Terry Gross remembers her late husband, jazz writer Francis Davis

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. This is my first show back in about 2 1/2 weeks. Today's show is all about why. My husband, my partner of 47 years, Francis Davis, died after a long illness on Monday, April 14. You may know about Francis from his writing about jazz and popular culture or from the time he was a jazz critic on FRESH AIR when it was a local show and in the early days when we went national. Often when I introduce a guest, I quote from reviews and profiles that sum up their contributions better than I think I could. To sum up my husband's place as a writer, I'm going to quote from a couple of the obits.

In The New York Times, Adam Nossiter wrote, his specialty was teasing meaning from the sounds he heard, situating them in America's history, culture and society. That approach and the fluency of his writing made him one of the most influential writers on jazz in the 1980s and beyond. The headline of the NPR obit by Nate Chinen described him as a giant of jazz criticism. In addition to jazz, Francis also wrote essays about other forms of music, as well as movies, TV and books. For me, reading him is now my best way of feeling like I'm spending time with him. I've been reading him a lot lately.

Before I get back to doing interviews and immersing myself in the lives of my guests, I want to share some of Francis with you. On today's show, I'm going to read you excerpts of a few of his essays and play recordings he praised in those pieces. Along the way, I'll also tell a few stories about him, including the story of how we met and became a couple. FRESH AIR played a big part in that.

Francis wrote for The Atlantic magazine, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Philadelphia Inquirer and various music magazines. He had seven books and received a Guggenheim fellowship. He founded and ran The Village Voice annual jazz critics poll, which, after several years, moved to NPR Music and is now on artsfuse.org, where it's run by Tom Hull, who will be continuing the poll, which he renamed the Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll.

Francis also won a Grammy for his liner notes to the Miles Davis 50th anniversary collector's edition of "Kind Of Blue." It's been surreal to have that famous trophy in our home. In his liner notes, Francis wrote, quote, "in terms of where it falls in jazz history, 'Kind Of Blue' is celebrated for being the album that popularized improvising on modes - that is, improvising in the sparest and starkest of scales as an alternative to bebop's dense thickets of chord changes. But this hardly explains the album's hold on three successive generations of listeners. The pieces on 'Kind Of Blue' were meant to serve as springboards to improvisation, and did they ever," unquote. Francis went on to describe John Coltrane's solo on the track "Flamenco Sketches." Quote, "Coltrane worries the notes of each scale as prayerfully as beads on a rosary," unquote.

I'm going to play an excerpt of that Coltrane solo because it's beautiful and because Francis had a contract to write a book about Coltrane. Although he never finished the book, he was steeped in Coltrane music and research and wrote about him in shorter essays. In this solo on "Flamenco Sketches," you'll hear Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Bill Evans - piano, Paul Chambers - bass, Jimmy Cobb - drums.

(SOUNDBITE OF MILES DAVIS' "FLAMENCO SKETCHES")

GROSS: That was an excerpt of John Coltrane's solo on the track "Flamenco Sketches" from the Miles Davis album "Kind Of Blue."

A piece that was a turning point for Francis was his profile of tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins titled "An Improvisor Prepares." After it was rejected by the magazine that greenlighted it, Francis sent it to the attention of Bill Whitworth, the revered editor of The Atlantic magazine. And although Bill didn't publish it, he wanted to see more. The Atlantic became Francis' longest professional affiliation. He became a contributing editor, and Bill became a treasured friend. Here's how Francis describes Sonny Rollins in that 1984 profile. Quote, "when conjuring up an image of the quintessential jazz man - heroic, inspired, mystical, obsessed, as often as not, it is Rollins we picture because no other jazz instrumentalist better epitomizes the lonely tight rope walk between spontaneity and organization, implicit in taking an improvised solo. Everyone who listens to jazz can tell a story of a night when Rollins could do no wrong, when ideas poured out of him so effortlessly. The irony is that the nights when Rollins is at wit's end can be just as thrilling for illuminating the perils endemic to improvisation. Rollins is the greatest living jazz improviser. No arguments, please. And if we redefine virtuosity to include improvisational cunning as well as instrumental finesse, he may be the greatest virtuoso that jazz has ever produced," unquote. Here's Sonny Rollins' unaccompanied opening on his 1972 recording of "Skylark."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "SKYLARK")

GROSS: That was the opening to Sonny Rollins' recording of "Skylark." The song was co-written by Hoagy Carmichael. Francis once wrote that Carmichael, who was from the Midwest, looked like a Corn Belt Samuel Beckett. Francis and I met through music. He was managing the record store on the University of Pennsylvania campus, which was just a few blocks away from where WHYY was in the 1970s. I'd go to that store to pick up records I needed for the show. A close friend of mine who also worked there introduced me to Francis and told me that Francis had a huge record collection that included a lot of out-of-print recordings. This was decades before you could find nearly anything on the internet.

At the time, 1978, FRESH AIR was a local three-hour show five days a week, which was way too much time to fill. So I was on the lookout for good features. I thought, why not try a feature in which Francis would play and talk about great but hard-to-find jazz recordings? I asked him to write a script and record an audition. This was before he'd started his writing career, and I was astonished by the quality of his writing. That's how he started his weekly FRESH AIR feature called Interval. I fell in love with his writing and with him. Music, movies, books - these were passions we shared and loved talking about with each other.

I need to take a short break here. I'll continue this remembrance of my husband, Francis Davis, after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILL EVANS' "SOME OTHER TIME")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. There's more I want to tell you about my husband, Francis Davis. He died Monday, April 14, after eight months in home hospice, doing his best to maintain his strength despite his enemies, COPD and Parkinson's. Francis wrote about jazz and other forms of music and popular culture. In this remembrance, I'm reading passages from his essays and playing related recordings that he praised.

When PBS was planning to broadcast a three-part series on "The History Of The Blues," Francis was asked to write the companion book. He wrote the book, but the series was never completed and never broadcast. The status of the series and how it would affect the book was very stress-inducing, and that was in addition to the pressure of writing the book.

As he was finishing it, he started to not feel well, and after it was done, he ended up in the hospital with a serious, possibly life-threatening infection that took days to diagnose. It was terrifying. After he was sent home, he still needed IV antibiotics. I was taught briefly how to administer the drugs through the IV line and was warned that if there are air bubbles in the tubing, that could be dangerous. And I was told that anything that touches the opening of the tubing or the medication could contaminate it. I thought, are you out of your mind, giving me the responsibility of doing what trained nurses do? I'm proud to say Francis survived my nursing, but I almost didn't. Here's a passage from the 1995 book, "The History Of The Blues," the book that Francis handed in before the hospital. The passage is about Blind Willie Johnson.

Quote, "he had few equals as a slide guitarist. He used a pocketknife in lieu of a bottleneck. Johnson's music was charred with purgatorial fire. More than 60 years later, you can still smell the smoke on it. He was a man of God, perhaps even a religious fanatic, but he ranted like a man possessed by demons. His life was tragic, even by the cruel standards of the day. He died in 1947, long after his brief recording career had come to an end. He made his living by playing on Texas street corners, a blind man with a guitar and a tin cup, shaking the faith of passers by with the absolute certainty of his. Were Johnson alive today, he might be livid to find his name in so many books on the blues. He performed mostly traditional hymns, hardly any secular material. Yet his style had more in common with those of the blues performers of his day than that of any of his fellow guitar evangelists, and no one was more original. In terms of its intensity alone, its spiritual ache, there's nothing else from the period to compare with Johnson's 1927 recording of 'Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground' on which his guitar takes the part of a preacher and his wordless voice the part of a wrapped congregation," unquote.

Here's Blind Willie Johnson's 1927 recording of "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DARK WAS THE NIGHT, COLD WAS THE GROUND")

BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON: (Vocalizing).

GROSS: That was Blind Willie Johnson. After Francis' blues book was published, he received a confounding invitation to sell the book live on TV on the cable home shopping network QVC. Apparently, one of the hosts was a fan. As I recall, Francis was sandwiched between fake emerald costume jewelry and the Road Whiz, an early kind of GPS that told you where the closest restaurants, gas stations, and bathrooms were. Let's just say the book did OK, but the Road Whiz did a whole lot better. As I mentioned, Francis was hospitalized after handing in the manuscript for "The History Of The Blues." The essay he wrote after he got out of the hospital was titled "Infection." It was a review of the original cast recording of the Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine musical "Passion."

The musical tells the story of an Italian soldier, Giorgio , who's forced to leave his beautiful, vibrant mistress, Clara, with whom he's deeply in love, after he receives orders that he's being transferred to a faraway garrison. His new commanding officer's sickly cousin, Fosca, falls in love with Giorgio and becomes obsessed with him. She lives in the world of the sick and marginalized, and he's healthy and strong and wants to get away from her. Francis and I loved the show. Here's an excerpt of his essay.

Quote, "a few days after seeing 'Passion' for the second time, I was hospitalized with a 104-degree temperature, a symptom of what was ultimately diagnosed as a serious bacterial infection. In a situation in which part of my role as a good patient was to monitor my moods and bodily functions and dutifully report even the slightest change, I no longer saw Fosca's morbid self-absorption as quite so absurd. Fosca's love for Giorgio is supposed to be superior to Clara's by virtue of not being carnal." At least that was what Sondheim and Lapine said in interviews. "Regardless of Sondheim and Lapine's original intentions, the dichotomy represented onstage wasn't between body love and soul love but between health and infirmity, the pang of happiness and the unaccountable lure of death," unquote.

Here's the song Francis singled out. It's sung by the character Fosca on what may be her deathbed. She tells Giorgio she wants to dictate a letter for him to write but to write it as if he were writing it to her, confessing his deep feelings for her. The song is "I Wish I Could Forget You," sung by Donna Murphy.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WISH I COULD FORGET YOU")

JERE SHEA: (As Giorgio) My dearest Fosca.

DONNA MURPHY: (As Fosca, singing) I wish I could forget you, erase you from my mind. But ever since I met you, I find I cannot leave the thought of you behind. That doesn't mean I love you.

SHEA: (As Giorgio, singing) That doesn't mean I love you.

MURPHY: (As Fosca, singing) I wish that I could love you. I know that I've upset you. I know I've been unkind. I wanted you to vanish from sight, but now I see you in a different light. And though I cannot love you, I wish that I could love you, for now I'm seeing love like none I've ever known, a love as pure as breath, as permanent as death, implacable as stone - a love that, like a knife, has cut into a life I wanted left alone. A love I may regret...

GROSS: That was Donna Murphy from the original cast recording of "Passion." Francis' essay about "Passion" was included in his book "Bebop And Nothingness: Jazz And Pop At The End Of The Century." The title is a play on Jean-Paul Sartre's book "Being And Nothingness." Francis was great at coming up with titles. That book showed up in a confounding place, a Brooks Brothers ad, maybe a page from the catalog. The photo was of a 20-something guy with his hands folded around the back of his head, and on his lap, a copy of Francis' book, "Bebop And Nothingness."

The model was supposed to look dreamy, but I doubt he'd ever dream of reading that book. My theory is the book was chosen as a prop because the book jacket's eye-catching color scheme of blue, red and yellow matched the model's sweater and plaid pants. We framed the ad, and it still hangs on our wall, baffling anyone who sees it. One of Francis' coinages also showed up in a surprising place. In a 1992 essay about the show "Seinfeld," Francis described Kramer as a hipster doofus. Someone from the show must've read that because the following year, hipster doofus showed up in a couple of "Seinfeld" episodes. Here's Kramer.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SEINFELD")

MICHAEL RICHARDS: (As Cosmo Kramer) She dumped me.

JERRY SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) She dumped you?

RICHARDS: (As Cosmo Kramer) She dumped me. She rolled right over me.

(LAUGHTER)

RICHARDS: (As Cosmo Kramer) Said I was a hipster doofus.

(LAUGHTER)

RICHARDS: (As Cosmo Kramer) Am I a hipster doofus?

JASON ALEXANDER: (As George Costanza) No, no.

SEINFELD: (As Jerry Seinfeld) No.

RICHARDS: (As Cosmo Kramer) Said I'm not good-looking enough for her, not good-looking enough. Jerry, look at me.

GROSS: After we take a short break, I'll conclude my tribute to Francis. And we'll feature my interview with George Clooney, who was just nominated for a Tony. He's on Broadway starring as journalist Edward R. Murrow in the stage adaptation of Clooney's 2005 film "Good Night, And Good Luck." Francis loved and was influenced by film noir, and he loved Charlie Haden's ensemble, Quartet West, and how it often evoked film noir like on this track, "There In A Dream." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE HADEN QUARTET WEST'S "THERE IN A DREAM (INSTRUMENTAL)")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Putting together a remembrance of my husband, Francis Davis, has been a very helpful way to transition back to FRESH AIR after his death nearly three weeks ago. We knew it was coming. He was in home hospice. But it's nothing you can really be prepared for. If you're just tuning in, Francis was a jazz critic who wrote about all aspects of popular culture. He was a contributing editor at The Atlantic magazine, wrote for The New York Times, the Village Voice, The Philadelphia Inquirer and various music magazines, had seven books, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and won a Grammy for his liner notes for the 50th anniversary edition of the classic Miles Davis recording "Kind Of Blue."

We were together 47 years. There's more of his writing I want to read you and more related music I want to play. I've mostly been quoting essays about people who are recognized as groundbreaking figures. But Francis also wrote extensively about emerging musicians and composers and the avant-garde. He helped launch the careers of newcomers and rediscover musicians who'd disappeared or been forgotten. He titled one of his books "Outcats," a word coined by the pianist Paul Knopf and revived by Francis. Knopf described an outcat as, quote, "an outcast and a far-out cat combined." Francis wrote about many outcats.

Here's how Francis used the word. Quote, "by popular stereotype, all jazz musicians are outcats. But those of us within music recognize the outcat as a specific type, too self-absorbed to be part of any movement and too idiosyncratic to spearhead one, and too self-reliant to seek audience or peer approval, and too marginal in the larger scheme of things to elicit much. The word conveys undertones of exile, rootlessness, alienation and despair," unquote.

One of my favorite Francis essays was written after Johnny Cash's death and was published in The Atlantic in March 2004. Here's how it opened. Quote, "in 1956, when he recorded 'I Walk The Line' for Sun Records, Johnny Cash became an overnight sensation. But it was as many years of singing as if he knew from personal experience all of humankind's strengths and failings, as if he had both committed murder and been accepted into God's light, that made him a favorite of liberals and conservatives, MTV and the Grand Ole Opry, Gary Gilmore and Billy Graham. From song to song, he was a cowboy or a white outcast who rode with Indians, a family man or a drifter, a believer in eternal life or a condemned murderer with no tomorrows anywhere. His credibility owed as much to the moral effort involved in endlessly putting himself in others' shoes as it did to his professional savvy in putting a song across," unquote.

In another part of the essay, Francis describes Cash like this. Quote, "he was in his late 30s and already had plenty of mileage on him when he was discovered by television. Longer hair and the shadows and dents of middle age brought out the character in his face," unquote. The shadows and dents of middle age - that's an image that has always stuck with me. One of Francis' favorite Johnny Cash songs is from John Frankenheimer's 1970 film "I Walk The Line," for which Cash wrote the score. The songs reflect what's going on in the main character's mind. Francis wrote, quote, "the movie was a flop at the box office, but the film's song 'Flesh And Blood,' perhaps the single most beautiful song Cash ever wrote, and one whose lyrics could stand alone as inspired nature poetry, reached No. 1 on the country charts," unquote. Here's the song "Flesh And Blood."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FLESH AND BLOOD")

JOHNNY CASH: (Singing) Beside a singing mountain stream where the willow grew, where the silver leaf of maple sparkled in the morning view, I braided twigs of willow, made a string of buckeye beads. But flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and you're the one I need. Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and you're the one I need. I leaned against a bark of birch, and I breathed the honeydew. I saw a northbound flock of geese against a sky of baby blue. Beside the lily pads, I carved a whistle from a reed. Mother Nature's quite a lady, but you're the one I need. Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and you're the one I need.

GROSS: Thank you for listening to this remembrance of my husband, Francis Davis. This has been different from anything I've ever done on FRESH AIR, but that's because the last 2 1/2 weeks since Francis died have been unlike anything I've ever experienced. Thank you for all the emails, posts and letters I've received. Francis, my husband, my best friend, thank you for our 47 years together. You will live on in your writing and always in my heart.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FLESH AND BLOOD")

CASH: (Singing) So when the day was ended, I was still not satisfied, for I knew everything I touched would wither and would die. And love is all that will remain and grow from all these seeds. Mother Nature's quite a lady, but you're the one I need. Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and you're the one I need.

GROSS: After we take a short break, we'll hear my interview with George Clooney, who's on Broadway starring as journalist Edward R. Murrow in the stage adaptation of Clooney's 2005 film "Good Night, And Good Luck." He was just nominated for a Tony. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILL EVANS' "B MINOR WALTZ")

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. George Clooney was just nominated for a Tony. He's making his Broadway debut in "Good Night, And Good Luck." It's adapted from the 2005 film of the same name, which he directed, cowrote and costarred in. In the Broadway production, he stars as journalist Edward R. Murrow, a different role than the one he played in the film. The story is about how Murrow challenged Senator Joe McCarthy's tactic of smearing people by accusing them of being communists or associating with communists. At the time, Murrow was hosting the CBS TV news program "See It Now." Murrow and his crew decided to do a program about Lieutenant Milo Radulovich, a U.S. Air Force reservist who was kicked out for being a security risk without being told what the charges were after he refused to denounce his father and sister who were accused of being communists. In this scene from the movie, two Air Force colonels are pressuring Murrow's producer, Fred Friendly, to cancel the broadcast. Friendly is played by George Clooney.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK")

GEORGE CLOONEY: (As Fred Friendly) We are going with a story that says that the U.S. Air Force tried Milo Radulovich without one shred of evidence and found him guilty of being a security risk without his constitutional rights...

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) And you, who also have not seen the evidence, are claiming he's not a security risk. Wouldn't you guess that the people who have seen the contents of that envelope might...

CLOONEY: (As Fred Friendly) Who?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) ...Have better idea of what makes someone a danger to his country...

CLOONEY: (As Fred Friendly) Who?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) ...Or do you think...

CLOONEY: (As Fred Friendly) Who are these people, Sir?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) ...It should just be you who decides?

CLOONEY: (As Fred Friendly) Who are the people? Are they elected? Are they appointed? Do they have an axe to grind? Is it you, Sir?

GROSS: George Clooney in a scene from his 2005 film "Good Night, And Good Luck." The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for David Strathairn who played Murrow, the role now played by Clooney on Broadway. Clooney has starred in such films as "Oceans 11," Syriana," "Michael Clayton," "The Descendants," "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Hail, Caesar!" He first became famous for his role on the medical series "ER." His father is the broadcast journalist Nick Clooney, who's also a former movie host on the cable channel AMC. Here's the interview I recorded with Clooney in 2005 when the film "Good Night, And Good Luck" was released.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: George Clooney, welcome to FRESH AIR. What did Edward R. Murrow mean to you when you were growing up?

CLOONEY: My father was an anchor man, and broadcast journalism was a big part of our lives growing up. I spent most of my life as a small child on the floor of WKRC newsroom watching my father put news shows together. He was the news director. He wrote the news. And Murrow and Cronkite were heroes of his because of the two probably great moments in broadcast journalism, which was Cronkite coming back from Vietnam and saying it doesn't work and Murrow taking on McCarthy because they changed policy overnight. And for that alone, he was a hero of my father's and therefore a hero of mine.

GROSS: Now, in the movie, you don't have an actor playing McCarthy. The only time we see McCarthy is through his actual videotapes - through his television appearances...

CLOONEY: Right.

GROSS: ...Such as, you know, the hearings and the video tape that was made for the Edward R. Murrow "See It Now" broadcast. Why did you choose to have him play himself instead of having an actor portray him?

CLOONEY: In the actual story - and we were - we researched everything. I had to treat this like a journalist. I talked to my father about this, and he said, look, if you get anything wrong, you'll be marginalized, now. So we did it the old-fashioned way, which is every scene we double sourced either through books or through the real people, Joe and Shirley Wershba, Milo Radulovich or Don Hewitt, so that we were very careful with the facts. Then, we decided to do exactly what Murrow did in his show, which is use McCarthy in his own words so that, again, you couldn't have someone say, oh, we were making him look too much like a buffoon or too arch. We thought best to let him hang himself.

GROSS: Now, as an actor and director, talk a little bit about how Murrow looks on TV compared to how McCarthy looks on TV.

CLOONEY: Well, that's sort of the beauty of it. It's - in a way, the other one of those versions would be Kennedy/Nixon debate...

GROSS: Yeah. Yeah.

CLOONEY: ...You know, where the simple truth was McCarthy was pretty good at a 30-second soundbite where he could yell and scare people and talk about death and bombs and things like that. But he wasn't handsome, and he certainly wasn't proficient at the new art of television, and Murrow was the best. So that when he demanded equal time - which was 28 minutes and 28 seconds - to do his rebuttal, he holds up for about a minute, and then - he's also pretty drunk. He slurs and drags on and is - it's one of - if you see the whole half an hour...

GROSS: He's drunk?

CLOONEY: ...Rebuttal - oh, yeah, very drunk. When you see the rebuttal, it's embarrassing. I mean, it's the most unprofessional thing you've ever seen. So, it was an interesting - the moment that that happened was when they first knew they had him because the simple truth is, and the funniest thing is, Murrow going after McCarthy is not what hurt McCarthy. McCarthy turning around and accusing Murrow of being a traitor is what hurt McCarthy because everyone knew that Murrow was the guy at the top of those buildings during the London Blitz. We knew he was a hero. And so the minute you saw those methods, when he turns around and calls Murrow the cleverest of the jackal pack of communists, everybody knew that wasn't true.

GROSS: The film is so much about faces. You know, the film is shot in pretty high contrast, black and white, and there's so many close-ups of faces because it all takes place, basically, in the office and in the studio. And the faces are so interesting to look at. They're mostly - you know, mostly middle-aged and slightly younger than that and slightly older than that men, who are kind of creased and who've lived and who haven't had plastic surgery...

CLOONEY: Yeah.

GROSS: ...And it's just really wonderful to see these faces.

CLOONEY: I think the interesting thing to me was, even in the film, the score I wanted to be silence. Silence was how I would score the film. And the way you do that is by spending time on people's faces because that's how you can understand suspense. I know when you'd see films like "Fail Safe" or "12 Angry Men," there would be - tension came out of these close-ups of people's faces and watching - putting them in a difficult situation and watching them deal with it and watching it play on their face as opposed to hearing them talk about it. Now we talk about everything. Then guys didn't talk about anything. So when - so there was that sort of bravery of, you know, lighting a cigarette and looking at each other and going, alright, Butch, see you later Sundance, kind of feeling. And I love that. It's a very masculine, probably not great thing to do, but it is very romantic in a way, you know, to watch a couple of people. Watching Patty Clarkson and Robert Downey Jr. just looking at each other when they know they've got McCarthy. There's something beautiful about that. It's simple.

GROSS: You are one of the, quote, "Hollywood liberals" who is sometimes attacked by the right. Do you find it amusing when you are targeted by the right and singled out for criticism because you're a, quote, "Hollywood liberal," or is it disturbing to you?

CLOONEY: Well, no, you know, look, if you're going to stick your head out and stick your neck out, you're going to have to take some hits. I don't think anybody in their life has ever accomplished anything that they would be proud of later if they didn't take some criticism for it. Sometimes that criticism is right. I would be disturbed if I wasn't, 20 years from now, able to point back at a point in time and say, this is where I stood and what I believed in, which I think will end up proving to be pretty correct.

You know, the strangest thing to me is that the word liberal is a bad word. I'm going to keep saying it and saying it and saying it as often as I can. I don't know where we've stood on the wrong side of social issues. Now, I have many friends who are conservative, so I'm not knocking conservatives. I have a lot of very good friends who are conservatives.

But to have us losing the moral argument when we were the ones who said that women should be allowed to vote and that, you know, Blacks should be allowed to vote and sit in the front of the bus - we're the ones who said Vietnam was a mistake. You go down the list of the social issues over a long period of time, we haven't stood on the wrong side of those issues, and so I don't understand how we lose the moral argument. I think we're bad at it, us liberals. I think we're pretty weak at it right now.

GROSS: When you were growing up, your father was on TV. He had his own show. He was a news anchor. Did your father seem like a different person on camera and off?

CLOONEY: No, no, no, not really. My father's - I think one of his great qualities is that integrity has been sort of the thing that has always lasted and has lasted into his - well into his 70s. He's been the same guy. It's an interesting thing. It's more difficult being the child of someone with that kind of integrity than - I'm now thrilled, but, you know, when you're a kid and you're in a state that's still dealing with its own problems with bigotry - we'd be out at dinner, and you'd hear someone say, you know, well, that's - about those people, knowing that they were talking about Blacks, you know? And my sister and I knew that my dad was going to make a scene and walk out, so we would eat as fast as we could. We'd start to eat quick 'cause my father was going to make a scene. And I remember as a kid always wishing that maybe there was just one time he just pretended not to hear it.

GROSS: What would he do when he made a scene?

CLOONEY: Oh, he'd get up and say, you know, you're an idiot, and, how could you say something like that, and, you know, are you from the 1500s, and, you know, he would make a big scene. And I, at times, wished that he hadn't. Now I couldn't be more proud that he did. And he taught me those same lessons, which are that every time you let that go, every time you don't hear that or you purposefully ignore it just to make things easier for yourself, you are doing a disservice. And so that's why you have to fight those fights.

GROSS: We'll hear more of my 2005 interview with George Clooney after a break. He's now on Broadway, portraying Edward R. Murrow in his stage adaptation of his 2005 movie "Good Night, And Good Luck." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILL EVANS' "YOU'RE GONNA HEAR FROM ME")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with George Clooney. He's now on Broadway, starring as Edward R. Murrow in his stage adaptation of his 2005 film "Good Night, And Good Luck." Murrow was the CBS TV news journalist who challenged Senator Joe McCarthy's tactic of smearing people by accusing them of being communists or associating with communists. We recorded this interview in 2005, when the film was released.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: You grew up on a - well, your grandparents had a tobacco farm.

CLOONEY: Sure.

GROSS: So were you near that?

CLOONEY: I worked it for years. That's how you made your money in the summer when you were a kid. You know, you start by - you're topping it, and then you're chopping it and cutting it and housing it and stripping it later. You can make, you know, 3 1/2 bucks an hour, so you can make some pretty decent money. But, you know, you don't think of those consequences of tobacco at that point.

I had nine great aunts and uncles, all brothers and sisters. Six of them died of lung cancer or emphysema. Both my grandparents died of it. I'm not a smoker. I don't - you know, I was concerned with how romantic we made smoking look in the film. And so I put that commercial in just to show how - some of the lies that were perpetrated back then about how smoking was actually good for you.

GROSS: There's a lot of cigarette smoke in your movie.

CLOONEY: Yeah.

GROSS: And Edward R. Murrow died of lung cancer. He was quite a smoker. It's just amazing to see him smoking on camera or even smoking in the hallway of the office. You just can't - you can't do that anymore.

CLOONEY: You couldn't - yeah, we were the only set that had people outside the sound stage not smoking.

GROSS: (Laughter) Did you have to work hard to get the actors to inhale?

CLOONEY: No, we - every actor that we hired, I talked to, and literally, we brought them in and said, smoke. Because if you can't smoke, you can't smoke. It doesn't look right if you're faking it. And we needed people who could smoke because all these guys died of lung cancer, you know? Most of them did. It was a pretty brutal time.

GROSS: One of the many things I really like about your film is the performance by Dianne Reeves, the singer in it. And the music director for your film is Allen Sviridoff, who had been the music director for your aunt, Rosemary Clooney...

CLOONEY: Right.

GROSS: ...Who I'm an enormous fan of. I love her recordings. What did her music mean to you when you were growing up? It was not your generation.

CLOONEY: No, but I was one of those weird kids. You know, I was listening to...

GROSS: It wasn't my generation, either (laughter).

CLOONEY: No, that's right. Well, I was listening to Led Zeppelin, and I was listening to Nat Cole. You know, I had a very varied growing-up because I was on the road with, you know, them a lot, or I was always exposed to...

GROSS: Were you? You were on the road with Rosemary Clooney?

CLOONEY: When I was 20, I was Rosemary's driver and...

GROSS: Oh, you were - oh, right. I see. Yeah. Yeah.

CLOONEY: So I spent - I was around that kind of music a lot.

GROSS: Yeah.

CLOONEY: So I got to appreciate Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer.

GROSS: I see. Yeah.

CLOONEY: And I had a real appreciation of those guys - Sinatra and, you know, Nat King Cole especially, and Rosemary. And Rosemary was having - she was having her comeback at that point. And her comeback was something rather spectacular because she became the singer's singer. Singers adored her and would show up. So there was a great pride in being around her. So I was really exposed to that kind of music.

The fun part for me was, in putting this band together, Peter Martin, the pianist, is Dianne's - works with Dianne, but the rest of the guys all played on Rosemary's albums, you know? And it was fun because I got to pick the music, and we wrote one of the scenes around "How High The Moon." But the rest of the stuff, you know, the rest of the music was fun because we - I got to sit down with Allen and go, let's talk about music that we really loved and how to play it and how to do it. And so it was about simplifying things 'cause now everybody likes to show off.

I remember asking Rosemary why she's a better singer at 70 than she was at 21. 'Cause she couldn't hold the notes the way she could. She couldn't hit the notes the way - and she said, 'cause I don't have to prove I can sing anymore. And I thought that was a good acting lesson, you know, was not having to show off anymore.

GROSS: And I know exactly what she was talking about, too, because her voice was basically shot in the last couple of recordings she made, but her phrasing was so beautiful, and the emotion was so beautifully conveyed in it.

CLOONEY: When you see her taking songs that are normally sort of up-tempoed, like "Don't Fence Me In" or - and bringing it down to, like, a quarter of the speed and singing, you know, "Straighten Up And Fly Right," it's amazing.

GROSS: You stayed with your aunt when you first got to Hollywood. Did you think you were talented when you started working? Did you think you actually had something?

CLOONEY: I didn't really know whether I had any talent or not. I knew that I was, for the first time in my life, engaged, and I hadn't been. I was one of those guys who was pretty good at almost anything I tried right away, you know? Anything I wanted to do, I could pick it up pretty quickly - sports, almost any sport - but never great at anything. And then I found acting, and I thought, well, this is something that, at the very least, I'm not going to be bored by. And I know that there is no moment that you go, wow, I've finally done it. You know, you're never going to be satisfied by it because it's a constant growing process. And I got into an acting class pretty quickly, and I started working with working actors. And what you realized was - you'd be doing a scene, and you'd be holding your own with someone who's making a very good living acting - you'd realize that there's a possibility that you can actually do this for a living.

GROSS: Well, "ER" - when you got "ER," that certainly must have changed your life a lot.

CLOONEY: Sure.

GROSS: I mean, suddenly you were a star. And people become so close to you when you're on TV every week...

CLOONEY: Yeah.

GROSS: ...That there's this kind of bonding that I think people go through.

CLOONEY: It's an unusual experience because it's not like being a movie star. You haven't paid 10 bucks and you're 30 feet high and you've made it a date. You know, you've been in their homes every Thursday. So, you know, the truth is, I am a product of a great amount of luck. I create some of that luck because, you know, I did 13 pilots, and I did eight television series before that. But the simple truth is, had I done that exact same show and that exact same role and we were on Friday night instead of Thursday night at 10, I don't have a film career and I'm not sitting here with you. It requires that kind of luck. The show would never have been as popular on a Friday night as it was on a Thursday night.

GROSS: You knew something about fame. You know, your father was on TV. Rosemary Clooney, your aunt, was incredibly famous. But what surprised you most when it happened to you? What were you unprepared for?

CLOONEY: Well, it's a funny thing. There isn't a real fame school that you can go to and learn, you know? I had probably - if there's - haven't met many people better prepared for it. Because I had the great vision of watching, especially with Rosemary, how big you can get and how quickly it can be taken away. And it's not like Rosemary became less of a singer in that period of time, which showed me that it has very little to do with you. And that was an important thing to learn, an important thing to understand, which I did. But the things that you aren't prepared for are the trade-offs. No one wants to hear you complain about them, so you don't complain about them. But I would say that the significant loss of privacy is interesting.

GROSS: I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

CLOONEY: Oh, it's fun.

GROSS: My interview with George Clooney was recorded in 2005, after the release of his movie "Good Night, And Good Luck." He's now on Broadway in the stage adaptation of the film. He cowrote it and stars as Edward R. Murrow. His performance has just been nominated for a Tony.

If you'd like to catch up on FRESH AIR interviews you missed, like this week's interviews about the pronatalist movement, Project 2025 and how trauma shapes us, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of FRESH AIR interviews.

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FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our cohost is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

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