Louis "Studs" Terkel (16 May 1912 – 31 October 2008) was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for
The Good War, and is best remembered for his
oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.
Biography
Early life
Terkel was born to a
Russian Jewish tailor, Samuel Terkel, and Anna Finkelin in
New York City, New York. At the age of eight he moved with his family to
Chicago, Illinois, where he spent most of his life. He had two brothers, Ben (1907–1965) and Meyer (1905-1958).
From 1926 to 1936, his parents ran a rooming house that was a collecting point for people of all types. Terkel credited his knowledge of the world to the tenants who gathered in the lobby of the hotel and the people who congregated in nearby
Bughouse Square. In 1939, he married Ida Goldberg (1912–1999) and they had one son, Dan.
Terkel received his
J.D. from the
University of Chicago Law School in 1934, but he said that instead of practicing law, he wanted to be a concierge at a hotel and he soon joined a theater group.
Career
Terkel joined the
Works Progress Administration's
Federal Writers' Project, working in
radio, doing work that varied from voicing
soap opera productions and announcing
news and
sports, to presenting shows of recorded
music and writing radio scripts and advertisements. His well-known radio program, titled
The Studs Terkel Program, aired on 98.7
WFMT Chicago between 1952 and 1997. The one-hour program was broadcast each weekday during those forty-five years. On this program, he interviewed guests as diverse as
Bob Dylan,
Leonard Bernstein, and
Alexander Frey. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Terkel was also the central character of
Studs' Place, an unscripted television drama about the owner of a
greasy-spoon diner in Chicago through which many famous people and interesting characters passed. This show, along with
Marlin Perkins's
Zoo Parade and the children's show
Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, are widely-considered canonical examples of the Chicago School of Television.
Terkel published his first book,
Giants of Jazz, in 1956. He followed it with a number of other books, most focusing on the
history of the United States people, relying substantially on
oral history. He also served as a distinguished scholar-in-residence at the
Chicago History Museum. He appeared in the film
Eight Men Out, based on the
Black Sox Scandal, in which he played newspaper reporter
Hugh Fullerton, who tries to uncover the White Sox players' plans to throw the
1919 World Series.
Terkel received his
nickname while he was acting in a play with another person named Louis. To keep the two straight, the director of the production gave Terkel the nickname
Studs after the fictional character about whom Terkel was reading at the time—
Studs Lonigan, of
James T. Farrell's trilogy.
Terkel was acclaimed for his efforts to preserve
American oral history. His 1985 book
"The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two, which detailed ordinary peoples' accounts of the country's involvement in World War II, won the
Pulitzer Prize. For
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, Terkel assembled recollections of the
Great Depression that spanned the socioeconomic spectrum, from
Okies, through prison inmates, to the wealthy. His 1974 book,
Working, in which (as reflected by its subtitle)
People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, also was highly acclaimed.
Working was made into a short-lived
Broadway show in 1978 and was telecast on
PBS in 1982. In 1997, Terkel was elected a member of
The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Two years later, he received the
George Polk Career Award in 1999.
Later life
In 2004, Terkel received the
Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary
Doctor of Laws degree from
Colby College. In August 2005, Terkel underwent successful
open-heart surgery. At the age of ninety-three, he was one of the oldest people to undergo this form of surgery and doctors reported his recovery to be remarkable for someone of that advanced age.
On May 22, 2006, Terkel, along with other plaintiffs, filed a suit in federal district court against
AT&T, to stop the telecommunications carrier from giving customer telephone records to the
National Security Agency without a court order.
The lawsuit was dismissed by Judge
Matthew F. Kennelly on July 26, 2006. Judge Kennelly cited a "
state secrets privilege" designed to protect national security from being harmed by lawsuits.
In 2006, Terkel received the
Dayton Literary Peace Prize's first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award.
Terkel completed a new personal memoir entitled,
Touch and Go, published in the fall of 2007.
Terkel was a self-described
agnostic, which he jokingly defined as "a cowardly atheist" during a 2004 interview with Krista Tippett on
NPR's
Speaking of Faith. Movie critic
Roger Ebert claimed that Terkel was an
atheist.
Terkel never learned to drive.
One of his last interviews was for the documentary Soul of a People on
Smithsonian Channel. He spoke about his participation in the
Works Progress Administration.
At his last public appearance, in 2007, Terkel said he was "still in touch—but ready to go".
He gave one of his last interviews on the
BBC Hardtalk program on Feb 4th 2008. He spoke of the imminent election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, and offered him some advice, in October, 2008.
Terkel died in his Chicago home on Friday, October 31, 2008 at the age of ninety-six. He had been suffering ever since a fall in his home earlier in October 2008.
Selected works
- Giants of Jazz (1957). ISBN 1565847695
- Division Street: America (1967) ISBN 0394422678
- Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970) ISBN 0394427742
- Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times (1977) ISBN 0394411021
- American Dreams: Lost and Found (1983)
- Chicago (1986) ISBN 5551545687
- The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream (1988)
- Race: What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (1992). ISBN 978-1565840003
- Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who’ve Lived It (1995) ISBN 1565842847
- My American Century (1997) ISBN 1595581774
- The Spectator: Talk About Movies and Plays With Those Who Make Them (1999) ISBN 1565846338
- Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith (2001) ISBN 0641759371
- Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times (2003) ISBN 1565848373
- And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey (2005) ISBN 1595580034
- Touch and Go (2007) ISBN 1595580433
- P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening (2008) ISBN 1595584234
