50 Fun Facts About Edward R. Murrow

Which first name was Edward R. Murrow given at birth, before he swapped it for Edward?

Egbert was the name his parents gave him, though friends already called him Ed in his teens. He went by Edward for the rest of his life.

During the German bombing of London, Edward R. Murrow broadcast live air-raid reports to America from where?

A rooftop put the real sound of anti-aircraft guns on American radios. British officials had resisted at first, fearing a live report could guide German bombers.

Which 2005 black-and-white film dramatizes Edward R. Murrow's on-air clash with Senator Joseph McCarthy?

Good Night, and Good Luck takes its title from the phrase he used to close his broadcasts. Shot on color film stock, it was converted to black-and-white in post-production.

Edward R. Murrow was a White House dinner guest of the Roosevelts on the very day of which wartime event?

The Pearl Harbor attack did not cancel his invitation, and Roosevelt told him after dinner that American losses were far heavier than reported. Murrow chose not to broadcast it.

Which British prime minister offered Edward R. Murrow a top BBC programming job during World War II?

Winston Churchill offered in 1943 to make the American joint Director-General of the BBC, in charge of programming. Murrow turned the job down.

Edward R. Murrow, who smoked about three packs a day, was almost never seen without which cigarette brand?

Camel was the brand always in his hand, on air and off, at a reported 60 to 65 cigarettes a day. He died of lung cancer two days after his 57th birthday.

Which band's 2003 album Say You Will includes a song picturing Edward R. Murrow turning over in his grave?

Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham wrote it during the O.J. Simpson trial, convinced the newsman would be dismayed by the state of mass media.

Which president persuaded Edward R. Murrow to leave CBS and run the United States Information Agency?

John F. Kennedy made the offer in January 1961, and the job also gave the veteran newsman a seat on the National Security Council.

In 1950 Edward R. Murrow narrated a CBS radio documentary taking a balanced look at which popular mystery?

Flying saucers got a half-hour hearing in The Case of the Flying Saucer, for which he interviewed both witness Kenneth Arnold and astronomer Donald Menzel.

Edward R. Murrow was among the first reporters to enter which Nazi concentration camp in April 1945?

Buchenwald shook him so deeply that he waited three days to broadcast, then told listeners that for most of what he saw he had no words.

Edward R. Murrow was born in a log cabin at Polecat Creek in which southern US state?

North Carolina was home only for his first few years, until the family moved across the country to the Pacific Northwest. The cabin had no electricity or plumbing.

Edward R. Murrow's parents, who raised him on a small corn and hay farm, belonged to which religious group?

Quakers are known for pacifism, yet Murrow's father had enlisted in the army during the Spanish-American War. The household was remembered as strict in its faith.

Edward R. Murrow, later famed for his radio delivery, majored in which subject at college?

Speech was his major: he took 19 courses in it, most from a young teacher who called him her masterpiece. He had arrived intending to study business.

Which school in Pullman, Edward R. Murrow's alma mater, named its college of communication after him?

Washington State University also hosted the ceremony when a 1994 postage stamp made him the first broadcast journalist honored that way.

Edward R. Murrow gave the first on-the-scene news report of his career in 1938 from which European capital?

Vienna was where he went on air at about 2:30 a.m. during the Nazi takeover of Austria, having chartered an entire passenger plane to get there.

Which reporter, later author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, was Edward R. Murrow's first hire in Europe?

William L. Shirer joined in 1937 and became the first of the Murrow Boys. The friendship broke a decade later, when CBS dropped his Sunday news show.

Which future CBS anchor turned down Edward R. Murrow's wartime offer to run the network's Moscow bureau?

Walter Cronkite first said yes, then stayed with the United Press for better pay. Murrow held the grudge for years after the two became CBS colleagues.

Months after Edward R. Murrow's 1954 See It Now exposé, the US Senate voted to do what to Joseph McCarthy?

The Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure him that December, a rare punishment. Colleagues then shunned him, and his later speeches met a near-empty chamber.

A 1953 See It Now report by Edward R. Murrow defended Milo Radulovich, a reserve lieutenant in which military branch?

The Air Force had branded him a security risk because his father and sister were accused of communist sympathies. After the broadcast it kept him in the service.

Which 1960 Edward R. Murrow documentary exposed the poverty of America's migrant farmworkers the day after Thanksgiving?

Harvest of Shame was his last CBS documentary. Soon after joining the government he asked the BBC not to show it, worried about America's image, and was refused.

Edward R. Murrow interviewed celebrities live in their own homes on which CBS show that began in 1953?

Person to Person kept him in a New York studio chair while as many as six cameras followed each guest around the house.

Which Cold War revolutionary leader was among the guests on Edward R. Murrow's celebrity home-interview show?

Fidel Castro shared a guest list with Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando and anthropologist Margaret Mead. A program typically paired two very different guests.

Which Brooklyn Dodgers star was the very first guest on Edward R. Murrow's celebrity home-interview show in 1953?

Roy Campanella had just hit a home run to win Game 3 of the World Series against the Yankees. He returned in 1959, by then using a wheelchair after a car accident.

Which of the wartime Murrow Boys replaced Edward R. Murrow as host of his celebrity interview show in 1959?

Charles Collingwood, who had covered the North African campaign and the liberation of France, hosted the program for its last two years.

Which producer, later president of CBS News, co-created See It Now with Edward R. Murrow?

Fred W. Friendly first teamed with him on I Can Hear It Now, a 1948 album of historic recordings that became a surprise hit and led to their radio series.

Which early director of Edward R. Murrow's See It Now later borrowed its format to create 60 Minutes?

Don Hewitt built 60 Minutes with two more See It Now veterans, Palmer Williams and Joe Wershba, carrying its magazine style to a new generation.

Which company sponsored Edward R. Murrow's See It Now until pulling its advertising from the program in 1955?

Alcoa left after the program investigated a Texas land scandal in an area where the aluminum maker was expanding. Without a regular sponsor, the show lost its weekly slot.

Which hit quiz show, airing just before See It Now, reportedly made Edward R. Murrow doubt his time slot would last?

The $64,000 Question launched a mid-1950s quiz craze, and he is said to have asked his producer how long they could expect to keep their slot. See It Now lost it in 1955.

What did Edward R. Murrow offer Senator Joseph McCarthy after criticizing him on See It Now in March 1954?

Airtime to reply was the offer, and McCarthy used a full half-hour on April 6 to call his critic a communist sympathizer. The rebuttal only hurt the senator further.

Which national honor did Edward R. Murrow receive in 1964, the year illness ended his government service?

The Presidential Medal of Freedom came months after he resigned as a federal agency chief. President Johnson had asked him to stay on, but cancer forced him out.

Which British honor did Queen Elizabeth II confer on Edward R. Murrow in March 1965, weeks before his death?

A knighthood, honorary because he was American, made him a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Belgium, France and Sweden gave him similar honors.

Which award did Edward R. Murrow win posthumously in 1967 for a collection of his wartime broadcasts?

A Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album went to A Reporter Remembers, Vol. I: The War Years, two years after his death.

What ended the Murrow Isn't God Club, formed by younger CBS staff who resented Edward R. Murrow's inner circle?

He asked to join, and the club promptly disbanded. Its members had felt shut out by his closeness to the correspondents he hired during the war.

Edward R. Murrow's personal library is kept at the Fletcher School, part of which Massachusetts institution?

Tufts set up the Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy after his death, and David Halberstam worked on The Best and the Brightest there as writer-in-residence.

Edward R. Murrow played himself, recreating his wartime London broadcasts, in which 1960 British war film?

Sink the Bismarck! was his final film appearance, and his radio reports helped give the naval drama its near-documentary feel.

Edward R. Murrow appears on screen presenting the prologue of which Best Picture-winning 1956 adventure film?

Around the World in 80 Days opens with him showing clips from Georges Méliès's 1902 film A Trip to the Moon. Most of the prologue was cut for a 1968 re-release.

Which actor earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for playing Edward R. Murrow in a 2005 film?

David Strathairn led a film that collected six Academy Award nominations, among them Best Picture and Best Director.

Which film star played Edward R. Murrow on Broadway in 2025, two decades after directing a movie about him?

George Clooney made his Broadway debut in the role, in a play he co-wrote from his own film. One June performance was broadcast live on CNN.

How does the 2005 film about Edward R. Murrow's See It Now show Senator Joseph McCarthy on screen?

Only archive footage of the real senator appears, with no actor in the part. Because all of it was black-and-white, the whole film was made to match.

As director of the US Information Agency, Edward R. Murrow oversaw which government-run international radio service?

Voice of America answered to the agency he ran from 1961, and one of its US transmitting stations was later named after him.

New York Democrats invited Edward R. Murrow to run for which office, a move Harry Truman's advice led him to decline?

A Senate seat was on offer after See It Now ended. Truman said he could be New York's junior senator or stay Edward R. Murrow, hero to millions.

Before joining CBS, Edward R. Murrow helped run a committee placing which group of people fleeing Nazi Germany?

Refugee scholars, many of them Jews barred from their posts by Nazi racial laws, were placed at American colleges. Murrow called the work some of his most satisfying.

Edward R. Murrow worked as a teenager in which rugged industry of the Pacific Northwest before starting college?

Logging paid for his start: at 17 he was an axman with a crew in the Olympic rain forest, saving money for college.

The 1951 premiere of Edward R. Murrow's See It Now used a split screen to show what live at once?

Both US coasts appeared together, the Golden Gate Bridge beside a New York bridge, while the studio's own monitors and technicians stayed in full view.

A 1952 See It Now special took Edward R. Murrow's cameras to spend Christmas with American soldiers in which country?

Korea was the setting for the one-hour report, which showed the war through the eyes of ordinary soldiers. One critic called it graphic yet sensitive.

Edward R. Murrow hosted which five-minute CBS radio series of essays read by famous and everyday guests?

This I Believe asked each guest for a personal philosophy from 1951 to 1955, and NPR revived the idea half a century later with new essays.

Which label released I Can Hear It Now, the hit 1948 history album narrated by Edward R. Murrow?

Columbia Records issued it as a boxed set of five 78 rpm discs that reached No. 3 on the US albums chart. Its success grew into a weekly radio show.

Who was the only woman among the original Murrow Boys, the CBS war reporters hired by Edward R. Murrow?

Marvin Breckinridge used her middle name professionally, partly to sidestep prejudice against women. She covered Britain, Scandinavia and the Low Countries for CBS.

Which long-running CBS radio program grew from a 1938 multi-city special that Edward R. Murrow helped assemble?

World News Roundup began as a one-time special linking reporters across Europe to an anchor in New York, and it stayed on the air for 88 years.

Which actor played Edward R. Murrow in the 1986 HBO film Murrow, with Dabney Coleman as his CBS boss?

Daniel J. Travanti took the title role in the cable film, with Robert Vaughn in support as Franklin D. Roosevelt.