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00:00:01From A&E, this is Biography.
00:00:19What are the hazards and what are our scientists doing to ensure man's survival in the hostile environment of outer
00:00:26space?
00:00:28Cronkite plunged in with two feet and that's what started his whole rise to prominence.
00:00:34He was the best newsman. He was just dedicated to news. It's that simple.
00:00:43Walter never liked to be second and definitely not third. It wasn't in his makeup.
00:00:51Every facility of car and driver is tested here.
00:00:54This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
00:01:00Good evening.
00:01:01The women all love him. The guys, you know, feel like they're his best buddy.
00:01:06And now, three weeks after the offensive began, the firing still goes on from here on the new side of
00:01:12the city, across the Perfume River to the old side, the Citadel.
00:01:16When he was home, he was home. And he didn't go out after work with the boys. He didn't go
00:01:22off golfing on the weekends. He was home with the family.
00:01:25He really did his homework extremely well. And of course, it showed up in his comments. It was, it just
00:01:31naturally came through.
00:01:33Whew, boy.
00:01:34We're going to be busy for a minute.
00:01:36He had a healthy ego, but his ego never got in the way of a story.
00:01:41The flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time.
00:01:49With Cronkite, what you see is what you get. He is the way he is on television. Friendly, trivial, trustworthy.
00:02:12St. Joseph, Missouri, on the fringe of the old Wild West. It was where the Pony Express first ran, where
00:02:20Jesse
00:02:20James was shot down, and where, in the years shortly before World War I, a young dentist set up shop.
00:02:28In 1915, Dr. Cronkite took as his bride a beautiful Kansas native named Helen Fritchie.
00:02:38One year later, on the 4th of November, the couple's only child, Walter Leland Cronkite Jr., was born.
00:02:47Global events made an immediate impact on the child's life. World War I was raging in Europe,
00:02:54and Dr. Cronkite was off to France with the 36th Army.
00:03:09With her husband at war, Helen took Walter to Kansas City, where her parents
00:03:15owned a drug store owned a drug store. The entire Fritchie family doted on young Walter.
00:03:28At the end of World War I, when Walter was only two years old, Dr. Cronkite rejoined his family in
00:03:35Kansas City and set up a new practice. Kansas City, in the roaring 20s, was a wide-open town, fueled
00:03:43by jazz, burlesque, and illegal booze, and the Cronkites made the most of it.
00:03:55Their home was the scene of frequent parties, and Helen and Dr. Cronkite lived it up.
00:04:01Everyone cleared the floor when they danced, and their precocious son performed for the crowd too,
00:04:07waving a conductor's baton in front of the Victrola.
00:04:12He got an empty Coke crate, stood on that, broke off part of a hanger for his baton, and he
00:04:22sits there and conducts the whole symphony.
00:04:25And what's kidding with it? Dead serious.
00:04:29While young Walter played hard, Dr. Cronkite let the fun get the better of him.
00:04:34His wife and son watched helplessly as he fell victim to alcohol.
00:04:40Dr. There was a real problem there at home because Dr. Cronkite, her term was he liked the bottle too
00:04:47much.
00:04:48Walter watched in confusion as his father's drinking got worse.
00:04:53Hoping to make a new start, the family moved to Houston.
00:04:57Walter was a serious child with an active, curious mind and a very competitive spirit.
00:05:03He constructed a telegraph system connecting his friends' houses and talked to them in Morse code until the phone company
00:05:12took the wires down.
00:05:14He also declared himself neighborhood champion for the longest bicycle leap.
00:05:18But there was still something he couldn't win, his father's love and attention.
00:05:26He felt there was a wall between himself and his father.
00:05:30He was never abused. He didn't feel disliked. He just didn't feel that there was anything there.
00:05:35It was just sort of an empty relationship.
00:05:38Unable to connect with his father, Walter was learning to become self-sufficient.
00:05:43He seemed, I would say, somewhat of a loner. He knew what he wanted to do and he did it.
00:05:51Walter filled his time with odd jobs, doing everything from flipping burgers to selling clothes.
00:05:57Meanwhile, Helen Cronkite, virtually estranged from her husband, focused all her attention on her son.
00:06:05Walter Cronkite, Jr.: And she was a very possessive mother and she wouldn't let him out of his sight.
00:06:12She'd let him go, but she wanted to have a leash there tied to him all the time.
00:06:18Walter Cronkite, Jr.: She would go with him to his sporting event. She would go to him to play.
00:06:22She would go with him to school. And she made sure that he never came home to an empty house.
00:06:28Stifled by his mother's attention and hurt by his father's neglect, Walter moved away from home
00:06:33the first chance he got. At age 16, he left for Austin and the University of Texas,
00:06:40where he enrolled as a political science major.
00:06:43Walter Cronkite, Jr.: He may have wanted to have proved something to himself and to his father
00:06:48and to the world, of course, that he can do it. And, you know, he refused to accept any
00:06:53pay when he went to college. He paid his own way and he was on his own really from the
00:06:58time he was around 18.
00:07:01Soon after he left home in 1933, his parents divorced and both moved back to Missouri.
00:07:08In Austin, Walter took an interest in everything. He worked for the campus paper
00:07:14and a local radio station. He was a correspondent for the Hearst International News Service
00:07:20and for Scripps Howard. But whatever spare money he earned, he had to send to Helen.
00:07:27Walter Cronkite, Jr.: I think he was forced to take care of her. I mean, she had no income.
00:07:32She had no alimony or anything like that. I think in the early years,
00:07:37she was somewhat of a burden for him to carry. Walter took every job he could get
00:07:45and something had to give. In 1935, that something was school.
00:07:50Walter Cronkite, Jr.: I dropped out. I regret it very much. I'm not proud of it.
00:07:54I wish I had paid more attention. But Walter had paid attention to the lesson he learned at home,
00:08:01that the only person he could truly rely on was himself. And now he put that lesson to work.
00:08:08Walter Cronkite, Jr.: I think Walter was aggressive enough and knew that. To get anything,
00:08:13you had to be better than the other guy. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: He wriggled his way into a job
00:08:18covering the Texas State House and then into a position as a general assignment reporter for the
00:08:24Houston Press. He'd entered the rough and tumble world of the daily newspaper, where nothing could
00:08:33come between a reporter and a great story. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: The newspaper practices in those days
00:08:40were not always just what you might say 100% ethical, I suppose. I was briefly a picture snatcher for
00:08:50the
00:08:50Houston Press. Once, while pursuing the story of a woman who died in a car crash, Walter pinched a photo
00:08:58of the victim from her family's house. It was only after the photo was published that he learned he'd
00:09:04been in the wrong house and that he had the wrong woman. In 1936, on a lock, he took a
00:09:13$15 a week job
00:09:14as an announcer at KCMO, a tiny 100-watt radio station in Kansas City. The job would last just a
00:09:23matter of
00:09:23weeks, but those few weeks would change his life. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: There came the day at KCMO when
00:09:33down the corridor and I could see her coming, the most gorgeous creature I'd ever seen in my life,
00:09:39an absolutely sensational redhead. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: That fiery redhead was Betsy Maxwell,
00:09:46a recent college graduate the station had just hired as a writer.
00:09:50Walter Cronkite, Jr.: She and Walter were soon thrown together to broadcast a commercial,
00:09:54and when they left the studio that afternoon, a courtship began. Betsy was the only thing Walter
00:10:02found worthwhile at KCMO. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: I didn't like radio. It was schlock. It was pretty
00:10:10schlock in those days. We didn't have any news service. Walter made his views plain to KCMO's
00:10:16station manager and soon found himself out of work. He landed a job with the United Press Wire Service,
00:10:24a poor rival to the powerful Associated Press, and was back on the road, relying on his wits.
00:10:31While working in Dallas, he broke his first national story. A gas leak had caused an explosion at a new
00:10:39London, Texas school. Walter attacked the story aggressively, getting the first interview with a
00:10:45distraught school superintendent, whose own son was lost in the rubble.
00:10:50Walter Cronkite, Jr.: Hundreds of school children and their teachers killed and mangled,
00:10:55some of them literally blown to bits, others crushed by falling masonry.
00:11:00Walter Cronkite, Jr.: Normally, you'd say, let him alone, for gosh sakes, you know. But I found out something.
00:11:05Walter Cronkite, Jr.: It's essential to get eyewitness stories as quickly as you can.
00:11:11It's essential to get them if you can before they've been repeated more than once. You know,
00:11:17you'd like to have the original telling. Although Walter loved the life of a correspondent,
00:11:22he'd left his heart in Kansas City. And in 1939, Betsy drew him back. Walter took a job on the
00:11:30United Press
00:11:31desk, working late hours, covering the city. He found that the old town held the same charms for him
00:11:38as it had for his parents.
00:11:40Walter Cronkite, Jr.: 12th Street was a street line with jazz joints and strip joints and female
00:11:50impersonator joints and every other kind of joint you could think of. They had a couple of joints of
00:11:58Winnie Winkle and the Chesterfield Club had nude waitresses, and that was for lunch.
00:12:04Out on the town, Walter liked to take center stage on the dance floor.
00:12:09Walter Cronkite, Jr.: Walter said that what he wanted to be really in life, if he couldn't be
00:12:17managing editor of the New York Times, he wanted to be a song and dance man, a hoofer.
00:12:26Walter Cronkite, Jr.: Although he happily danced the Kansas City nights away,
00:12:30he had other things on his mind. On March 30th, 1940, he and Betsy married. The life of a wire
00:12:38service reporter Walter had decided was his niche, and Kansas City was his town. But it would not be home
00:12:47for long. World War II was raging, and it was the story that would launch Walter Cronkite's career.
00:13:07When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States military was caught
00:13:15napping. America entered World War II short on equipment, supplies, and personnel.
00:13:23Walter Cronkite, on the other hand, was wide awake and ready for action. He was just 25,
00:13:30but he had several years experience as a reporter, and was one of the United Press's rising stars.
00:13:38The wire service brought him to its war headquarters, the Foreign Desk, in New York.
00:13:43Walter Cronkite, Jr.: And the Cronkites moved to Manhattan. With hundreds of young men being drafted
00:13:49into service, Walter was itching to go to war, too.
00:13:54Walter Cronkite, Jr.: Of course, the war was building up, and we were all hoping to get into
00:14:01it one way or another. Hard to think now that everybody wanted to go to war. It was exciting,
00:14:07and a big story. The United Press assigned Walter to cover the war in the Atlantic as a Navy correspondent.
00:14:14He boarded the battleship Arkansas in New York Harbor and set out to sea. He was issued an army
00:14:21uniform and an armband that had a big letter C on it for correspondent. At first, the officers aboard the
00:14:29Arkansas were wary of it. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: It turned out that they thought I was a chaplain. I had
00:14:36this C on my arm.
00:14:38Well, I had to disabuse them of that rather quickly with a couple of dirty stories. Walter's job on the
00:14:44Arkansas? To report on convoys of supply ships to Great Britain, which was under a full assault by
00:14:50German naval and air forces. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: That was the big story then, the Battle of the
00:14:57North Atlantic, and I was very pleased to be assigned to it and went out on convoy duty. I found
00:15:05it a
00:15:06pretty rough way to have to cover a war. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: The ships in Walter's convoy came
00:15:13under repeated German attack. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: The submarines got in among us and sank two or three
00:15:21on one occasion and on another occasion sank one on the outskirts of the convoy. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: He
00:15:28crossed the North Atlantic three times. Then he boarded the battleship Texas, bound for North Africa,
00:15:34where the Vichy French held strategic positions. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: The North African land was the first
00:15:40amphibious operation of the American Army in its history, and it wasn't going too well there at
00:15:46all. And the United Press has told me to forget the pledge to stay with the Navy and get ashore
00:15:52when I
00:15:53could, but there was no way to get ashore for the first couple of days. From the decks of the
00:15:59Texas
00:16:00off the coast of Morocco, Walter watched the destroyer fight its way upriver to free Port Laetay.
00:16:07Walter Cronkite, Jr.: The French had blocked the river with a boom, and from the cliffs above, artillery
00:16:12fire rained on the destroyer. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: And I must say that was about the most courageous
00:16:18feat I saw in World War II with those officers aboard that destroyer who took it up that river. Talk
00:16:24about fish in a barrel. That was it, but they made it. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: But Walter's dispatches back to
00:16:30the United
00:16:30Press Home Office didn't make it. In fact, Walter's bosses had given him up for loss. Oblivious to all
00:16:37this, he shipped back to the States, desperately hoping to beat his competitors with uncensored stories
00:16:44of the North African landing. As soon as he was in range of shore, he boarded a Navy plane that
00:16:51was
00:16:51taking off for Norfolk, Virginia. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: And the pilot said to me at one point, he said,
00:16:56I'm not sure we're going to make it. I think we're going to run out of gas before we get
00:17:00there.
00:17:01Well, we didn't. We landed in Hampton Roads and just, just with a sputtering engine, made it into Norfolk.
00:17:10Walter hustled to UP headquarters in New York. Walter Cronkite, Jr.: The telephone operator jumped up,
00:17:17almost tore her head off with that headset still on, coming over to me and weeping and grabbing me
00:17:23and kissing me. My God, you're alive. You're alive. I said, well, of course I'm alive. You know, why not?
00:17:29Walter Cronkite, Jr.: He immediately sat down, wrote his stories, and beat the competition to print.
00:17:35Being first with a story had its reward, he was featured in a Paramount Newsreel.
00:17:41Walter Cronkite, Jr.: I'm just back from the biggest assignment that any American
00:17:44reporter could have so far in this war, covering the occupation of North Africa by American troops.
00:17:52I represented the United Press, and when we were permitted to write, there was plenty to report.
00:17:58He next shipped out to England to cover the air war for the UP. The competition to get stories home
00:18:05first was intense, and working for the underdog United Press instilled in Walter a practically
00:18:12religious zeal to beat his rivals to every story.
00:18:17Walter Cronkite, Jr.: They raced each other for seconds. Seconds counted in a wire story,
00:18:23because the first one that got his story out of London and got it to the United States usually
00:18:28was the one that got printed in the papers. Success gave him new confidence, and in London,
00:18:35he began to mix with journalists already made famous by the war. The most famous of them all was Edward
00:18:42R. Murrow.
00:18:43Edward Murrow, Jr.: Hello, America. This is Edward Murrow speaking from London. There were more German
00:18:49planes over the coast of Britain today than at any time since the war began.
00:18:53Walter was watching as Ed Murrow and his hand-picked group of CBS radio correspondents
00:19:00British radio. The media that Walter had dismissed just a few years earlier had come into its own thanks
00:19:11to the Murrow boys.
00:19:14Cronkite, Jr.: Cronkite, I think, was in awe of the Murrow boys. In many ways, he was as good as
00:19:19they were,
00:19:20but he did not get the attention. He did not get the respect that the Murrow boys were getting.
00:19:27Ed, one time, asked me to join CBS, and I was flattered. I liked the idea. I liked the people.
00:19:37I liked Ed.
00:19:38But when the United Press heard about Murrow's offer to Walter, they quickly countered with a raise
00:19:44and convinced him to stay. Murrow was annoyed.
00:19:48I think he always felt that I'd used him as a bargaining tool, which wasn't meant that way at all.
00:19:55Cronkite, Jr.: Having thrown in his lot with the United Press, Walter made the most of the rest of
00:20:00the war. He garnered choice assignments. Choice, but dangerous. Perhaps most dangerous of all was
00:20:08covering the U.S. 8th Air Force.
00:20:11Walter, Jr.: The reporters covering the 8th Air Force, I think we all got a little bit ashamed of ourselves.
00:20:18We
00:20:19were going out every day, and these aircraft would come back with dead and wounded on board. And here
00:20:25we were, roughly their age, and we were just writing about them. And we were embarrassed,
00:20:32and we decided that the thing to do was to go on a raid ourselves.
00:20:36Walter, Jr.: We ran into quite a firestorm of German resistance. I was the only one who actually ever
00:20:42manned a gun. I was on that gun firing up enough ammunition, so I had empty shell cases practically
00:20:49up my hips. We didn't get hit, very obviously, very happy to say, but several planes did. I think,
00:20:55if I remember, we lost about 11 planes out of something like 60 that made the mission. Pretty
00:21:02heavy loss. Walter and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Homer Biggert compared notes on how they would report on
00:21:11the air battle. Biggert had a stammer. Homer Biggert stammered badly, and Walter said something like,
00:21:20I've already got my lead written. And Homer said, what is it? And Walter said, I have just returned from
00:21:29an assignment to hell. And Homer said, you wouldn't. But Walter did, and that lead landed him on front
00:21:40pages all over England and the United States. But London itself was no safe haven, especially after
00:21:50D-Day. The Germans were getting desperate. Walter, Jr.: Things got a little hairier after the invasion,
00:21:57after our invasion, Normandy, when the Germans began unleashing the flying bombs, the V-1s, so-called,
00:22:03on London. And that was quite terrifying. Witnessing so much death and mayhem was beginning to take its
00:22:12toll on the young man, still only in his twenties. Walter, Jr.: Emotionally, it's a strain. But like
00:22:21soldiers themselves, you do become, after a while, inured to bodies, to prisoners, to destruction.
00:22:30Walter, Jr.: You have to. You'd go crazy otherwise. There were fascinating minutes, of course, where you
00:22:37thought you were going to live in your last, perhaps.
00:22:43Those last moments almost came once when Walter found himself in the middle of a firefight and stuck
00:22:49in a ditch with another correspondent. Walter, Jr.: We got pinned down and deserted the jeep and
00:22:56were in a ditch with a lot of small arms fire and mortar fire right over us. And I didn't
00:23:02see any
00:23:02possibility of getting out of there really basically alive or certainly without being captured.
00:23:10The ditch offered enough cover to keep him from being discovered or shot. When the firing stopped,
00:23:16he walked away unharmed physically. Walter, Jr.: When you saw a young man who had just been hit, still
00:23:25suffering, hoping for aid, no, you can't detach yourself from that sort of thing completely as much
00:23:31as you tried. And of course, you can't detach yourself from the fact you're part of it.
00:23:37Walter, Jr.: By 1944, the war had turned in the Allies' favor and Walter Cronkite had established himself.
00:23:45He began dreaming of the end of the war and of the day he and Betsy would be reunited. But
00:23:51there
00:23:51were bloody battles still to come, and that reunion would remain a dream, at least for a while.
00:24:04The year was 1944. Walter Cronkite was 28 years old and in the middle of the biggest conflict the
00:24:12world had ever seen. On December 16, 1944, under cover of fog, half a million German troops poured
00:24:24through the rugged Ardennes region of Belgium, totally surprising the American forces who were
00:24:29gathered there. The Battle of the Bulge had begun. Walter was attached to General George Patton's Third
00:24:41Army. The Battle of the Bulge finally ended on January 25, 1945. 19,000 Americans and tens of thousands
00:24:57of Germans had died. Walter returned from the front and during the rest of the war in Europe reopened
00:25:06the United Press offices in Amsterdam and Brussels.
00:25:13When the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, Walter at first did not believe the
00:25:19translated report that came across the UP wire.
00:25:23I was very critical of the translations we were getting out of Paris. And we got this bulletin that
00:25:31the Americans had dropped a bomb, the equivalent of 5,000 tons of TNT or something like that.
00:25:38And I said, oh, come on, they've done it again. They fouled it up.
00:25:43The report was, of course, true, and World War II was over. Betsy came to Europe and she and Walter
00:25:51were
00:25:51reunited. She also came to work as a freelance reporter. A tribunal had assembled in the ancient
00:25:58German city of Nuremberg to pass judgment on the crimes of Nazi Germany's leaders.
00:26:04Betsy and Walter were there to cover it.
00:26:07Will you answer my question? Do you still say that neither Hitler or you knew of the policy to
00:26:16exterminate the Jews? Betsy and Walter sat in court. They watched and listened in horror as the
00:26:25story of the Holocaust unfolded. Some of them were sniveling. You know, gosh, you couldn't stand them.
00:26:34Stryker, Jew baiter, terrible man. He wanted to get up there and personally cut his throat.
00:26:42Rudolf Hess. Hess was obviously mad as I had it. Absolutely insane.
00:26:50No. That will be entered as a plea of not guilty.
00:26:57The Nuremberg trials revealed the extent of Nazi Germany's genocide. The trial dragged on for nearly
00:27:05a year. A relentless account of atrocities. It was a hard story to write because it seemed so
00:27:16unbelievable. I mean, as you wrote it, you said, who's going to believe this?
00:27:21After years apart, years of war, Walter and Betsy looked forward to breaks in the trial
00:27:28when they could escape to the Italian countryside.
00:27:32We sat up there and eat garlic sandwiches and indulge in the wine and then drive back on Monday
00:27:39to the courthouse. And our pourers were exuding this garlic. And Goering, who had a sense of humor,
00:27:48had a great sense of humor, but these few feet from us would look at us and shake his head,
00:27:54kind of, finally sent a message to us through his attorney. He said,
00:27:58I believe this is what you Americans call cruel and inhuman punishment.
00:28:07The Nuremberg trials ended in 1946 and Walter expected to settle back in the States with Betsy.
00:28:14But the United Press offered another assignment and Walter, who developed a knack for finding his way
00:28:21to the biggest stories, took it. It was Moscow. It was a precarious moment in history, the beginning of the
00:28:31Cold War.
00:28:36Joseph Stalin's repressive, secretive Soviet Union was not the most welcoming of places to American journalists.
00:28:46The extent of the, of the censorship, the, the, uh, restrictions, uh, of the secret police,
00:28:53and the inability to, to move, uh, well, not to move around, but to make contacts, which are, after all,
00:28:58the essentials for a reporter, uh, were such that, uh, uh, one saw that one is, uh, one is in
00:29:05a, uh, very different place,
00:29:07uh, even worse than one had imagined.
00:29:10With working conditions so difficult and with practically no opportunities to mingle with Soviet
00:29:16citizens, the Americans in Moscow developed a bunker mentality.
00:29:22It was hard living in a way, harsh living, but it was very, a lot of camaraderie.
00:29:29It's the only place where newsmen are really welcome with the diplomats is there. We all pulled our wagons
00:29:35in a circle. Walter and Betsy were favorites on the tiny social circuit.
00:29:42I remember, uh, he had a little party trick, uh, which always warmed things up. He, uh,
00:29:49did, uh, the double bass. Of course, he didn't have a double bass. He did an imaginary double bass.
00:29:54And he did the thump, thump, thump, you know, and, and twirled it around. And, uh, it was a very
00:29:59good
00:29:59icebreaker, a very good mood, mood improver for a pretty drab existence.
00:30:06In 1948, Betsy became pregnant. The Cronkites were terrified. Babies born in the USSR automatically
00:30:13became Soviet citizens and could not leave the country. So Betsy made a daring decision to go home
00:30:21alone. So United Press wouldn't let him go for free. They wouldn't let a replacement come in.
00:30:27So he stayed there with some of the guys. Betsy made her way home and Walter was finally able to
00:30:35leave Moscow several months later. He arrived in Kansas City just in time for the birth of their
00:30:41first child, daughter Nancy. Back home, Walter became intrigued by the promise of a new medium,
00:30:50television. His curiosity would lead him to a new career, one that would eventually make him
00:30:57a household name. When Walter Cronkite came back to the United States in 1948, the changes he saw
00:31:06around him were striking. In particular, broadcast journalism had grown enormously. Walter took stock
00:31:14of the situation and made a risky decision. He would become a television broadcaster.
00:31:21I was quite surprised when I heard that he was getting into broadcasting. I was even skeptical that
00:31:27he would be able to do it that well. Others were less skeptical. CBS's Washington affiliate was so
00:31:35impressed with Walter, they put him right on the air. With no experience before the camera and no real
00:31:42idea of what he was doing, he took over the station's newscast.
00:31:49I used to watch his 11 o'clock nighttime news and I became fascinated by the way he was doing
00:31:55it. It was
00:31:55all I had lived. Well, I determined at that point, as soon as I had an opportunity to make good
00:32:00use of
00:32:01Walter, I would. CBS News President Sig Mickelson made good on his promise and named Walter to host CBS's
00:32:10coverage of the 1952 Republican convention. A new term was coined to describe his role,
00:32:18Anchorman. There will be a head-on showdown fight at this very first session of the National Convention
00:32:24of the Republican Party between the Eisenhower and the Taft forces. The choice of Walter Cronkite to
00:32:31anchor the convention was something of a surprise. He was chosen over more obvious CBS candidates,
00:32:38such as Edward R. Murrow, who'd hosted the conventions four years earlier. But Walter was more willing than
00:32:45Murrow to fly by the seat of his pants. Murrow, I think it's fair to say, sort of was distrustful
00:32:53of
00:32:53and disdain television. Cronkite plunged in with two feet. That's what started his whole rise to
00:33:02prominence. The first official film of the preparations of the Explorer, and here it is.
00:33:07This is the Explorer as it has been moved to the gantry. Unfortunately, however, the film seems to be
00:33:15upside down. If we can get it right side up in time, we'll take a look at it for you.
00:33:22Walter's success also began to inspire some backbiting within CBS News. There was a rivalry
00:33:29with Murrow. I have a feeling that Murrow regarded him as something of a police reporter and not one of
00:33:36the very bright, knowledgeable group that had worked with him during the war. The tension between Cronkite
00:33:45and Murrow became obvious one night at a dinner party. Murrow and Cronkite sniped at each other
00:33:53during the dinner. And then after dinner, Murrow and Cronkite each took a dueling pistol and pretended
00:33:58to actually shoot each other. So I think that reflected the kind of feeling they had toward each other.
00:34:11The thrill of sports car driving is just day-to-day driving. But what ultimately endeared Walter to
00:34:18the network was that he fully embraced the new television business CBS was trying to establish.
00:34:25He was willing to try anything, news or not. You are there.
00:34:33This is Walter Cronkite reporting. The date is 399 B.C. in Athens, Greece, where the Hellenistic
00:34:39world is awaiting the climax of the trial and condemnation of the philosopher Socrates.
00:34:46But Walter's career was moving in the right direction. He had status, he had some money,
00:34:52and he had a glittering future. He also had a growing family. Daughter Nancy had been joined by
00:34:59two more children, Kathy and Chip. Keeping pace with his family while pursuing a demanding high-profile
00:35:07career was difficult. But remembering how distant he had felt from his own father, Walter tried to be a
00:35:14presence in his children's lives. He and my mother both worked very hard at us all having a close family.
00:35:27When he was home, he was home. And he didn't go out after work with the boys. He didn't go
00:35:32off
00:35:33golfing on the weekends. He was home with the family. He even included his family in his risky new
00:35:43hobby, motor racing. I used to rally with my father in the sports car. And I was the navigator. And
00:35:52we
00:35:52used to go in these father-daughter rallies around in Connecticut. And that was fun. But what was fun
00:35:59for Walter was frightening for CBS News executives. There was a concern particularly after he tipped his car
00:36:07over in the Great Smoky Mountains in a fog one night, up in the up, well up in the mountains.
00:36:14And we were
00:36:15very seriously concerned at that time whether he ought to carry on. And I think he was too. And I
00:36:20think he got
00:36:21out of racing sports cars very shortly thereafter.
00:36:28Cronkite traded in his racing car for a sailboat and took to navigating the placid waters of upstate New York.
00:36:36It was 1960. And as one of the most valuable properties of CBS News, he saw nothing but smooth
00:36:43sailing ahead. But the coming decade would be a trying one.
00:36:52By the early 1960s, Walter Cronkite was the rising star at CBS News. His convention and election
00:37:00coverage had earned him critical praise and public approval. And his credentials as a television
00:37:06journalist was surpassed by no one. He was ready for the network's top news job.
00:37:18Good evening, everybody. Here's the news picture tonight. The administration announces a new farm
00:37:23program calling for subsidies and price supports. The centerpiece of the CBS television news operation
00:37:29was the Evening News, a makeshift 15-minute nightly newscast anchored by Douglas Edwards. The broadcast
00:37:37was being beaten badly in the ratings. CBS chairman William S. Paley demanded that his news division
00:37:46become more competitive. And plans were made to replace Doug Edwards. A number of CBS correspondents
00:37:54had their eyes on the anchor chair. They knew that that's where the spotlight was going to be.
00:38:01That's where the power was going to be. That's where the money was going to be. That's where the celebrity
00:38:04was going to be. But 12 years of service to CBS television had left Walter with a wealth of goodwill
00:38:12and respect within the company. And he easily won the job. None of us had that particular quality
00:38:20that Cronkite had. And it was reflected quite obviously in the ratings that were being taken
00:38:28all the time. And the management, of course, thought they had what they called a hot property
00:38:34on their hands. Direct from our newsroom in New York, this is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
00:38:42And shortly after he took over as anchorman, the Evening News was expanded to a half-hour broadcast.
00:38:48To kick off the new format, Walter appeared with the president.
00:38:53President Kennedy today talked with this reporter of many things,
00:38:56including the political repercussions of the integration battle.
00:39:02How seriously do you think this civil rights situation is going to affect your chances,
00:39:08assuming you'll be the nominee of the Democratic Party next year, in 1964?
00:39:14Well, obviously it's going to be an important matter. It's caused a good deal of
00:39:19feeling, I suppose, against the administration in the South.
00:39:22Are you making any estimate as to who your opponent might be in 64?
00:39:26No, there's a good many of them. There's a good many of them.
00:39:28Got any choices to who you'd like to run against?
00:39:31No, no.
00:39:31Either to put the issues before the people or otherwise?
00:39:33That's a great mistake. I know some Republicans chose me in 60 as their favorite candidate,
00:39:38but so I don't know I can choose anybody. I'll let them choose.
00:39:41And dissolve, dissolve, cue all up.
00:39:44President Kennedy on other issues, domestic...
00:39:46By the time he became Evening News Anchorman, he was a face already familiar to the American public.
00:39:53But familiarity was not enough to make him America's most trusted newsman.
00:39:59It would take a national tragedy to do that.
00:40:04I know now why everyone in Texas, Fort Worth is so thin, having gotten up and down about nine times.
00:40:12I was in our newsroom in New York, and I was actually standing at the United Press printer
00:40:18when the words came over a bulletin from Dallas that shots had rung out as the president's motorcade
00:40:24proceeded through downtown Dallas. And then the terrible story spilled out from there on out.
00:40:33Here is a bulletin from CBS News.
00:40:36In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas.
00:40:42The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.
00:40:48It's interesting that I spent the whole time in my shirt sleeves, hair uncombed, wearing my glasses,
00:40:54didn't even realize it, didn't even think about prettying myself for those broadcasts.
00:41:00We just have a report from our correspondent Dan, rather, in Dallas,
00:41:04that he has confirmed that President Kennedy is dead. There is still no official confirmation of this,
00:41:11however, it's a report from our correspondent Dan Rather in Dallas, Texas.
00:41:17I felt during that entire period of time only the pressures of a reporter, an editor, a broadcaster
00:41:25on the scene, except for the moment when I had to say, he's dead. And that grabbed me. And I
00:41:35almost lost it there for a minute.
00:41:38From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time,
00:41:472 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.
00:41:53He was brought to tears and could almost not speak. You know, the heart knows something, the mind does not.
00:42:03And I think it would have surprised Walter that he broke up at that point and had a hard time
00:42:11continuing because of the emotion that welled up within him.
00:42:14I think he would have been as surprised as anyone that that happened to him. It was a very warm
00:42:19moment.
00:42:20As the citizens of this nation pay final tribute to President Kennedy at the Capitol in Washington,
00:42:27and as foreign dignitaries converge upon Washington for the funeral tomorrow, the immediate bereaved family also begins to gather.
00:42:38He was upset about it, devastated by it. But we didn't talk about that so much as the logistics of
00:42:47getting his clothes changed and back,
00:42:50and will he take time and will he sleep five hours and go back? It was a terrible time.
00:42:56And it just seemed like the end of the world. How can they do this? Where will it stop? And
00:43:01it never did.
00:43:04You may not cry.
00:43:11You may not cry.
00:43:13Hear it.
00:43:13Hear it.
00:43:18Hear it.
00:43:20Hear it.
00:43:38it was a defining moment for television for the country and for walter cronkite
00:43:46it's like i say to you who were you with when kennedy was shot and you could say who you
00:43:53were with and then you say and i remember walter cronkite walter's reporting during the kennedy
00:44:00assassination and the four days of non-stop coverage that followed made him a national
00:44:06fixture after years of bouncing around cbs he found the place the job for which he seemed
00:44:14almost to have been born but he would be sorely tested in the years to come
00:44:26by 1964 the american public knew who walter cronkite was he'd reported on all the big stories
00:44:36president lyndon johnson's unveiling his plan for the great society
00:44:43american martin luther king winning the nobel peace prize the beatles invading america
00:44:55420 lexington the gray bar building virtually no one refused an interview with walter cronkite
00:45:04do you think your boiling point is low
00:45:08not anymore it used to be i think that comes with a normal growing up and the way of living
00:45:15with
00:45:16friends people with whom you become acquainted what started he was riding high but he was about to
00:45:22experience a humiliating setback that would force him to question everything about the profession he had
00:45:34chosen back here at san francisco's cow palace the republican national convention when cbs's coverage of the
00:45:421964 republican convention lost badly in the ratings cbs chairman william paylee made a stunning move
00:45:51he had walter removed as anchorman at the democratic convention later that summer
00:45:58he was crushed there was no question about this was a tremendous blow to him professionally personally
00:46:05to him and his family
00:46:09publicly walter kept his anger to himself but privately he seethed but when the democratic convention came
00:46:17to atlantic city he was there anyway with his evening news broadcast
00:46:23and i was with him in atlantic city he was there we were walking on the boardwalk and
00:46:30hundreds of people came up to him and it was like somebody died in his family
00:46:36and he was hurting very badly cbs news covers the democratic national convention
00:46:43here now are cbs news correspondents robert trout and roger mudd this is the convention second
00:46:50night of the democrat cbs's convention anchor team of roger mudd and bob trout fared no better than
00:46:56walter and cbs again finished a distant second in the ratings i thought that was a panic decision
00:47:05we got a lot of publicity out of it but we got our tails beat it was a total failure
00:47:12a total failure rumors flew at the time that he was going to he was going to leave cbs and
00:47:18got cbs quite
00:47:19upset at the time but uh but he played the good soldier 30 seconds walter emerged from this
00:47:26potentially damaging episode with his career intact and his reputation even enhanced by the way he
00:47:34handled the setback 10 seconds but he learned a lesson he would never forget adlai stevenson tells
00:47:41the u.n what we're doing in southeast asia it confirmed what i kind of thought about broadcasting
00:47:48that it was show business that uh that your job was about as good as the next rating
00:47:54and uh and uh and other whims of the business
00:48:01but the news itself made other considerations seem paltry his broadcast became a nightly window
00:48:09on america tearing itself apart get your hands up i said the crisis and race relations shoved the
00:48:17vietnam war into the background at the white house today and president johnson devoted almost all his
00:48:22time to the problem the 1960s undoubtedly were uh the nadir of our existence the low point and the high
00:48:31uh the political assassinations uh including the president himself the uh civil rights riots for heaven's
00:48:39sakes uh the the uh kind of uh uh headlong plunge into immorality in in the country
00:49:05the turmoil and the changing mores that were sweeping the country swept right into the cronkite
00:49:11household walter and betsy found raising two teenage daughters in manhattan in the 60s difficult and
00:49:20frustrated the generation gap was clearly apparent in the 60s as the youth revolution took place
00:49:32i tell you how out of touch i was i was way out of touch my parents felt that things
00:49:37were still much
00:49:38the same as they had been when they had grown up and of course they weren't he had some furious
00:49:44arguments with his daughters we tried to keep control but it was very difficult i don't think
00:49:51there was any ever a more difficult parental period dad is is good at arguing any side of a point
00:49:59and it's uh of course it makes you examine things and and all that and then hot buttons can get
00:50:06pushed
00:50:07and it can get get a little exciting
00:50:15i remember one time my dad said i'm sure he didn't mean it i just made him mad and he
00:50:19said
00:50:19that he thought junkies should be shot i couldn't believe it i started to cry and then he got mad
00:50:26at
00:50:26me and he said why are you a junkie do you know junkies what's the matter with you and all
00:50:29this stuff
00:50:29and it was horrible it was one of the worst arguments i ever had with my dad
00:50:37during that period i made the declarative statements i don't care for their hair i don't
00:50:42care for their looks i don't care for their clothes i don't care for their behavior i don't care for
00:50:46anything about them like other american parents he tried to bridge the generation gap to find a common
00:50:55ground with his children to ease the tensions at home walter would take the family sailing
00:51:04it was really the one place you knew you were really away and you were really just family
00:51:08and cbs wasn't going to call and world event we weren't going to know about world events
00:51:16but the boat was no refuge from the most wrenching event of the 60s the vietnam war in 1968 he
00:51:25began a
00:51:26long trying year by confronting the war head-on in february during the tut offensive walter traveled to
00:51:39vietnam to see the war for himself the communist intention was to take and seize the cities they
00:51:47came closer here at way than anywhere else and now three weeks after the offensive began the firing still
00:51:54goes from here on the new side of the city across the perfume river to the old side of the
00:51:59citadel
00:52:01when he covered the bloody battle of way he was sick the time had come to speak up never had
00:52:10to give
00:52:10an opinion never wanted to give an opinion never any desire to be an editorialist i thought the highest
00:52:16calling was to try to get the facts straight and report them impartially and fairly and to take off
00:52:22that hat put on an editorial hat and give an opinion uh gave me a lot of qualms
00:52:30but walter overcame those qualms and sat down with his staff to write in effect an editorial against the
00:52:39war that was probably the most singly carefully crafted piece of copy that i've ever experienced in
00:52:50television but it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to
00:52:58negotiate not as victors but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and
00:53:06did the best they could there was a very very uh acute understanding
00:53:16that this this this little piece of editorializing or commentary was going to create waves i'm not
00:53:24sure anybody involved understood how high these waves were going to be i recall that lbj said to many of
00:53:32us that if i've lost walter kronkite i've lost the war those in violation of law will be arrested
00:53:48shortly after walter came out against the war johnson made the shocking announcement that he would not
00:53:54seek another term as president there were greater shocks to come dr martin luther king the apostle of
00:54:04non-violence in the civil rights movement has been shot to death in memphis tennessee dr king a leading
00:54:10exponent of non-violence had often risked danger and he often said he would be willing to die for his
00:54:16cause
00:54:29and just two months later bobby kennedy was shot to death in los angeles
00:54:40the turmoil continued all summer and came to a head in august in chicago
00:54:45at the democratic national convention chicago police confronted protesters outside the convention hall
00:54:54provoking an ugly brutal riot while the whole country watched
00:55:07the chaos spilled into the hole and walter was dragged into the fray
00:55:13when cbs correspondent dan rather was manhandled
00:55:17dan rather don't don't push me please i know you won't but don't push me take your hands off
00:55:22of me unless you didn't plan to arrest me wait a minute wait a minute
00:55:27walter as you can see
00:55:30i don't know what's going on but this these are security people apparently around dan
00:55:36characteristic of walter always concerned about the safety and well-being of his correspondents
00:55:42always prepared to stand up for them try to do so in the air
00:55:48i think we've got a bunch of thugs here dan
00:55:52if i may be permitted to say so well mind you walter i'm all right i it's uh it's all
00:55:58in
00:55:58today's work thank you dan for staying in there pitching despite every handicap that they can
00:56:03possibly put in our way from free flow of information at this democratic national convention
00:56:08walter blew his top on camera uh which was unprofessional i think it's fair to say that
00:56:16he's embarrassed by it to this day i want to just turn off our cameras and pack up our microphones
00:56:21and
00:56:21our typewriters and get the devil out of this town and not leave the democrats to their agony
00:56:26but of course that's quite impossible that's just what they want the agony of the 1968 democratic
00:56:32convention was the culmination of what had been a trying decade for america
00:56:41but at the end of the decade walter cronkite brought us an event that literally took us out of this
00:56:48world
00:56:50we're at t-minus 19 seconds i don't know any words for this except the trite ones
00:56:56tension is mounting here at cape canavera there is perhaps nothing walter cronkite ever broadcast
00:57:02with which he was more closely associated than the space program one zero liftoff looks like a good
00:57:13flight all gold i think that our conquest of space man escaping his environment is one of the great
00:57:21stories in the 20th century some refer to cronkite as the eighth astronaut and indeed he learned as
00:57:31much about the space program as if he were planning to go on a moonshot himself
00:57:39well it's like walking on the moon it's not bad
00:57:42he really did his homework extremely well and of course it showed up in his comments it was it just
00:57:48naturally came through and that's almost precisely on the money that's at the apogee they fire at the
00:57:56apogee to raise the perigee the perigee the space program was so much a part of our family life it
00:58:03was
00:58:03something that he personally was really emotional about really passionate about really caught up in
00:58:08really excited by and and brought that excitement home to all of us about the possibilities about the
00:58:15technologies about the frontier he was so excited before each shot that he could hardly sleep at
00:58:21night you know so keyed up to some of his colleagues walter's enthusiasm got the better of his judgment
00:58:30it's the arm of which the flight crew will load on launch morning i thought walter was a booster for
00:58:37the space program i thought he got captivated by it and i think i think that was understandable
00:58:43we were political reporters and uh sure we thought that he had uh from time to time put too much
00:58:51emphasis on the space program but it was a fascinating period and he became identified with it four three
00:58:58two one zero liftoff we have a liftoff
00:59:05the space program reached its pinnacle in july 1969 with the launch
00:59:11of apollo 11. the landing on the moon presented an interesting emotional challenge for me
00:59:20i had just as much time to prepare for that landing as the space program did i'd watched it from
00:59:26the
00:59:26beginning with us here at the cbs news space center our very dear old friend and yours too wally shara
00:59:36who naturally i had this awe of going on the air with walter and i kept asking him off camera
00:59:40are there
00:59:41things we should be doing so i was sort of seeking the father-son guidance from walter of uh
00:59:48what can we say what are you going to say when these men uh land on the moon oh wait
00:59:54i i i i consider
00:59:55that quite seriously i see you wonderful thank you eagle we got you now it's looking good over
01:00:02finally we're approaching lunar landing and we're off camera and looking at each other
01:00:07what are you going to say oh boy while they say something i'm speechless the world class journalist
01:00:28has spoken by the late 1960s walter helped the cbs evening news reach new heights as well
01:00:38the program landed on top of the ratings the show's number one ranking firmly established walter
01:00:45as the most popular and the most important newsman in america but being number one had its drawbacks
01:00:54it made walter and cbs news a particular target despite what uh cronkite may say or mr stanton may say
01:01:06i don't think cbs has been particularly objective as we got deeper into the first nixon administration
01:01:14and when a calculated decision was made by the president and by those around the president
01:01:20it to have spiro agnew try to quote muscle the press walter was amounting the first to realize what was
01:01:29happening now how is this network news determined a small group of men numbering perhaps no more than
01:01:39a dozen anchormen commentators and executive producers settle upon the 20 minutes or so of film
01:01:46and commentary that's to reach the public it struck a chord in the american people and that shocked us
01:01:55number one shocked us that a that a high elected official would attack a news organization number
01:02:01two that the response from the people was so overwhelmingly favorable that was a shock
01:02:07in the united states vice president spiro agnew spearheaded the nixon administration's effort
01:02:14to demonize the press as a negative force in the country when the public cheered agnew's remarks american
01:02:23media figures knew they were in trouble and as the most visible and well-known newsman in america cronkite
01:02:31was on the front line again we're not defending a precious right of our own of freedom of speech
01:02:38and freedom of press now what we're defending is the people's right to know
01:02:46but the issue of the media became less important as reports of the watergate burglary began to leak out
01:02:54the white house became embroiled in scandal
01:03:02the watergate story was broken with a lot of headlines by primarily the washington post
01:03:09but the story petered out it had really faded out and yet here was this this
01:03:17really insidious crime to try to steal our democracy to steal an election
01:03:25the watergate story would soon die if someone didn't try to make some sense of it
01:03:32cronkite came in one day and threw up his arms and said this is impossible it doesn't make any
01:03:37sense at all let's put together what we know in an abc fashion with a story that has a beginning
01:03:44a middle maybe an end but at least let's leave let's see what the possible endings are
01:03:50at first it was called the watergate caper five men apparently caught in the act of burglarizing
01:03:58and bugging democratic headquarters in washington but the episode grew steadily more sinister
01:04:03no longer a caper but the watergate affair escalating suddenly watergate made sense to people
01:04:12this was cronkite's instinct that led us to this uh even though we didn't have any any new information
01:04:18the white house went crazy absolutely crazy we this was broadcast two or three weeks before the
01:04:24election of 72 and it was it was wild well the washington post charges that at least one fairly
01:04:32important white house official saw the bugging reports and it's walter cronkite was at the height of
01:04:37his influence during the nixon period they surely considered him as a spokesman of the enemy press
01:04:45on odd number days president nixon might even have considered him a personal enemy
01:04:52white house officials complained bitterly to cbs executives about walters watergate reports
01:04:59but there was no backing down and for the next year and a half the evening news stayed on top
01:05:06of the growing scandal mr haldeman good evening john dean the ex-white house council testified today
01:05:13that president nixon knew about the watergate cover-up you can't believe what it was like to be a
01:05:19journalist back then when every story each night was better than the one the night before until you
01:05:26couldn't stand it i mean you wake up in the morning like this but you did not know what was
01:05:31going to
01:05:31happen to your government to the administration so that was very exciting good evening the watergate
01:05:37grand jury today indicted seven former top-level nixon administration and campaign aides for plotting
01:05:43to cover up the scandal 27 members have voted aye 11 members have voted no i shall resign the presidency
01:05:53effective at noon tomorrow on august 9 1974 richard nixon was forced out of the presidency
01:06:09by this time walter cronkite was at the peak of his fame and influence he was praised revered a celebrity
01:06:18a tv star he was about to discover just how big a star he had become up up up up
01:06:27everybody it's your
01:06:28birthday good morning and happy birthday i'm walter cronkite cbs news happy birthday to all 215 million
01:06:36of us the people of the united states of america on this the 200th anniversary of our nation
01:06:42by the 200th birthday of the united states walter cronkite was an american institution what a day
01:06:50what a day this has been this has been the grandest birthday party this nation could have given itself
01:06:58he had grown up virtually fatherless but as a nightly presence in millions of american homes
01:07:05walter became a father figure to the nation
01:07:09and in an era when americans had become disillusioned with their government he came to be called the
01:07:15most trusted man in america i was deeply honored of course that's something that any journalist would
01:07:24like to believe that they have achieved as a degree of trust in their reporting but you know
01:07:31there wasn't anything i could do about it i mean once you've got to that kind of accolade
01:07:38uh what what do you do with it it just seemed like it was kind of pretentious to say that
01:07:44somebody
01:07:44was most trusted of course you have to realize we had watergate and a lot of untrusted people then
01:07:49so it was comparatively i think the most trusted walter cronkite is the most trusted public figure in the
01:07:56country okay as far as the news is concerned walter's celebrity transcended television news it was
01:08:04comparable only to entertainment figures and when he was out in public he was received like a movie star
01:08:13this is worse than your evening show
01:08:16sometimes his celebrity interfered with his ability to do his job his mere appearance at a
01:08:24political rally or political event created more interest and focus than the politician who was
01:08:32running for office but walter didn't shy away from the limelight he loved to party and he reveled in
01:08:41being able to take over a room people liked him they all liked him he was a great entertainer he
01:08:48became
01:08:49the center of any social group the minute he walked into it he's the kind of person you want to
01:08:59party
01:09:00because he comes to have a good time and he's going to have a good time if the seating falls
01:09:04in
01:09:05uh if you run out of food he's going to have a good time i think the women all love
01:09:10him and the guys you
01:09:13know feel like they're his best buddy and you know right away there's no side to him he is in
01:09:21social
01:09:21situation the way he is on television friendly trivial trustworthy
01:09:30his colleagues felt the same way the christmas party was the one day of the year when walter
01:09:38i think literally let his hair down and would play a play a piano and and and do a very
01:09:44modest but
01:09:45funny striptease it was a party everyone looked forward to it was a wonderful party it was not a
01:09:51party everyone remembered but everyone looked forward to and being the life of the party occasionally got
01:10:00him in trouble we went to tahiti together and we had a wonderful time and the thing they don't know
01:10:09about walter though he's the most trusted man in america he also likes women and out there in tahiti
01:10:17we all met the most gorgeous woman we've ever seen in our lives
01:10:24so walter started dancing with her and he couldn't stop dancing
01:10:33betsy got awfully mad at him
01:10:43being a star also meant walter could practically dictate his own terms to cbs
01:10:51walter got this nifty contract sort of in the 70s i guess in which he got i guess two months
01:10:57off
01:10:58we said he should change the name of his boat to assignment so then the announcer could say the cbs
01:11:04this evening news with roger budd substituting for walter cronkite who is on assignment
01:11:10walter and his beloved both she did take him on some rough passages
01:11:17there was a crash of thunder and lightning and this face was lit up and i was about
01:11:22six or seven inches from walter's face you know the most famous face in america at that time
01:11:29and here are these red eyes from being up so long salt water and a two or three day stubble
01:11:36beard and just this flash for a second we were looking in each other's eyes we went on deck
01:11:42he excused the the crew that was up there and he and i sailed the boat through the stormy night
01:11:50he's a regular magellan he can plot a course from a to b and get there exactly when he says
01:11:55he will
01:11:56at the end of the day i'm always kind of relieved we made it again
01:12:01one thing the captain did do was to coin a phrase that became part of our vocabulary
01:12:08all these famous broadcasters have their catch lines morrow good night and good luck
01:12:14lowell thomas and so long until tomorrow so why not have one of those and a nice one might be
01:12:21and
01:12:21that's the way it is because i could say it almost any way and that's the way it is and
01:12:26that's the way
01:12:26it is that's the way it is and it caught on almost instantly that it's the darndest thing the way
01:12:34such
01:12:34thing can can make an impact even in the 1970s walter still made his biggest impact on the staff
01:12:43of the cbs evening news he was as demanding as ever that the program maintained its number one ranking
01:12:52that's the one i doubt i doubt these stories that they're doing this for the first for a showdown battle
01:12:59i made cronkite was ferocious in terms of being upset if he feels uh cbs news has been beaten on
01:13:08his story and he would pay very close attention to the competition and not only in terms of whether
01:13:16they had scoops we didn't have but whether they handled a particular story better than we did in his
01:13:22eyes he was a tense competitor he was focused on stories he wanted his correspondence he insist his
01:13:30correspondence be story hunters story breakers storytellers you just knew that you had to somehow
01:13:42outperform the other networks walter never liked to be second and definitely not third it wasn't in his
01:13:52makeup one way he tried to keep cbs news on top was to push everyone to their limits
01:14:01he was a tough boss he could be tough and he he was the managing editor of his show so
01:14:07he was indeed a
01:14:08boss and he made demands regarding the pieces that uh were on his show well i know they don't want
01:14:17to
01:14:17you i'll see a script oh yeah i wanted to control that news flow so and there was quite a
01:14:24lot of
01:14:24screaming and hollering mostly on my part when we when we failed to get a story or didn't develop the
01:14:30story as well as the other two did this is the cbs evening news with walter cronkite good evening from
01:14:38cairo and washington today came pessimistic appraisals of the israeli egyptian peace treaty negotiations
01:14:45egypt's egypt's president saddam by the late 1970s walter cronkite was still at the top of his game
01:14:52but the most trusted man in america was growing tired as he approached the age of 65 he began to
01:15:00think of what he wanted to do with the rest of his life the decisions that followed would shake cbs
01:15:07news
01:15:08to its foundations walter cronkite was so closely identified with cbs news that thoughts of his
01:15:19retirement had long struck fear into the network so when walter began to make noises about stepping down
01:15:27cbs news management was in no hurry to name a successor but then dan rather one of the network's top
01:15:36correspondents received offers from the other networks cbs executives became nervous and talk of
01:15:43succeeding walter shifted into high gear both rather and cbs correspondent roger mud had their eyes on the
01:15:53cronkite throne there was turmoil at the time because it had been generally believed that roger mud
01:16:03was the heir apparent and it didn't happen that way with abc hoping to build its news division around
01:16:12rather it became clear that cbs's only hope of keeping him was to give him the top job
01:16:19so in february 1980 cbs anointed him to succeed walter cronkite complete with a timetable that would force
01:16:28walter out eight months earlier than he had planned to leave i think he felt that he had been pushed
01:16:35a
01:16:36bit i think he was i think he felt that he wanted to stay another year but the circumstances were
01:16:43such
01:16:44that it for the management is it was not convenient dan has signed a new long-term contract
01:16:52and we'll take up walter publicly supported cbs's decision but inside cbs there was fear about a
01:17:00future with anyone but him at the helm walter cronkite's final broadcast as the anchor of the cbs evening
01:17:13news took place march 6 1981 the anticipation for his last broadcast was without precedent when cronkite
01:17:23stepped down from the evening news he was as famous as clark gable when gone with the wind open
01:17:31stand by 15 seconds we're rolling cronkite's imminent departure was lamented nationwide
01:17:42it seemed everyone wanted to talk about it everyone but walter
01:17:49this is the cbs evening news with walter cronkite good evening president reagan cronkite did not want
01:17:56to say anything about his departure his intention was to simply sign off and leave and bill leonard then
01:18:07president of cbs news had some ferocious conversations with him thursday and friday leading up to the
01:18:13departure to convince him to say something this is my last broadcast as the anchorman of the cbs evening
01:18:21news for me it's a moment for which i long have planned but which nevertheless comes with some sadness
01:18:27for almost two decades after all we've been meeting like this in the evenings and i'll miss that but
01:18:32those who have made anything of this departure i'm afraid have made too much this is but a transition
01:18:38a passing of the baton a great broadcaster and gentleman doug edwards preceded me in this job and
01:18:45another dan rather will follow and anyway walter finished the broadcast and was swept away to a
01:18:52series of parties the first was at cbs
01:18:58i asked betsy cronkite to make sure that he didn't come back to the set after the drinks that
01:19:06he went right to the second party i wasn't there but he did come back but it must have been
01:19:13uh a singular moment for him to come back and see you know it was being ripped up walter's name
01:19:21was
01:19:21already off the door there were drop cloths over everything repeating because they had to get it
01:19:26ready by monday and they and they did not want the exact same set you know and they had this
01:19:31in
01:19:31planning stages for a long time but it was it was really eerie to come up and it was like
01:19:39the evidence was being removed still walter was a valuable property and signed a new multi-million
01:19:47dollar contract with cbs and was named to the company's board of directors
01:19:54less than two months ago walter cronkite on assignment in poland interviewed the two leading
01:19:58antagonists the head of solidarity lech bowenza and the head of government general yarisowski
01:20:04walter how can they in their contrary positions be reconciled
01:20:09i don't think their contrasting positions can be reconciled
01:20:13he expected to appear frequently on the network hosting specials and reporting for cbs news
01:20:20but after some initial appearances he began to be seen less and less there was a very real perception
01:20:28all you had to do was tune in that walter was not only out of his job had left his
01:20:35his anchorman's job but
01:20:37some people there and management just no longer wanted him present there and i don't know
01:20:46why but there was a definite break from the past are you saying it's not a bomb
01:20:51they're saying an explosive device some type of device walter also watched in frustration as cbs's once
01:20:59vaunted news division was hurt by budget cuts but his protests were ignored
01:21:07as the 80s came to a close walter felt unwanted he had given his life to cbs but he was
01:21:14now perceived
01:21:14as a troublemaking dinosaur he knew it was time to find a new television home
01:21:27so walter cronkite had spent over 35 years at cbs most of it as the network's biggest news star
01:21:35he was still under contract to cbs but had little to do mr and mrs walter cronkite so in 1993
01:21:43at the age of 76 he formed an independent television production company walter still had plenty of
01:21:51stories he wanted to report he focused on his favorite topic science we seem to have an affinity
01:21:59for wales and i want to take you back beyond even the time when this man was alive the environment
01:22:06do we
01:22:07have time to delay environmental legislation an alliance of congressmen and industrialists
01:22:13is threatening the environmental gains that we've made at great cost over the last 25 years
01:22:20and public affairs we're either going to make up our mind to be competitive or not
01:22:24thank you very much mr president thank you thank you very much walter also became a persistent
01:22:31critic of the television news business we're not doing our job in television news nearly and we are
01:22:38endangering the democracy by our failure to understand and to carry out our responsibility in this regard
01:22:47his criticisms of television news were simple and clear he decried its increasing emphasis on
01:22:54entertainment at the expense of the news values he had always championed
01:22:59the news area whereas in our day the management considered as practically a lost leader a prestige
01:23:06item for the network and left us alone to do what we felt was necessary which would spend the time
01:23:11delivering the news and not trying to constantly featurize it and in order to to hold on to a ever
01:23:18shrinking part of the viewer pie
01:23:26the news and the news and the news and the news and the news and all the managing editors and
01:23:37anchormans
01:23:38bewail the lack of hard news but nothing happens nothing changes
01:23:43walter also spent his 70s working on a long overdue autobiography the project forced him to reassess his
01:23:53profession he said i thought that i or we all were building something in this new business called
01:24:04television news that would last forever that we were setting a standard that others who came after us
01:24:13would follow and then he looked sort of wistfully and said and it just disappeared like that
01:24:24in april 1997 age seemed finally to be catching up with walter cronkite he entered the hospital for a
01:24:32quadruple bypass i was concerned and i told him that and he said well i'm not you know worry about
01:24:41it and
01:24:41and i i don't think he wasn't it wasn't bravado or anything walter was 80 years old an age when
01:24:50most men
01:24:50slow down but he left the hospital and returned to an active life almost immediately sure enough he
01:24:59went in and not long after that he was out again and we were sailing in fact there was a
01:25:05little concern
01:25:06amongst the doctors and family did not push it and i looked at him standing behind the wheel and we
01:25:13had
01:25:13one one day a really rollicking sail and he was right there on the helm you know hanging on and
01:25:19away we
01:25:20went he's back in every way and i think i think it's fair to say that he's better looking now
01:25:26than
01:25:26he was 20 years ago he's in robust good health that's the way it was that's the way it is
01:25:33that's
01:25:34the way it always should be ladies and gentlemen walter cronkite
01:25:59was more than the most famous television newsman he was one of the biggest tv stars there ever was
01:26:07and he was ideally suited for the media his career coincided with one of the most turbulent
01:26:14distressing and exciting periods in american history he is permanently associated with the
01:26:21events that defined that era and no one ever did more for television news
01:26:29i believe then and believe now there's never going to be another walter cronkite
01:26:35i think he set the standard of truth justice in the american way you know
01:26:42and of what good journalism is walter represents television news at its very best cronkite was
01:26:51the consummate anchor his interest was not in himself not in his career not in promoting himself
01:26:59as a see-all know-all be-all but just as being a reporter of news the thing that people
01:27:04like about
01:27:05walter so much now is he was the last guy you felt who was giving you the news straight
01:27:13and that's the way it is friday march 6 1981 i'll be away on assignment and dan rather will be
01:27:19sitting
01:27:19in here for the next few years good night
01:27:53you