Frazier Hunt

Frazier Hunt (born 1885, Rock Island, Illinois, died 1967, Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania at Lincoln Avenue and Frost Lane) was an American radio announcer, writer and war correspondent during World War I and World War II. He wrote several books about his experience during both World Wars as well as historical biographies on famous Americans such as General George Armstrong Custer and Douglas MacArthur.

Biography

Hunt spent his boyhood in a small Indiana town and after two years in Chicago and three in Mexico he returned to another small mid-western town to edit the local paper. It was with this background that he came to New York City in 1916 and joined the staff of The Sun. From New York he went to France and from there to Russia where for months he had the Revolution all to himself.

In 1919, he smuggled a copy of the Treaty of Versailles, scooping the story.

He served as the European editor for Cosmoplitan Magazine, interviewing Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler. He also traveled to the Far East, covering the Sino-Japanese War.

One of his better-selling books was about his World War I experiences entitled Blown in By the Draft, published by Doubleday in 1918.

During the 1930s, he purchased the ranch "Eden Valley" in southern Alberta, where he met Edward, the Prince of Wales (future Edward VIII), teaching him how to play poker. His Untold Story of General MacArthur was based upon his war correspondence duties as he followed Douglas MacArthur through the Pacific.

As a broadcaster, Hunt presented Frazier Hunt and the News on the CBS Radio Network in the early 1940s.[1][2]

Hunt has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; he was inducted on February 8, 1960.[3]

Obituary

Obituary from the New York Times, December 27, 1967:

Frazier Hunt, 82, War Reporter In the Romantic Tradition, Dies. From the Marne to Moscow, From Lenin to Hitler, He Covered the Big Story

Newtown, Pa., Dec. 27 (UPI)—Frazier Hunt, author, newspaperman and correspondent in two wars, died on Christmas Eve, it was disclosed today. He was 82 years old.

Mr. Hunt suffered a stroke at his home here last Wednesday and was taken to Abington Hospital in Montgomery County where he died.

His wife, Emma, died in 1964. He is survived by a son Robert, three grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

A Flair for Adventure

A swashbuckling 240-pound Midwesterner who stood 6 feet 3 inches tall and whose habitual attire was a trenchcoat and a fedora, Frazier Hunt fulfilled a romantic’s ideal of a foreign correspondent. For three decades, from World War I through World War II, his life was one adventure after another, one exclusive story following hard upon another from all over the world.

He interviewed the world’s leading statesmen, from Lenin, who talked to him in broken English in the first days of the Bolshevik Revolution, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with whom he shared a luncheon tray in the White House. He covered big wars, small wars, revolutions and coups. He talked to the famous, from Maxim Gorky to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. And he was equally at home with the little known, whose words he reported in a notable survey of American opinion in 1936, a survey that forecast Mr. Roosevelt’s re-election.

Mr. Hunt—Spike as he was universally called—scored many notable exclusives, but perhaps none so dramatic as his acquiring a copy of the Treaty of Versailles before its release to the public. Carrying it from Paris to Chicago in the bottom of his kit bag, Mr. Hunt delivered the document to The Chicago Tribune, which published it. “I was called everything from a public benefactor to a traitor who should be publicly hung,” Mr. Hunt recalled in his autobiography, “One American and His Attempt at Education,” published in 1938.

Covered Pacific Campaign

In his career, Mr. Hunt worked for a variety of publishers and news services, including the International News Service, the National Editorial Association, and King Features. Many of his dispatches appeared in Hearst newspapers and in the New York World-Telegram. In World War II, he covered the Pacific campaign and General MacArthur for The Reader's Digest.

Two biographies of General MacArthur were among his 14 books. The others included an account of the life of Dr. Allan Dafoe, obstetrician to the Dionne quintuplets; a biography of King Edward VIII, with whom, as the Prince of Wales, he had shot craps [sic. taught him how to play poker in Alberta, Canada, while writing the book "Bachelor Prince"]; and a life of Billy the Kid, his final book, which was published in 1956 by Hasting’s House as “The Tragic Days of Billy the Kid.”

Frazier Hunt was born in Rock Island, Ill., Dec. 1, 1885, and was graduated in 1908 from the University of Illinois, where he was a cheerleader. Ever afterward he had a voice that roared.

He was a cub reporter in Chicago for two years, a sugar planter in Mexico for two-and-a-half years and editor of a country newspaper in Alexis, Ill. In 1916, he came to New York and joined the staff of The New York Sun. According to legend, he was hired by Keats Speed, The Sun‍ '​s city editor, solely because Mr. Speed, a tall man, was impressed with Mr. Hunt’s height.

Assigned to cover a draft camp at Camp Upton on Long Island during World War I, he invented the character of Yaphank Bennie, who epitomized the shy, awkward boys who were undergoing basic training. Yaphank Bennie brought its creator national fame.

Mr. Hunt went to Europe to cover the war, first for the American Red Cross Magazine and then for The Chicago Tribune. A front-line correspondent, he witnessed part of the Battle of the Marne from a shell hole and marched with the American 42d Division on the Meuse-Argonne front.

Toward the end of the fighting in Europe, he was assigned to cover American troop intervention in the Russian Revolution. The presence of some 5,000 troops in the Arctic, near Archangel, was then little known. His dramatic dispatches, filed from Norway after he had left the front, were credited with forcing President Wilson to order the withdrawal of these soldiers.

Later, Mr. Hunt journeyed to Petrograd, now Leningrad, and to Moscow, where he interviewed the principal Bolshevik leaders. His cordial reception owed much to the sympathy he then expressed for the aims of the revolution and to his friendship with Lincoln Steffens, the American journalist.

Roved the World

After the war, Mr. Hunt went around the world as a roving correspondent. He interviewed Sun Yat-sen in China and Mohandas K. Gandi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) in India. He covered the bizarre attempt of Gabriele D'Annunzio, the Italian poet, to capture the port of Fiume. In Mexico, he cornered and questioned Pancho Villa. In Detroit, he interviewed Henry Ford on mysticism and religion. Mr. Hunt took his notebooks and typewriter back to Europe in 1922, where he developed a drinking relationship with Sinclair Lewis, covered Kemal Ataturk and the rise of Turkish nationalism, interviewed (and dismissed) Adolf Hitler, talked to Benito Mussolini, jogged across Siberia, interviewed Chinese and Japanese leaders. For 10 years his photograph and byline were almost as renowned as the names of those whose words and deeds he reported.

Returning to the United States in 1932, Mr. Hunt reported the first years of the New Deal, for which he had warm personal sympathies. For a while he was also a radio newscaster for the General Electric Company. In 1940, he returned to Europe to report on World War II, shifting to the Pacific theater after the United States entered the conflict in 1941.

With General MacArthur, whom he came to idolize, Mr. Hunt enjoyed a reputation for gusto and a hearty, self-confident roughness. His reportage, then, as earlier, was cast in the first person.

After the war, Mr. Hunt lived with his wife, the former Miss Emma Kern, in Newtown, Bucks County, Pa. He and Miss Kern, a childhood sweetheart, were married in 1911.

Other books

In collaboration with son Robert Hunt

References

  1. ↑ Paul Ackerman (March 14, 1942). "Program Reviews: Frazier Hunt". Billboard Magazine. Retrieved February 17, 2010.
  2. ↑ "<advertisement>". Life. March 22, 1943. Retrieved February 17, 2010.
  3. ↑ "Frazier Hunt". Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Retrieved February 17, 2010.

Other sources