Globe-Trotter at Work

The most elegant voice on the U.S. air belongs to a slight, Vandyke-bearded, richly-turned-out gentleman who made a happy career out of avoiding hard work until World War II caught up with him. The voice is that of John W. (for Womack) Vandercook, 41, onetime night watchman for a rummage sale, at present one of radio's better news commentators.

Weekly at 7:15 p.m., E.W.T., Monday through Friday, Vandercook's suavely virile tones lead NBC's widely heard News of the World through a series of foreign pickups that might easily floor a less well-oriented man. One thing that gives Vandercook his air of ease and authority is the fact that he has been to many of the places he talks about. He is a genuinely knowledgeable man about the world.

Vandercook was born in London, son of a founder and first president of United Press. He went to New York boarding schools and for a year to Yale, which heartily bored him because "there were too damn many Republicans." Looking for an easy way of making a living after his father died, he tried acting ("I was appallingly bad"), did his night watching over the rummage sale, reported for various Scripps-Howard papers, from Columbus, Ohio, to Baltimore. He did not last long ("Very definitely, I wasn't any good. I dislike the haste of newspaper work; I frequently dislike the sense of intrusion").

Through the Wilds. Having failed at the two easiest careers he could think of ("I have been through an amazing amount of work, but my instincts are essentially restful"), he married a Manhattan sculptress and turned explorer--complete with full beard, a concession to a 600-mile hike through the Cameroons. Before his wife died, twelve years later, he had visited some 70 countries and commented on his travels (Black Majesty, Tom-Tom, Dark Islands, etc.).

One journey--to New Guinea and the Solomons--came in very handy when the U.S. forces invaded those lands. Vandercook recalls asking his wife during their Solomons sojourn in 1933-34: "Why don't we just live here? It's the most beautiful place in the world, and it's so obvious nothing can ever happen here." News of the U.S.-British deal for Caribbean bases made Vandercook a commentator. When the story broke, he was paying a social call on an NBC vice president. This official asked Vandercook if he knew anything about the West Indies. They happen to be a Vandercook specialty. That night in September 1940, he went on the air -- where he has been ever since, save for one one-week vacation.

A Cinch. Now getting $100,000 a year for his newscasting, Vandercook is "amazed" by the freedom of U.S. radio. No one at NBC interferes with anything he says or proposes to say. He writes his own material, utters his own opinions. Vandercook rarely goes in for prediction. His military analyses have benefited from his acute sense of geography. Says he: "The tactics of the desert, the tactics of the mountain are geographical. . . . When we take a machine-gun nest in Italy, I don't say the German lines have been smashed. In that kind of terrain, there is no such thing as the smashing of a line. You can smash a line in plains. . . ."

John Vandercook is not much impressed by the size of his audience. Says he: "Of all the cinches in radio--to be an announcer." Even so, he longs for the day when there will be no war to discuss and he can resume globetrotting. Says he: "Steady work just came upon me lately."

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