Rooney Tunes

CBS man knows his stuff

Andy Rooney is the Boswell of stuff. He has heard the siren call of an empty coffee can ("How can you throw away such a nice clean can with this tight-fitting top?"). He understands the disquieting dimensions of soap ("Most of its lifetime, a cake of soap is too small . . . It's not only too small, it's sharp around the edges"). And he knows why dogs are man's best friend ("The average dog is a nicer person than the average person").

These observations are delivered with a mischievous air on 60 Minutes, the top-rated CBS newsmagazine, and hi a thrice-weekly column syndicated to more than 100 newspapers. Rooney, 60, covers the commonplace, leaving wars and statecraft to more conventional colleagues. "Andy is our Russell Baker, our Art Buchwald," says Don Hewitt, executive producer of 60 Minutes. "He is a cross between Charles Kuralt and H.L. Mencken."

Rooney is not another pretty face. He is 5 ft. 9 in. tall, "a little fat" (210 lbs., 25 over his playing weight as a football guard at Colgate), and his forelock goes where it pleases. "I have an unpleasant voice," he notes, "a raspy voice." Says Hewitt: "Andy is kind of like Peck's Bad Boy. You expect to find him walking home from school kicking a can."

His humor is wry and derisive. Explains Harry Reasoner, a longtime colleague at CBS: "Andy sees something portentous or pompous and puts a pin in it." Not long ago, he journeyed to Pottstown, Pa., in search of Mrs. Smith of Mrs. Smith's Pies; there was no Mrs. Smith, he discovered, only the executives of Kellogg's. On another occasion, a seductive sales pitch set him to wondering. "Save $1,253 on a Saab," he mused. "I mean, if you bought eight or ten Saabs a year, you can save enough to buy a Mercedes."

Rooney was a correspondent for Stars and Stripes during World War II, and embarked on a freelance writing career. "I spent six weeks on a piece for Harper's and got $350 for it," he recalls. "I realized I was not going to make it as a magazine writer." From 1949 to 1955, he was Arthur Godfrey's radio and television writer, at a more comfortable $625 a week.

Shortly after teaming up with Reasoner at CBS in 1962, Rooney began exploring the mundane in earnest, turning out half-hour TV essays on such topics as chairs, doors and bridges. Throughout their six-year collaboration, it was Reasoner on camera and Rooney in the background, writing and producing. Says he: "It never occurred to me to be the guy reading my stuff."

But then, in a characteristic run-in with the powers that be, Rooney quit over CBS's refusal to air his essay on war--written, he recalls, from the perspective of "a soft hardhat." The network sold him the piece for a nominal sum, and he took it to public television. Minus his old frontman, Rooney narrated the documentary, and so it was that his on-camera career was launched in 1971.

Rejoining CBS in 1972, Rooney wrote, produced and narrated a series of winsome reports on American life. The best-known was Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington (1975), an innocent's tour of the federal bureaucracy. But the finest was probably In Praise of New York City (1974), a journalistic paean that anticipated parts of Woody Allen's Manhattan. Rooney became a regular commentator on 60 Minutes in September 1978 and last year won an Emmy for his work there.

Contemptuous of actors, Rooney considers his appearances on-camera "an extension of my writing." One thing worries him, though. Everyone says his performances are getting better all the time. "I hope it's lucky coincidence," Rooney says. "I'd hate to think I'm learning how to do it."

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