New York Stories » Television

A Newsman Departs

Annie Stone — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:08:13 +0000

        Growing up in the sixties and seventies, the Six-o-Clock News on CBS with Walter Cronkite formed the backdrop to almost every evening meal.  The sound of his serious, but reassuring voice and the drone of the helicopters coming from places like Saigon and Hanoi as Cronkite gave us body counts and explained to us all the quagmire that was Vietnam, formed the soundtrack to our lives as we went about the wonderful, terrible business of trying to grow up.
      Cronkite’s dignified demeanor seemed to embody all that was good and decent.
      His visible grief when President Kennedy was shot was moving, not only because he was expressing publically out own collective shock – but also partly because of its restraint — in the effort he took to suppress it.
      His range was unprecedented.
     He covered World War II and the Nuremberg trials, moved onto Vietnam and Watergate and watched a man Walk on the Moon. “Oh, boy,” he said when the apollo spacecraft touched down on that heretofore mythical place in the sky. ‘Oh boy.”
    His Voice was that of the Decent Everyman. When Walter Cronkite declared during one of his broadcasts that Vietnam War was at a stalement — that it was unwinnable and the United States should negotiate a peace treaty, President Lyndon Johnson famously declared: ”If I’ve lost Cronkite. I’ve lost middle America.”

Walter Cronkite is irreplaceable. We will not see his kind again.
That’s the Way it Was. That’s the Way It Is.

A Moptop Returns to New York

Annie Stone — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 13:01:28 +0000

      The Beatle walked out onto the set that was once the stage for the Ed Sullivan show last week, 45 years after it had all begun. Not the band — of course. That had begun many years before that, in Liverpool where he and some mates had decided: Hey, Let’s Put on a Show!
     Sir Paul McCarney had been 22 years old then and he thought He Knew it All. He told David Letterman he felt so much older at 22 than he does now. S o when the stage manager asked him that night in 1964 right before he was to go out and sing ’Yesterday,’ whether he was scared, he said ’No.” “You should be,” the stage manager told him. “There’s 73 million people watching.” McCartney admitted to Letterman: “I was scared.”
        His face is more lined now — a bit more careworn. He’s been through his share of tragedy and triumphs. He’s had a hit record or two. He’s now known as a Sir. But underneath, the carefree kid with the killer smile and the Mod haircut is still there.
      That night in 1964 , on black and white televisions, all over the country, in Living Rooms and Dens, the people watched the Beatles on the Sunday night ritual known as The Ed Sullivan Show. Fathers were incredulous. Mothers smiled. Girls screamed. The Dog Barked.
     The Mop Tops Had Come to Town. And everything Changed.

Tears and Farewell to a Clown

Annie Stone — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:45:28 +0000

          This isn’t really a New York story — it’s more of an L.A. story,.  ”The Tonight Show’ with Johnny Carson debuted in New York on October 1, 1962 but moved to Burbank, Calif. in 1972 where it ran until 1992.
       For those of us of a Certain Age, the memory of Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon peering at us through our television screens evokes an entire era . Their witty, civilized banter, underscored by McMahon’s booming baritone every night introducing that master of Understated Comedy and Wit — Johnny Carson — will forever be engraved in our memories and hearts. There was a richness to the laughter, and a sense of safety — All’s Well With the World Feeling — that the duo seemed to evoke.
       McMahon was always the Second Banana, but it’s a role he seemed to relish. He wrote in his autobiography the label was the ‘highest form of flattery.”
          His chemistry with Carson was legendary.
      They were like an old married couple, communicating by
’body language, or tone of voice” where they wanted to go, Carson once said.
       Ed McMahon , The Tonight Show’s  Sidekick Extraordinaire, died on June 23 at the age of 86.