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Beatty, Bessie (27 January 1886–06 April 1947), radio broadcaster, journalist, and author, was born Elizabeth M. Beatty in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Thomas Edward Beatty and Jane Mary Boxwell. Her parents had immigrated from Ireland to the Midwest and then to Los Angeles, where Thomas Beatty became a director of the first electric street railroad in the city. In 1903 Bessie Beatty matriculated at the Highland Park campus of Occidental College, determined to be a writer. She was active in campus literary societies and wrote several articles for student publications before taking a position in her senior year as a reporter for the ...

Carter, Boake (28 September 1898–16 November 1944), broadcast journalist, was born Harold Thomas Henry Carter in Baku, then part of Russia (now the capital of Azerbaijan), the son of Thomas Carter, an oilman and British consul in that city, and Edith Harwood-Yarred Carter. He was educated at boarding schools in England and then spent a brief interval at Cambridge University, where he wrote for a student newspaper. Carter was impatient to enter the oil business with his father, and while making preparations to do so he worked as a stringer for the ...

Clapper, Raymond Lewis (30 May 1892–01 February 1944), journalist and radio commentator, was born near La Cygne, Kansas, the son of John William Clapper and Julia Crowe, farmers. Shortly after his birth Clapper’s family moved to Kansas City, Kansas, where his father worked in packinghouse factories. His parents, hardworking but poor, showed little interest in books, politics, or the world outside their strict, religious home life, which was supplemented only by regular attendance at the Baptist church. Through grade school Clapper avidly read newspapers, including the ...

Davis, Elmer (13 January 1890–18 May 1958), author, journalist, and radio commentator, was born Elmer Holmes Davis in Aurora, Indiana, the son of Elam H. Davis, a cashier for the First National Bank of Aurora, and Louise Severin, principal at the local high school. Described by a childhood friend as an avid reader, Davis began his long career with newspapers the summer after his freshman year in high school by obtaining a job as a printer’s devil for the ...

Eisler, Gerhart (20 February 1897–21 March 1968), Communist journalist and politician, was born in Leipzig, Germany, the son of Rudolf Eisler, a philosopher, and Marie Ida Fischer. Eisler grew up in Vienna, Austria, where his father was an assistant professor without tenure (Privatdozent) at the university. The socialist sympathies of his parents, his own studies in anarchist and Marxist literature, writing for his school journal, and eventually his experiences as a young officer during World War I were all factors that influenced Eisler’s future. He was active in the revolution in November 1918 and joined the Communist party of German-Austria....

Eliot, George Fielding (22 June 1894–21 April 1971), author and journalist, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Philip Park Eliot and Rena King. His mother died when he was three; five years later his father, a marine insurance broker, married again and, in pursuit of a business opportunity, moved the family to Australia. After attending school at Montclair Academy in New Jersey and in the Melbourne suburb of St. Kilda, young Eliot entered Trinity College, University of Melbourne, from which he graduated in 1914....

Godwin, Earl (24 January 1881–23 September 1956), radio broadcaster and journalist, was born Earl Thomas J. Godwin to Harry Godwin, at that time city editor of the Washington Star newspaper, and Annie Falconer Stoppard Godwin, in the family home—later the site of the U.S. Supreme Court building—across from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. After attending public elementary school, he studied at the private Emerson Institute (later the Emerson Preparatory School). By the late 1890s his parents were living apart, and the young Godwin joined his mother in New Jersey before moving to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he worked briefly in a factory. Intent on a career in journalism, he was hired as a cub reporter by a community newspaper in Passaic, New Jersey. In ...

Hale, Arthur William (16 March 1896–17 October 1971), radio news broadcaster, was born Arthur William Glunt in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the son of George Alexander Glunt, a general store and property owner, and Ida J. Nail. In 1912 Glunt helped organize Altoona’s Musicians’ Union local, graduating from Altoona High School the following year. Glunt also clerked in his father’s store and played the piano in a local movie house. Entering Gettysburg College in 1914, he led the Sophomore and College Orchestra and was Glee Club pianist. When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, he left college to join the U.S. Army. Ten months later he was shipped to France and was discharged honorably on 21 August 1919 as a second lieutenant, having served as battalion gas officer in the 312th Field Artillery, 79th Division....

Hard, William (15 September 1878–30 January 1962), journalist, was born in Painted Post, New York, the son of Rev. Clark Pettengill Hard and Lydia E. van Someren. He spent part of his childhood in India, where his father was a Methodist missionary. Hard received a B.A. in history from Northwestern University in 1900, graduating, he wrote, “with a Phi Beta Kappa Key and no key to anything else.” In 1901 he left graduate study in history to be a resident at Northwestern University Settlement House in Chicago. He was resident-in-charge for one year and wrote for and later edited the house’s monthly, the ...

Howe, Quincy Huntington (17 August 1900–17 February 1977), journalist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe, an editor and biographer, and Fanny Huntington Quincy. He attended the Country Day School for Boys in Boston and St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, and went on to Harvard University, where he received a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in 1921. He studied for a year in England at Christ College, Cambridge University....

McCann, Alfred Watterson (09 January 1879–19 January 1931), journalist, radio commentator, and crusader for pure food, was born in Pittsburgh, the son of Michael McCann, a printer and engraver, and Maria (maiden name unknown). He attended the University of Chicago and was graduated in 1899 from Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University, where he accepted a faculty position teaching English and mathematics after graduation. In 1905 he married Mary Carmody of Pittsburgh; they had five children....

Trout, Robert (15 October 1909–14 November 2000), broadcast journalist, was born Robert Albert Blondheim in Wake County, North Carolina, near Raleigh, the only child of Louis Blondheim and Juliette Mabee Blondheim, farmers. When Trout was nine the family moved to Washington, D.C., where his father opened a shoe store. He attended public schools and was, by his own account, not much interested in his studies. He had no aspirations of becoming a journalist. He did develop an early passion for radio and later recalled, “When I was supposed to be asleep at night, I was often in bed with the light out listening to my little [homemade] crystal set” (interview by Ron Simon, Scheuer Collection). Trout credited radio with awakening a desire in him to know more of the world. He made several attempts to run away from home and spent a summer as a cabin boy on a transatlantic passenger ship....