Bill Stern
Encyclopedia
Bill Stern was a U.S. actor
and sportscaster
who announced the nation's first remote sports broadcast and the first telecast of a Major League Baseball
game. In 1984, Stern was part of the American Sportscasters Association
Hall of Fame’s inaugural class which included sportscasting legends Red Barber
, Don Dunphy
, Ted Husing
and Graham McNamee
. He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame (1988) and has a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame
.
, Stern began doing radio
play-by-play commentary in 1925, when he was hired by a local station, WHAM, to cover football
games. Shortly after that, he enrolled at Pennsylvania Military College, graduating in 1930.
Stern was hired by NBC
in 1937 to host The Colgate Sports Newsreel as well as Friday night boxing
on radio. Stern was also one of the first men to do commentary on televised boxing bouts.
Stern broadcast the first televised sporting event, the second game of a baseball
double header between Princeton and Columbia at Columbia's Baker Field on May 17, 1939. On September 30 of that same year, he called the first televised football game
.
During his most successful years, Stern engaged in a fierce rivalry with Ted Husing
of the CBS Radio Network
. They competed not only for broadcast position during sports and news events, but also for the rights to cover events themselves. Both Stern and Husing served for many years as their networks' sports directors as well as on-air stars.
According to the book Sports on New York Radio by sportscaster and Westwood One
executive David J. Halberstam
, Stern's remarkable career flourished despite a physical handicap. In 1935, while Stern was in a car riding home from a football game in Texas, the auto got into an accident, injuring Stern badly enough that his left leg had to be amputated just above the knee.
Many observers consider Stern's style to have provided a blueprint in the 1940s for the career of Paul Harvey
, the ABC
Entertainment Network social commentator. Fellow ABC newcaster Paul Harvey
adopted both Stern's newscasting Reel One (to Page One) and Stern's stories about the famous and odd to Harvey's Rest Of The Story, although Stern made no effort to authenticate his stories and, in later years, introduced that segment of his show by saying that they "might be actual, may be mythical, but definitely interesting."
Paul Harvey, on the other hand, stated he only told stories that he had authenticated in some way.
, and Here Come the Co-Eds
, starring Abbott and Costello
. Stern also narrated a long-running series of 10-minute short subjects for Columbia Pictures
, "Bill Stern's World of Sports."
Stern also did sports commentary for the News of the Day newsreels, the fact of which was acknowledged as part of the signoff message on his Colgate Shave Cream Sports Newsreel of the Air over NBC Radio ("Until then, I'll be seeing you in the News of the Day newsreel at your favourite Loews or Associated theatres!").
of baseball's American League
to lose the World Series
that year. Stern later expressed regret about writing the article; the Browns nevertheless did lose the World Series that year, 4 games to 2, to their hometown rivals, St. Louis Cardinals
.
One day, while doing radio play-by-play for a football game, as a player broke away towards a long run for a touchdown, Stern misidentified the runner several times as he proceeded towards the score. Noticing the error just before the runner crossed the goal line, Stern announced he had lateraled the ball to the correct player, who then scored. Sometime later, Clem McCarthy
, that era's most prominent announcer for horse racing, described the wrong horse as having won a race. The verbose Stern chided him for this error, and McCarthy replied, "You can't lateral a horse, Bill."
in the 19th century, Candy Cummings
or Fred Goldsmith? In his 1949 book, Bill Stern's Favorite Baseball Stories, Stern came down solidly in Goldsmith's corner:
, where he lasted until 1956. While at ABC, Stern was a regular panelist on the game show The Name's the Same
. Most of the program was played for laughs but Stern, with his reporter training, could always be counted on to ask shrewd, probing questions that speeded the show along.
According to the Halberstam book, Stern's tenures at both networks were cut short due to health problems caused by his addiction to painkillers, which dated back to the period after his leg was amputated.
After retiring from television broadcasting, Stern did radio sports reports and commentaries for the Mutual Broadcasting System
in the late 1950s and 1960s. During this period, he settled in Rye, New York
, where he spent his last 15 years.
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
and sportscaster
Sportscaster
In sports broadcasting, a commentator gives a running commentary of a game or event in real time, usually during a live broadcast. The comments are normally a voiceover, with the sounds of the action and spectators also heard in the background. In the case of television commentary, the commentator...
who announced the nation's first remote sports broadcast and the first telecast of a Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
game. In 1984, Stern was part of the American Sportscasters Association
American Sportscasters Association
American Sportscasters Association was founded in 1979 by broadcaster Dick London and associate attorney Harold Foner as a non profit association to represent sportscasters by promoting and supporting the needs and interests of the professional sports broadcaster.-History:In 1980, Louis O...
Hall of Fame’s inaugural class which included sportscasting legends Red Barber
Red Barber
Walter Lanier "Red" Barber was an American sportscaster.Barber, nicknamed "The Ol' Redhead", was primarily identified with radio broadcasts of Major League Baseball, calling play-by-play across four decades with the Cincinnati Reds , Brooklyn Dodgers , and New York Yankees...
, Don Dunphy
Don Dunphy
Don Dunphy was a United States television and radio sports announcer specializing in boxing broadcasts. Dunphy was noted for his fast paced delivery and enthusiasm for the sport. It is estimated that he did "blow-by-blow" action for over 2,000 fights. The Friday Night Fights were broadcast every...
, Ted Husing
Ted Husing
Edward Britt Husing was an American sportscaster and was among the first to lay the groundwork for the structure and pace of modern sports reporting on television and radio.-Early life and career:...
and Graham McNamee
Graham McNamee
Graham McNamee was a pioneering broadcaster in American radio, the medium's most recognized national personality in its first international decade....
. He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame (1988) and has a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
.
Career
Born in Rochester, New YorkRochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
, Stern began doing radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
play-by-play commentary in 1925, when he was hired by a local station, WHAM, to cover football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
games. Shortly after that, he enrolled at Pennsylvania Military College, graduating in 1930.
Stern was hired by NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
in 1937 to host The Colgate Sports Newsreel as well as Friday night boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
on radio. Stern was also one of the first men to do commentary on televised boxing bouts.
Stern broadcast the first televised sporting event, the second game of a baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
double header between Princeton and Columbia at Columbia's Baker Field on May 17, 1939. On September 30 of that same year, he called the first televised football game
1939 Waynesburg vs. Fordham football game
The 1939 Waynesburg vs. Fordham football game was a college football game between the and the played on September 30, 1939. The game was played at Triborough Stadium on New York City's Randall's Island. Fordham won the game by a score of 34 to 7...
.
During his most successful years, Stern engaged in a fierce rivalry with Ted Husing
Ted Husing
Edward Britt Husing was an American sportscaster and was among the first to lay the groundwork for the structure and pace of modern sports reporting on television and radio.-Early life and career:...
of the CBS Radio Network
CBS Radio Network
The CBS Radio Network provides news, sports and other programming to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the United States. The network is owned by CBS Corporation, and operated by CBS Radio ....
. They competed not only for broadcast position during sports and news events, but also for the rights to cover events themselves. Both Stern and Husing served for many years as their networks' sports directors as well as on-air stars.
According to the book Sports on New York Radio by sportscaster and Westwood One
Westwood One
Westwood One was an American radio network and was based in New York City. At one time, it was managed by CBS Radio, the radio arm of CBS Corporation, and Viacom and was later purchased by the private equity firm The Gores Group...
executive David J. Halberstam
David J. Halberstam
David J. Halberstam is the EVP/General Manager of Westwood One Sports. Previously, he was the play-by-play announcer for the Miami Heat and St...
, Stern's remarkable career flourished despite a physical handicap. In 1935, while Stern was in a car riding home from a football game in Texas, the auto got into an accident, injuring Stern badly enough that his left leg had to be amputated just above the knee.
Many observers consider Stern's style to have provided a blueprint in the 1940s for the career of Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey Aurandt , better known as Paul Harvey, was an American radio broadcaster for the ABC Radio Networks. He broadcast News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments. His listening audience was estimated, at...
, the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
Entertainment Network social commentator. Fellow ABC newcaster Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey Aurandt , better known as Paul Harvey, was an American radio broadcaster for the ABC Radio Networks. He broadcast News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments. His listening audience was estimated, at...
adopted both Stern's newscasting Reel One (to Page One) and Stern's stories about the famous and odd to Harvey's Rest Of The Story, although Stern made no effort to authenticate his stories and, in later years, introduced that segment of his show by saying that they "might be actual, may be mythical, but definitely interesting."
Paul Harvey, on the other hand, stated he only told stories that he had authenticated in some way.
Motion pictures
Stern occasionally appeared in feature films as himself. Two of his more familiar credits are Pride of the Yankees, starring Gary CooperGary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
, and Here Come the Co-Eds
Here Come the Co-Eds
Here Come The Co-Eds is a 1945 film starring the comedy team of Abbott and Costello.-Plot:Three friends, Oliver Quackenbush , Molly McCarthy , and her brother Slats work for the Miramar Ballroom as taxi dancers. Slats plants a phony article in the local newspaper that declares Molly's ambition to...
, starring Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...
. Stern also narrated a long-running series of 10-minute short subjects for Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
, "Bill Stern's World of Sports."
Stern also did sports commentary for the News of the Day newsreels, the fact of which was acknowledged as part of the signoff message on his Colgate Shave Cream Sports Newsreel of the Air over NBC Radio ("Until then, I'll be seeing you in the News of the Day newsreel at your favourite Loews or Associated theatres!").
Controversies
Bill Stern caused controversy on September 15, 1944, when he reported that a Chicago newspaper had broken word of an arrangement that would enable the St. Louis BrownsBaltimore Orioles
The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. They are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League. One of the American League's eight charter franchises in 1901, it spent its first year as a major league...
of baseball's American League
American League
The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, or simply the American League , is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a minor league based in the Great Lakes states, which eventually aspired to major...
to lose the World Series
1944 World Series
-Game 1:Wednesday, October 4, 1944 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, MissouriGeorge McQuinn hit the Brown's only home run of the series to put his team ahead in the fourth inning, while Denny Galehouse outpitched World Series veteran Mort Cooper to hold on for the win.-Game 2:Thursday, October 5,...
that year. Stern later expressed regret about writing the article; the Browns nevertheless did lose the World Series that year, 4 games to 2, to their hometown rivals, St. Louis Cardinals
St. Louis Cardinals
The St. Louis Cardinals are a professional baseball team based in St. Louis, Missouri. They are members of the Central Division in the National League of Major League Baseball. The Cardinals have won eleven World Series championships, the most of any National League team, and second overall only to...
.
One day, while doing radio play-by-play for a football game, as a player broke away towards a long run for a touchdown, Stern misidentified the runner several times as he proceeded towards the score. Noticing the error just before the runner crossed the goal line, Stern announced he had lateraled the ball to the correct player, who then scored. Sometime later, Clem McCarthy
Clem McCarthy
Clem McCarthy was an American sportscaster and public address announcer. He also lent his voice to Pathe News's RKO newsreels. He was known for his gravelly voice and dramatic style, a "whiskey tenor" as sports announcer and executive David J...
, that era's most prominent announcer for horse racing, described the wrong horse as having won a race. The verbose Stern chided him for this error, and McCarthy replied, "You can't lateral a horse, Bill."
Bill Stern on the curveball
In 1949 Stern waded into "The Great Curveball Debate" about who invented the curveballCurveball
The curveball is a type of pitch in baseball thrown with a characteristic grip and hand movement that imparts forward spin to the ball causing it to dive in a downward path as it approaches the plate. Its close relatives are the slider and the slurve. The "curve" of the ball varies from pitcher to...
in the 19th century, Candy Cummings
Candy Cummings
William Arthur "Candy" Cummings was a professional baseball pitcher in the National Association and National League who was credited with inventing the curveball. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.-Career:...
or Fred Goldsmith? In his 1949 book, Bill Stern's Favorite Baseball Stories, Stern came down solidly in Goldsmith's corner:
- Some 80 years ago, an obscure kid pitcher on the Connecticut sandlots made a discovery that revolutionized baseball. He discovered that he could perform an amazing trick. He could actually pitch a baseball in such a way as to make it curve! In 1870, before a large but skeptical crowd, Freddy Goldsmith gave a demonstration of his new invention. The test was made by drawing a chalk line along the ground for 45 feet. Poles were set upright at each end of the line, and another was placed midway between these two. Freddy Goldsmith stood at the first pole and his catcher at the end other end. To the amazement of the crowd, Freddy demonstrated that he could throw a baseball so that it went on the outside of the center pole and the inside of the others, in a curve. Thus the baseball world came to know of Freddy Goldsmith and his invention -- "the curve ball." Freddy Goldsmith became nationally famous. Big league clubs fought for his pitching services. He became a star with the Chicago White Stockings. With his "curve ball," pitcher Goldsmith was soon the most talked-about ballplayer in America! But there is a curious ending to this story. For years, long after his days of baseball glory were over, Freddy Goldsmith lived happily in the knowledge that posterity would always know him as the inventor of the curve ball. However, another pitcher named Arthur Cummings popped up, claiming to be the inventor, and quite a few baseball men believed him. When Freddy Goldsmith heard about this, it broke him up completely. Ill and bed-ridden at the time, he died a broken-hearted man, pathetically maintaining to the end that he, and only he, was the original inventor of "the curve ball."
Later years
After many years with NBC, he joined ABCAmerican Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, where he lasted until 1956. While at ABC, Stern was a regular panelist on the game show The Name's the Same
The Name's the Same
The Name's the Same is an American game show that was produced by Goodson-Todman for the ABC television network from December 5, 1951 to August 31, 1954, followed by a run from October 25, 1954 to October 7, 1955....
. Most of the program was played for laughs but Stern, with his reporter training, could always be counted on to ask shrewd, probing questions that speeded the show along.
According to the Halberstam book, Stern's tenures at both networks were cut short due to health problems caused by his addiction to painkillers, which dated back to the period after his leg was amputated.
After retiring from television broadcasting, Stern did radio sports reports and commentaries for the Mutual Broadcasting System
Mutual Broadcasting System
The Mutual Broadcasting System was an American radio network, in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, MBS was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow...
in the late 1950s and 1960s. During this period, he settled in Rye, New York
Rye (city), New York
Rye is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is separate from the town of Rye, which is larger than the city. Rye city, formerly the village of Rye, was part of the town until 1942, when it received its charter as a city, the most recent to be issued in New York...
, where he spent his last 15 years.