The one and only Andy Rooney
Morley Safer profiles his colleague Andy Rooney, America's favorite curmudgeon, and chats with the iconic commentator about his remarkable career. The interview precedes Rooney's final regular appearance on "60 Minutes," where he has had the last word since 1978.
The following script is from "Andy Rooney" which aired on October 2, 2011.
As we begin our 44th season of "60 Minutes" we want to take more than a few minutes to bid the fondest of farewells to one of our most familiar - dare we say most beloved faces - Andy Rooney. This will be Andy's last regular appearance on this broadcast.
There have been many curmudgeons on television over its long history, but none has been so long-serving in that role as Mr. Rooney - the grandpa Moses of broadcasting. At age 92, perhaps Grandpa Methuselah would be more fitting.
We sat down with Andy recently to chat about...well, Andy.
Andy Rooney: "My Lucky Life"
Watch Rooney's last regularly scheduled appearance on "60 Minutes"
Morley Safer: When you first started the Rooney piece on "60 Minutes," what was the immediate response?
Andy Rooney: Well, how you gonna hate Andy Rooney on television? I mean, I don't recall having much negative comment from anybody.
Safer: Did you have any idea, though, that you would become iconic on this broadcast?
Rooney: Well, I hope you're right. I don't know the-- whether you're right or not. But I like hearing you say it.
[Rooney on "60 Minutes": I don't know anything offhand that mystifies Americans more than the cotton they put in pill bottles. Why do they do it?]
"60 Minutes Overtime": The best of Andy Rooney
There is no better way to celebrate Andy Rooney's work than to let Andy do the talking
For over 30 years, Andy Rooney has held court, dispensing his wit and wisdom from his desk turned pulpit, soapbox or whatever you want to call it.
[Rooney: I make my living having opinions.]
[Rooney: All I'm saying is....]
As America's favorite grouch in chief, he was the voice...
[Rooney: Will you please tell me why...]
...the loud whiny voice, speaking on behalf of citizens fed up with nearly everything.
[Rooney: That's what's wrong with what's going on in Washington.]
And a watchdog...
[Rooney: Look at these boxes of stuff.]
...our junkyard poodle protecting consumers.
[Rooney: Check the size of those things. They not only puffed the wheat, they puffed the blueberries!]
Rooney: I think of it as work. I love to come in and sit down at my typewriter.
Safer: You-- you think of it as work. People watching this say, "And you call that work?"
Rooney: I know. I know. That is true. But I do think of it-- it is work.
As for topics...well, he had an axe to grind about nearly everything - the more insignificant, the better.
Produced by Warren Lustig.
[Rooney: You have one of these?]
From the junk on his desk...
[Rooney: I've got a lot of paper weights.]
...to the junk in his car.
[Rooney: Here's a pair of dark sunglasses with one side of the earpiece missing.]
For Andy, having the demeanor of an unmade bed...
[Rooney: This is what I look like in real life. Ya surprised?]
...and the persona of a surly curmudgeon was no act.
[Rooney: There's no doubt about it. Dogs are nicer than people.]
Safer: People say, "Is Rooney really like that?" You know, about the character they see on the screen. "Is Rooney really like that?" I say, "He's exactly like that."
For example...
Safer: Well, I've been out with you, just walking the street. And people come up asking for an autograph.
Rooney: Oh, what kind of--
Safer: And you can be--
Rooney: --an idiot--
Safer: --you get very prickly with--
Rooney: Oh, what kind of an idiot wants my name on a piece--
Safer: It's not a question--
Rooney: --of paper?
Safer: --of what kind of idiot. I've you heard say to people, "Look, I get paid to write." You've--
Rooney: I suppose you're right. But I still do it. And I have no intention of stopping. I just don't sign autographs.
Andy was born in 1919, just as the first World War ended. He grew up in Albany, New York during the Depression, but the Rooneys never had to stand in a bread line.
Safer: What was your childhood like? What was it like up there?
Rooney: Well, it was good. My father traveled so he was away a lot.
And I had a good mother. And, she took care of us.
Safer: And you weren't a poor family at all.
Rooney: No, no. My father made, I think he made $18,000 a year. And that was a lotta money. And my mother spent it. She-- she-- yeah, he gave it all to her, I guess.
Rooney: When I was about fifteen I went to a very good school, one of the best schools in the country, Albany Academy. I was not a good student but they were good teachers.
He was good enough to get into Colgate University, until...
Safer: World War II comes along--
Rooney: Uh-huh.
Safer: I gather you were-- a reluctant warrior.
Rooney: I was a reluctant warrior. I did not believe in the war. I thought it was wrong to go into any war. And-- I got to the war and saw the Germans and I changed my mind. I decided we were right, going into World War II.
Safer: You lost a lotta friends, correct?
Rooney: Oh, I did. I lost three or four close friends from the Albany Academy. There were about 22 in my class. And I think four of 'em were killed.
Safer: You-- you weren't in combat, although I'm sure you saw some.
Rooney: I worked for the Army newspaper. And I could go as far up as I dared. And I dared go pretty far up. It was-- it was dangerous.
Safer: The weird thing about covering a war is, it's dangerous and it's brutal and it's awful. And it's great fun as well.
Rooney: It is. I mean, it's incredible to say I had a great time in World War II. And I was at the battlefront.
Safer: And you made some life-long friends in--
Rooney: Oh, I made some life-long friends, yeah.
Safer: Cronkite?
Rooney: Walter Cronkite. Can't believe I got to know Walter. He was one of my best friends. I mean, he was until the day he died. He was a g-- a great friend.
After the war, Andy tried his hand at comedy, writing for the popular radio, turned television personality Arthur Godfrey.
[Arthur Godfrey: This is Mr. Rooney's joke. The favorite dish of the men from another planet who pilot the flying saucers is "Venus -schnitzel". (Godfrey moans at the bad joke)]
Godfrey presented himself as the nation's favorite uncle. But...
Rooney: He was not a great guy to work for because he was-- well, he was nasty sometimes. But-- I was-- this was 1949, '50, '51. I was making something like $500 a week. I mean, a fortune.
Safer: But you were writing for somebody else to-- to read--
Rooney: Yes, but that didn't bother me then as it would now. I can't imagine writing for anybody else now. But I was perfectly happy and when he used something of mine on the air, I liked it.
From working for a fake good guy, he went to work for a real one - correspondent Harry Reasoner here at CBS News.
[Reasoner: No thought has much meaning until it is written or spoken.]
Rooney: I worked for Harry Reasoner for eight or ten years and wrote a lot of what he read.
Safer: Tell me about that relationship, that partnership with Harry.
Rooney: We were very good friends. I-- I liked Harry a lot. And he obviously liked me.
Safer: He was a pretty good writer himself.
Rooney: Oh! He was a great-- that was the darnedest thing. I mean, he was a better writer than I was, and yet, he let me do it for him.
Safer: Laziness, do you think?
Rooney: Oh, he was lazy. Harry Reasoner was a lazy person. No question about it. And it was lucky for me, because it enabled me to do-- so much writing.
Safer: But he was one of the most companionable men--
Rooney: Oh, he was a great -- great guy to be with.
Safer: And he liked to put the-- he liked the-- the--
Rooney: He drank a lot. Are you trying to say he drank a lot?
Safer: Something like that.
Then, "60 Minutes" creator Don Hewitt, desperate for some kind of post script to the broadcast, decided to put Andy Rooney on the air...at least his shadow.
[Silhouette 1: Being elected President of the United States is the highest honor in the world.
Silhouette 2: Aren't you being chauvinistic?
Silhouette 1: No.]
They were anonymous Silhouettes. Andy was the guy on the right.
[Silhouette 1: A man who wants to be loved greatly, greatly loves people or he wouldn't care what they thought of him.
Silhouette 2: Thank you.
Silhouette 1: Thank you.]
Rooney: Oh, god, I'd forgotten those, yes.
It didn't last very long and was followed by a parade of contributors from Billy Graham to Art Buchwald.
[Mike Wallace: And where there is smoke...]
And then, the long running Point-Counterpoint, first with Nicholas Von Hoffman, then Shana Alexander speaking for the left...
[Shana Alexander: And Jack, your right to blow smoke ends where my nose begins.
Jack Kilpatrick: That's sound libertarian doctrine Shana.]
...and Jack Kilpatrick for the right. It worked, up to a point.
[Kilpatrick: I can't agree.]
VO: And then, in 1978...
[Rooney: We were curious about the car death figures...]
Andy emerged from the shadows to begin his long run as the last word on "60 Minutes."
[Rooney: Why is it we all look forward to the mail coming everyday?]
[Rooney: Something's got to be done about phone books.]
[Rooney: You know something I don't like? Chocolate chip cookies.]
[Rooney: (Typing)]
Rooney: I sit down at my typewriter or I look at the newspaper, and there is so much going on in the world. I mean, "Who couldn't write a column," I think to myself. It's-- it's just-- there's everything going on. And I-- I-- I would be embarrassed to say I couldn't write a column.
[Rooney: Nothing seems funny this week...]
And it wasn't just doorknobs and desk clutter. There were times when he spoke for the nation.
[Rooney: And lift-off...]
He shared our sense of helplessness when the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986.
[Rooney: We can all be prouder to be human beings because that's what they were. They make up for a lot of liars, cheats and terrorists among us.]
And in 1995, our anger over the Oklahoma City bombers.
[Rooney: I could kill the bastards.]
And in 2003, he said this about the war in Iraq.
[Rooney: We didn't shock them, and we didn't awe them in Baghdad. The phrase makes us look like foolish braggarts. The president ought to fire whoever wrote that for him.]
Safer: Do you ever get any flack for being too political?
Rooney: Do you think I'm too political sometimes?
Safer: Yeah.
Rooney: Well-- I suppose I am sometimes. It's hard to conceal the fact I am more of a Democrat than I am a Republican. But I'm absolutely open-minded about it, I think. And-- I would-- I would-- object to being called either.
In 1990 though, he was pilloried for making some questionable observations about race and homosexuality which led to a suspension from CBS.
Safer: The controversy that you got involved in which led to a three-month suspension. You made some remarks that the homosexual community in this country took as offensive. And you were-- you were pretty nasty about-- about their outrage.
Rooney: Well, I suppose I was. If I was, I'm sorry.
Safer: Do you look for trouble?
Rooney: No. I don't. I-- it comes naturally to me.
He's not exactly Mr. Congeniality, even to his most ardent fans.
Safer: You-- you've gotten tons of mail over the--
Rooney: I get---a lotta mail. I--more mail than---most people.
Safer: Do you answer any of them?
Rooney: Not much, no. I mean, who would wanna answer an idiot who has the bad sense to write me a letter? I mean, it's a certain kind of person who writes and they're not my kind of people, usually.
Safer: Well, they are your kind of people.
Rooney: Well--
Safer: They're the people who are--
Rooney: I suppose. But I-- I-- every once in awhile I answer one. But not very often.
Most people, who've kept most of their marbles, tend to mellow with age. Not our Andy who, at age 92, grows even grumpier.
Safer: It's not much fun growing old, is it?
Rooney: I hate it. I mean, I'm gonna die. And--it'd-- that doesn't appeal to me at all.
Safer: Do you think about death?
Rooney: Oh, I do. I do think about it quite a bit.
Safer: And?
Rooney: I don't like it.
The only thing golden about the golden years may be memories. Andy has plenty of those.
Rooney: The interesting thing was I really liked all of them and that doesn't happen very often when you work with a group of people. Imagine, being on "60 Minutes." It has just been such a show over the years.
Safer: If you had your life to live over again, what would you do?
Rooney: If I had my life to live over again, I'd be on television. I'd get on "60 Minutes" if I could and I'd do a piece every week, of my own. I'd write it and say it. And that's what I'd like to do best. And that's what I do.