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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Look Back at Those Who Passed in 2002

Aired December 31, 2002 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening again. I'm Aaron Brown. Happy new year or pretty nearly that, anyway.
In answer to the question we're all going to be asking a little later on tonight, no. Old acquaintances should not be forgotten. That's why we plan to spend our hour tonight remembering some people who will not be coming along with us into the year 2003. They finished their runs, and remarkable runs they were, in the year just ending. Some of them we met in a television sense while they were still alive. Others we tipped our hats to the day they died. But the news being what it's, there were more than a few nights this year when we did not have enough time to say so long to someone who really deserved a long good-bye.

So we'll remedy that lapse tonight as best we can. And one more thing, just to be up front about this. We will be biased in favor of people whose lives we can celebrate. There isn't much celebration in the news business, and this is our last chance for the year, and we'll make the most of it, with but one exception, and you'll get that one when it comes.

Anyway, the news comes first, as it always must, after which we begin what promises to be a rather wonderful parade. We hope you'll stay with us.

(NEWSBREAK)

BROWN: Gordon Matthews died this year. And who was Gordon Matthews, you ask? He invented voice-mail. Try getting along without that. So we begin by thanking Mr. Matthews.

Earl Warrick died, as well, a Dow Chemical engineer, he was responsible, at least half the historians say, for coming up with Silly Putty. The other half say no, that was the late James Wright working for G.E.

We can't settle that matter except to say between the two of them, they provided a lot of fun for a lot of kids for a long, long time. And so did Arthur "Spud" Melin, cofounder of the Wham-O Company, popularizer of, among other things, the hula-hoop and the Frisbee, which, by the way, Steady Ed Headrick helped perfect.

Now, Spud and Steady Eddy both are gone. And speaking of inventors, Milton Berle died as well this year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Milton Berle!

BROWN (voice-over): When laughter on television is concerned, Milton Berle did all but invent it.

MILTON BERLE, ACTOR: I knew him 10 years ago. I'm Uncle Miltie.

BROWN: He was the first and biggest comedy star in a medium that was just beginning to flicker all over the world, a pretty well established medium these days.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Pat Wheeler was a TV inventor, too. He invented "The Today Show."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning to you. When I say good morning, it's what I hope to be (UNINTELLIGIBLE), good morning between you and I.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And the "Tonight Show," TV while you're still in bed and TV after you go to bed, our staples now. But they weren't, not before Pat Wheeler dreamed them up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought I was (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And Rune Arledge dreamed up a few things, as well, "Monday Night Football," for one; "Wide World of Sports," "Nightline" and more. In fact, on TV, he changed everything. Rune Arledge brought the smarts of news to sports.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The peace of what have been called the serenal (ph) effects were shattered.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And the pizzazz of sports to the news.

And Howard K. Smith died this year, an exemplary news man for a very long time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD K. SMITH: And now for the first opening statement by Senator John F. Kennedy. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And so was Danny Pearl an exemplary newsman, but alas not for nearly long enough. Danny Pearl of the "Wall Street Journal" was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan at the age of 39.

We say good-bye tonight to Stephen Jay Gould, who was one of the best explainers of science we had ever had and good-bye to the designer Bill Blass. Bill Blass helped an awful lot of people look really good.

So to the portrait photographer Yusuf Karsh. The greatest people of the age sat still for him for a while. And consider what they lost this year in England. First, Princess Margaret, the sister of the queen, and then, not too long after that, Elizabeth, the 102-year-old mother of the queen and Margaret, too, the Queen Mum generations called her.

By the way, if you think we don't have royalty in this country, think again. Billy Wiler was the king of Hollywood and one of the wittiest directors there's ever been.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll say. You know something? You guys got cheated. This is a really crummy cigar.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do not worry. We sent them pretty crummy rockets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And Ann Landers, she was the queen of the advice columnists.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Want to know how much I love you, want to know how much I care? When you put your arms around me, I get a fever that's so hard to bear. You give me fever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And then we lost not one, but two queens of song.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PEGGY LEE: You're not a fan of mine (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 22. You let all the women make a official of you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Peggy Lee, she was sultry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROSEMARY CLOONEY: Heaven, you are the stars in my eyes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And Rosemary Clooney. Rosemary Clooney, the sweet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And while we're on the subject of voices, William Warfield died this year. Just listen to him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM WARFIELD: And old man river, he just keeps...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And just look at Johnny Unitas. Fans who saw that great quarterback play could hardly have imagined that death would beat him, but it did this year. And it also caught Avery Shriver, a very funny guy who bit a mean chip. And good-bye, too, to Dave Thomas, who made a mean burger, many millions of them, as it turned out, all of those Wendy's he started.

Not that William Rosenberg was a slouch in the franchise department. He started Dunkin' Donuts. You can't go very far nowadays without seeing one of his establishments. And we'll bet you dollars to some of Mr. Rosenberg's donuts that we're not done yet.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: How much of a life can you build on a pocket sized magazine with an original cover price of two bits a copy? And what about a skinny, hard, plastic doll six or eight inches high? Those would not seem to be the foundations of great fortunes, and yet they were. Great fortunes, great influence and in the case of the doll, at least, a great change in a couple of generations of American girls.

We tip our hats now first to Walter Annenberg and then to Ruth Handler.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Walter Annenberg's father landed in this country from East Prussia not only penniless, but barefoot. His shoes had washed overboard in the stormy passage across the Atlantic. Still and all, and within a few decades, the elder Annenberg was a multi- millionaire and a jailed tax evader from whom his son inherited a passel of troubles, a huge debt to Uncle Sam and "The Daily Racing Forum," among other newspapers.

Then Walter Annenberg dreamed up a couple of publications on his own. There was "17" magazine, the country's first magazine for teenage girls. And there was "TV Guide," the jewel in the crown of what would be the Annenberg media empire.

Having spent years making good, restoring the family fortune and the family name, Annenberg spent years doing good, giving away billions, mostly to large educational institutions. But then he gave $100 million to a small institution, the prep school he attended in the 1920s. And his billion dollar art collection, well, he gave that to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Walter Annenberg had the ear of presidents from Dwight Eisenhower on. He served as Richard Nixon's ambassador to Great Britain. Pretty remarkable for a man whose father fetched up on these shores shoeless, made a fortune then died in disgrace not long after leaving a federal prison.

WALTER ANNENBERG: I've had the best side of this country. I owe it a great deal.

BROWN: Whatever else American success stories may be, they are rarely simple.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Barbie you're beautiful. You make me see.

BROWN: It's simple, really. Ruth Handler's invention, this tiny figure with correct anatomy, not only changed the way most American girls played with dolls, it has played a role in American culture, as well.

RUTH HANDLER: I did not think this doll could ever be this huge. I thought the Barbie doll would always be successful. I thought it would be a great success.

BROWN: But how great not even Ruth Handler could have envisioned. More than a billion Barbies have been sold in 150 countries.

HANDLER: It's no longer amazing to me. I think hopefully she'll go one forever, reflecting society as it changes forever.

BROWN: Barbie was invented in 1959 and then it was revolutionary. Ruth Handler insisted that her doll have breasts. Baby dolls had dominated the market until Barbie came along. Someone once figured out that had the original Barbie been human, she would have been about 5'6" and her figure would have been 39-18-33.

Barbie was an immediate sensation. The company that sold the doll, Mattel, became an instant success story. Ruth Handler and a Barbie model even rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, marry in style. BROWN: After a time, some feminist groups objected to Barbie. Her too perfect figure, they said, might lead to low self-esteem among young girls. But Ruth Handler didn't seem to pay much attention, said her husband, it really didn't bother her. She thought they were wrong.

From Crystal Barbie to Doctor Barbie, Hawaiian Fun Barbie and, of course, there's Ken, Ruth Handler's invention kept changing as America changed. Through Barbie she once said, a little girl could be anything she wanted to be, or perhaps hoped to be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Most people get one part to play in life. Benjamin O. Davis died this year. He was the first African-American to rise to the rank of general in the U.S. Air Force. By all accounts, he acquitted himself honorably and well in that important role.

Of course, if you're an actor it's different. You get lots of roles to play. James Coburn died this year.

Here's CNN's Anderson Cooper's farewell to a man of many parts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMES COBURN, ACTOR: Rhett, Rhett, wake up. I'm talking to you. Look at me.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He could be rough as sand paper. Or smooth as silk. His snarl was as convincing as his grin. And he had style, whether he was being debonair or dangerous.

COBURN: I say, bouillabaisse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Huh?

COBURN: Sir, throughout the world in the preparation of bouillabaisse, the usual proportion of garlic to buttered saffron fennel is two cloves of garlic to a pinch of buttered saffron to a dash of fennel.

COOPER: Yes, he had a way with words. But he had a way without them, as well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'll tell him. I wanted him there.

COOPER: He was a man among men when, he wasn't a man among women. He seemed pretty comfortable in any company really. James Coburn was one of those guys who made the very hard thing he did look easy for four decades.

COBURN: Say, why does that eagle attack me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's been trained to recognize and attack Americans. COBURN: An anti-American eagle. It's diabolical.

What do I have to be grateful for, Captain?

COOPER: Thank you, Mr. Coburn. It was a heck of a ride.

Anderson Cooper, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead tonight, lives cut short, lives lived to the fullest, lives of many kind.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

COMMERCIAL

BROWN: Senator Paul Wellstone died an untimely death in a small plane crash in Minnesota. On the other hand, Ruth Handler, who co- founded the Mattel Toy Company, as we told you a bit ago, and invented the Barbie doll, lived to be 86. Life is like that. If it isn't your time yet, then it isn't your time.

Take the case of Eddie Worth.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Eddie Worth first picked up a camera for the Associated Press in 1934. This is Mr. Worth as an old man, showing off one of his most famous photos to Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair. And here's the thing you need to bear in mind about Eddie Worth. He might have died many times over many years ago doing what he did for A.P. He might have died in London during the blitz during WWII.

This is his picture, the one he was showing Tony Blair, of smoke curling up around the dome of St. Paul's after a German bombing raid on London in June of '41. Eddie Worth and the cathedral were both spared.

He might have died while he was following the fighting all through Europe, from the beaches of Normandy on D-Day on to the rest of France and into Germany. That's young Eddie Worth scribbling a photo caption while flying into Berlin.

He might have died after the war, too, covering perilous clean up operations. Here is his photo of Canadian soldiers disarming a V1 flying bomb in Germany in 1945.

And this is Eddie Worth's photo of perhaps the most famous tribunal of the 20th century, the trial at Nuremberg, the trial of high level nazis accused of war crimes. By the time he took this picture, Eddie Worth was already a legendary combat photographer and he went on doing that dangerous work, and doing it brilliantly, for a long time after. As we say, he might have died many times over many years ago. But he didn't. Eddie Worth lived through it all, took pictures of it all and he died this past Sunday back home in England at the age of 93.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And now Anderson Cooper remembers another celebrity who lived a long life, not in years, in feet. We're talking about Samantha R. Python.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice over): There's no telling exactly how old Ms. Python was. She came to this country from Borneo as an adult in 1993, but her other vital statistics were matters of record. She was 26 feet long, weighed 275 pounds. This made Ms. Python the largest of her kind in captivity anywhere.

In her illustrious career as a star attraction at the Bronx Zoo, Ms. Python was visited by something like a million people a year. Crowds were always thickest on the one day a month Mr. Python was fed a still warm euthanized 25 or 30 pound pig, which she would spend a quarter hour swallowing and a week digesting.

Samantha R. -- her middle name was Reticulated -- died of natural causes. Her nearest surviving relatives are four pairs of shoes and eight handbags, all of Palm Beach, Florida, and a belt of Paris, France.

Eventually, when the necessary arrangements have been made, Ms. Python will lay in state at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

Those who knew her best said she was mellow and easygoing. Evidently, however, she could also be a real handful, or 18 real handfuls, to be exact. So long to a so long star. RIP, S.R.P.

Anderson Cooper, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I did tell you at the outset that there would be one figure tonight who wasn't celebrated so much as he was unavoidable. So here it is, a final good-bye to the Teflon don.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Beneath the broad smiles and the Robin Hood complex, he was, as one writer put it, just a thug in a great looking suit. And he spoke like central casting's version of a mob boss.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gotti would say this guy has got to go and snap his fingers and he'd give the contract to somebody and a few days later the guy would be dead.

BROWN: John Gotti began hijacking trucks and cargo at 19. He committed his first murder at 25. He was jailed not once, but twice, as he worked his way up to a leadership role in the Gambino family, and the FBI was watching. And so was a young federal prosecutor named Rudolph Giuliani.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI: A member of the organized crime family, their highest level members are now spending 50 and 100 years in prison, not the five years and 10 years they used to get in the past.

BROWN: Like most mafia guys, he was no more than a local story until a winter's night in 1985. That night he ordered the killing of rival Paul Castellano in front of a New York steak house while he and his best friend, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, watched from a half a block away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in an hour from now here tonight (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

BROWN: Like it or not, there was a swagger about John Gotti. He threw neighborhood block parties, fireworks and all. He was loved by some, feared by anyone with a brain. He saw himself as a modern day Robin Hood. Well, Robin Hood with a really good tailor. His $2,000 suits earned him the name the dapper don and he virtually taunted police, basking, it appeared, in the government's five indictments against him in four years, three times he avoided conviction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We find him not guilty.

BROWN: The dapper don then became the Teflon don and that name stuck. And he became more arrogant and he became less careful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This guy who prided himself on being a la cosa nostra loyalist must have the biggest mouth in the room. He just talked about things on tape you should never talk about.

BROWN: His undoing came at the hands of that boyhood friend, Sammy Gravano, "The Bull," who cooperated with federal authorities and whose bloodless testimony about murder after murder put John Gotti in prison for life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Teflon is gone. The don is covered with Velcro and every charge in the indictment stuck.

BROWN: John Gotti seemed to feed off the limelight, but he spent the last years of his life inside a tiny, underground prison cell in the nation's toughest prison alone.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The foray continues. We'll be back after a couple of minutes of the latest news from CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: Astrid Lingren of Sweden died this year. She wrote nearly as many books as years she lived. And she was 95. Most parents don't have to be told who she was. Astrid Lingren created Pippi Longstocking, the strongest, pluckiest, most independent girl ever put on paper.

As for independent creatures put on something other than paper, that was Chuck Jones' department.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Chuck Jones was one of the great animators, director of some of the best of Daffy Duck and Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner. Talk about making people laugh.

DAFFY DUCK: They're sturdy, they're dependable, they're factory fresh. They're -- hmm, slightly used.

BROWN: Which brings us to Dudley Moore.

DUDLEY MOORE, ACTOR; Where can I get $200? I will ask you to simonize my car.

(SINGING)

BROWN: And to Eddie Bracken.

EDDIE BRACKEN, ACTOR: The soldiers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right, Norville. I'm awful sorry.

BRACKEN: You think they'd give up party some time for those who have to stay behind. They also serve, you know, who only sit in -- oh, whatever they, do I forget.

BROWN: They were wonderful comic actors. Good-bye to both of them this year. And Rod Steiger, a powerful presence of a man on the screen.

ROD STEIGER, ACTOR: You take them outside. But treat him easy, because a man that makes $162.39 a week, man, we do not want to ruffle him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, sir.

BROWN: As was Harold Russell. Harold Russell lost both hands in the second World War, then won an Oscar for playing the part of a veteran who knew how to go on. The fact is, he wasn't just playing the part. He was living it and lived it well until this year.

HAROLD RUSSELL, ACTOR: Well, that's where I'm going now. Take a piano lesson.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take one for me.

RUSSELL: See you later. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So long, Homer.

RUSSELL: Looking forward to the future, you're nuts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's stuffed.

BROWN: Richard Harris died this year as well. Richard Harris as an actor was a wizard. No, really, he was.

And Lionel Hampton was a wizard to nobody. Nobody ever played the vibrophone the way he did. Hand-made music was what the Hamp turned out, terrific, hand-made music for decades. He could swing.

And so could Ted Williams, better than anyone. Baseball fans like to argue, but not about him. They never do. There was never anyone else remotely close to the Splendid Splinter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was the last man to hit 400 in a season.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A few other athletes to remember too this year. Three we've decided. The absolute ace of clubs, that would be Sam Snead, and one of the great runners of all-time, that would be Seattle's Slew.

But first, Anderson Cooper on the amazing Pete Gray.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The St. Louis Browns, 1944...

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When number 14 took the field, Pete Gray was home for one glorious season, despite a physical handicap that would have stopped most people, Gray played outfield for the 1945 St. Louis Browns.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aided and abetted by the sensational Pete Gray. One arm, he's going to the Major Leagues.

COOPER: Gray lost his right arm in a childhood accident, but he taught himself to bat, catch, and throw lefty, removing his glove with lightning speed. As World War II raged overseas, many ballplayers were called to serve. Pete Gray, however, suited up to play baseball, playing in 77 games. He got 51 hits, scored 26 runs, and had an average of .218. But his fans quickly found out there was nothing average about Pete Gray.

Many saw the Pennsylvania native as an example of courage and athleticism. Others saw him as an oddity. He was frequently taunted for his handicap.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The day I cannot play a triple is the day I hang up my glove.

COOPER: In 1986, his life story made the small screen. A made for television movie "A Winner Never Quits."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome.

COOPER: Now Gray's glove and his legacy are forever immortalized in Cooperstown. Pete Gray dead at age 87.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SAMMY SNEAD: And it's funny. I get up on the tee and these young bugs say, hey, how many shots are you giving me?

BROWN: Slammin' Sammy Snead. That's what he was called. And in many ways, he was an American original, straw hat and all.

More then and even now, golf was a rich man's sport. Sam Snead was a caddy, a child of West Virginia who learned the game with tree branches and stones. And it can be said he learned it pretty well.

He won 81 PGA championships. No one has ever won more. He won three masters, perhaps the most coveted title in the game. He teed it up in the Masters for the first time in '37 and for the final time just last month. He never missed a one, not one. This year, it was just ceremony one shot off the first tee. And it was a forgettable shot. He hit a spectator. But what wasn't forgettable, and you needn't be a golfer to get it, was that swing. So sweet and so perfect.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Captain Sammy Snead.

BROWN: So tonight up there somewhere, Hogan and Sarazen and Bobby Jones has a fort. Samuel Jackson Snead, he's the one with the straw hat and the very, very sweet swing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): He was never supposed to be great. Seattle Slew was purchased for a song: $17,500. And on May the 7th of 1977, Slew won the Kentucky Derby.

Now in truth, by the time he entered the Derby, it was clear Slew was a very good horse. And so when he won that day in Louisville, it was no shock.

But the difference between very good and great would play out over the next several weeks in the late spring and early summer of '77.

Slew won again at the Preakness at Pimlico, leg two of the rare Triple Crown.

ANNOUNCER: June 11, 1977, the third jewel of the Triple Crown. BROWN: But many horses have won two legs of the Triple. Only nine have won all three. And when Slew arrived in New York for the Belmont stakes, tens of millions of dollars were on the line for his owners. Seattle Slew, of course, won the Belmont and joined that great line of horses like Citation and Affirmed, maybe even up there with the great Secretariat, though they'll always be debate about such things.

ANNOUNCER: With John Crugay (ph) in the saddle, Seattle...

BROWN: For Slew, the hard work was over. He would spend the rest of his life doing what great horses do when their running days are done. He sired some 900 foals. His stud fee between $200,000 and $300,000. But there are no sure bets in horse racing. And of those 900, 101 became stakes winners. And it is estimated they earned something like $75 million.

But that is the business of racing, and while aficionados remember those numbers, the rest of us remember this. The great horse, his power and endurance, Seattle Slew who died today at 28, died 25 years to the exact date he crossed the finish line a Kentucky Derby winner.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The sands are running out, but we still have a few grains left. So stay with us for a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Adolf Green died this year. Adolf Green, with his lifelong partner, Betty Comden, wrote the book and lyrics to some of the greatest musical shows and films of our age. "On the Town," "Wonderful Town," "Singin' in the Rain," "The Bells Are Ringing." ASCAP, the composer's union, lists 279 songs under Adolf Green's name.

It's hard to imagine anyone responsible for more music than that. Hard, but not impossible.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): For almost 70 years, first with his father John Lomax, and then on his own, Alan Lomax traveled the back roads of this country, lugging primitive recording equipment that weighed hundreds of pounds, in search of whatever music might be springing up out of the soil and out of the soul of those American places outsiders hardly ever visit.

He went to prison farms, to cotton fields, to cowboy camps, to shacks, and shanties, sat on who knows how many front porches. The American music he wanted the rest of America to hear had nothing to do with tin pan alley or Nashville or recording studios or Hollywood. What he was after was the musical equivalent of moonshine. Raw, homemade, seldom offered to strangers, and strong enough when taken straight to make your head snap back. To get that music, he sat at the knees of people whose lives were nothing to sing about, but who sang anyway. Out there in his travels he ran into a young fellow named Woodie Guthrie and a guy calling himself Muddy Waters, and a parolee nicknamed "Leadbelly," who wrote a song called "Good-night, Irene."

Ran into lots of others, too. Cajuns and convicts, sharecroppers, fishermen, Gandhi dancers, working people of every kind and color, and plenty of people without work, too.

What Alan Lomax found among all those overlooked Americans in all those overlooked places what he harvested, he put into books, radio broadcasts, films, TV shows, recordings, thousands of recordings. In time, those recordings were heard by the pioneers of pretty nearly every other kind of American music still to come. Blues, R&B, gospel, rock 'n' roll, all have their bloodstreams, strong doses, of what Alan Lomax spent his life collecting.

Last year's Grammy award album of the year, for instance, the song track of the film "O Brother, Where Art Thou" has on it a recording made by Lomax at a penitentiary in Mississippi 43 years ago. He traveled the rest of the world, too, and dreamed for the end of his life of putting together what he called a global jukebox, a giant computer database of all the native music and dance of the world. That is work others will have to finish now.

But it is not as if Alan Lomax didn't do enough. Even now, if you ignore the rhinestones and the reverb, when you hear something that rings especially true, you are probably hearing some bit of pure powerful American song that Alan Lomax tracked down long ago, back when it was growing wild.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: OK, I think we'll leave you for the night and for the year with what may have been the most adventurous life of them all.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): In 1947, in order to prove the original Polynesians may have come west across the Pacific from South America, rather than east from Asia, Thor Hierdahl set out to make the trip himself. He crossed the greatest stretch of water on earth in 101 days aboard a raft made of on balsa wood logs, which he figured the people of pre Inca Peru would have used.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The nine large balsa logs provided the structural basis for our raft.

BROWN: We said he did the impossible because that is what all the learned men of the day said it was. Impossible and ridiculous. Primitive Indians crossing an ocean on logs of the sort of wood kids nowadays use to build model airplanes. Balsa wood is soft enough to cut with a razor and almost weightless. The man would be swamped and soggy and sunk in no time, only he wasn't.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have found that it is very difficult to reconstruct the past of mankind.

BROWN: Thor Hierdahl, born and raised in Norway and terrified of water until he was 22, bobbed and floated 4900 miles aboard the raft he named Kon-tiki, which is what he also called the book after the adventure. Kon-tiki, the book, went on to sell tens of millions of copies. And Kon-tiki, the movie, went on to win the Oscar for best documentary in 1951.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were in fact so close to the shore, that natives on the beach caught sight of the Kon-tiki and paddled out.

BROWN: As for Thor Hierdahl, he went on, too. He explored the lonely speck of land called Easter Island on which inexplicable great stoneheads are found. He tried to show that the ancient inhabitants of the fertile Crescent, the lands through which the Nile River runs, might have come to the new world in boats made of papyrus reeds. He built two vessels of that kind, shown in Egyptian wall paintings. The first of them sank, but the second did not. Aboard a boat a pharaoh would have found familiar, Thor Hierdahl sailed from North Africa to the Caribbean. The trip took 55 days.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I always believed in teamwork in science.

BROWN: So that's who Thor Hierdahl was, in case you didn't know. In this age of the world, what with our moonwalks and spacewalks, and our round-trip rocket rides, we are pretty blase about doing the impossible. But we weren't blase back then, not when he did it. One last time, Mr. Hierdahl, bon voyage.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: What a life he lived, and what lives they all lived and they all died in the year just passed.

We'll see you again soon. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired December 31, 2002 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening again. I'm Aaron Brown. Happy new year or pretty nearly that, anyway.
In answer to the question we're all going to be asking a little later on tonight, no. Old acquaintances should not be forgotten. That's why we plan to spend our hour tonight remembering some people who will not be coming along with us into the year 2003. They finished their runs, and remarkable runs they were, in the year just ending. Some of them we met in a television sense while they were still alive. Others we tipped our hats to the day they died. But the news being what it's, there were more than a few nights this year when we did not have enough time to say so long to someone who really deserved a long good-bye.

So we'll remedy that lapse tonight as best we can. And one more thing, just to be up front about this. We will be biased in favor of people whose lives we can celebrate. There isn't much celebration in the news business, and this is our last chance for the year, and we'll make the most of it, with but one exception, and you'll get that one when it comes.

Anyway, the news comes first, as it always must, after which we begin what promises to be a rather wonderful parade. We hope you'll stay with us.

(NEWSBREAK)

BROWN: Gordon Matthews died this year. And who was Gordon Matthews, you ask? He invented voice-mail. Try getting along without that. So we begin by thanking Mr. Matthews.

Earl Warrick died, as well, a Dow Chemical engineer, he was responsible, at least half the historians say, for coming up with Silly Putty. The other half say no, that was the late James Wright working for G.E.

We can't settle that matter except to say between the two of them, they provided a lot of fun for a lot of kids for a long, long time. And so did Arthur "Spud" Melin, cofounder of the Wham-O Company, popularizer of, among other things, the hula-hoop and the Frisbee, which, by the way, Steady Ed Headrick helped perfect.

Now, Spud and Steady Eddy both are gone. And speaking of inventors, Milton Berle died as well this year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Milton Berle!

BROWN (voice-over): When laughter on television is concerned, Milton Berle did all but invent it.

MILTON BERLE, ACTOR: I knew him 10 years ago. I'm Uncle Miltie.

BROWN: He was the first and biggest comedy star in a medium that was just beginning to flicker all over the world, a pretty well established medium these days.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Pat Wheeler was a TV inventor, too. He invented "The Today Show."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning to you. When I say good morning, it's what I hope to be (UNINTELLIGIBLE), good morning between you and I.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And the "Tonight Show," TV while you're still in bed and TV after you go to bed, our staples now. But they weren't, not before Pat Wheeler dreamed them up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought I was (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And Rune Arledge dreamed up a few things, as well, "Monday Night Football," for one; "Wide World of Sports," "Nightline" and more. In fact, on TV, he changed everything. Rune Arledge brought the smarts of news to sports.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The peace of what have been called the serenal (ph) effects were shattered.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And the pizzazz of sports to the news.

And Howard K. Smith died this year, an exemplary news man for a very long time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD K. SMITH: And now for the first opening statement by Senator John F. Kennedy. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And so was Danny Pearl an exemplary newsman, but alas not for nearly long enough. Danny Pearl of the "Wall Street Journal" was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan at the age of 39.

We say good-bye tonight to Stephen Jay Gould, who was one of the best explainers of science we had ever had and good-bye to the designer Bill Blass. Bill Blass helped an awful lot of people look really good.

So to the portrait photographer Yusuf Karsh. The greatest people of the age sat still for him for a while. And consider what they lost this year in England. First, Princess Margaret, the sister of the queen, and then, not too long after that, Elizabeth, the 102-year-old mother of the queen and Margaret, too, the Queen Mum generations called her.

By the way, if you think we don't have royalty in this country, think again. Billy Wiler was the king of Hollywood and one of the wittiest directors there's ever been.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll say. You know something? You guys got cheated. This is a really crummy cigar.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do not worry. We sent them pretty crummy rockets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And Ann Landers, she was the queen of the advice columnists.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Want to know how much I love you, want to know how much I care? When you put your arms around me, I get a fever that's so hard to bear. You give me fever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And then we lost not one, but two queens of song.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PEGGY LEE: You're not a fan of mine (UNINTELLIGIBLE) 22. You let all the women make a official of you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Peggy Lee, she was sultry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROSEMARY CLOONEY: Heaven, you are the stars in my eyes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And Rosemary Clooney. Rosemary Clooney, the sweet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And while we're on the subject of voices, William Warfield died this year. Just listen to him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM WARFIELD: And old man river, he just keeps...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And just look at Johnny Unitas. Fans who saw that great quarterback play could hardly have imagined that death would beat him, but it did this year. And it also caught Avery Shriver, a very funny guy who bit a mean chip. And good-bye, too, to Dave Thomas, who made a mean burger, many millions of them, as it turned out, all of those Wendy's he started.

Not that William Rosenberg was a slouch in the franchise department. He started Dunkin' Donuts. You can't go very far nowadays without seeing one of his establishments. And we'll bet you dollars to some of Mr. Rosenberg's donuts that we're not done yet.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: How much of a life can you build on a pocket sized magazine with an original cover price of two bits a copy? And what about a skinny, hard, plastic doll six or eight inches high? Those would not seem to be the foundations of great fortunes, and yet they were. Great fortunes, great influence and in the case of the doll, at least, a great change in a couple of generations of American girls.

We tip our hats now first to Walter Annenberg and then to Ruth Handler.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Walter Annenberg's father landed in this country from East Prussia not only penniless, but barefoot. His shoes had washed overboard in the stormy passage across the Atlantic. Still and all, and within a few decades, the elder Annenberg was a multi- millionaire and a jailed tax evader from whom his son inherited a passel of troubles, a huge debt to Uncle Sam and "The Daily Racing Forum," among other newspapers.

Then Walter Annenberg dreamed up a couple of publications on his own. There was "17" magazine, the country's first magazine for teenage girls. And there was "TV Guide," the jewel in the crown of what would be the Annenberg media empire.

Having spent years making good, restoring the family fortune and the family name, Annenberg spent years doing good, giving away billions, mostly to large educational institutions. But then he gave $100 million to a small institution, the prep school he attended in the 1920s. And his billion dollar art collection, well, he gave that to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Walter Annenberg had the ear of presidents from Dwight Eisenhower on. He served as Richard Nixon's ambassador to Great Britain. Pretty remarkable for a man whose father fetched up on these shores shoeless, made a fortune then died in disgrace not long after leaving a federal prison.

WALTER ANNENBERG: I've had the best side of this country. I owe it a great deal.

BROWN: Whatever else American success stories may be, they are rarely simple.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Barbie you're beautiful. You make me see.

BROWN: It's simple, really. Ruth Handler's invention, this tiny figure with correct anatomy, not only changed the way most American girls played with dolls, it has played a role in American culture, as well.

RUTH HANDLER: I did not think this doll could ever be this huge. I thought the Barbie doll would always be successful. I thought it would be a great success.

BROWN: But how great not even Ruth Handler could have envisioned. More than a billion Barbies have been sold in 150 countries.

HANDLER: It's no longer amazing to me. I think hopefully she'll go one forever, reflecting society as it changes forever.

BROWN: Barbie was invented in 1959 and then it was revolutionary. Ruth Handler insisted that her doll have breasts. Baby dolls had dominated the market until Barbie came along. Someone once figured out that had the original Barbie been human, she would have been about 5'6" and her figure would have been 39-18-33.

Barbie was an immediate sensation. The company that sold the doll, Mattel, became an instant success story. Ruth Handler and a Barbie model even rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, marry in style. BROWN: After a time, some feminist groups objected to Barbie. Her too perfect figure, they said, might lead to low self-esteem among young girls. But Ruth Handler didn't seem to pay much attention, said her husband, it really didn't bother her. She thought they were wrong.

From Crystal Barbie to Doctor Barbie, Hawaiian Fun Barbie and, of course, there's Ken, Ruth Handler's invention kept changing as America changed. Through Barbie she once said, a little girl could be anything she wanted to be, or perhaps hoped to be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Most people get one part to play in life. Benjamin O. Davis died this year. He was the first African-American to rise to the rank of general in the U.S. Air Force. By all accounts, he acquitted himself honorably and well in that important role.

Of course, if you're an actor it's different. You get lots of roles to play. James Coburn died this year.

Here's CNN's Anderson Cooper's farewell to a man of many parts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMES COBURN, ACTOR: Rhett, Rhett, wake up. I'm talking to you. Look at me.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He could be rough as sand paper. Or smooth as silk. His snarl was as convincing as his grin. And he had style, whether he was being debonair or dangerous.

COBURN: I say, bouillabaisse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Huh?

COBURN: Sir, throughout the world in the preparation of bouillabaisse, the usual proportion of garlic to buttered saffron fennel is two cloves of garlic to a pinch of buttered saffron to a dash of fennel.

COOPER: Yes, he had a way with words. But he had a way without them, as well.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'll tell him. I wanted him there.

COOPER: He was a man among men when, he wasn't a man among women. He seemed pretty comfortable in any company really. James Coburn was one of those guys who made the very hard thing he did look easy for four decades.

COBURN: Say, why does that eagle attack me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's been trained to recognize and attack Americans. COBURN: An anti-American eagle. It's diabolical.

What do I have to be grateful for, Captain?

COOPER: Thank you, Mr. Coburn. It was a heck of a ride.

Anderson Cooper, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still ahead tonight, lives cut short, lives lived to the fullest, lives of many kind.

This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

COMMERCIAL

BROWN: Senator Paul Wellstone died an untimely death in a small plane crash in Minnesota. On the other hand, Ruth Handler, who co- founded the Mattel Toy Company, as we told you a bit ago, and invented the Barbie doll, lived to be 86. Life is like that. If it isn't your time yet, then it isn't your time.

Take the case of Eddie Worth.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Eddie Worth first picked up a camera for the Associated Press in 1934. This is Mr. Worth as an old man, showing off one of his most famous photos to Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair. And here's the thing you need to bear in mind about Eddie Worth. He might have died many times over many years ago doing what he did for A.P. He might have died in London during the blitz during WWII.

This is his picture, the one he was showing Tony Blair, of smoke curling up around the dome of St. Paul's after a German bombing raid on London in June of '41. Eddie Worth and the cathedral were both spared.

He might have died while he was following the fighting all through Europe, from the beaches of Normandy on D-Day on to the rest of France and into Germany. That's young Eddie Worth scribbling a photo caption while flying into Berlin.

He might have died after the war, too, covering perilous clean up operations. Here is his photo of Canadian soldiers disarming a V1 flying bomb in Germany in 1945.

And this is Eddie Worth's photo of perhaps the most famous tribunal of the 20th century, the trial at Nuremberg, the trial of high level nazis accused of war crimes. By the time he took this picture, Eddie Worth was already a legendary combat photographer and he went on doing that dangerous work, and doing it brilliantly, for a long time after. As we say, he might have died many times over many years ago. But he didn't. Eddie Worth lived through it all, took pictures of it all and he died this past Sunday back home in England at the age of 93.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And now Anderson Cooper remembers another celebrity who lived a long life, not in years, in feet. We're talking about Samantha R. Python.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice over): There's no telling exactly how old Ms. Python was. She came to this country from Borneo as an adult in 1993, but her other vital statistics were matters of record. She was 26 feet long, weighed 275 pounds. This made Ms. Python the largest of her kind in captivity anywhere.

In her illustrious career as a star attraction at the Bronx Zoo, Ms. Python was visited by something like a million people a year. Crowds were always thickest on the one day a month Mr. Python was fed a still warm euthanized 25 or 30 pound pig, which she would spend a quarter hour swallowing and a week digesting.

Samantha R. -- her middle name was Reticulated -- died of natural causes. Her nearest surviving relatives are four pairs of shoes and eight handbags, all of Palm Beach, Florida, and a belt of Paris, France.

Eventually, when the necessary arrangements have been made, Ms. Python will lay in state at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

Those who knew her best said she was mellow and easygoing. Evidently, however, she could also be a real handful, or 18 real handfuls, to be exact. So long to a so long star. RIP, S.R.P.

Anderson Cooper, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I did tell you at the outset that there would be one figure tonight who wasn't celebrated so much as he was unavoidable. So here it is, a final good-bye to the Teflon don.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Beneath the broad smiles and the Robin Hood complex, he was, as one writer put it, just a thug in a great looking suit. And he spoke like central casting's version of a mob boss.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gotti would say this guy has got to go and snap his fingers and he'd give the contract to somebody and a few days later the guy would be dead.

BROWN: John Gotti began hijacking trucks and cargo at 19. He committed his first murder at 25. He was jailed not once, but twice, as he worked his way up to a leadership role in the Gambino family, and the FBI was watching. And so was a young federal prosecutor named Rudolph Giuliani.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI: A member of the organized crime family, their highest level members are now spending 50 and 100 years in prison, not the five years and 10 years they used to get in the past.

BROWN: Like most mafia guys, he was no more than a local story until a winter's night in 1985. That night he ordered the killing of rival Paul Castellano in front of a New York steak house while he and his best friend, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, watched from a half a block away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in an hour from now here tonight (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

BROWN: Like it or not, there was a swagger about John Gotti. He threw neighborhood block parties, fireworks and all. He was loved by some, feared by anyone with a brain. He saw himself as a modern day Robin Hood. Well, Robin Hood with a really good tailor. His $2,000 suits earned him the name the dapper don and he virtually taunted police, basking, it appeared, in the government's five indictments against him in four years, three times he avoided conviction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We find him not guilty.

BROWN: The dapper don then became the Teflon don and that name stuck. And he became more arrogant and he became less careful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This guy who prided himself on being a la cosa nostra loyalist must have the biggest mouth in the room. He just talked about things on tape you should never talk about.

BROWN: His undoing came at the hands of that boyhood friend, Sammy Gravano, "The Bull," who cooperated with federal authorities and whose bloodless testimony about murder after murder put John Gotti in prison for life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Teflon is gone. The don is covered with Velcro and every charge in the indictment stuck.

BROWN: John Gotti seemed to feed off the limelight, but he spent the last years of his life inside a tiny, underground prison cell in the nation's toughest prison alone.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The foray continues. We'll be back after a couple of minutes of the latest news from CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: Astrid Lingren of Sweden died this year. She wrote nearly as many books as years she lived. And she was 95. Most parents don't have to be told who she was. Astrid Lingren created Pippi Longstocking, the strongest, pluckiest, most independent girl ever put on paper.

As for independent creatures put on something other than paper, that was Chuck Jones' department.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Chuck Jones was one of the great animators, director of some of the best of Daffy Duck and Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner. Talk about making people laugh.

DAFFY DUCK: They're sturdy, they're dependable, they're factory fresh. They're -- hmm, slightly used.

BROWN: Which brings us to Dudley Moore.

DUDLEY MOORE, ACTOR; Where can I get $200? I will ask you to simonize my car.

(SINGING)

BROWN: And to Eddie Bracken.

EDDIE BRACKEN, ACTOR: The soldiers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right, Norville. I'm awful sorry.

BRACKEN: You think they'd give up party some time for those who have to stay behind. They also serve, you know, who only sit in -- oh, whatever they, do I forget.

BROWN: They were wonderful comic actors. Good-bye to both of them this year. And Rod Steiger, a powerful presence of a man on the screen.

ROD STEIGER, ACTOR: You take them outside. But treat him easy, because a man that makes $162.39 a week, man, we do not want to ruffle him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, sir.

BROWN: As was Harold Russell. Harold Russell lost both hands in the second World War, then won an Oscar for playing the part of a veteran who knew how to go on. The fact is, he wasn't just playing the part. He was living it and lived it well until this year.

HAROLD RUSSELL, ACTOR: Well, that's where I'm going now. Take a piano lesson.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take one for me.

RUSSELL: See you later. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So long, Homer.

RUSSELL: Looking forward to the future, you're nuts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's stuffed.

BROWN: Richard Harris died this year as well. Richard Harris as an actor was a wizard. No, really, he was.

And Lionel Hampton was a wizard to nobody. Nobody ever played the vibrophone the way he did. Hand-made music was what the Hamp turned out, terrific, hand-made music for decades. He could swing.

And so could Ted Williams, better than anyone. Baseball fans like to argue, but not about him. They never do. There was never anyone else remotely close to the Splendid Splinter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was the last man to hit 400 in a season.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A few other athletes to remember too this year. Three we've decided. The absolute ace of clubs, that would be Sam Snead, and one of the great runners of all-time, that would be Seattle's Slew.

But first, Anderson Cooper on the amazing Pete Gray.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The St. Louis Browns, 1944...

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When number 14 took the field, Pete Gray was home for one glorious season, despite a physical handicap that would have stopped most people, Gray played outfield for the 1945 St. Louis Browns.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aided and abetted by the sensational Pete Gray. One arm, he's going to the Major Leagues.

COOPER: Gray lost his right arm in a childhood accident, but he taught himself to bat, catch, and throw lefty, removing his glove with lightning speed. As World War II raged overseas, many ballplayers were called to serve. Pete Gray, however, suited up to play baseball, playing in 77 games. He got 51 hits, scored 26 runs, and had an average of .218. But his fans quickly found out there was nothing average about Pete Gray.

Many saw the Pennsylvania native as an example of courage and athleticism. Others saw him as an oddity. He was frequently taunted for his handicap.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The day I cannot play a triple is the day I hang up my glove.

COOPER: In 1986, his life story made the small screen. A made for television movie "A Winner Never Quits."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome.

COOPER: Now Gray's glove and his legacy are forever immortalized in Cooperstown. Pete Gray dead at age 87.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SAMMY SNEAD: And it's funny. I get up on the tee and these young bugs say, hey, how many shots are you giving me?

BROWN: Slammin' Sammy Snead. That's what he was called. And in many ways, he was an American original, straw hat and all.

More then and even now, golf was a rich man's sport. Sam Snead was a caddy, a child of West Virginia who learned the game with tree branches and stones. And it can be said he learned it pretty well.

He won 81 PGA championships. No one has ever won more. He won three masters, perhaps the most coveted title in the game. He teed it up in the Masters for the first time in '37 and for the final time just last month. He never missed a one, not one. This year, it was just ceremony one shot off the first tee. And it was a forgettable shot. He hit a spectator. But what wasn't forgettable, and you needn't be a golfer to get it, was that swing. So sweet and so perfect.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Captain Sammy Snead.

BROWN: So tonight up there somewhere, Hogan and Sarazen and Bobby Jones has a fort. Samuel Jackson Snead, he's the one with the straw hat and the very, very sweet swing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): He was never supposed to be great. Seattle Slew was purchased for a song: $17,500. And on May the 7th of 1977, Slew won the Kentucky Derby.

Now in truth, by the time he entered the Derby, it was clear Slew was a very good horse. And so when he won that day in Louisville, it was no shock.

But the difference between very good and great would play out over the next several weeks in the late spring and early summer of '77.

Slew won again at the Preakness at Pimlico, leg two of the rare Triple Crown.

ANNOUNCER: June 11, 1977, the third jewel of the Triple Crown. BROWN: But many horses have won two legs of the Triple. Only nine have won all three. And when Slew arrived in New York for the Belmont stakes, tens of millions of dollars were on the line for his owners. Seattle Slew, of course, won the Belmont and joined that great line of horses like Citation and Affirmed, maybe even up there with the great Secretariat, though they'll always be debate about such things.

ANNOUNCER: With John Crugay (ph) in the saddle, Seattle...

BROWN: For Slew, the hard work was over. He would spend the rest of his life doing what great horses do when their running days are done. He sired some 900 foals. His stud fee between $200,000 and $300,000. But there are no sure bets in horse racing. And of those 900, 101 became stakes winners. And it is estimated they earned something like $75 million.

But that is the business of racing, and while aficionados remember those numbers, the rest of us remember this. The great horse, his power and endurance, Seattle Slew who died today at 28, died 25 years to the exact date he crossed the finish line a Kentucky Derby winner.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The sands are running out, but we still have a few grains left. So stay with us for a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Adolf Green died this year. Adolf Green, with his lifelong partner, Betty Comden, wrote the book and lyrics to some of the greatest musical shows and films of our age. "On the Town," "Wonderful Town," "Singin' in the Rain," "The Bells Are Ringing." ASCAP, the composer's union, lists 279 songs under Adolf Green's name.

It's hard to imagine anyone responsible for more music than that. Hard, but not impossible.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): For almost 70 years, first with his father John Lomax, and then on his own, Alan Lomax traveled the back roads of this country, lugging primitive recording equipment that weighed hundreds of pounds, in search of whatever music might be springing up out of the soil and out of the soul of those American places outsiders hardly ever visit.

He went to prison farms, to cotton fields, to cowboy camps, to shacks, and shanties, sat on who knows how many front porches. The American music he wanted the rest of America to hear had nothing to do with tin pan alley or Nashville or recording studios or Hollywood. What he was after was the musical equivalent of moonshine. Raw, homemade, seldom offered to strangers, and strong enough when taken straight to make your head snap back. To get that music, he sat at the knees of people whose lives were nothing to sing about, but who sang anyway. Out there in his travels he ran into a young fellow named Woodie Guthrie and a guy calling himself Muddy Waters, and a parolee nicknamed "Leadbelly," who wrote a song called "Good-night, Irene."

Ran into lots of others, too. Cajuns and convicts, sharecroppers, fishermen, Gandhi dancers, working people of every kind and color, and plenty of people without work, too.

What Alan Lomax found among all those overlooked Americans in all those overlooked places what he harvested, he put into books, radio broadcasts, films, TV shows, recordings, thousands of recordings. In time, those recordings were heard by the pioneers of pretty nearly every other kind of American music still to come. Blues, R&B, gospel, rock 'n' roll, all have their bloodstreams, strong doses, of what Alan Lomax spent his life collecting.

Last year's Grammy award album of the year, for instance, the song track of the film "O Brother, Where Art Thou" has on it a recording made by Lomax at a penitentiary in Mississippi 43 years ago. He traveled the rest of the world, too, and dreamed for the end of his life of putting together what he called a global jukebox, a giant computer database of all the native music and dance of the world. That is work others will have to finish now.

But it is not as if Alan Lomax didn't do enough. Even now, if you ignore the rhinestones and the reverb, when you hear something that rings especially true, you are probably hearing some bit of pure powerful American song that Alan Lomax tracked down long ago, back when it was growing wild.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: OK, I think we'll leave you for the night and for the year with what may have been the most adventurous life of them all.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): In 1947, in order to prove the original Polynesians may have come west across the Pacific from South America, rather than east from Asia, Thor Hierdahl set out to make the trip himself. He crossed the greatest stretch of water on earth in 101 days aboard a raft made of on balsa wood logs, which he figured the people of pre Inca Peru would have used.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The nine large balsa logs provided the structural basis for our raft.

BROWN: We said he did the impossible because that is what all the learned men of the day said it was. Impossible and ridiculous. Primitive Indians crossing an ocean on logs of the sort of wood kids nowadays use to build model airplanes. Balsa wood is soft enough to cut with a razor and almost weightless. The man would be swamped and soggy and sunk in no time, only he wasn't.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have found that it is very difficult to reconstruct the past of mankind.

BROWN: Thor Hierdahl, born and raised in Norway and terrified of water until he was 22, bobbed and floated 4900 miles aboard the raft he named Kon-tiki, which is what he also called the book after the adventure. Kon-tiki, the book, went on to sell tens of millions of copies. And Kon-tiki, the movie, went on to win the Oscar for best documentary in 1951.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were in fact so close to the shore, that natives on the beach caught sight of the Kon-tiki and paddled out.

BROWN: As for Thor Hierdahl, he went on, too. He explored the lonely speck of land called Easter Island on which inexplicable great stoneheads are found. He tried to show that the ancient inhabitants of the fertile Crescent, the lands through which the Nile River runs, might have come to the new world in boats made of papyrus reeds. He built two vessels of that kind, shown in Egyptian wall paintings. The first of them sank, but the second did not. Aboard a boat a pharaoh would have found familiar, Thor Hierdahl sailed from North Africa to the Caribbean. The trip took 55 days.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I always believed in teamwork in science.

BROWN: So that's who Thor Hierdahl was, in case you didn't know. In this age of the world, what with our moonwalks and spacewalks, and our round-trip rocket rides, we are pretty blase about doing the impossible. But we weren't blase back then, not when he did it. One last time, Mr. Hierdahl, bon voyage.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: What a life he lived, and what lives they all lived and they all died in the year just passed.

We'll see you again soon. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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