Everything about Graham Mcnamee totally explained
Graham McNamee (
July 10,
1888 -
May 9,
1942) was a pioneering
broadcaster in
American radio, the medium's most recognized national personality in its first commercial decade.
Born in
Washington, D.C. and raised in
St. Paul, Minnesota, McNamee had early aspirations of being an
opera singer. In 1923, while serving
jury duty in
New York City, he passed the studios of radio station
WEAF en route to the courthouse and, on a whim, went to see the station manager. He was given an audition and hired as a staff
announcer on the spot.
Radio
broadcasting of sporting events was a new thing in the 1920s. The
play-by-play announcements were performed by a rotating group of
newspaper writers. Their descriptions were matter-of-fact and boring at best. In 1923, announcer McNamee was assigned to help the
sportswriters liven up their broadcasts. He wasn't a baseball expert, but had a knack for conveying what he saw in great detail, and with great enthusiasm. He became broadcasting’s first
color commentator, bringing the sights and sounds of the game into the homes of listeners.
At WEAF, McNamee performed a variety of on-air duties, including baseball color commentary, culminating in doing
play-by-play of the
1926 World Series. Over the course of the next decade, first with WEAF and then with the national
NBC network, McNamee would broadcast numerous
sports events (including several World Series,
Rose Bowls, and championship
boxing matches), national
political conventions, presidential inaugurations and the triumphant arrival of aviator
Charles Lindbergh in
New York City following his historic transatlantic flight to
Paris, France in 1927. Later that year, McNamee was featured on the cover of
Time (October 3, 1927).
In 1925, at the Radio World Fair, he won a solid gold cup, designed like a microphone, as America's most popular announcer, receiving 189,470 votes out of 1,161,659 votes cast. He was married to concert and church soprano Josephine Garrett.
McNamee continued to broadcast into the 1930s, as the announcer on
Ed Wynn's and
Rudy Vallee's weekly programs. McNamee played straight man for Wynn's jokes, and often was genuinely amused by Wynn's inspired improvisations. McNamee also worked in motion pictures, narrating
Universal Pictures' weekly
newsreel.
He ended every broadcast with a distinctive
catchphrase: "This is Graham McNamee speaking. Goodnight, all."
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