Category Archives: News
Mort Crim
Bill Diehl
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A Remembrance
Not The Retiring Type
“This is a radio story!”
More on H.V.K. and Hitler
H.V. Kaltenborn’s round-the-clock reports on the Munich crisis of 1938 established him so firmly in the public mind as the voice of crisis from abroad, it’s recalled by his biographers that many American radio listeners were not fooled by Orson Welles’ panic-inducing “War of the Worlds” broadcast because Kaltenborn was not on it and surely would have been had the crisis been real.
Like many American correspondants who investigated reports of Nazi brutality as Hitler came to power, such as beatings of Americans who wouldn’t give the Nazi salute, Kaltenborn was known to suspect that the reports were exaggerated. Some biographers suggest his mind was changed when his own son suffered such a beating. H.V.K. acknowledged in later writings that he was slow to alter his view that Hitler was too radical and unstable to achieve power or long hold it.
Among the few American journalists to interview Hitler in the early 1930’s, Kaltenborn was the only one to interview Hitler several times. A few photos from Kalenborn’s book “Fifty Fabulous Years,” published in 1950 by G. P. Putnam Sons, and sent along by Bill Diehl, were recently published on this site. Bill has now sent a long a few pages about those Hitler interviews. Here they are.
End of excerpts from “Fifty Fabulous Years”
“The Rest Of The Story”
He Was A Gift
Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch (1978-1989) died Friday, Feb. 1 at age 88. An appraisal by Andy Fisher, posted on the New York Broadcasting History Board, appears below.
Ed Koch never worked for WNEW, but in the 1970s and 1980s, he might as well have.
Ed Koch certainly had a face for radio, and from sound-bite to talk show, he was always entertaining on the air. He presided over New York City’s financial and psychological comeback from chaos in the late 1970s, so he was a pretty good mayor by anyone’s standards, although for a long time, as someone pointed out this morning, he did seem to have a “tin ear” when it came to the subject of race relations.
My first interview with Ed Koch was on primary night in 1974. Howard Samuels, the choice of the Democratic organization, was supposed to win an easy gubernatorial nomination, so WNEW assigned first-string reporter Mike Eisgrau to Samuels headquarters. I was sent to the headquarters of underdog Brooklyn congressman Hugh Carey. Carey headquarters was a pretty quiet place, and I was getting set for a long wait until his concession speech, but shortly after the polls closed, Ed Koch showed up. He was the congressman from the “silk stocking” district, and he clearly knew that something extraordinary was happening. Sure enough, Carey upset Samuels, and Ed Koch was almost a play-by-play announcer for us!
The other time I interviewed him was July 4, 1986, during Liberty Weekend, when President Reagan came to town to re-dedicate the renovated Statue of Liberty. I was a radio correspondent for NBC News, and Mayor Koch came to the press compound on the landfill for Battery Park City. I needled him about Liberty Island really being in New Jersey, and about his own origins in Newark, and, of course, he gave as good as he got. I tend to judge people by their senses of humor, and on that basis, I regard Ed Koch as the greatest New York mayor I can remember.
I can’t conceive of Michael Bloomberg standing on the Brooklyn Bridge asking, “How’m I doing?” I can remember John Lindsay getting huffy when he was reminded about calling New York “Fun City.” You wouldn’t dare try to have fun with Rudy Giuliani.
Ed Koch was a gift to radio, to politics, and, most of all, to New York
A.F.
Photos added by WNEW1130