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Ed, you're the most... Without being unduly flattering, | 0:00:22 | 0:00:25 | |
you're the most famous television interviewer in the world. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:29 | |
As far as this country's concerned, I'm probably the most infamous. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:33 | |
How do you manage to interview people so interestingly, | 0:00:33 | 0:00:35 | |
and talk so little? | 0:00:35 | 0:00:37 | |
Well, Malcolm, may I begin by registering a complaint? | 0:00:37 | 0:00:41 | |
Yeah. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:42 | |
You have intellectual advantages over me. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:44 | |
But, you also have sartorial advantages. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:46 | |
You should've told me you were going to wear a dinner jacket. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:49 | |
I have one, you know, made by a London tailor. | 0:00:49 | 0:00:51 | |
I'm sure you have, Ed, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:53 | |
but the pure excuse for my being in a dinner jacket | 0:00:53 | 0:00:56 | |
is that I'm going to dine tonight with a very eminent person, | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
and it's unusual for me to put on a dinner jacket, | 0:01:00 | 0:01:02 | |
and I wouldn't have done it, unless it had been the case | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
that I was going to dine with this very eminent, | 0:01:05 | 0:01:08 | |
dare I say, newspaper proprietor? | 0:01:08 | 0:01:10 | |
Yes, and now, to your question, though. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:14 | |
Interviewing seems to me reasonably simple. | 0:01:14 | 0:01:17 | |
It consists only of finding an interesting person | 0:01:17 | 0:01:20 | |
and then finding questions to ask him. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:23 | |
But, when it's not an interesting person, what do you do then? | 0:01:23 | 0:01:26 | |
Well, then, you listen harder than you do, normally. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:29 | |
I find it a real strain, if you're interviewing someone | 0:01:29 | 0:01:32 | |
and you get the answer that says, "Yeah, no, don't know," | 0:01:32 | 0:01:37 | |
then the physical effort of listening so hard that you try to extract | 0:01:37 | 0:01:42 | |
from that individual a little more of an answer than you have already had. | 0:01:42 | 0:01:46 | |
But you do that without talking too much. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:49 | |
Yes, I rather prefer doing an interview with the camera | 0:01:49 | 0:01:52 | |
working over my shoulder, | 0:01:52 | 0:01:54 | |
so that the interviewer does not get between the subject | 0:01:54 | 0:01:57 | |
and the audience, so that the subject is in fact, | 0:01:57 | 0:01:59 | |
rather, talking to the audience instead of talking to me. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
Ed, now, the point that always puzzled me | 0:02:02 | 0:02:06 | |
about this television interviewing is this. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:09 | |
If you're having an interesting conversation with someone, | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
- you must participate in it. - Yes. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:14 | |
If you participate in it, you must speak a bit. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:19 | |
You must have a position. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:21 | |
You can't be a purely neutral personage. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:25 | |
Now, how do you get over that? | 0:02:25 | 0:02:26 | |
Well, I think perhaps the honest answer to that is that I don't. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:30 | |
But, the way I try to do it is to do enough research in advance | 0:02:30 | 0:02:35 | |
so that one can ask the offbeat questions, as we call them. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:39 | |
By which I mean, if you are interviewing a movie star, | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
you try to find out whether that movie star is interested | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
in shooting or fishing or doing woodworking or something like that, | 0:02:45 | 0:02:50 | |
so that, instead of doing the typical fan magazine sort of interview - | 0:02:50 | 0:02:53 | |
"How did you get started in the movies?" | 0:02:53 | 0:02:55 | |
"What is your favourite role?" | 0:02:55 | 0:02:57 | |
"Who is your favourite director?" And so forth... | 0:02:57 | 0:02:59 | |
- Which are boring questions. - Boring questions, | 0:02:59 | 0:03:01 | |
and have already appeared in print and elsewhere. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:03 | |
You ask about hobbies and, as I say, offbeat interests and activities. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:07 | |
You see, my great difficulty is that, if I get interested | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
in a conversation, I want to say what I think about it. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:14 | |
And, if I say what I think about it, I begin to talk a lot. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:18 | |
And that detracts interest from the person you're talking to. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:24 | |
- Have you had that difficulty? - Yes. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
And I haven't seen, unfortunately, enough of your interviews | 0:03:27 | 0:03:30 | |
to be able to give a critique on them. | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
Sometime, when I can spend more time here, I will do it, | 0:03:33 | 0:03:36 | |
but I have the same difficulty. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:38 | |
- I am always tempted... - To hone in. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:40 | |
Yes, but I think that results from | 0:03:40 | 0:03:43 | |
what is called in the House of Commons, supplementary questions. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:47 | |
But I always want, I never know, when I'm doing an interview, | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
where I'm going. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:52 | |
Because my questions generally arise from the preceding answer. | 0:03:52 | 0:03:56 | |
Rather than being carefully thought out. | 0:03:56 | 0:03:58 | |
I am very much opposed, as I'm sure you are, | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
to the rehearsed, planned interview. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
I'm sure that's a mistake. It's a complete bore. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:06 | |
Because there's no sort of spontaneity in it, | 0:04:06 | 0:04:09 | |
there's no sort of interest in it. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:11 | |
For instance, you take the most interesting person | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
I have interviewed on television, was Mr Somerset Maugham. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:17 | |
Yes. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:18 | |
Right, we began talking about the novel. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:22 | |
And my single desire was to bring out from Mr Maugham | 0:04:22 | 0:04:26 | |
what he thought about it. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:27 | |
But the moment he began to talk about the novel, | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
all sorts of ideas of my own began to develop | 0:04:30 | 0:04:34 | |
and I couldn't help myself expressing those ideas. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
Do you think that's bad, or not? | 0:04:37 | 0:04:39 | |
I think it depends upon what you elicited from Mr Maugham | 0:04:39 | 0:04:42 | |
as a result of your questions. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:44 | |
I think the most interesting interview I have ever done, | 0:04:44 | 0:04:47 | |
where I did not have that difficulty, Malcolm, was with Dr Oppenheimer. | 0:04:47 | 0:04:50 | |
Because, he stood up at the blackboard | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
and started doing these symbols, and I didn't understand a word | 0:04:53 | 0:04:57 | |
he was saying, but the cameraman took a cutaway shot, | 0:04:57 | 0:05:01 | |
and when I looked at the cutaway shot, | 0:05:01 | 0:05:03 | |
I was sitting there, fascinated, | 0:05:03 | 0:05:05 | |
looking at these entirely unintelligible symbols. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:08 | |
Well, there, I was in no danger of interrupting or talking | 0:05:08 | 0:05:11 | |
because I didn't know what he was talking about. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
I quite agree, and I don't want to be rude, but that was | 0:05:14 | 0:05:16 | |
money for jam, because none of us know anything about those symbols. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
But if you begin to talk about something like the novel, | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
it's terribly difficult. | 0:05:23 | 0:05:25 | |
We've all got views on those things. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
Not for me. I don't know anything about novels, either! | 0:05:28 | 0:05:30 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:05:30 | 0:05:32 | |
Ed, I would like to switch on | 0:05:33 | 0:05:35 | |
from the particular thing of interviewing, | 0:05:35 | 0:05:37 | |
to this question of television altogether. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:39 | |
Now, you were a famous broadcaster here in England, | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
and there's not a single person here | 0:05:42 | 0:05:44 | |
who doesn't remember your broadcasting in the war. | 0:05:44 | 0:05:48 | |
What do you feel about this thing, television, | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
which has taken the place of sound broadcasting? | 0:05:51 | 0:05:54 | |
Well, in the first place, | 0:05:54 | 0:05:55 | |
I don't think it has taken the place of sound broadcasting, | 0:05:55 | 0:05:58 | |
insofar as news is concerned. | 0:05:58 | 0:06:00 | |
Which is the only thing I pretend to know anything about. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:02 | |
I think, in the field of news, it is basically a pictorial supplement. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:08 | |
Where you have a set spectacle, a coronation. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:11 | |
The Trooping the Colour, | 0:06:11 | 0:06:13 | |
something like that, then television cannot be equalled. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:17 | |
But, I think in the realm of news, | 0:06:17 | 0:06:19 | |
and I would contend that news consists, | 0:06:19 | 0:06:21 | |
to a large extent, of ideas. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:23 | |
And you know how difficult it is | 0:06:23 | 0:06:26 | |
- to translate ideas into words. - My goodness, yes. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:28 | |
But then, when you have to translate them into pictures as well, | 0:06:28 | 0:06:32 | |
it becomes exceedingly difficult and, to answer your question, | 0:06:32 | 0:06:35 | |
so far as I am concerned personally, in the area of news, | 0:06:35 | 0:06:40 | |
I continue to get more personal, psychological dividend, | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
and I don't believe that television is going to replace radio. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:48 | |
For example, I had meant to say, earlier on, | 0:06:48 | 0:06:52 | |
how pleasant it is to be back in London, | 0:06:52 | 0:06:55 | |
where I spent nine years. | 0:06:55 | 0:06:57 | |
And where I left all of my youth and much of my heart. | 0:06:57 | 0:07:03 | |
Well, one can say that on radio, I think, | 0:07:03 | 0:07:08 | |
as effectively, perhaps more effectively, than on television. | 0:07:08 | 0:07:13 | |
I see exactly what you mean, but I'm still thinking, for instance, | 0:07:13 | 0:07:17 | |
the last time I was in the United States, | 0:07:17 | 0:07:19 | |
I had to cover the Chicago Conventions. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:21 | |
Now, the television coverage of those conventions, | 0:07:23 | 0:07:27 | |
seemed to me so perfect, so complete, that, you know, | 0:07:27 | 0:07:30 | |
we foreign correspondents didn't go into the convention hall at all. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
I remember. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:35 | |
We sat in our hotel rooms with the television going on | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
and covered it from that. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:41 | |
Yes, but, Malcolm, this was the set, predictable spectacle. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:45 | |
- Like the Coronation? - Like the Coronation. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
But, when it came, at that convention in Chicago, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:52 | |
to finding out what was happening in the party caucus, | 0:07:52 | 0:07:55 | |
the television cameras weren't there, | 0:07:55 | 0:07:57 | |
and that is where the old reportorial effort had still to be applied. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:03 | |
So, you really feel that, just as newspapers have survived radio, | 0:08:03 | 0:08:07 | |
sound radio will survive television? | 0:08:07 | 0:08:09 | |
I do indeed, and I think it's going to be a different type | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
of news reporting in radio. I think it will go in greater depth. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:16 | |
It is not going to be just the pictures of what happened today. | 0:08:16 | 0:08:20 | |
Radio is going to have to devote more time to backgrounding the news. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:26 | |
Not only saying this happened, but this is the background, | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
this is what caused it to happen, these are the results | 0:08:29 | 0:08:32 | |
and the consequences that may be expected to flow from it. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:35 | |
I think radio news has got to change due to the impact | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
of this incredible device called television. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:40 | |
I remember when, the last time I saw you, which was in New York, | 0:08:40 | 0:08:44 | |
you had just done what I think was a sort of historic thing, | 0:08:44 | 0:08:48 | |
was your very effective attack, | 0:08:48 | 0:08:54 | |
effective because it was based on reason and not on passion, | 0:08:54 | 0:08:59 | |
on the whole business of the McCarthy hearings, | 0:08:59 | 0:09:01 | |
which we all hate in this country, you see. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:03 | |
Now, I remember asking you | 0:09:04 | 0:09:06 | |
whether that would lead to any trouble with your sponsor. | 0:09:06 | 0:09:10 | |
And you said no, it wouldn't lead to any trouble with your sponsor. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
And I frequently use that argument. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
Are we absolutely sure that the withdrawal of this sponsorship | 0:09:16 | 0:09:20 | |
is not due to any considerations of that kind? | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
No-one is ever quite sure what is in the mind of a sponsor or an editor. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
- But your honest opinion. - I can only tell you this. | 0:09:28 | 0:09:32 | |
That, since the McCarthy programme, the Aluminum Company of America | 0:09:32 | 0:09:37 | |
had four opportunities to drop the sponsorship, | 0:09:37 | 0:09:41 | |
contractually, that is, contracts expired. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:45 | |
They didn't. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:46 | |
They chose to do it now, and I choose to accept their explanation, | 0:09:46 | 0:09:50 | |
that it is because of a change in their merchandising programme. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:55 | |
You see, this programme, had... Oh, it was, what? | 0:09:55 | 0:10:00 | |
25th, 30th, something like that, in terms of popularity rating. | 0:10:00 | 0:10:04 | |
A corporation that is trying to sell consumer goods is obviously, | 0:10:06 | 0:10:10 | |
as an advertiser looks for the preferred position in a newspaper, | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
is obviously going to try to get up | 0:10:13 | 0:10:16 | |
with the programme in the first five, ten, 15. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:19 | |
Now, I accept their explanation in this case and, as I say, | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
the answer will come | 0:10:22 | 0:10:24 | |
in terms of whether anyone else decides to sponsor it. We shall see! | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
And you think they will, of course. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
I have no alternative but to think they will! | 0:10:30 | 0:10:33 | |
But whether they do or not, and this, again, | 0:10:33 | 0:10:36 | |
is an aspect of commercial television, in this particular case, | 0:10:36 | 0:10:39 | |
whether it is sponsored or not, it will remain on the air. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:43 | |
But you see, I remember seeing in your room in New York, | 0:10:43 | 0:10:45 | |
and it rather touched me, that among the various trophies that you had | 0:10:45 | 0:10:49 | |
was the BBC microphone that you'd used in the war. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:54 | |
Which is the only trophy I have ever kept, and I have received many. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:58 | |
The most touching thing that ever happened to me. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:01 | |
When I left here, after nine years, | 0:11:01 | 0:11:03 | |
they went down and just cut loose that old-fashioned microphone, | 0:11:03 | 0:11:07 | |
literally cut the cable, put a little plaque on it which said, | 0:11:07 | 0:11:11 | |
in substance, "This is from studio B4. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
"For Morrow, who used it with," I think they said "some" distinction. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:19 | |
- Which is... - Very fair! | 0:11:19 | 0:11:20 | |
...overstatement. And this, I value above anything else. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:25 | |
I just want to ask you one last question. You know the BBC. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:29 | |
You know what monopoly broadcasting means. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:33 | |
We have embarked, and we are about to embark, | 0:11:33 | 0:11:36 | |
unless the election has it otherwise, | 0:11:36 | 0:11:39 | |
we are about to embark on the experiment of commercial television. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:45 | |
Do you think that that is going to be good or bad? | 0:11:46 | 0:11:50 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:11:50 | 0:11:51 | |
It's a good last question, Ed! | 0:11:51 | 0:11:53 | |
Malcolm, I lived here long enough to know that the British have | 0:11:53 | 0:11:59 | |
this admirable trait, when they go abroad, of not attempting | 0:11:59 | 0:12:04 | |
to give counsel or comment on domestic affairs. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
I don't know the results here. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:14 | |
I do know one thing. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:15 | |
That, after about four years | 0:12:15 | 0:12:17 | |
of discussing here in London with my friends, | 0:12:17 | 0:12:20 | |
the relative merits of British and American broadcasting, | 0:12:20 | 0:12:25 | |
I finally concluded it was an utterly futile undertaking because, | 0:12:25 | 0:12:28 | |
if you compare the two systems, in the end of the day, | 0:12:28 | 0:12:32 | |
or rather, at the end of a long evening, | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
you come down to a comparison of the two countries. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
Neither system could be transplanted effectively to the other country. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:43 | |
It has always seemed to me that American radio, | 0:12:43 | 0:12:46 | |
and the same thing perhaps goes for television, | 0:12:46 | 0:12:48 | |
is highly competitive, it is commercial, | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
it is loud, it is vulgar, it is... At times vulgar, it is experimental. | 0:12:51 | 0:12:56 | |
British broadcasting is careful, cautious, rather paternalistic. | 0:12:56 | 0:13:02 | |
And, at times, vulgar. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:03 | |
And, not quite so often, vulgar! | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
At least to these tired old ears. | 0:13:06 | 0:13:08 | |
But, when you finish comparing the two systems, | 0:13:08 | 0:13:12 | |
you have compared the two countries. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
Both radio in the States and in Britain are, I would contend, | 0:13:14 | 0:13:19 | |
accurate reflections of the political, | 0:13:19 | 0:13:22 | |
social and economic climate in which the two grew up. | 0:13:22 | 0:13:26 | |
I think it's a very true and interesting point of view. | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
The only thing is that we now are going to embark upon this change, | 0:13:30 | 0:13:36 | |
which I have supported, Ed, not for any reason, | 0:13:36 | 0:13:39 | |
except that I hate monopoly. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:41 | |
- I'm always for competition. - So am I, I loathe monopoly. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
I loathe one person or one entity controlling anything. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:48 | |
And I just wonder what it's going to be like. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:52 | |
Well, I'm curious to know what the commercials | 0:13:52 | 0:13:54 | |
will be like, for example. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:56 | |
I'm sure they will not be the jingles, | 0:13:56 | 0:14:00 | |
the singing commercials, that we have in the States in many instances. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:05 | |
But, certainly, competition, I think it would be most deplorable | 0:14:05 | 0:14:10 | |
if Punch were the only publication | 0:14:10 | 0:14:13 | |
permitted in this country. Wouldn't you? Would you go that far? | 0:14:13 | 0:14:17 | |
It would be more than deplorable, it would be a catastrophe, | 0:14:17 | 0:14:21 | |
an immeasurable catastrophe! | 0:14:21 | 0:14:24 | |
I say that as one of your loyal subscribers in the States, Malcolm! | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
And, if that be a commercial, so be it! | 0:14:27 | 0:14:30 | |
Well, it's commercial! | 0:14:30 | 0:14:32 |