Don Hewitt was 8 years old when he went to the neighborhood movie house and saw “The Front Page.”
He never got over it.
The character Hildy Johnson, big-city, gee-whiz reporter in Chicago, got inside his head and stayed there all these 80-something years.
Hewitt wiggled his way into journalism as the night copy boy for The New York Herald Tribune. Later he got into public relations with the Merchant Marine, and met a couple of reporters in London. Their names were Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite.
Hewitt eventually parlayed his red-hot ambition and wild imagination into a little television show that ranked 83rd in its second season, but was to become the hottest commodity and most-watched show on the air: “60 Minutes.”
It has made a $2 billion profit for CBS-TV, won 68 Emmys, and is a Sunday evening ritual must-see for millions of viewers.
Author David Blum takes us inside the show in his “tick … tick … tick … The Long Life and Turbulent Times of 60 Minutes.”
It is an amazing story, one in which the uberproducer Hewitt outshines his stars: Mike Wallace, Dan Rather, Ed Bradley, Diane Sawyer, Andy Rooney, Morley Safer, Harry Reasoner, Steve Kroft, Leslie Stahl and Meredith Viera.
It was a toxic shop. Hewitt’s mercurial personality, his temper and ego made life miserable for most of the cast. They didn’t like each other much either.
In a highly competitive business, huge egos clashed. Mike Wallace would brook no threat to his preeminence. “I didn’t see the knife,” Ed Bradley once whispered to him after Wallace undercut him at a meeting.
Read more at voice-tribune.com
