Graham McNamee
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Graham McNamee (July 10, 1888 - May 9, 1942) was a pioneering broadcaster in American radio, the medium's most recognized national personality in its first commercial decade.
Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, McNamee had early aspirations of being an opera singer. In 1923, while serving jury duty in New York City, he passed the studios of radio station WEAF en route to the courthouse and, on a whim, went to see the station manager. He was given an audition and hired as a staff announcer on the spot.
Radio broadcasting of sporting events was a new thing in the 1920’s. The play-by-play announcements were performed by a rotating group of newspaper writers. Their descriptions were matter-of-fact and boring at best. In 1923, McNamee was hired to help the sportswriters liven up their broadcasts. He wasn't a baseball expert, but had a knack for conveying what he saw in great detail. What he became was baseball’s first color commentator. He allowed the sights and sounds of the game to come into the homes of New Yorkers.
At WEAF, McNamee performed a variety of on-air duties, including baseball color commentary, culminating in doing play-by-play of the 1926 World Series. Over the course of the next decade, first with WEAF and then with the national NBC network, McNamee would broadcast numerous sports events (including several World Series, Rose Bowls, and championship boxing matches), national political conventions, presidential inaugurations and the triumphant arrival of aviator Charles Lindbergh in New York City following his historic transatlantic flight to Paris, France in 1927. McNamee's stature waned in the 1930s, but he continued to broadcast, most notably as a narrator of newsreels and as the emcee for Ed Wynn's and Rudy Vallee's weekly programs. He ended every broadcast with a distinctive catchphrase: "This is Graham McNamee speaking. Goodnight, all."
