John Charles Daly (What's My Line? 1950).jpg

John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly (February 20, 1914 – February 24, 1991) was an American journalist, host, radio and television personality, ABC News executive, TV anchor, and game show host, best known for his work on the CBS panel game show ''What's My Line?''

Daly was the first national correspondent to report the attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. During World War II, Daly covered front-line news from Europe and North Africa.

Early life

The younger of two brothers, Daly was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, where his American father worked as a geologist. While in Johannesburg, Daly attended Marist Brothers College. After his father died of a tropical fever, Daly's mother moved the family to Boston, Massachusetts. At that time, John was 11 years old, and attended the Tilton School where he later served on its board of directors for many years, contributing to the construction or restoration of many buildings on campus. He did his post-secondary education at a junior college and graduated from Boston College. Daly worked for a time in a wool factory and a transit company in Washington, D.C. before becoming a reporter for NBC Radio and, later, CBS.

Career

Radio

Daly began his broadcasting career as a reporter for NBC Radio and then WJSV (now WTOP), the local CBS Radio Network affiliate in Washington, D.C., as CBS' White House correspondent. He appears on the famous " One Day in Radio" tapes of September 21, 1939, in which WJSV preserved its entire broadcast day for posterity.

While covering the Roosevelt White House, Daly became known to the national CBS audience as the network announcer for many of the President's speeches. In late 1941, Daly transferred to New York City, where he became anchor of ''The World Today''. During World War II, he covered the news from London as well as the North African and Italian fronts. Daly was a war correspondent in 1943 in Italy during Gen. George S. Patton's infamous " slapping incidents." After the war, he was a lead reporter on CBS Radio's news/entertainment program ''CBS Is There'' (later revived for television as the Walter Cronkite-hosted series '' You Are There''), which recreated the great events of history as if CBS correspondents were on the scene.

Famous broadcasts

As a reporter for the CBS radio network, Daly was the voice of two historic announcements. He was the first national correspondent to deliver the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941, and he was also the first to relay the wire service report of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, interrupting the program ''Wilderness Road'' to deliver the news. Those bulletins have been preserved on historical record album retrospectives and radio and television documentaries.

In July 1959, along with the Associated Press writer John Scali, Daly reported from Moscow on the infamous Kitchen Debate between First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

Television

Daly's first foray into television was as a panelist on the game show ''Celebrity Time''. This led to a job in 1950 as the host and moderator on a new panel show produced by Goodson–Todman, ''What's My Line?'' The show lasted 17 years, with Daly hosting all but four episodes of the weekly series.

Each ''What's My Line?'' panelist introduced the next in line at the start of the show. On Fred Allen's death in 1956, Random House book publisher co-founder and humorist Bennett Cerf became the anchor panelist who would usually introduce Daly. Cerf usually prefaced his introduction with a pun or joke that over time became a pun or joke at Daly's expense. Daly would then often fire back his own retort. Cerf and Daly enjoyed a friendly feud from across the stage for the remainder of the history of the program. The mystery guest on the final CBS program (aired September 3, 1967) was Daly himself. Daly had received many letters over the years asking him to fill that role; until the finale he never could, because Daly served as the "emergency mystery guest", in case the scheduled celebrity failed to show on the live program.

According to producer Gil Fates, Daly was resistant to changes that would have appealed to a younger audience but might have diminished the show's dignity. For example, Daly usually referred to the panelists formally, such as "Mr. Cerf." The producers, Fates said, were unable to challenge Daly for fear of losing him as the show's moderator.See, for example, The series spawned a brief radio version in 1952 that was also hosted by Daly. The series also inspired a multitude of concurrent international versions and a syndicated U.S. revival in 1968 in which Daly did not participate. He was a vice president at ABC during the 1950s. He did hosting duties on ''Who Said That?'', ''It's News to Me'', ''We Take Your Word'', and ''Open Hearing.'' Daly was a narrator on ''The Voice of Firestone'' starting in 1958.

He also had several television and movie guest appearances from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, including an uncredited role in ''Bye Bye Birdie'' (as the reporter announcing the title character's induction into the Army) and as the narrator, in a mock documentary style, on the premiere episode of the rural comedy series '' Green Acres''. In 1949 he starred in the short-lived CBS Television newspaper drama ''The Front Page'', where it was thought that his presence and journalistic experience would give the series more authenticity.

During the 1950s, Daly became the vice president in charge of news, special events, and public affairs, religious programs and sports for ABC and won three Peabody Awards. From 1953 to 1960, he anchored ABC News broadcasts and was the face of the network's news division, even though ''What's My Line?'' was then on competing CBS. In addition, he provided the voice of a Conelrad radio announcer on the May 18, 1954 broadcast of The Motorola Television Hour on ABC titled ''Atomic Attack'', which showcases a story about a family in a New York City suburb dealing with the aftermath of an H-bomb attack fifty miles away. At the time, this was a very rare instance of a television personality working on two different US broadcast TV networks simultaneously. (Daly did not work for CBS but for the producers of ''What's My Line?'', Goodson-Todman Productions. He also filled in occasionally on NBC's ''The Today Show'', making Daly one of the few people to work simultaneously on all ''three'' networks.)

One of his most memorable days as host of NBC's ''Today Show'' was when Harpo Marx was a guest promoting his book ''Harpo Speaks''. Marx caused chaos on-camera for Daly. Daly became completely convulsed in laughter during the live telecast on the NBC network.

Although the Harpo Marx segment was preserved via kinescope, and so were most live telecasts of ''What's My Line?'', all of Daly's 15-minute live newscasts for the ABC network were lost due to wiping.

Daly's closing line on the ABC newscasts was "Good night, and a good tomorrow." He resigned from ABC on November 16, 1960, after the network preempted the first hour of 1960 presidential election night coverage to show Bugs Bunny cartoons and ''The Rifleman'' from 7:30 to 8:30 pm while CBS and NBC were covering returns from the Kennedy–Nixon presidential election and other important vote counts. Daly stated that "the last straw" that led to his resignation was the decision of the then-president of ABC, Leonard Goldenson, to bring in Time Inc. to co-produce documentaries that had previously been under Daly's direction for the network.

In May 1967, during the final year of ''What's My Line?'', it was announced that Daly would become the director of the Voice of America after the show ended. He assumed the position on September 20, 1967, but lasted only until June 6, 1968, when he resigned over a claim that Leonard H. Marks, his superior at the U.S. Information Agency, had been making personnel changes behind Daly's back.

From December 1968 to January 1969, Daly hosted the arts and humanities program "Critique" on NET. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Old Dominion Foundation (later the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), and the Louis Calder Foundation (paper industry leader), “Critique” was originally scheduled for 26 weekly programs. However, Daly resigned after only five programs because the producing station of the program, Newark, New Jersey

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