Howard Kingsbury Smith (May 12, 1914-February 15, 2002) was an American journalist, radio reporter, television anchorman and commentator, and one of the original Edward R. Murrow boys.
Smith was born in Ferriday in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, to Howard K. Smith, originally from a gentleman-farming family in Lettsworth in Pointe Coupee Parish, and the former Minnie Gates, the daughter of a Cajun riverboat pilot.[1]
Smith graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1936, with both a bachelor's degree and an L.L.B. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University (Merton College) from which he graduated in September 1939.
Early career/CBS years
World War II
Upon graduating, Smith worked for the New Orleans Item, with United Press in London, and with the The New York Times. In January 1940, Smith was sent to Berlin, where he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System. He visited Hitler's mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden and interviewed many of the most prominent Nazis, including Hitler himself, SS leader Heinrich Himmler and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
In December 1941 Smith was one of the last American reporters to leave Berlin before Germany and the United States went to war. Smith's 1942 book, Last Train from Berlin: An Eye-Witness Account of Germany at War describes the reporter's observations from Berlin in the year after the departure of Berlin Diary author William L. Shirer. Last Train from Berlin became an American best-seller and was reprinted in 2001, shortly before Smith's death.
Unable to leave Switzerland, Smith reported what he could when the Swiss government would let him. After the liberation of France in 1944, Smith reported on the war effort on the frontlines of Europe for CBS News. He was by then a significant member of the "Murrow Boys" (after Edward R. Murrow) that made CBS News the dominant broadcast news organization of the era. In May 1945 he returned to Berlin to recount the German surrender.
Post-war
After the war Smith continued to work for CBS as the anchor reporter for CBS Reports. After the Nuremberg Trial, he witnessed the execution of the prominent Nazi leaders, including Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest ranking member of the SS to face trial.
After his return to the United States, Smith chaired the first televised presidential debate between Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon.
In 1962 he left his job at CBS over a dispute about a documentary called "Who Speaks for Birmingham." This in-depth investigation concerned the battle between civil rights advocates and the police of Birmingham. His commentary at the end of the piece led to a dispute with CBS management about his reporting of the civil rights movement, and he left CBS.
ABC, 1962-79
Smith moved to ABC at a time when that network's news division was a distant third among the "Big Three" networks. After the 1962 mid-term elections, Smith presented a documentary called, "The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon". Smith referred to Nixon's "last press conference" after his disastrous losing campaign against Democrat Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, Sr., for governor of California. In that press conference, the former vice president famously told reporters that they would not "have Nixon to kick around any more."
After his arrival at ABC, Smith hosted in the 1962-1963 season a public affairs program called Howard K. Smith: News and Comment in the 10:30 Eastern slot on Sundays, opposite CBS's long-running What's My Line?. The following season the program was revised as ABC News Reports.[2]
On June 5, 1968, Smith was anchoring coverage of the California presidential primary that had stretched to 3 AM New York time. As the closing credits for the special were airing, word came in that U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York had just been shot. ABC simply showed a wide shot of the chaotic newsroom for several minutes until Smith was able to confirm the initial story and go back on the air with a special report. He continued at the anchor desk for several more hours as reports of Kennedy's condition trickled in.
In 1969, the veteran reporter became the co-anchor of the ABC Evening News, first with Frank Reynolds, then the following year with another CBS alumnus, Harry Reasoner. He began making increasingly conservative commentaries, in particular adopting a hard-line stance in support of the Vietnam War. During this period, his son, future ABC newsman, Jack Smith, was serving with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam. These commentaries endeared him to President Nixon, who rewarded him with a rare, hour-long, one-on-one interview in 1971, at the height of the administration's animus against major newspapers, CBS and NBC.
During the 1972 presidential campaign, a letter was published that Smith had written to the Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, indicating Smith's full support for Muskie — written on stationery with ABC's letterhead. Nothing ever came of this controversy, however, and Smith kept his job. Notwithstanding his friendly relations with President Nixon, Smith became the first national television commentator to call for his resignation over the Watergate scandal.
Smith remained as co-anchor at ABC until 1976, when Barbara Walters joined the anchor desk, and stayed on for about two more years as an analyst, but left as the Roone Arledge era of ABC News began--and full retirement age approached. Sources say that Smith, apparently bitter over his diminished role at ABC, resigned not too long after criticizing the revamped World News Tonight broadcast as a "Punch and Judy show."[3]
Awards, film roles and personal life
Among honors which Smith received over the years were DuPont Awards in 1955 and 1963, a Sigma Delta Chi Award for radio journalism in 1957, and an award from the American Jewish Congress in 1960.
Smith also appeared in a number of films, often as himself. The films include The Candidate (1972), Nashville (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), the television series The Bionic Woman - the "Kill Oscar" episode (1977) playing himself anchoring an ABC newscast, and V (1984). In V, Smith introduced early episodes of the series as part of a faux news broadcast in which Smith was depicted as representing the human resistance fighting the series' alien invaders. Smith's prologues were abandoned after the series underwent a mid-season relaunch. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, someone addresses him as "Walter", because it was originally intended that Walter Cronkite would appear in that scene. Smith was also cast in the movie, "The Pink Panther Strikes Again".
Along with Last Train from Berlin, he wrote three other books, a memoir Events Leading Up to My Death: The Life of a Twentieth-Century Reporter (1996), a children's book Washington, D.C.; the story of our Nation's Capital (1967), and The Population Explosion (1960).
Smith's son, Jack, was an ABC News correspondent who received Peabody and Emmy awards for his coverage of technology; he died in Marin County, California, in 2004. Smith also had a daughter, Catherine, by his March 1942 marriage to the former Benedicte "Bennie" Traberg, a Danish journalist, whom Smith called the most impressive person he had ever known "far above presidents and generals".[1]
Notes
- ^ a b "Howard K. Smith", Delta Music Museum Celebritis, Ferriday, Louisiana, p. 2
- ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962%E2%80%9363_United_States_network_television_schedule
- ^ Smith, Howard K
External links
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