Broadcasting: Man of Convictions

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Most of the accolades accorded Edward R. Murrow on his death last April skipped over the fact that there was another man who had made a historic and earlier contribution to broadcasting journalism. People had forgotten the clipped, high-pitched, precisely accentuated tones of H. V. Kaltenborn, who died at 86 last week of a heart attack. In his prime in the '30s, Kaltenborn had roamed a sick Europe, producing fascinating, ominous interviews with Hitler and Mussolini, and his brilliant marathon coverage of the Munich crisis jarred American homes into a chilling awareness of the war to come.

Kaltenborn had more firm opinions on more topics than any other commentator, and he delivered them with complete self-assurance. He was often profoundly right, especially in his early diagnosis of the dangers of Nazism. He could also be spectacularly wrong. In the close 1948 presidential election, which tried the stamina of most pundits, he kept insisting, long after it was prudent, that Tom Dewey would win by an "overwhelming vote." Later Truman enjoyed imitating H.V.'s commentary in H.V.'s voice. Kaltenborn did not resent it; he mimicked Truman mimicking him.

Scorning a Script. Descendant of an aristocratic German family, Hans von Kaltenborn was born in Milwaukee, left home and school at 14 because he thirsted for "information of the world." He joined the Brooklyn Eagle in 1902, but after a few years of reporting, he decided he needed a formal education and went to Harvard. After graduation, he returned to the Eagle, where he gave weekly lectures on current events. On a whim, the Eagle broadcast one of the lectures, and Kaltenborn was launched on a new career.

He became radio's first regularly scheduled news commentator. Scorning a script, he spoke only from sketchy notes—and sometimes from none at all. Scarcely glancing at the clock, totally unflappable, he rattled off the news without muffing a line. In his early days of broadcasting, a pianist stood ready to knock out a tune if Kaltenborn should run out of words, but the pianist never had to strike a note.

In Spain during the Civil War, Kaltenborn broadcast the first live radio coverage of combat; once, he installed himself in a haystack on the battlefield so that listeners could hear the crackle of gunfire. For 20 days during the Munich crisis in 1938, he scarcely budged from his CBS studio in New York, where he subsisted on onion soup and slept on a cot. He provided running translations of the speeches of Hitler and Mussolini as they came over short wave and analyzed them on the spot. He saw the significance of Munich and warned his audiences accordingly: "Hitler always says after each of his conquests, 'Now, no more. All is well.' But there has always been more, and there may be more still. Sir Robert Walpole said when the British people rejoiced because he had kept them out of war: 'Today they ring the bells. Tomorrow they will wring their hands.' "