Cecil Brown was born in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, on September 14, 1907. The family later moved to Beaver Falls and College Hill, Pennsylvania and Warren, Ohio. While attending high school in Warren, he was editor of the school paper. Brown attended Western Reserve University for two years, concentrating on courses in journalism and later transferring to Ohio State University. His first newspaper job was with the Warren, Ohio, Tribune-Chronicle, describing a canoe trip on the Ohio River. After his junior year Brown stowed away on a ship going to South America, and wrote weekly stories about the experience to the Youngstown Vindicator. Following his senior year at Ohio State University, Brown shipped out as a seaman on an American Export Lines freighter to the Black Sea and then to North Africa. An injury and operation in Casablanca forced his return to the United States. While en route to Mexico City, Brown accepted a job with the United Press at Phoenix and was soon transferred to Los Angeles. In 1933, at the age of 26, Cecil Brown became editor of the Prescott-Journal Miner in Prescott, Arizona. The following year Brown returned to the East to work for the Pittsburgh Press, 1934-1936, and the Newark Ledger, 1936-1937.
Brown's first contact with radio came during the summer of 1937 as a temporary news writer for CBS but soon after he became a free-lance magazine writer, traveling in Europe for several months and selling a series of articles to Ken magazine. In 1938, he joined the International News Service in Paris. Shortly thereafter INS sent him to Rome as bureau manager, where he reported on the death of Pope Pius XI.
In February 1940 Brown become part of the CBS staff in Rome and part of that network's European team along with Edward R. Murrow in London, William Shirer in Berlin, and Eric Sevareid in Paris. Because of his frank broadcast opinions--always a hallmark of Brown's reporting--in April 1941, Mussolini expelled Brown for his open hostility to fascism. During the next eleven months, Brown's travel for CBS took him to Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece, Palestine, Egypt, India, and Malaya. He was briefly held by the Germans in Sarajevo, saw the Allied troops take Damascus, reported on the fighting in Egypt, and was involved in a plane crash while observing the defense of Malaya. Finally, Brown was on board the Repulse, a British warship, when it and the warship Prince of Wales were sunk in the South China Sea three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After his rescue, Brown's eyewitness account of the sinking brought him international fame. This reporting won Brown the Peabody Award for the best news coverage of 1941, and his book about the event, Suez to Singapore (1942), became a best seller.
In January 1942 Brown's criticism of the British lack of preparedness in his CBS broadcasts from Singapore led to the revocation of his broadcast license, after which Brown returned to the United States and began a regular nightly radio broadcast for CBS. At the same time he launched a career as a public speaker and continued his free-lance writing. In September 1943, Brown resigned from CBS over the right to express his opinions during news broadcasts. The Mutual Broadcasting System hired Brown, where he remained with MBS for thirteen years as a news broadcaster and analyst. Brown's career with MBS was notable for his extensive travels to Europe, the Far East, and the Soviet Union, and his interviews with world leaders. Brown was one of the first reporters to use a portable tape recorder for his on-the-spot reporting. During this period Brown won the Overseas Press Club's award for foreign affairs commentary, and he served as president of the Overseas Press Club.
In 1957 Brown began broadcasting on television for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) on a program known as Cecil Brown and the News. After being replaced in that slot, Brown then joined the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to head its news operations in the Far East. With a base in Tokyo, Brown traveled widely to cover the news in that part of the globe. In 1962 NBC transferred him to Los Angeles where he began a regular program of news analysis on KNBC, the Brown-Peterson Comment, which was broadcast to a West Coast audience. In 1964 Brown resigned to become director of news and public affairs at KCET, the public television station in Los Angeles, where he continued his broadcast commentaries. In 1966 his KCET broadcasts earned Brown the Alfred I. DuPont award for national broadcast excellence and the Associated Press award for outstanding editorial commentary.
In 1967, at age 60, Brown began a teaching career at California Polytechnic University where he taught American civilization and mass communications. He quickly established a reputation as one of the best lecturers on campus, and in 1980, the year in which he retired, he won the school's outstanding teacher award. Brown died on October 25, 1987 as the result of a ruptured aorta. He was survived by his wife, Martha Kohn, whom he married in Italy in 1938.
