The Actor in Television

During television’s toddler years of the 1930s-1940s before Murrow and his legendary team shook the world, news production was often put under actors and personalities in handbooks of the day rather than standing on its own right.

From a 1940s production textbook, some suggestions that were given to television news commentators, err, actors of the day from the chapter titled “The Actor in Television.”

News broadcasters are prone to be the most flagrant violators of the rule of naturalness. Concerned solely with the importance of the copy before them, they run on, head down, for the assigned fifteen minutes, with scarcely a glance at the audience. If the television set owners are to expect nothing more than this bird’s-eye view of the news analyst’s bald spot, it would be far better to use radio. Even in the limited field of acting available to the commentator, the newsman can do much to benefit his presentation. First of all, whenever possible he should forget the script before him. If the subject matter is such as to require exact delivery, he should school himself to read ahead so as to be able to deliver his lines more or less directly to the camera. If he is permitted to “ad lib,” all the better, for then he becomes more like a visitor in the home and less like a town crier. Let him be natural smile, even stop to run his fingers through his hair, or light a cigarette. Let him feel, and make the audience feel, that he is conversing with each one individually, not reading the evening paper while he makes his scheduled visit.

In an attempt to relieve the monotony of telecasting individuals, WBKB (now WBBM-TV), in Chicago, has experimented somewhat successfully with the use of more than one commentator and has thus developed a conversational setup with an interesting background. Cubberly and Campbell, for instance, have adopted a typical newsroom locale and normally play their bit in shirt sleeves, to the accompaniment of typewriters and telephones.

This double feature allows one actor to consider his lines as well as the picture. While his colleague is talking, there is an opportunity for him to develop well-thought-out questions and answers to sustain the interest of the audience.

Ann Hunter, another extremely popular commentator of the Chicago air, prefers to play her bit solo, and does it so successfully that she bids fair to rank high in the lists of popular newspeople in the postwar period. Ann Hunter uses the direct “ad lib” technique, and by talking directly to the lens she becomes not only an interesting commentator but a particularly charming and acceptable picture as well.

A glimpse of changes to come

During the 1930s, the engineering wizards of the radio networks were experimenting with a new invention, one that would give radio a pair of eyes – television. In television’s toddler years leading up to the end of World War II, television was a just a novelty and the news was delivered via newspapers, radio and the newsreels.

In the post-war boom of the 1950s, Murrow and his legendary colleagues started to lay the groundwork of modern broadcast journalism and along with it, started an exodus of the newsreel photographers and soundmen to live life behind the lens of this new medium. The nascent news operations wanted the best news shooters in the business to go alongside the finest commentators radio had to offer, and turned to poaching the newsreel photographers. Less than twenty years later the newsreels would roll for the last time in the theaters.

Coolidge and the Press

President Calvin Coolidge and newsreel photographers. Coolidge was well loved by the press for being as pliable as putty in their hands, and was always willing to stand for a gag shot dressed as anything from a cowboy (photo above) to a fisherman to a boy scout.

“News is Public Domain”

“News is public domain. A news outfit in quest of a news beat might steal a story from under the opposition’s nose, but they won’t buy it!” – Norman Alley

On September 22, 1927, heavyweight boxer Gene Tunney was scheduled to defend his title against William Dempsey at Chicago’s Soldiers Field. In a foreshadowing of things to come in modern sports, the exclusive rights to photograph the fight was sold to a private interest by the name of Harry Voiler.

This restriction did not sit well with the newsreel crews in Hearst’s Chicago office, who decided come hell or high water, they were going to photograph this fight in the name that “news is public domain.” And they were going to try every trick they knew of to get those shots.

The first scheme they hatched up was to make photographers Allyn Alexander and Hiram Lutz disappear from the face of the earth. Soldiers Field is/was flanked by two huge colonnades overlooking the field, and Alexander and Lutz was to stake out a position on top of them, the view being a commanding location for a shot via a long telephoto lens.

In an effort to escape Voiler’s watch for intruding crews, the Hearst boys decided to setup camp on the colonnades five days before the fight. In the dead of the night, the entire staff helped to move Alexander and Lutz, their cameras and other equipment for their extended camping trip on the roof. And there, they waited until the morning of the fight.

When the eve of September 22 dawned, Voiler and his men went over the stadium with a fine tooth comb, those exclusive pictures were going to be exclusive, and he didn’t trust the competing newsreel men to not to try any shenanigans. As Alexander and Lutz watched them sweep over the fields, bleachers and every nook and cranny, suddenly they saw Voiler point at the colonnades. Foiled! Alexander and Lutz packed their gear up in a hurry and beat a hasty retreat back to the office.

Hearst may have been knocked down, but they weren’t out for the count. Norman Alley had another plan – in the form of ringside tickets to the game and a small stroke of luck. Alley put in a call to the editor in New York, Charlie Mathieu, and requested more crews to come to Chicago. Among those who answered Alley’s call for reinforcements that night were U. K. Whipple, Carl Wallen, Johnny Bockhorst, Eddie Morrison and Ted Rickman.

Security for the fight was put in the hands of the Illinois National Guard under the command of General Roy Keehn – who also just happened to be a member of Hearst’s Chicago general counsel. Orders were given by Keehn to the ushers of the fight that no one bearing boxes, bags or cameras was to be barred from entering as long as they possessed a valid ticket to the fight.

The eve of the fight, the eight Hearst cameramen headed for the stadium, split up and entered separately. They got their shots of the fight from beginning to end from every angle around the ring, and while they were under the jurisdiction of the Illinois National Guard, there was nothing Voiler could do to stop them. As soon as the final bell rang and the fight was over, the Hearst men hustled back to the offices with their film, knowing that Voiler will be hot on their tail as soon as they were out of the national guard’s protection.

Back at the office, the photogs dropped off their film in the darkroom for the operator to soup the film and they headed for home, leaving Alley and a few operators behind to finish editing the reel. Voiler ordered some of his hirelings to Hearst’s offices in an attempt to stop Alley from shipping the reel out. The hirelings attempted to kick the front doors in, while Voiler’s lawyer constantly called non-stop issuing threats to bully Alley into stopping what he was doing. Alley refused to be intimidated and after taunting Voiler’s lawyer on the phone with “call back later. We’re busy getting out a prizefight special,” called a friend of his with the Chicago Police Department. Alley’s CPD friend send over a detail to chase off Voiler’s thugs and to guard the office while Alley finished printing off the reel. The finished reels were escorted to the local movie houses under police protection and the negative was sent to New York via a chartered flight.

And Alley finally went home after a long week to get what he considered what was news in the public’s interest instead of a story to be sold exclusively to the highest bidder.

Shooting on the banks of the Columbia

A crew from Ed Murrow’s See It Now shoots footage on the bank of the Columbia River at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation on January 21, 1958.