from: Stephen Segaller, Vice President of Content for WNET.ORG

Legacy of War premieres Wednesday, April 29 at 10 pm.

Walter Cronkite takes viewers through the major post-war events in Legacy of War. You have a long history with Cronkite. How did you first meet him?

In 1983 I was a 29-year-old producer at World In Action, the UK’s Sixty Minutes. A general election loomed – four years after Margaret Thatcher’s amazing first victory. With a campaign that lasts only three weeks – and not much doubt that Thatcher would trounce her inept opponent, Labour Party leader Michael Foot – what was a weekly show to do?

I thought, why not get an American correspondent to report on the British election since every British election is accompanied by increasing chatter that “our elections are getting like American elections, they’re just popularity contests”, driven by advertising agencies and spin doctors.

Well, there was one major name I knew – and he’d quite recently retired from anchoring the CBS Evening News – Walter Cronkite.

My editor was doubtful, “Yeah, sure – you’re going to get Walter Cronkite to come over here and work for us…!!??”

I found myself flying to New York with little more than a toothbrush and a passport, to pitch the great man. After an hour of my describing the issues and personalities of the coming campaign, and how we saw his role as our roving correspondent, Cronkite simply said “I’d love to do it – I’ll clear my calendar for two weeks.”

“But Mr Cronkite,” I said -

“Call me Walter.”

“OK, Walter – I’ve told you what I think the issues and the topics are, and who you should talk to and where we should go – but what do you want to do in these shows?” I did not want to get back to the UK without knowing the veteran anchor’s own intentions.

“Steve, let me make something clear,” said Walter. You’re the producer – that means you’re in charge. I go where you tell me, and we work together from there.”

I have never been so intimidated in all my life.

But after disembarking from the Concorde, Walter was as good as his word. We set the itinerary, we scheduled the interviews with Thatcher, Foot, Denis Healey, David Steel and David Owen, and booked hotel after hotel and crew after crew, hopscotching around Britain. Walter listened, interviewed, jotted illegible notes in his reporter’s notebook, and about twice a day he and I would discuss what we had heard, learned and inferred from the shoot. We’d distill that into a few ideas, and Walter would write it down in the notebook to do his stand-up. In writing it, he memorized it – every time. The crew called him “One-Take Wally”.

On day 8, Walter had a terrible cold. After a 19-hour day, we collapsed for the night at a medieval castle-hotel outside Edinburgh. It was after midnight when Walter withdrew from the paneled dining room to hit the sack. The crew continued to sample the hotel’s malt whisky collection. Half an hour later, the door creaked open again. I thought “Oh no, we’ve woken him up, he’ll be furious.” Not a bit of it. “You fellas all seemed to be having such a good time, I thought I’d just join you for one more nightcap.” And in his elegant pajamas and dressing gown, he did.

After 12 days of this insane schedule, we still had to edit, and get the shows on the air. Walter recorded the narration and flew back to New York. The shows aired to great acclaim – hailed as the most original programming of the election campaign. And Margaret Thatcher won in a landslide.

There were two possible outcomes to this brief but intense working relationship – either Walter would never want to set eyes on me again – or we’d become firm friends.

Three months later in August, when the excitement of the election was long forgotten, my wife and I welcomed our son Adam into the world. A couple of days after Adam’s birth, my wife returned to her hospital room to find it filled with a forest of flowers – “from your friends Walter and Betsy and all at CBS.”

I’ve been at WNET just over ten years, where Walter has had a long association through documentaries and with Great Performances’ Vienna New Year’s Day concerts. But most recently, for me, it has been a wonderful privilege to renew that friendship and the working relationship on City At War: London Calling, and more recently on Legacy of War. I’m proud to be able to say that Walter has been both a colleague – and a friend.

How was it working with Cronkite again after so many years?

As a life-long journalist, it’s always a privilege and honor working with Walter Cronkite. This is a correspondent who represents one of a dozen or more who gave America its coverage of WWII. To work with a journalist who was in the Nuremberg court room is like being connected to these extraordinary historical events — forget about six degrees of separation, this is two degrees. There’s really no one left who still connects us to the second World War as a reporter.