The Beatles and Walter Cronkite: How BEATLEMANIA in the USA began

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-lewis/tweet-the-beatles-how-wal_b_239202.html

Here is a great article documenting how the Beatles became famous in America and Walter Cronkite had a BIG role, that is often overlooked (so does Jack Paar, but that is for another article).

Also, about midway through the article, you can open a file that is the first documented playing of I Want to Hold Your Hand in America.

Enjoy!

Rest in peace Walter.

 

Thanks Beatlematt. That was a great article.

One of the comments was interesting. A Canadian resident mentioned watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. Was it broadcast into Canada in 1964?

 

Long live Uncle Walter.

 

If I'm not mistaken, Ed Sullivan was broadcasted on CBC starting in the 50s.

 

Yes....in introducing the Rolling Stones on one show, Ed mentions being on in Canada.

Evan

 

I watched with my Dad Doug.

 

In the comment section of this article someone mentions that the CBS Morning News did a filmed piece on the Beatles on the morning of November 22, 1963. That piece would have been repeated for the CBS Evening News, but the Evening News program was pre-empted after the tragic event of that afternoon.

 

I remember that 1980 broadcast. It was cathartic, like being able to mourn with the whole nation. Walter Cronkite was a gem. We will not see his like again.

 

Thanks for the link. I agree he deserves some credit for this. He was a very special person and it's amazing how many people he touched over his many years of work.

Isn't it amazing how many R.I.P. threads are open today?

 

A wonderful article, perhaps my favorite on the birth of Beatlemania. It shows just how much their success was due to so many random occurrences coming together and how the stars were truly in alignment.

RIP Uncle Walter. We loved and trusted you through those dark and unsure days of VietNam and assassinations, the violence and turmoil of the 1960s. You gave us hope and -- along with your peers Chet Huntley and David Brinkley -- made America feel that somehow it would all be ok. We miss you.

 

I remember my Mom letting me get up from the dinner table to watch that night. I was bawling by the end of it.

I may be dreaming this, but when I was 7 or 8 I remember Cronkite doing a story on the Sex Pistols and the punk rock phenomenon. It has stuck with me to this day.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5170873n&tag=mg;eveningnews

He's a small segment where Walter comments on the Beatles first US TV appearance on the CBS news.

Very sad to see him pass, I'd been saying to my wife that when I watched the Neil Armstrong first walk on the moon it was him presenting the broadcast.

 

What a great article, many thks.

 

Thanks. Great stuff.

 

I remember Walter began that broadcast with some kind of list of important events transpiring in the world, violence in the Middle East, etc. And THEN he said something like: "but all of that will have to wait as the world mourns for a man who sang and played the guitar."

A man who sang and played the guitar--that's the part I think I remember almost word-for-word and it STILL gives me a grateful shiver whenever I think of it, which is often.

Funny thing, I lived fairly near Silver Spring in 1963 and I'm pretty sure that intial broadcast of "I Want to Hold our Hand" is when I first heard The Beatles. My reaction was to be STUNNED--and I wasn't even certain if I LIKED or DISLIKED what I heard--it simply transfixed and transported me. A couple more listens changed my life.

 

here is the original broadcast.

 

Here's the video of Walter Cronkite opening that news broadcast. The footage appears about nine seconds in.

 

I read the linked piece by Martin Lewis. I didn't go over it with a fine toothed comb, but how much of it wasn't in Bruce Spizer's The Beatles Are Coming! book? Lewis mentions the book, but of course not the author.

 

Was there a link on here? REALLY like to see that again.

 

Sorry! Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ31tc4_9aU. It's just the opening, not the entire broadcast, but it's great to see it again anyway.

 

What seems lost in all this is that After Sullivan saw the reaction at London Airport, he had his son in law (who ran the show) investigate . The info he must have gotten, how they were causing asolute havoc in The UK is probably what pushed Sullivan, not Water Cronkite. But music writers contunue to re-write history.

 

"Good evening. The death of a man who sang and played the guitar overshadows the news from Poland, Iran, and Washington tonight . . ."

Thank you so very much for locating this. Brings back vividly how people from all around this fractured planet pulled together in the wake of that tragedy. Gave and still gives a strange kind of hope. Cronkite distilled that with his simple direct eloquence.

 

I wander if Carroll James had access to any of the other Beatles records in Dec. 63. I know US Beatles records were fairly obscure at the time.

Tim