John Franklin MacVane, journalist and radio-television news commentator, was born April 29,
1912, in Portland, Maine. Educated in the Portland public schools, Philipps Exeter Academy
(1929), and William College (1933), he also received a degree from Exeter College, Oxford
University in 1935.
MacVane began his professional career in 1935 as a reporter and ship news columnist for the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle. This was followed
by a two-year stint with the New York Sun
as a reporter and rewriter. During a vacation in 1938 he accepted a position as sub-editor
with the London Daily Express, one of
London's major dailies. The following year the Express transferred him to their Paris bureau. In Paris MacVane subsequently
wrote for the Continental Daily Mail, the
Exchange Telegraph News Agency and the International News Service, covering the rapidly
deteriorating situation on the continent until the fall of France forced him to flee to
Great Britain.
In July 1940, MacVane went to work as a radio broadcaster for the National Broadcasting
Company in London, and in the following months he was on the air daily, carrying news of the
Battle of Britain to American audiences. In 1942 MacVane was the only American radio
correspondent assigned to accompany the Dieppe Raid. From the autumn of that year until
spring 1943, MacVane covered the North African theatre. Rapidly earning a reputation as a
combat correspondent, MacVane made the first radio broadcast from Algiers, and he scored a
world beat in announcing the news of the assassination of Admiral Darlan.
After the initial assault, MacVane was recalled to London to serve as NBC's acting European
manager. Such was his reputation during this period that MacVane was one of only two
commentators whom the British permitted to broadcast “ad lib” without
censorship. On D-Day MacVane was the first radio correspondent ashore. Then, after being
wounded on Omaha Beach, he returned to London to broadcast the first, full eye-witness
accounts of the landings. MacVane also covered the Allied advance with the First Army and
was one of the first American newsmen to enter Paris. Adding to his long line of
“firsts,” he arrived in Berlin in advance of the American forces.
In 1946 MacVane persuaded NBC to open a bureau at the United Nations, and he has been
primarily known since as a specialist on international affairs. In 1950 he left NBC to
become press consultant to the United States delegation to the U.N.; in this capacity he
served as producer-moderator of the weekly program, United or Not?, which was broadcast over the ABC network. Since June 1953,
MacVane has been the U.N. correspondent for ABC, appearing frequently on such television
programs as Issues and Answers, Adlai Stevenson Reports, John Daly and the News, and the ABC Evening News and such radio programs as News Around the World. He has also been a radio
commentator for Voice of America and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
In addition to his radio and television work, MacVane has authored numerous magazine
articles and pamphlets, and he has written a regular column on the United Nations for the
Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de Sao Paulo.
His book-length study of the North African invasion, Journey into War: War and Diplomacy in North Africa, was
published in 1943.
MacVane has received many honors including the Purple Heart, the Legion of Honor, the
National Headliners Award (all during 1947), and the American Association for the United
Nations Award in 1960. He is a member of the Association of Radio News Analysts (having
served as its president for four terms) and a founder of the United Nations Correspondents
Association.
