B6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 , 2019
ism.
He worked at the Manchester
Guardian newspaper and occa-
sionally as a London-based
broadcaster for CBS and other
news agencies before joining the
New York Times as a metropoli-
tan reporter in 1955. He moved to
NBC two years later, assigned to
the Washington and Chicago bu-
reaus.
Later, during his 15 years at
ABC, Mr. Vanocur held several
positions, including chief diplo-
matic correspondent and anchor
of a program on business news.
He saw television news change
from a slow-paced medium, in
which he sometimes had a week
to polish a story, to a form of
nearly instantaneous communi-
cation. It was not an evolution he
always liked.
“Now, we have the capacity
because of technology to be al-
most everywhere almost at once,”
Mr. Vanocur said in 1991, “and,
because we are there, that in itself
becomes significant. And, be-
cause everything’s significant,
nothing is significant.”
His first wife, the former Edith
Pick, a onetime food columnist
for The Post, died in 1975 after 19
years of marriage. Their son, Nick
Vanocur, died in 2015. Survivors
include his wife of 43 years, the
former Virginia Backus Wood, of
Montecito, Calif.; a son from his
first marriage, broadcast journal-
ist Chris Vanocur of Salt Lake
City; a stepdaughter, Daphne
Wood Hicks of New York City;
and two grandchildren.
After leaving ABC in 1992, Mr.
Vanocur was a visiting scholar at
the First Amendment Center in
Nashville, where he developed
educational videos on how presi-
dents used radio and television
through the years.
He sometimes appeared as
himself in films and TV shows,
including “Dave” (1993) and
“Without Warning” (1994), a TV
retelling of H.G. Wells’s “The War
of the Worlds.” He later joined the
History Channel, where he was
the host of “Movies in Time,” in
which he interviewed scholars
and others about the historical
accuracy and significance of vari-
ous films.
Mr. Vanocur settled in Califor-
nia, but “mostly I live on United
Airlines,” he joked.
Balding and slightly stocky, he
bore a physical resemblance to
another well-traveled television
reporter, Charles Kuralt of CBS
News.
“I was in an airport the other
day and headed for the United
club,” he told the St. Petersburg
Times. “A nd as I pulled out my
membership card the woman
said, ‘Oh, you don’t need to do
that, Mr. Kuralt.’ I just said thank
you and walked on in.”
[email protected]After his parents divorced in
the early 1940s, he moved with
his mother and sister to Peoria,
Ill. His mother changed the spell-
ing of the family’s last name.
Mr. Vanocur graduated in 1950
from Northwestern University in
Evanston, Ill., and then studied atthe London School of Economics
and served two years in the Army,
primarily in Europe.
Before publishing an opinion
piece in London’s Observer news-
paper, he was planning to attend
law school, but he later said he
was so intoxicated by seeing his
name in print that he decided to
embark on a career in journal-where among other assignments,
he returned to his earlier experi-
ence in high-profile debates. He
was the moderator of a vice-
presidential debate in 1984 and a
panelist in a 1992 presidential
debate between George H.W.
Bush and Bill Clinton.“Television has come to so
dominate politics that the very
act of political reporting becomes
part of it,” Mr. Vanocur told the
Los Angeles Times in 1991. “I’m
not sure that’s good or bad. It’s
just a fact.”
Sander Vanocur was born Jan.
8, 1928, in Cleveland. His father
was a lawyer.first lady Jacqueline Kennedy on
international tours and once re-
ceived a curtsy from the presi-
dent’s young daughter, Caroline,
after he gave her a children’s b ook
as a gift.
He later covered the growing
U.S. military involvement in Viet-
nam and reported on the civil
rights movement in the Ameri-
can South. In 1967, he conducted
a revelatory interview with the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in
which the civil rights leader con-
fessed that the dream of equality
he outlined in his famous 1963
speech on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial, had turned into a
“nightmare.”
In the interview, less than a
year before King was slain, he
spoke of how the Vietnam War
could “poison the very soul of our
nation,” but he added that his
commitment to nonviolence re-
mained firm.
While covering the 1968 presi-
dential campaign, Mr. Vanocur
interviewed Sen. Robert F. Ken-
nedy hours before the candidate
was gunned down in the kitchen
hallway of a Los Angeles hotel.
Mr. Vanocur stayed on the scene
for hours, covering the aftermath
of the assassination.
Mr. Vanocur left N BC in 1972 to
lead a short-lived news program
with Robert MacNeil on PBS,
then spent time at a think tank
and teaching before joining The
Washington Post in 1975 as a
television columnist and editor.
In 1977, he went to ABC News,BY MATT SCHUDEL
Sander Vanocur, a veteran
broadcaster for NBC and other
networks who covered the civil
rights movement and Vietnam
War and was part of the panel of
interviewers at the first televised
presidential debate, between
John F. Kennedy and Richard M.
Nixon in 1960, died Sept. 16 at a
hospice center in Santa Barbara,
Calif. He was 91.
The cause was complications
from dementia, said his son,
Chris Vanocur.
Mr. Vanocur (pronounced van-
OH-ker) was a familiar face on
television news for decades, be-
ginning when he joined NBC
News in the late 1950s. While
covering the 1960 presidential
campaign, he had a historic role
as one of four panelists asking
questions of Kennedy and Nixon
at their first debate.
The debate, held Sept. 26,
1960, in Chicago and watched by
about 70 million people, was
considered a turning point in the
race and highlighted the growing
influence of television.
Nixon had been ailing from a
staph infection in his knee and
came to the debate without re-
hearsing his responses. He
turned down the offer of profes-
sional makeup, which left him
perspiring and with a swarthy
five o’clock shadow under the
studio’s bright lights.
Mr. Vanocur put Nixon on the
defensive when he cited Presi-
dent Dwight D. Eisenhower’s re-
mark about ideas advanced by
Nixon, his vice president. “If you
give me a week,” E isenhower said,
“I might think of one. I don’t
remember.”
Nixon brushed off Eisenhow-
er’s comment as “probably a face-
tious remark.” But Nixon’s re-
sponses and appearance at the
debate helped turn voters toward
Kennedy, who projected a calm
and comfortable manner and, by
looking directly into the camera,
had a better understanding of the
demands of the new medium of
television.
“We did not see the debate as
the rest of the country saw it,” Mr.
Vanocur said in 2010 of the panel
of journalists. “Those who heard
it on the radio thought Nixon had
won. In the studio, the four of us
were seated on a platform, and
we looked at the two candidates
with our naked eyes.”
After Kennedy won a narrow
victory in 1960, Nixon came to
resent the debates and what he
considered the triumph of show-
manship over the exchange of
ideas. After Nixon was elected
president in 1968, he put Mr.
Vanocur on the so-called White
House enemies list.
Mr. Vanocur covered the Ken-
nedy White House, accompanied
SANDER VANOCUR, 91
Veteran TV journalist was panelist in Kennedy-Nixon debate
DAVID BRESLAUER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sander Vanocur, with his back to the camera, moderates a 1 98 4 Democratic presidential primary
debate among, from left, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson and Gary Hart.REED SAXON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mr. Vanocur worked for NBC, ABC and The Washington Post, and
was on President Richard M. Nixon’s White House “enemies list.”obituaries
FROM STAFF REPORTS
AND NEWS SERVICES
Phyllis Newman, a To ny
Award-winning Broadway vet-
eran and show-business person-
ality who eventually turned her
attention to fight for women’s
health, died Sept. 15 in Manhat-
tan. She was 86.
The cause was complications
from a lung disorder, said her son,
Adam Green.
After a decade in small parts on
screen and stage, Ms. Newman
had a career breakthrough with
“Subways Are for Sleeping”
(1961), in which she appeared in a
bath towel and for which she won
the To ny for best featured actress
in a musical. (The lyrics were
co-written by her husband,
Adolph Green.)
She won the coveted prize over
such formidable competitors as
Barbara Harris and Barbra Strei-
sand, seeming to blare her arrival
as the next big musical theater
star. Ye t for decades, amid stellar
reviews, she mostly was hired as a
replacement for bigger names in
Broadway shows.
Meanwhile, she became a stal-
wart of TV game and talk shows,
which led to her appearances on
“The To night Show” a s a perform-
er and a guest host. She said her
gift for gab — a s a “a chatterer and
a laugher,” as she was once char-
acterized — ricocheted against
her and stereotyped her.
“I know everybody in the world
and they never hire me for any-
thing,” she once told an inter-
viewer. Of her TV work, she add-
ed, “It keeps you in front of the
public, but that’s the only way
they knew me.”
She also said she put her career
second to raising her two chil-
dren with Green. “It just seemed
inevitable that I would do that,”
she told the New York Post.
“A dolph was always working and
someone had to take care of the
kids. I’m not bitter about it at a ll. I
don’t regret it for one minute.”
She earned a second To ny n om-ination, for best featured actress
in a play, as Aunt Blanche in the
Neil Simon play “Broadway
Bound” (1986). She soon began a
brief role in the ABC soap opera
“One Life to Live.”
“I was supposed to do just five
episodes of ‘One Life to Live,’ ” s he
told the Associated Press. “Iplayed Renee Devine, an ex-
madame from Las Vegas who
dressed to kill. The character just
took off.”
Ms. Newman was born in Jer-
sey City on March 19, 1933. Her
parents, Jewish emigrants from
Eastern Europe, worked on the
Atlantic City boardwalk. Hermother, Rachel, took the name
“Marvelle, the Fortune Te ller,”
and her father, Sigmund, ana-
lyzed handwriting under the
moniker “Gabel the Grapholo-
gist.”
As a child, Ms. Newman also
showed a talent for performance.
As “Baby Phyllis,” she began im-
personating stars of the day such
as the flamboyant Brazilian sing-
er Carmen Miranda.
She made her Broadway debut
in “Wish You Were Here” (1952), a
musical set in a summer camp.
Her other Broadway credits in-
cluded a 1971 revival of the musi-
cal “On the To wn.” Working with
playwright Arthur Laurents, she
created a short-lived one-woman
show, “The Madwoman of Central
Park West” (1979). She also made
dozens of TV and films appear-
ances.
In the 1990s, she focused on
fundraising and founded the
Phyllis Newman Women’s Health
Initiative of the Actor’s Fund. Her
work earned her the 2009 Isabelle
Stevenson Award from the To ny
Awards. She also hosted the an-
nual benefit Breathless on Broad-
way to raise money for research to
combat the lung disease pulmo-
nary hypertension.
She started writing her autobi-
ography, “Just in Time: Notes
From My Life” (1988), after being
diagnosed with breast cancer. “I
started writing it because I didn’t
want to talk about it. Not that it
was a secret. After I had 50 pages
down, Simon & Schuster bought
it,” she said at the time.
Green, whom she married in
1960, died in 2002. In addition to
her son, survivors include her
daughter, Amanda Green.
[email protected]PHYLLIS NEWMAN, 86
Tony-winning actress later focused on fight for women’s health
MARK LENNIHAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Phyllis Newman, left, shown with Lauren Bacall during a tribute to conductor Leonard Bernstein in
New York in 1990, won a Tony Award in 196 2 and was a stalwart of TV game and talk shows.IN MEMORIAML. DAVID HARRELL
Happy Birthday David!
Your life has beenapriceless gift.
Wewere so sad when you were called
to live in the home above,
God's promise is to soften our sorrow.
And give us new strength
forabrighter tomorrow!
Your loving mom, family and friendsHARRELLDEATH NOTICESIMONED. CANE (Age 83)
Passed away peacefully at home onJanuary
4, 2019. Born in Den Helder,Holland, daughter
of Dutch Naval Captain Simon Rosier and Lien
Den Exter.Simone wasraised in both Holland
and Indonesia. She often told the story of her
father who,during WWII, against orders,drove
his wife and young children, Simone and Henk
thirteen hours across Indonesia, less thanaday
ahead of theJapanse forces.From Surabaya,
he secured for his family safe passage to
Australia. At eight years old, the emotion of
waving goodbye to her father became an
enduring and lifelong memory.Simone,her
brother and mother ultimately found their way
to Brooklyn NY where they remained for the
duration of the war.
Simone was fluent in four languages,abeauti-
ful and charming woman, she collected many
lifelong friends.In1958 while in Virginia Beach,
she met the love of her life Guy Cane,a
Navy fighter pilot from the Bronx, NY.She and
Guy married in 1959. Captain Cane and family
retired in 1977 to Annapolis,MD.They spent
many years thoughtfully restoring their historic
waterfront home.Simone worked with Guy
at his business Cane Associates.Guy passed
away in March of 2000.
Simone is survived by her sons,Peter and John;
Peter’swife Suzie; her niece Monique Rosier
of Nice,France; and her beloved cousin Winny
Den Exter of Provence,France.
Agraveside service will be held at Arlington
National Cemetery where Simone will be laid
to rest by her husband Guy,onSeptember 25,
2019 at2p.m.
Peter and Suzie extendaspecial thank you to
the staff at Hospice of the Chesapeake and
Hospice of Marion County for the heartfelt
care in Simone’sfinal months with Dementia.
Memorial donations may be made to Hospice.CANEGUILLERMO CARMONA (Age 97)
On Sunday,September 15, 2019,
of Silver Spring, MD formerly of
Stratford, CT.Beloved husband of
the late Rhina Ligia Carmona; lov-
ing father of Roberto (Lisa Brai-
ley), Maria (Ari Fitzgerald) and the
late Carlos Carmona. Grandfather
of Pilar,Isel and Lourdes Fitzgerald; brother
of Rogelio and Alicia Carmona, and the late
EdelmiraLopez and Celia, Rigoberto,Santiago,
and Eraclides.Also survived by numerous
nieces and nephews,and family by marriage.
Relatives and friends may call at Collins Funeral
Home,500 University BoulevardWest, Silver
Spring, MD,(ValetParking),Friday,September
20, 2019, from7to9p.m. Mass of Christian
Burial at St. Michael the Archangel Church,
805 WayneAvenue,Silver Spring, MD,on
Saturday,September 21, 2019 at 10 a.m.
Interment Gate of Heaven Cemetery,Trumbull
CT on September 28, 2019 preceded by a
memorial mass at 10 a.m. at St.James Church
in Stratford, CT.Memorial contributions may
be made to the Missionaries of Charity,5 99
BeechwoodAve.,Bridgeport, CT 06604 or 2800
Otis St. NE,Washington, DC 20018.
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