Cronkite (94 page)

202 Cronkite was accorded some historical credit:
“Saturday TV Program,”
Washington Post
, February 14, 1960; “Thursday TV Highlights,”
Washington
Post
, February 14, 1960; “Television Previews,”
Washington Post
, February 18, 1960; “Preview of Saturday’s TV Highlights,”
Washington Post
, February 20, 1960.

202 Summer Olympics:
Jennifer Moreland, “Olympics and Television,” Museum of Broadcast Communications, http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=olympicsand.

203 “We think of him as the on-air editor and coordinator”:
Quigg, “CBS Ready to Let Go Anchor-Man at Conventions.”

203 “only Walter Cronkite had not been moved forward”:
Walter Cronkite Fan Club
Newsletter
(June 1974), Feder Archive, Chicago, IL.

204 raising money had become what politicians did:
Donovan and Scherer,
Unsilent Revolution
, p. 225.

205 the two candidates first had to be chosen:
Theodore H. White,
The Making of
the President, 1960
(New York: Atheneum House, 1961), p. 282.

205 “We were on a shopping trip”:
Dan Rather,
I Remember
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1991), p. 231.

206 Paley hated being a number two:
White,
The Making of the
President 1960
, p. 283.

206 “This was supposed to be comeback time”:
Author interview with Dan Rather, February 11, 2010.

206 “I panicked and went to Sig Mickelson”:
Don Hewitt,
Fifty Years and Sixty
Minutes in Television
, p. 70.

206 “Hewitt, whose judgment was normally impeccable”:
Mickelson,
The Decade
That Shaped Television
, p. 220.

207 “One of the basic troubles with radio and television”:
Sperber,
Murrow, His Life and Times
, p. xxii.

207 “Murrow thought he was a larger historical personage”:
Author interview with Don Hewitt, February 15, 1998.

207 “I applauded it wildly”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with Cronkite
, pp. 137–38.

208 The most notable Murrow documentary became “Harvest of Shame”:
Kendrick,
Prime Time
, p. 505.

208 “Walter was big”:
Author interview with Dan Rather, February 18, 2011.

208 “Murrow came and sat”:
Ibid.

209 “Who’s supposed to do what?”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with
Cronkite
, p. 140.

210 “the pre-eminence of CBS in news”:
Jack Gould, “TV’s New Convention Look,”
New York Times
, July 17, 1960.

210 admitted in retrospect that it had been “a terrible idea”:
Hewitt,
Fifty Years
, p. 70.

210 CBS lost viewers to ABC:
“The Battle of TV News,”
Newsweek
, September 21, 1963.

210 “Cronkite was not blamed at all”:
David Schoenbrun,
On and Off the Air: An
Informal History of CBS News
(New York: Dutton Adult, 1989), p. 128.

211 “Dr. Stanton courageously stood up”:
Cronkite,
A Reporter’s Life
, p. 186.

211 “Walter Cronkite’s a Republican, isn’t he”:
Halberstam,
The Powers That Be
, p. 414.

211
Presidential Countdown
’s first telecast:
Brooks and Marsh,
The Complete Directory of Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows
, pp. 1100–1101.

211 “I came up with the idea”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with Cronkite
, p. 195.

214 Cronkite threw unexpected questions at Nixon:
John P. Shanley, “TV: A Talk with Nixon,”
New York Times,
September 13, 1980.

214 The house had been a gift from Kennedy:
Pauline Frommer and James Yenckel,
Pauline Frommer’s Washington, Part 3
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, 2007), p. 201.

214 “When it was over, we thanked him:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations
with Cronkite
, p. 197.

215 “I’ve got to talk to him”:
Ibid., p. 195.

215 They both saw “a fire in Walter’s eyes”:
Author interview with Ted Sorensen, May 14, 2010.

217 “CBS is not the Ministry of Justice”:
Schoenbrun,
On and Off the Air
, p. 129.

218 CBS radio was in a position to start fresh:
White,
News on the Air
, pp. 22–23.

219 And it was Cronkite, not Murrow, who was chosen as one of four reporters:
Sidney Kraus,
Great Debates: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), p. 114.

219 “The networks had insisted that the interrogators”:
Sig Mickelson,
The Electric
Mirror
, p. 211.

220 CBS News spent a fortune taking out display ads:
“Display Ad 88,”
Washington Post
, September 12, 1960, and “Display Ad 65,”
Washington Post
, November 4, 1960.

220 the show pro-Nixon:
Chris Matthews,
Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

Fifteen
: New Space Frontier on CBS

222 “Our guys,” Cronkite recalled, “were pulling cables”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with Cronkite
, p. 200.

222 But all the CBSers were grumpy because they’d been outplayed by NBC News:
Val Adams, “News of TV and Radio—The Inauguration,”
New York Times
, January 15, 1961.

222 “I’ve been watching you and I have a big job”:
Author interview with Robert Wussler.

222 Are we
sure
JFK will be the youngest president?:
Thurston Clarke,
Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America
(New York: Henry Holt, 2004), p. 181.

222 Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1936, Wussler:
Who’s Who in America
(New Providence, NJ: Marquis, 1999), p. 5395.

223 Wussler started helping Douglas Edwards:
Gates,
Air Time
, pp. 329–330.

223 He ran the CBS News special events unit:
Hogan, “Televising the Space Age.”

223 “Men are going to fly in space”:
Ibid., pp. 248–49.

224 Cronkite himself had claimed that during the Second World War:
“Cronkite Believes He Saw V-2 Rocket,” UP, December 2, 1944.

224 The Cronkite-Wussler creative collaboration:
Russo, “CBS and the American Political Experience,” pp. 305–13.

224 “It was a little bit like being along for Columbus”:
Robert Wussler interview with Alfred Robert Hogan, March 13, 2003 (transcript), Hogan Archive, Washington, DC.

226 Frank Stanton, working behind the scenes, had convinced the Kennedy gang:
Sandy Socolow to Douglas Brinkley, October 20, 2011.

226 there would be a “prime-time examination” of where NASA (the U.S.) stood:
Author interview with Sandy Socolow, July 11, 2011.

227 Cronkite and Marvin Kalb interviewed Gagarin:
Walter Cronkite/Marvin Kalb, “Down to Earth,” CBS News,
Eyewitness to History
, April 14, 1961 (transcript), CBS News Reference Library, New York.

227 “American prestige was jolted”:
David Greene, “In Russia, Space Ride for U.S. Spurs Nostalgia, Hope,” NPR News, July 15, 2011.

227 “There was great pressure”:
Cronkite and Carleton,
Conversations with
Cronkite
, p. 233.

227 “We were quite aware that the image that NASA was trying to project”:
Gerard J. Degroot,
Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American
Lunar Quest
(New York: New York University Press, 2006), p. 106.

228 “I wasn’t scared, but I was up there looking around”:
Gene Kranz,
Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), p. 201.

228 “We feared that Shepard’s flight was premature”:
Cronkite,
A Reporter’s Life
, pp. 274–75.

228 “a man was going to sit on top of all that”:
“TV Looks at American in Space,”
Christian Science Monitor
, July 19, 1974.

229 When he praised the “depth of broadcast’s contribution”:
Newton M. Minow, “Television and the Public Interest,” National Association of Broadcasters, delivered May 9, 1961, reprinted in William Safire, ed.,
Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in American History
(New York: Norton, 2004), pp. 788–796.

229 “You just saw the umbilical cord come away”:
Transcript of Walter Cronkite covering
Liberty Bell 7
, Gus Grissom Launch, Friday, July 21, 1961, CBS News Archive, New York.

230 “captured the phenomenon of Eisenhower”:
Jack Gould, “TV: An Elder Statesman,”
New York Times
, October 13, 1961.

230 credited Cronkite with conducting a “brilliant historical interview”:
Jack O’Brian,
New York Journal American
[nd], WCP-UTA.

231 Cronkite’s CBS team focused on Boston’s police:
Bliss,
Now the
News
, pp. 392–93.

231 “At this point, you may be inclined to say”:
Walter Cronkite, “Biography of a Bookie Joint,” November 30, 1961, CBS News Archives, New York. The show was rebroadcast on March 20, 1963.

231 he was a “relentless adversary”:
Lapham, “The Secret Life of Walter (Mitty) Cronkite.”

232 “There’s no physical exhaustion”:
Joan Crosby, “Hectic Night Due for Anchor Men,”
Abilene Reporter
, November 6, 1962.

232 identical to the Eisenhower administration, only “thirty years younger”:
Chalmer M. Roberts, “Kennedy Moving Ahead ‘Decisively,’ Lippmann Says, Lauding Crisis Acts,”
Washington Post
, December 22, 1961.

232 For the Glenn mission, it had a team:
CBS News,
Seven Days
(privately published), July 1962, John Glenn Papers, Ohio State University, Columbus.

233 “Space travel was so new”:
Author interview with John Glenn, October 27, 2011.

233 “a glorified radio broadcast”:
Ron Bonn, “CBS News and the Landing of the Moon,” speech draft, June 18, 2011, Bonn Archive, Naples, FL.

233 At the CBS News control center:
“Cronkite Brings Enthusiasm for Space to CNN,”
Houston Chronicle
, July 30, 1998.

233 the orbit that “united the nation”:
Jack Gould, “Radio-TV: Networks Convey Drama of Glenn Feat; Give Dazzling Display of Modern Electronics,”
New
York Times
, February 21, 1962.

233 “The best moment”:
Walter Cronkite, “Outstanding Moments During TV Coverage of John Glenn,”
New York Herald Tribune
, April 29, 1962.

234 “When President Kennedy comes to pin a medal”:
CBS News,
Seven Days
.

234 “I think we have a lot more knowledge”:
“The Interpreters and the ‘Golden Throats,’ ”
Newsweek
, October 8, 1962.

235 it was “a one-up”:
Sacknoff,
In Their Own Words
, p. 194.

235 “Can you imagine how great it would be to say”:
Joe Adcock, “Walter Cronkite,”
Texas Magazine
, November 27, 1966.

235 Cronkite outshone the competition:
Barbara Matusow,
The Evening Stars: The Making of the Network News Anchor
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), p. 126.

236 “instead of looking down despondently, we could look”:
Sacknoff,
In
Their Own Words
, p. 195.

236 “This is not just Cronkite the old reportorial warhorse”:
Cecil Smith, “Cronkite Flees NY—by Design,”
Los Angeles Times
, May 22, 1962.

236 Cronkite was treated as the new Murrow:
CBS News,
Seven Days
.

236 “we all took to calling Walter ‘Mr. Space’ ”:
Author interview with John Glenn, October 27, 2011.

237 “Just as Noah once sent out a dove”:
“T-Minus 4 Years, 9 Months, and 30 Days,” CBS Television Network, March 1, 1965 (transcript), CBS Research Library, New York.

Sixteen
: Anchorman of Camelot

241 “How many times have you been around?”:
Lawrence Laurent, “Walter Does Get Around,”
Washington Post
, March 27, 1960.

242 “Walter wanted to ride on the Kennedys’ coattails”:
Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.

242 “first television president”:
Halberstam,
The Powers That Be
, p. 316.

243 Midgley was first hired by CBS in the mid-1950s:
Douglas Martin, “Leslie Midgley, 87, Prolific TV News Producer,”
New York Times
, June 20, 2002.

244 “Once Cronkite came to Newport with his director Vinny Walters”:
Author interview with Lew Wood, January 10, 2012.

244 “turned Cronkite onto the yachting world”:
Ibid.

245 “all the women who’ve made Cronkite men”:
David Friend, “Guess Who’s Going Up in Orbit,”
Life
, August 19, 1984 (unpublished interview notes), Friend Archive.

245 his CBS superiors were ready with the hook:
Dennis Hevesi, “Douglas Edwards, First TV Anchorman, Dies at 73,”
New York Times
, October 14, 1990.

245 When President Kennedy summoned Murrow to run USIA:
Fred W. Friendly,
Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control
(New York: Vintage Books, 1968), pp. 126–27.

245 Smith lashed out:
Harold Jackson, “Howard K. Smith,”
The
Guardian
, February 19, 2002.

246 “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil”:
Daniel E. Ritchie, ed.,
Edmund
Burke: Appraisals and Applications
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990), p. xiii.

246 “I have heard all this junk before”:
Howard K. Smith,
Events Leading Up to My
Death
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 275.