Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - The Man Bill-hind the Voice!

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

Peter sits down with our very own judge and scorekeeper, Bill Kurtis, to learn about the legendary anchorman's life and career.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, everybody. Peter Sagal here with you. And today for our podcast extra, I am joined by none other than my co-host, our official judge and scorekeeper, Mr. Bill Curtis. Who cares about those other medals? You just won the Nobel Prize. I'm Bill Curtis. Take a gulp of me and I'll give you wings. I'm Red Bill. Hey there, Senators. Come sit on Capitol Bill. Bill, it has come to my attention that many in our audience do not know who you are. And my purpose today of having you join us here for this podcast, Jaxcha, is to see what we can do to fix that. And I want to start by redoing something that we often do in our live shows. I bring up the movie Anchorman, which everybody has seen,

and I turn to you, Bill, and I say, Bill, hit it. There was a time, a time before cable, when only men read the news. And in San Diego, that man was Ron Burgundy. Sound familiar? And what people don't understand is that in Chicago, that man was you. That not only did you, Bill Curtis, narrate the movie Anchorman, but you are the anchorman.

So just to get some background, you're a Kansas man born and bred, right? Yes. Well, not born. My dad was in the Marines and we traveled around. That was 1940. And after the war, we began traveling. But wound up in Kansas. He went to Kansas, and my mother went to all the schools, the Emporia State Teachers College. That's where they met. But you found your way into journalism or broadcasting basically by strength of your voice, right?

You were presumably the Curtis plan was to go off and go out to law school, right, out of the University of Kansas. And who knows? Maybe you would have been a local politician or Governor Curtis. God forbid. Oh, God, yes. I did. I went to Washburn University School of Law. That's in Topeka.

And I had a deep voice. It started about 16, got a job at a radio station, the only one in Independence, Kansas, my little town. And it was some of the best experience. You know, you do everything, disc jockey, announcer, setting up a studio for an Oklahoma preacher reading the news. This is what I wanted to get to. This is, of course, the great 1966 Topeka tornado. And you were, as I understand the story, you had gotten like a part-time job just manning the desk on evenings at a local station in Topeka? From 1966, June 8th, I had graduated from law school. I was studying for the bar.

A friend of mine asked me to fill in, as I had done during the part-time job, for the news. And so I read the six o'clock news. And at 6.30, they asked me to stay because we have some high winds and rough weather coming in from the west, Manhattan, Kansas, and a two-way radio, I can hear it coming into the newsroom, and it comes into the studio. Ed Rutherford, our cameraman, is at the southwest edge of the city of some distance, and he said the tornado's on the ground. Well, it hit Burnett's Mound at the southwest edge of the city, which was supposed to protect Topeka, the capital. And the next bulletin I get from Ed, it's wiped out.

The 200 apartment, Huntington apartment complex. Okay, there is a sobering moment that will chill you to the spine, and it did me. I knew that the next few words that I would say would mean life and death, so I said, for God's sake, take cover. And I think my face was as white as my shirt. We're on the northern edge. For God's sake, take cover. And it got people, one, paying attention now to the television set.

And from interviews afterwards, a lot of them, I could say most of them, got the message to go to the basement. It was, as I say, my start, and it has stayed with those people and the lore of Topeka all our lives. And you subsequently, if I'm not mistaken, spent something of the nature of 24 hours straight on air reporting damage, reporting useful information for people who had survived and information by people who may not have. That must have been quite an introduction. Yes, quite an introduction. We were the only ones left on the air because the tornado blew three other radio stations down.

And so the communication system was almost non-existent. So they asked us to become the hub. On the basis of that evening and everything that subsequently happened in your subsequent reporting, you came to the attention of people in the industry. And it wasn't long after that, that you got a job here in Chicago with the local CBS affiliate, right? Yes. I felt like Dorothy being blown away in the Wizard of Oz. And it was the beginning. Maybe the tornado should have given me the message. The beginning of a reporter's life. There's so much we could talk about.

Eventually, though, your exploits and adventures covering nations' major stories for Chicago CBS led you to a promotion to an anchor position, right, with the network in New York. Good morning. It's February 23rd, the day after Washington's birthday. They were celebrating the birthday in Chicago last night, you know. Congressman Harold Washington really had a celebration there. He defeated Mayor Jane Byrne of the Democratic primary. That's our top story this morning. Arab oil ministers continue to CBS Morning News co-anchoring with Diane Sawyer three years. But at the end of it, I realized, you know, I'm not doing what I want to do. And that is producing and writing, being out on the street as I had been, you know, in Chicago.

So I left and I went back to Chicago with an idea in the back of my head to start a documentary company. Now, documentaries were dead, especially in the networks because they didn't get the ratings and, you know, the dedication to a long form of journalism was not there. With A&E, we had more than 100 investigative reports, 137 cold case files. Jonathan Towers producing American Justice that I anchored for more than 200 shows. I anchored for more than 200 shows, and we're now producing American Greed for CNBC on our 220th broadcast. Despite an intense police investigation, the murderer was still at large. The FBI profile suggested that the suspect would be a white male with a childhood history

of neglect and abuse. Like other serial killers, he was most likely... Bill, let's try to jump ahead, just in the interest of time, because I want to get to some of the stuff that you did later on that made you, in addition, because you've had this bunch of these careers, you've had this news career, but you've also had this amazing presence in pop culture. And you became famous for this TV series about, as we say, unsolved murders. And not only did everybody enjoy it, but it became sort of this cultural touchstone. Saturday Night Live actually did a sketch about you. So here's Bill Curtis

being parodied on Saturday Night Live. It's 2005, and you'll hear Daryl Hammond playing Bill along with Maya Rudolph and Jason Bateman. Bill, are you still doing Weight Watchers? I was until the holidays hit. Tell me about it. Okay, next line. Once again, when they found the corpse, both ring fingers were missing. Fantastic.

They've got this new Weight Watchers menu at Applebee's. All the points are right there on the menu. Is there anything from that period of sort of your pop culture reign that you particularly remember? Well, I figured that I was retired. And so I'm retired. What a joke. With a documentary company that we've now done 500, produced 500 shows. I've narrated 1,000 and still going strong. But I wanted to touch all parts of the business.

Right. And Adam McKay, now the Oscar-winning director, was doing his first movie called Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and sent me a script. I said no. He watched me during the glory days when Walter and I were riding high in Chicago. So it wasn't that we were the models for the movie, but we were established the platform on which Will could then do his thing. And so

he sent it back and said, why don't you read it again and then we'll record you. After every line, I laughed. And I laughed heartily. His name was Ron Burgundy. He was like a god walking amongst mere mortals. He had a voice that could make a wolverine purr. And suits so fine, they made Sinatra look like a hobo. In other words, Ron Burgundy was the balls. off. And I had met you in various circles in Chicago. So I, of course, pitched you. How about

if we get the great Bill Curtis to fill in for Carl? Everybody was thrilled and you were gracious enough to do it. So this is your first appearance as a guest judge and scorekeeper on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me 10 years ago in 2012. First, we are way excited that while Carl is off on his late summer vacation to have, well, would it be legendary or iconic newsman, anchorman Bill Curtis filling in. Bill, you've been a news anchor. You've hosted countless documentaries. You narrated the movie Anchorman. Some say you were a model for the character. Are you, Bill Curtis, prepared to be our judge and scorekeeper?

The question is, Peter, are you prepared to be judged and score kept by me? Carl was going to retire, and now we needed a permanent replacement. And everybody, of course, had been thrilled to have you the year before as a special guest. And so they said to me, Peter, why don't we just get Bill to come back and do it permanently? And I said, and I am almost quoting myself. I said, guys, are you kidding? Why in the world would Bill Curtis, a man of this accomplishment, ever want to spend every week doing our show? But you got to tell me, that's what I thought you were going to think when we asked you.

What did you think when we asked you? Well, while I was thrilled, I was flattered. But there's this little thought in my head that goes back to Brando and on the waterfront. I could have been somebody. If I just start early, I could have been somebody. Somebody being a stand-up comic? I don't think so.

Doing something different is a key. I had done 50 years of anchoring both network and local and producing shows, and I was ready for a new phase of this business. And I'm sure glad that I made that choice. Here is my observation, after getting to know both you and Carl Castle pretty well, it's all you serious news guys, all you intoners of the truth,

be it in the evening or the morning, all you want to do is get a laugh. Carl and I come from the same genre of news. So we were doing Tangled Wood and Carl came in for an appearance. And I knew that these were giant shoes. But we sat down, we started talking. And I said, you know, we're so much alike. I'm you and you're me. I mean, we could almost finish each other's sentences. And we had a very good time. So I felt very comfortable and especially wanting to carry on the torch.

Ladies and gentlemen, just a small taste for our audience Now you know, not merely our judge and scorekeeper, but a living legend Bill Curtis I bid you goodbye, Peter For about three hours before we all gather there On stage at the Studebaker Theatre in downtown Chicago, Illinois.