<Archive> John Facenda, The Voice of NFL Films
Joe Pucillo
Thursday, September 27, 1984
Section: LOCAL
Page: A01
By Lee Winfrey, Inquirer TV Columnist
John Facenda, an anchorman who dominated local television news
for two decades, died yesterday at the age of 71.
Facenda died at 8:40 a.m. yesterday at Mercy Catholic Medical
Center, Fitzgerald Division, in Darby. His family declined to
disclose the cause of his death.
Every other anchor who has reached the pinnacle in Philadelphia -
Vince Leonard, Larry Kane, Jim Gardner - was preceded in pre-
eminence by Facenda. When Facenda first sat down to anchor the
news at WCAU-TV (Channel 10), the very term anchorman had not
even been invented.
Facenda was a rare human being: the scarce sort who was both
professionaly successful and privately and personally admirable.
His courtesy, kindness, generosity, and class were legendary in a
trade in which those virtues are not always in abundant supply.
In a medium where looks are prized, Facenda prospered by his
voice. His mellow and mellifluent tones, the pace and measure of
his cadences, the compelling sincerity and ringing drama of his
delivery, have never been approached by any other broadcaster
active here. As the original narrator of NFL Films, Facenda was
for a score of years the very voice of pro football, the
chronicler of gridiron greatness for millions of nationwide
listeners who maybe never even knew his name.
Mayor Goode called Facenda "a monument in this city. I grew up
feeling that the only newsperson in Philadelphia was John
Facenda. I trusted him."
City Council president Joseph E. Coleman called Facenda "a
distinct voice. He was a fine reporter, a fine gentleman, a man
of integrity."
John Thomas Ralph Augustine James Facenda was born on Aug. 8,
1913, in Portsmouth, Va., the son of a civil engineer. He was the
middle child among his six brothers and six sisters.
His father came to Philadelphia in 1922 to help build the
Benjamin Franklin Bridge. His father brought the Facenda family
here on July 4, 1926, the day the bridge was dedicated. Young
John Facenda was 12 years old when he first arrived in the city
where he would achieve fame and fortune.
Facenda graduated from Roman Catholic High School in 1931 and
entered Villanova University as an engineering student during the
depths of the Depression. The Facenda family was hard hit by the
Depression, which virtually halted the highway and bridge
construction projects in which Facenda's father specialized.
"I can remember," Facenda once said, "my mother sacrificing her
own meals so the kids could eat. She would say she had a little
acido, a little acid in her stomach, and that she wasn't really
hungry anyway, only because she knew there wasn't enough for all
of us."
LEARNING HOW TO SPEAK
The facility in speech that characterized Facenda as an adult
began with a childhood game at the family's sparse table.
"To keep our minds off our growling stomachs and tattered
clothes," Facenda recalled, "my father invented a game of cards.
He wrote a subject matter on each card. We would sit around the
dinner table or sometimes in the living room and we would each
take a card from the deck. When it got to be your turn, you had
to talk on the subject matter of the card for a minute. You could
ad lib on it in both English and Italian."
Facenda was forced to drop out of Villanova, probably because of
economic circumstances. He went to work for the Philadelphia
Public Ledger, a now- defunct newspaper that also owned radio
station WHAT. He broke into broadcasting by accident when the
announcer for a WHAT program called ''Scholastic Sports Review"
got sick and Facenda replaced him that day.
Facenda was hired by WHAT as an announcer and general utility
man. When he first went on the radio, he was so nervous he could
scarcely hold his script. To steady himself, he thought of his
mother and decided to talk straight to her. Later he put his
mother's picture up in his booth beside the station's call
letters. Here he developed the magnetic technique, which served
him so well later on TV, of thinking of and talking to his
audience as only one person, not many.
WORKED IN NEW YORK
Facenda's duties at WHAT included knocking ice off the station's
antenna during the winter. He quit when the station manager would
not reimburse him $5 for a pair of new pigskin gloves he tore
while climbing the tower.
Facenda went to New York City for a couple of years, the only
stretch of his broadcasting career that he spent outside
Philadelphia, to work as program director for a radio operation
called Ticker News Service. Returning here, he joined WIP radio
in 1935. He remained there 17 years.
The concern and empathy that Facenda later extended to his TV
audience first manifested itself during his radio days. As World
War II ended, Facenda provided precise details on the arrival of
homecoming troop ships. For many wives, fiancees, and mothers, he
supplied the first news of their man coming home. "I still get
some letters from those people," Facenda said almost 20 years
later. "Some of them named their sons after me."
TV was still in diapers when Facenda began free-lancing for the
new medium. He was still a WIP announcer when he anchored his
first newscast for WCAU-TV on Sept. 13, 1948. The fledgling
station had been on the air for less than four months, and its
broadcast day lasted only from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m.
In 1952, the year the term anchorman was invented to describe
Walter Cronkite's early work for CBS, Facenda finally left WIP
and went to work for Channel 10 full-time. He had already
developed, at the radio station, what became probably the most
famous sign-off statement ever used by a TV anchor here: "Have a
nice night tonight and a good day tomorrow. Goodnight, all."
ORIGIN OF HIS SIGN-OFF
Facenda once told how he coined those 12 familiar words:
"I was finishing up a newscast at WIP radio and I was a little
light in joining the network. My tagline had always been,
'Goodnight, all,' but I threw in the rest that night. Three days
later I received a letter from a woman who told me to go on
saying that because, she said, you never know how many people
there are who have no one to say goodnight to. She had been
bedridden for the previous 13 years."
Facenda's sign-off soon became so famous that it was used in a
1956 movie, The Burglar, that was filmed in Philadelphia. Jayne
Mansfield and Dan Duryea portrayed burglars whose target was a
rich old woman who lived in a mansion. In a regular night routine
of hers, she was shown watching Facenda delivering his tagline on
TV before she went to sleep.
"For thousands and thousands of people, that was their signal to
go to bed," said Joe Daley, a Channel 10 videotape producer who
was Facenda's scriptwriter for many years.
Facenda was on the air before most Philadelphians owned a TV set.
"For many people, John was the first thing they saw on their
first little nine-inch set," said Herb Clarke, who worked as the
Channel 10 weatherman with Facenda for 14 years.
Through the 1950s and most of the 1960s, Facenda was the king of
local news, often commanding an audience larger than those of
Channel 3 (now called KYW) and Channel 6 (now called WPVI)
combined. His newscasts, only five minutes long when they began,
expanded to 15 minutes and then to half an hour as his popularity
increased and the number of TV sets increased in this area.
At Channel 10, Facenda worked with several people who later
became well- known on the networks, notably Ed McMahon, now
Johnny Carson's sidekick on the "Tonight" show, and Jack
Whitaker, currently an ABC sports announcer. He was a role model
for many, including Clarke, who recalled becoming Facenda's
weatherman in 1958:
"John was a great teacher. I was a raw country kid, and John was
a polished urbanite. I learned a lot of social graces just by
going out with him for dinner. People would come over and they
could be rude or obnoxious and John would make them feel like a
million dollars."
Facenda's unfailing courtesy was legendary. "A cavalier, the
ultimate gentleman," WCAU announcer Gene Crane called him.
Tales of Facenda's generosity abounded. Daley told of
accompanying Facenda, a devout Roman Catholic, to a church where
the monsignor asked Facenda for the time. After learning that the
monsignor had no watch, said Daley, "John took his watch off and
gave it to him on the spot."
A GENEROUS NATURE
Robert Hosking, former vice president and general manager of
Channel 10, said Facenda once gave a blank check to a co-worker
who had serious medical problems in his family. "John told him,"
said Hosking, "not to worry about paying it back. He just told
him that if he made it out for more than $10,000, to tell John so
that he could cover it."
As a newsman, said WCAU correspondent Edie Huggins, "His
credibility was at the top. If John Facenda said the sky would
open at midnight and Martians would come down, people would be
outside to watch."
Just as he had begun in radio by accident, Facenda became the
narrator for NFL Films by accident. It happened in 1965 when he
and Whitaker dropped into the now-defunct RDA Club.
To boost business that night, the tavern owner was showing some
pro football game action assembled by NFL Films, which had
recently set up shop as a producer for the National Football
League. Fascinated by the slow-motion sequences, Facenda said, "I
started to rhapsodize about how beautiful it was. Ed Sabol, the
man who founded NFL Films, happened to be at the bar. He came up
to me and asked, 'If I give you a script, could you repeat what
you just did?' I said I would try."
Facenda went on from there to narrate NFL Films' game footage and
highlight reels for two decades, his rich, dramatic voice a
perfect complement to the long passes, thrilling runs and violent
line play. Always the perfectionist, he marked his NFL Film
scripts with musical notations for his guidance: lento (slow
down), presto (speed up), glissando (glide through it).
Facenda also taped the narration for the sound and light show
that is presented during each Christmas season at John Wanamaker
in Center City.
As an anchor, Facenda's star did not begin to dim until the end
of the 1960s, when Vince Leonard anchored Channel 3 into first
place in the news ratings. By 1972, Larry Kane anchored Channel 6
into first place and Facenda slipped to last place locally. That
same year, WCAU brought in Judd Hambrick
from Honolulu to co-anchor with Facenda, who had always been a
solo act before.
Facenda, who seldom spoke ill of anyone, held Hambrick in
contempt. "I tried to get along with him," Facenda said, "but he
spent more time fixing his hair than in learning how to pronounce
Bala Cynwyd."
Facenda, nearing 60 years of age, saw a youth movement closing in
on him. Shortly after Channel 10 dumped Hambrick and replaced him
with another young co-anchor, Mike Tuck, Facenda stepped down.
His last night as a news anchor was March 23, 1973.
Facenda said he wasn't sacked. "It was my decision as much as
anyone else's," he said later. "But let's not kid ourselves about
the fact that I was very much aware of the swell going in the
opposite direction: the new faces, particularly those who were
younger. That was the tide of the future, and I wasn't going to
fight it. I thought that was a good time to go."
Facenda's departure was an unpopular move that angered many
Channel 10 viewers and handicapped the station in the ratings
race for years afterward. Inquirer columnist Tom Fox spoke for
many when he wrote:
"There hasn't been very much dignity in television news in this
town since John Facenda, the scholarly old anchor at Channel 10,
was taken off the screen. After Facenda, television news became a
Disneyland - a series of schlocky gimmicks and painted dolls and
guys who comb their hair with dryers."
For several years after stepping away from the anchor's chair,
Facenda served as host and narrator of various Channel 10 public
affairs series such as "Eye On . . .," the predecessor of the
current "10 Around Town," and ''Sunday Edition," later called
"Credo." His last assignment for WCAU was helping cover the
Mummers Parade this year. He retained his touch, as Kane recalled
in describing how he and Facenda co-anchored Channel 10's
coverage of the 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II to Philadelphia:
"John had not been on the air live for almost seven years. He was
a little nervous getting back on the air, but during the Mass, he
whispered to me, 'I'll take it.' I decided, I think I'll defer to
the master. He went on to describe the Mass so beautifully that
it brought tears to my eyes. He came back to the moment."
Twelve days before he died, Facenda was presented the Governors
Award for lifetime achievement by the Philadelphia chapter of the
National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Facenda was precise in planning and efficient in execution as he
sought to meet every test. Once he described being present at his
father's deathbed:
"I closed his eyes when he died. He was a magnificent man, a man
who taught me how to live. And he taught me, I most certainly
hope when the time comes, how to die."
Facenda is survived by his widow, Dorothy, of Havertown, and
their son, John Facenda Jr., of Lansdowne. His funeral will be at
10 a.m. tomorrow, with a Mass of Christian burial at 11 a.m., at
St. Bernadette's Roman Catholic Church in Drexel Hill.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in Facenda's
name to Mercy Catholic Medical Center in Darby.