio, Brokaw gives credit to Garroway for his talent in helping make the show succeed. Weaver recalls how Garroway came in from Chicago and asked to do the show, and that Weaver quickly realized that Garroway’s “command and serenity” in the midst of the show’s chaos would work well. Brokaw asks Weaver how he would change television in 1977. “Oh, you’ll need an hour for that,” he replies with a verbal eye-roll.
Yes, he’s Sigourney’s dad – all the more reason to love him. (NBC photo)
The discussion continues into the local-option break. Brokaw introduces a piece by Paul Cunningham on how the Today model has been adapted worldwide. After the piece, Brokaw muses that in Britain they’re called “presenters” and Weaver insisted on the title “communicators,” and now Brokaw’s title was “host,” which made him feel like he should be serving breakfast to his fellow on-air personalities. Weaver didn’t like that title. “I’d knock that off fast!” he said. Garroway informs us that to this day, he’s still remembered for Today – for every one person who remembers Garroway at Large there will be two people who know him from Today. What fascinated him, he recalled, about the Today job was that at that hour, people’s minds were open. “It’s almost a blank slate.” Brokaw thanks Weaver and Garroway for what they have done to make Today last. Weaver replies, “See you on the fiftieth!” Garroway follows: “Amen!”11
The final half-hour doesn’t have a lot about Garroway and Lescoulie and Blair, but it does begin with a nod to the storefront studio window and a simplified version of the move inside 30 Rock for the move to color broadcasting.12 There’s news, and then after a commercial we get a live spot for Alpo with Gene Shalit:
NBC photo
And Lew Wood does a spot at the desk for True Value Hardware Stores.
Lew’s telling us about a special on white paint that keeps your walls easy to clean. (NBC photo)
Then there’s a discussion about what the preceding 25 years have meant for society and the country. The panelists are Daniel Boorstin, Pulitzer-winning historian and Librarian of Congress; Charlotte Curtis, editor of the op-ed page of the New York Times; and Martin Marty of the Christian Century, who is also a professor at the University of Chicago.13 It’s a lengthy and thoughtful discussion of the sort you would never see on the modern Today program.
A sign of a far different time indeed. I shudder to think what they’d use this segment for now. (NBC photo)
After a break, we get another Lionel Hampton performance. This time, the music plays behind a montage of photos of Today‘s people from the last quarter-century. It’s a simple but really cool tribute.
After the final break, Tom Brokaw stands with the morning’s guests and the show’s current staff. He says that two prominent television critics of the day gave Today bad reviews and shares some of the more pointed quotes from them. Then Brokaw points out that both those newspapers are no longer around, but Today still is. “While much has changed over 25 years, one hope that has been with this program from the very beginning has not changed.” At which point, Brokaw nods to Dave Garroway, who says, “That hope is some love…and peace.”
NBC photoNBC photo
As the cameras pull back, you can just see Garroway move over to the giant birthday cake and pretend to give it a karate-chop, much to everyone’s amusement.
And that’s how Today celebrated its 25th anniversary: a little silly and a lot sentimental, but all of it memorable.
Last week we lost another longtime NBC crewmember. Phil Hymes, a lighting director whose NBC career began in 1951 and spanned decades, with a credits list including everything from Your Hit Parade and The Bell Telephone Hour to Late Night with Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, passed away last week at age 96.
In reading the obits for Phil Hymes you find phrases like “the best” and “creative” (mixed in, of course, with comments about how opinionated he could be – “brutally honest,” Fallon said, and that’s a recurring theme. Yes Please by Amy Poehler includes one such story of Phil being extremely candid). But as you read, you’re also struck by the span of the man’s career, how much he saw, and how many shows he worked on. Some of them didn’t last, some of them are forgotten, but some have endured. His most famous work was helping light Saturday Night Live, and as I work my way through the DVDs of the first five seasons, more often than not I see Phil Hymes among the familiar names on the credit scroll at the end of each episode.
And one of Phil’s first jobs at NBC? Lighting Today. That’s right, he would have been responsible for making Garroway and company look good from the very earliest days of Pat Weaver’s morning experiment. I don’t even want to know what had to go into figuring out how to make the interior of the RCA Exhibition Hall look so presentable on television (especially in those early days), but he somehow helped get it done.
People like Phil Hymes – and I’ve said things like this over and over, but I do so because it’s a point that cannot be overstated – are the people who helped carve a medium from the wilderness. They arrived as television was on the way up; they helped figure out how to make it work; and so much of how it’s now done, they wrote the book on. So many of them stuck around for so long, leaving their mark on generation after generation of programs. Along the way, they not only became part of the institutional history, but they retained so much of what they did and what they witnessed. Every television industry veteran with whom I’ve had a conversation…oh, the stories they can tell, the bygone eras they bring back to vivid (and sometimes hilarious) life, and what understanding they can help you reach about how it really was and how things worked back then. And every time we lose another one, we lose their stories, their perspectives, and so much more.
It’s inevitable that we will lose these people. But it also makes me thankful for initiatives like the Television Academy’s interview project, for the work of people like Stephen Bowie and Kliph Nesteroff, and all the others who work with industry veterans to record their memories and stories and perspectives. But it also makes me think about all those who vanished before we could get their contributions down for the record. And it again makes me think I need to do more than I have to help this cause.
Phil Hymes was a giant. And now, here’s hoping that what Lorne Michaels said has come true: “If God has him now, despite all the arguing, heaven will be much better lit.”
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.
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.
Charles Van Doren (left) with Jack Lescoulie and Dave Garroway in Paris, 1959. (NBC photo)
Charles Van Doren passed away this week at age 93. No matter what else he accomplished in those years, he is remembered forever for a decision he made in 1956, at age 30, to be a contestant on the television quiz show Twenty One. The 14 weeks he spent sealed in an isolation booth on live television, answering questions about anything under the sun, made him a very famous man. He was respected, admired, and even became something of a national crush – a charming young man with all the answers.
Or so it seemed. In late 1959 he confessed before a House committee that he had been given answers on Twenty One. And after his admission, Van Doren spent the next six decades in a sort of exile. Instead of celebrity, Van Doren labored in the world of the mind, working as an author and editor, doing some teaching, and trying his best to build a good life. He didn’t like to comment on his moment of celebrity, despite numerous attempts by many parties to get him to talk or to participate in the making of documentaries or feature films. Not until 2008 did he tell his side of the story, when he wrote an essay for The New Yorker.1
Charles Van Doren is so often remembered for his association with Twenty One that it’s easy to overlook what immediately followed his time on the quiz show. NBC, eager to capitalize on the appeal this brainy young man from an intellectual family could bring to the network, signed Van Doren to a three-year contract worth $50,000 a year. He would advise the network on public service and educational matters. And in that capacity, he eventually found himself part of Dave Garroway’s team on Today.
As Van Doren recalled it, NBC News was given the task of finding him something to do, but not much seemed to stick. A stint writing radio newsbreaks didn’t work, and an assignment to help out in the Washington bureau became a minor disaster. But while those chores didn’t work out, Van Doren fared much better as a contributor to programs such as Wide Wide World, where a longer-form style and a more philosophical approach let him play to his strengths. In time Van Doren became what he called a “semi-regular” on the program, and it led to his opportunity with Today.2
At the time Van Doren started on the program, Today was still presented live. He had to get up each morning at five to be ready to go on the air for two hours. Then he had to write the next day’s segment, and then take the subway to Columbia University for his regular teaching job, “where my sudden celebrity seemed to impress no one.”
NBC photo
As Van Doren remembered, he was initially awkward on Today. But Garroway eventually gave him five minutes each day for a cultural and literary segment, and on Friday Van Doren would read some of the great poems and provide some insight about their authors. Other times he might provide a brief lesson on something like non-Euclidean geometry. The segments were well-received by the audience, and by Garroway.
But all the while, stories were circulating that the big-money quiz shows had been rigged, and in 1958 an incident on another program prompted a full-blown investigation. Van Doren maintained his innocence, both before a Manhattan grand jury and before the Today audience. On the air he insisted, “I myself was never given any answers or told any questions beforehand,” and he likewise insisted his fellow contestants had received no similar coaching. And all seemed well in the world of Today.
One morning in August 1959, as Van Doren reviewed some notes just after the program went off the air, a young Congressional investigator introduced himself. Richard Goodwin3 was working for a House committee that was looking into the quiz shows and planned to hold hearings. Goodwin told Van Doren that the grand jury testimony of the contestant Van Doren had defeated to become champion on Twenty One contradicted Van Doren’s own testimony, and that two of the show’s producers had come back to the grand jury and confirmed the contestant’s assertion. Goodwin and Van Doren adjourned to an empty office, where Van Doren learned that other contestants had lied. “From all that he said, I realized that the committee wanted my story to come out at hearings in Washington,” Van Doren later wrote. Goodwin advised Van Doren that it would be best if he said nothing to anybody.4
A month later things started to happen. Van Doren had been waiting to learn if NBC would renew his contract. His agent insisted NBC was just waiting for the quiz investigations to blow over. “There’s no problem, is there?” his agent asked. But Van Doren sensed that NBC executives were feeling uneasy. On October 9, he was suspended from Today. In late October, he and another Twenty One contestant returned to the grand jury and made what the district attorney called “substantial changes” to their original statements. Soon, Van Doren’s testimony to the House committee was scheduled for Monday, November 2. As all this played out, thousands of viewers wrote to NBC and pleaded for Van Doren’s reinstatement. Some letters asked when Garroway would say something about the situation. He would, but events would intervene.
On November 2, Van Doren made a public confession before the House committee. The next day, NBC terminated its contract with him.
That afternoon, as Today was being recorded for the next morning’s broadcast5, Garroway finally spoke. In a five-minute talk, Garroway spoke of Van Doren as being part of “a little family on this show,” of the bonds that form when you’re doing a show in the early hours of the morning, and that while he could never defend anything Van Doren had done wrong on the quiz show, he would remember the cultural pieces and philosophical essays, the friendship he had built with Van Doren and his family. “What do you want me to say?” Garroway asked, as he held back sobs. “I can only say I’m heartsick.”6 After the segment ended, an overcome Garroway had to leave, and Jack Lescoulie informed viewers that “Dave has gone home.”
Inside NBC there was some deliberation over whether it would be appropriate to show Garroway’s emotional essay about Van Doren. But producer Bob Bendick believed that running a program as recorded was essential to the show’s credibility.7 Therefore, Garroway’s teary farewell to Charles Van Doren was aired that morning, made headlines that afternoon, and was even featured in Life Magazine’s look at the aftermath of Van Doren’s confession.
The revelation that Garroway’s tearful farewell had been pre-recorded also brought fire. Critic Jack Gould slammed the “misuse of video tape recordings” as another “depressing development” in the quiz show scandal. Gould wrote that one could sympathize with Garroway’s emotions, but upon learning that the whole thing had been recorded and kept overnight to be put on the air, “there can only be one thing to say: Why?” Henry Lee of the New York Daily News wrote that NBC’s reluctance to admit Garroway’s tears were prerecorded “was TV’s fitting farewell to Charley.”
What happened to the relationship between Charles Van Doren and Dave Garroway? As Van Doren remembered, they wrote to one another a few times but eventually fell out of touch.
As for Charles Van Doren himself, the immediate aftermath of his confession meant the loss of his NBC job and his teaching job at Columbia University. He spent the remainder of his life keeping a much lower profile, finding fulfillment in being an author, editor, teacher and scholar. He turned down requests to take part in projects related to the quiz show scandals. In retirement he found happiness, living with his wife in an old house that had been in the family for a long time, finding joy in being a parent and a grandparent.
In these times we look back on the sins of Charles Van Doren and other quiz show contestants, and the whole matter seems…quaint.8 And others can say more, much more eloquently than I ever can, about how he took his lumps and retreated, to rebuild a life with some kind of dignity. But let’s take a moment to remember him as a sometimes-overlooked member of that little family on Today.
SOURCES:
Steven Battaglio, From Yesterday To Today. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2011.
“Dave Garroway Heartbroken Over Van’s Disgrace.” Monroe (La.) News-Star 4 Nov 1959: 10.
“Garroway Cries Over Van Doren.” Pittsburgh Press 4 Nov 1959: 4.
Jack Gould, “Contempt for Law Is Most Sickening Part of Scandal.” Corpus Christi Caller-Times 8 Nov 1959: 78.
Robert Metz, The Today Show. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1977.
Gordon T. Mills, “The Way I See It….” Burlington (Vt.) Free Press 7 Nov 1959: 12.
Charles Van Doren, “All the Answers.” The New Yorker 28 July 2008.
Some years ago I made reference to a 1953 Esquire article by Richard Gehman. This article captured what it was like when Today was young and everything seemed brand-new, and cast and crew were coping with life at an hour that still seemed far too early for television. Back when I wrote about it, the best I could do was give you a summary of the article, for the Esquire archive was paywalled.
