In 1956 the Air Force public relations machine was pleased to re-tell its history in World War II, but the war on Washington’s mind was the Cold War with the Soviet Union. There was a notion that American Stalinists worked in the media. By clever distortions of story lines, narration, and dialog, it was thought Read More
Because I needed access to classified footage on the atomic and hydrogen bombs, I was given a Q clearance — the United States Department of Energy (DOE) security clearance that is roughly comparable to a United States Department of Defense Top Secret clearance with Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Access (TS-SCI). I requested the Order of Battle Read More
Target Ploesti gave me trouble with the Air Force and Cronkite. A program on a raid on Schweinfurt gave me trouble with Ed Murrow, Truman Capote and Bill Paley. Schweinfurt manufactured ball bearings for the German military. The military logic for bombing the plant seemed impeccable: without ball bearings, German rolling stock would be stopped. Read More
World War II had ended eleven years earlier, and Vietnam was yet to come. The emotions of our victory had lessened and faded. The fateful style of the commentators of World War II gave to simpler voices in the ‘50’s. Yet there were moments of heightened prose that could not be forgotten. Winston Churchill’s most Read More
“You are finished at the Museum,” Sig Mickelson said. “We have a disaster on our hands with the Air Force. Be at my office at 8 tomorrow. Do you know Walter Cronkite?” Mickelson had received orders from Bill Paley (his boss’s boss). I saw I was not to question him too closely. Paley had been Read More
Our offices were in a turret on the south side of the building. Our film editing room was on the fifth floor of another section of the building, so it was a long walk between the two. Late at night the return took me through halls where work lights illuminated shards of far-off tribes; long Read More
For a short time I had two offices, one at the Museum, the other at the CBS building. I was in an office next door to a man who never said hello and was constantly on the phone. His voice was low. The Cold War was overheated with threats of nuclear exchanges. Undercover, as a Read More
One of the most ambitious series-within-a- series was a four-part summary entitled, The History of Life on Earth. The guide was George Gaylord Simpson, one of the world’s leading paleontologists and the author of The Meaning of Evolution. Dr. Simpson began with fossil invertebrates seen under an electron microscope. With the aid of other curators Read More
One of the glories of the American Museum of Natural History was the Hall of Mexico and Central America. As part of the Adventure Series (1953-1955), we planned a lengthy segment on the films a staff archeologist had taken of Mayan architecture. He would then have a conversation with Frank Lloyd Wright, the American architect. Read More
At WBBM I was also assigned public interest “sustainers” or unsponsored programs. In the 40’s the commercial broadcasters were required to do public interest programming or face the threat of their license being given to someone else. A license to broadcast was a license to print money. Nevertheless almost nothing was spent on “sustainers.” I Read More