TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1955)

(Continued from page 35) in reply, all adding up to the same surprising conclusion. Given a choice between watching Garroway and maintaining a normal daily life, most fans are determined to have their cake and eat it, too. Many viewers, Dave found, bring a bundle of clothes to the TV set and dress around it in much the same way their grandparents once "dressed around the old wood stove." The majority, however, eat breakfast while watching Today. This entails no difficulty on the part of the family, of course, but what about the woman of the house who must prepare that breakfast in the kitchen? Efficiency is the answer for one. "Turn TV on at 6:45 A.M. to signal," she wrote. "Squeeze orange juice before 7, as mixer throws picture off. Bring in milk, put coffee on, cook everything but bacon — as I can turn bacon from around corner of door in kitchen while watching." Another woman simply leaves her kitchen door open. "We have a mirror over the sink," she explained, "and, by shoving the can opener under one corner of it, I can get the proper angle and watch everything that goes on." One correspondent managed to have "a full view of the goings-on" in the living room "whilst dunking (his) morning doughnuts" in the kitchen — by cutting a six-by-six foot opening in the wall between the rooms and disguising it as an "open" bookshelf. And then there's the letter from a young housewife: "My husband and I turn the set on when we first get up at seven in the morning. And I must say that your program gives us a good reason for getting up. We run from the bedroom to the living room, to the bath, to the baby's room, to the kitchen. Luckily, the floor plan gives us a circle — so, by keeping clockwise traffic, we don't run into each other." In contrast is the woman who watches Today from her bed. This required her having a cabinet maker put a . swivel top on the TV table so the set could be turned toward her. But then, she found, the foot of her bed cut the TV picture in half. Either she would have to raise her head off the pillow or raise her TV set. Naturally, she returned to the cabinet maker and had him extend the legs on the TV table. JV1 ost women, however, have too much to do to allow for the luxury of remaining abed in the morning. While Garroway is on the air, they iron, tend the baby, sew, knit or crochet by the TV set. Those with receivers in the kitchen cook, wash dishes or make sandwiches. These women not only get their husbands off to work in time and their children off to school, they manage to watch the entire show without postponing the housework. Their letters prove that far from interfering with normal daily life, Today provides a much-needed supplement— as little trouble, and just as welcome, as the morning newspaper. By now, some four-and-a-half million viewers have changed their habits — some have even rearranged their homes — in order to accommodate Dave's early morning TV show. This is a tribute not only to the adaptability of Americans to new ideas, but to the nation-wide popularity _ of a good-natured guy with horn-rimmed V glasses and a happy bow tie — the most D comfortable personality in TV today. Trying to explain the nature of Dave's appeal, critics invariably call him "re88 Man of Today laxed" — as though four-and-a-half million people would stagger out of bed at seven o'clock on a weekday morning to watch someone else "relax." More particularly, Dave is a "relaxing" person. And, in the morning, people need a little relaxation. Today is like that moment of calm before the storm — the breathing space that gets a man set for what's about to come. Take it easy, Dave seems to be saying, you'll get there just as fast. Certainly, in his own life, Dave exemplifies the moral of that old sCory about the tortoise and the hare. In a business as competitive as radio and TV, the race for success sometimes goes to the fast-talking, the overly ambitious, the self-pushing. Yet Dave — slowly but surely, and even quietly — has outstripped many a wild hare and won his way to the top. He claims it's just luck and cites instance after instance to prove he got the breaks. But is it that simple? Or is it that Dave, by taking it easy, has had the perspective to size up his breaks and know what to do with them? At least, his getting into radio in the first place was a matter of pure chance. "That was in 1937," Dave recalls. "I was a Bachelor of Fine Arts, fresh out of Washington University, where I had majored in Abnormal Psychology and English." He chuckles, well aware that this doesn't explain how he happened to be selling piston rings in Boston. But perhaps it explains why — as he says — "I didn't sell one single ring. "So then I found myself in New York," he continues, "trying to sell a book to schoolteachers. One day, I happened to be in a hotel lobby when I ran into a young man who had once courted the same girl I had. At the time, we were arch rivals, but now — years later — the passion had all cooled off. He said he needed a fourth for bridge, and that's how I ended up in a game with the Assistant Manager of Guest Relations for NBC. She happened to mention that NBC was looking for page boys and, several days later, I was in uniform — in Rockefeller Center." It was there, in a training class for future announcers, that Dave wound up twenty-third in a class of twenty-four. "I couldn't believe I was that bad," he says. "I was sure it must be some mistake." It probably was — for, one month later, Dave got the best job of anyone in his class: Special Events Director at Station KDKA in Pittsburgh. And the mistake, if it was one, also proved a lucky break. "For the first time in my life," he admits, "I was filled with a burning ambition." Not that he was out to set the world on fire. He just wanted to prove himself — and he did. One year after going to work in Pittsburgh, NBC gave him a staff job at Station WMAQ in Chicago. Dave's now-famous "relaxed" style also came about as a matter of chance, a by-product of World War II. "I was instructing in a yeoman school at Pearl Harbor," he recalls. "At night, during my off-duty hours, I was given permission to broadcast a disc-jockey show at a radio station in near-by Honolulu. After my daytime duties, however, I was too tired to plot a program and write continuity, so I just played jazz and said anything that came into my head." It turned out to be perfect practice for his next lucky break. When Dave returned to Chicago after his discharge, WMAQ assigned him to a discjockey show in the middle of the night, because he was the only staff announcer who didn't live out in the suburbs. Dave dug into the music library and played all the recordings he had missed during those three years in the Navy. And, because it was late at night, he relaxed as he had in Honolulu — talking at random about any subject under the sun. That was when the fan mail started arriving in such quantities that the station had to hire a special clerk to handle it. In 1949, when NBC opened its TV lines to Chicago, Garroway At Large was one of the first shows to emanate from that city. This was not luck, of course, for Dave was already a success in radio. But it was a break being given such a low budget for a variety show. Unable to compete with the high-priced stars, the choruses, the lavish sets and costumes of New York telecasts, Dave substituted imagination and a new kind of TV comedy. In Garroway At Large, there was no slapstick, no insulting jokes — just a quiet, off-beat kind of humor that had the nation chuckling to itself. Sometimes, there was no set — just the bare walls of the studio — and the one prop might be a ladder or a flight of stairs. But thanks to brilliant camera work and inventive staging, the TV screen came alive. The show somehow translated Dave's casual, relaxed style into visual terms. It not only made history in the early days of TV, but there is now talk of reviving it again this fall. And luckily, at the time, it paved the way for the biggest break of all. It was in 1952 that Dave took over his present assignment as host and emcee of Today, the first network TV show to feature news and special events at an early morning hour. In addition, Dave still has his own radio show, Friday With Garroway. Between the two programs, however, the relaxed style which has brought Dave so much success on the air allows him little time to relax in his own private life. For the truth is that the easygoing manner is actually the effortless performance which comes from thorough preparation and hard work. Today may sound informal, but it is written and rehearsed in advance: "The show takes all my waking time," Dave admits. "I've got thirty half-hours a week in front of the cameras, and then there's the business incidental to the show — all the offshoots and odds and ends to be taken care of, such as lunching with clients and that sort of thing." As a consequence, he can't help feeling that it's just as well that he leads a bachelor existence at the moment. It's not that Dave particularly enjoys living alone. It's because he hasn't much of a life to share with anyone. Up at five in the morning, and in bed by nine or ten at night — the rest is work. He is free over the weekends, of course, when he sees a few people, catches up on his reading, or visits in the country. But he's just as likely to spend the entire time in bed "just looking at the walls." All of his old hobbies — racing cars, fishing, drumming and golf — have been temporarily abandoned. While he often takes a pretty girl to dinner, he can never stay out late. "If I'm feeling really reckless," he says, "I can tear around till ten." The one exception is a charming young lady named Paris — there's always time for her, whenever she can come to New York for a visit. Paris is Dave's tenyear-old daughter, who lives with her mother in St. Louis. Eight years ago,