Paul Harvey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named Paul Harvey, see
Paul Harvey (disambiguation).
Paul Harvey
receiving the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 Birth name Paul Harvey Aurandt Born September 4, 1918
Tulsa, Oklahoma Died February 28, 2009 (aged 90)
[1]
Phoenix, Arizona Show
The Rest of the Story,
Paul Harvey News and Comment Network
ABC Radio Networks Country
United States Spouse(s)
Lynne "Angel" Cooper Harvey (1940–2008) Children
Paul Harvey, Jr. Website
Paul Harvey Paul Harvey Aurandt (September 4, 1918 – February 28, 2009),
[1] better known as
Paul Harvey, was an American
radio broadcaster for the
ABC Radio Networks. He broadcast
News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous
The Rest of the Story segments. His listening audience was estimated, at its peak, at 24 million people a week.
[2] Paul Harvey News was carried on 1,200 radio stations, 400
Armed Forces Network stations and 300 newspapers. His broadcasts and newspaper columns have been reprinted in the
Congressional Record more than those of any other commentator.
[3]
The most noticeable features of Harvey's folksy delivery were his
dramatic pauses and quirky intonations.
His success with sponsors stemmed from the seamlessness with which he segued from his monologue into reading commercial messages. He explained his relationship with them, saying "I am fiercely loyal to those willing to put their money where my mouth is."
[4]
Contents
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hide]
[edit] Career
[edit] Early years
The son of a policeman,
[5] Harvey made radio receivers as a young boy. He attended
Tulsa Central High School where a teacher, Isabelle Ronan, was "impressed by his voice." On her recommendation, he started working at
KVOO in Tulsa in 1933, when he was 14. His first job was helping clean up. Eventually he was allowed to fill in on the air, reading commercials and the news.
[6][7][8]
While attending the
University of Tulsa, he continued working at KVOO, first as an announcer, and later as a program director. Harvey spent three years as a station manager for
KSAL, a local station in
Salina, Kansas. From there, he moved to a newscasting job at
KOMA in
Oklahoma City, and then to
KXOK, in
St. Louis, where he was Director of Special Events and a roving reporter.
Harvey then moved to Hawaii to cover the
United States Navy as it concentrated its fleet in the Pacific. He was returning to the mainland from assignment when the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor. He eventually enlisted in the
United States Army Air Forces but served only from December 1943 to March 1944. His critics[
specify] claimed he was given a psychiatric discharge for deliberately injuring himself in the heel. Harvey angrily denied the accusation, but was vague about details: "There was a little training accident...a minor cut on the obstacle course...I don't recall seeing anyone I knew who was a psychiatrist...I cannot tell you the exact wording on my discharge."
[9]
[edit] Move to Chicago
Harvey then moved to Chicago, where in June 1944, he began broadcasting from the ABC affiliate WENR. In 1945, he began hosting the postwar employment program
Jobs for G.I. Joe on WENR. Harvey added
The Rest of the Story as a tagline to in-depth feature stories in 1946.
One of Harvey's regular topics was lax security, in particular at
Argonne National Laboratory, a nuclear test site located 20 miles (32 km) west of Chicago.
[5] To demonstrate his concern, just after midnight on February 6, 1951, Harvey engaged in an "act of
participatory journalism"; as
The Washington Post described it in 2010, after obtaining 1400 pages of the FBI file on Harvey:
[5][10]
Harvey guided his black Cadillac Fleetwood toward Argonne, arriving sometime past midnight. He parked in a secluded spot, tossed his overcoat onto the barbed wire topping a fence, then scampered over....Harvey['s plan was] to scratch his signature on 'objects that could not possibly have been brought to the site by someone else,' according to a statement later given by an off-duty guard who accompanied him....But seconds after Harvey hit the ground, security officers spotted him....Harvey ran until, caught in a Jeep's headlights, he tripped and fell. As guards approached, Harvey sprang to his feet and waved. Guards asked whether Harvey realized he was in a restricted area. Harvey replied no, that he thought he might be at the airport because of the red lights.....Harvey told the authorities he had been headed to a neighboring town to give a speech when his car died....Under questioning, Harvey eventually dropped his cover story but refused to elaborate, saying he wanted to tell his tale before a congressional committee. Guards searched his Cadillac and found ... a four-page, typewritten script for an upcoming broadcast. Harvey, it turned out, had planned from the outset to feed the nation a bogus account of his escapade: "I hereby affirm the following is a true and accurate account," the script began. "My friend and I were driving a once-familiar road, when the car stalled....We started to walk....We made no effort to conceal our presence....Suddenly I realized where I was. That I had entered, unchallenged, one of the United States' vital atomic research installations....Quite by accident, understand, I had found myself inside the 'hot' area....We could have carried a bomb in, or classified documents out.
Harvey's "escapade" prompted the
U.S. attorney for Illinois to empanel a
grand jury to consider an
espionage indictment; Harvey "went on the air to suggest he was being set up"; the grand jury subsequently declined to indict Harvey.
[5]
On April 1, 1951, before the grand jury's decision,
[5] the ABC Radio Network debuted
Paul Harvey News and Comment "Commentary and analysis of Paul Harvey each weekday at 12 Noon". Paul Harvey was also heard originally on Sundays; the first Sunday program was Harvey's introduction. Later, the Sunday program would move to Saturdays. The program continued until his death.
From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, there was a televised, five-minute editorial by Paul Harvey that local stations could insert into their local news programs or show separately.
In the latter half of his career, Paul Harvey was also known for the radio series
The Rest of the Story, described as a blend of mystery and history, which premiered on May 10, 1976. The series quickly grew to six broadcasts a week, and continued until Harvey's death in 2009.
The Rest of the Story series was written and produced by the broadcaster's son, Paul Harvey, Jr., from its outset and for its thirty-three year duration. Harvey and his radio network stated that the stories in that series, although entertaining, were completely true.
[11] This was contested by some critics, including
urban legend expert
Jan Harold Brunvand.
[12]
In November 2000, Harvey signed a 10-year, $100M contract with ABC Radio Networks. A few months later, after damaging his
vocal cords, he went off the air, but returned in August 2001.
[edit] Fill-in hosts
Former Senator
Fred Thompson, known for his work on NBC's
Law and Order, substituted for Harvey regularly from 2006 to 2007, prior to his unsuccessful
run for President. Thompson left the network to run and did not return, instead joining
Westwood One in January 2009. Other substitutes for Harvey have included his son,
Paul Harvey, Jr.,
[13] Doug Limerick,
[14] Paul W. Smith,
[15] Gil Gross,
[16] Ron Chapman,
[17] Mitt Romney,
[18] Mike Huckabee,
[19] Mort Crim,
Scott Shannon, and
Tony Snow. After Huckabee's sub-hosting, ABC offered him a spin-off program,
The Huckabee Report, which launched early in 2009. Gross (morning) and Limerick (afternoons) were named Harvey's eventual successors, but three weeks after Harvey's death, the entire
News and Comment franchise was canceled.
Harvey did not host the show full-time after April 2008, when he came down with pneumonia. Shortly after his recovery, his wife died on May 3, causing him to prolong his time away from broadcasting. He voiced commercials, new episodes of
The Rest of the Story and
News & Comment during middays a few times a week, with his son handling mornings.
[edit] On-air persona, catch phrases, trademarks, and off-air interest
Harvey's on-air persona was influenced by that of sportscaster
Bill Stern. During the 1940s, Stern's
The Colgate Sports Reel and newsreel programs used many of the techniques later used by Harvey, including his emphatic style of delivery, and the use of phrases such as
Reel Two and
Reel Three to denote
