From the Collection: March 2019

March is Women’s History Month and we’re celebrating with an exhibit we created as part of our partnership with Google Arts & Culture: Women in Broadcast Journalism. The exhibit highlights the accomplishments of pioneering female journalists, including Connie Chung, Barbara Walters, Maria Elena Salinas, and more!

There are some big birthdays this month, including Ron Howard (March 1), Quincy Jones (March 14), Vicki Lawrence (March 26), and Shirley Jones (March 31)!

The beloved Fred Rogers, who passed away in 2003, would have celebrated his 91st birthday on March 20.

The Free to Be…You and Me television special turns 45 on March 11. Marlo Thomas shares how the album on which the television special was based came to be:

"There weren't any stories that said to young girls: you can be anything you want to be. You know, the world is open to you. The choices are all there. All the things that I thought I had learned as a young woman had not found their way into children's books. ... So I decided that I would do a record...because my sister and I had grown up listening to story records. ... And I asked my friends if they would tell me what they wished they'd been told as a child. And one male friend of mine said, 'I wished I'd been told it was all right to cry.' So we wrote a song called 'It's All Right to Cry.'"

On March 9, 1954, CBS aired the episode of Edward R. Murrow’s See it Now “A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy,” which highlighted the hypocritical and dangerous nature of McCarthy’s Communist witch hunt. Mili Lerner Bonsignori recalls editing the pivotal episode:

20 years ago, in March of 1999, we had the honor of interviewing actor Robert Guillaume, who shared his goal in his performances:

“I don't like dignity. I like truth. I'm not trying to dignify anybody or anything, but I am trying to be true. I think there's dignity in truth but not necessarily truth in dignity. Some people might disagree that the word dignity inherently involves truth, I don't think so. I think that no matter what character I play, I would like to be true to it.”

15 years ago, we interviewed The Brady Bunch's Alice: Ann B. Davis!

And since March 20 marks the first day of spring – and the end of winter – why not take a look at our two “wintery” interviewees: writer/show creator Terence Winter and comedian Jonathan Winters!

- Jenna Hymes