Studs Terkel, legendary Pulitzer Prize winning author, historian, radio and television broadcaster, and Chicago icon has died at age 96.  His pioneering work spanned many decades and many genres; he wrote numerous best selling books, was a major force in establishing the cultural importance of oral history, of chronicling the lives of everyday people, and he was a lifelong activist.  He was also a trailblazing figure in the early days of television in the 1950s and, a long-time radio broadcaster, with a radio program on Chicago’s WFMT for 45 years.

“My epitaph? My epitaph will be ‘Curiosity did not kill this cat,’” he once said.

Louis Terkel arrived here as a child from New York City and in Chicago found not only a new name but a place that perfectly matched–in its energy, its swagger, its charms, its heart–his own personality. They made a perfect and enduring pair.

Author-radio host-actor-activist and Chicago symbol Louis “Studs” Terkel died today at his Chicago home at age 96.

At his bedside was a copy of his latest book, “P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening,” scheduled for a November release.

Beset in recent years by a variety of ailments and the woes of age, which included being virtually deaf, Terkel’s health took a turn for the worse when he suffered a fall in his home two weeks ago.

It is hard to imagine a fuller life.

Studs Terkel in 2001 (Photo credit: Chicago Tribune)

A television institution for years, a radio staple for decades, a literary lion since 1967, when he wrote his first best-selling book at the age of 55, Louis Terkel was born in New York City on May 16, 1912. “I came up the year the Titanic went down,” he would often say. [...]

He attended the University of Chicago, where he obtained a law degree and borrowed his nickname from the character in the ” Studs Lonigan” trilogy by Chicago writer James T. Farrell. He never practiced law. Instead, he took a job in a federally sponsored statistical project with the Federal Emergency Rehabilitation Administration, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” agencies. Then he found a spot in a writers project with the Works Progress Administration, writing plays and developing his acting skills.

Terkel worked on radio soap operas, in stage plays, as a sportscaster and a disk jockey. His first radio program was called “The Wax Museum,” an eclectic gather of whatever sort of music struck his fancy, including the first recordings of Mahalia Jackson, who would become a friend.

When television became a force in the American home in the early 1950s, Terkel created and hosted “Studs’ Place,” one of the major jewels in the legendary “Chicago school” of television that also spawned Dave Garroway and Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

It was on “Studs’ Place,” which was set in a tavern, that large numbers of people discovered what Terkel did best–talk and listen. Terkel, arms waving, words exploding in bursts, leaning close to his talking companions, didn’t merely conduct interviews. He engaged in conversations. He was interested in what he was talking about and who he was talking to.  [Continues...]

Source:  Chicago Tribune obituary – Studs Terkel dies

Studs Terkel in 2007 (Photo credit: Chicago Tribune)

In his oral histories, which he called guerrilla journalism, Studs Terkel relied on his enthusiastic but gentle interviewing style to elicit, in rich detail, the experiences and thoughts of ordinary Americans. “Division Street: America” (1966), his first best-seller and the first in a triptych of tape-recorded works, explored the urban conflicts of the 1960s. Its success led to “Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression”(1970) and “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do”(1974). “ ‘The Good War’: An Oral History of World War II,” won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.

In “Talking to Myself,” Mr. Terkel turned the microphone on himself to produce an engaging memoir, and more recently, in “Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession” (1992) and “Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who’ve Lived It”(1995)’ he reached for his ever-present tape recorder for interviews on race relations in the United States and the experience of growing old.

Although detractors derided him as a sentimental populist whose views were simplistic and occasionally maudlin, Mr. Terkel was widely credited with transforming oral history into a popular literary form. In 1985 a reviewer for The Financial Times of London characterized Mr. Terkel’s books as “completely free of sociological claptrap, armchair revisionism and academic moralizing.”

Source: New York Times Obituary – Studs Terkel, Chronicler of the American Everyman, Is Dead at 96

For more photographs of Studs Terkel see: Chicago Tribune – Studs Terkel turns the page

Harry Kreisler interviewed Studs Terkel on October 29, 2003 as part of his “Conversations with History” series

Here is a three-part interview with Studs Terkel on YouTube from the Archive of American Television.

Part 1 – Terkel discusses his early years in television broadcast
• Part 2 – Terkel talks about his 1950s TV series “Stud’s Place”
• Part 3 – Terkel talks about his guest appearances on TV shows in the 1950s

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Studs Terkel, Legendary Author, Historian, Broadcaster (1912-2008) Video Tribute