Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney (born January 14, 1919, Albany, New York, U.S.—died November 4, 2011, New York City) was an American journalist and essayist who was best known for his curmudgeonly commentaries (1978–2011) at the end of the television news show 60 Minutes.

Rooney was raised in Albany, New York, the younger of two children born to a felt salesman and a homemaker. He attended Colgate University but, following the outbreak of World War II, was drafted in 1941. By his own account, while still stateside, he was arrested in Florida for sitting in the back of a segregated bus alongside African American servicemen. By the next year Rooney was in England as part of an artillery brigade. An unenthusiastic soldier, he quickly transferred to the London office of the U.S. Army newspaper, The Stars and Stripes. As a reporter, he traveled across Europe; he was among a group of journalists that flew with the U.S. Army Air Forces on a series of raids on Germany. He relayed the stories of some of the men he met while covering the aerial conflict in Air Gunner (1944), written with fellow reporter Oram C. (“Bud”) Hutton. Following the war, the two collaborated again on The Story of the Stars and Stripes (1946) and Conquerors’ Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders (1947), the latter of which evolved from a magazine assignment to cover Europe in the wake of the war.

In 1947 Rooney returned to Albany, where he worked as a freelance writer. Two years later he was hired by the CBS radio and television network as a writer for on-air personality Arthur Godfrey. Rooney worked on the radio and television broadcasts of Godfrey’s talk and talent shows until 1955. In 1957 he adapted E.B. White’s essay “Here Is New York” for television. While contributing bits to other CBS comedies such as The Garry Moore Show, Rooney increasingly moved toward the station’s news content, contributing to The 20th Century and Calendar, among other programs. In 1962 he published The Fortunes of War: Four Great Battles of World War II.

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That same year he began working as a producer for presenter Harry Reasoner. The two collaborated on a number of television essays that presaged the format that would catapult Rooney to fame. Such specials as An Essay on Doors (1964) and An Essay on Women (1967) featured Reasoner narrating text written by Rooney. His 1968 script for Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed (narrated by Bill Cosby), an installment of CBS’s Of Black America series, earned Rooney an Emmy Award. That year he also made his first—brief—television appearance. He left CBS in 1970 after it refused to air his An Essay on War, which contained statements condemning modern warfare. He purchased the film from CBS and aired it on the PBS program The Great American Dream Machine with his own narration. Following a stint at ABC, he returned to CBS in 1972 after a chance encounter with the CBS news chief at the Republican National Convention.

Rooney went on to produce a series of specials for CBS including Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington (1975), Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner (1976), and Mr. Rooney Goes to Work (1977). In 1978 Rooney debuted “Three Minutes or So with Andy Rooney” at the end of the 60 Minutes broadcast during a hiatus of “Point/Counterpoint,” the segment that usually filled the slot. Rooney’s segment, later retitled “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney,” was a hit, and at the beginning of the 1979–80 season his segment replaced its precursor. Rooney’s segment typically featured his splenetic—and drily humorous—complaints about the vagaries of modern life. He won Emmys for the segment in 1979, 1981, and 1982. Rooney continued to host the segment into his 90s; he made his last regular broadcast in 2011. He won a lifetime achievement Emmy Award in 2003.

Rooney continued to write prolifically as well, releasing, among others, Pieces of My Mind (1984), Sweet and Sour (1992), My War (1995), Sincerely, Andy Rooney (1999), and Out of My Mind (2006).