Walter Cronkite’s Desk…A Reproduction Coming Soon
Walter Cronkite’s Desk…A Reproduction Coming Soon
This fall, Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, Cronkite’s alma mater, will open a new exhibit in the Cronkite Museum that will include a replica of his 70’s era ‘CBS Evening News’ set, complete with cameras.
I am helping them with photos (like these rare shots of the set from our friend Glenn Mack), on locating equipment and with information from CBS veterans that were there. If you worked on this set, please message me via Facebook as we need all the help we can get.
In the photo with the green screen, we have determined that the map is a real relief map and, that although two different shades of green, this was indeed the chromakey background which I always thought had to be flat and one color.
The other photo is one of my all time favorite shots. This is what Walter saw as he sat behind the desk. The camera on the right is mounted on a rare German tripod that can be raised and lowered very quickly. You can’t make that adjustment when the camera is live, but you can do it between shots if you need to. We have located one of these tripods and two Norelcos, but need a pedestal.
If you have an old Houston Fearless TD 3, the lead counterbalance model, or TD 7, the pneumatic model, or and early TVP pneumatic pedestal, please let me know.
By the way, I think in this 1973 photo from Glenn, they techs are changing out the teleprompters from the ones that showed a video image of a long paper roll to the computer based character generated system. Any thoughts on this or any details of the set you can add would be appreciated.
Given the vintage of these photos, I don’t think they were updating to computer teleprompters but rather just updating to through the lens system. As you can see this would have been a 2 mirror prompter with the monitor mounted above the lens.
I saw this in 1971 on a trip to W 57th, his office was just steps away to the left as you look at the anchor desk, from what we are told he really worked at this space doing the final edits for the broadcast..
The gems just keep coming.