Howard K. Smith
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Howard Kingsbury Smith (born May 12, 1914; Ferriday, Louisiana; died February 15, 2002, Bethesda, Maryland) was an American journalist, radio reporter, television anchorman and commentator, and one of the original Murrow boys.
Smith graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1936, with both a bachelor's degree and an L.L.D. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University (Merton College) from which he graduated in September 1939.
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[edit] Early career/CBS years
[edit] World War II
Upon graduating, Smith immediately went to work for United Press as a London reporter. In January 1940, he was sent to Berlin, where he soon went to work for CBS. 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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 "The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon" on ABC. Smith referred to Nixon's "last press conference" after his disastrous campaign against Democrat Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, Sr., for governor of California. In that press conference, the former vice president told the media representatives that they would not have Nixon "to kick around any more." Within four years, however, Nixon was on the road to a great political comeback.
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 Robert F. Kennedy 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 would continue 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. It was during this period that he began making increasingly conservative commentaries, espousing stands such as support for the U.S.' continued involvement in Vietnam, something contrary to the views of most other network TV newsmen. In a likely reversal of the situation some years before, Smith's opinions endeared him to Nixon, who rewarded him with a rare interview in 1971, at the height of the Administration's animus against major newspapers and CBS and NBC.
During the 1972 presidential campaign, a letter was published that he had written to candidate U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, which indicated Smith's full support for Muskie—using ABC stationery. Muskie had also been the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate with presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota in 1968. Nothing ever came of this controversy, however, and Smith kept his job.
Despite his formerly friendly relations with President Nixon, Smith became the first national television commentator to call for his resignation. 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."[1]
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.
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).
His son, Jack Smith, was an ABC correspondent who secured 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 Benedicte "Bennie" Traberg.
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.
[edit] Notes
[edit] External links
- Museum of Broadcast Communications
- Spartacus Educational website
- Who's Who in America, 1972 edition
- YouTube clip of Smith anchoring ABC News, November 21, 1969
- ABC News' "Time Tunnel" page containing clips of numerous newscasts on which Smith appeared
| Preceded by Howard K. Smith and Frank Reynolds |
ABC Evening News anchor 1970-1975 |
Succeeded by Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters |
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