The Voice

Winston Churchill was feeling blue. It was Dec. 7, 1941. The war was not going too well. Mrs. Churchill was in bed with a bad cold. The Prime Minister's mood communicated itself to his guests in the panelled dining hall at Chequers, country residence of Britain's Prime Ministers. They ate quietly, spoke softly and seldom. U.S. Lend-Lease Coordinator W. Averell Harriman was there, as was Commander C. R. Thompson, Mr. Churchill's personal aide, and U.S. Ambassador John Gilbert Winant.

A servant switched on the radio, tuned in the 9 o'clock news. "Here is the news," said the announcer in the typically dry, burnt-toast style of BBC newscasting. The Prime Minister and his guests listened with half an ear. The announcer droned on "The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor" he casually observed. "There will be a change tomorrow in the rationing of certain foods. ..."

Harriman cried, "What did he say?"

"He said the Japanese bombed some island--Pearl Island," observed Commander Thompson.

"No, he didn't!" shouted Harriman. "He said the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor!"

A Friendly Tone. This vignette of how Britain's Prime Minister first heard of the historic event was related last week by the New York Herald Tribune's Bert Andrews, who got it from friends of U.S. Ambassador to Russia Harriman. The anecdote was a pertinent comment on U.S. and British newscasting styles.* Its counterpart could scarcely have happened in the U.S.--especially with George Fredric Putnam/- at the microphone.

Walter Winchell has dubbed George Putnam "the greatest male voice in radio." Putnam is the property of the National Broadcasting Co. and the vocal light of its No. 1 station, Manhattan's WEAF. Nearly a million faithful Greater New Yorkers tune in his daily newscasts (6:15 & 11 p.m., E.W.T.), and no local radio newsman or commentator has more daily listeners in the Metropolitan area.

Putnam's mikeside manner is silvery, melodious, supersmooth. He describes it as "a fast-moving style. The voice is authoritative and has an underlying tone of friendliness, a tone of optimism but not optimistic."

A Sizable Following. Putnam does not write what he reports; that is ably done by NBC news writers. Putnam reads it after "processing" it for two hours. "Processing" consists of marking the copy to suggest intonations and going over it with Roy Porteous, night supervisor of NBC announcers. "I prefer," says George Putnam, "to say that Putnam works hours in the preparation of his news." He also says, of other radio commentators: "It doesn't matter that they've been all over the world. When these people are back a couple of months they can't tell you anything that I can't tell you."

George Putnam was 19 when he told his mother that he was going into radio. Said she: "You talk all the time anyway; you might as well get paid for it. Station WDGY, in Minneapolis, took him on as announcer, jazz-record-player, occasional vocalist. He built up a sizable following of jitterbugs for his record program, White Heat, enrolled many a hepcat in his White Heat Club of America. When he moved across the river to St. Paul's station KSTP, Minneapolitans remembered him chiefly for the double talk he ad-libbed between records. It sounded something like: "Come on, you pulsating, cheerilating, titillating, palsadictasomnadictadypsomaniacs of thermal rhythm, and listen to...."

A Driving Force. This phase had passed when he turned up in Manhattan on vacation five years later and got a job with NBC. Now 29, George Putnam says he makes better than $50,000 a year. He says he works 15 hours a day, seven days a week, and "no vacations."

Born in Wahpeton, N.D. on July 14, 1914 ("Bastille Day, and my whole life revolves around freedom"), he was an outstanding Boy Scout, a college (Macalester) and university (Minnesota) undergraduate of formidable achievement: debating, editing, football, basketball, hockey, track.

A movie-handsome six-footer with a Tarzan build, George Putnam believes that the advent of television will be the flowering of his career. Although cinemoguls, he says, have told him that he could be "as big as anything in Hollywood," he insists that radio newscasting is his metier. And, he points out, it is not all voice: "Look at David Ross. Look at Milton Cross. They have beautiful voices, but there must be a driving force." This, and his "underlying note of friendly warmth," are what Putnam points to with pride when listeners write in, as they constantly do, saying: "You send me to bed thinking goldarn, things are bad, but they're going to get better."

* Radiodramatist Norman Corwin once parodied the BBC style in his An American in England series from London: "This is London, here is the news, and this is John Snagg reading it: The world came to an end at two minutes after three this afternoon, during a debate in the House of Commons. A summary of the debate will be given at the end of this bulletin. Due to the unusual nature of the event and also to the fact that he was away at the time, Mr. Churchill could not be reached immediately to comment on the policy which His Majesty's Government intends to pursue regarding the situation."

/- Not to be confused with Publisher George Palmer Putnam, onetime husband of the late Aviatrix Amelia Earhart.

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