Newman was born on January 25, 1919 in New York City to Myron and Rose (née Parker) Newman. His older brother was M. W. Newman, a longtime reporter for the Chicago Daily News. Newman married Rigel Grell on August 14, 1944. They had one daughter, Nancy, who was born on October 6, 1945.
After graduating from George Washington High School, Newman attended the University of Wisconsin, earning a bachelor's degree in political science in 1940. He was also on the staff of The Daily Cardinal. He briefly did graduate studies in American government at Louisiana State University prior to entering the journalism profession.
Career
1940s
Newman worked initially for the wire services, first the International News Service (as a copy boy, mostly in the Senate) and then the United Press. On the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Sunday, December 7, 1941, he heard the news during a radio concert. When he rang the office asking if he should come in, "Hell yes!" came the reply. He took dictation for 12 hours as United Press reporters phoned in their stories.
Newman served four years in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1945. He was a signal officer stationed first in Trinidad and then at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Following the war, Newman worked as a reporter for United Press (1945—1946), mostly reporting about the State Department, before moving to the CBS News radio division (1947—1949) as assistant to Eric Sevareid.
1950s
Between 1949 and 1952 Newman worked freelance, primarily for NBC News. He also wrote for numerous publications and worked for the Marshall Plan (1951) in Greece.
In 1952, he began to work for NBC full-time. He covered significant stories from the funeral of King George VI from the freezing battlements of Windsor Castle (1952); to Britain’s emergence as a nuclear power; to the Suez Crisis (1956). At the same time, as always, he loved quirky stories. Once he climbed a tree in Kensington Gardens dressed in a hunting outfit, complete with deerstalker hat and whistle, to investigate a report that ducks had taken to nesting in trees.
Newman was Bureau Chief for NBC, first in Rome and then in Paris. In both assignments, diplomatic and political news such as the twists and turns of the Cold War and the increasingly divisive anti-colonial Algerian War, vied with stories to cover elsewhere in Europe and further afield. Newman covered the accession to power of President Charles de Gaulle in 1958. He was decorated Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur for his coverage of the President’s funeral in 1970, and for strengthening the understanding of France in the United States.
1961-1984: NBC News
Between 1961 and 1984, Newman participated in every kind of program NBC News produced, as well as for other parts of NBC.He was a regular member of the Today Show team. On Meet the Press, he was one of the most frequent panelists and very often the moderator.
From 1960 to 1984, he played a central role in NBC's coverage of the Republican and Democratic national conventions at a time when gavel to gavel coverage was the norm. He, along with John Chancellor, Frank McGee and Sander Vanocur, were fitted with technologically advanced backpacks to enable them to roam the convention floor to conduct live interviews with delegates for the first time in 1968. They were dubbed "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
Newman was a specialist in breaking news. In 1963, he made the first announcement on NBC radio of President John F. Kennedy’s death. He anchored the television coverage of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy (1968) as well as the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War (1967) and the Vietnam Ceasefire (1973). In 1981, after an assassination attempt on President Reagan Reagan, he was seized to anchor NBC's television coverage for a considerable time until full teams were mustered.
Newman was the only journalist to interview Emperor Hirohito. The interview took place in September 1975 at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, just before Hirohito's diplomatically delicate visit to the United States.
For his program Speaking Freely, he conducted more than 250 hour-long interviews with leading figures of the day between 1967 and 1976. Among those he interviewed were film-maker Ingmar Bergman; zoologist Konrad Lorenz; classical guitarist Andres Segovia; boxer Muhammad Ali; and the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion. The series was broadcast on Sunday mornings by the local New York station, WNBC and syndicated to other stations.
Newman moderated two presidential debates, both of which called on his legendary calm and courtesy. In 1976, he was chosen to moderate the first presidential debate since 1960. The debate between President Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter was marred by a 27-minute loss of sound during which the candidates stood silently by their lecterns. In 1984, President Reagan faced Walter Mondale; when Reagan overran the time limit for a closing statement, he was obliged to cut off the President in full flow.
He took part in numerous documentaries while at NBC. Among those for NBC were: Japan: East is West (1961); Who Shall Live? (about kidney dialysis, 1965); Pensions: The Broken Promise (1972); Violence in America (1977); Spying for Uncle Sam (1978); Reading, Writing and Reefer (1978); Oil and American Power (1979); and The Billionaire Hunts (1981).
Other work
As a music lover, he hosted Boston Symphony concerts from Tanglewood; he contributed to the work of the Religious Affairs Unit at NBC; was a Broadway drama critic (1965—1971); and, as a baseball and boxing aficionado from childhood, relished sports broadcasts.
Newman was also the man giving in-studio news updates during the short-lived morning version of The David Letterman Show in 1980 on NBC. On multiple occasions, he received standing ovations from the show's studio audience.
1984 and after
After leaving NBC in January 1984, Newman was greatly in demand as an interviewer, narrator and moderator. He took part in many programs on PBS and on cable channels. One series to which he was particularly committed was Congress: We the People. He moderated the annual televised conferences of the Former Secretaries of State (from 1983), and conducted a definitive series of interviews with Dean Rusk (US Secretary of State 1961-69), both for the Southern Center for International Studies, Atlanta Georgia. And by contrast, he narrated a series of programs about the restoration of Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. He was also in demand to play himself in films and on television. Among his credits were the films The Pelican Brief, Spies Like Us, and My Fellow Americans, and episodes of such television series as Newhart, Mr. Belvedere, The Golden Girls, Wings, and Murphy Brown.
He lectured extensively on English and on the news business.
Final years
He spent his final years quietly, moving with his wife to England in 2007 to be nearer their daughter. He died of pneumonia in Oxford, England on August 13, 2010. The public announcement of his death was delayed for a little over a month until September 15 to allow a period of private mourning for his family. His wife and daughter survive him.
Newman had a rare blend of seriousness and humor. For a 1964 documentary, he traveled from Paris on the Orient Express, talking to people along the way — and famously ended in a bubble bath in Istanbul. He also relished puns. When he worked on The Today Show, his doggerel poem reviewing each year’s events would end, "Happy Noo Year to Yoose from Edwin Newman NBC Noose." Around the time he left NBC in 1984, he was twice host of Saturday Night Live and on one occasion, to the delight of the audience, sang the song "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" as part of the opening monologue.
In 1974, his first book, Strictly Speaking: Will America be the Death of English? reached Number 1 in the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller List. A Civil Tongue followed in 1976; Sunday Punch (a comic novel) in 1979; and I Must Say in 1988. The last, a collection of his syndicated columns for King Features, ranged over US politics and foreign policy; his journalistic assignments; and the state of English.
He served for many years as the Chairman of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin).
