When man first walked on the moon, the three major U.S. television networks provided extensive coverage of the historic Apollo 11 mission with star-studded broadcasts.
As part of the “entertainment fill,” ABC brought in acclaimed writers Rod Serling and Isaac Asimov for their thoughts, while NBC turned to author Michael Crichton and poet Rod McKuen.
CBS’ coverage was by famously anchored by Walter Cronkite and featured his exclusive interview with former President Lyndon B. Johnson. It also included an Orson Welles narrated documentary, A History of Space Journeys, as well as Mike Wallace’s interview with Welles in London on his reflections on The War of the Worlds radio broadcast of 30 years earlier.
A History of Space Journeys included clips from a 1902 French movie based on Jules Verne’s A Trip to the Moon; a 1929 German movie, Woman on the Moon; and scenes from the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials, as well as Destination Moon and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Welles concluded his narration by saying, “Now, the moon has yielded, not merely to man’s imagination, but to his actual presence. But for the science fiction writers and filmmakers, there remain other challenges to pose to man.”
Immediately after, Cronkite talked with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey) about these new challenges.
Cronkite: “Well, Arthur, you must have been particularly interested in seeing that Orson Welles film just then, and seeing some excerpts
from your own movie.”Clarke: “It brought quite a few memories, sitting through some of those 20-, 30-, 40-year old movies.”
Cronkite: “You know, it really is remarkable how close all of this came to reality. The only thing they didn’t seem to contemplate was that the United Nations was going to be in the act, and we would have a space treaty. We wouldn’t be claiming the moon. But in a sense we did, in claiming it for all mankind, as opposed to claiming it for the United States itself.”
Clarke: “I wrote a trend of that 20 years ago in my first lunar landing novel. I coined the phrase, ‘We shall take no frontiers into space.’ And I think that’s the way it will be.”
Sadly, the CBS News documentary A History of Space Journeys is not commercially available.
Six years after the Apollo 11 moon landing, Welles narrated a documentary for NASA, Who’s Out There?, which delved into the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
In 1983, Welles narrated The Greatest Adventure — The Story of Man’s Voyage to the Moon, which utilized NASA footage of the Apollo missions.
(Note: CBS News streaming service, CBSN, will rebroadcast Cronkite’s account of the moon landing and moonwalk on Saturday, July 20, at 1:17 p.m. and 7:56 p.m. PT.)
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