A card from 1946 from the CBS staff congratulating the Downses on their wedding. Signed by: Edward R. Murrow, Shirley Lubowitz (before she married Joe Wershba), Lee Otis, Ted Church, Kay Campbell, Ed Bliss, Doug Edwards, Dallas Townsend, Jack Jefferson, Joe Wershba, Charles Collingwood, Don Hollenbeck, Larry LeSueur, John Merriman, William L. Shirer, Robert Trout, John Daly, Quincy Howe, and more.
Letter sent to Bill Downs from President Johnson on March 26, 1965
March 22, 1965
BILL DOWNS SUBSTITUTING FOR EDWARD P. MORGAN
Here in Washington there's a game called "President-watching." It's the favorite indoor sport of most of the diplomatic corps and absolutely all of the politicians who jam this capital.
"President-watching" also is the main assignment and bounden duty of the White House correspondents...who by the very nature of their jobs, vicariously live the official life of the man who occupies the Executive Mansion. We have just returned from a long weekend in Texas covering Mr. Johnson. White House correspondents keep his appointments and engagements under constant scrutiny; they analyze his temper foibles and fevers; they criticize and sometimes praise his speeches. They make private jokes about him and the life he leads them. And pro or con, the men and women who cover the White House are always sympathetic about the terrible burdens of the presidency—no matter how much they approve or disapprove of the man himself.
Out of this close observation of the Chief Executive comes the stuff of biography and of legend—which eventually distills itself into the thing called history.
Today Lyndon Johnson completes his 16th month in the White House. It is clear, even to this part-time "President-watcher," that the past year and four months in the White House already is leaving its mark on Mr. Johnson. There has been a change...the Texas politician who left the Congress with the respect and admiration of his fellow Senators because of his skill as a master persuader and maneuverer of votes...is no longer the same man.
It has been a subtle and basic kind of change...part of it has been the result of holding the awful power of the office...and part of it appears to have been a personal and deliberate effort to improve the Johnson image, as they say on Madison Avenue.
The corrupting influence of Executive power has been proved in history too often to argue about it. The other side of this coin in the American democracy has been the responsibility that goes with the office of the Presidency. And it is the responsibility which seems to contain the magic of the White House which changes the men who live there.
This magic worked on Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. And before his assassination, the Presidency already had left its sobering mark on John F. Kennedy. The youthful brashness was being replaced by a maturing patina of real statesmanship.
The past 16 months have produced a notable contrast in the public personality of Lyndon Johnson. There has not been—nor will their be—any apology for his political history...but at the same time, there seems to be a discarding of much of the southwestern "dressage"...the regionalistic emphasis on the acts and words which produced the "wheeler-dealer" charges his critics likes to repeat.
Although Mr. Johnson could not erase the twang of the Texas hill-country from his speech if he wanted to—and he doesn't—the Presidential vocabulary has taken on a new dignity which goes beyond the demands of his office and becomes deeply and sincerely personal. It must be assumed that when a man becomes President, he eventually asks himself "what kind of President do I want to be?"
For the answer, he must look back at his own beginnings and his root-country for the truth.
Anyone who looks at the personal history of Lyndon Johnson will find throughout the many biographies the constant references and pride he took in becoming a country school-teacher. In fact, it was his knowledge gained in teaching Spanish-American youngsters in South Texas that put him on the road to a political career. He always carried the minority vote in his district. And following up, an estimated 80 to 90 percent of the so-called minorities voted for him in 1964 to put him in the White House by a landslide.
It would appear that the 36th President of the United States now has decided his personal goal in history.
In this era of exploding knowledge, Lyndon Johnson would like to be the kind of President who teaches his people while he leads them. Perhaps he sees himself as a kind of philosopher-President, a Texas Plato guiding Americans to build the perfect Republic.
But more likely, he prefers the role of the teacher...keeping his pupils in line with stern discipline when they are fractious—as in Alabama—but who sees himself as a failure if he does not make his student-body aware of the immeasurable benefits due to them when they are graduated into his Great Society.
From now until the President gives up the office, we-the-people can expect a lot of free instruction and high level lectures from the head master and superintendent of the biggest democratic institution on earth. And school-teacher Lyndon Johnson already has warned us that we have a lot of homework to do if we are to matriculate from this society into the Greater one...which he insists is America's destiny.
This is Bill Downs, substituting for Edward P. Morgan, saying good night from Washington.
British Pathé recently made available for free nearly 82,000 videos from its vast collection of historical footage. This video contains unused footage of some of the Murrow Boys during a photo op in London. While the footage is dated 1943, this section of the video is actually from June 1, 1944. The men in the video are the same as Murrow's D-Day team pictured above.
They can be seen at 3:12 in the video below. The men are: (standing, from left to right) Charles Shaw, Gene Ryder, Richard C. Hottelet, Larry LeSueur, Charles Collingwood, Bill Downs, and Bill Shadel. Edward R. Murrow is sitting in front.
Passed for publication — A.E.F. FIELD PRESS CENSOR
The news blackout still holds on this front tonight. The latest releases are that British troops have reached the Albert Canal. American troops on the right flank of the British drive are now in contact with the British east of Brussels. And over in the Channel pocket, the Canadians and the British on the left continue to close in.
There can be little doubt that a decisive battle is developing—perhaps one of the final battles of the war in Western Europe. The optimism on the front is what you would expect after an advance of more than 700 miles in a week.
Brussels is seething with every sort of rumor, and they pass from person to person so fast that it is difficult to convince people that they are not true. If you walked down any street in Brussels right now you can hear that Hitler has committed suicide; that Goering has flown to Sweden; that German generals are conferring about appealing for an armistice. None of these rumors can be confirmed, and no one knows where they came from. But the people repeat them with glee.
We are beginning to find out now just how Belgium lived under the Nazis, for there seems to be no shortages here or anything except bread. The shop windows in downtown Brussels rival Fifth Avenue in New York for color and smartness. Their shelves, of course, are not nearly so full. But there is a good front on everything. The women dress smartly and the suits of the men seem of good quality. And people look moderately well fed, although there are some signs of malnutrition in the working districts.
But it was all done through the black market, an organization which became extremely efficient during the four years of occupation. There was a black market for everything. American phonograph records could be purchased from people who had regular traffic to Spain. The film "Gone With the Wind" was shown secretly a number of times here. The price of seeing it was something like $20 a ticket. The film also was smuggled in.
The finest brandies and wines were smuggled in from France despite the Nazi order that liquors were reserved for the German army. And it was possible even to buy Scotch whiskey gotten into the country some way or another.
Perfumes, silk stockings, motor oil, tires, buttons, needles and thread all were and are available for those who have the money. I talked to one man who told me he paid the equivalent of $400 for a suit of clothes.
This has resulted in a peculiar kind of inflation here in Belgium. But most people seem to be fairly well off, and during this liberation holiday, money is flowing in like Saturday night in a gold mining camp.
However, it does shake you to walk into a restaurant and have a perfect meal. Hors d'oeuvres of sardine and tomato and ham and lettuce followed by roast chicken or steak or chops, and then finish up with ice cream or fruit and coffee and brandy. Then you find that it costs you about $70 a plate.
Brussels has lived comparatively well during the occupation. But the black market has become such an institution that people are finding it hard to go into stores and ask out loud for some silk dress material—or for a bottle of brandy or for a loaf of bread. For the past four years they have been getting all this from under the counter—and from right under the noses of the Germans.
This is Bill Downs in Brussels returning you to CBS in New York.
