Don Hollenbeck
Encyclopedia
Don Hollenbeck was a CBS
newscaster and commentator and colleague of Edward R. Murrow
and Fred W. Friendly
. He died from natural gas
inhalation as it was discovered that his stove
and oven
had been turned on but not lit (allowing gas to fill his apartment). Consequently, Hollenbeck's death was ruled a suicide
. Reasons that it might have been suicide included health problems, a broken marriage, and frequent published attacks by Jack O'Brian
, a Hearst
columnist and supporter of Joseph McCarthy
.
, Nebraska
, and began reporting the news while at the University of Nebraska. His first assignment was to the Nebraska State Journal in 1926. During World War II
, he was assigned to the foreign staff of NBC
in London in March 1943. From there he went to Algiers
just in time to take a place with the British troops landing at Salerno
, Italy
in September. He went in with the second wave — the assault wave which took the full force of German shells, and later made a number of battle-action recordings which were broadcast to the United States.
During the conquest of southern Italy, Hollenbeck moved northward with the troops and was one of the first correspondents to begin broadcasting from Naples
when the Army Signal Corps set up transmitters for the correspondents. But at Salerno
he was stricken with malaria
, then with jaundice
and ordered back home.
Asked what kind of protection there was after these forces had landed, Hollenbeck replied:
From Stars and Stripes
September 20, 1943:
(Picture Magazine). Founded in 1940 by department store magnate Marshall Field III
and published in New York, PM was a left-leaning newspaper, and it garnered accusations of being sympathetic to Communism
even though it was critical of the Soviet Union
for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
and of the American Communist Party for supporting it.
The newspaper published work by authors such as Ernest Hemingway
and Erskine Caldwell
, photographers like Weegee
and Margaret Bourke-White
, and cartoonists like Dr. Seuss
, Crockett Johnson
and Walt Kelly
. It accepted no advertising, and dedicated itself to preventing "the little guy from being pushed around." It ended up becoming a target for anti-communists
, and subsequently it went out of business in 1948. Because of this affiliation, Hollenbeck was a target for McCarthy
-supporting columnist Jack O'Brian
, whose attacks appeared in the New York Journal American
and other newspapers in the Hearst
newspaper chain.
Hollenbeck also worked for the Office of War Information (OWI), NBC
and ABC
, once subbing on short notice for Orson Welles
over Welles' scheduled Sunday night ABC news commentary program, before joining CBS
in 1946. Murrow eventually had Hollenbeck do the innovative media-review program, CBS Views the Press, over the radio network's flagship station, WCBS
. In the early 1950s, Hollenbeck worked both for CBS Television and flagship WCBS-TV
.
On June 22, 1954, the 49-year-old Hollenbeck committed suicide
by gas
in his Manhattan
apartment. A newspaper account reported:
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
newscaster and commentator and colleague of Edward R. Murrow
Edward R. Murrow
Edward Roscoe Murrow, KBE was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, and Alexander Kendrick...
and Fred W. Friendly
Fred W. Friendly
Fred W. Friendly was a president of CBS News and the creator, along with Edward R. Murrow, of the documentary television program See It Now...
. He died from natural gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
inhalation as it was discovered that his stove
Stove
A stove is an enclosed heated space. The term is commonly taken to mean an enclosed space in which fuel is burned to provide heating, either to heat the space in which the stove is situated or to heat the stove itself, and items placed on it...
and oven
Oven
An oven is a thermally insulated chamber used for the heating, baking or drying of a substance. It is most commonly used for cooking. Kilns, and furnaces are special-purpose ovens...
had been turned on but not lit (allowing gas to fill his apartment). Consequently, Hollenbeck's death was ruled a suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. Reasons that it might have been suicide included health problems, a broken marriage, and frequent published attacks by Jack O'Brian
Jack O'Brian
John Dennis Patrick O'Brian was a New York Journal American television critic and supporter of Joseph McCarthy.O'Brian was born in Buffalo, New York...
, a Hearst
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...
columnist and supporter of Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
.
Life
Hollenbeck was born in LincolnLincoln, Nebraska
The City of Lincoln is the capital and the second-most populous city of the US state of Nebraska. Lincoln is also the county seat of Lancaster County and the home of the University of Nebraska. Lincoln's 2010 Census population was 258,379....
, Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
, and began reporting the news while at the University of Nebraska. His first assignment was to the Nebraska State Journal in 1926. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he was assigned to the foreign staff of 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 London in March 1943. From there he went to Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
just in time to take a place with the British troops landing at Salerno
Salerno
Salerno is a city and comune in Campania and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in September. He went in with the second wave — the assault wave which took the full force of German shells, and later made a number of battle-action recordings which were broadcast to the United States.
During the conquest of southern Italy, Hollenbeck moved northward with the troops and was one of the first correspondents to begin broadcasting from Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
when the Army Signal Corps set up transmitters for the correspondents. But at Salerno
Salerno
Salerno is a city and comune in Campania and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea....
he was stricken with malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
, then with jaundice
Jaundice
Jaundice is a yellowish pigmentation of the skin, the conjunctival membranes over the sclerae , and other mucous membranes caused by hyperbilirubinemia . This hyperbilirubinemia subsequently causes increased levels of bilirubin in the extracellular fluid...
and ordered back home.
Asked what kind of protection there was after these forces had landed, Hollenbeck replied:
From Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes (newspaper)
Stars and Stripes is a news source that operates from inside the United States Department of Defense but is editorially separate from it. The First Amendment protection which Stars and Stripes enjoys is safeguarded by Congress to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests,...
September 20, 1943:
Allegations regarding communism
Don Hollenbeck was at one time employed by the newspaper PMPM (newspaper)
PM was a leftist New York City daily newspaper published by Ralph Ingersoll from June 1940 to June 1948 and bankrolled by the eccentric Chicago millionaire Marshall Field III....
(Picture Magazine). Founded in 1940 by department store magnate Marshall Field III
Marshall Field III
Marshall Field III was an American investment banker, publisher, racehorse owner/breeder, philanthropist, heir to the Marshall Field department store fortune and a leading financial supporter and founding board member of Saul Alinsky's community organizing network Industrial Areas Foundation.Born...
and published in New York, PM was a left-leaning newspaper, and it garnered accusations of being sympathetic to Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
even though it was critical of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
and of the American Communist Party for supporting it.
The newspaper published work by authors such as Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
and Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Preston Caldwell was an American author. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native South like the novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre won him critical acclaim, but they also made him controversial among fellow Southerners of the time who felt he was...
, photographers like Weegee
Weegee
Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig , a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography....
and Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White was an American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet Industry, the first female war correspondent and the first female photographer for Henry Luce's Life magazine, where her...
, and cartoonists like Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss
Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone....
, Crockett Johnson
Crockett Johnson
Crockett Johnson was the pen name of cartoonist and children's book illustrator David Johnson Leisk...
and Walt Kelly
Walt Kelly
Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. , or Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip, Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Pinocchio and Fantasia. Kelly resigned in 1941 at the age of 28 to work at Post-Hall Syndicate,...
. It accepted no advertising, and dedicated itself to preventing "the little guy from being pushed around." It ended up becoming a target for anti-communists
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
, and subsequently it went out of business in 1948. Because of this affiliation, Hollenbeck was a target for McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
-supporting columnist Jack O'Brian
Jack O'Brian
John Dennis Patrick O'Brian was a New York Journal American television critic and supporter of Joseph McCarthy.O'Brian was born in Buffalo, New York...
, whose attacks appeared in the New York Journal American
New York Journal American
The New York Journal American was a newspaper published from 1937 to 1966. The Journal American was the product of a merger between two New York newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst: The New York American , a morning paper, and the New York Evening Journal, an afternoon paper...
and other newspapers in the Hearst
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...
newspaper chain.
Hollenbeck also worked for the Office of War Information (OWI), 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...
and 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...
, once subbing on short notice for Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
over Welles' scheduled Sunday night ABC news commentary program, before joining CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
in 1946. Murrow eventually had Hollenbeck do the innovative media-review program, CBS Views the Press, over the radio network's flagship station, WCBS
WCBS (AM)
WCBS , often referred to as "WCBS Newsradio 880" , is a radio station in New York City. Owned by CBS Radio, the station broadcasts on a clear channel and is the flagship station of the CBS Radio Network...
. In the early 1950s, Hollenbeck worked both for CBS Television and flagship WCBS-TV
WCBS-TV
WCBS-TV, channel 2, is the flagship station of the CBS television network, located in New York City. The station's studios are located within the CBS Broadcast Center and its transmitter is atop the Empire State Building, both in Midtown Manhattan....
.
Death
The first newsman WCBS-TV viewers saw after Murrow's March 9, 1954 documentary on Joe McCarthy was Hollenbeck, who told the viewers he wanted "to associate myself with what Ed Murrow has just said, and say I have never been prouder of CBS." That prompted O'Brian in the Hearst newspapers (including the flagship Journal-American) to step up his criticism of CBS and especially of Hollenbeck, who, despite his news experience under pressure situations, was a sensitive man.On June 22, 1954, the 49-year-old Hollenbeck committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
in his Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
apartment. A newspaper account reported:
External links
- Radio's Revolution: Don Hollenbeck's CBS Views the Press edited and with an introduction by Loren Ghiglione (University of Nebraska Press, 2008)