99 put his hand on Cronkite’s arm and moaned, “Y-y-y-y-you wouldn’t”: Powers, “Walter Cronkite: A Candid Conversation.”
99 “I swept the boards with my story”: Quigg, “Uncle Walter.”
99 “to get the smell of warm blood into their copy”: Carl Sessions Stepp, “Down to the Wires,” American Journalism Review (August–September 2003).
100 “Bigart, Cronkite and Hill were badly shaken”: Harrison Salisbury, foreword in Wade, ed., Forward Positions: The War Correspondence of Homer Bigart (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1992), p. xiv.
100 the best journalistic account: Louis Snyder, ed., Masterpieces of War Reporting: Great Moments of World War II (New York: Julian Messner, 1962), p. 239.
100 “The impressions of a first bombing mission”: Maurice Isserman and John Steward Bowman, World War II (New York: Facts on File, 2003), p. 131.
101 “This is the story of Bob Post”: Walter Cronkite, “Bob Post,” UP, February 25, 1943.
102 The New York Times declared Post dead: Hamilton, The Writing 69th, p. 123.
102 “I was scared to death”: Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.
102 “The Yanks are here”: Walter Cronkite, “Yanks in European Air Offensive in Full Force Now,” UP, May 15, 1943.
102 “We were all on the same side”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 289.
103 His November 19 dispatch: Walter Cronkite, “Nazi Air Force Seen Beaten at Every Turn,” New York World-Telegram, November 19, 1943.
103 “We do not have the least idea”: Morris, Deadline Every Minute, p. 254.
103 “I’m embarrassed when I’m introduced”: Powers, “Walter Cronkite: A Candid Conversation.”
Seven: Dean of the Air War
104 “It expressed the jargon”: Walter Cronkite, “Dramatized WWII Radio Program ‘Soldiers of the Press,’ ” All Things Considered, NPR, July 21, 2003.
105 Murrow, a gifted talent scout, asked: John A. Steuart, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Critical Biography, 2nd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1924), p. 180.
105 This group—which included: Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson, The Murrow Boys (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), Author’s Note.
105 “I guess he was looking for cannon fodder”: Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, April 18, 1998.
106 “Well, he drove a stake”: Walter Cronkite, oral history interview with Don Carleton, WCP-UTA.
106 “He gave me a sales pitch”: Ibid.
107 “I don’t think it cost him”: Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, April 28, 1998.
107 “Murrow couldn’t believe it”: Cloud and Olson, The Murrow Boys, p. 297.
107 “a certain chill” pervaded Cronkite’s relationship: Stephen Miller and Sam Schechner, “Walter Cronkite, Broadcasting Legend, Dies at 92,” Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2009.
108 to worry about his Q factor with Murrow: Alexander Kendrick, Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow (New York: Little, Brown, 1969), p. 275.
108 Cronkite reliving the flight over Wilhelmshaven: Walter Cronkite, “My Favorite War Story,” Look, November 16, 1943.
108 “Despite my turning down Ed’s offer, CBS kept inviting me”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, pp. 63–64.
108 “a kind of orchestrated hell”: Belyn Rodgers, “Edward R. Murrow’s ‘Orchestrated Hell’: A Rhetorical Analysis,” University of Texas at Tyler, http//www.uttyler.edu/meidenmuller/publicomm/belynrogers.htm (accessed October 5, 2011).
109 “gratitude for getting us back”: Photograph on the Writing 69th Home Page, Green Harbor Publications, http://www.greenharbor.com/wr69/wr69.html.
110 “That the first two years seemed to go”: Walter Cronkite to Betsy Cronkite, March 29, 1944, WCP-UTA.
110 Cronkite conveyed how “broken hearted”: Walter Cronkite to Betsy Cronkite, May 14, 1944, WCP-UTA.
110 “We’ve gotten a new mission”: Walter Cronkite oral history interview with Don Carleton, WCP-UTA.
110 “It struck me”: Walter Cronkite, “Cronkite Left in Fog on D-Day,” New York Daily News, June 4, 1984.
111 Leyshon warned Cronkite that the flight would be at a very low altitude: Walter Cronkite, “R.A.F. Bombers Blasted Path for Invasion,” UP, June 6, 1944.
111 “And then the order came to arm”: Cronkite, “Cronkite Left in the Fog on D-Day.”
111 “didn’t seem to be room for any more”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 104.
112 “Many of the German gun nests were blanketed”: Walter Cronkite, “RAF Bombers Rip Coast,” UP, June 6, 1944.
112 “The planes come over closer”: Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, 1933 to 1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 199.
112 “everything was anti-climax”: Paul White, News on the Air, p. 356.
113 Murrow was anointed president of the London-based organization: Bob Edwards, Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004), p. 78.
113 “I did fly the morning of the invasion after all”: Walter Cronkite to Betsy Cronkite, June 12, 1944, WCP-UTA.
113 “I think it was Omaha”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 59.
114 Cronkite got the opportunity to interview: Stephen E. Ambrose, D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 583.
114 “To think of the lives that were given”: Walter Cronkite interview with Dwight D. Eisenhower, June 6, 1964, CBS Special Report, CBS News Reference Library, New York.
114 “I actually have been just as busy since D-Day”: Walter Cronkite to Helen Cronkite, August 15, 1944, WCP-UTA.
115 “Hugh Baillie is coming”: Ibid.
115 “There’s no question that television has”: White, News on the Air, p. 372.
115 He roundly disdained the rest of CBS’s programming: Conway, The Origins of Television News in America, p. 126.
Eight: Gliding to V-E Day
118 “I was unceremoniously crash-landed in a troop-carrying glider”: Cornelius Ryan, A Bridge Too Far (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974), p. 216.
118 silent glide into eternity”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 10.
118 “don’t go by glider!”: Ibid.
118 “I thought the wheels of the glider”: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, p. 216.
119 “Thousands of Allied parachutists and glider troops landed”: Walter Cronkite, “Arnhem,” UP, September 18, 1944.
119 Cronkite’s upbeat Market Garden stories ran: Walter Cronkite, “Sky Troops Fight as They Hit Earth,” New York Times, September 18, 1944.
120 “lame”: Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, p. 12.
120 “I can see their chutes going down now”: Murrow and Bliss, In Search of Light, p. 84.
120 Murrow’s “That’s the way it was” antedated: Edward Bliss Jr., Now the News: The Story of Broadcast Journalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 161–162.
121 Cronkite reported on the battles to liberate: Cronkite, “200th Anniversary of Friendship and Unbroken Diplomatic Relations with the Netherlands.”
121 “It looked like a gigantic skyrocket”: “Cronkite Believes He Saw V-2 Rocket,” New York Times, December 2, 1944.
121 with Downs as his constant companion: Expansion of CBS war coverage from Columbia Broadcasting System 1944 Annual Report, March 24, 1945, pp. 20–21. Also see Bliss, Now the News, pp. 91–97.
121 “I couldn’t go around calling your name”: Bliss, Now the News, p. 162.
122 “I was back in Brussels”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 68.
123 “During the early days of the Bulge”: “Remembering the Battle of the Bulge, which took place 60 years ago this week,” All Things Considered, NPR, September 27, 2004.
123 “The heroic events of that Christmas”: Ibid.
124 “He really didn’t deserve the credit”: Cronkite and Carleto
n, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 68.
124 the ability to say he’d been a war correspondent: Mark Bernstein and Alex Lubertozzi, World War II: On the Air (New York: Sourcebooks, 2003), p. xiv.
124 “Before you knew it, you could hear”: Don Hewitt, Tell Me a Story (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), p. 32.
125 “Downs, lying behind me, began tugging”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 114.Also, Edwards, Edward R. Murrow, p. 81.
125 “They pelted us with tulips”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 123.
125 “I got a lot of garlands”: “Television: The Most Intimate Medium,” Time, October 14, 1966.
126 Cronkite was proud to be among the brave Dutch: Ibid.
126 “The sound of Allied aircraft”: Cronkite, “200th Anniversary of Friendship and Unbroken Diplomatic Relations with the Netherlands.”
126 “Through their tears of joy they couldn’t wait to tell”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 123.
127 “There were a number of great stories”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p.74
127 When Murrow took to the CBS Radio airwaves, he prayed: Edwards, Edward R. Murrow, pp. 74–84.
127 “You can’t write horror stories”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 73.
127 The Nazis had starved and beaten: Goddard, Canada and the Liberation of the Netherlands, pp. 209–214.
128 “There is absolutely no food”: Walter Cronkite letter, May 20, 1945, WCP-UTA.
128 “It would serve America well to listen”: Walter Cronkite, “200th Anniversary of Friendship and Unbroken Diplomatic Relations with the Netherlands.”
129 Cronkite was able to buy wire: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, pp. 122–124.
130 “I had a curious feeling of age”: Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream, p. 511.
131 he was “in a kind of mental coma”: Ibid., pp. 511–512.
131 He attended General Patton’s funeral: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 77.
132 The courtroom was an old German theater: Joseph E. Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 132.
Nine: From the Nuremberg Trials to Russia
134 “They had come into the dock”: Walter Cronkite, The Nuremberg Trials (transcript), PBS, American Experience, 2006, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nuremberg/filmmore/pt.html.
134 “We’d get drunk around the bar and debate”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 80.
134 “The real skill,” he recalled of Stringer: Walter Cronkite oral history interview, WCP-UTA.
134 “We got a lot of damn good front page stories”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, pp. 79–80.
135 procuring “new information”: Walter Cronkite, “Goering’s Wife Tells How She Helped Build Fortune,” UP, July 9, 1946.
135 “Göring displayed on the stand”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 126.
135 “As soon as the defendants saw”: Cronkite, The Nuremberg Trials.
135 “There has been much criticism”: Timothy White, “Walter: We Hardly Knew You,” Rolling Stone, February 5, 1981.
136 “I have a vivid memory of Walter coming to visit”: Author interview with Kay Barnes, July 7, 2011.
136 “I was chief correspondent”: Walter Cronkite interview, Archive of American Television, April 28, 1998.
137 Moscow was to Betsy Cronkite “a last bastion of empire”: Betsy Cronkite as told to Lyn Tornabee, “My Husband the Newscaster.”
137 “They lived a dual existence”: Author interview with Kathy Cronkite, March 22, 2011.
137 “Life at the Metropol was a little like”: Harrison Salisbury, A Journey for Our Times (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 255.
137 With UP picking up the tab, the Cronkites spent a long weekend: Earl Wilson, “A Visit with Walter Cronkite,” Houston Post, September 11, 1955.
137 “Sprawled in a snowbank this morning I heard”: Walter Cronkite, UP clippings, WCP-UTA.
138 “The foreign correspondent in Moscow”: Walter Cronkite, “Newsmen in Moscow Run Get Their Stories on Papers,” UP, March 23, 1948.
139 “After the smashing of the German source of international reaction”: Walter Cronkite, “Red Commentator Says Truman, Marshall Head Aggression Rising,” UP, September 25, 1947.
139 Whatever veneer of excitement that had glossed: Salisbury, A Journey for Our Times, p. 248.
140 ending its policy of “limited friendship”: David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 240.
140 “If they had known we were newspaper people”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 153.
141 “the best masculine garb for the video camera”: Jack Gould, “Television and Politics,” New York Times, July 18, 1948.
141 needed to have a happy-go-lucky “anchorman”: There is a dispute concerning the coining of the term anchorman. Three different broadcasting executives have claimed provenance: Sig Mickelson, Don Hewitt, and Paul Levitan.
141 “In a town overrun with eager beavers”: Gould, “Television and Politics.”
Ten: Infancy of TV News
145 a pregnant Betsy had returned to Kansas City: Walter Cronkite interview with Richard Snow, “He Was There,” American Heritage 45, no. 8 (1994): 42–44.
145 “I raced half way around the world”: “Walter Cronkite: TV Biography,” Special Projects, CBS News, May 15, 1953, CBS News Archive, New York.
145 “That’s the way it was in those days”: Author interview with Nancy Cronkite, April 4, 2011.
146 Cronkite theorized that he could pick up the slack: Detroit News Magazine, September 24, 1978.
146 “It was a very fine, responsible radio station”: Ibid.
146 “Solid as a mountain”: Miller and Runyon, “And That’s the Way It Seems.”
146 “When Walter got into radio”: Author interview with Bob Schieffer, July 13, 2009.
147 “Cronkite is in Washington to establish headquarters”: Jim Carson, “Listen!” Atchison Daily Globe, January 9, 1949.
147 Having the Missouri connection would give Cronkite: White, “Walter, We Hardly Knew You.”
147 The Cronkites rented a small house: Author interview with Nancy Cronkite, April 4, 2011.
147 Edward R. Murrow was a semiregular guest: Ann M. Sperber, Murrow, His Life and Times (New York: Freudlich, 1986), p. 225.
148 “I couldn’t believe that anybody was going to take McCarthy seriously”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 114.
148 “Walter being Walter, he got to know Sam Rayburn”: Author interview with Andy Rooney, March 15, 2011.
149 “The people who say TV will destroy”: Joseph E. Persico, Edward R. Murrow: An American Original (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), p. 301.
149 “the Murrows, Collingwoods, Sevareids wouldn’t deign”: Felicity Barringer, “Sig Mickelson, First Director of CBS’s TV News, Dies at 86,” New York Times, March 27, 2000.
149 Murrow, along with producer Fred Friendly, had been doing: Ben Gross, “Looking and Listening,” New York Sunday News, June 28, 1953.
149 Born in Ada, Oklahoma, in 1917, Edwards began a career: Denis Hevesi, “Douglas Edwards, First TV Anchorman, Dies at 73,” New York Times, October 14, 1990.
150 “First it was television”: Conway, The Origins of Television News in America, p. 2.
150 Edwards’s fifteen-minute show on CBS: Halberstam, The Powers That Be, p. 123.
150 NBC started its own TV news program: Barbara Matusow, The Evening Stars: The Making of the Network News Anchor (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), p. 60.
150 Swayze could ad-lib a bit: Frederick Jacobi Jr., “Video Newscaster,” New York Times, September 10, 1950.
151 “didn’t know how to query me for information”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 101.
151 “Ed said that not many guys get a second chance”: Ibid, pp. 102–103.
152 “KMBC-KFRM Washington Corre
spondent has taken an indefinite leave”: Carson, “Listen!”
152 Stanton was the provost type: Holcomb B. Noble, “Frank Stanton, Broadcasting Pioneer, Dies at 98,” New York Times, December 26, 2006.
153 “ ‘Go out and do five minutes on the evening news’ ”: “News Commentator Walter Cronkite,” Detroit News Magazine, September 4, 1978.
153 Cronkite drew arrows on the map: Tom Wicker, “Broadcast News,” New York Times, January 26, 1997.
153 “We were still trying to figure out how to do news on television”: Cronkite and Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite, p. 104.
154 his was the only name CBS would promote: “Display Ad 28,” Washington Post, November 7, 1950.
154 “Within six months he was the talk of the town”: Shadel, “An Uncharted Career,” p. 8.
154 “How do you do the news so perfectly”: Author interview with Shirley Wershba, July 6, 2011.
155 “[Shadel] came every Wednesday night”: Walter Cronkite, Foreword to Shadel, “An Uncharted Career.”
155 “Walter Winchell drops a line to the effect that”: Joe Wershba, “A Real TV Ace Doesn’t Need a Script,” Washington Post, January 23, 1951.
155 Cronkite and Lindley aired new combat footage: “Display Ad 60,” Washington Post, June 24, 1951.
156 “I went on and I did the news”: Walter Cronkite, oral history interview with Don Carleton, p. 198, WCP-UTA.
157 Murrow had been influenced by the immediacy: Persico, Edward R. Murrow, p. 300.
157 “The television performance,” he admitted about the Kefauver investigations: William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America (New York: Bantam Books, 1975), p. 601.
157 “This is an old team trying to learn”: Quoted in Persico, Edward R. Murrow, p. 303.
157 His voice inflections always seemed: Walter Cronkite, oral history interview with Don Carleton, p. 200, WCP-UTA.
158 “a real slick job”: John Crosby, “White House Tour a Real Slick Job,” Washington Post, May 10, 1952.
158 “Do the clocks run”: Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life, p. 170.
158 “saw Cronkite as Douglas Edwards’ successor”: Hewitt, Tell Me a Story, p. 55.
158 “Walter Cronkite was not one of the Murrow Boys”: Halberstam, The Powers That Be, p. 238.
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