Award-winning CBS news correspondent and analyst Charles Cummings Collingwood was born in Three Rivers, Michigan, on June 4, 1917. He spent his early youth in Ithaca, New York, where his father, G. Harris Collingwood was a professor of forestry at Cornell University. When young Collingwood was six his father accepted a position with the U.S. Forest Service, and the family moved to Washington, D.C. After graduation from Central High School, Collingwood attended Deep Springs School and graduated cum laude from Cornell University in 1939, with a major in philosophy. In his final year at Cornell, Collingwood won a Rhodes Scholarship, as well as a scholarship for the study of international affairs at Geneva, after which he intended to study law. However, after the outbreak of World War II, he abandoned his studies and went to work in 1940 for the United Press as a reporter in London.
One year later he was recruited by Edward R. Murrow, and he joined the CBS news staff. In subsequent months Collingwood broadcast on-the-scene news stories concerning the blitz, the Allied invasion of North Africa (for which he won a Peabody Award in 1942 for his coverage of the Darlan assassination), and the Normandy invasion, and he was one of sixteen reporters selected to witness the German surrender.
In 1946 Collingwood returned to the United States to become the chief CBS United Nations reporter, but soon after at his own request he worked as west coast correspondent. From 1949 to 1952 he was the network's White House correspondent. In 1952 he took a leave from this position to become special assistant to Mutual Security Director Averell Harriman. In 1954 Collingwood returned to the network as reporter and news analyst. Already well-known to the public for his wartime broadcasts, Collingwood became the regular summer replacement for Edward R. Murrow, and he was associated with many of the network's best public affairs series of the era: Adventure, Odyssey, and Chronicle, which dealt with art, science, and literature, and with acclaimed local program WCBS-TV Views the Press.
At the urging of John Henry Faulk and Orson Bean, in 1955 Collingwood ran as a moderate candidate and was elected president of the New York local of AFTRA. Although the anti-Communist hysteria was then at its height, Collingwood took a strong position against the blacklist to which some members of the local were being subjected.
In 1957 Collingwood was named chief of the London Bureau, from which post he returned in 1959 to succeed Murrow on Person to Person. In 1964 he was named chief foreign correspondent for CBS, and he continued to work in this capacity until 1975 when he returned to New York. Throughout his career Collingwood was associated with many award-winning news specials broadcast as part of the CBS Reports series. Among these were “A Timetable for Vietnam” (1969), “A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy,” (1962) and “Picasso is 90” (1971).
From the early 1960s to the late 1970s Collingwood covered Vietnam, with his work resulting in many news specials on the subject. In 1968 Collingwood was the first American newsman to be admitted to North Vietnam. A novel, The Defector, published in 1970 was partially based on his observations and experiences in Vietnam. From 1975 through 1980 Collingwood worked in New York City, reporting and anchoring various CBS News specials and broadcasting on radio. He retired in 1982 and assumed special correspondent status.
Charles Collingwood was married to the actress Louise Allbritton. After her death in 1979, he married Tatiana Angelini Jolin. Charles Collingwood died of cancer on October 3, 1985.
During his career Collingwood was widely acclaimed as one of the best CBS newsmen and his work received a number of awards. In addition to the previously-mentioned Peabody Award, he also received the Headliners Awards in 1942 and 1948 and several awards from the Overseas Press Club.
