For more than a half century, 18 million listeners a day on 1,200 radio stations would tune into their favorite news program, which began with a booming voice announcing:
I was one of those 18 million, having “discovered” Paul Harvey during my college years as I drove to classes. I was particularly captivated by his delivery with its distinctive pauses and his signature sign off – “Paul Harvey … (pause) … Gooood Day!”
By his own admission, Paul Harvey fell in love with words and ran away to join radio in 1933. He rolled those words across the airwaves without a slur, taking special care to pronounce “nee-euws” instead of “nooze” and reck-ord” instead of “reckerd.” When two consonants abutted in multi-syllable words, as in webpage, Harvey made sure that one consonant ended before the other began by inserting an “a” as in “web-a-page.”
Notwithstanding his elocution, Harvey’s audience was down home Middle America and he spoke to it as if it were drawn up at his feet, intently listening. Unlike any other news program, Paul Harvey reported news that was largely out of the mainstream. His stories were G-rated, devoid of salacious and shocking reports of violence and tragedy – the fodder that fuels most news programs. A news story about the war in the Middle East might be followed by one about a bear cub who got stuck in a suburban garbage can, requiring its rescuers to devise a way to extricate the critter without being seriously clawed.
Over time a unique format developed which he called “Paul Harvey’s News & Comment” and it was broadcast twice a day – usually a 15-minute segment in the morning drive time and a longer 30-minute version at noon. A feature of the noon broadcast was his bumper before commercials – “And now … Page One,” later followed by Page Two and so on up to Page Four. I’ve been known to keep lunch guests waiting while Uncle Paul got to Page Four on my car radio.
Following the sign-on for News & Comment, the news never came first; the sponsor did. “I am fiercely loyal to those who are willing to put their money where my mouth is,” Harvey often said. Predictably some of his sponsors stayed with him for more than 30 years. All of the products and services he advertised he personally tested and used, and he personally interviewed every sponsor. Commercials were delivered live, most of them by Harvey himself, and almost all were ad-libbed so they had the honest ring of a trusted person referring the product to a friend. Here’s an example of Harvey’s folksy sales pitch:
"If the father in your family owns a truck," he would tell his audience, "have I got a Father's Day gift for you!!!," he continued with uncontained enthusiasm. “Get him a load handler. A LOOOAD HANNNDLER. I know; I've got one down on our farm in the Missouri Ozarks!"
All news had to pass the “Aunt Betty” test – so-called for his sister-in-law, an "old-fashioned housewife" who lived in Missouri. If he thought a story was too hard for Aunt Betty to grasp or too offbeat to interest her, Harvey would rewrite it or delete it from his news script.
His producer for almost 70 years was also his partner in life – Lynne Cooper. In 1939 she was a Tulsa school teacher who had come to do a program on KXOK where Harvey broadcasted. He asked her to dinner and proposed marriage during the meal. She turned him down, but they married the next year. Thereafter, he referred to her as “Angel Harvey.”
Paul Harvey was a channel for news that interested an audience whom he understood better than anyone, He once told Larry King, "I don't think of myself as a profound journalist. I think of myself as a professional parade watcher who can't wait to get out of bed every morning and rush down to the teletypes and pan for gold."
Their work day began at 3:30 a.m. in the ABC offices of "Paul Harvey News" on Paul Harvey Drive in the heart of Chicago. Unlike radio personalities today who wear shorts, blue jeans, and flip flops to do their broadcasts, Harvey always wore a starched shirt and tie to work. When broadcasting, he removed his suit or sports jacket and donned a starched blue lab cost with an ABC logo on the pocket. Angel would dress in a business suit and heels with her hair done as if she were going to a formal affair.
As soon as they entered their office, they began scouring the news feed teletypes, looking for stories they could mold into the day’s program. Harvey banged out the daily copy script on an IBM Selectric, rather than a PC, which he called “The Confuser,” that sat idle in another room.
The news was delivered live in a small broadcast studio in the office. After the noon broadcast, Harvey and Angel ritually lunched at the Tavern Club, located on top of the building from which he broadcasted. After lunch, they would return to the office for a final meeting of the day with their assistant, then they called their driver and would be home by 2 p.m. There might be a round of afternoon golf, but after a little early evening television, they would turn in at nightfall because the alarm went off at 3 a.m. the next morning.
Over the years, Harvey developed homilies that often found their way into his scripts: “In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these." If a program contained a news item in which someone had done something outrageous or offensive, Harvey would pay the offender the ultimate snub, saying, "He would want us to mention his name," followed by a period of silence, then he would start the next news item.
Paul Harvey used language like no other, introducing an unusual story with a phrase like, “Oh my, here’s a strange …” Words that he invented, like “bumpersnicker” and “guesstimate,” became part of the American vernacular.
He could report stories in a way that portrayed him as surprised as his listeners: "Doctors have removed a kidney stone from a woman that is the size of a coconut … seven inches across! Seven inches???!!!"
His style of delivery was his hallmark. Characterized by long, almost painful pauses, a listener might think the program had dropped off the air, until Harvey would come back and complete the thought or sentence. His programs included quirky stories like the nude sunbather who lay down on a hotel roof … unknowingly on the dining room skylight … or the Virginia fire department whose new colorful, scuff-proof, adjustable-size helmets were wonderful in every way except … they melted near heat.
People who had been married for many years held a special fascination, if not reverence, for Harvey. A regular segment of each news program was introduced as: “This day's news of most lasting significance …" and sometimes would be followed by, "Agnes and John Caroline in Lavalette, N.J., are 71 years along the way to forever together." The Harveys were married 68 years before Angel died.
The last item of a broadcast, which was often a funny story, would usually be preceded by the introduction, "For what it's worth …" No one could tell a story like Paul Harvey – teasing out the details with pauses so the listener created a mental picture of what was happening:
"For what it's worth, Mark Hatterer of York, Pennsylvania, gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dog. I said, Mr. Hatterer gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation … to a dog … after the dog had nearly drowned … in a septic tank. The dog was drowning in a septic tank when Mr. Hatterer rescued it. After a veterinary doctor pronounced the Scottish terrier out of danger, Mr. Hatterer said, `You know … I … I hope I don't ever have to do that again.'... Paaaul Harvey........ Gooood-DAY!"
In 2000, ABC Radio awarded Harvey, then 82, a 10-year, $100 million contract to stay with the network. A 10-year contract with an 82-year old man was a tribute not only to Harvey’s enormous listening audience – about 22 million people – but also to his uncommon ability to inspire so much trust in his listeners that the products he advertised were assumed good values because Paul Harvey said they were. At the time that his contract was announced, I couldn’t help but remember George Burns, who at 95 signed a contract to perform in London in celebration of his 100th birthday.
On May 17, 2007, Harvey told his radio audience that Angel had developed leukemia. She died a year later at age 92. She was, one observer noted, what Colonel Parker was to Elvis Presley. Angel Harvey put Paul Harvey on track to have the phenomenal career that his became.
Harvey was forced to leave the air for several months in 2001 because of a virus that weakened a vocal cord. But he returned to work and continued working as hard as ever despite his age and gradually declining health. He was 89 when Angel died, and while the light seemed to have dimmed in his life after she was gone, he continued to broadcast even after a bout with pneumonia. At age 90, with his workload reduced to a few broadcasts per week, guest broadcasters were needed to fill it. Some suggested it might be time to think about retiring. "Retiring," he scoffed, "is just practicing up to be dead. That doesn't take any practice." He was still broadcasting the week before he died, which came less than a year after Angel’s death.
Paul Harvey was the descendent of five generations of fundamental Baptist preachers. He was socially conservative, and religion shaped his daily life. Beginning in 1965 he broadcasted a special program every year on Christmas Day that became a tradition. Whatever I was doing on that day, I made time to listen to it. I can’t think of a better way to end this week’s blog than with Paul Harvey’s annual Christmas Story, since Christmas is a few days down the week.
It is hard to capture the intonations of his spoken words with written words, particularly his notable pauses, which I’ve attempted to replicate with dots (…). Even with the limitations of telling Harvey’s story in written form, it is a message for the ages.
Today I am going to tell you a modern parable and the man I’m going to describe was not a scrooge … he was not a scrooge … he was a kind, decent, mostly good man; generous to his family, upright in his dealings with others.
But he just didn’t believe all of that “incarnation” stuff that the churches proclaim at Christmas time. It just didn’t make sense to him, and he was too honest to pretend otherwise.
He could not swallow the “Jesus story” about God coming to earth as man. Why would God want to do anything like that?
“I’m truly sorry to distress you,” he told his wife, “but I’m not going with you and the family to church this Christmas Eve.” He said he’d feel like a hypocrite; that he would much rather stay home, but that he would wait up for them.
So he stayed, and they went to the midnight service.
Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall and he went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier. Then he went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper.
Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. And then another … and then another. At first he thought someone must have been throwing snowballs against his living room window.
But when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm, and in a desperate search for shelter, they had tried to fly through his large landscape window!
Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter – if he could direct the birds to it.
Quickly he put on his coat and galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn, opened the door wide, and turned on a light.
But the birds did not come in.
He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow lighted, wide open doorway of the stable.
And yet to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow.
He tried catching them, he tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms, but instead they scattered in every direction … every direction except into the warm, lighted barn.
Then he realized they were afraid of him. Of course they were! To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature, if only I could think of some way to let them know they can trust me, that I’m not trying to hurt them, I’m trying to help them.
But how? Any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led, they would not be shooed into the barn because they feared him.
“If only I could be a bird myself for a few moments,” he thought to himself. “If only I could be one of them and mingle with them and speak their language and tell … and tell them not to be afraid … and show them … and show them the way to the safe warm barn. But I’d have to be one of them, so they could see … and hear … and understand.”
At that moment, the church bells began to ring.
The sound of them reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells … Adeste Fideles … listening to the bells pealing the glad tiding of Christmas …
And he sank to his knees in the snow …
“Now I understand,” he whispered. “Now I see why you had to come.”
Merry Christmas to all of my blog readers!
HELLO AMERICANS! THIS IS PAUL HARVEY …
STAAAAND BYYYY … FOR NEEEWS!!
STAAAAND BYYYY … FOR NEEEWS!!
I was one of those 18 million, having “discovered” Paul Harvey during my college years as I drove to classes. I was particularly captivated by his delivery with its distinctive pauses and his signature sign off – “Paul Harvey … (pause) … Gooood Day!”
By his own admission, Paul Harvey fell in love with words and ran away to join radio in 1933. He rolled those words across the airwaves without a slur, taking special care to pronounce “nee-euws” instead of “nooze” and reck-ord” instead of “reckerd.” When two consonants abutted in multi-syllable words, as in webpage, Harvey made sure that one consonant ended before the other began by inserting an “a” as in “web-a-page.”
Notwithstanding his elocution, Harvey’s audience was down home Middle America and he spoke to it as if it were drawn up at his feet, intently listening. Unlike any other news program, Paul Harvey reported news that was largely out of the mainstream. His stories were G-rated, devoid of salacious and shocking reports of violence and tragedy – the fodder that fuels most news programs. A news story about the war in the Middle East might be followed by one about a bear cub who got stuck in a suburban garbage can, requiring its rescuers to devise a way to extricate the critter without being seriously clawed.
Over time a unique format developed which he called “Paul Harvey’s News & Comment” and it was broadcast twice a day – usually a 15-minute segment in the morning drive time and a longer 30-minute version at noon. A feature of the noon broadcast was his bumper before commercials – “And now … Page One,” later followed by Page Two and so on up to Page Four. I’ve been known to keep lunch guests waiting while Uncle Paul got to Page Four on my car radio.
Following the sign-on for News & Comment, the news never came first; the sponsor did. “I am fiercely loyal to those who are willing to put their money where my mouth is,” Harvey often said. Predictably some of his sponsors stayed with him for more than 30 years. All of the products and services he advertised he personally tested and used, and he personally interviewed every sponsor. Commercials were delivered live, most of them by Harvey himself, and almost all were ad-libbed so they had the honest ring of a trusted person referring the product to a friend. Here’s an example of Harvey’s folksy sales pitch:
"If the father in your family owns a truck," he would tell his audience, "have I got a Father's Day gift for you!!!," he continued with uncontained enthusiasm. “Get him a load handler. A LOOOAD HANNNDLER. I know; I've got one down on our farm in the Missouri Ozarks!"
All news had to pass the “Aunt Betty” test – so-called for his sister-in-law, an "old-fashioned housewife" who lived in Missouri. If he thought a story was too hard for Aunt Betty to grasp or too offbeat to interest her, Harvey would rewrite it or delete it from his news script.
His producer for almost 70 years was also his partner in life – Lynne Cooper. In 1939 she was a Tulsa school teacher who had come to do a program on KXOK where Harvey broadcasted. He asked her to dinner and proposed marriage during the meal. She turned him down, but they married the next year. Thereafter, he referred to her as “Angel Harvey.”
Paul Harvey was a channel for news that interested an audience whom he understood better than anyone, He once told Larry King, "I don't think of myself as a profound journalist. I think of myself as a professional parade watcher who can't wait to get out of bed every morning and rush down to the teletypes and pan for gold."
Their work day began at 3:30 a.m. in the ABC offices of "Paul Harvey News" on Paul Harvey Drive in the heart of Chicago. Unlike radio personalities today who wear shorts, blue jeans, and flip flops to do their broadcasts, Harvey always wore a starched shirt and tie to work. When broadcasting, he removed his suit or sports jacket and donned a starched blue lab cost with an ABC logo on the pocket. Angel would dress in a business suit and heels with her hair done as if she were going to a formal affair.
As soon as they entered their office, they began scouring the news feed teletypes, looking for stories they could mold into the day’s program. Harvey banged out the daily copy script on an IBM Selectric, rather than a PC, which he called “The Confuser,” that sat idle in another room.
The news was delivered live in a small broadcast studio in the office. After the noon broadcast, Harvey and Angel ritually lunched at the Tavern Club, located on top of the building from which he broadcasted. After lunch, they would return to the office for a final meeting of the day with their assistant, then they called their driver and would be home by 2 p.m. There might be a round of afternoon golf, but after a little early evening television, they would turn in at nightfall because the alarm went off at 3 a.m. the next morning.
Over the years, Harvey developed homilies that often found their way into his scripts: “In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these." If a program contained a news item in which someone had done something outrageous or offensive, Harvey would pay the offender the ultimate snub, saying, "He would want us to mention his name," followed by a period of silence, then he would start the next news item.
Paul Harvey used language like no other, introducing an unusual story with a phrase like, “Oh my, here’s a strange …” Words that he invented, like “bumpersnicker” and “guesstimate,” became part of the American vernacular.
He could report stories in a way that portrayed him as surprised as his listeners: "Doctors have removed a kidney stone from a woman that is the size of a coconut … seven inches across! Seven inches???!!!"
His style of delivery was his hallmark. Characterized by long, almost painful pauses, a listener might think the program had dropped off the air, until Harvey would come back and complete the thought or sentence. His programs included quirky stories like the nude sunbather who lay down on a hotel roof … unknowingly on the dining room skylight … or the Virginia fire department whose new colorful, scuff-proof, adjustable-size helmets were wonderful in every way except … they melted near heat.
People who had been married for many years held a special fascination, if not reverence, for Harvey. A regular segment of each news program was introduced as: “This day's news of most lasting significance …" and sometimes would be followed by, "Agnes and John Caroline in Lavalette, N.J., are 71 years along the way to forever together." The Harveys were married 68 years before Angel died.
The last item of a broadcast, which was often a funny story, would usually be preceded by the introduction, "For what it's worth …" No one could tell a story like Paul Harvey – teasing out the details with pauses so the listener created a mental picture of what was happening:
"For what it's worth, Mark Hatterer of York, Pennsylvania, gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dog. I said, Mr. Hatterer gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation … to a dog … after the dog had nearly drowned … in a septic tank. The dog was drowning in a septic tank when Mr. Hatterer rescued it. After a veterinary doctor pronounced the Scottish terrier out of danger, Mr. Hatterer said, `You know … I … I hope I don't ever have to do that again.'... Paaaul Harvey........ Gooood-DAY!"
In 2000, ABC Radio awarded Harvey, then 82, a 10-year, $100 million contract to stay with the network. A 10-year contract with an 82-year old man was a tribute not only to Harvey’s enormous listening audience – about 22 million people – but also to his uncommon ability to inspire so much trust in his listeners that the products he advertised were assumed good values because Paul Harvey said they were. At the time that his contract was announced, I couldn’t help but remember George Burns, who at 95 signed a contract to perform in London in celebration of his 100th birthday.
On May 17, 2007, Harvey told his radio audience that Angel had developed leukemia. She died a year later at age 92. She was, one observer noted, what Colonel Parker was to Elvis Presley. Angel Harvey put Paul Harvey on track to have the phenomenal career that his became.
Harvey was forced to leave the air for several months in 2001 because of a virus that weakened a vocal cord. But he returned to work and continued working as hard as ever despite his age and gradually declining health. He was 89 when Angel died, and while the light seemed to have dimmed in his life after she was gone, he continued to broadcast even after a bout with pneumonia. At age 90, with his workload reduced to a few broadcasts per week, guest broadcasters were needed to fill it. Some suggested it might be time to think about retiring. "Retiring," he scoffed, "is just practicing up to be dead. That doesn't take any practice." He was still broadcasting the week before he died, which came less than a year after Angel’s death.
Paul Harvey was the descendent of five generations of fundamental Baptist preachers. He was socially conservative, and religion shaped his daily life. Beginning in 1965 he broadcasted a special program every year on Christmas Day that became a tradition. Whatever I was doing on that day, I made time to listen to it. I can’t think of a better way to end this week’s blog than with Paul Harvey’s annual Christmas Story, since Christmas is a few days down the week.
It is hard to capture the intonations of his spoken words with written words, particularly his notable pauses, which I’ve attempted to replicate with dots (…). Even with the limitations of telling Harvey’s story in written form, it is a message for the ages.
Today I am going to tell you a modern parable and the man I’m going to describe was not a scrooge … he was not a scrooge … he was a kind, decent, mostly good man; generous to his family, upright in his dealings with others.
But he just didn’t believe all of that “incarnation” stuff that the churches proclaim at Christmas time. It just didn’t make sense to him, and he was too honest to pretend otherwise.
He could not swallow the “Jesus story” about God coming to earth as man. Why would God want to do anything like that?
“I’m truly sorry to distress you,” he told his wife, “but I’m not going with you and the family to church this Christmas Eve.” He said he’d feel like a hypocrite; that he would much rather stay home, but that he would wait up for them.
So he stayed, and they went to the midnight service.
Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall and he went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier. Then he went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper.
Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. And then another … and then another. At first he thought someone must have been throwing snowballs against his living room window.
But when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm, and in a desperate search for shelter, they had tried to fly through his large landscape window!
Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter – if he could direct the birds to it.
Quickly he put on his coat and galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn, opened the door wide, and turned on a light.
But the birds did not come in.
He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow lighted, wide open doorway of the stable.
And yet to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow.
He tried catching them, he tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms, but instead they scattered in every direction … every direction except into the warm, lighted barn.
Then he realized they were afraid of him. Of course they were! To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature, if only I could think of some way to let them know they can trust me, that I’m not trying to hurt them, I’m trying to help them.
But how? Any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led, they would not be shooed into the barn because they feared him.
“If only I could be a bird myself for a few moments,” he thought to himself. “If only I could be one of them and mingle with them and speak their language and tell … and tell them not to be afraid … and show them … and show them the way to the safe warm barn. But I’d have to be one of them, so they could see … and hear … and understand.”
At that moment, the church bells began to ring.
The sound of them reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells … Adeste Fideles … listening to the bells pealing the glad tiding of Christmas …
And he sank to his knees in the snow …
“Now I understand,” he whispered. “Now I see why you had to come.”
Merry Christmas to all of my blog readers!
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