Edward R. Murrow's famous sign-off came from Londoners parting during the Blitz
In late 1940, as German bombs fell on London each night, people said goodbye with "good night, and good luck," unsure they would meet again. Edward R. Murrow borrowed the phrase for a CBS broadcast. His old speech teacher, Ida Lou Anderson, told him to keep it, and it became one of broadcasting's best-known farewells.
Anderson also shaped his opening line. His predecessor had begun with "Hello, America. This is London calling." She suggested something tighter, and Murrow's "This is London," with weight on the first word and a slight pause after, became inseparable from him and his network. Before him, radio news mostly meant an announcer in a studio reading wire copy; his live shortwave reports during the Blitz gripped American listeners in a way nothing had.
He had not been hired to report at all. Born Egbert Murrow in a North Carolina log cabin with no electricity or plumbing, he grew up homesteading in Washington state, studied speech in college and renamed himself Edward. CBS took him on in 1935 to line up guests, and in 1937 sent him to London to persuade European figures to speak on the network. When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, William Shirer, whom Murrow had hired, could not get the story out of Vienna. Murrow sent Shirer to London, chartered a 23-seat plane from Warsaw, and gave his first on-the-spot report from Vienna in the small hours. The linked broadcast from several European cities that night became the model for CBS's World News Roundup.
During the war he flew on 25 Allied combat missions, recording descriptions from the aircraft, and built a London bureau of correspondents later nicknamed the Murrow Boys, though one of them, Mary Marvin Breckinridge, was a woman. Churchill thought enough of him to offer him joint leadership of the BBC in 1943; he said no.
At a welcome-home dinner for 1,100 guests in 1941, Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish told him he had brought the burning of London into American homes. Later, on television, his See It Now reports helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. He died in 1965.
Source: Edward R. Murrow
