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

Related post:

• Studs Terkel, Legendary Author, Historian, Broadcaster Publishes New Memoir at Age 95

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

Continuing the promotion of her new book, Audition: A Memoir, Barbara Walters made an appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on May 14. Not surprisingly, Barbara Walters’ revelations of affairs with former Senator Edward Brooke, as well as Alan Greenspan, Alan Greenberg, Senator John Warner – along with the highly public feud with former View cohost, Star Jones — have boosted book sales beyond the quarter million mark in just a few days.

New York Post Page Six declares a backlash:

THE backlash has begun against Barbara Walters for admitting in her autobiography, “Audition,” to an adulterous affair 30 years ago with Edward Brooke, the then-married Massachusetts senator, while she was simultaneously seeing Alan “Ace“ Greenberg, who became chairman of Bear Stearns.

“Barbara Walters is a shameless media whore,” says Marc Dice, spokesman for conservative media watchdog group The Resistance. “Barbara has now sunk to the very level of other attention-starved celebrities such as Paris Hilton or even Steve-O from ‘Jackass.’ ”

Walters’ spokeswoman, Cindi Berger, told Page Six: “This conservative watchdog seems to have lived a sheltered life in his doghouse.”

Source: New York Post – Barbara Starts to Feel Heat

See also:

• Video: Barbara Walters on Oprah 5/6/08 (Full Interview)
• Barbara Walters’ Previously Secret Affair with Senator Edward Brooke No Longer Secret
• Celebitchy: Barbara Walters cheated on the men she bedded, incl. Alan Greenspan

Via: Popcrunch – Barbara Walters “Ellen” Video

Video: Barbara Walters on “Ellen DeGeneres Show” 5-14-08

William Shatner made an appearance on May 12, 2008 on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” discussing his book, Up Till Now: The Autobiographywhich was released today, May 13 and surveys Shatner’s lengthy film, theater and television career. The early days of his career saw Shatner in movies such as “Judgment at Nuremberg” and television series such as “The Twilight Zone” in the years before the “Star Trek” — and now “Boston Legal” — roles for which he is most known.

In a recent interview, William Shatner discussed how and why he wrote the book.

“I wrote it because I had the opportunity to,” he says, speaking in his deliberate way by phone after a day on the set of “Boston Legal.” “And I chose to do it because I felt it was a way of explaining to my children and grandchildren who I was … in some minuscule form, like a book.

“So the last while I’ve been trying to do things that may explain who this creature was that they were looking at, and what was going on inside.”

In a way, he explains, one of the most recognizable faces in show business needed to write a book to help his own family recognize who he was and what his life had meant for all those years he’d spent in the spotlight. It was an experience, that Shatner says showed him things about himself he’d never before recognized.

Shatner told his stories into a recorder and sent them to co-author David Fisher, who worked them into rough drafts of chapters, which mapped the actor’s life in ways he’d never considered it before, he says.

“I saw my life laid out in a pattern, laid out in a sequential way that I’d never thought of it before, and then I went through the process of puzzling out what was the meaning of all this, where were the repetitions, the habits – why did I do the things that I did?

“And it was alarming! First of all, the time, the interval between the first story and the last story in my head is about seven weeks,” Shatner says. “But it turns out to be considerably longer than that. And it all happened so quickly and I had no idea that it was happening.”

William Shatner and Julie Harris in the Broadway play “A Shot In The Dark” in 1962

Seeing the passage of time in his life’s story, Shatner says, encouraged him not just to complete the book, but also to consider everything else that he wanted to accomplish in his life.

“It reinforces a feeling of anxiety of getting thing done, of doing the things you meant to do, or you have in mind to do,” he says. “There’s an urgency involved that wasn’t there before.”

And so he talked and talked, and Fisher sculpted the stories into chapters and a book that is filled with stories.

Many are funny – his encounter with Koko the famous gorilla, who decided to grab him by a most sensitive part of the anatomy, helps open the book.

William Shatner with Leonard Nimoy

Others poignant – after “Star Trek” ended, freshly divorced and completely broke, he was practically homeless, working in summer stock around the country, sleeping behind the theaters in his pickup truck to save money.

Source: William Shatner shares O.C. memories in new book

See also:

• In bed with Captain Kirk … William Shatner tells of his 40-year Star Trek
• William Shatner: ‘Mr Spock hated me’

Via – William Shatner Conan Video: William Shatner “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” Video

That’s the news and video: William Shatner on Conan O’Brien 5-12-08

Last week, Barbara Walters’ new book, Audition: A Memoir, and news of her revelation of the previously secret 1970s affair with former Senator Edward Brooke, the first black U.S. senator since the Reconstruction Era, predictably drew much attention. No doubt her interview on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” will draw even more interest as she discusses her colorful public and private persona.

Barbara Walters 1970s

Senator Edward W. Brooke in 1973 – Photo Credit: Jim Cole

Barbara Walters shared other personal revelations in her interview.

Walters told Winfrey that she knew about [Star] Jones’ gastric bypass surgery long before “The View” co-host admitted it to the public, but she and the rest of “The View” women lied to keep it a secret because Jones didn’t want to talk about it.

“She decided to have a gastric bypass operation, but then she decided not to tell anybody,” Walters said on Tuesday’s “Oprah.” “Then we had to lie on the set every day because she said it was portion control and Pilates. Well, we knew it wasn’t portion control and Pilates.”

On June 27, 2006, Jones told People magazine she would be leaving Walters’ talk show because her contract wasn’t renewed, saying, “I feel like I was fired.” The next day, Walters said she was blindsided by Jones’ announcement and effective immediately, Jones would no longer appear on “The View.”

Walters also dished about former “View” moderator Rosie O’Donnell’s infamous shouting match with Elisabeth Hasselbeck in May 2007. The two got into a heated on-air debate about the Iraq War that prompted O’Donnell’s premature departure from the show.

Walters said she was at home during the on-air spat, “saying, ‘Go to commercial, Go to commercial!’” But Walters said that she didn’t regret having O’Donnell on the show and still respects her tremendously.

The veteran newswoman opened up about her 1970s affair with married U.S. Sen. Edward Brooke, the first African-American to be popularly elected to the Senate. During the years of their affair, Walters was a co-host of NBC’s “Today” show. The couple agreed to keep their relationship a secret for fear that public knowledge of it would ruin their careers. Their tryst ended before Brooke lost his bid for a third term in 1978.

Source: Barbara Walters Spills About Star Jones, Rosie O’Donnell

See also previous story:

• Barbara Walters’ Previously Secret Affair with Senator Edward Brooke No Longer Secret

Video via Popcrunch – Barbara Walters “Oprah” Video

Barbara Walters on The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast on May 6, 2008.

Trailblazing actor, director and Hollywood icon Sidney Poitier has written a new memoir, Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter, which, as the title implies is his life story told in letters to his great-granddaughter. His previous memoirs, This Life and The Measure of a Man have been wildly successful (Measure of a Man was an Oprah Book Club selection) and illuminating, letting us know a bit more about this living Hollywood legend and the struggles and obstacles he has faced and emerged triumphant.

In 1967, Sidney Poitier had three box-office smashes: “To Sir, With Love,” “In the Heat of the Night,” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” It was the career apex of a trailblazing actor who had vaulted over Hollywood’s color barrier to become Hollywood’s first black leading man, upturning the stereotypical roles inhabited by Butterfly McQueen, Stepin Fetchit and the like. Poitier gave the movies a bold new image of an African American man who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his white counterparts. That he did this during the turbulent years of the civil rights era made his impact even greater.

Then, suddenly, the love affair was over. In the racial and political fury of the late ‘60, Poitier and the button-down, impossibly noble characters he played became outdated symbols of slow, moderate progress in a country that was in rapid upheaval. He worked decades longer without another major hit, gradually receding into the role of elder statesman — revered by African American actors and filmmakers who passed through doors he opened, but seemingly ignored by just about everyone else.

What will Sidney Poitier’s legacy be to future generations, those born in the Barack Obama era and beyond? It’s an unasked question that resonates through “Life Beyond Measure,” Poitier’s third memoir. Composed as a series of letters to Poitier’s great-granddaughter Ayele, born in 2005 (when Poitier was in his late 70s), the book is equal parts family history, autobiography and ruminations on love, faith, life, death and personal strengths and foibles.

Poitier never lectures or condescends, but “Life Beyond Measure” still has the feel of an old man waxing nostalgic and philosophical to a little girl bouncing on his lap. He revisits oft-told tales from the arc of his life, from his upbringing in a dirt-poor paradise in the Bahamas, to arriving in New York alone at 16 and sleeping in bus-station pay toilets, to the job search that led him to an ad for “actors wanted.” Here, though, the stories are used as object lessons and entrees to broader essays about the world Poitier bequeaths to the little girl. It’s all written in simple, gentle prose that’s restrained even by Poitier’s own standards; not kid stuff exactly, but you won’t find the four-letter words or the simmering anger that fueled Poitier’s two previous books, “This Life” and “The Measure of a Man.”

Source: Breaking barriers

Read an excerpt of Sidney Poitier’s book.

Here’s a look at some of Poitier’s early groundbreaking work….

No Way Out earns its place in the history books thanks to the searing feature film debut of Sidney Poitier, offering a formidable performance as a doctor tending to slum residents whose ethics are put to the test when confronted with blind racism, personified by Richard Widmark as the hateful robber Ray Biddle.

Source: Wikipedia “No Way Out”

Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark in “No Way Out“ (1950)

Here is the trailer for “No Way Out”

Blackboard Jungle is another groundbreaking film, in which Sidney Poitier starred as a teacher in an inner-city school coping with students who exhibited disrupting and sometimes violent behavior.

The film has also been credited with sparking the Rock and Roll revolution by featuring Bill Haley & His Comets’s Rock Around the Clock, initially a B-side, over the film’s opening credits, establishing that song as an instant classic. The music led to a huge teenage audience for the film: their exuberance sometimes overflowed into violence and vandalism at screenings.^[1] In this sense, it has been seen as marking the start of a period of visible teenage rebellion in the late 20th century.

Source: Wikipedia – Blackboard Jungle

Sidney Poitier and Glenn Ford in “Blackboard Jungle” (1955)

Here is a scene from “Blackboard Jungle” – opening day at school

Sidney Poitier won the Oscar for “Lillies of the Field,” the first black ever to win a Best Actor Academy Award.

Sidney Poitier with Lilia Skala in “Lilies of the Field”

Final scene of “Lilies of the Field”

Sidney Poitier’s 1964 Oscar acceptance speech for “Lilies of the Field”

That’s just a small sampling of Sidney Poitier’s impressive, trailblazing early work in Hollywood. In an era in which movies were dominated with images of black stereotypes, Poitier’s dignified leading man roles were remarkable indeed.

Apparently with Barbara Walters there is a statute of limitation on secrecy if it means more book sales. And so it is that former U.S. Senator Edward Brooke’s Wikipedia entry has been edited today to let the reader know of Barbara Walters’ revelation of a previously secret affair in the 1970s.

After three decades of keeping mum, Barbara Walters is disclosing a past affair with married U.S. Senator Edward Brooke, whom she remembers as “exciting” and “brilliant.”

Senator Edward W. Brooke in 1973 – Photo Credit: Jim Cole

Appearing on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” scheduled to air Tuesday, Walters shares details of her relationship with Brooke that lasted several years in the 1970s, according to a transcript of the show provided to The Associated Press.

A moderate Republican from Massachusetts who took office in 1967, Brooke was the first African-American to be popularly elected to the Senate. Both he and Walters knew that public knowledge of their affair could have ruined his career as well as hers, Walters says.

At the time, the twice-divorced Walters was a rising star in TV news and co-host of NBC’s TODAY show, but would soon jump to ABC News, where she has enjoyed unrivaled success. Her affair with Brooke, which never before came to light, had ended before he lost his bid for a third term in 1978.

[...]

Winfrey asks Walters if she was in love.

“I was certainly — I don’t know — I was certainly infatuated.”

“Infatuated.”

“I was certainly involved,” Walters says. “He was exciting. He was brilliant. It was exciting times in Washington.”

Source: Barbara Walters reveals affair with senator

Photo credit: White House
Edward Brooke receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 as President George W. Bush congratulates him

It is a strange and unexpected way for former Senator Edward Brooke to find himself in the limelight again. For those who never never heard of him, he was the first black U.S. Senator, since the Reconstruction Era, serving from 1967-1979. We suspect he prefers to be remembered for that than for this.

More about Barbara Walter’s new memoir, Audition:

Audition: A Memoir

Arthur C. Clark, a towering figure in science fiction and futurism has died at 90.

Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90.

Rohan de Silva, an aide, confirmed the death and said Mr. Clarke had been experiencing breathing problems, The Associated Press reported. He had suffered from post-polio syndrome for the last two decades.

The author of almost 100 books, Mr. Clarke was an ardent promoter of the idea that humanity’s destiny lay beyond the confines of Earth. It was a vision served most vividly by “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the classic 1968 science-fiction film he created with the director Stanley Kubrick and the novel of the same title that he wrote as part of the project.

His work was also prophetic: his detailed forecast of telecommunications satellites in 1945 came more than a decade before the first orbital rocket flight.

Other early advocates of a space program argued that it would pay for itself by jump-starting new technology. Mr. Clarke set his sights higher. Borrowing a phrase from William James, he suggested that exploring the solar system could serve as the “moral equivalent of war,” giving an outlet to energies that might otherwise lead to nuclear holocaust.

Mr. Clarke’s influence on public attitudes toward space was acknowledged by American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, by scientists like the astronomer Carl Sagan and by movie and television producers. Gene Roddenberry credited Mr. Clarke’s writings with giving him courage to pursue his “Star Trek” project in the face of indifference, even ridicule, from television executives.

In his later years, after settling in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Mr. Clarke continued to bask in worldwide acclaim as both a scientific sage and the pre-eminent science fiction writer of the 20th century. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

Mr. Clarke played down his success in foretelling a globe-spanning network of communications satellites. “No one can predict the future,” he always maintained. But as a science fiction writer he couldn’t resist drawing up timelines for what he called “possible futures.” Far from displaying uncanny prescience, these conjectures mainly demonstrated his lifelong, and often disappointed, optimism about the peaceful uses of technology — from his calculation in 1945 that atomic-fueled rockets could be no more than 20 years away to his conviction in 1999 that “clean, safe power” from “cold fusion” would be commercially available in the first years of the new millennium.

The New York Times obituary continues.

Wired had this to say.

Arthur C. Clarke, the award-winning sci-fi writer and futurist most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, died Wednesday at his home in Sri Lanka. He was 90.

His writing, both fiction and nonfiction, established Clarke as a visionary. In a paper titled “Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?” published in 1945 , Clarke floated the idea of using geosynchronous satellites for communications long before such technology changed our world. As a result, geostationary orbit is now sometimes known as the Clarke orbit.

That’s just one of the many innovative concepts Clark is credited with unleashing. From the electrosecretary transcription machine to the space elevator, Clarke laid out his visionary ideas in more than 100 fiction and nonfiction books.

Despite his track record as a futurist, Clarke remained humble about his work when he was interviewed for a 1993 Q&A with Wired magazine.

“I’ve never predicted the future,” Clarke said. “Or hardly ever. I extrapolate. Look, I’ve written six stories about the end of the Earth; they can’t all be true!”

Clarke picked his book The Songs of Distant Earth as his favorite personal writing, saying, “It’s got everything in it that I ever wanted to say.”

In one of the writer’s last published works, a submission to Wired magazine’s six-word story project in 2006, Clarke bent the rules a bit and refused to trim his 10-word piece (”God said, ‘Cancel Program GENESIS.’ The universe ceased to exist.”)

Arthur C. Clarke greets attendees at ISDC 2001.



Arthur C. Clarke 90th birthday reflections, recorded in December 2007.



Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Odyssey in 2 m and 01 sec