John S. Sharnik Collection

              John S. Sharnik Collection – Addendum to Original Catalogue P a g e | 1
rev. 11-13-2015
Creator: John S. Sharnik
Original Title: John S. Sharnik Educational Script Collection; John S. Sharnik Film and Video Collection
Dates: 1955 – 1988
Quantity: 12 linear feet
Origin: This personal collection of television-documentary scripts and other materials was donated by
John S. Sharnik to the Nyselius Library at Fairfield University in 1995.
Repository: Fairfield University Archives and Special Collections
Additional Notes:
Collection Name and Location: The original catalogue refers to two separate collections, one consisting
of scripts and background material (John S. Sharnik Educational Script Collection) located in the Fairfield
University Library (Nyselius Library) and the other collection consisting of films and videotapes (John S.
Sharnik Film and Video Collection) housed in the Fairfield University Media Center. Please note that
these two collections have been combined into one, the “John S. Sharnik Collection,” and are housed in
the Fairfield University Archives and Special Collections in the DiMenna-Nyselius Library.
Reformatting of Visual Material: The umatic videotapes in the collection were reformatted to DVD in
order to make the material accessible to the public for research and educational use. Copies are kept in
the Fairfield University Archives and are discoverable through the finding aids and the library catalog.
Scope and Content of Papers
This collection, consisting of paper-based materials, 16mm film, and umatic videotape, highlights the
development of the television documentary at the Columbia Broadcasting Company (CBS) between
1955 – 1988, where Mr. Sharnik was a television producer and news executive. Scripts, notes, and
background information on TV documentaries produced by Mr. Sharnik, as well as original 16mm films
and videotaped material, are included in the collection. The original catalogue was compiled and
written by the donor himself, and includes notes which can be consulted for more information on the
material, its significance and place in the history of documentary-making.
Biographical Information
John Seymour Sharnik (July 5, 1923- May 16, 2002) was a documentary producer and vice president for
CBS News. Sharnik worked for the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes during World War II, then later for
the Hartford Times and the New York Times before joining the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in
1954. He received a number of awards during his career, including an Emmy for the 1972 CBS
documentary ''A Night in Jail, a Day in Court.'' He won other prizes for television documentaries,
including an R.F.K. Journalism Award in 1976, the Humanitas Prize in 1977 and a Christopher Award in
1985. Sharnik also authored two books, Remembrance of Games Past (1986), about the 1984 tennis
Grand Masters Tour, and Inside the Cold War: an Oral History (1987). Sharnik retired from CBS in 1982.
Source: “John Sharnik, 78, Television Producer” (obituary), New York Times, May 16, 2002.
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Historical Background
The Television Documentary (excerpt from the Encyclopedia of Journalism)
Television documentary emerged in the 1950s, influenced by traditions inherited from radio news,
photojournalism, documentary film, and movie theater newsreels.
Documentaries, which were scarce on American television in the 1950s, were of two main types. The
first, historical documentaries were compilation films that knitted together archival footage unified by a
dominant narrator who told the story, setting the conventions for historical documentaries for years to
come. Each of the major commercial networks produced a compilation series in cooperation with the
military. Victory at Sea (NBC, 1952–53) relied on footage shot by the U.S. Navy to recount the naval
battles of World War II to the dramatic musical score of Richard Rogers. The Big Picture (ABC, 1953–59)
drew on Army footage and sources to portray military history and leaders. Air Power (CBS, 1956–57),
produced with help from the U.S. Air Force, told the story of World War II's aircraft and decisive air
battles. These series were later syndicated to stations around the country, where they were re-run for
many years. The Twentieth Century (CBS, 1957–70), narrated by Walter Cronkite (1916–2009), depicted
historical events through the biographies of key figures, often including retrospective interviews with
participants. You Are There (CBS, 1953–56) dramatized events by placing modern reporters within
recreated historical scenes.
The investigative documentary debuted in the 1950s. See It Now (CBS, 1951–55, then intermittently
until 1958) marked the first critical journalism on television, giving birth to the second major
documentary type. A team headed by reporter Edward R. Murrow and producer Fred Friendly shot their
own film and conducted their own interviews rather than using reenactments. The series focused on
current and controversial issues rather than major historical events or widely admired heroes. The
program was more likely to question political leaders and policies than to collaborate closely with
government agencies as co-producers. In its most famous reports early in 1954, See It Now critiqued
Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist investigations, profiling some of the victims of his often
unsupported accusations of communist activity. Although Congressional sentiment was already turning
against McCarthy at the time of the reports, See It Now probably helped diminish public support as well.
However, network and sponsor discomfort with the program's courting of controversy and commercial
pressures to air more lucrative programming forced eventual cancellation of the series and its
replacement by the occasional CBS Reports.
The 1960s can be seen as the golden age of television network documentary. Early in the decade, each
network developed a prime-time documentary series: CBS Reports, NBC White Paper, and ABC's Bell and
Howell Close-Up! At the high point of the documentary boom, the networks aired 447 documentaries in
the 1961–62 season, over twice as many as four years earlier. The heavy investment in documentaries
was the result of several factors. As public service programming, documentaries helped the networks
appease angry regulators after the quiz show rigging scandals of the late 1950s. FCC Chairman Newton
Minow pressured the networks to expand informational fare to improve what he called the “vast
wasteland” of commercial entertainment. The Kennedy administration hoped that documentaries might
support American efforts around the world to contain communism. The networks believed that
documentaries would increase the influence of American television as the networks expanded into
global video markets. Television journalists hoped documentaries would help raise their prestige to the
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level of top print journalists, while offering citizens more thoughtful explanations of current events. By
1969, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) began to provide a new outlet for documentary journalism
that exposed social problems and critiqued American institutions.
Although the networks experimented with many different approaches to documentary in the 1960s,
their most enduring contribution may have been to the development of investigative television
reporting. Network journalists helped create the first sustained period of muckraking since the
beginning of the twentieth century. While most scholars and journalists think print media have been
primarily responsible for watchdog reporting on government and corporations, the networks created
their documentary units several years before major newspapers developed permanent investigative
teams. The number of investigative documentaries on television compared favorably with the number
of major press exposés each year—and the documentaries reached many more Americans. In the early
1960s, about 90 percent of American households saw at least one documentary per month. By the early
1970s, a prime-time CBS documentary drew seven to 12 million viewers, while the largest urban
newspapers reached fewer than a million readers each.
The most famous of these television reports were as carefully researched and argued as their print
counterparts. For example, in Harvest of Shame (CBS, 1961), Murrow attacked the poor working and
living conditions of migrant farm workers by following some of them on the east and west coasts. The
Battle of Newburgh (NBC, 1962) criticized opponents of public support for the poor by closely examining
the evidence and arguments of an antiwelfare town manager in New York state. Hunger in America
(CBS, 1968) exposed federal food programs' failure to address widespread malnutrition among
Appalachian whites, Southern blacks, Native Americans in the Southwest, and Mexican Americans in
Texas. Several documentaries exposed the dark side of America's war in Vietnam through firsthand
reporting. Like most investigative reporting, these documentaries often relied heavily on government
sources and interest groups for their framing of the issues, yet they helped amplify those voices to a
larger audience.
Journalists invented many of the conventions of television documentary in this same period. Taking
advantage of newly available lightweight cameras and sound equipment, documentary producers were
freed to leave the studio interview setting to offer more intimate and dynamic portraits of people and
places. Robert Drew produced path-breaking documentaries for Time-Life's television stations and then
ABC in which moving cameras followed political leaders behind the scenes for the first time to record
them during moments of reflection and crisis. The first of these, Primary (1960), followed John F.
Kennedy and his opponent Hubert Humphrey in public and private for the last five days of the Wisconsin
presidential primary and influenced how political campaigns would be represented for years to come.
This informal and less stagy style became known as cinema verite or direct cinema. Biography of a
Bookie Joint (CBS, 1961) inaugurated the use of hidden cameras, which would become a staple of
investigative television reporting, in this case to capture the doings in an illegal betting parlor operating
with police protection in Boston. Documentaries began featuring confrontational interviews between
journalists and their sources, introducing another mainstay of television reporting.
Investigative reporting, however, attracted intense opposition from government and business officials,
advertisers, and nervous network executives. Complaints to the FCC about documentaries' fairness and
accuracy grew. Executive branch officials and congressional committees conducted lengthy probes of
television documentary practices, accusing the networks of staging events, encouraging subjects to
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break the law, paying participants for their stories, and reflecting political bias. Perhaps ironically, airing
hard-hitting documentaries helped stimulate threats to regulate network news. When Congress
investigated whether CBS journalists deceptively edited an interview with a Department of Defense
official to make him sound untruthful in The Selling of the Pentagon (CBS, 1971), CBS President Frank
Stanton (1908–2006) narrowly escaped being cited for contempt of Congress because he refused to
relinquish reporters' work notes and unused footage (outtakes). While the documentary boom arose in
part to assuage ire at deceptive game shows, critics accused some documentaries of being equally
fraudulent.
Nowhere was this backlash against documentaries felt more directly than at PBS which depended, in
part, on public funding. The noncommercial network focused heavily on informational and educational
programming to fulfill its mandate. This included airing some contentious documentaries that
challenged major institutions. One such report, Banks and the Poor (PBS, 1970), assailed banks for
discriminating against low-income borrowers and Congress for failing to address the problem because of
its members' financial ties to the banking industry. The program incensed bankers, some of whom sat on
local public station boards of directors. President Richard Nixon's administration sought to restructure
and rein in public broadcasting to limit the autonomy of program producers by trimming budgets for
program production. Public affairs documentaries on PBS declined in the ensuing decade.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the documentary also began a slow decline on the commercial networks.
Political and legal pressure from government and corporate targets of documentaries alienated
sponsors, network executives, and affiliate stations (who refused to carry some of the programs). The
rise of television newsmagazines, led by 60 Minutes (which premiered in 1968 on CBS), demonstrated
that programs with several briefer stories reported by a regular cast of celebrity journalists could attract
larger audiences and more advertising dollars than long-format documentaries on a single issue. In the
1980s, the FCC dropped regulations that had spurred television stations to provide public service
programming. The networks cut back unprofitable news programs because of declining audiences and
advertising revenues in the face of growing competition from cable and satellite television, home video
recorders, and, by the mid-1990s, the Internet. By 1984 the three commercial television networks aired
just 11 documentaries between them all year.
The documentary survived in the 1990s and early 2000s, mainly on PBS and cable television networks.
On PBS, the long-running Frontline series and the documentaries of Bill Moyers kept the investigative
tradition alive. POV (short for “point of view”) aired more personal, independent documentaries, some
of which addressed public life, often from the standpoint of unsung individuals. Ken Burns reinvented
the historical documentary, starting with his 12-hour epic The Civil War (PBS, 1990), by mixing
imaginative use of archival photographs with contemporary cinematography, music, and actors'
readings of historical documents to bring the past to life. Series such as Nova and Nature continue to
introduce viewers to recent developments in human understanding of nature and science.
Cable networks offered a new home for documentaries that were less constrained than on broadcast
networks. Some cable channels specialized in presenting particular types of documentary, such as The
History Channel (historical documentaries) and Discovery (science and nature documentaries), while
others regularly incorporated documentaries into their entertainment schedules, such as the
Independent Film Channel, the Sundance Channel, and Home Box Office (HBO). The Documentary
Channel focused entirely on presenting documentaries of all types. Most of the most significant and
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award-winning documentaries of this period premiered on cable, such as Spike Lee's When the Levees
Broke (HBO, 2006), a four-part examination of human suffering in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
and an indictment of the federal government's response to the crisis.
Conclusion
During the 1960s and 1970s, documentaries could reach and influence millions of Americans. Because so
many might watch, however, documentaries became a focal point for criticism of television journalism
generally. Powerful forces in government and business pressured network executives to rein in
documentary reports to avoid offense, lawsuits, regulatory oversight, and lost advertising dollars.
By the 1990s and 2000s, changing economics and deregulation of television fragmented the mass
audience and all but erased the documentary from the commercial network schedules. Broadcast
documentarians could no longer command the resources and broad public attention they had in the
past. This distinction passed to documentaries first released in movie theaters, which were often
buoyed by organized political campaigns, such as those of Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko) and
former Vice President Al Gore's exposition of global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. PBS and cable
channels also suffered some economic and legal pressure to quell or restrain investigative reporting. But
these networks aired more documentaries produced by independent journalists for audiences more
likely to tolerate journalism with a point of view.
Although documentaries have never been plentiful, they have often drawn high esteem within and
beyond broadcast journalism. Because they permit journalists to tell lengthier stories and to express a
point of view more clearly than other types of news, documentaries may have greater impact on public
consciousness. Documentarians pioneered many techniques of television news and, in the process,
prompted many recurring questions about broadcast news ethics. Some mourn the passing of a golden
age of television documentary. But many feel that documentary makers are freer today on public
broadcasting and cable networks.
Source (excerpt): Raphael, Chad. "Documentaries, Television." Encyclopedia of Journalism. Ed.
Christopher H. Sterling. Vol. 2. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference, 2009. 457-462. Gale Virtual
Reference Library. Web. 13 Nov. 2015.
JOHN S. SHARNIK EDUCATIONAL SCRIPT COLLECTION
Materials for Documentary Films and Videotapes
Produced and/or Written by John Sharnik
1955-1988
CATALOGUE
With historical notes and background information
by the donor.
Note: The materials described here and submitted with this
catalogue are being made available only for scholarly study
and research. They may be cited and briefly quoted, but
they may not be published or reproduced.
The symbol [V] preceding an entry indicates that a videotape
of that production is avail~ble in the John s. Sharnik
Educational Film and Videotape Collection at Fairfield
University Media Center.
P.2 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 1
"WORLD WAR 1" Series
Scripts for the complete series of 26 half-hour films
documenting the social, political and military history of
the first quarter of the twentieth century -- and its
epochal event, the First World War.
Narrated by motion-picture actor Robert Ryan. Original
musical score by Morton Gould.
Originally broadcast in the season of 1964-65 on the CBS
Television Network, and repeated the following summer.
Since then, the series has had frequent runs on PBS and on
A&E Cable.
WORLD WAR 1 was conceived and produced by John Sharnik, who
was also the author or co-author of about half the scripts
and served as script editor for the others.
The series incorporates some of the earliest reality film
ever shot, and represents probably the most comprehensive
compilation of historic film of the period, including some
footage never publicly shown before -- footage retrieved
for this project from obscure archives and private sources.
Each of the scripts in this collection is accompanied by the
historical research (usually running 50 pp. or more) for the
episode, and also by production notes. These notes consist
of producer's instructions to researchers and film editors.
There are also occasional memos to the producer from the
executive producer, Burton Benjamin.
The entire series of documentaries is available on videotape
in the John s. Sharnik Educational Film and Videotape
Collection at Fairfield University Media Center.
A list of the individual episode titles follows on the next
page.
P.3 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 1 contd
"WORLD WAR 1" Episodes
Scripts written by John Sharnik except where
other author(s) indicated in parentheses
[V] "The Summer of Sarajevo." 12 pp.
[V] "Clash of the Generals." 21 pp.
[V] "The Trenches." 16pp. (S.L.A. Marshall)
[V] "Doomed Dynasties" 17 pp (Burton Benjamin)
[V] "Atrocity 1914" 18 pp (Irve Tunick)
[V] "They Sank the Lusitania" 19 pp {Burton Benjamin)
[V] "Verdun the Inferno" 16 pp
[V] "Battle of Jutland" 17 pp
[V] "D-Day at Gallipoli" 17 pp {Sharnik & B.Benjamin)
[V] "America the Neutral" 19 pp {~ames Benjamin)
[V] "Wilson and War" 15 pp {Sharnik & Marilyn Nissenson)
[V] "Revolution in Red" 21 pp {Roger Butterfield)
[V] "Year of Lost Illusions" 19 pp (Arthur Holch)
[V] "Behind the German Lines" 16 pp {Alfred Butterfield)
[V] "Over There" 20 pp.
[V] "Over Here" 18 pp
[V] "Daredevils and Dogfights" 14 pp (Earle Luby)
[V] "The Promised Lands" 17 pp
[V] "The Agony of Caporetto" 12 pp {Burton Benjamin)
[V] "Tipperary and All That Jazz" 5 pp
[V] "The ~ide Turns" 14 pp (S.L.A. Marshall)
[V] "Battle of the Argonne" 15 pp (S.L.A. Marshall)
[V] "The Day the Guns Stopped Firing" 16 pp (Sharnik &
D . R • A z za r ella )
[V] "Wilson and Peace" 16 pp (Burton Benjamin)
[V] "The Allies in Russia" 16 pp
[V] "Heritage of War" 17 pp
Note: In addition to series episodes, collection includes:
1.Script for Series Pilot, "Nightmare at Verdun."
Broadcast as an episode in the Twentieth Century
series. Narrated by Walter Cronkite. Subsequently,
a prologue was added, compensatory cuts made, and
resulting half-hour film was used as a promotional
trailer for the WW1 series. The Verdun episode in the
WW1 series is substantially different.
2.Producer's file of series plans & outlines,
planning memos, broadcast schedule, reviews etc.
[THIS COMPLETES CONTENTS OF BOX 1]
P.4 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2
The Television Documentary
Historical Background
Television inherited a documentary tradition from motion
pictures. It consisted of two basic forms. One was the
"compilation" of stock footage from newsreels and other
sources -- in effect, reconstructions of history on film.
The second, represented by the work of directors like
Robert Flaherty ("Nanook of the North") and Pare Lorentz
("The Plow That Broke the Plains"}, was essentially dramatic,
characterized by pre-scripted dialogue and action, and by
the use of actors (often amateurs "impersonating" themselves
or other real individuals).
Some documentary filmmakers in early television
followed these traditional patterns, their work appearing in
television's so-called "intellectual ghetto" on Sunday
afternoons.
But soon after television became established in the United
States, it began to develop its own form of documentary.
The subjects were usually topical; the sensibility, the
motivating spirit, was neither history nor drama but
journalism; the standards and practises were journalistic.
The historical compilation survived (VICTORY AT SEA, AIR
POWER, WORLD WAR 1, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, etc.), but the
"dramatic" documentary was replaced by the topical
documentary, which became television's basic form of
nonfiction programming.
Reporter Edward R. Murrow and Producer Fred Friendly were
the pioneers; their SEE IT NOW series (1951-1958) on CBS was
the prototype. The form evolved from there -- sometimes in
a direct line and sometimes in a simultaneous, parallel line
of development.
The scripts in this collection pretty much cover the range
of that development over the four decades from the 1950s to
the 1990s.
5
P. f Sharnik Script Coll~ctio_DLBox_l__s;ontd
"PRE-DOCUMENTARIESn
1954-1959
The weekly nelvS review: background, analysis, commentary in
a form of program that no longer exists, aired in a
time-period that no longer exists -- the Sunday afternoon
ghetto. THE AMERICAN WEEK with Eric Sevareid on CBS was
the original example, launched in 1953. (I joined it "in
progress" the following season, from The New York Times.)
These half-hour broadcasts contained early examples of the
"mini-documentary" (film pieces running anywhere from about
5 to 10 minutes in length). Once or twice the whole program
was devoted to a single subject. CBS management decided that
was uncomfortably close to SEE IT NOW. William s. Paley,
the CBS chairman, was shaken by the experience of SEE IT
NOW's expose of Sen. Joe McCarthy in 1954, and worried about
giving CBS journalists room to "editorialize."
The worry may have been a fear of political and economic
retribution -- McCarthy had powerful allies in business and
in conservative political circles; it may.have been
misguided "journalistic" principle. In any case, the weekly
news review, under various titles, was gradually reined in
and eventually "neutered" into, basically, a Sunday edition
of the daily news broadcasts. The Sunday afternoon ghetto
ultimately was pre-empted by NFL football and other sports.
Scripts (mostly excerpts) in this collection were typically
written jointly by John Sharnik and Eric Sevareid (replaced
for a while by Robert Trout):
1955. THE AMERICAN WEEK (Sevareid)
Feb. 13. 8 pp.
1955. CBS SUNDAY NEWS (Sevareid)
Dec. 11. 7 pp
1956. CBS SUNDAY NEWS (Trout)
June 3. 5 pp. June 24. 10 pp.
1957. WORLD NEWS ROUNDUP (Sevareid)
March 10. 18 pp. May 26. 22 pp.
April 14. 24 pp. June 2. 21 pp.
April 21. 17 pp. June 9. 25 pp.
May 12. 19 pp. June 16. 22 pp.
P. 6 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2
SPECIAL REPORTS
1955-59
While SEE IT NOW was laboring under the burden of Ed
Murrow's troubled relations with CBS corporate management,
an even newsier form of documentary program began to develop
at the network.
Under the pressure of Cold War headlines, and in spite of
management's suspicions of documentaries, my colleague Les
Midgley and I were repeatedly commissioned to muster the
staff of our declining weekly news review to produce
"special reports" (one hour or half-hour) on major events.
The objective was to provide expanded, in-depth coverage of
big stories just days, or even hours, behind the Evening
News. Among ourselves, we called these primitive
documentaries "instant specials" -- even though, on
some running storie like space exploration or German
economic recovery (see below), we sometimes spent weeks or
even months on research and production.
· Included in this collection are these early examples:
1956. "World in Crisis." 33 pp (unpaginated)
The simultaneous explosions of two.Cold War situations
-- revolution in Communist Hungary and the invasion of
Suez by British and French forces, joined by Israel.
One hour, narrated by Howard K. Smith and others.
Written with Smith and others.
1957. "Wirtschaftswunder: Miracle on Auqusten Street."
25 pp. Narrated by Walter Cronkite. Written with Ernest
Leiser. Germany's spectacular post-WWII economic
recovery, treated in a one-hour documentary pegged to
and broadcast on the day of -- a crucial election
in the Federal republic of West Germany.
1957. "The Black Star Rises." 24 pp Half-hour narrated
by Howard K. Smith. Written with Howard K. Smith.
Independence of Ghana, the first in the wave of African
colonial nations to achieve sovereignty.
[contd]
P. 7 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2 contd
SPECIAL REPORTS contd
1958. "Where We Stand." 96 pp. A 90-minute report, by
Walter Cronkite and other CBS News correspondents, on
the status of the American space program and its
underlying "support system" -- the economy, educational
system, etc. -- in the light of the Soviet challenge
signalled by the launching of the sputnik. Written with
others. Script accompanied by lengthy production memo.
1958. "Ceiling Unlimited." 57 pp. One hour, narrated
by Walter Cronkite. The first full-length documentary
on space exploration. Written with others.
1959. "Where We Stand II." 65 pp. Progress report on
u.s. space program, economy, science, etc., one year
after the original report. Narrated by Walter Cronkite.
Written with others.
+ + +
P.8 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2 contd
THE GOLDEN AGE
1960s-1980s
In 1959 the documentary got a new lease of life from a
curious, if not incongruous, source. In Congressional
hearings on the quiz show scandals, the networks promised
a substantial increase in public-interest programming in
return for an exemption from the threat of tightened Federal
regulation.
The first visible result of this commitment on CBS was
EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY, soon followed by a new
Murrow-Friendly enterprise, CBS REPORTS. (NBC pitched irr
with its WHITE PAPERS series. ABC, always behind-step in
those days, didn't really get into the act for another
decade or so.)
Among historians of the media, 1959 is generally regarded as
the beginning of a ngolden agen of television journalism.
For more than two decades after that the long-form
documentary flourished -- "long-form" meaning a film or
videotape production, usually one hour in length (though
sometimes 30 minutes, occasionally 90) devoted to a single
subject (most often a topical· issue), treated in a
journalistic style.
Examples from the major documentary series are catalogued on
the following pages.
P. 9 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2 contd
1959. EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY series.
An innovative form of topical documentary, EYEWITNESS
attempted to present a structured, in-depth treatment of
significant events as they occurred -- a new venture in
journalism that was facilitated by two new facts
of technology: videotape and the jet plane. Coverage of
distant events was plotted so as to provide historical
background and interpretive reporting, as well as "the
facts." The footage was flown in to the CBS Broadcast
Center by jet and broadcast as a coherent story -- even
though the conclusion was sometimes still being edited
while the opening was going on the air.
Originally this was an intermittent series of half-hour
broadcasts anchored by Walter Cronkite -- all devoted to a
single, dramatic running story: the extraordinary
venture in personal diplomacy by President Eisenhower
and Soviet Chairman Khrushchev, leading up to a summit
meeting designed to check the nuclear arms race.
The design collapsed, of course, in a matter of months,
under the weight of the U-2 incident. EYEWITNESS
continued as a series of weekly half-hours devoted to a
single headline subject of that week ••• variously with
Charles Kuralt, again with Cronkite, and finally with
Charles Collingwood.
Executive producer: Leslie Midgley.
Producer/writer: John Sharnik.
The collection includes the six scripts listed on the
next page plus accessory material as described.
P. 10 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2 contd
EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY series
1959. "The President in Germany." Premiere broadcast.
12 pp (transcript)
1959. "President Eisenhower in Rome" 14pp (transcript)
1961. "The Revolt of the Generals."
Algeria. 35 pp
French crisis in
1961. "Danger Along the Wall." Gunfire in Berlin -­one
chapter in the story of the Cold War's
longest-running crisis. 27 pp.
1962. "The Robert Kennedys on Tour." The President's
brother, the Attorney General, visits the Far East.
27 pp
1962. "Tonight's Decision on the Bomb." Resumption of
nuclear testing -- the background, the prospective
consequences, etc of the White House decision. 19 pp
Besides the six scripts listed above, the EYEWITNESS
file contains 1) a complete list of the four seasons'
programs, with air dates, 2) series prospectus, 3) notes
from an informal, off-camera conversation I had with
Eisenhower in 1967 (some years after he left the White
House), on his personal recollections of Khrushchev and the
Summit experience, 4) a letter/memoir from an Iowa
farmer-businessman, Roswell Garst, who was instrumental in
bringing Eisenhower and Khrushchev together and initiating
their historic (though failed) venture in personal diplomacy
-- EYEWITNESS's original theme.
*
P. 11 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2 contd
CBS REPORTS
Although EYEWITNESS (original air date: Aug. 27, 1959) was
technically the first manifestation of the "golden age,"
CBS REPORTS (OAD: Oct. 27, 1959) proved by far the most
durable.
EYEWITNESS lasted four seasons -- not a bad run as
television goes. But for another couple of decades CBS
continued to broadcast at least 20 scheduled long-form
documentaries a year, most of them in the predominant
investigative mode of CBS REPORTS. Most of them were
aired under that over-all series title, though after 1965
(both Murrow and Friendly had moved on or out by then) the
documentaries were produced individually by small teams
(characteristically, a producer/writer, an associate
producer, a researcher) operating semi-autonomously.
Besides the hard-edged CBS REPORTS, there were also
"softer" documentaries -- 'cultural" subjects, profiles,
etc. These were usually aired as CBS NEWS SPECIALS.
(Meanwhile CBS News continued to broadcast innumerable
unscheduled "special reports" on breaking news events.)
The documentary teams normally spent months researching and
producing a subject. In some cases, they took a year or
more (as with my multi-part CBS REPORTS and CBS NEWS
SPECIALS mentioned below). The lengthy production process
was expensive, cumbersome, exhausting -- characteristics
sometimes reflected in the pace of the films -- and these
were all factors that ultimately rendered the long form all
but extinct on the networks.
The form was pretty much doomed by network economy waves and
the primacy of ratings. Until then documentary ratings were
rarely noted, were rarely even made known to producers.
The long form gave way to the magazine form, as developed by
60 MINUTES, in which three or more subjects are dealt with
in a single hour or half-hour, in a brisk, narrative style.
For better or for worse, the treatment is "story-driven" or
"character-driven" rather than issue-oriented.
The CBS REPORTS and CBS NEWS SPECIALS on the following pages
were written and produced by John Sharnik (sometimes with a
co-producer as indicated on the scripts).
P. 12 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2 contd
CBS REPORTS
and CBS NEWS SPECIALS
1966. CBS REPORTS: "The Anti-Americans." 38 pp.
The American image abroad as an aspect of the
cold war, and the role of the United States
Information Agency in that competition. One hour.
Reported by Charles Collingwood. With Dan Rather.
Research and production notes included.
1966. CBS REPORTS: "The Spring Grove Experiment."
Production script 25 pp. Broadcast transcript 37 pp.
Experimental use of LSD in psychotherapy. This
documentary was a kind of serendipitous accident; the
film was shot with the original intention of using
it as one sequence in a program or series on the
human mind. One hour. Reported by Charles Kuralt.
1967. CBS REPORTS: "The Farthest Frontier." 19 pp
{transcript) plus production notes. Reported by
Charles Kuralt. Discoveries about the functioning,
malfunctioning -- and healing -- of the human mind
through research in brain chemistry. One hour.
Second and last installment of the project that
included "Spring Grove" {see above).
[V] 1967. CBS REPORTS: "The Germans." 58 pp.
Reported by Hughes Rudd and John Sharnik. Group
portrait of a dynamic but tradition-bound
society -- a nation that has played a major role,
constructive and destructive, in the history of our
times. Project prompted by the first signs of
re-emergence of right-wing groups in West Germany.
One hour. Research and production notes included.
1967. CBS REPORTS: "The Football Scholars." 60 pp.
High-pressure recruiting of high school athletes by
colleges. One hour. Reported and narrated by
Roger Mudd.
P. 13 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2 contd
[V]
CBS REPORTS and CBS NEWS SPECIALS contd
1970-73. CBS NEWS SPECIAL: "L.B.J."
The Presidential memoirs of Lyndon Baines Johnson,
recorded in interviews with Walter Cronkite.
A multi-part, irregularly scheduled series.
Producer/writer (introductions, transitions,
background sequences): John Sharnik.
"Lyndon Johnson Talks Politics" -- fourth program
of a total of six broadcast over three years.
48 pp.
This is the only script from the "L.B.J." series,
but the file also includes production memos,
reviews, notes on off-camera conversations with
the ex-President, production stills.
1971. CBS REPORTS: "Justice in America." Three-part
series, within one season's CBS REPORTS schedule,
investigating inequities and anomalies in the U.S.
court system. Reported by Eric Sevareid, John Sharnik
and others.
1. "Some Are More Equal Than Others." 44 pp.
(transcript only). Race and class as factors in the
quality of justice.
2. "Justice Delayed, Justice Denied." (Script
missing) The logjam in the courts.
3. "Crime and the Courts." 59 pp. How the courts
of one community (Denver) try to cope with the
rising rate of street crime and the impact of drugs.
[V] 1972. CBS REPORTS: "A Night in Jail, a Day in Court,"
69 pp. The experiences of two defendants -- one white,
one black -- accused of similar crimes on the same day in
the same court. A kind of spin-off from "Justice in
America," put together from out-takes that seemed too
good to leave on the cutting-room floor. Indeed, it
turned out to be the best of the four Justice films.
Reported by Eric Sevareid and John Sharnik.
P. 14 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2 contd
CBS REPORTS and CBS NEWS SPECIALS contd
(V] 1973. CBS REPORTS: "Anatomy of a News Story." 28 pp.
Transcript only. How one controversial event -­protest
demonstrations at the 1972 Republican National
Convention in Miami -- was covered and treated
by one of the television networks (CBS). Reported
by John Sharnik.
(V] 1980. CBS NEWS SPECIAL: "Sadat's Eternal Egypt 43 pp
The civilization of ancient Egypt revealed by its
artifacts in a tour of the Nile with Walter Cronkite
and Egypt's President Anwar Sadat. Producer/writer:
Gordon Hyatt. Executive producer/writer: John Sharnik.
+ + +
P. 15 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2 contd
MISCELLANEOUS SCRIPTS FOR CBS NEWS
1959. "Harlem: A Self-Portrait." 27 pp. Manhattan's
African-American community at a time of rising black
consciousness {Malcolm X and the Black Muslims) and
protest. One hour, produced by CBS News for its
New York affiliate, WCBS-TV, but then broadcast on the
network. Narrated by Bill Leonard. Producer/writer:
John Sharnik.
1960. "Strangers in the City." 28 pp. The Puerto Rican
immigration to Neu York. A twin to "Harlem" as an
example of "minority programming" produced under the
same auspices by the same team.
1965. "VICTORY IN EUROPE -- 20 YEARS AFTER" 16 pp
{excerpts -- Cronkite's voice-over-film narration
only) plus complete transcript. The first
full-length program broadcast live by transatlantic
satellite. {Previous satellite transmissions had been
limited to brief news reports.)
A one-hour commemoration of the 20th anniversary of V-E
Day, produced in collaboration with the BBC. Walter
Cronkite with Eisenhower in New York, Richard Dimbleby
with Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery in London. Reports
from various WWII landmarks in Europe.
Executive producers for CBS: Don Hewitt
and John Sharnik. Chief writer: Sharnik
Note: Transcript is accompanied by 1) BBC script,
2) research, 3) a lengthy {and somewhat outrageous)
cablegram from Gen. Montgomery to me via BBC, during
our preparations for the broadcast. It was a message
intended for transmittal to Eisenhower, Monty's wartime
nemesis, and it proposed, in effect, to rewrite the
history of World War II to inflate Monty's role at
Ike's expense. Ike was annoyed but patient; we managed
to deflect the proposal {though Monty took another
crack at his revisionist history on the air-- live).
P. 16 Sharnik Script Collection/ Box 2 contd
MISCELLANEOUS SCRIPTS FOR CBS NEWS contd
1969. 60 MINUTES: "Negative Income Tax" 7 pp.
(Transcript only) Daniel Schorr, reporter.
From the premiere season of 60 MINUTES (I was a
member of the original staff), when Mike Wallace and
Harry Reasoner were the on-camera editors and other
CBS News correspondents contributed reports.
(V] 1978. YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW: "Six Days of War"
21 pp. The Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967
reconstructed, with new information. Pilot (produced
but never broadcast) for a projected series of half-hour
documentaries on subjects drawn from recent history.
Caught in a change of management at CBS News, the
project was discarded in favor of a new approach-under
a new series title, INSIDE YESTERDAY (See below).
Note: The script is accompanied by lengthy research
and by documents outlining plans for the series.
(V] 1979. INSIDE YESTERDAY: "Target U.S.A."
25 pp. With MiRe Wallace. British espionage
in the u.s. early in World War II, aimed at
influencing America to join Allied war effort.
Half-hour pilot for a projected series applying
investigative journalism to historical subjects.
This pilot program was broadcast, but the series
was shelved.
Note: Script (and broadcast transcript)
accompanied by series plans.
(V) 1980. SPECIAL REPORT: "A Year in Captivity."
28 pp. The Iran hostages on the anniversary
of their capture. With Dan Rather and Charles
Osgood. Executive producer: John Sharnik.
Writers: John Sharnik & Dale Minor.
+ + +
P. 17 Sharnik Script Collection contd
SCRIPTS WRITTEN AND/OR PRODUCED
for the PUBLIC BROADCASTING SERVICE
1984. HERITAGE: CIVILIZATION AND THE JEWS
(Episode No. 1: "A People is Born"
54 pp. Introductory program of a nine-part
documentary series tracing the history of the
Jewish people from pre-Biblical origins to the
founding of the modern state of Israel.
Written by John Sharnik. Narrated by Abba Eban.
One hour.
1985. SMITHSONIAN WORLD: "Where None Has Gone Before"
45 pp. One hour, three subjects connected by
a single theme: all deal with current efforts to
advance the boundaries of knowledge or experience.
{Long-distance flight, the Hubble space telescope,
discovery of new species of marine life.)
Written by John Sharnik. Narrated by David McCullough.
1988. GLOBAL RIVALS.
Four-part series, produced at a crucial point
in u.s.-soviet relations, about the prospects
for ending the Cold War. Based on the ideas
and perceptions of political scientist Seweryn
Bialer of Columbia University. With Bialer and
reporter Bernard Kalb. Executive producer/writer:
John Sharnik. The episodes (each one hour):
1. "Beyond the Cold War" 51 pp
2. "The Arms Race and the Human Race 44 pp
3. "The Global Arena" 47 pp
4. "Decade of Opportunity" 6 pp (Kalb's intra,
and transitions only; program was mostly a panel
discussion of East-West experts, held in Vienna).
Some production memos, etc included.
P. 18 Sharnik Script CollectionLBox 2 contd
Documentaries for Various Broadcast Outlets
1960. "The Sound of the Big Bass Drum."
For Armstrong Circle Theatre. Douglas Edwards,
host. Unproduced. 22 pp (incomplete script)
A historical view of Presidential campaigning.
1983. "The Plot to Kill President Kennedy."
For syndication by Fox-Lorber Associates,
on the 20th anniversary of the JFK assassination.
Documentary based on the findings of the
House Special Assassinations Committee,
which had concluded (in 1978) that the
Warren Commission Report was faulty, that
"President Kennedy was probably assassinated
as the result of a conspiracy," in which
"organized crime ... [and] members of anti-Castro
Cuban groups may have been involved."
41 pp. Research and other accessory materials
included.
[THIS CONCLUDES CONTENTS OF BOX 2
AND COMPLETES CATALOGUE OF THE COLLECTION]