Call it a lingering U.S. Eighth Air Force complex, but Cronkite, the American booster, thought Shepard, Grissom, and Glenn were good for cold war America—and, it shouldn’t be overlooked, they were helping to advance his career at CBS. By throwing away the script at key junctures during the Glenn mission, letting his enthusiasm bubble, Cronkite outshone the competition by a country mile. The frenzied ticker tape parade thrown for Glenn in New York nine days after the mission proved that America, too, saw the astronauts as its new heroes, that “instead of looking down despondently, we could look up at the stars.”
Cecil Smith, writing in the Los Angeles Times about Cronkite as the voice of NASA, surmised that Glenn’s three orbits were “quite possibly the finest excuse for television’s existence that the little tube has ever offered.” Looking fit and feisty, Cronkite soared to TV newsman fame on the exhaust of John Glenn’s Redstone rocket. TV journalism as an art was almost virgin territory, for the simple reason that the medium was so new. Therefore Cronkite could claim to be a pioneer in his own right. “This is not just Cronkite the old reportorial warhorse fleeing the confinement of his New York headquarters,” Smith wrote. “It’s part of a major design to do more and more of the CBS newscasts from remote locations.”
CBS grew so determined to showcase Cronkite as the media star of the Glenn mission that it published a colorful souvenir book titled Seven Days. Cronkite was treated as the new Murrow, the voice of space, the resplendent broadcaster John Glenn’s mother wanted to meet. The trifecta of Shepard, Grissom, and Glenn had transformed Cronkite’s career in dramatic ways. “At NASA,” Glenn recalled, “we all took to calling Walter ‘Mr. Space.’ ”
What space exploration had going for it from a TV perspective wasn’t astronauts squabbling, but rather the high-stakes drama of liftoff and recovery. Cronkite was a master at narrating those nail-biting moments with the right mixture of reverence, exclamatory judgments, and long pauses. CBS helped him out by using artists’ animations and full-scale models. Cronkite, using his newfound gravitas, worked to persuade Low of NASA to allow astronauts to bring TV cameras into space. Seeing color photos of Earth from space was a breathtaking experience. All the networks benefited from Cronkite’s pestering impatience when NASA ultimately ordered astronaut Gordon Cooper to send back live pictures from space during his May 1963 Mercury mission. Cooper orbited Earth twenty-two times and logged more time in space than all the previous space ventures combined (thirty-four hours, nineteen minutes, and forty-nine seconds, traveling an astounding 546,167 miles).
By 1963 there was a plethora of Project Mercury enthusiasts in America, but Cronkite was the first among equals. He publicly embraced Kennedy’s moon pledge with the ardor of a convert. He often described space in grand historical and even biblical terms. Understanding that the American people were keen to beat the Soviet Union in space, Cronkite, the veteran sports broadcaster, cloaked his reporting in almost jingoistic, high-octane nationalistic, anti-communist rhetoric. He was more NASA collaborator than reporter. Yet there was something wholesome and country-fried and urbane—all at once—about his ability to broadcast space travel. Cronkite, the tech-geek, knew before most that satellites would soon revolutionize the communications industry in astounding ways. “Just as Noah once sent out a dove to explore an unknown and dangerous landscape, man is now sending mechanical birds to feel out the perilous highway from here to the Moon,” he said on CBS Reports with Glenn looking on. “What we are hearing now is the curious song of those birds. They’re artificial satellites wandering through Space.”
PHOTOGRAPHS
Walter Cronkite braving a Missouri snowstorm, circa 1918. While his father was in France serving in the Army during World War I, Walter and his mother lived with his maternal grandparents in Kansas City. (Whitehurst Photos)
Helen Cronkite with her son, Walter, circa 1921. (Whitehurst Photos)
A six-year-old Walter Cronkite riding in a goat-drawn carriage in 1922. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite as a young man (undated). An only child, he was an undistinguished student, but a voracious reader. (Whitehurst Photos)
The Purple Pup student newspaper for April 24, 1929, featuring an article by Walter Cronkite, then twelve years old. The Pup was published at Lanier Middle School in Houston, Texas. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
A family outing to the seaside city of Galveston, Texas, in 1930. Bottom row: Walter sitting between his grandparents, Matilda and Edward C. Fritsche. Top row: Walter’s parents, Helen and Walter Cronkite Sr. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite on the day of his graduation from San Jacinto High School in Houston, Texas, 1933. (Whitehurst Photos)
On March 22, 1935, The Daily Texan, the student newspaper at the University of Texas, led with a Cronkite scoop: his interview with literary figure Gertrude Stein, who was then visiting the campus. According to his article, he found her to be “genuine—the real thing in person. Her thinking is certainly straightforward; her speech is the same.” (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Cronkite at college, in a photograph taken for the Cactus, the yearbook of the University of Texas. The picture was probably taken in 1935, the year Cronkite left school. The young woman in the open photo book is Cronkite’s high school girlfriend, Cornelia “Bit” Winter. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
“Walter Wilcox,” better known as Walter Cronkite, preparing for a 1936 broadcast at KCMO, a Kansas City radio station. Cronkite was the sports director at the station, where a bright young woman named Betsy Maxwell soon started working as an advertising copywriter. They began dating and were married four years later. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite during a 1937 radio interview with Beryl Clark, future star quarterback for the University of Oklahoma football team. Throughout the 1937 season, Cronkite broadcast Oklahoma football games for WKY, in Oklahoma City. (Whitehurst Photos)
Walter and Betsy Cronkite, shortly after their 1940 wedding. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Cronkite at work for United Press during World War II while wearing the uniform authorized by the Army for credentialed correspondents. After the United States joined the Allies, the UP named Cronkite, then twenty-five, a war correspondent. Throughout the war, Cronkite sought assignments at the vanguard of the action. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite (right), ready for flight, with the crew of a B-26 bomber at an air base in England on February 9, 1944. Cronkite was then preparing to join another crew on a mission to destroy a German V-1 rocket base in France. With Cronkite, from left to right: Ceibert C. Bragg (flight engineer), Enrique Zepeda (tail gunner), Arthur W. Brand (radio operator), Norman M. Rosner (bombardier), and Jack W. Nye (pilot). (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite (left) with fellow United Press correspondents during the Nuremberg Trials. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Poster depicting CBS television newscasters, circa 1950–1959. This picture, drawn by Joe Kaufman over the caption, “America’s Most Celebrated Reporters,” shows Cronkite in a white shirt at the lower left. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
President Harry Truman with Cronkite during a televised tour of the newly renovated White House on May 3, 1952, that all three major networks cooperated to broadcast. (Whitehurst Photos)
An advertisement for the CBS television series You Are There, hosted by Cronkite. The show staged re-creations of major events in world history, allowing Cronkite’s correspondents to step into the action and “interview” famous personalities from Galileo to Benedict Arnold. It originally ran from 1953 to 1957. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Walter Cronkite standing in front of a weather map while holding the Farmers’ Alma
nac during a Morning Show broadcast on June 1, 1954. (CBS Photo Archive)
Walter Cronkite on CBS’s The Morning Show with the puppet Charlemane, circa 1954. The lion puppet, created by Bill and Cora Baird, introduced musical numbers on the show and also discussed current events with Cronkite. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Walter Cronkite at Washington’s WTOP television studio in 1954. After trying to establish himself in radio during the late 1940s, Cronkite joined the staff of WTOP-TV, a CBS affiliate, in 1950. He would stay until 1954. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
CBS composite photo, highlighting Cronkite’s coverage of the space program. He is shown with six members of Mercury 7 (undated). (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Doris Duke, heiress to a tobacco fortune, with Walter and Betsy Cronkite at a party. The Cronkites were active members of New York’s social life (undated). (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Cronkite explaining the Explorer 1 mission to CBS viewers in 1958. Explorer 1 was a hastily constructed response to Sputnik, the Soviets’ 1957 earth-orbiting satellite. Because nearly every concept surrounding Explorer 1 was new to American viewers, Cronkite used models to clarify the principles of aerospace. (CBS Photo Archive)
From the left: Eric Sevareid, Walter Cronkite, and Edward R. Murrow at the news desk during CBS’s election-night coverage on November 8, 1960. (CBS Photo Archive)
On May 4, 1961, Cronkite rehearsed in his station wagon for CBS’s coverage of Freedom 7, which would be launched at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on May 5. Freedom 7 would take Alan Shepard on America’s first manned space flight: a fifteen-minute orbit of the earth. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite covering the Freedom 7 manned space flight on May 5, 1961. Viewers worried along with him that Shepard might not survive the return to earth. Ultimately, the flight was a success, giving America—and Cronkite—a future in space exploration. (CBS Photo Archive)
Cronkite’s longhand notes on astronaut Gordon Cooper’s space flight on the thirty-four-hour Faith 7 mission, May 22–23, 1963. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Cronkite interviewed President John F. Kennedy for the first thirty-minute broadcast of the CBS Evening News on September 3, 1963. Previously, the program had been fifteen minutes in length. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite, in a moment of undisguised emotion, having just announced the death of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Cronkite was dubbed “healer of the nation” in the wake of his exemplary coverage. (CBS Photo Archive)
Cronkite met former president Dwight D. Eisenhower in France in 1963 to film “D-Day Plus 20 Years: Eisenhower Returns to Normandy.” The program aired on CBS in 1964 and was repeated on national television many times afterward to commemorate the D-day landings. Cronkite’s softball interviewing style suited the occasion, turning the program into a special conversation with the former supreme Allied commander. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite interviewing Barry Goldwater in 1964. A longtime Arizona senator, Goldwater was the Republican nominee for president; he ultimately lost by a wide margin to Lyndon Johnson. CBS News management warned Cronkite not to let his anti-Goldwater feelings seep into the CBS Evening News. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Cronkite in a reduced-gravity environment in 1964. Cronkite was often regarded as a staid character, sitting behind an anchor desk, but in fact throughout his career he was an enthusiastic, participatory journalist. (Whitehurst Photos)
The Cronkite family: Betsy, Nancy, Chip, Walter, and Kathy, circa 1966. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite (right) interviewing John Glenn for CBS News on February 8, 1967. He spoke with Cronkite in the aftermath of a fire at Cape Kennedy on January 27 that had claimed the lives of three astronauts. (Whitehurst Photos)
Walter Cronkite speaking with Robert F. Kennedy before a public event, circa 1967. Kennedy (D-NY) was considering a run for the presidency, a prospect about which Cronkite would voice an encouraging opinion in a private setting. (Whitehurst Photos)
To better inform his space coverage in the late 1960s, Cronkite tried out a lunar reduced-gravity simulator at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
A war correspondent again, Cronkite traveled through Vietnam in February 1968, at the end of the Vietcong’s Tet Offensive. Back home, Americans were being told by commanders, as well as President Johnson, that the United States was drawing steadily nearer to victory. Cronkite went to Vietnam to see for himself. (Whitehurst Photos)
February 1968: Cronkite at Hué in South Vietnam, the scene of grim, street-to-street fighting as U.S. forces, led by the Marines, sought to retake the city, which had been seized by the Vietcong during the first phase of the Tet Offensive. Such heroism impressed Cronkite, but the overall strategies of the war did not. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Cronkite interviews Richard M. Nixon on April 1, 1968, in Nixon’s New York apartment. The former vice president led the race for the Republican presidential nomination, having recently vanquished George Romney of Michigan. Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Ronald Reagan of California would also fail to catch him. Nixon campaigned carefully and made little news in interviews, feeling that the nomination would be his if he avoided mistakes. He did, and won the White House in the November election. (Whitehurst Photos)
On July 21, 1969, the day after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, Cronkite held up a copy of The New York Times while he was on the air. Trained as a newspaper reporter, Cronkite rejoiced anew when he saw the epoch-making story in print. (Whitehurst Photos)
Walter Cronkite talking with Lyndon Baines Johnson at his ranch in Texas in the early 1970s. Cronkite and Johnson engaged in a series of extensive interviews on Johnson’s life and turbulent presidency. The last of their conversations occurred on January 12, 1973, just ten days before Johnson’s death. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite was an active amateur auto racer. He gave it up partly in deference to pressure from CBS, and soon took up sailing. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite in 1970 with some of those directly responsible for the look and stature of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite: Sandy Socolow (producer), Les Midgley (executive producer), and Richard Salant (news division president). (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Cronkite taking a break from sailing while on vacation near the Windward Islands in the Caribbean in 1971. (Whitehurst Photos)
Walter Cronkite in his office after a broadcast in 1971, shaving before a night out on the town. Cronkite’s office, overstuffed with books, gadgets, awards, and memos, reflected the texture of his lifestyle. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite and his son, Chip, clowning for a photographer from Life magazine in 1971. Cronkite was then forty-five and Chip was fourteen. Cronkite often broke into off-the-cuff numbers with only the slightest encouragement. (Whitehurst Photos)
Cronkite standing in front of the Great Wall during CBS News’ coverage of Nixon’s 1972 trip to China. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
Cronkite preps eight young people on the set of the CBS News special What Ever Happened to ’72? Cronkite and the students, all from an Evanston, Illinois, junior high school, traded opinions on everything from the presidential election to the latest movies. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin)
“Ted Baxter Meets Walter Cronkite” was the title of the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode that aired on February 9, 1974. Ted Knight played Baxter, the news anchor at WJM, in a moment when he convinces
himself that he is going to become Cronkite’s co-anchor on the CBS Evening News. Cronkite made a cameo appearance on the program. (Whitehurst Photos)
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