Edward R. Murrow Is Dead

Apr. 27, 1965 - Edward R. Murrow (pictured in 1945), whose independence and incisive reporting brought heightened journalistic stature to radio and television, died today at his home in Pawling, N.Y., at the age of 57.

The former head of the U.S. Information Agency had been battling cancer since October 1963. He had been in and out of the hospital ever since. Death came three weeks after he was discharged from New York Hospital for the last time.

The ever-present cigarette — he smoked 60 to 70 a day — the matter-of-fact baritone voice, and the high-domed, worried, lopsided face were the trademarks of the reporter who became internationally famous during World War II with radio broadcasts that started, “This…is London.”Later, on television, his series of news documentaries, “See It Now,” on CBS from 1951 to 1958, set the standard for all television documentaries on all networks. 

President Johnson, on learning of Murrow’s death, said that all Americans “feel a sense of loss in the death of Edward R. Murrow.”

He was, the President said, a “gallant fighter” who had “dedicated his life as a newsman and as a public official to the unrelenting search for truth.”

Murrow’s wartime broadcasts from Britain, North Africa, and finally the European Continent gripped listeners by their firm, spare authority; nicely timed pauses; and Murrow’s calm, grave delivery. One observer wrote that his voice always “conveyed the impression that he knows the worst.”He was the first Allied correspondent inside the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald. Near 300 bodies, he saw a mound of men’s, women’s, and children’s shoes.

“I regarded that broadcast as a failure,” he said. “I could have described three pairs of those shows — but hundreds of them? I couldn’t. The tragedy of it simply overwhelmed me.”

In many years of receiving honors and tributes, the most recent was conferred on Murrow on Mar. 5, 1965, by Queen Elizabeth II, who named him an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

On Sept. 14, 1964, President Johnson awarded him the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor a President can confer on an American citizen.

A funeral service will be held Friday at 2 p.m. at St. James Episcopal Church, 865 Madison Ave., between 71st and 72d Streets. Burial is to be announced.

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