A Thinking Man's TV Journalist

BILL LEONARD 337

NEW YORK is many different things to many different people. To eight million of them it is a likable enough place to live. To nearly twice that number annually, O. Henry's "Bagdad on the Subway" is a great place to visit. But for Bill Leonard '37 it has been birthplace, home, reporter's beat, and a good deal .else - in short, it is a way of life.

Ever since the waning days of 1945 when he made his debut with the peripatetic daily radio program, This Is NewYork, Bill has kept a roving eye on every nook and asphalt cranny of the Big City, ferreting out the aboriginal Gothamite in his native habitat to discover the lives, opinions, and fancies of this rugged breed. In 1947 the series was put on television and a few years later became CBS-TV's on New York, which Bill conducted by interviewing local and visiting dignitaries, reviewing plays, and pointing up Manhattan's outstandingplaces to dine. Along with this, he was moderator of CBS Radio's Let's Find Out and was the star of the Bill LeonardShow. A veteran traveler, he has ranged far and wide in search of material for his shows, and on occasion he has been a sportscaster, political reporter, news commentator, and interviewer. He was narrator of the widely acclaimed WCBS TV documentary, Harlem - A Self Portrait; and in 1956 he won an Albert Lasker Award for medical journalism with TheWassaic Story, a report on the treatment of retarded children.

However, it has been within the past year that Bill has hit a new peak in his dynamic TV-journalistic career, expanding his gaze far beyond the banks of the Hudson. Several months ago he moved over to CBS News as staff correspondent and producer, and he has since been working with the exciting new series of CBS Reports which have aroused so much public discussion and praise. These hour-long documentaries are carried monthly on prime viewing time, reaching an estimated twenty million people. Recent Reports that received special acclaim covered organized crime, the population explosion, and the fledgling new republics of Africa.

In his present job, Bill is often on the move to get his story, but while in New York he worts out of Edward R. Murrow's currently vacant office in CBS's Madison Avenue headquarters. His most noted and recent production was the documentary, Trujillo - Portrait of aDictator. It took six months of ground work and 125,000 feet of film to get this story, but Bill swung it. Men like Trujillo are not known for liking this sort of public scrutiny, and Bill says his task was just as difficult as that of "getting a gangster to sit still for a picture." In order to give the interviews a spontaneity, no one complete stretch of film longer than one-and-a-half minutes was used.

It's not like trying to review a play, he says. You just can't buy your ticket, walk in, and take it from there. This kind of operation requires a planeload of equipment, and it took a lot of patience and diplomacy to bring what Bill likes to refer to as his "2000-pound typewriter" to bear on this ultra-sensitive despot. Furthermore, this sort of project is expensive to do. Eye on New York previously was the network's most expensive local show, and Bill estimates that one CBSReport generally costs about the same as six months of the Eye series.

Nevertheless, the public and critical response has been overwhelming; and Bill has nothing. but enthusiasm about prospects for the future. "This is just the covered-wagon stage of TV-journalism," he says. "The potential is far beyond that of any other medium — at least," he quips, "until they find a way to make The New York Times talk."

However, Bill's visage grows more serious when he refers to the responsibility involved in such an undertaking. He notes that journalism in the past has often had the power to plunge nations into war or, depending upon how it was handled, to keep the peace. "Now," he comments, "you can do more with one hour than ever before in history, and the benefit to public awareness can be immeasurable. But, conversely, it is now also possible to do the same amount of harm."

In many ways, Bill feels, television has not yet measured up to the responsibilities thrust upon it by the Twentieth Century, but he still echoes the hope that these troubles are merely growing pains. "Free TV is just as important as a free press," he says. "If the government ends up taking us over, we may very well have deserved it, but things will be worse than before." And here he mentions the obvious, that no federal agency would ever spend $75.000 to finance operations like CBS's "2000-pound typewriter."

gill knows that during the next few years the medium is going to be watched more closely and judged more strictly than ever before. This freedom must be earned and, for that matter, constantly re-earned. Television, he feels, can become the great force for a journalistic awakening in this country; or it can just as easily sink to the level of the nickel arcade and become one big six-shooter - literally.

The worst enemies of television are within, he says; but he also has a few choice words to say about another group, "those who criticize without knowing just what it is they're talking about." His pet gripe is people who would condemn TV and legislate against it without ever having turned to a set to see what is going on.

The ability to carry out immensely important and responsible assignments didn't come to Bill Leonard overnight. He has been involved in some form of public communications since college days. At Dartmouth he served an apprenticeship on The Dartmouth under the tutelage of Budd Schulberg '36, and by his senior year he was in the managing editor's chair. Following graduation he worked two years as a reporter for the Bridgeport, Conn., Post . Telegram and then returned to New York in the radio and research departments of an advertising agency. During World War II he served in the Navy, emerging as a lieutenant commander and with a commendation for his radio countermeasures work during the invasion of southern France in 1944.

Bill's interest in radio and electronic communications is by no means limited to the producing end. Ever since college days he has been a licensed "ham" radio operator, and he has held a record for single-operator contacts, having once established 842 in 96 hours.

Personally Bill is an affable and ingenuous sort of individual who gets right to the point and says what he thinks. A competent athlete in his day, he once boxed a round each with Joe Louis and Ezzard Charles in an attempt to predict the result of a forthcoming fight. Nowadays, however, he confines himself pretty much to contract bridge, which his friend Charles Goren claims he plays like one of the top amateurs.

In a way, Bill also has his own private baseball team; and they're all Leonards too. This is referring to his eight sons, six of his own and two added when his second marriage, to the former Mrs. Mike Wallace, took place in 1957. He hasn't had much luck yet, but he hopes someday that he can persuade at least a couple of them to follow their father's footsteps to the Hanover Plain.

At present, the Leonard family cliffdwells right in west side Manhattan, close to the pulse of the city Bill loves so well.

Bill Leonard talking with Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, whom he interviewed for the highly praised CBS News Report, "Trujillo: Portrait of a Dictator," produced and narrated by Leonard, and telecast over the CBS national network on March 17.