Graham McNamie, or simply Graham McNamy, is an American sports broadcaster, the most famous and nationally recognized radio broadcaster of the first decade of the 20th century. He was the first to develop the principles of sports commenting in real time. For this he was awarded the Ford S. Frick Prize, and in 2016 was inducted into the National Hall of Fame and the Baseball Museum.
Biography
Graham McNamie was born on July 10, 1888 in Washington, DC. His father, John B. ManNemy, was an attorney and legal advisor to President Grover Cleveland's cabinet. Graham's mother, Anne, was a housewife who was fond of singing in the church choir.
Graham's childhood was spent in St. Paul, Minnesota. From a young age, the boy dreamed of becoming an opera singer, and for this he studied vocal singing, sang in church choirs. In 1922, Graham gave his first concert at the Aeolian Hall in New York.
At the time, Graham was serving on a jury. But one day, he visited a studio at the WEAF radio station (now WFAN), which was located on the way to the courtroom. And on a sudden whim, he auditioned as a singer at this radio station. His voice was heard by the management and he was asked to say a few phrases into the microphone. Thus, he successfully auditioned and got a job as a staff speaker in the broadcasting studio.
Sports commentator career
Radio broadcasts from sporting events were new things for the 1920s. As a rule, the announcers were recruited from among the writers. At the time, baseball was the most popular sport in America and journalists were sure to attend all the games to write a review for the print newspapers.
But their radio coverage was not just boring, but incredibly boring. Their main drawback is a large amount of dead air, an unintentional period of silence, which interrupts the course of the broadcast and during which neither sound nor image is transmitted.
The second major drawback of radio reports of those years was that they were given in the past tense, after the completion of actions on the field.
In 1923, announcer McNamie was assigned to assist sports writers with their broadcasts. One day, one of the sports commentators, Grantland Rice, asked McNamie to finish broadcasting the game on his own and left. McNamie, having no experience in sports commenting, simply began describing what he saw and how it happened, creating the world's first live sports broadcast. Despite the fact that Graham was not an expert in baseball, he managed to convey everything he could see, describing all the smallest details and with great enthusiasm, trying to convey the images and sounds of the match to the listeners.
This is how sports commentary appeared in real time, when the commentator gives the most detailed commentary on the game or events in real time and, as a rule, during a live broadcast (live broadcast), with historical commentary and with enthusiasm in his voice.
Subsequently, Graham McNamie began to frequently work with Philip Karlin in the same commenting style. Their voices were so similar that listeners could rarely distinguish between them. McNamie quickly became famous and he was given the increasing responsibility of the WEAF to provide radio commentary on matches, including commenting on important and important baseball games. In 1926, he was entrusted with coverage of the 1926 World Series of Baseball. Over the next decade, McNamie continued to work for the WEAF and the national network of NBC until the very moment when WEAF became the flagship station on the NBC network.
McNamie has broadcasted numerous sporting events throughout his commentary career, including the World Baseball and Basketball Championships, the Boxing Championships and the Indianapolis 500. He broadcasted national political events, presidential inaugurations, and the welcoming ceremony for aviator Charles Lindbergh in New York after his 1927 transatlantic flight from Paris. Traditionally, McNamie began each of his broadcasts with the words: “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen! Radio audience. This is Graham McNamie."
On October 3, 1927, McNamie was voted the sportscaster of the decade and featured on the cover of Time magazine.
Creation
McNamie's main job was as an announcer for sports matches. But besides her, he was often a guest guest on other weekly programs, such as The Rudy Vallee Show and The Edd Win Show. On the latter, he was always straightforward and immediately parried Vin's taunts and jokes.
In 1933, McNamie starred as a narrator in the film Krakatoa. It was an American short documentary produced by the Joe Rock Film Company. The picture was awarded an Oscar in 1934 for Best Short Film and for its novelty of plot.
The film featured stunning sound quality for cinemas of the time. In Australia and some other countries, distributors insisted on a minimum power output of 10 watts for cinema equipment wishing to show a film. In the 1930s, this was considered a powerful piece of equipment and made cinemas buy the latest sound systems. A revised version of the film was released in 1966 and is included in the Library of Congress.
The plot of the motion picture describes the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano on the island in 1883, during which half of the island exploded and flew into the air, a large tsunami rose, and the air wave from the volcano circled the entire globe seven times. The eruption spewed tons of dust and soot into the atmosphere that eclipsed the sun around the world for months.
In 1935 McNamie worked at Universal Newsreels on Universal Pictures. These pictures were 7-10 minute newsreels that were produced twice a week by Universal Studios from 1929 to 1967. Responsible for their release was Sam B. Jacobson, an official advertising agent for Universal. Almost all of them were filmed in black and white and narrated by Ed Herlihi.
In the same 1935, Graham managed to work as a storyteller in the American short film Camera Thrills, which was directed and produced by Charles Ford. This motion picture won an Academy Award at the 8th Academy Awards in 1936 for Best Short Film and Novelty of Plot. In 2012, this film was saved in the Academy's film archive.
In 1936, Graham McNamie worked on the "Stars of the Circus" project. This project consisted of Ringling Barnum Brothers and Bailey's Circus clowns and performers who performed on a charitable basis at Bellevue Hospital and other closed hospitals in New York, entertaining young children. In the same year, he co-starred with Ed Wynn in a commercial for an experimental television show NBC.
In the early 1940s, McNamie was brought in to comment on newsreels. In addition, he developed and began producing his own radio show, Behind Mike's Back, for the NBC radio station. By the expression "behind Mike's back" the radio commentators of those years understood the phrase "behind the microphone".
Behind Mike's Back is a radio series for the Blue Network, hosted by Graham McNamie and covering behind-the-scenes stories in radio broadcasts. Show-format radio programs aired on Sundays at 4:30 pm ET from September 15, 1940 to April 19, 1942.
The program of the show included interviews with on-air personalities and announcers, musicians and other performers, with creators of sound effects, with producers, engineers and other technical specialists involved in the production of radio broadcasts. In each program, up to six stories were told, in the section "Correspondent's Corner" answers were given to listeners' questions. The musical accompaniment was provided by Ernie Watson and his orchestra.
After McNamie's death, the title of the program was changed first to "This is true", then to "Nothing but the truth." Broadcasting of the issues continued until June 7, 1942.
A similar program with the same title "Behind Mike" was broadcast on CBS radio during 1931 and 1932.
Personal life and recent years
Graham McNamie has been married twice. He first married in 1921 to the concert and church soprano singer Josephine Garrett. The couple divorced in 1932.
McNamie's second wife is Anne Lee Sims, whose wedding took place in 1934. The couple lived happily together for the rest of their lives.
On May 9, 1942, Graham McNamie died suddenly at the age of 53. The cause of death is a cerebral embolism that began after he was hospitalized with a streptococcal infection. The commentator was buried at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.
Achievements
In 1925, at the World Radio Show, Graham McNamie was recognized as America's most popular discord and won the cup of pure gold, made in the form of a microphone. In the voting, he received 189,470 votes out of 1,161,659 cast.
In February 1960, McNamie was posthumously honored with a personal star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 1964, Graham received a place in the National Athletes 'and Writers' Association Hall of Fame.
In 1984, he received a place in the inaugural class of the American Athletes Association Hall of Fame, which included sports broadcast legends Red Barber, Don Dunphy, Ted Husing and Bill Stern.
In 2011, McNamie earned a place in the National Radio Hall of Fame.
In 2015, McNamie was named the 2016 Ford S. Frick Award winner at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
