| Ben Grauer |
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| grauer, ben | |
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| 1908 births | |
| 1977 deaths | |
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After graduating from Townsend Harris High School , he received his B.A. from the City College Of New York in 1930 . Grauer started in Radio as an actor, but soon became part of the broadcasting staff at the National Broadcasting Company . He was the main announcer for the NBC Symphony Broadcasts on radio and TV from 1937 till 1954 . Arturo Toscanini said he was his favorite announcer. Grauer's other close personal associations in broadcasting included Walter Winchell and Eleanor Roosevelt . Starting in 1932 , Grauer covered the Olympic Games , presidential inaugurations, and international events. He married interior designer Melanie Kahane in 1954 and retired from NBC in 1973 . Ben Grauer is best remembered as the NBC radio and TV host of the annual New Year's Eve broadcasts live from Times Square . For decades, these broadcasts were part of the NBC Tonight Show , where he worked not only with Johnny Carson , but his predecessors. During his 40-year broadcast career, he hosted over half a dozen TV programs on NBC including game shows, quiz shows, concerts and news programs. His career at NBC ended in 1973 . In the decade before his death, Grauer also collected material for a projected history of prices and pricing, with special attention to book prices. He was active in several professional journalistic organizations as well as the Grolier Club. Grauer always had a great interest in the graphic arts, he even printed his own Christmas Card s. FILMOGRAPHY Including early career as child actor:
RADIO AND TV YEARS Perhaps Ben Grauer's greatest fame lies in his legendary 40-year career in Radio . In 1930 , the then 22-year-old Benjamin Franklin Grauer joined the staff at NBC. He quickly rose through the ranks, to become a senior commentator and reporter. He was the designated announcer for the popular 1940s Walter Winchell 's ''Jergens Journal''. Perhaps, most importantly, he was selected by Arturo Toscanini to become the voice of the NBC Symphony Orchestra (Grauer took over in 1940 and remained until it was disbanded in June 1954 ). Grauer did both the Toscanini Radio and TV broadcasts. Several years after the death of Toscanini , Ben Grauer, together with the composer Don Gillis (who produced the NBC broadcasts from 1947 - 1954 ), created the Peabody Award -winning radio series ''Toscanini, the Man Behind the Legend''. It began in 1963 and continued through the centennial of Toscanini's birth in 1967 . This series ran for nearly two decades on NBC and then other radio stations until the early 1980s . During his distingished radio career Grauer covered nearly every major historic event, including the Morro Castle fire, the Paris Peace Conference , and the US occupation of Japan . Millions remember Ben Grauer for his NBC broadcast coverage of the New Year's celebrations on both radio and TV. Between 1951 and 1969 Grauer covered these events eleven times live from New York's Times Square . Ben Grauer provided the commentary for NBC's first television special, the opening in 1939 of the New York World's Fair . In 1948 Grauer, together with John Cameron Swayze provided the first live TV coverage of the national political conventions. In 1956 NBC began broadcasting some of their shows In Living Color and in 1957 the animated Peacock Logo made its debut, with a musical score by Lou Garisto and the voice was Ben Grauer! Between all these heady tasks, Ben Grauer also found the time to host a large number of popular radio and TV programs including: Radio credits
TV credits
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