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Tomorrow the curtain goes up on the 1953 college football season.
And with it, NBC inaugurates its 26th year of broadcasting, the most colorful of these weekly games.
Ordinarily, when we speak of the greats in the world of sports, we are referring to the athletes themselves.
The men who could sock the hardest, run the fastest, hit a ball the farthest.
The men, yes, and women who have become legends, unexcelled in their fields.
The undisputed champions.
Tonight we deviate a little to talk about a man who didn't actually participate in the game, but who was nonetheless a champ.
A man who made an immeasurable contribution to the world of sports.
A man who, like the other greats of his era, has also become a legend.
As famous as the events he described.
A man and his unforgettable voice.
What do you do, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience? This is Graham McNamee speaking.
Yes, that's a voice we'll never forget.
For years the most familiar, the most popular voice in radio.
There's a younger generation today who can't remember Graham McNamee as the nation's pioneer sports announcer.
But those among us who have hair that's thinning a little, or is touched with gray at the temples,
remember full well what he meant to us in the days when radio was the miracle of the age.
We look back with nostalgia to the turbulent 20s, perhaps the most colorful era in the history of sports.
Those with the ears of the sports titans, the Goliaths and the Sampson's.
It isn't my intention to detract from the deserved glory of those supermen,
but I can't help wondering how much Graham McNamee must have contributed towards securing their position in the Hall of Fame.
There was radio, and there was McNamee.
With radio, the newest wonder, the public was for the first time brought into close touch with the game.
There was a wondrous thrill in the roar of the crowd, the crack of the bat, the timekeeper's bell, the referee's whistle.
And Graham McNamee's broadcasts were dynamic, colorful and picturesque.
With his overwhelming enthusiasm, his vivid imagination and descriptive ability,
he made it possible for the listener not only to hear, but actually to visualize the action taking place.
And Graham McNamee became a radio tradition.
His voice, his every inflection became known to millions.
He was heard by more people than any voice the world has ever known.
And so tonight, on the eve of this new football season, we'd like to look back,
to recall some memories of the man who was the patron father of the sports announcers.
Some men choose a profession. Others just seem to drift into one.
But who can say that their steps aren't guided by destiny?
Back in St. Paul, when Graham McNamee was just a youngster, his ambitious mother decided to fit him for a musical career.
She had been a singer with a voice of delightful quality, and she longed to carry on her own career through him.
She started him early at the piano, which like almost any normal healthy boy, he detested.
No, no, baby. Now take it again from the beginning.
Ah gee, Mom, isn't my hour up yet?
No, you still have fifteen minutes. Come on, baby, take it once more.
Now, this is the way it should go.
Now, you see how it should be? It goes from A to F sharp.
Here's what you're doing.
You're going from A to F natural.
There, now you try it.
Ah, heck, who wants to learn how to play the old piano anyway?
Now, baby, I want you to be a fine pianist, and if you're to become one, you've got to practice.
Why, Pat, a rescue practice is as much as ten hours a day.
Who cares? Golly, I'd rather be a baseball player.
Baseball player? Now, what kind of profession is that for a man?
Lots of baseball players make lots of money.
And maybe I'll be a prize fighter.
Prize fighter? Why, I never heard of such a thing.
You're going to become a fine pianist, baby.
Now, do as I ask, once more.
All right.
Yes, it was baby then, and Graham didn't mind so much where his mother was concerned.
But when the gang one and all took up the cry, well, that was a different thing.
Okay, gang, let's go.
Put the old stuff on this one, Graham.
Suck it in there, boys, suck it in.
Here we go.
Strike two.
Atta boy, Graham. Lay this next one over the old plate now, come on.
Yes, strike them out.
Get that in number, Graham.
Make them hit to me.
Hey, who's coming second?
Look out for hit and run.
Baby.
Hey, Graham, your mother's calling you.
What?
Baby, it's time for you to come in and practice.
Aw, heck.
Gee whiz, you can't quit now, Graham.
Golly, we're still a run behind. Hold pitch for us.
Yeah, hold pitch for us.
Ask her if you can play a while longer.
Yeah, go on, ask her.
Aw, it won't do any good.
You can't ask, can't you?
I said it wouldn't do any good, didn't I?
Well, Johnny, you can ask, can't you?
Aw, let him go.
Baby, it's time to practice.
Hey, cut it out.
Baby.
I said cut it out.
Unless somebody wants a sock in the jaw.
Yeah, who's big enough to do it?
I am.
Yeah?
Anybody that plays the pianos are sissy.
Sissy, huh?
I'll show you. You can't call me that.
Hey, hey, look him. Hey, take your pinky there.
You're gonna hurt his arm.
He won't be able to pitch in you.
Yes, that name started many a fight.
But even when the gang learned better and stopped the kidding,
he would leave the games unwilling.
And like Shakespeare's boy, creeped to the old piano
at the rate of about a mile a week,
digging his toes in the ground, kicking up dust,
and shying all the rocks he could find at the kingbirds on the telegraph wires.
But when he was 18, there came a change.
He turned from the piano to singing and fairly ate it up.
Mother McNamee, still ambitious for him, and with an eye on bigger things,
decided the big town was the place to be.
New York, the place where the big things happened.
And this was the move that indirectly led him to radio.
The going was tough at first.
Their small savings dwindled rapidly,
but the young voice student from St. Paul managed to earn a few dollars singing here and there.
And one day in the spring of 1923, he strolled up Broadway,
noticed the sign of a radio station, W-E-A-F.
Curious about this strange new thing called radio, he went in to look around,
and the program director met him at the door.
Hello, my name's McNamee. I thought I'd have a look around if it's all right.
Sure, always glad to have visitors.
But I'm afraid there's much to see right now. We're off the air.
What are your broadcasting hours?
From seven to ten in the evening.
You're welcome to come back any time when something's happening,
but while you're here, you might as well have a look at the studios.
Oh, I like that.
We have two, one over here and one across the way.
The small room in between is the control booth.
That's small.
You're not in the business, are you?
The broadcasting business? No, but I should imagine it's pretty interesting, huh?
Believe me, there's nothing like it. It gets in your blood.
Right now it's new, of course, but just listen to anyone who takes it seriously,
anyone who knows what he's talking about, and he'll tell you it's the coming thing.
Someday it's going to be big business.
Maybe it would be a good thing to get into.
Well, it's not so simple. There aren't so many jobs.
You've got a pretty good voice, nice register.
Maybe you could be an announcer. But even that isn't so easy.
What's so hard about it? Just about all I've ever heard any of them do is announce a musical number.
Well, even that may not be as easy as it seems.
Sure, anyone can introduce. Yes, we have no bananas.
But how about Stielernacht, Halliganacht, Le Regiment de Sambre Meuse,
or all the difficult, hard-to-pronounce names of composers?
Could you do it without stumbling all over the studio?
I could manage. I'm a singer, so I'm pretty familiar with the correct pronunciations.
A singer, huh? Where are you working?
No place in particular right now. I've been doing some concert work.
I managed to pick up a few jobs as a church soloist and an operetta and grand opera choruses.
Is that so? You know, maybe we could use you.
How would you like to give it a try?
So Graham McNamee became a radio announcer at a time when announcers were little more than a breathing space between musical selections.
Along with announcing and singing, he did a little of everything, answered telephones, escorted visitors around the studio,
coached nervous performers in how to use the mic, and on occasions even used a broom.
Not long after he joined WEAF, another announcer was hired,
a man who went on to have quite a career himself as a sports broadcaster
and who now is one of the top executives in the broadcasting industry.
His name was Phillips Carlin, and he and Graham McNamee soon formed a working team in radio
that was to last over the years in a solid friendship that would last an even longer time.
Their voices were said to be much alike, and their manner of handling a broadcast was identical.
Each had personality plus, and they put it on the air with vibrant enthusiasm.
Today, thinking about the new season of football ahead and recalling Graham McNamee's role as the pioneer of football broadcasts,
I reminisced with Phillips Carlin about those early days in radio and his close association with Mac.
Many of the stories he told me were so interesting, I wanted to recreate them for you.
And thanks to Phillips Carlin, I'm able to.
Where would you like to begin, Phil?
Well, Joe, you've already mentioned the physical setup of those old WEAF studios.
Just two studios marked A and B with a little control booth between them, and that was it.
When I look around at these magnificent NBC studios in the RCA building today,
it's a little bewildering to remember that our little setup was the beginning of it all.
I should think it would also give you quite a feeling of pride, Phil,
the realization that you helped to start it on its way.
Yes, it does. But the physical setup wasn't the only thing different about those days.
The whole operating procedure was different, as you can well imagine.
For instance, many times we'd be broadcasting two programs simultaneously,
a program from one studio going to WEAF and a program in the other studio going to, I believe it was WMAF.
That was Colonel Green Station.
And believe it or not, Mack and I would often go from one studio to the other announcing two programs at the same time.
You know, it's a wonder that sometimes you didn't say the right thing on the wrong program,
maybe the wrong thing on the right program.
I don't think that ever happened, but sometimes we would get the switches mixed up
and send the wrong program to each station.
I want to tell you something about that little control booth, though.
That was where we had to stay most of the time,
and I do mean it was little, about four feet wide and seven feet long.
There was no ventilation.
The only openings were the two doors leading into the two studios.
Of course, they had to be kept closed because the broadcasts had to be going on.
Well, Mack and I rigged up our own cooling system.
Every day we bought a hundred pound cake of ice, which we set in a big pan on a stool
and let an electric fan blow across it onto our legs.
It took the hundred pound cake about three hours to melt.
In three hours, well, it was just about the length of your broadcasting day, wasn't it?
Yes, we were on the air from seven till ten in the evening.
Managed only to keep the booth bearable.
But one day someone gave Mack a big fish,
and he put it on top of the cake of ice to keep till he finished work.
The only trouble was when he left for home, he forgot it.
I had opened up the next day.
Well, you can imagine what that booth was like.
The ice, of course, had melted hours before.
It was hot as a blast furnace, and that dead fish.
Maybe it was my imagination, but I don't think we ever got the smell out of the place.
You sure it was the fish that was responsible, Phil?
Couldn't have been the programs you were broadcasting in those days?
You know, I never thought about that. Maybe you got something.
I was kidding, of course.
I remember, Phil, they called you and Mack the touchdown twins back in those days, didn't they?
Yes, for two reasons, perhaps.
For one, we worked so many broadcasts together.
And secondly, there was quite a similarity in our voices, such a similarity,
in fact, that listeners often made bets as to whether the announcer was Mack and me or Carlin.
But the similarity worked to our advantage on some occasions.
Well, how was that?
Well, for example, Mack signed a contract to narrate the Universal Newsreel films.
He was the first of the celebrities to be signed for such a job.
And if you remember, it started to trend.
Oh, yes.
There'd be times when Mack wasn't available, and when he wasn't, Carlin did them,
with no one actually being the wiser.
I know this is a bit difficult to answer,
because you and Mack worked so many big football broadcasts during the 20s.
But what are some of the outstanding ones that you do remember?
Well, that's something of a poser, Joe.
Our football broadcasts were confined almost entirely to the Ivy League,
Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Army, Navy games.
The big intersectional games hadn't come into their own then.
They came later along with the era of the sports specialist and statistician,
and with them the stature of the sports broadcaster has grown.
Till now it's a highly specialized and highly competitive profession.
I do recall one game very vividly, though,
not only because it was a great gridiron battle,
but also because of an incident that happened.
What game was that?
The Harvard-Princeton game in 1925.
It was a cold and frosty day,
and I was handing Mack our thermos of hot coffee,
just as Jake Slago cut loose for an 84-yard run.
I got so excited I dropped the thermos through a crack in the stand.
Later, Mack expressed his disgust in pretty strong terms,
not with Jake's run, of course, but with mine losing our coffee.
As a result of his somewhat pointed observations about it,
we got an unexpectedly large response of mail.
You mean the mic was open?
Naturally.
Wasn't it always in those days when you said something
that wasn't supposed to go out over the air?
Yes, I've heard rumors to that effect.
Maybe you can tell us something about the pre-broadcast preparations
back in those days.
Well, frankly, there just wasn't any pre-broadcast preparation.
We didn't approach the game the way the experts and statisticians do today,
which I quickly admit enabled them to make a broadcast more interesting and accurate.
Back in those days, we were lucky to have a list of the players
and a couple of spotters.
Everything was ad-lib, and in that department Mack was superb.
He had great imagination and tremendous enthusiasm.
In fact, his enthusiasm at times was so overwhelming, it got him in trouble.
You mean when he had the wrong fighter taking a right cross to the jaw?
Yes, or the fullback going through a right tackle when actually it was the quarterback.
But it was that same enthusiasm that gave the listener the color,
the feel of the crowd, the intensity of the atmosphere,
the illusion of being present at the scene.
Well, Joe, I know you're particularly interested in Mack's football broadcast tonight,
but I would like to mention the sports event that started him on the road to sports broadcasting,
the first one he did.
Well, go ahead, Phil, we'd like to hear about it.
Well, just a few months after Mack joined WEAF,
it was decided as an experiment to broadcast the middleweight championship fight
between Johnny Wilson and Harry Greb.
Well, nobody knew exactly why, at least of all Mack, but he was given the assignment.
Before the fight, he was a nervous wreck,
more shaky than either of the fighters could possibly have been.
He had gone to each of the training camps and made copious notes.
The afternoon of the fight, he went to the polo grounds and made more notes.
But that night, when the fight actually started, and they said,
Mack, you're on the air, he tore up all the notes and got down to the business at hand,
and he put all his wide-eyed wonder and enthusiasm into his description.
That was really the beginning of radio as a sports covering medium
and Mack's beginning as a sports broadcaster.
Must have been quite an experience for him, a novice stepping into a spot like that,
which scared the pants off many a seasoned veteran today.
Well, Mack didn't scare easily, and just a few weeks later,
he was called on to broadcast the World Series between the Yankees and the Giants.
I remember that. One game was held up 60 minutes by a downpour,
but Mack draped his coat over the microphone to shield it from the rain,
and he ad-libbed for the full hour.
That's right. They didn't have any snug broadcasting booths then.
And because he did such a great job of those broadcasts,
they sent him out to do the first broadcast of the big football games,
and from that time on, whenever something big and exciting happened or was scheduled to happen,
whether a sports event or a political event, a catastrophe or a convention,
an interview with a visiting potentate or the president, Mack was on the scene.
In spite of the fact that he was called on so often to handle outstanding special events,
sports broadcasting was his first love, wasn't it, Phil?
Yes, Joe. Mack was the pioneer, the trailblazer in all the fields of radio announcing.
But first and last, he loved sports best.
I wonder when it was after that chance visit to the old WEAF studios
that Mack began to realize he hadn't found just a spare time job, but an unusual profession.
After that first World Series broadcast, I think.
Until then, he still entertained ideas of returning to a singing career.
But the WEAF program director was right. Radio gets into your blood. It certainly got into Mack's.
Well, it couldn't have worked out better for both, Phil.
No, because Mack became Mr. Radio himself.
He's been called that, also the dean of broadcasters and the voice of radio.
But the title doesn't matter so much. They all fit.
Indeed they do. And our thanks to Phillips Carlin for these reminiscences,
for helping us recall a man and his unforgettable voice.
How do you do, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience? This is Graham McNamee speaking.
Yes, the story of Graham McNamee is the story of radio.
And the list of events he covered is the history of an era.
He broadcast the first championship boxing match, the first national political convention,
the first World Series, the first of the big football games.
And since this is the eve of a new football season, there is still another first that we especially want to recall tonight.
The Rose Bowl game, which he broadcast in 1927, which was also the very first coast-to-coast network broadcast.
In 1941, he revisited the Rose Bowl.
As in days of old, he sat in the broadcasting booth.
And during the half, he recalls some of the great moments of the past with Ken Carpenter.
Graham, what year was it that you first broadcast the Rose Bowl football game here in the Royal Seco?
Well, Ken, it was January 1st, 1927, a long time ago.
This is the 15th Rose Bowl game broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company.
And I was fortunate enough to work in the first four games. And I sure enjoyed the privilege, Ken.
The 1927 game was a mighty tough one for the coast.
It was a tie game, 7-7, between the Indians of Stanford and the Crimson Tide of Alabama.
Alabama blocked a Stanford kick on the Stanford 14-yard line and tied the score up in the last two minutes of play,
after Stanford seemed to have the game on ice.
It was a tough break for old Pop Warner, the Stanford coach,
since his team had treated the Alabama boys pretty roughly all afternoon.
In that game, Stanford sure showed three great backs in Hoffman, Hyland, and Vogue.
In 1928, Stanford beat Pittsburgh 7-6, Hoffman's toe winning the game with his conversion after touchdown,
after fumbles by each team had resulted in touchdowns for the other.
Well, that 1929 game was a pretty wild one, wasn't it, Graham?
Wild, Ken? Yes, that was a tough one.
That was the game that produced the most talked-of play in football of all time.
When the boys from Georgia Tech took the California team 8-7.
Roy Regals, the California center, scooped up a Tech fumble deep in Tech territory.
He got bumped around a bit, finally got squared away, and he saw a couple of goal posts and started for home.
Unfortunately, it was his own home, Ken, and not the opposition's, and how he did go down that field.
The crowd was simply stunned into utter silence.
They were unable to believe the awful thing that their eyes told them, a man running the wrong way.
Benny Lomb, that fast California back, took out after him, but Regals was an inspired runner for the moment,
and Lomb couldn't stop him until he had reached his own two-yard line.
Lomb tried to turn Regals around and start him in the right direction, but it was too late, Ken,
and the ball was downed on California's one-yard line, with California forced to kick from deep in their own end zone.
Regals passed Lomb from kick formation, missed fire, and after the ball had bounded around for what seemed an interminable time
with 22 men in hot pursuit, the play was finally ruled a safety for Georgia Tech, and those two points won the game for Tech 8-7.
Wasn't the 1927 game your first on the very important date in the physical history of broadcasting, Graham?
Ken, it was mighty important, as it marked the first coast-to-coast radio hookup of the National Broadcasting Company,
and believe me, there was plenty of worrying on the part of telephone and radio officials all the way from New York to Los Angeles.
It was one of the most important milestones in radio broadcasting.
Two wire channels were cleared across the country several days before the job, following very divergent routes,
a regular channel and a spare to be used in case the regular went out for any reason, such as flood or fire or storm or anything of that kind.
Much thought and a tremendous lot of labor were put into the routing of the two lines,
and wire equalization tests were conducted for days and days until the engineers were satisfied that the lines were ready for the long strain.
Why, even the night before the big day, our New York engineer, Gene Grossman, he's now an important sound man in the picture industry and I,
were called over to the telephone company at Los Angeles and we spent the night there, testing for voice with New York
and grabbing a few winks of sleep on desktops between tests.
The nice thing, though, was the fact that on the day of the game, everything worked to perfection,
and the first NBC coast-to-coast radio network was an accomplished fact.
Yes, Graham McNamee played an important role in radio history, but he never cared much about fame, nor did he worry about his critics.
There were few things he couldn't laugh off, but there was one thing he couldn't laugh off.
Following a broadcast in the spring of 1942, he was stricken with a throat infection,
and during the days that followed as he lay hospitalized, letters by the thousands poured in from listeners, from friends, and well-wishers.
Meanwhile, a new organization called the Sports Broadcasters Association was formed, and Ted Husing was chosen to bring a membership pin to Mack,
and Mack was very grateful. The following night, McNamee died.
But can a legend die? Can you still immortality?
Tomorrow, and on many another tomorrow, when the starting gun inaugurates another new season of football,
old-timers sitting by their radios will again hear, at least in memory, that unforgettable voice.
How do you do, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience? This is Graham McNamee speaking.
And so each year, the Sports Broadcasters Association gives to the outstanding athlete the Graham McNamee Memorial Award,
in honor of the man who was the true pioneer of sports broadcasting.
Graham was loved by the men in his profession, as well as the millions who knew him only as a voice.
And so ends our tribute to Graham McNamee, the sports announcer who became as famous as the events he described.
Be with us next week when the All-American Sports Show salutes Casey Stengel of the New York Yankees, the first manager to win five straight pennants.