![]() “God, it was a great paper,” he said in 2011, six months before he died at 92. But his experience at Stars and Stripes was foundational. Rooney achieved the rank of staff sergeant and was awarded numerous medals, including the Bronze Star, before he mustered out. I mean, I don't have to risk my life’ - except that I felt so bad for all the men who did have to risk their lives all those times that it just seemed like it was the honest thing to do," he recalled decades later. "I got in my bomber and I thought to myself, ‘Why am I doing this? I'm scared to death. Soon enough, he rode along on the the second bombing mission from London into Germany. “The grease monkey is the unglamorous, backstage - and very necessary - human element of the war.” But he is made of the same basic stuff that puts the men in the Flying Fortresses in the headlines day after day," Rooney wrote. “The Purple Heart may never be awarded to the grease monkey in olive-drab overalls who works seven days and nights a week to keep Army wheels rolling. His first story was about a maintenance unit. He was among the first into liberated Paris and the Nazi death camps, got to Normandy while it was still stacked with the dead, and was the first journalist on the scene when the bridge at Remagen was captured. He is survived by his children, Ellen, Martha, Emily and Brian.Based in London for the newly revived newspaper, Rooney covered almost every theater of the war. Rooney's wife of 62 years, Marguerite, died in 2004. ![]() In 2004, he enraged the religious right by saying that God had spoken to him about Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, and that the Almighty had declared Gibson "a real nut case". He blamed CBS's troubles on the chairman Laurence Tisch's cutbacks, publicly daring Tisch to fire him. When the Writers Guild of America took strike action against CBS in 1987, Rooney – who was not a union member – embraced solidarity and delivered no commentaries until a settlement. Rooney was never afraid to attack his bosses. His unexpected but painfully honest opinions often got him into trouble, and he was briefly suspended by CBS in 1990 for an alleged racist remark in a magazine interview, which he denied. He presented his first regular slot on 60 Minutes in 1978. He wrote, produced and narrated a series on aspects of American life, including Mr Rooney Goes to Washington (1975), Mr Rooney Goes to Dinner (1976) and Mr Rooney Goes to Work (1977). When CBS refused to air his essay on the Vietnam war, he left the network and presented it on the Public Broadcasting Service instead, appearing on screen for the first time. That year Rooney wrote the Emmy-winning documentary Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed. With the correspondent Harry Reasoner narrating, and Rooney writing and producing, the pair created praised essays on subjects such as bridges, hotels and chairs, ending with The Strange Case of the English Language, in 1968. Its success convinced CBS that he could make anything interesting. He wrote his first television essay in 1964 – on the subject of doors. He simultaneously contributed to current affairs broadcasts and the big magazines of the day. Over the next decade, Rooney wrote for the pianist-humorist Victor Borge, the comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, and the crooner Perry Como. Rooney told him he needed better writing and Godfrey, intrigued, took him on for a show, Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, which moved to television and became a hit. Rooney wryly wrote: "I don't want to go on a noisy one." His memorable book My War, published in 1995, recalled this period.Īfter a Hollywood stint writing the script for a never-made film based on one of his other war books, he freelanced as a writer until 1949, when he confronted, in the CBS lift, Arthur Godfrey, the biggest radio star of the day. Andy Rooney was born in Albany in January 1919 and grew up in the Capital District (of NYS), the son of Walter and Elinor (Reynolds) Rooney. His story about the incident ended with a quote from the pilot about the "quiet trip". The group of reporters requested – and were granted permission – to take to the air themselves, and on his first flight over Germany in February 1943, Rooney's bomber was hit and damaged. As a reporter for Stars and Stripes, he was based in London and, with a handful of other American journalists, interviewed returning US bomber crews. He attended Colgate University in New York until he was drafted into the US army in 1941. ![]() Rooney was born in Albany, New York, and grew up in a middle-class family. He also wrote for more than 200 newspapers. He did not hobnob and would not sign autographs, except on his books, of which he produced more than a dozen. ![]() A few minutes once a week hardly made him a television celebrity and that suited Rooney. ![]()
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