The Howard K. Smith Papers were received and organized by the Historical Society in two parts. Part 1 dates 1941-1961 and consists of correspondence, cables and dispatches, and scripts for radio and television reports. Part 2 dates 1962-1963 and entirely concerns Smith's ABC television series, News and Comment.
The correspondence in Part 1 of the Howard K. Smith Papers consists of exchanges of letters between him and his listeners. Most of the mail is from the period 1957 to 1961, after he had returned to the United States.
Concerning the cables to the London Daily Herald and to Time and Life, Smith says:
By agreement with CBS, I sent these cables to the London Daily Herald in 1942. All English papers were sharply restricted in size by war needs, so the reports were made as compact as possible. Frequently they were for the background information of the editor rather than for publication. All telegrams were censored by the Swiss, and that had to be kept in mind in writing them. Information was gathered mainly in Berne, the diplomatic center of Switzerland, but also in Zurich (a rather better source of information on Germany) and Lugano (for Italy) and Geneva and Lausanne (for France).
When the Swiss, concerned for their neutrality, banned broadcasting, CBS and Time reached an agreement to let me work for Time. The Swiss agreed to relax censorship provided the information in the cables for Time appeared with no indication that it came from Switzerland. Unknown to me, Time let a British newspaper use some of the dispatches (The Evening Standard) over my name. The Swiss became very angry and threatened to re-introduce strong censorship of my dispatches, until I persuaded Time not to let the information appear any longer over my name.
This information is rather better than that in other dispatches (to the Daily Herald and to CBS) because the Swiss let anything go as long as it was not published that it came from Switzerland.
Much of the material here is unique. For example, this file contains, I believe, the first revelations about the existence of Tito and his partisans (at a time when the western world believed Mihailovic was leader of these partisans and had heard nothing of Tito). I got the information, and the identity of Tito from emissaries sent to Switzerland by Tito. I refused to use the information until documents and photos were provided indicating the information was serious.
Also there is an eyewitness account—the first one I believe—of life among the French partisans in the “Macquis”. I went there in 1944 before the Americans arrived.
Smith says of the World War II radio scripts:
At first broadcasting was forbidden. The Swiss being surrounded and dependent on supplies that traveled through German occupied territory went to great lengths not to arouse German hostility. However, they permitted us to send cables.
Later when the tide turned in the war, the Swiss engaged in the modest hypocrisy of permitting telephone calls though not broadcasts. So we telephoned our broadcasts which were put on the air, as we spoke. The quality was metallic, but they were audible. The “comment” that appears pencilled at the bottom of the broadcast means the quality of the sound reception and not the quality of the journalistic or literary effort. After each broadcast I waited breathless to hear that comment which became more important in those primitive and difficult circumstances than the quality of the material broadcast.
In order to get past censors, much of the information is affirmed by quoting Swiss newspapers.
Among the cables to CBS are some (like several on the Yugoslav partisans) CBS requested not for use on CBS but for publication in newspapers. Others were used in frameworks for broadcast dramas—for example, one on Berlin during an air raid.
Many of these were literally broadcast from bed—the electronic journalists' dream. However that was because the phone happened to be at the bedside. Certainly there is no implication of relaxation. Trying to get through to CBS and writing in a manner so that no word would be missed by this unsatisfactory way of broadcasting by telephone was most un-relaxing.
I made my way from Switzerland to Paris, flying over a part of France still occupied in September, 1944. In Paris I was accredited as a war correspondent with the Ninth U.S. Army. I worked there and at First Army all that winter, covering the Battle of the Bulge and the Ninth Army's advance over the Roer River, then across the Rhine. It was expected that this army would go on to Berlin. But it was halted at Magdeburg due to agreement with the Russians, and withdrew from there.
However, by lot I was chosen the only American radio broadcaster to go to Berlin while it was still burning and attend the signing of the surrender in Zhukov's headquarters. Broadcasts about that occasion, done for all the networks, are included in this. All these were censored by army censors.
Some of the World War II scripts were not dated by Smith, but, because all those scripts which were dated were in correct order, Smith's arrangement of the undated scripts has been retained. At the beginning, they are numbered consecutively in the upper right hand corner. Thereafter, when “runs” of undated scripts occur they are indicated by their relation to the last dated script, that is: “l after 1942, April 14; 2 after 1942, April 14,” etc. When the scripts are dated only with numbers, keep in mind that the European system is used, that is, the first number is the day, and the second is the month. Some 1945 scripts are written on the backs of U.S. Army press releases, of interest in themselves.
Of the analysis scripts for Douglas Edwards and the News, Smith says:
This series of broadcasts was designed to meet what remains a major problem of Television News. TV News Programs tend to be rather short and shallow bulletins. CBS decided to try to deepen its coverage by having an analyst try to write a daily commentary to last only 90 seconds. I was selected, and was brought from London to Washington to do it.
I think, and the producer and Edwards and indeed almost everyone who has commented on the innovation, thought that it worked. It required considerable effort to say something both easily understood and meaningful in the space of little more than a sonnet, but the feature became a favored part of CBS' main daily TV News program.
However, as CBS' policy altered and the commentaries—already difficult due to their brevity—became many times more difficult for having to suit several timid editors and executives, I finally gave notice that I could not continue unless given freer scope. The scope was refused, so the series ended.
During the period when this feature was applied, the Douglas Edwards News Program became the news outlet with the widest audience in the world—some fourteen or fifteen million viewers a day, an audience no newspaper or magazine or radio or TV program achieved.
There is a complete file of Smith's Sunday Broadcast Commentaries in the collection. An inventory of these scripts has been filed at the end of the Douglas Edwards scripts.
Of the Sunday Commentary scripts, Smith says:
As Vice-President of CBS, Ed Murrow assigned me to assume, after an interval, a Sunday broadcast he had been doing throughout the war. I did the broadcast for eleven years from London and other places abroad, then for four years from Washington and other places in America.
The broadcast was done from a remarkable variety of locations—from most capitals in Europe on both sides of the Iron Curtain, from Mid-Atlantic on board one of the Queen's Liners, from the jungle in Africa, and from the desert in Jordan. The early efforts were a little crude, but I would like to think that they improved as a stride was hit. There were occasional arguments about them with CBS, but not, I think, more arguments than other commentators have had with editors.
However, in America the arguments increased in number and in intensity—especially concerning a broadcast I did on Birmingham at the time of planned violence against so-called Freedom Riders there. My relations never recovered from that argument, and eventually the program was withdrawn from me a week or so before we broke relations. In the year before the break, each Sunday script was go8212;especially concerning a broadcast I did on Birmingham at the time of planned violence against so-called Freedom Riders there. My relations never recovered from that argument, and eventually the program was withdrawn from me a week or so before we broke relations. In the year before the break, each Sunday script was gone over by an editor in212;especially concerning a broadcast I did on Birmingham at the time of planned violence against so-called Freedom Riders there. My relations never recovered from that argument, and eventually the program was withdrawn from me a week or so before we broke relations. In the year before the break, each Sunday script was gone over by an editor in Washington, who then read the script to the Washington Bureau Manager, Mr. Koop, who was told to be free to call the news director, Mr. Day, who was told to keep a Vice-President, Mr. Salant, informed. Then copies of the script had to be sent to Mr. Salant.
There are several observations that ought to be made about the series. The program, in its occasional self-conscious moments, makes them itself. This is probably the longest continuous broadcast series by an individual that has ever been made.
Part 2 of the Smith Papers, concerning his ABC television series News and Comment, include listeners' mail, scripts, interviews, New York office files, clippings, tape recordings, and films.
Listeners' mail for this series has been arranged according to the program to which it pertains and is followed by an analysis of the responses. Scripts are mostly the final on-the-air scripts actually used by Mr. Smith. A small number of the programs had no scripts as such, because they were discussion programs or interviews. There are also scripts in the New York office files.
Interview transcripts are arranged alphabetically by interviewee. Much of the interview material never was used on the air; often, only two or three minutes of an interview was actually broadcast. There are a number of other interviews in the New York office files, arranged according to the program on which they were used. Interview transcripts include: Paul H. Douglas, Samuel J. Ervin Jr., James A. Farley, Gerald R. Ford, Orville E. Freeman, Lillian Gish, Harry Golden, Albert A. Gore Sr., Sheilah Graham, Ernest Gruening, Leonard W. Hall, Philip A. Hart, James R. Hoffa, Hubert H. Humphrey, Jacob K. Javits, C. Estes Kefauver, Joseph E. Levine, John V. Lindsay, Eugene J. McCarthy, Robert S. McNamara, Malcolm X, Mike Mansfield, Clark R. Mollenhoff, Wayne L. Morse, Hans Morgenthau, Edward R. Murrow, Adam Clayton Powell, Walter W. Rostow, Dean Rusk, Hugh D. Scott Jr., Merriman Smith, Theodore C. Sorenson, Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Gloria Swanson, J. Strom Thurmond, and Rexford G. Tugwell, among others.
The New York office files cover only February 14 through October 28, 1962, and are arranged by program. They contain scripts, interviews, research materials, notes, and memoranda. These files are followed by papers concerning the original suggestion for the series, an award, early Nielsen ratings, and publicity.
Clippings for News and Comment are divided into two sections: those pertaining to the whole series, excluding the November 11, 1962 program, “The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon;” and those pertaining to the Nixon program.
Tape recordings, films, and photographs are detailed in the contents list below.
