Talk:Bill Beutel

Discussion of Interview with Malcolm X

I removed this section from the article with a note left that Beutel had interviewed him. In my view, the section is too long for its importance in Beutel's life. I am posting it here. Capitalistroadster 03:01, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Interview with Malcolm X

• Among the hundreds of famous personages who were deposed under Bill Beutel's congenial scrutiny was the African American Muslim and black nationalist leader Malcolm X.

Alex Haley, the ghostwriter of the posthumously-published The Autobiography of Malcolm X, who later became world-famous in his own right as the author of the historical novel Roots, vividly recalled an interview that Beutel conducted with Malcolm X shortly after the latter's return from his historic hajj, or pilgrimage, to the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in late May 1964.

The Context

Three months earlier, Malcolm X severed his 16-year association with Elijah Muhammad's controversial Nation of Islam (NOI), for which he was the influential Harlem minister and high-profile national representative.

The NOI preached an African American-centered version of the Muslim religion and had become notorious because of its reverse psychology teaching that black people were superior, not inferior, to white people, who were a race of "devils," and that black people must separate from, not integrate with, them.

On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X broke with the NOI over its apolitical posture and the moral corruption of its leadership and made his pilgrimage the following month. While there, he publicly rejected racism and proffered another olive branch to the mainstream civil rights movement in a series of famous letters to the U. S. media, which met him with great anticipation upon his return on May 21.

The Interview

"Malcolm X was busy, busy, busy," Haley wrote in the epilogue to Malcolm X's best-selling memoir; "he could not visit my hotel room often, and when he did, it shortly would get the feeling of Grand Central Station." (Haley did not identify the hotel, but it was probably the Americana in midtown Manhattan.)

"It seemed that when the telephone was not ringing for him, he was calling someone else, consulting the jotted numbers in his ever-ready memorandum book. ...

"One day I remember the phone had rung steadily with such callers as [U. S. television networks] C. B. S., A. B. C., N. B. C., every New York City paper, the London Daily Express, and numerous individuals -- he and I had gotten no work at all accomplished; then a television camera crew arrived and filled the room to tape an interview with Malcolm X by A. B. C.'s commentator Bill Beutel. As the crew was setting up its floodlights on tripods, a Dayton, Ohio, radio station called. ... Then the Ghana Ministry of Information called. I turned with a note to Malcolm X to whom the commentator Beutel had just said 'I won’t take much of your time, I just have a few probably stupid questions.' Glancing at my note, Malcolm X said to Beutel, 'Only the unasked question is stupid'..."² (Alex Haley, amanuensis, The Autobiography of Malcolm X [New York: Grove, 1964, 1965], 414-15).

The news film of the interview shows an unusually relaxed, grinning Malcolm X sporting the reddish new moustache and goatee that he grew while abroad.

Beutel seemed at pains not to ask any "stupid questions" while serving as his viewers' surrogate, and Malcolm X seemed equally at pains to assure him, through his manner and soft-spoken tone, that he would be happy to answer any questions that Beutel might pose.

Personal Note

When this writer was working at WABC-TV some 16 years later, he was pleasantly surprised when Beutel stepped into the elevator. Beutel, who seemed aware that his smiling car mate was studying him, broke the awkward silence by gallantly introducing himself and offering an egoless handshake.

When complimented on his 1964 interview with Malcolm X, he turned as he was exiting the car and said, in a lower-modulated version of his somewhat metallic television voice: "I was just thinking -- you look like Malcolm X."

The writer accepted his observation more as an example of Beutel's habitual graciousness than as an accurate description. He was one of the most decent, civilized men the writer has ever been privileged to meet.

January to November 1975

I'm a tad confused. When Bill co-hosted AM America, was he still co-anchoring Eyewitness News at 6:00 (at least), or was he just exclusive to the morning show? Rollosmokes 01:07, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

• Initially, Mr. Beutel co-anchored Eyewitness News for a bit after taking on the AM America job - but by the middle of the year, his duties on the morning show led to the situation of Roger Grimsby having two co-anchors, one for each of the evening newscasts - Tom Ellis (later a Boston anchor) at 6:00, and once-and-future Detroit anchor Bill Bonds at 11:00. After AM America was revamped as Good Morning America, leaving Beutel available again, he and Grimsby thereafter did only the 6:00 newscast - and Ellis and Bonds, for the remainder of their WABC-TV contracts, anchored the 11:00 newscast together, and after they left were replaced by Larry Kane. . . . Does this answer your question? –Wbwn 10:05, 27 December 2006 (UTC)