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(Click
on photos to enlarge)
Graham McNamee (L) was the emcee and straight man for Ed
Wynn (center) in the popular NBC “Texaco Fire Chief” program from 1932 to
1935. Orchestra Leader Lennie Hayton is
at right. (Author’s collection)
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He was radio's first big name
announcer - the prototype for all who followed.
His is mostly
forgotten today, but at one time it was said
that more people had heard his voice than any other human voice in the
history
of the world. Graham
McNamee practically
invented the art of radio announcing, and was the industry’s first
nationally-known
celebrity personality.
Born in 1888, he was
raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, where
his father was an attorney. He demonstrated an early love of sports and
played
them all – football, baseball, hockey and boxing -- but his mother
wanted him to
be an opera singer, and so he also took voice lessons. After his parents divorced
in 1907, he moved
with his mother to New York City, where he continued his musical
training and
sang in church choirs. He
found work as
a railroad clerk while pursuing a singing career. In 1920, at the age
of 31, he
made his professional singing debut at New York’s Aeolian Hall, but
despite
receiving good reviews, his concert and church work continued to be
scarce.
Early
in 1923, while serving jury duty, he took a lunchtime
break and walked over to AT&T’s radio station WEAF, asking to
audition as a
singer. There were
no singing
opportunities, but the manager liked McNamee’s baritone speaking voice
with its
clear enunciation and pleasant tone, and he hired him on the spot as an
announcer. McNamee
knew nothing about radio and didn’t
even own one at the time, but he had everything an announcer needed - a
clear
and pleasant speaking voice, ample vocabulary, and a knowledge of music
and
sports.
WEAF
in 1923 was a crude operation – broadcasting just four
hours daily from two rooms with a tiny staff. His
job was simple. He
wrote, “All
the man before the microphone had to do was to say, ‘Miss So and So
will now
sing such a number’, and at the end, ‘Miss So and So has sung such a
number,’
without any comments or explanation of the music.” McNamee initially adopted
the formal style of
announcing that was common in early radio – the precise pronunciation
and clear
articulation of every word, and formal greetings like “Good
evening, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience.”
In
August, McNamee received his first important assignment -
the ringside broadcast of the Greb-Wilson middleweight boxing
championship
match. He realized
that the usual stilted
announcing style would not be suitable – just saying “Greb
hit Wilson” and “Wilson
hit Greb” would not convey the story.
He started to embellish his portrayal, describing
the finer points of
boxing based on his past experience as an amateur fighter, and
describing people
he saw in the crowd. As
the rapid-fire
action increased, he became more animated, caught up in the emotion of
the
moment. Afterwards,
letters of
congratulation poured into WEAF. “Wonderful, brilliant, we saw it as if
through our own eyes,” wrote one admirer.
McNamee had found his calling.
Live event
broadcasting – especially sportscasting – was a brand
new field. Before
radio, no one had ever
needed to describe an event in spoken words to a live audience. There were no “old hands”
or idols to
emulate, and so McNamee and a handful of other pioneers had to create
their own
style and techniques – many of which are commonplace today.
Soon
after the Greb-Wilson fight, McNamee was assigned to the
first World Series broadcast. But
the task
of announcing was given to a well-known newspaper reporter, chosen for
his
ample knowledge of baseball. McNamee
was
just there to assist -- coaching him in how to use a microphone. But the sportswriter, for
all his baseball knowledge,
knew nothing of broadcasting. He
described each play in a deadpan voice, remaining silent between the
plays. Finally, in
the middle of game
three, he tired of the chore and asked McNamee to take over.
To
fill the gaps in the action, McNamee fell back on his technique
of describing the scene. He
wrote,
“You
must make each of your listeners … feel that he or she, too, is there
with you
in that press stand, watching the movements of the game, the color, and
flags;
the pop-bottles thrown in the air; the straw hats demolished; Gloria
Swanson
just arriving in her new ermine coat; McGraw in his dugout, apparently
motionless but giving signals all the time.”
His performance so
impressed the management that he was asked
to announce all the remaining games.
Afterwards,
more than 1,700 letters of praise poured into WEAF.
He became WEAF’s
“go-to man” for special events. In
December, McNamee was dispatched to
Washington to broadcast President Coolidge’s address to Congress over a
multi-station hookup. It
was the first
presidential address ever broadcast on the radio.
As the president spoke, McNamee took notes on
the back of an old envelope.
“When
the speech was half through, it occurred to me that many would perhaps
tune in
late and miss much of the message. It would not be a bad idea, I
thought, to
recapitulate it for them. So,
when the
President had finished speaking, I went to the microphone and read my
summary. It was an
innovation that
seemed to please our audience, for the letters following showed a most
favorable reaction.”
WEAF
was now one of the nation’s foremost radio stations.
AT&T was using its flagship station as a
springboard to launch a network of stations, all interconnected through
its own
long lines. The
staff grew from a
handful to over a hundred in just three years.
McNamee’s voice was increasingly being heard around
the country.
In
June of 1924, McNamee broadcast the first-ever coverage
of the country’s two political conventions over a temporary hook-up of
18
stations. “Again, no orders were given us by the office –
there were no
precedents or rules to guide us.”
The
Republican event in Cleveland went smoothly, nominating Calvin Coolidge
with
little controversy. But
the Democratic
convention from Madison Square Garden turned into a marathon, as the
conventioneers battled through 103 ballots before selecting John W.
Davis. McNamee
worked the microphone sixteen hours a
day for fifteen straight days, again using his ad-lib talents to depict
small
details of the event to fill the many long gaps in the proceedings.
Other
choice assignments followed. He
reported President Coolidge’s inauguration
from Washington on March 4, 1925.
He
announced Philharmonic concerts from Carnegie Hall, dozens of boxing
matches
and college football games, and the 1925 and 1926 World Series. In 1925, he received Radio
Digest Magazine’s
Gold Cup Award as America’s most popular announcer.
In July, 1926,
AT&T unexpectedly sold its flagship
station and fledgling network to RCA and got out of the radio business. WEAF was moved to Aeolian
Hall, sharing space
with its former competitor, WJZ. In
November, the two stations became the flagships for the new National
Broadcasting Company and its two networks – NBC Red and NBC Blue. McNamee’s fame rose even
more, as he was now being
heard over a nationwide hookup of the country’s most prestigious
stations. On New
Years’ Day, 1927, he called the Rose
Bowl game from Pasadena in first ever coast-to-coast broadcast. He hosted dozens of other
sports events for
NBC, including the World Series, championship boxing matches, college
bowl
games and the Indianapolis 500. In
1927,
while broadcasting the arrival of Charles Lindbergh in New York, a
crowd broke
through the barriers and knocked him to the ground, but he continued
talking
while lying prone on the pavement.
He covered
both 1928 national political conventions and the 1929 inauguration. His voice was heard by
upwards of 50 million
listeners for the 1927 Dempsey-Sharkey fight over a 51-station hookup. Later that year, his
broadcast of the famous Dempsey-Tunney
“long count” fight went over the combined NBC Red and Blue networks and
was relayed
by shortwave around the world. He
was on
the cover of “Time Magazine” in 1927.
But
as the wildcat 1920’s gave way to the thirties, radio
was becoming more commercial, more professional, and more competitive. Scores of talented young
men were making
their way to the top -- NBC alone employed nearly a hundred. The “jack-of-all-trades”
announcer was giving
way to specialists with expert backgrounds in music, news, sports and
entertainment. At
the same time, Graham
McNamee’s grueling travel schedule was starting to wear him down. He made some notable gaffs
on the air, such
as calling the wrong players in football games and naming the wrong
winner in a
1934 regatta. Increasingly,
he was being
marginalized - assigned to pre-game coverage, with others calling the
action.
As
his sportscasting star began to fade, McNamee was
assigned more studio emcee jobs.
In
1929, he hosted Rudy Vallee in NBC’s popular “Fleischmann’s
Yeast Radio Hour”.
His big comeback came in 1932 when he was chosen to
announce Ed Wynn’s immensely
popular “Texaco Fire Chief” program, where he played the straight man
to Wynn’s
silliness. He also
emceed “The Major Bowes
Original Amateur
Hour” and “Ripley’s
Believe It
Or Not”. Universal
Studios signed
him to voice their weekly newsreel films for $700 a week. His income had grown in
just ten years from
$50 a week to an estimated $50,000 a year – a huge sum during the
depression.
Still,
McNamee was having a harder time keeping up the
pace. He went
through a divorce and a
re-marriage. He was
drinking more. In
1935, he was knocked unconscious while
broadcasting the National Soap Box Derby when an errant vehicle crashed
into
the press stand. The
resulting head
injury hospitalized him for weeks.
Early
in the morning of February 9, 1942, McNamee was called
out to report on a fire aboard the French luxury liner Normandie in New
York Harbor. The
ship was being converted into a troop
carrier when a welding torch ignited a fire that swept the ship, which
ultimately
capsized. McNamee
spoke live for four hours
in the cold, catching a sore throat that he was unable to shake for
weeks. By April, it
had turned into strep
throat. He was
hospitalized and was
discovered to be suffering from a heart ailment.
His
usual sign-off was "This
is Graham McNamee saying good night all."
But on April 24, he signed off for the "Elsa Maxwell's Party Line"
and added the tag - "and
goodbye". The
next day, he
suffered a heart attack. . He died in the hospital
from a brain embolism
on May 9, 1942, at the age of 53.
Eulogizing
the famous announcer, the New York Times estimated he had “uttered ten times the number of words in an
unabridged dictionary
during his radio career.”
Graham
McNamee was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame for Radio in 1960. In
1984, he was
inducted into
The American Sportscasters Association
Hall of Fame, and in 2011 to the Radio Hall of Fame. Listen to Graham McNamee announce for NBC's Seventh Anniversary program: https://youtu.be/hkD9uqppj3w
RESOURCES:
- You’re
On The Air by Graham McNamee, Harper &
Brothers, 1926
- Wikipedia,
Graham McNamee profile
- www.americansportscastersonline.com
- “National
Pastime”, Society for American Baseball Research, “Graham
McNamee: Broadcast Pioneer”, 2000
- National
Baseball Hall of Fame, “He Covered It All” by Matt
Rothenberg
- “Sports Illustrated” Magazine, 10/12/1964,
“Sports Announcer
By Accident”
- “Radio
Stars” Magazine, 10/1933, “Listen to This, Graham”
- “Broadcasting
Magazine” 8/15/1935, “McNamee, Manning Hurt”
- “Radio
Digest” Magazine
- 9/6/1924:
“Long Lines Making McNamee Popular”
- 9/12/1925:
“Graham McNamee Wins Gold Cup”
- 9/1927:
“Graham McNamee’s Voice Heard More Than Anyone
Who Ever Lived”
- 10/1929:
“McNamee’s Dad Tells About Famous Son’s School
Days”
This article was originally
published in "Radio World" Magazine on March 4, 2019.
www.theradiohistorian.org
John F. Schneider & Associates, LLC
Copyright, 1997
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