Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The voices of Studio nine Edward R. Morrow on a
London rooftop during the blitz.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is London.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
I'm standing again tonight looking out over London. In the
course of the last fifteen or twenty minutes, there's been
considerable action up here.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Charles Collingwood, describing the German surrender, General.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Yodo said, in a voice that choked and almost broke
with this signature, the German people and the German armed
forces are, for better or worse, delivered into the victor's
hands in this war, which is last.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
HB.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Caltenborne, speculating about a third term for Fdr. Good evening everybody,
there has been a contest of wits between the President
of the United States and the Washington reporters. They have
sought to make him tell what he intends to do
about a third term.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
He has sought.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Eric Saverid, recalling the fall of France.
Speaker 6 (00:56):
The life just simply ran out of the city. Is
like a beautiful woman lying in a coma with a
lifeblood just draining out through every every vein every street.
I noticed one week.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Those are the voices of CBS Radio News Studio nine.
Those anothers like Elmer Davis, William L. Shier, John day
Allan Jackson, who through the dark days of Hitler's March,
through Europe and World War II, through the fifties and
now the sixties, brought the living history of the world
through Studio nine and into the living rooms of the nation.
(01:30):
Tonight they bid farewell to Studio nine.
Speaker 7 (01:50):
Farewell to Studio nine, an affectionate goodbye to the birthplace
of CBS News. Here is CBS News Correspondent Robert Trump.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I am speaking to you from Studio nine. As broadcasting
facilities go, this one is not remarkable at all. It's
just a sound proofed room, fifteen by twenty surrounded on
two sides by glass encased control rooms.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
On the third.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
It looks out into the clutter of the CBS newsroom.
It's not the handsomest radio studio, not the most modern,
not lovely at all, but for those who have worked here,
it has a charm all its own.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
We shall miss it.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
We have been moving from this headquarters of CBS News
at fifty second Street in Madison Avenue in New York
City to our new headquarters on the West side of Manhattan,
and this old Studio nine goes dead.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
The voices of those decades that.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Have gone seem to be talking again, speaking words that
once made people tremble and rejoice and laugh and cry,
sometimes speaking words that will not die. This program, an
affectionate Farewell to Studio nine, is a collection of reminiscences, recollections,
and reports by the men who built CBS news, men
(03:06):
like Edward R.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Murrow, Bob.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
One of the infuriating things I remember about Studio nine
was it occasionally we would get through to Master Control
and then they couldn't get it down to Studio nine.
And that produced some rather profane comments because we couldn't
see why we could get a good signal three five
thousand miles and then New.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
York you could get it four floors.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I think the engineers are going to be slightly us.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Well.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
We have some recordings of some of the broadcasts, a
few of those things that you did, ed Would you
like to hear any of them? Would like to hear
the one on the rooftop, the Blitz in the Blitz.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I've never heard it, haven't you? Really?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Probably terrible?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Listen to it now. This is London.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I'm standing again tonight on a rooftop looking out over
London feeling rather large and lonesome.
Speaker 8 (03:59):
In the course of the last fifteen or twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
There's been considerable action up here, but at the moment
there's an ominous silence hanging over London, but at the
same time, a silence that is a great deal of dignity.
Just straight away in front of me, the third flight
they're working, I can see one or two bursts of
an aircraft fire far in the distance.
Speaker 8 (04:22):
Just on a roof across the way, I can see
a man standing wearing a tin hat with a pair
of powerful night glasses to his eyes, scanning the sky.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Again. Looking in the opposite of direction, there's a building
with two windows gone. Out of one window there waves
something that looks like a white bed sheet, a window curtain,
swinging free in this night breeze, and looks as though
it were being shaken by a ghost.
Speaker 8 (04:55):
There are great many ghosts.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Around these buildings in London, and some of them companies
of ghosts.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, I don't know how you feel about that. I
find it kind of hard to take.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
I'll tell you something about that Robert that was never reported.
I had to stand on a rooftop for six nights
in succession and make a record each night and submit
it to the Ministry of Information in order to persuade
the centers that I could add lib without violating security.
And I did it for six nights, and the records
were lost somewhere in the Ministry of Information, So then
I had to do it for another six nights before
they would finally give me permission after listening to the
(05:30):
second take of six to stand on a rooftop. So
I had a lot of time up there.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
You remember the studio at the BBC.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
That threat before it was referred to as having formerly
been a waitress's robing room, in fact meant that it
was spread the ladies lavatory. Yes, and all the broadcasts
from London came from the during the war.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
This is a reminiscence you'd ever care to remember, but
it's always been my story. You remember the first time
that you ever went on CBS.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
On the air.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
We'd gone to the Christmas party of the Publicity Department
and somehow it stretched on into the evening at least
for us. And I was practically a tee totally, you know,
I didn't know anything about all this alcohol, and of
course you were always very circumspect.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And as the evening war on, and I remembered I had.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
To do a five minute news broadcast supplied by the
Press Radio Bureau, you decided that I really wasn't quite
fit to do it. Do you remember that, if this
is being recorded, I don't remember any big about it.
And I sat in the studio when I was supposed
to be doing it, and you did.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
That's right, And you were going to give me the cut,
You were going to give me the watch at the end,
and you gave it to me a minute early, and
we left forty five seconds of dead air at the end.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I don't remember that at all.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
You were the director of Talked and we're supposed to
be in there at all.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
That's right. I think that was your first broadcast CBS.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
And one thing that's almost hard to believe now as
we think about it, in those early is we didn't
have any press associations because the Associated Press, the United Press,
and the International News Service as they were then, refused
to sell their services to broadcasters.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Remember, ah, yes, and I can remember you night after
night ending a five minute news broadcast by saying for
further details, read your daily newspaper. That's why I can
remember when I first went to Europe in nineteen thirty seven,
I was not permitted to be a member of the
American Correspondence Association in London and Paris because I was
involved in that ridiculous thing called Radio.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
All I remember was that shortly after I got to London,
you were the president of it.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Well, that was in the build up for D Day. Yeah,
it just happened to be my turn.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
No, but I hadn't remembered that you had a hard
time getting in Well. Of course, during the war you
made a number of bombing flights over the enemy territory
over Germany, broadcasting as you went, astonishing broadcasts. I know
that the management of CBS was kind of unhappy that
you insisted on going on the things and tried to
(08:01):
dissuade Jill, and you wouldn't be dissuaded. We have the
result of at least one of those air raids.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Would you like to hear that one? Oh? Yes.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
I began to see what was happening to Berlin. The
small incenderies were going down like a fistful of white
rice thrown on a piece of black velvet. The cookies,
the four thousand pound high explosives were bursting below like
great sunflowers gone mad. And then as we started down again,
still held in the light, I remembered.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
That the dog still had one of.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Those cookies and a whole basket of incenderies in his belly,
and the light still held.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
It, and I was very frightened.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
I looked down and.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
The white fires had turned red. They were beginning to
merge and spread, just like the butter does on a
hot plate. The bound doors were open, and then there
was a general, confident upward thrust under my feet, and
Bob said, cookie gone. Few seconds later the incendiaries went, and.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
D Dog seemed lighter and easier to hand them.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
I began to breathe, and to reflect again that all
men would be brave if only they could leave their
stomach at home.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
When there was a tremendous warmth, an.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Unintelligible shout from the tail gunner, and D Dog shivered
and lost altitude. I looked to the port side, and
there was a lancaster.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
That seemed close enough to touch. He whipped straight under us,
missed us.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
By twenty five fifty feet. No one knew how much
Berlin was a kind of orchestrated hell, a terrible symphony
of light and flame.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
There were four reporters on this operation.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Two of them didn't.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Come back, two friends of mine, Norman Stockton of Australian
Associated Newspapers and Lowell Bennett, an American representing International News Service.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
There is something of a tradition amongst reporters that.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
Those who were prevented by circumstances from filing.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Their stories will be covered by their colleagues.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
This has been my effort to do so. I have
no doubt that Bennetton stuck them would have given you
a better report of last night's activities.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
That was the broadcast that became known as orchestrated Hell.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
I'm sure you do one thing that I imagine the public
thinking back, listening a bit, perhaps listening to us talk,
would find amazing. Could hardly believe it is that all
during the war. Of course, we didn't use recordings. It
was all live.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
We were permitted to use them shortly before D Day
and we used them from then onward. For example, broadcast
at George Hickstead from the ship during the D Day
landings that was done on tape.
Speaker 9 (10:48):
Yes, well, then we go again, another planet.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Come over.
Speaker 10 (10:59):
Aside.
Speaker 8 (11:02):
Looks like we're going to have a night to night.
Speaker 10 (11:09):
Something burning is falling down through the sky.
Speaker 8 (11:14):
That's certainly down.
Speaker 11 (11:16):
Maybe I cat plan.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Here we go, they got one, they got one? Be
one right here? Did we have?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
The next record that we have here to listen to
is the one when you got to the concentration camp
and saw what had happened in Buchenwald.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Let's listen to it.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
When I entered, men crowded around tried to lift me
to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them
could not get out of bed. As I walked down
to the end of the barracks, there was applause from
the men too weak to get out. It sounded like
the hand clapping of babies. As we walked out into
the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others they must
(12:09):
have been over sixty, were crawling towards the latrine. I
saw it, but will not describe it. In another part
of the camp, they showed me the children, hundreds of them,
some were only six. One rolled up his sleeve showed
me his number. It was tattooed on his arm. D.
(12:30):
Six thousand and thirty.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
It was. The others showed me their numbers.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
They will carry them till they die. The children clung
to my hands and stared. We crossed to the courtyard.
Men kept coming up to speak to me, in to
touch me. Professors from Poland, doctor from Vienna, men from
all Europe, men from the countries that made America. We
proceeded to the small courtyard. There were two rows of
bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white.
(12:58):
Some of the bodies were terribly bruised, though there seemed
to be little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot
to the head, but they bled but little. It appeared
that most of the men and boys had died of starvation.
They had not been executed, but the manner of death
seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Bougenvalud. God alone
(13:21):
knows how many men and boys have died there during
the last twelve years. As I left that camp, a
Frenchman who used to work for Havas in Paris, came
up to me and said, you will write something about this, perhaps,
And he added, to write about this, you must have
been here at least two years, and after that you
don't want to write any more. I pray you to
(13:45):
believe what I have said about Bugenvalud. I have reported
what I saw and heard, but only part of it.
If I have offended you by this rather mild account
of Buguenvald, I am not in the least sorry.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Listening to that ed makes me realize again how radio
came to be the magnificent medium that it is, and
how much you did to make it that kind of medium.
And also because I can't help thinking how much of
those broadcasts, how many of them came through the studio nine.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
What does it mean to you? I keep thinking of
the people I remember.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Elmer Davis was one of the most sensitive men I
have ever met, although most people didn't realize it.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
I wish you could be here with us today.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Let's listen to one of his broadcasts, Elmer Davis.
Speaker 12 (14:40):
Whatever the terms imposed on France may be, it can
pretty safely be assumed that they will be such as
to make it impossible for France ever to become dangerous
to Germany again, unless of course, it first should be overthrown.
How much farther they may go in the direction of
attempting to make France over on the Nazi model remains
to be seen. At least some of the Nazi theorists
(15:01):
seem to have extensive hopes. One of the chief of
these philosophers of Nazism, man who has worked out its
doctrines very thoroughly, has offered Rosenberg. He is a less
prominent figure than he used to be, but he still
writes a good deal in the felksh Er Beilbachster, the
principal Nazi paper, and some remarks of his quoted in
The New York Times last Sunday, are a suggestion of
(15:22):
the sort of world that the more philosophical Nazis will
create if they can. Mister Rosenberg writes about Paris the
Fall of Paris. He says, I quote, the fall of
Paris is the beginning of the end of the spiritual and.
Speaker 7 (15:35):
Racial turpitude of Europe.
Speaker 12 (15:37):
For Paris was the center of the mental confusion that
pervaded Europe end quote. What Rosenberg and the other Nazis
call mental confusion, and they mean this quite sincerely. It's
part of a well thought out philosophy. What they call
mental confusion is what the rest of us call freedom
of thought, the liberty of the mind to work over
everything and come to its own conclusions.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
This man had an ability to compress and condense without
distorting that I've never heard by anyone in radio anywhere.
He had always the essence of the news, great brevity
and great clarity.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
His was a genius. I agree.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
It's still the best instrument through which to convey the news,
this old fashioned radio.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
That's what I wanted. If you were going to say
that's true, let me just say to you then goodbye
and good luck.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Another voice that was already famous in the early days
of the war belonged to HV. Caltonborne, who, even then,
as a young fellow just entering his sixties, was known
to the nation as the Dean of radio news analysts. Now,
having just celebrated his eighty sixth birthday, HB. Caltonborn looks
back to the Suditan crisis of thirty eight and how
(16:48):
it affected the lives of Americans who were keeping track
of it.
Speaker 13 (16:51):
They'd never used departible radios before, and they came in
during that crisis. People carried radios all over with them.
Wherever you went, you saw people carrying radios because they
were listening to the crisis and didn't want to lose
a minute of it.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yes, there was biggest suitcases in those days.
Speaker 13 (17:09):
Yes they were pretty big, but they carried them and
got a lot out of them.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Because do you think that that crisis really is the
first thing, the turning point, that made this country more
aware of the outside world and the whole world Christ, I.
Speaker 13 (17:24):
Think that's probably its significance that for the first time,
the entire country was aware of the fact that the
actions of one of these dictators operating over there in
Europe could plunge this country into a world war, And
that was its significance.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
How many days and nights you suppose, I guess neither
one of us could possibly remember how many days and
nights it lasted. But you used to sleep on the
sofa and missus Calvin Bourne would bring in the soup
for you.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Do you recall That's right? I recall that very well.
Speaker 13 (17:58):
And it was essential that I'd be there because things
were coming up every minute. There was no time, day
or night when we couldn't be called upon to analyze
a major crisis, and so I did sleep in the studio.
That was the only way we could handle it, and
we certainly did our job. That is, of course we
(18:23):
never had the commendations that came to us after that crisis. Gosh,
that was something that overwhelmed me.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And I got.
Speaker 13 (18:32):
Petitions and tributes and cups, and lord knows.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
What all you could have gone to the Senate.
Speaker 13 (18:41):
I could have done something on the strength of the
reputation that I gathered there.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yes, But then when the war did come in nineteen
thirty nine and we were again in Studio nine, the
country still was pretty solidly isolationist. I don't suppose the
United States ever would have entered the war voluntarily.
Speaker 13 (18:58):
For the best proof that it was isolationist was the
fact that we had a hard time getting on a
prayer by the Archbishop of Canterbury for peace as against
the Kentucky Derby. And so we set it for the
for the prayer and by Jinx if the two didn't
(19:21):
come in exactly the same time. And I'll never forget
the feeling in the words of the announcer of the
Kentucky Derby but in Louisville, as he said, Gee, we've
just had the greatest letdown of our lives because you
took the time that we had taken for the Kentucky
(19:44):
Derby and the audience didn't get any of it. Well,
those were the things that happened in those days of
the old studio.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
After the war in Europe was what one year old.
In nineteen forty we had a presidential election in this country.
And that brings me to another record that we have
from those days.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Let's listen to this one.
Speaker 14 (20:05):
Carltonbourne edits the news good evening everybody. For months past
there has been a contest of wits between the President
of the United States and the Washington reporters. They have
sought to make him tell what he intends to do
about a third term. He has sought, by banter, perciflage,
(20:26):
clever answer, smiles, and occasional silence not to tell him.
How long can that battle of wits go on without
somebody losing his temper?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
However, Franklin D. Roosevelt is clever.
Speaker 14 (20:41):
Enough with rapertee and easy enough in almost any situation
in relation to reporters to be able to continue to
handle it.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
That's another one. We know.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
The end of nowedge fitted me. But did you think
at that time that that mister Roosevelt would run again?
Speaker 13 (20:59):
Yes, I felt that he would run again. I'm sure
that he believed that he could handle this difficult peace
or war situation better than anyone else, and there was
nothing against a third term.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
The dean of American news broadcasters HV. Caltonborn. A voice
that today regularly commands the nation's attention is that of
Eric Severide, one of broadcasting's most celebrated news analysts. When
the war began, Eric Severide was a newspaper man in France,
and he joined the growing CBS news staff as the
(21:35):
Germans drove nearer to Paris. Now it is June ninth,
nineteen forty.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
This is Paris at midnight. It's been a great day
for the moving and packing industry in Paris. At the
time of the Battle of La marn in nineteen fourteen,
the Germans were equally close to the city. I don't
know how many of the radio broadcasts and the MAC
in the Paris studio. If there is an interruption, we
(22:01):
will try to continue with facilities installed in other towns
for their south. I do not think there is any
deliberate attempts to hide the real state of affairs and
the people of parents. They are promised to be affected.
They are fay holistic people. It is this quality which
makes Frenchmen stand half naked in this wilting heat, feeding
(22:24):
their red hot guns until literally crushed out by German tanks.
Perhaps this suit for slics young french Men.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
And girls, as I.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Saw them today, to float on their backs in the water,
blow swimming pools and idly watched the flowering bursts of
anti aircraft sails in the sky.
Speaker 6 (22:41):
Robert, that's the first time I've heard any of those
broadcasts from that period so long ago, when Paris is
about to fall. I wouldn't recognize my own voice. That
broadcast must have been one of the first half dozen
or so than I ever did, and you can and
I must say, it frightened me to death. I didn't
know how to speak, and the microphone scared me, and I.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Never quite got over it.
Speaker 6 (23:06):
I really made the last broadcast to the States from Paris.
In fact, they packed up that radio station as soon
as I finished that night. It was very bad and
in the city when the Germans were coming in. It
must have been very shortly after that broadcast that the
government pulled out, and they didn't tell the people what
to do or where to go, whether to stay or
(23:28):
to go, so they crowded around the railroad stations and
the southern part of Paris, Gamo parnass for example. By
the thousands. I was lucky. I had a car, and
I had all the francs that CBS had in a
bank stuffed in my pocket, and I even had a
bicycle on top of that car an extra can of gasoline,
(23:48):
so I was able to make my way south with
the government.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
But it was perfectly terrible. But the roads were clogged,
weren't they. It was awful.
Speaker 6 (23:56):
We drove all night and all day, just barely creeping
the It must have taken this, oh, many many many
hours geting on a tour where the government was. But
that last day I was in Paris, there was a
crowd cloud of black smoke the north. Uh way to
the north, the creeping toward Paris. I think some oil
dumps or something been set on fire. And uh, this
(24:18):
was very symbolic. The whole horizon began to dock and
and close toward the city. And looking up uh the
Chans of Lysias Great Boulevard, there was hardly a car left.
I noticed a one waiter out putting the chairs from
a cafe back inside. No one sitting there. The life
just simply ran out of the city. It was like
(24:41):
a beautiful woman lying in a coma, you know, with
a life blood just draining out from every every vane,
every street. But we had quite a round of luck.
We had this uh break about. Uh. I'd send a
cable it's out of a cold thing in advance to
New York that h if I ware heard them such
and such a phrase that met a German breakthrough, or
(25:03):
a French breakthrough, or something of this sort. And coming
down from Cambra and that long night ride in the
refugee train, we could see the gun flashes off the northeast,
and then we would hear the sound of the guns.
And in our group was an American who had been
in off in World War One, and he took out
his stopwatch and he timed the period you see between
(25:27):
the flashes and the sound, and then he figured out
how far it was, and we measured this on a map.
It was perfectly clear from this little exercise that the
Germans had broken through.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yes.
Speaker 6 (25:40):
And so I got to Paris and I finally remembered,
after maybe in some hours of having forgotten that cable
that I had in such a cable in Ork sent
this code phrase to Paul White and New York, and
then he finally remembered he had such a cable in
his desk and do it out. And I think Elmer
Davis broadcast they had what they believed to be reputable
(26:02):
report that the Germans had broken through the main French defenses.
At least that's what I was told later when I
got to New York.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And I remember in New York the big front page
headlines on the newspapers more than once with a story
of yours that had come from us through the CBS. Yes,
especially just as Palace was falling. You didn't go to
the South at all, to the Bishi government.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
You will know.
Speaker 6 (26:25):
I left Bordeaux then when Petan took over and they surrendered,
And in fact I was on the ship coming out
of the mouth of the river, our sister ship I
was bombed and sunk.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I heard on the ship.
Speaker 6 (26:38):
Radio Bill Shire broadcasting from Compien the formal surrender to Hitler.
This was an extraordinary sensation, I must say.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
CBS News correspondent Eric Severad, We'll listened to William L.
Sharer at Compiene describing the French surrender and talk to
him about that day in just a moment.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
Farewell to Studio nine will continue after a ten second
pause for station identification. This is the CBS Radio Network.
CBS News continues with farewell to Studio nine.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Here again is Robert Trump.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
As CBS News moves into its new headquarters and Studio
nine shuts down, the voices that broadcast living history form
a permanent record of our time. One of those who broadcast,
William L. Sharer, a newspaperman in Berlin, was hired by
European news director Ed Murrow to help fill the growing
call for more broadcasts from Europe as the lights again
(27:47):
began going.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Out one by one.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Soon with the Second Global War a reality, the voice
of Sharer, speaking almost nightly from Berlin, was what we
came to feel was the principal thread of sanity that
still kept us linked in a way with the capital
of the country that was, although then undeclared the enemy.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
William L.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Sharer was in the forest at Compienne in France, June
twenty second, nineteen forty, looking through a window of a
train car where inside Hitler was accepting the French surrender.
The same train car in which twenty two years earlier,
the French accepted the German surrender. William L. Sharer on
that June day in nineteen forty described the scene.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Hitler stepped up into the car, followed by Gerring and
the others. We watched them entering the growing room in
Marshall Coach's car with can eemas now through the car windows.
Hitler enters France and take the place occupied by Marchall Coach.
The morning the French arms of the fan, the German court,
(28:53):
the hitnispairs what Europeans call correct. But you will get
the picture when I say that we've seen no handshakes
nuts on occasions like this. Hitler and the other German
leaders rise from their feet as the French at of
the drawing room. Hitler we see, gives the nati the
arm rays. The German officers, given no time salute. The
(29:17):
French do the same. Hit Less, the doll as we
can see through the windows just in front of his hair,
does not say anything. He nods to a general title
at his side. We can see general Title adjusting his papers,
and then he starts to leave. He is leading the
preamble of the Giant handed the ten the French sit
(29:39):
there with marble like faces and listen intently Hitler and
Going grants. At the green tabletop. We see Hitler's stand
up salutes stiffly with hand up rays any side down
the Going room, followed by Goring, General Daukits Grand Admiral
raiders their hair heat and at the end here for Revendt.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
That was the UH, the first of the two days sessions.
Speaker 15 (30:06):
When Hitler arrived at the little clearing in the forest
near Compierre and uh laid down the conditions, we were
the only people, for embarrassingly long hours that had a
report that the French should signed the armistice. And that
was due to as are so many scoops in journalism,
(30:27):
to UH, a.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Piece or two of very good luck.
Speaker 15 (30:30):
All the other UH foreign correspondents, including the Americans, the
newspaper people had UH flown back to Berlin that day. UH,
because Hitler had said that the armistice news would come
from him. I took a chance and stayed at Compien.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
UH.
Speaker 15 (30:48):
The armistice was signed at six fifty pm, and I
think I went on the air at seven, and I
assumed that was being recorded in Berlin. But what happened
somebody in Berlin forgot to pull the switch, and I
went straight out from Brilliant on the Jeremy Shortway Center
to New York. I was told later that even people
(31:08):
like Churchill in London first got the news because Hillary
did not release seek news of the armistice for six hours.
And I remember, I think later on I had a
feedback with New York and I heard Elmer Davis, who
was in doing the thing that afternoon, saying, well, it's
a exciting news, but there's no confirmation any place.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
The voice of William L.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Shier John Daly, whom we then called John Charles daily
broadcast for CBS in the thirties from Washington. Then, with
the creation of that great dividing line of our times,
the start of hostilities, he made his permanent home here
in New York in this Studio nine. It was here
that he made his now famous broadcast on December seventh,
(31:56):
nineteen forty one.
Speaker 16 (31:59):
I was staying get out there in the newsroom, looking
over the machines, waiting for any last minute things that
came in, and uh, this uh Pearl Harbor announcement hit,
and I came in and broke into the Philharmonic Concert
to announce that that UH Pearl Harbor had been attacked.
Speaker 17 (32:25):
We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin.
The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air. President
Roosevelt has just announced the attack also was made on
all naval and military activities on the principal island of Ohawe.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
UH.
Speaker 16 (32:39):
The staff was sitting around this this table, and they
just we took turns going out and picking up every
little bit of information we could about UH, the relationships
with the Japanese. The principles involved the character and nature
of Pearl Harbor, getting little shreds of information and telephone
calls to our station affiliates and in the area, and
(32:59):
we just kept the air and kept on reporting everything
that came through it. It doesn't in the context of
all that's done these days, perhaps sound very revolutionary, but
for that time, it was the concept that you would
just take over a whole network's operation and give the
broadest and widest coverage of the story that you were
(33:20):
on in those days was a revolutionary concept.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
John Daly also broadcast the news on that April day.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
In nineteen forty.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Five, Wilderness road adventure on the American frontier with the
Western Family and Danil Boom in the exciting days following
the American Revolution.
Speaker 17 (33:37):
We interrupt this program to bring you a special news
bulletin from CBS World News. A press association has just
announced that President Roosevelt is dead. The President died of
a cerebral hemorrhage. All we know so far is that
the President died at Warm Springs in Georgia.
Speaker 16 (33:54):
I think its impact on me probably was greater than
it would be on most cause I had been White
House correspondent for three or four years in that wonderfully
informal atmosphere that existed in those days, and in that assignment,
which doesn't unhappily exist anymore so because it's grown so.
But wherever Franklin Roosevelt went as president, that hardcore of
(34:16):
permanent correspondents assigned to cover the White House went with him,
and we all were fond of him. The whole country was,
I think, just brought up short when it did happen.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
John Day recalling the day that was so hard to believe.
Charles Collingwood joined CBS News in London not long after
the war began. He broadcast his way through the blitz
on London, then the beginning of the march back to
the continent of Europe, the invasion of North Africa, American
troops going into the western end of the Mediterranean south shore,
as General Montgomery's British army chased the Germans from the
(34:49):
eastern end, and when the Allies sailed from England for
the coast of France, Charles Collingwood was there all the
way through Paris to the surrender of the Third Reich.
Charles is again in per tr Us now as chief
European correspondent for CBS News, and we talked to him
about those days.
Speaker 18 (35:06):
The entry into Paris was one of the most moving
things that I have ever experienced. The sense of liberation,
the great welcome for General Degoul, who exercised magic power
over the French crowds, just as he does today, and
their gratitude and the depth and the fervency of the
(35:28):
welcome for the American troops was fantastic. And I spoke
a little bit of French and I did, I guess,
talk to them while the mic was open, and of
course they responded with all of the fervor that was
in their souls.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Then, yeah, so what I keep hearing you say just
the introduction when you was you knew you'd say, my friends,
I can still hear you saying that, a loud voice
addressing in the multitude. They might have run you for something,
you might have been elected to the deputies.
Speaker 18 (35:56):
Well, in those days it was easier for an American.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
To get elect could do anything that it would be these.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Well, then you went through the war, a lot more
of the war, and then came the big German surrender,
and we have a tape recording that we've dug up
from the files or.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Shall I say the archives.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
That sounds a little bit more imposing of you at
the surrender of Germany.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Would I'd like to hear that? Fine?
Speaker 4 (36:20):
General Yodel, chief of Staff of the German Army, signed
the last document. He sat there very straight, with his
head bent over the papers, and when he had signed
the last one, he put the cap back on the
pin and looked up at.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
The men sitting across the plane wooden table.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
Opposite him sat General Beadle Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff.
As he looked to his right, General Yodel could see
a big, powerful man in the uniform of a Russian general.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Sitting next to General Smith.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
He was General Susse Laparoff, the Russian delegate. Over his
shoulder peered the extraordinary head of another Russian. The head
was bared as a gord with fierce, unwavering eyes, whose
light and sinister gaze did not for an instant leave
the drawn face.
Speaker 11 (37:03):
Of General Yodel.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Yodel did not meet his eyes for long. Then General
Yodel looked again at General Smith. I would like to
say something, he said. Smith nodded. Yodel rose stiffly to
his feet. Here, General, he said, in a voice that
choked and almost broke. With this signature, the German people
and the German armed.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Forces are, for better or worse, delivered.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Into the victor's hands in this hour. I can only
express the hope that the victor will treat them with generosity.
Then General Yodel sat down quickly. No one else said anything.
The Germans looked around as they're wondering what to do next,
and at another nod from General Smith.
Speaker 11 (37:46):
They got up.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
General Yodel, his aid, and Admiral Freiberg, who commands the
German navy, with Yodin in the lead, they walked quickly
out of the room.
Speaker 18 (37:56):
That sounded pretty good.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
You took the words out of my voz, Charles. It
sounded very good, indeed very good. As I sit here
listening then we're playing the record here in New York,
you're listening across the ocean. A question keeps going through
my mind to which there isn't any answer. I wonder
if younger people listening to these records, you know, and
knowing what they are, that their history not written in
(38:19):
a book, but as it was being lived. I wonder
if they get an emotion as I do. Or I
wonder if they would just consider it a kind of curiosity.
You know, you look in the book and you see
someone wearing a strange costume and a picture, or you
read about a king dying or something like that, and
it's a curious thing to me. It's they're very alive,
very much alive. Well, they're very.
Speaker 18 (38:38):
Alive to me. I suppose young people. After all, you
would be quite mature now and not even have been
born when these things happen. It must seem like ancient history.
But to me it makes it very much alive. How
things have changed since the war. There we have Great
(39:00):
Franco German reconciliation, the friendship between Germany and the United States.
Speaker 19 (39:06):
The scars of war in Germany.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Are nearly all healed now. Yes, And of course it
could have been different. That's the thing, really, isn't it.
Speaker 18 (39:13):
I don't know. I think there's something about fate. I
really somehow believe that people who are motivated by what
an old fashioned terms we'd call wickedness. And I think
if there was a wicked man somehow inevitably make the
miscalculations that bring about their downfall. And at the same time,
(39:34):
those people who are motivated by by all the things
that we believe in generally somehow tend to make the
right decisions.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Charles, That's not only a highly comforting thought, I think
it's an idealistic note on which we could end our
transatlantic conversation today.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Goodbye, but pleasure to talk to you again. Bye.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
After a couple of years in England before the d
Day Lands, I found myself back in New York, here
in Studio nine again, as the war followed its tortured
path to victory. When the Germans collapsed, the center of
our world broadcasting was here. Many experts said it would
take years to conquer the Japanese. But three months after
the day of victory in Europe, Japan was falling. I
(40:20):
moved out of Studio nine, just outside the door where
the news machines are the teletypes and a direct telephone
from the White House hung on the wall there to
be able to broadcast the great news a few seconds
faster than if I had remained inside the studio. I
sat in a chair in the news room for four
days and nights waiting, and then the word came.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Seven p m.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Eastern Wartime, Bob Trout reporting, the Japanese have accepted our
terms fully. That's the word we've just received from the
White House in Washington. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the
end of the Second World War.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
The United Nations on land.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
On the sea, in the air, until the four corners
of the Earth are united and are victorious. The great
rift between the communist world roughly of the East, and
the civilization of what we call the Western world was
to mark the years after the war. The postwar East
West conflict grew worse, and at its height, the Soviet
(41:18):
Union blockaded Berlin. The Allied reply, successfully carried out, was
of course, the airlift, but in another part of the world.
After the airlift saved Berlin, the Communists attacked in open
warfare in Asia, the North Koreans crossing the border into
South Korea, supplied by the Soviet Union and later reinforced
by the Communist Chinese. Robert Pierpoint was in Korea for
(41:41):
CBS News the date June one, nineteen fifty one, the
place of Foxhole during a battle.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
We have just hit the dirt.
Speaker 7 (41:58):
In whether this tape is still going.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
But I'm off alow right now.
Speaker 5 (42:04):
Who was that that came over?
Speaker 20 (42:06):
That was artillery?
Speaker 10 (42:08):
I wanted to raise that thing.
Speaker 5 (42:11):
Now.
Speaker 10 (42:11):
It's just one o'clock straight up and down on the
morning of the eighteenth, and we're still out here on
the hill with Flash company and Captain Sutton looking down
at Chinese throats as he tried to advance up the valley.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Here.
Speaker 13 (42:27):
Whoop.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
That was a big one.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
The weapon that changed the world and gave our age
its nuclear name. The atomic bomb was first publicly displayed
for newsman in April nineteen fifty two. Dallas Townsend was
at Yucca Flats in Nevada.
Speaker 21 (42:46):
Five two one zero.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
That's it.
Speaker 9 (42:53):
You could feel the flash you could feel the heat.
We're waiting three seconds. We can see the clouds going
up in the air.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Two thousand three.
Speaker 9 (43:02):
We're taking our goggles off. There's the cloud, the enormous
the enormous cloud already going high in the air, the
great glowing mass. Now the cloud is beginning to expand,
a sort of cataractive white foam, white cloud is pouring
(43:26):
over the top of it.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Wow, that was the shockwave.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
The space age arrived with the Soviet launching of the
first split nick that caught the United States by surprise,
even into the era of manned flight. The Soviet Union
at first had the field or the sky to itself.
Then on May fifth, nineteen sixty one, the first American
to enter outer space, Alan Shephard, went up from Cape Canaveral.
(43:55):
The broadcast went through this studio nine, and I was
in Florida at the scene.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Three two one zero cognition.
Speaker 19 (44:07):
You don't hear the sound yet, but we see the
flame very slowly, majestically, the red stone rises into the sky.
It's man invisible inside the capsule, and a flame clearly
seems like a beaming light, like a searchlight focused down
at the Earth. Again as that thin, slim pencil goes slowly,
slowly cut into the clear sky. And now the sound
(44:29):
goes louder and louder and swallows everything. Many times from
this Studio nine we called in the eternal city Rome,
often to hear a timely and timeless event, like the
announcement that the Roman Catholic Church had a new pope.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Here is Winston Burdett reporting.
Speaker 21 (44:56):
On your up the scars your mind a bird, Popham.
Speaker 11 (45:05):
We have Aprilovanni Beniza Caol Hockey, the sixty five year
old Archbishop of the land, and he has taken the
name of Pope the Sick.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
There have been all night broadcasts and all day broadcasts
in and through this Studio nine invasions, coronations, elections, and
the collapse of empires. Events like the drive across France
reported by Bill Downs and Larry Lesser, the founding of
the United Nations reported by Ned Kalmer, the rise of
(45:44):
post war Germany reported by Richard C. Hoteleett, the sinking
of the Andrea Doria reported by Douglas Edwards. And then
there came the day of the broadcast that at first
no one could quite believe. No one wanted to believe.
The day of November the twenty second, nineteen sixty three,
Alan Jackson was on the air.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
We interrupt this program for a CBS Radio net alert bulletin.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
President Kennedy and Governor John Connolly of Texas were both
hit by a would be assassin's bullets as they toured
down down Dallas in an open automobile a short while ago.
That is the latest word that had just come in
from Dallas on United Press International. The Associated Press, and
its first report says that President Kennedy was shot just
as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Missus Kennedy, who was
(46:34):
riding with him, jumped up and grabbed mister Kennedy and cried,
oh no. As I listened to that tape just now,
I recall that the first dawning of the disaster that
had happened came to me intuitively, perhaps when I read
a the quote of Missus Kennedy when she said, oh no.
(46:57):
Somehow this just struck me very deeply at the time. Uh,
this was one of those stories where you believe it,
and yet you don't wanna believe it.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
And then of course, as time went on, you kept
fearing the inevitable conclusion that you knew was coming. I
haven't the slightest idea of anything else that was happening
that day.
Speaker 20 (47:18):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
It was the usual run of things. I suppose, UH,
Africa and Europe, and maybe something at the UN. But
at this moment, I can't recall anything else but that
one story. I don't think I ever will. For that matter,
it wasn't long before the word was final, ladies and gentlemen,
the President of the United States is dead.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
John F.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Kennedy has died of the wounds received an assassination in
Dallas less than an hour ago. We repeat, it had
just been announced that President Kennedy is dead. That was
the hardest announcement I ever put on the air anytime.
(48:07):
It took a great, big, deep breath on my part
to be able to get it out. Here was this
thing which had happened. You knew it was true, and
yet there was this great reluctance to announce it as
a fact, and yet it had to be done. It
was something like fifteen or twenty minutes later before the
(48:28):
wires came through with the announcement that the president had died.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Here was another great bit of awful agony in waiting
out confirmation.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
You you were fearful.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Of being having reported the death too soon, and in
the other hand, you were hoping that maybe you had
been wrong after all, but yet knowing that you couldn't
be politics as much as anything. Were a part of
Studio nine. And they echoed again through here from San Francis.
So this goes Cow Palace, where the Republicans were nominating
(49:03):
Senator Barry Goldwater as their presidential candidate. I was there
at the convention, my fifteenth, keeping track of the tally
chairman on Belie.
Speaker 20 (49:14):
Great women, we can do this small work, Suth Carolina
care sixteen votes for Senator berg Goldwater, and up in
the air go hand.
Speaker 22 (49:28):
Fellows, pushions, packards sailing into the air, the final demonstration
on this night of nominations. As just as we had expected,
South Carolina did it and put him over.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
It's a gold Water party now.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Barry Goldwater is the Republican candidate for the presidency.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
And they're unrolling a big banner down there in one
of the delegations.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
In those gold letters, Arizona's.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Barry is America's future. Had three men to hold that one.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
The Republican could Invention of nineteen sixty four, the last
one to go through the Studio nine. As we say
goodbye to the one room that has been headquarters and
home to all CBS News correspondents, three of them tell
us what it has meant to them, John Daily, HV.
Caltonborne and Edward Armorrow.
Speaker 16 (50:18):
So I was brung up in this room, and I
really was. I learned much of my trade here. Very
often we tend to forget that the days which culminated
in December seventh in the attack on Pearl Harbor, really
were the days when we first put together what is
now the great Electronic News Fraternity, and almost overnight we
(50:40):
built a tremendous organization in one thing.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
That I sit around this table, I.
Speaker 16 (50:45):
Think of the careers that started here, men who came
out of other disciplines in the communications field. Major George
Fielding Elliott, who was our military analyst for so many years,
Elmer Davis Quincy. How that great CBS staff I got
its basic training right at this table in Studio nine.
Speaker 13 (51:04):
However, Bob, I feel that it is a great opportunity
for radio, and I'm only happy that I was one
of the minor instruments in voicing it for the American people.
Any accomplishment like that makes us feel that we have
not lived in vain.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
Very difficult to put it into words, Bob, I can
remember it in the utmost detail. I know exactly where
the leather couch was. I used to swing that microphone
around so a three quarter angle. I'm wondering about your
new quarters. I haven't seen them, but I'm wondering if
they will make it any easier to know what to
say and how to say it. I rather doubt it,
(51:48):
no matter how fancy they are.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
What do you think, I doubt it, very very much,
very much.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Now that we have come to the end of our
look backward, one point stands out. How much of the
history of three decades went through this studio. How little
of it we have been able to bring back in
this space of time, So many broadcasts, so little time
to remember them. Let us salute the words that, because
time cannot be expanded, were not spoken again on this
(52:18):
broadcast today. As the electric current dies and the microphones
grow cold, as the lights are switched off and the
sound proofing comes off the walls, as Studio nine itself
passes into the History of Our Times.
Speaker 7 (52:42):
Farewell to Studio nine with Robert Trutt. Produced for CBS
News by Al Snyder. Correspondent Steve Rowan was special reporter.
Audio engineers Mart Goldberg and Mike truskis Research by Jerry Morgan,
Executive producer Lee Hammon. This is George Bryan speaking.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
This is the CBS Radio Network.
The voices of Studio nine Edward R. Morrow on a
London rooftop during the blitz.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is London.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
I'm standing again tonight looking out over London. In the
course of the last fifteen or twenty minutes, there's been
considerable action up here.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Charles Collingwood, describing the German surrender, General.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Yodo said, in a voice that choked and almost broke
with this signature, the German people and the German armed
forces are, for better or worse, delivered into the victor's
hands in this war, which is last.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
HB.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Caltenborne, speculating about a third term for Fdr. Good evening everybody,
there has been a contest of wits between the President
of the United States and the Washington reporters. They have
sought to make him tell what he intends to do
about a third term.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
He has sought.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Eric Saverid, recalling the fall of France.
Speaker 6 (00:56):
The life just simply ran out of the city. Is
like a beautiful woman lying in a coma with a
lifeblood just draining out through every every vein every street.
I noticed one week.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Those are the voices of CBS Radio News Studio nine.
Those anothers like Elmer Davis, William L. Shier, John day
Allan Jackson, who through the dark days of Hitler's March,
through Europe and World War II, through the fifties and
now the sixties, brought the living history of the world
through Studio nine and into the living rooms of the nation.
(01:30):
Tonight they bid farewell to Studio nine.
Speaker 7 (01:50):
Farewell to Studio nine, an affectionate goodbye to the birthplace
of CBS News. Here is CBS News Correspondent Robert Trump.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I am speaking to you from Studio nine. As broadcasting
facilities go, this one is not remarkable at all. It's
just a sound proofed room, fifteen by twenty surrounded on
two sides by glass encased control rooms.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
On the third.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
It looks out into the clutter of the CBS newsroom.
It's not the handsomest radio studio, not the most modern,
not lovely at all, but for those who have worked here,
it has a charm all its own.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
We shall miss it.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
We have been moving from this headquarters of CBS News
at fifty second Street in Madison Avenue in New York
City to our new headquarters on the West side of Manhattan,
and this old Studio nine goes dead.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
The voices of those decades that.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Have gone seem to be talking again, speaking words that
once made people tremble and rejoice and laugh and cry,
sometimes speaking words that will not die. This program, an
affectionate Farewell to Studio nine, is a collection of reminiscences, recollections,
and reports by the men who built CBS news, men
(03:06):
like Edward R.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Murrow, Bob.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
One of the infuriating things I remember about Studio nine
was it occasionally we would get through to Master Control
and then they couldn't get it down to Studio nine.
And that produced some rather profane comments because we couldn't
see why we could get a good signal three five
thousand miles and then New.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
York you could get it four floors.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
I think the engineers are going to be slightly us.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Well.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
We have some recordings of some of the broadcasts, a
few of those things that you did, ed Would you
like to hear any of them? Would like to hear
the one on the rooftop, the Blitz in the Blitz.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I've never heard it, haven't you? Really?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Probably terrible?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Listen to it now. This is London.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I'm standing again tonight on a rooftop looking out over
London feeling rather large and lonesome.
Speaker 8 (03:59):
In the course of the last fifteen or twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
There's been considerable action up here, but at the moment
there's an ominous silence hanging over London, but at the
same time, a silence that is a great deal of dignity.
Just straight away in front of me, the third flight
they're working, I can see one or two bursts of
an aircraft fire far in the distance.
Speaker 8 (04:22):
Just on a roof across the way, I can see
a man standing wearing a tin hat with a pair
of powerful night glasses to his eyes, scanning the sky.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Again. Looking in the opposite of direction, there's a building
with two windows gone. Out of one window there waves
something that looks like a white bed sheet, a window curtain,
swinging free in this night breeze, and looks as though
it were being shaken by a ghost.
Speaker 8 (04:55):
There are great many ghosts.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Around these buildings in London, and some of them companies
of ghosts.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, I don't know how you feel about that. I
find it kind of hard to take.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
I'll tell you something about that Robert that was never reported.
I had to stand on a rooftop for six nights
in succession and make a record each night and submit
it to the Ministry of Information in order to persuade
the centers that I could add lib without violating security.
And I did it for six nights, and the records
were lost somewhere in the Ministry of Information, So then
I had to do it for another six nights before
they would finally give me permission after listening to the
(05:30):
second take of six to stand on a rooftop. So
I had a lot of time up there.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
You remember the studio at the BBC.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
That threat before it was referred to as having formerly
been a waitress's robing room, in fact meant that it
was spread the ladies lavatory. Yes, and all the broadcasts
from London came from the during the war.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
This is a reminiscence you'd ever care to remember, but
it's always been my story. You remember the first time
that you ever went on CBS.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
On the air.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
We'd gone to the Christmas party of the Publicity Department
and somehow it stretched on into the evening at least
for us. And I was practically a tee totally, you know,
I didn't know anything about all this alcohol, and of
course you were always very circumspect.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And as the evening war on, and I remembered I had.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
To do a five minute news broadcast supplied by the
Press Radio Bureau, you decided that I really wasn't quite
fit to do it. Do you remember that, if this
is being recorded, I don't remember any big about it.
And I sat in the studio when I was supposed
to be doing it, and you did.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
That's right, And you were going to give me the cut,
You were going to give me the watch at the end,
and you gave it to me a minute early, and
we left forty five seconds of dead air at the end.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I don't remember that at all.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
You were the director of Talked and we're supposed to
be in there at all.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
That's right. I think that was your first broadcast CBS.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
And one thing that's almost hard to believe now as
we think about it, in those early is we didn't
have any press associations because the Associated Press, the United Press,
and the International News Service as they were then, refused
to sell their services to broadcasters.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Remember, ah, yes, and I can remember you night after
night ending a five minute news broadcast by saying for
further details, read your daily newspaper. That's why I can
remember when I first went to Europe in nineteen thirty seven,
I was not permitted to be a member of the
American Correspondence Association in London and Paris because I was
involved in that ridiculous thing called Radio.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
All I remember was that shortly after I got to London,
you were the president of it.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Well, that was in the build up for D Day. Yeah,
it just happened to be my turn.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
No, but I hadn't remembered that you had a hard
time getting in Well. Of course, during the war you
made a number of bombing flights over the enemy territory
over Germany, broadcasting as you went, astonishing broadcasts. I know
that the management of CBS was kind of unhappy that
you insisted on going on the things and tried to
(08:01):
dissuade Jill, and you wouldn't be dissuaded. We have the
result of at least one of those air raids.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Would you like to hear that one? Oh? Yes.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
I began to see what was happening to Berlin. The
small incenderies were going down like a fistful of white
rice thrown on a piece of black velvet. The cookies,
the four thousand pound high explosives were bursting below like
great sunflowers gone mad. And then as we started down again,
still held in the light, I remembered.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
That the dog still had one of.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Those cookies and a whole basket of incenderies in his belly,
and the light still held.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
It, and I was very frightened.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
I looked down and.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
The white fires had turned red. They were beginning to
merge and spread, just like the butter does on a
hot plate. The bound doors were open, and then there
was a general, confident upward thrust under my feet, and
Bob said, cookie gone. Few seconds later the incendiaries went, and.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
D Dog seemed lighter and easier to hand them.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
I began to breathe, and to reflect again that all
men would be brave if only they could leave their
stomach at home.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
When there was a tremendous warmth, an.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Unintelligible shout from the tail gunner, and D Dog shivered
and lost altitude. I looked to the port side, and
there was a lancaster.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
That seemed close enough to touch. He whipped straight under us,
missed us.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
By twenty five fifty feet. No one knew how much
Berlin was a kind of orchestrated hell, a terrible symphony
of light and flame.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
There were four reporters on this operation.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Two of them didn't.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Come back, two friends of mine, Norman Stockton of Australian
Associated Newspapers and Lowell Bennett, an American representing International News Service.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
There is something of a tradition amongst reporters that.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
Those who were prevented by circumstances from filing.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Their stories will be covered by their colleagues.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
This has been my effort to do so. I have
no doubt that Bennetton stuck them would have given you
a better report of last night's activities.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
That was the broadcast that became known as orchestrated Hell.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
I'm sure you do one thing that I imagine the public
thinking back, listening a bit, perhaps listening to us talk,
would find amazing. Could hardly believe it is that all
during the war. Of course, we didn't use recordings. It
was all live.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
We were permitted to use them shortly before D Day
and we used them from then onward. For example, broadcast
at George Hickstead from the ship during the D Day
landings that was done on tape.
Speaker 9 (10:48):
Yes, well, then we go again, another planet.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Come over.
Speaker 10 (10:59):
Aside.
Speaker 8 (11:02):
Looks like we're going to have a night to night.
Speaker 10 (11:09):
Something burning is falling down through the sky.
Speaker 8 (11:14):
That's certainly down.
Speaker 11 (11:16):
Maybe I cat plan.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Here we go, they got one, they got one? Be
one right here? Did we have?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
The next record that we have here to listen to
is the one when you got to the concentration camp
and saw what had happened in Buchenwald.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Let's listen to it.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
When I entered, men crowded around tried to lift me
to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them
could not get out of bed. As I walked down
to the end of the barracks, there was applause from
the men too weak to get out. It sounded like
the hand clapping of babies. As we walked out into
the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others they must
(12:09):
have been over sixty, were crawling towards the latrine. I
saw it, but will not describe it. In another part
of the camp, they showed me the children, hundreds of them,
some were only six. One rolled up his sleeve showed
me his number. It was tattooed on his arm. D.
(12:30):
Six thousand and thirty.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
It was. The others showed me their numbers.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
They will carry them till they die. The children clung
to my hands and stared. We crossed to the courtyard.
Men kept coming up to speak to me, in to
touch me. Professors from Poland, doctor from Vienna, men from
all Europe, men from the countries that made America. We
proceeded to the small courtyard. There were two rows of
bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white.
(12:58):
Some of the bodies were terribly bruised, though there seemed
to be little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot
to the head, but they bled but little. It appeared
that most of the men and boys had died of starvation.
They had not been executed, but the manner of death
seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Bougenvalud. God alone
(13:21):
knows how many men and boys have died there during
the last twelve years. As I left that camp, a
Frenchman who used to work for Havas in Paris, came
up to me and said, you will write something about this, perhaps,
And he added, to write about this, you must have
been here at least two years, and after that you
don't want to write any more. I pray you to
(13:45):
believe what I have said about Bugenvalud. I have reported
what I saw and heard, but only part of it.
If I have offended you by this rather mild account
of Buguenvald, I am not in the least sorry.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Listening to that ed makes me realize again how radio
came to be the magnificent medium that it is, and
how much you did to make it that kind of medium.
And also because I can't help thinking how much of
those broadcasts, how many of them came through the studio nine.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
What does it mean to you? I keep thinking of
the people I remember.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Elmer Davis was one of the most sensitive men I
have ever met, although most people didn't realize it.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
I wish you could be here with us today.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Let's listen to one of his broadcasts, Elmer Davis.
Speaker 12 (14:40):
Whatever the terms imposed on France may be, it can
pretty safely be assumed that they will be such as
to make it impossible for France ever to become dangerous
to Germany again, unless of course, it first should be overthrown.
How much farther they may go in the direction of
attempting to make France over on the Nazi model remains
to be seen. At least some of the Nazi theorists
(15:01):
seem to have extensive hopes. One of the chief of
these philosophers of Nazism, man who has worked out its
doctrines very thoroughly, has offered Rosenberg. He is a less
prominent figure than he used to be, but he still
writes a good deal in the felksh Er Beilbachster, the
principal Nazi paper, and some remarks of his quoted in
The New York Times last Sunday, are a suggestion of
(15:22):
the sort of world that the more philosophical Nazis will
create if they can. Mister Rosenberg writes about Paris the
Fall of Paris. He says, I quote, the fall of
Paris is the beginning of the end of the spiritual and.
Speaker 7 (15:35):
Racial turpitude of Europe.
Speaker 12 (15:37):
For Paris was the center of the mental confusion that
pervaded Europe end quote. What Rosenberg and the other Nazis
call mental confusion, and they mean this quite sincerely. It's
part of a well thought out philosophy. What they call
mental confusion is what the rest of us call freedom
of thought, the liberty of the mind to work over
everything and come to its own conclusions.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
This man had an ability to compress and condense without
distorting that I've never heard by anyone in radio anywhere.
He had always the essence of the news, great brevity
and great clarity.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
His was a genius. I agree.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
It's still the best instrument through which to convey the news,
this old fashioned radio.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
That's what I wanted. If you were going to say
that's true, let me just say to you then goodbye
and good luck.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Another voice that was already famous in the early days
of the war belonged to HV. Caltonborne, who, even then,
as a young fellow just entering his sixties, was known
to the nation as the Dean of radio news analysts. Now,
having just celebrated his eighty sixth birthday, HB. Caltonborn looks
back to the Suditan crisis of thirty eight and how
(16:48):
it affected the lives of Americans who were keeping track
of it.
Speaker 13 (16:51):
They'd never used departible radios before, and they came in
during that crisis. People carried radios all over with them.
Wherever you went, you saw people carrying radios because they
were listening to the crisis and didn't want to lose
a minute of it.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yes, there was biggest suitcases in those days.
Speaker 13 (17:09):
Yes they were pretty big, but they carried them and
got a lot out of them.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Because do you think that that crisis really is the
first thing, the turning point, that made this country more
aware of the outside world and the whole world Christ, I.
Speaker 13 (17:24):
Think that's probably its significance that for the first time,
the entire country was aware of the fact that the
actions of one of these dictators operating over there in
Europe could plunge this country into a world war, And
that was its significance.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
How many days and nights you suppose, I guess neither
one of us could possibly remember how many days and
nights it lasted. But you used to sleep on the
sofa and missus Calvin Bourne would bring in the soup
for you.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Do you recall That's right? I recall that very well.
Speaker 13 (17:58):
And it was essential that I'd be there because things
were coming up every minute. There was no time, day
or night when we couldn't be called upon to analyze
a major crisis, and so I did sleep in the studio.
That was the only way we could handle it, and
we certainly did our job. That is, of course we
(18:23):
never had the commendations that came to us after that crisis. Gosh,
that was something that overwhelmed me.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And I got.
Speaker 13 (18:32):
Petitions and tributes and cups, and lord knows.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
What all you could have gone to the Senate.
Speaker 13 (18:41):
I could have done something on the strength of the
reputation that I gathered there.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yes, But then when the war did come in nineteen
thirty nine and we were again in Studio nine, the
country still was pretty solidly isolationist. I don't suppose the
United States ever would have entered the war voluntarily.
Speaker 13 (18:58):
For the best proof that it was isolationist was the
fact that we had a hard time getting on a
prayer by the Archbishop of Canterbury for peace as against
the Kentucky Derby. And so we set it for the
for the prayer and by Jinx if the two didn't
(19:21):
come in exactly the same time. And I'll never forget
the feeling in the words of the announcer of the
Kentucky Derby but in Louisville, as he said, Gee, we've
just had the greatest letdown of our lives because you
took the time that we had taken for the Kentucky
(19:44):
Derby and the audience didn't get any of it. Well,
those were the things that happened in those days of
the old studio.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
After the war in Europe was what one year old.
In nineteen forty we had a presidential election in this country.
And that brings me to another record that we have
from those days.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Let's listen to this one.
Speaker 14 (20:05):
Carltonbourne edits the news good evening everybody. For months past
there has been a contest of wits between the President
of the United States and the Washington reporters. They have
sought to make him tell what he intends to do
about a third term. He has sought, by banter, perciflage,
(20:26):
clever answer, smiles, and occasional silence not to tell him.
How long can that battle of wits go on without
somebody losing his temper?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
However, Franklin D. Roosevelt is clever.
Speaker 14 (20:41):
Enough with rapertee and easy enough in almost any situation
in relation to reporters to be able to continue to
handle it.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
That's another one. We know.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
The end of nowedge fitted me. But did you think
at that time that that mister Roosevelt would run again?
Speaker 13 (20:59):
Yes, I felt that he would run again. I'm sure
that he believed that he could handle this difficult peace
or war situation better than anyone else, and there was
nothing against a third term.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
The dean of American news broadcasters HV. Caltonborn. A voice
that today regularly commands the nation's attention is that of
Eric Severide, one of broadcasting's most celebrated news analysts. When
the war began, Eric Severide was a newspaper man in France,
and he joined the growing CBS news staff as the
(21:35):
Germans drove nearer to Paris. Now it is June ninth,
nineteen forty.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
This is Paris at midnight. It's been a great day
for the moving and packing industry in Paris. At the
time of the Battle of La marn in nineteen fourteen,
the Germans were equally close to the city. I don't
know how many of the radio broadcasts and the MAC
in the Paris studio. If there is an interruption, we
(22:01):
will try to continue with facilities installed in other towns
for their south. I do not think there is any
deliberate attempts to hide the real state of affairs and
the people of parents. They are promised to be affected.
They are fay holistic people. It is this quality which
makes Frenchmen stand half naked in this wilting heat, feeding
(22:24):
their red hot guns until literally crushed out by German tanks.
Perhaps this suit for slics young french Men.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
And girls, as I.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Saw them today, to float on their backs in the water,
blow swimming pools and idly watched the flowering bursts of
anti aircraft sails in the sky.
Speaker 6 (22:41):
Robert, that's the first time I've heard any of those
broadcasts from that period so long ago, when Paris is
about to fall. I wouldn't recognize my own voice. That
broadcast must have been one of the first half dozen
or so than I ever did, and you can and
I must say, it frightened me to death. I didn't
know how to speak, and the microphone scared me, and I.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Never quite got over it.
Speaker 6 (23:06):
I really made the last broadcast to the States from Paris.
In fact, they packed up that radio station as soon
as I finished that night. It was very bad and
in the city when the Germans were coming in. It
must have been very shortly after that broadcast that the
government pulled out, and they didn't tell the people what
to do or where to go, whether to stay or
(23:28):
to go, so they crowded around the railroad stations and
the southern part of Paris, Gamo parnass for example. By
the thousands. I was lucky. I had a car, and
I had all the francs that CBS had in a
bank stuffed in my pocket, and I even had a
bicycle on top of that car an extra can of gasoline,
(23:48):
so I was able to make my way south with
the government.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
But it was perfectly terrible. But the roads were clogged,
weren't they. It was awful.
Speaker 6 (23:56):
We drove all night and all day, just barely creeping
the It must have taken this, oh, many many many
hours geting on a tour where the government was. But
that last day I was in Paris, there was a
crowd cloud of black smoke the north. Uh way to
the north, the creeping toward Paris. I think some oil
dumps or something been set on fire. And uh, this
(24:18):
was very symbolic. The whole horizon began to dock and
and close toward the city. And looking up uh the
Chans of Lysias Great Boulevard, there was hardly a car left.
I noticed a one waiter out putting the chairs from
a cafe back inside. No one sitting there. The life
just simply ran out of the city. It was like
(24:41):
a beautiful woman lying in a coma, you know, with
a life blood just draining out from every every vane,
every street. But we had quite a round of luck.
We had this uh break about. Uh. I'd send a
cable it's out of a cold thing in advance to
New York that h if I ware heard them such
and such a phrase that met a German breakthrough, or
(25:03):
a French breakthrough, or something of this sort. And coming
down from Cambra and that long night ride in the
refugee train, we could see the gun flashes off the northeast,
and then we would hear the sound of the guns.
And in our group was an American who had been
in off in World War One, and he took out
his stopwatch and he timed the period you see between
(25:27):
the flashes and the sound, and then he figured out
how far it was, and we measured this on a map.
It was perfectly clear from this little exercise that the
Germans had broken through.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yes.
Speaker 6 (25:40):
And so I got to Paris and I finally remembered,
after maybe in some hours of having forgotten that cable
that I had in such a cable in Ork sent
this code phrase to Paul White and New York, and
then he finally remembered he had such a cable in
his desk and do it out. And I think Elmer
Davis broadcast they had what they believed to be reputable
(26:02):
report that the Germans had broken through the main French defenses.
At least that's what I was told later when I
got to New York.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And I remember in New York the big front page
headlines on the newspapers more than once with a story
of yours that had come from us through the CBS. Yes,
especially just as Palace was falling. You didn't go to
the South at all, to the Bishi government.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
You will know.
Speaker 6 (26:25):
I left Bordeaux then when Petan took over and they surrendered,
And in fact I was on the ship coming out
of the mouth of the river, our sister ship I
was bombed and sunk.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I heard on the ship.
Speaker 6 (26:38):
Radio Bill Shire broadcasting from Compien the formal surrender to Hitler.
This was an extraordinary sensation, I must say.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
CBS News correspondent Eric Severad, We'll listened to William L.
Sharer at Compiene describing the French surrender and talk to
him about that day in just a moment.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
Farewell to Studio nine will continue after a ten second
pause for station identification. This is the CBS Radio Network.
CBS News continues with farewell to Studio nine.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Here again is Robert Trump.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
As CBS News moves into its new headquarters and Studio
nine shuts down, the voices that broadcast living history form
a permanent record of our time. One of those who broadcast,
William L. Sharer, a newspaperman in Berlin, was hired by
European news director Ed Murrow to help fill the growing
call for more broadcasts from Europe as the lights again
(27:47):
began going.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Out one by one.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Soon with the Second Global War a reality, the voice
of Sharer, speaking almost nightly from Berlin, was what we
came to feel was the principal thread of sanity that
still kept us linked in a way with the capital
of the country that was, although then undeclared the enemy.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
William L.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Sharer was in the forest at Compienne in France, June
twenty second, nineteen forty, looking through a window of a
train car where inside Hitler was accepting the French surrender.
The same train car in which twenty two years earlier,
the French accepted the German surrender. William L. Sharer on
that June day in nineteen forty described the scene.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Hitler stepped up into the car, followed by Gerring and
the others. We watched them entering the growing room in
Marshall Coach's car with can eemas now through the car windows.
Hitler enters France and take the place occupied by Marchall Coach.
The morning the French arms of the fan, the German court,
(28:53):
the hitnispairs what Europeans call correct. But you will get
the picture when I say that we've seen no handshakes
nuts on occasions like this. Hitler and the other German
leaders rise from their feet as the French at of
the drawing room. Hitler we see, gives the nati the
arm rays. The German officers, given no time salute. The
(29:17):
French do the same. Hit Less, the doll as we
can see through the windows just in front of his hair,
does not say anything. He nods to a general title
at his side. We can see general Title adjusting his papers,
and then he starts to leave. He is leading the
preamble of the Giant handed the ten the French sit
(29:39):
there with marble like faces and listen intently Hitler and
Going grants. At the green tabletop. We see Hitler's stand
up salutes stiffly with hand up rays any side down
the Going room, followed by Goring, General Daukits Grand Admiral
raiders their hair heat and at the end here for Revendt.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
That was the UH, the first of the two days sessions.
Speaker 15 (30:06):
When Hitler arrived at the little clearing in the forest
near Compierre and uh laid down the conditions, we were
the only people, for embarrassingly long hours that had a
report that the French should signed the armistice. And that
was due to as are so many scoops in journalism,
(30:27):
to UH, a.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Piece or two of very good luck.
Speaker 15 (30:30):
All the other UH foreign correspondents, including the Americans, the
newspaper people had UH flown back to Berlin that day. UH,
because Hitler had said that the armistice news would come
from him. I took a chance and stayed at Compien.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
UH.
Speaker 15 (30:48):
The armistice was signed at six fifty pm, and I
think I went on the air at seven, and I
assumed that was being recorded in Berlin. But what happened
somebody in Berlin forgot to pull the switch, and I
went straight out from Brilliant on the Jeremy Shortway Center
to New York. I was told later that even people
(31:08):
like Churchill in London first got the news because Hillary
did not release seek news of the armistice for six hours.
And I remember, I think later on I had a
feedback with New York and I heard Elmer Davis, who
was in doing the thing that afternoon, saying, well, it's
a exciting news, but there's no confirmation any place.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
The voice of William L.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Shier John Daly, whom we then called John Charles daily
broadcast for CBS in the thirties from Washington. Then, with
the creation of that great dividing line of our times,
the start of hostilities, he made his permanent home here
in New York in this Studio nine. It was here
that he made his now famous broadcast on December seventh,
(31:56):
nineteen forty one.
Speaker 16 (31:59):
I was staying get out there in the newsroom, looking
over the machines, waiting for any last minute things that
came in, and uh, this uh Pearl Harbor announcement hit,
and I came in and broke into the Philharmonic Concert
to announce that that UH Pearl Harbor had been attacked.
Speaker 17 (32:25):
We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin.
The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air. President
Roosevelt has just announced the attack also was made on
all naval and military activities on the principal island of Ohawe.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
UH.
Speaker 16 (32:39):
The staff was sitting around this this table, and they
just we took turns going out and picking up every
little bit of information we could about UH, the relationships
with the Japanese. The principles involved the character and nature
of Pearl Harbor, getting little shreds of information and telephone
calls to our station affiliates and in the area, and
(32:59):
we just kept the air and kept on reporting everything
that came through it. It doesn't in the context of
all that's done these days, perhaps sound very revolutionary, but
for that time, it was the concept that you would
just take over a whole network's operation and give the
broadest and widest coverage of the story that you were
(33:20):
on in those days was a revolutionary concept.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
John Daly also broadcast the news on that April day.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
In nineteen forty.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Five, Wilderness road adventure on the American frontier with the
Western Family and Danil Boom in the exciting days following
the American Revolution.
Speaker 17 (33:37):
We interrupt this program to bring you a special news
bulletin from CBS World News. A press association has just
announced that President Roosevelt is dead. The President died of
a cerebral hemorrhage. All we know so far is that
the President died at Warm Springs in Georgia.
Speaker 16 (33:54):
I think its impact on me probably was greater than
it would be on most cause I had been White
House correspondent for three or four years in that wonderfully
informal atmosphere that existed in those days, and in that assignment,
which doesn't unhappily exist anymore so because it's grown so.
But wherever Franklin Roosevelt went as president, that hardcore of
(34:16):
permanent correspondents assigned to cover the White House went with him,
and we all were fond of him. The whole country was,
I think, just brought up short when it did happen.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
John Day recalling the day that was so hard to believe.
Charles Collingwood joined CBS News in London not long after
the war began. He broadcast his way through the blitz
on London, then the beginning of the march back to
the continent of Europe, the invasion of North Africa, American
troops going into the western end of the Mediterranean south shore,
as General Montgomery's British army chased the Germans from the
(34:49):
eastern end, and when the Allies sailed from England for
the coast of France, Charles Collingwood was there all the
way through Paris to the surrender of the Third Reich.
Charles is again in per tr Us now as chief
European correspondent for CBS News, and we talked to him
about those days.
Speaker 18 (35:06):
The entry into Paris was one of the most moving
things that I have ever experienced. The sense of liberation,
the great welcome for General Degoul, who exercised magic power
over the French crowds, just as he does today, and
their gratitude and the depth and the fervency of the
(35:28):
welcome for the American troops was fantastic. And I spoke
a little bit of French and I did, I guess,
talk to them while the mic was open, and of
course they responded with all of the fervor that was
in their souls.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Then, yeah, so what I keep hearing you say just
the introduction when you was you knew you'd say, my friends,
I can still hear you saying that, a loud voice
addressing in the multitude. They might have run you for something,
you might have been elected to the deputies.
Speaker 18 (35:56):
Well, in those days it was easier for an American.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
To get elect could do anything that it would be these.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Well, then you went through the war, a lot more
of the war, and then came the big German surrender,
and we have a tape recording that we've dug up
from the files or.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Shall I say the archives.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
That sounds a little bit more imposing of you at
the surrender of Germany.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Would I'd like to hear that? Fine?
Speaker 4 (36:20):
General Yodel, chief of Staff of the German Army, signed
the last document. He sat there very straight, with his
head bent over the papers, and when he had signed
the last one, he put the cap back on the
pin and looked up at.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
The men sitting across the plane wooden table.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
Opposite him sat General Beadle Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff.
As he looked to his right, General Yodel could see
a big, powerful man in the uniform of a Russian general.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Sitting next to General Smith.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
He was General Susse Laparoff, the Russian delegate. Over his
shoulder peered the extraordinary head of another Russian. The head
was bared as a gord with fierce, unwavering eyes, whose
light and sinister gaze did not for an instant leave
the drawn face.
Speaker 11 (37:03):
Of General Yodel.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Yodel did not meet his eyes for long. Then General
Yodel looked again at General Smith. I would like to
say something, he said. Smith nodded. Yodel rose stiffly to
his feet. Here, General, he said, in a voice that
choked and almost broke. With this signature, the German people
and the German armed.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Forces are, for better or worse, delivered.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Into the victor's hands in this hour. I can only
express the hope that the victor will treat them with generosity.
Then General Yodel sat down quickly. No one else said anything.
The Germans looked around as they're wondering what to do next,
and at another nod from General Smith.
Speaker 11 (37:46):
They got up.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
General Yodel, his aid, and Admiral Freiberg, who commands the
German navy, with Yodin in the lead, they walked quickly
out of the room.
Speaker 18 (37:56):
That sounded pretty good.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
You took the words out of my voz, Charles. It
sounded very good, indeed very good. As I sit here
listening then we're playing the record here in New York,
you're listening across the ocean. A question keeps going through
my mind to which there isn't any answer. I wonder
if younger people listening to these records, you know, and
knowing what they are, that their history not written in
(38:19):
a book, but as it was being lived. I wonder
if they get an emotion as I do. Or I
wonder if they would just consider it a kind of curiosity.
You know, you look in the book and you see
someone wearing a strange costume and a picture, or you
read about a king dying or something like that, and
it's a curious thing to me. It's they're very alive,
very much alive. Well, they're very.
Speaker 18 (38:38):
Alive to me. I suppose young people. After all, you
would be quite mature now and not even have been
born when these things happen. It must seem like ancient history.
But to me it makes it very much alive. How
things have changed since the war. There we have Great
(39:00):
Franco German reconciliation, the friendship between Germany and the United States.
Speaker 19 (39:06):
The scars of war in Germany.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Are nearly all healed now. Yes, And of course it
could have been different. That's the thing, really, isn't it.
Speaker 18 (39:13):
I don't know. I think there's something about fate. I
really somehow believe that people who are motivated by what
an old fashioned terms we'd call wickedness. And I think
if there was a wicked man somehow inevitably make the
miscalculations that bring about their downfall. And at the same time,
(39:34):
those people who are motivated by by all the things
that we believe in generally somehow tend to make the
right decisions.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Charles, That's not only a highly comforting thought, I think
it's an idealistic note on which we could end our
transatlantic conversation today.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Goodbye, but pleasure to talk to you again. Bye.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
After a couple of years in England before the d
Day Lands, I found myself back in New York, here
in Studio nine again, as the war followed its tortured
path to victory. When the Germans collapsed, the center of
our world broadcasting was here. Many experts said it would
take years to conquer the Japanese. But three months after
the day of victory in Europe, Japan was falling. I
(40:20):
moved out of Studio nine, just outside the door where
the news machines are the teletypes and a direct telephone
from the White House hung on the wall there to
be able to broadcast the great news a few seconds
faster than if I had remained inside the studio. I
sat in a chair in the news room for four
days and nights waiting, and then the word came.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Seven p m.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Eastern Wartime, Bob Trout reporting, the Japanese have accepted our
terms fully. That's the word we've just received from the
White House in Washington. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the
end of the Second World War.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
The United Nations on land.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
On the sea, in the air, until the four corners
of the Earth are united and are victorious. The great
rift between the communist world roughly of the East, and
the civilization of what we call the Western world was
to mark the years after the war. The postwar East
West conflict grew worse, and at its height, the Soviet
(41:18):
Union blockaded Berlin. The Allied reply, successfully carried out, was
of course, the airlift, but in another part of the world.
After the airlift saved Berlin, the Communists attacked in open
warfare in Asia, the North Koreans crossing the border into
South Korea, supplied by the Soviet Union and later reinforced
by the Communist Chinese. Robert Pierpoint was in Korea for
(41:41):
CBS News the date June one, nineteen fifty one, the
place of Foxhole during a battle.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
We have just hit the dirt.
Speaker 7 (41:58):
In whether this tape is still going.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
But I'm off alow right now.
Speaker 5 (42:04):
Who was that that came over?
Speaker 20 (42:06):
That was artillery?
Speaker 10 (42:08):
I wanted to raise that thing.
Speaker 5 (42:11):
Now.
Speaker 10 (42:11):
It's just one o'clock straight up and down on the
morning of the eighteenth, and we're still out here on
the hill with Flash company and Captain Sutton looking down
at Chinese throats as he tried to advance up the valley.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Here.
Speaker 13 (42:27):
Whoop.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
That was a big one.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
The weapon that changed the world and gave our age
its nuclear name. The atomic bomb was first publicly displayed
for newsman in April nineteen fifty two. Dallas Townsend was
at Yucca Flats in Nevada.
Speaker 21 (42:46):
Five two one zero.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
That's it.
Speaker 9 (42:53):
You could feel the flash you could feel the heat.
We're waiting three seconds. We can see the clouds going
up in the air.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Two thousand three.
Speaker 9 (43:02):
We're taking our goggles off. There's the cloud, the enormous
the enormous cloud already going high in the air, the
great glowing mass. Now the cloud is beginning to expand,
a sort of cataractive white foam, white cloud is pouring
(43:26):
over the top of it.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Wow, that was the shockwave.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
The space age arrived with the Soviet launching of the
first split nick that caught the United States by surprise,
even into the era of manned flight. The Soviet Union
at first had the field or the sky to itself.
Then on May fifth, nineteen sixty one, the first American
to enter outer space, Alan Shephard, went up from Cape Canaveral.
(43:55):
The broadcast went through this studio nine, and I was
in Florida at the scene.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Three two one zero cognition.
Speaker 19 (44:07):
You don't hear the sound yet, but we see the
flame very slowly, majestically, the red stone rises into the sky.
It's man invisible inside the capsule, and a flame clearly
seems like a beaming light, like a searchlight focused down
at the Earth. Again as that thin, slim pencil goes slowly,
slowly cut into the clear sky. And now the sound
(44:29):
goes louder and louder and swallows everything. Many times from
this Studio nine we called in the eternal city Rome,
often to hear a timely and timeless event, like the
announcement that the Roman Catholic Church had a new pope.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Here is Winston Burdett reporting.
Speaker 21 (44:56):
On your up the scars your mind a bird, Popham.
Speaker 11 (45:05):
We have Aprilovanni Beniza Caol Hockey, the sixty five year
old Archbishop of the land, and he has taken the
name of Pope the Sick.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
There have been all night broadcasts and all day broadcasts
in and through this Studio nine invasions, coronations, elections, and
the collapse of empires. Events like the drive across France
reported by Bill Downs and Larry Lesser, the founding of
the United Nations reported by Ned Kalmer, the rise of
(45:44):
post war Germany reported by Richard C. Hoteleett, the sinking
of the Andrea Doria reported by Douglas Edwards. And then
there came the day of the broadcast that at first
no one could quite believe. No one wanted to believe.
The day of November the twenty second, nineteen sixty three,
Alan Jackson was on the air.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
We interrupt this program for a CBS Radio net alert bulletin.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
President Kennedy and Governor John Connolly of Texas were both
hit by a would be assassin's bullets as they toured
down down Dallas in an open automobile a short while ago.
That is the latest word that had just come in
from Dallas on United Press International. The Associated Press, and
its first report says that President Kennedy was shot just
as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Missus Kennedy, who was
(46:34):
riding with him, jumped up and grabbed mister Kennedy and cried,
oh no. As I listened to that tape just now,
I recall that the first dawning of the disaster that
had happened came to me intuitively, perhaps when I read
a the quote of Missus Kennedy when she said, oh no.
(46:57):
Somehow this just struck me very deeply at the time. Uh,
this was one of those stories where you believe it,
and yet you don't wanna believe it.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
And then of course, as time went on, you kept
fearing the inevitable conclusion that you knew was coming. I
haven't the slightest idea of anything else that was happening
that day.
Speaker 20 (47:18):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
It was the usual run of things. I suppose, UH,
Africa and Europe, and maybe something at the UN. But
at this moment, I can't recall anything else but that
one story. I don't think I ever will. For that matter,
it wasn't long before the word was final, ladies and gentlemen,
the President of the United States is dead.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
John F.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Kennedy has died of the wounds received an assassination in
Dallas less than an hour ago. We repeat, it had
just been announced that President Kennedy is dead. That was
the hardest announcement I ever put on the air anytime.
(48:07):
It took a great, big, deep breath on my part
to be able to get it out. Here was this
thing which had happened. You knew it was true, and
yet there was this great reluctance to announce it as
a fact, and yet it had to be done. It
was something like fifteen or twenty minutes later before the
(48:28):
wires came through with the announcement that the president had died.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Here was another great bit of awful agony in waiting
out confirmation.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
You you were fearful.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Of being having reported the death too soon, and in
the other hand, you were hoping that maybe you had
been wrong after all, but yet knowing that you couldn't
be politics as much as anything. Were a part of
Studio nine. And they echoed again through here from San Francis.
So this goes Cow Palace, where the Republicans were nominating
(49:03):
Senator Barry Goldwater as their presidential candidate. I was there
at the convention, my fifteenth, keeping track of the tally
chairman on Belie.
Speaker 20 (49:14):
Great women, we can do this small work, Suth Carolina
care sixteen votes for Senator berg Goldwater, and up in
the air go hand.
Speaker 22 (49:28):
Fellows, pushions, packards sailing into the air, the final demonstration
on this night of nominations. As just as we had expected,
South Carolina did it and put him over.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
It's a gold Water party now.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Barry Goldwater is the Republican candidate for the presidency.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
And they're unrolling a big banner down there in one
of the delegations.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
In those gold letters, Arizona's.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Barry is America's future. Had three men to hold that one.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
The Republican could Invention of nineteen sixty four, the last
one to go through the Studio nine. As we say
goodbye to the one room that has been headquarters and
home to all CBS News correspondents, three of them tell
us what it has meant to them, John Daily, HV.
Caltonborne and Edward Armorrow.
Speaker 16 (50:18):
So I was brung up in this room, and I
really was. I learned much of my trade here. Very
often we tend to forget that the days which culminated
in December seventh in the attack on Pearl Harbor, really
were the days when we first put together what is
now the great Electronic News Fraternity, and almost overnight we
(50:40):
built a tremendous organization in one thing.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
That I sit around this table, I.
Speaker 16 (50:45):
Think of the careers that started here, men who came
out of other disciplines in the communications field. Major George
Fielding Elliott, who was our military analyst for so many years,
Elmer Davis Quincy. How that great CBS staff I got
its basic training right at this table in Studio nine.
Speaker 13 (51:04):
However, Bob, I feel that it is a great opportunity
for radio, and I'm only happy that I was one
of the minor instruments in voicing it for the American people.
Any accomplishment like that makes us feel that we have
not lived in vain.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
Very difficult to put it into words, Bob, I can
remember it in the utmost detail. I know exactly where
the leather couch was. I used to swing that microphone
around so a three quarter angle. I'm wondering about your
new quarters. I haven't seen them, but I'm wondering if
they will make it any easier to know what to
say and how to say it. I rather doubt it,
(51:48):
no matter how fancy they are.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
What do you think, I doubt it, very very much,
very much.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
Now that we have come to the end of our
look backward, one point stands out. How much of the
history of three decades went through this studio. How little
of it we have been able to bring back in
this space of time, So many broadcasts, so little time
to remember them. Let us salute the words that, because
time cannot be expanded, were not spoken again on this
(52:18):
broadcast today. As the electric current dies and the microphones
grow cold, as the lights are switched off and the
sound proofing comes off the walls, as Studio nine itself
passes into the History of Our Times.
Speaker 7 (52:42):
Farewell to Studio nine with Robert Trutt. Produced for CBS
News by Al Snyder. Correspondent Steve Rowan was special reporter.
Audio engineers Mart Goldberg and Mike truskis Research by Jerry Morgan,
Executive producer Lee Hammon. This is George Bryan speaking.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
This is the CBS Radio Network.
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