John Cameron Swayze (April 4, 1906 – August 15, 1995) was a popular news commentator and game show panelist in the United States during the 1950s.
John Cameron Swayze | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 4, 1906 |
| Died | August 15, 1995 (aged 89) |
| Occupation(s) | News presenter/reporter Game show panelist |
| Years active | 1940–1985 |
Early life
Born in Wichita, Kansas the son of a wholesale drug salesman. He attended schools in Atchison, Kansas. Swayze first sought to make his way as an actor but his move to Broadway in 1929 was derailed by the scarcity of acting roles following Wall Street's stock market crash.
Career
Swayze returned to the Midwest and hired on with the Kansas City Journal Post as a reporter.
From there Swayze graduated to radio doing news updates for Kansas City's KMBC in 1940 and reportedly, an experimental early television newscast. Four years later, Swayze went farther west, to Los Angeles and Hollywood where NBC hired him for its western news division before moving him to its New York news operation in 1947.
During 1948 Swayze provided voice-over work for the 'Camel Newsreel Theatre', an early television news program that broadcast Movietone News newsreels.
At the same time Swayze proposed and got a radio quiz program, Who Said That? but NBC had other plans for him. They made him the host of their national political convention coverage in 1948---the first commercial coverage ever on television (NBC Television did broadcast the Republican National Convention from Philadelphia in 1940 on a non-commercial, semi-experimental basis).
Anchor
NBC and the public liked what they saw and Swayze was picked in 1949 to host NBC's first television newscast, the fifteen-minute Camel News Caravan. He read items from the news wires and periodically interviewed newsmakers but he's remembered best for his two breezy catch-phrases: "Let's go hop scotching around the world for headlines" and his somewhat cartoonish sign-off: "That's the story, folks---glad we could get together." In early 1955, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, maker of Camel cigarettes, cut back its sponsorship to three days a week. Chrysler's Plymouth division sponsored the other days and on those days, the program was labelled the Plymouth News Caravan. In time Swayze's almost manic style seemed frivolous compared to his CBS rival Douglas Edwards with the News who Swayze once out-rated but whose anchor sounded sober and no-nonsense. By 1956 Swayze had fallen out of favor and was dismissed in favour of a new anchor team Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. In very short order, The Huntley-Brinkley Report became the nation's top-rated television newscast, ultimately pushing Edwards out of the anchor chair in 1962 in favor of Walter Cronkite.
Spokesperson
By that time Swayze---despite a brief turn anchoring an evening newscast for ABC---was more familiar for a series of commercials he did for Timex. Again his flair for writing or handling catch phrases banked him: "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking" ended up living even longer than hop scotching around the world for headlines did as Swayze appeared in Timex spots that amounted to mock newscasts before delivering the catch-phrase at the end of the spots. Swayze did the Timex spots for over two decades.
Swayze also appeared in commercials for Studebaker promoting the automobile company's 1963 model line. He also made an appearance in a 1984 commercial for radio station WHTZ in New York City, which was seen in other markets promoting different radio stations.
Popular culture
He was satirized easily enough himself perhaps most memorably by rock and roll comics Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman, whose first "break-in" novelty hit (mock newscasts spliced with bits of current rock and roll hits), "The Flying Saucer," satirized him as reporter John Cameron Cameron (played by Goodman). Swayze is mentioned in lyric of Allan Sherman's novelty song "My Grandfather's Watch", a parody of Henry Clay Work's "My Grandfather's Clock".
John Cameron Swayze was mentioned half a dozen times during the episode of The Honeymooners where "Ralph and Norton are up late rehearsing their mind-reading bit, a Laurel and Hardy impersonation, and a song-and-dance routine." The host of the talent show mentions John Cameron Swayze by name twice.
John Cameron Swayze made periodic cameos in films beginning with 1957's A Face in the Crowd. He also hosted and narrated from 1955-57 the long running television drama series, The Armstrong Circle Theater (1950-1963) after leaving NBC News, as well as a daytime game show on ABC, Chance for Romance.
He is mentioned in one of the scenes of Walt Disney World's attraction, Carousel of Progress at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida.
In the 1980 Ray Stevens recording "The Watch Song" Ray tells his problems in song to John Cameron Swayze.
In a 1981 episode of Family Feud, the question was: Name something that can ruin a watch. One of the answers was "Give it to John Cameron Swayze. Host Richard Dawson (after guessing that it would be there) quipped: "The one time a hip answer makes the survey".
Swayze was fairly frequently mentioned on The Golden Girls - for example in season one, Episode 9 airing on Nov. 16th 1985, Blanche and the Younger Man. Blanche finished telling the story when she was almost Mrs. Andy Griffith and Sophia reminds Dorothy when Blanche told a similar story but about John Cameron Swayze. And his Timex commercials are amusingly mentioned in the episode "The Stan Who Came to Dinner", which aired January 10, 1987, where Sophia (Estelle Getty) tells of a recurring dream where John Cameron Swayze straps a Timex to her chin and tosses her across an icy pond.
Honors
Swayze is the first person shown in the montage of former anchors that currently begins the NBC Nightly News.
Personal life
John Cameron Swayze was the son of Jesse Ernest Swayze and Christine Cameron, aka Camerona (cited by some sources). He had a sister, Mary F. Swayze (b. 1908). He married Beulah Mae Estes in 1935. He was survived by his widow and two children: John Cameron Swayze, Jr. of Bedford, New York who anchored weekend news on WCBS Newsradio 880 in New York until October 2010 (under the name Cameron Swayze) and Suzanne Swayze Patrick of Alexandria, Virginia; 6 grandchildren; and 8 great-grandchildren. He died in Sarasota, Florida, on August 15, 1995.
John Cameron Swayze and the actor Patrick Swayze were 6th cousins once removed. Both John and Patrick's father are descendants by 7 generations of Judge Samuel Swayze (March 20, 1688/1689-May 11, 1759) and his wife Penelope Horton (1689/1690-1746). Judge Swayze was the son of Joseph Swasey and his wife Mary Betts. Mary Betts was the daughter of Captain Richard Betts and his wife Joanna Chamberlayne. Other noteworthy relations descending from the Betts or Swayze lines are actors William Holden and Tom Hulce, and Evgenia Citkowitz, wife of actor Julian Sands.
External links
| Preceded by John Charles Daly |
ABC Evening News News anchor 1960 – 1962 |
Succeeded by Ron Cochran |