Remembering Andy Rooney
CBS News has announced that legendary journalist Andy Rooney died today, November 5th, at the age of 92. He had recently suffered complications from a "minor surgery" done shortly after he stepped down from 60 Minutes last month.
The Archive of American Television interviewed Andy Rooney in 1999. When we asked him how he’d like to be remembered, he said: “I’d like to be remembered as a good writer, [but] I won’t be, I’ll be remembered as Andy Rooney, the guy who does those little things at the end of 60 Minutes.”
Rooney talks about 60 Minutes and the rest of his long and distinguished career, that began as a print correspondent during World War II in his four-hour Archive of American Television interview. Here are some excerpts from the interview:
On writing and producing the documentary Sinatra
On the documentary Black History: Lost Stolen or Strayed
On Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington
On his start on 60 Minutes
On his 60 Minutes essays "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney"
On his "Essay on War"
Watch his full interview at http://emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/andy-rooney
Full Interview description:
Andy Rooney spoke about his 50-year career as a writer and producer for television. Rooney detailed his roots as a journalist writing for The Stars and Stripes during World War II. He talked about his entrance into radio and television as a staff writer for Arthur Godfrey and later on television’s The Morning Show with Will Rogers, Jr. and The Seven Lively Arts. He described his shift to the non-fiction form working on such CBS series as The Twentieth Century and Calendar. It was on the later series that Rooney first worked with newsman Harry Reasoner. He spoke in detail about the many CBS documentary specials the two collaborated on (Rooney as writer, Reasoner as narrator) including: An Essay on Doors (1964), A Bird’s Eye View of America (1964), and The Strange Case of the English Language (1968). Rooney talked about several other documentaries in which he contributed as a producer, writer, or a combination of the two including: Sinatra (1965, re-shown on CBS in 1998) and Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed (1968, Emmy winner). He talked about his long association with 60 Minutes, which began in 1968 when he wrote and appeared in (in silhouette) the recurring segment “Digressions,” a tongue-in-check 30-second “debate” on current events. He talked about his temporary break with CBS when the network refused to air an anti-Vietnam War piece An Essay on War, and the subsequent airing of it on PBS’s The Great American Dream Machine. Rooney described several documentaries he made for ABC and CBS in the 1970s including: A Small Town in Iowa, Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington, and Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner. Rooney spoke of his work writing and appearing in “A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney,” the literate and often cantankerous essays on everyday life that appear as an end-of-the program tag to 60 Minutes, a spot he occupied since 1978. The interview was conducted by Don Carleton on June 22, 1999.