Person to Person

Person to Person was a popular television program in the United States that ran from 1953 to 1961. Well-respected news reporter Edward R. Murrow hosted it until 1959, interviewing celebrities in their homes from a comfortable chair in his New York studio (his famous opening: "Good evening, I'm Ed Murrow. And the name of the program is 'Person to Person'. It's all live – there's no film"). The long list of guests included then-Senator John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, Elizabeth Taylor, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Liberace, Sammy Davis Jr., Groucho and Harpo Marx, Margaret Mead, Harry Truman, Marilyn Monroe, W.C. Handy, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, Fidel Castro, Bing Crosby, Leopold Stokowski, Kirk Douglas and John Steinbeck. In the last two years of its run, the host was Charles Collingwood.

Although Murrow is best remembered for his hard-hitting radio and television reporting on programs such as Hear It Now and See It Now and for publicly confronting Senator Joseph McCarthy, it should also be remembered that on Person to Person he pioneered the TV interview of a celebrity.

The program was not strictly scripted,...
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