(The Generous Years of which Chet Huntley writes began jus...)
The Generous Years of which Chet Huntley writes began just before the First World War and reached into the mid-twenties. For these were the years of Mr. Huntley's growing up on one of America's last frontiers - the prairies and towns of Montana at the time when traffic accidents were caused by run away horses, and education meant the one-room school.
Chester Robert "Chet" Huntley was an American television newscaster.
Background
Huntley was born in Cardwell, Montana, in 1911. He was the son of Percy Adams ("Pat") Huntley, a rancher and railroad telegrapher, and Blanche Tatham. A descendant through his father of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Huntley grew up in what was the last American frontier of cattlemen and miners. His earliest years were spent on a ranch, but hard times eventually brought his father to full-time employment as a telegrapher for the Northern Pacific railroad. Huntley's boyhood was spent along the railroad's right-of-way in a succession of small towns. Despite the frequent uprooting that his father's career entailed, Huntley gained a lifelong appreciation of outdoor life and a belief in what he took to be the frontier values of family, independence, hard work, and honesty.
Two prime influences on his life were his maternal grandfather, W. R. Tatum, a rancher who exemplified the rugged spirit of the West, and a high school English teacher, Callie Allison, who taught him "a love of language, " at Whitehall High School.
Education
He graduated from Whitehall High School in Whitehall, and attended Montana State College in Bozeman, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle before graduating from the University of Washington in 1934, with a degree in speech and drama.
Career
While a senior at Washington, he began work at KPCB, a small radio station, where he performed every kind of job, from sweeping up to writing advertising copy to on-air reporting. After graduation, he became the station's program director for two years and then in 1936 transferred to KHQ radio in Spokane, Wash. , as an announcer and newscaster. Over the next twenty years, Huntley served a variety of stations and three national networks as a radio newsman, analyst, and commentator, all in Los Angeles, first at KFI radio (1937 - 1939), then on CBS (1939 - 1951), followed by ABC (1951 - 1955). He moved to New York with NBC radio in 1955.
In 1942, in the wake of the zoot-suit riots brought on by often virulent discrimination against Mexican-Americans, Huntley wrote and produced for CBS radio a series of half-hour programs, "These Are Americans, " which condemned the prejudice and showed the contributions of Latinos to society. In other programs he spoke out strongly against the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans. The series won him a George Foster Peabody Award and citations from Ohio State and New York universities. He won a second Peabody Award in 1954 for his skill as an analyst and his "talent for mature commentary. " Then with KABC, Huntley appeared three times daily in Los Angeles, twice on radio and once on television, and, according to Newsweek, had "the highest ratings on any ABC news show. "
Because Huntley believed strongly that reporters had an obligation to place an issue in context and show its several sides, he was sometimes at odds with pressure groups, notably during the McCarthy era, when he was called a communist and a campaign was started to have him taken off the air. In 1954 he successfully sued the campaign's leader for slander, winning a $10, 000 settlement and a public apology. Years later, he rebutted the Nixon administration's attacks on newsmen during the Vietnam War. In a signed article in TV Guide, then the most widely read magazine in America, Huntley wrote that the president was mistaken if he believed that journalists were supposed to be the "cheerleaders" of society. "Tragically, " he said, "that is their function in authoritarian societies – but not in free countries. " The 1970 article earned him placement on the White House "enemies list" that came to light during the Watergate hearings.
In 1956 NBC paired Huntley with David Brinkley to cover the national presidential conventions. The two were the network's third choice (John Hersey and Henry Cabot Lodge had each turned down NBC's offer of the job) and originally they were to alternate the assignment. But when they began their coverage they blended their presentations, serving as complements of each other: Huntley, the rugged, rangy Westerner, unfailingly serious and stern in his delivery; Brinkley, the eastern sophisticate, puckish and irreverent in his. By fall, the network knew it had a popular team to replace John Cameron Swayze. Their first newscast took place on October 20, 1956.
By the end of the decade, the "Huntley-Brinkley Report" was one of the crown jewels of broadcasting and a prime source of revenue for NBC. A consumer survey in 1965 reported that Huntley and Brinkley were recognized by more Americans than Cary Grant, James Stewart, John Wayne, and the Beatles, all of whom were then at the height of their popularity. Their signature sign-off, "Good night, David – Good night, Chet" had become the object of gentle parody on television variety shows and was as familiar to millions of Americans as Edward R. Murrow's "Good night and good luck" had been earlier on CBS.
In July 1970, after fifteen years of telecasting, Huntley retired from the daily grind to pursue personal interests. He worked in television syndication as a commentator and became a partner in a New York advertising agency. He returned to Montana to head Big Sky, Inc. , a multimillion-dollar resort complex, which generated considerable controversy over environmental issues before his death from cancer in Bozeman.
Quotations:
“I hesitate to get into the gutter with this guy. ”
“Maybe where there's clarity of air, there's clarity of thought. ”
“Journalists were never intended to be the cheerleaders of a society, the conductors of applause, the sycophants. Tragically, that is their assigned role in authoritarian societies, but not here - not yet. ”
Connections
Huntley married Ingrid Rolin on February 23, 1936. They had two daughters and were divorced in 1959. His second marriage to Tipton Stringer, a television weathercaster, took place on March 7, 1959. They had no children.