Terkel, Studs (1912—)

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Terkel, Studs (1912—)

Studs Terkel was born Louis Terkel in New York City. When he was eight, his family moved to Chicago, a city of raw midwestern muscularity and deep jazz rhythms that sharply influenced his life and career. His love of acting and jazz combined with his urban working-class environment spawned his dual role as local radio personality and oral historian.

Though he graduated from college and law school at the University of Chicago, Terkel never practiced law. Instead, taking his nickname from a famous literary character of the day, Studs Lonigan, he succumbed to the lure of the stage, acting in radio and community theater productions and even in the exciting new medium of television. From 1949 until 1951, he had his own weekly show on NBC, Studs' Place, an innovative, improvisational situation comedy about "regular folks." Terkel took the show's loose, unscripted format from the jazz he loved.

In 1951, anticommunist fever was rising, and Terkel's television career was cut short when NBC discovered he had signed leftist petitions seeking reform on such controversial issues as rent control and segregation. With his typical stubborn conviction, Terkel refused to renounce the petitions, and his show was canceled. His next step was to approach radio station WFMT with a proposal for an hour-long interview show. The station hired him and became Terkel's home for the next 45 years, until his retirement in 1997.

During those years, Terkel interviewed hundreds of politicians, writers, artists, and "regular folks," becoming in the process the quintessential "regular folk" himself. Dressed in his trademark uniform, a red and white checked shirt, and red socks, Terkel developed an interviewing style that was homey yet incisive, respectful yet downright curious, which made many people comfortable in revealing their insights and experiences to him.

His interviews with celebrities and politicians were sensitive and probing, often undressing sides of figures in popular culture that were previously concealed. Terkel often ventured out across the United States with his show, interviewing ordinary people. Many of his fans would agree that he made his biggest contributions to society in these treks as a chronicler of the impact of historical events on everyday life.

Terkel often quoted a poem by Bertold Brecht:

When the Chinese wall was built, where'd the masons go for lunch?
When Caesar conquered Gaul was there not even a cook in the army?
When the Armada sank, King Philip wept. Were there no other tears?

It is these individuals whom history leaves out of its story who most deeply interested Terkel, and he strove to become their scribe. Beginning with Giants of Jazz in 1957, which extolled previously little known black musicians, Terkel produced a series of books that gave voice to the experience of the "regular folks." In 1967 he wrote Division Street America, the first of his oral histories, quickly followed by Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970), Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974), American Dreams, Lost and Found (1980), The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (1985), The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream (1988), Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (1992), Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century By Those Who Have Lived in It (1995), and My American Century (1997).

Each book depicts a multifaceted picture of the historical period it covers and the society that lived through it. Not interested in pat answers or definitive statements, Terkel took delight in the astonishing variety of human experience, and it is that delight he passes on to his readers, like a jovial host at a huge gathering.

"Oral journalism is associated with me," Terkel has said, "and I like that, and it's true. Because it's the sound of the voice that I'd like to capture." Terkel indeed captured the sound of hundreds of voices, previously unheard, but his own voice is apparent in his books as well, often merely in what he chose to write about. He jokingly related that his red checked shirt represents his politics. Terkel's ideological beliefs as a long-time socialist and his interest in working people went hand in hand. A resister of technology, he never used an electric typewriter or drove a car, preferring to take the bus to work. His down-to-earth style perhaps contributed to his success in radio, a much less superficial and glamour-oriented medium than television. He expressed his concern over how high-tech media has affected interpersonal relations when he complained, "We are more and more into communications and less into communication."

—Tina Gianoulis