For more than half a century, the journalist Alistair Cooke
showed us that being an American is much more than just happening
to live in a certain region of the world. Being an American is a
state of mind.
For more than half a century, the journalist Alistair Cooke showed us that being an American is much more than just happening to live in a certain region of the world. Being an American is a state of mind.
Cooke died recently at the age of 95. And almost to the end of his productive and fascinating life, he kept presenting his 15-minute audio essays on Britain’s BBC Radio which aired every weekend. His “Letter From America,” as the weekly reports were simply called, were first broadcast in 1946. It’s the single longest-running program in broadcasting history.
Each of his radio essays described the strangeness and wonder of life in these United States. Cooke’s reports served as a mirror reflecting our image as a people and how our history has shaped who we are.
With wit and candor, he clearly pointed out our strengths and weaknesses as a culture. It’s good for a nation to see its warts as well as its beauty marks. With his cultivated British voice, he expressed to BBC listeners his admiration and passion for America and Americans.
I became acquainted with Alistair Cooke’s journalism while I was a student at Palma High School in Salinas in the 1980s. The San Francisco PBS station broadcast his 13-part series titled “Alistair Cooke’s America: A Personal History of the United States,” and my attention was hooked by every episode. “America” was originally broadcast in the autumn of 1972, and it won four Emmys, a Peabody Award and the Benjamin Franklin medal of the Royal Society of Arts.
It was fortunate I was taking my U.S. History class at the time of its rebroadcast. Cooke’s tour of our nation’s past created a spell-binding education that brought history to life for me.
Cooke’s award-winning series proved American history is not a dry tome of endless dates to memorize and famous dead people to eulogize. He introduced me to the dramatic story that helped to shape who I am as an American.
Recently, I checked out of the Morgan Hill library the video collection of his “America” series. Although it looks a bit dated with the cheesy 1970s cars, clothing and hairstyles, I found Cooke’s remarks still pointedly relevant in his portrait of the American people. He shared with viewers his keen zest in exploring America’s past.
This landmark series presented his view on some areas near our own South Valley region of California. He takes a quick tour of the plaza in San Juan Bautista when he describes the wild days of Spanish settlement, and he also shows off the rugged coastal beauty of Point Lobos near Carmel. He fondly tells of his love affair with San Francisco, which he calls a city any foreign visitor will always feel welcome in.
Although he might first come across as the refined Cambridge-educated Englishman (he also introduced “Masterpiece Theater” programs on PBS for years), Cooke isn’t afraid to show his working-class Manchester roots.
During the series’s description of plantation life in the Old South, he stands in the middle of a sweltering Georgia cotton field, talking to the camera while wearing an immaculate business suit. He bends down and coolly pulls up a young plant from the soil as he explains how “king cotton” was the reason millions of Africans were kept in bondage during a long period of American history.
The “America” series also shows his surprising talent as a musician. He sits at a New Orleans saloon piano while his fingers dance on the keys and pull a lively blues tune out to play.
Cooke had a knack for the way Americans talk. When he quoted some American character in his “America” series or one of his radio essays, he would often go into a perfect imitation of the American voice – creating the twangy drawl of a Texan or the nasal tone of a New York City garment district worker.
And sometimes, his verbal snapshots of historic events could be chilling – such as his BBC “letter” describing the chaotic terror he saw in Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel’s kitchen service pantry the night Robert Kennedy was shot – shortly after winning California’s primary.
When I lived in London and worked as the European bureau chief for a news service, I always looked forward to Cooke’s weekend “Letter From America” broadcasts. He never failed to give a fresh and often comical perspective of the country of my birth. He humanized America as a land filled with amazing people.
Those radio broadcasts even inspired me to create a similar literary enterprise of my own. Shortly after arriving in England’s cosmopolitan capital, I started writing my “Letter From London” essays describing the city’s characters I met as well as British history I discovered during my weekend rambles. I’d mail them off once a week to friends back in the “New World.”
Alistair Cooke was the modern era’s version of Alexis de Tocqueville, a writer who took a tour of our still-wet-behind-the-ears nation in the 19th century and painted a picture of it – warts and beauty marks – in his classic work “Democracy in America.” Like that Frenchman, Cooke’s radio essays and PBS series gives Americans the perspective of distance to see our country as the world sees it. His British point of view lets us see the big picture – the drama and historic pageantry of our land. He showed us our American state of mind.
To hear some of Cooke’s classic radio essays available online, check out the BBC’s Web site at: www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/letter_from_America.
