The Vault

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Some call Studs Terkel an author, some an oral historian, some a TV and radio pioneer, others still a political radical. But to Chicago, he is widely considered one of the greatest living legends.

Terkel celebrated his 95th birthday on Wednesday. In his honor, we are re-running a 1989 CBS 2 special on the man behind the legend.

To this day, if you see Studs Terkel walking down the street, he'll likely be wearing his trademark red checked shirt and red socks. If there's a camera, he has always had a way of hamming it up. He's known for taking buses and cabs instead of driving a car – which he never learned how to do.

But more famously, Terkel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and acclaimed radio documentarian. He has been an actor, disc jockey, and television star. He is an expert on all sorts of music, from blues to classical.

He is a proud longtime resident of the Uptown neighborhood, and has said he was bothered by the fact that his street is not as gritty as much of the rest of the neighborhood.

He has a law degree from the University of Chicago, but never had occasion to use it.

Instead, he became a local pioneer, first as an actor in radio soap operas, and later, as star of the groundbreaking, early network TV show, "Studs' Place." But ABC dropped the show in 1952, after Terkel had been blacklisted for his left-wing politics, which he refused to deny.

Terkel settled in at WFMT radio, where for 45 years his eclectic show featured folk, blues and gospel music along with probing interviews of acclaimed artists and ordinary people. Management there gave him complete editorial control of his program. After ending his run as a daily radio host in 1997, he began contributing interviews for WBEZ radio.

Terkel also became famous for his oral histories, collected through interviews with everyone from socialites to public housing residents. That resulted in captivating depictions of Chicago in the book Division Street: America (1967), a forum for everyone from gravediggers to hairstylists to "talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do" in Working (1974), and most recently, frank discussions of death in Will the Circle Be Unbroken (2001). He won a Pulitzer Prize for his oral history of World War II, The Good War (1984). And these are among a total of a dozen books.

Collecting oral histories is a tradition Terkel continues, still armed only with a portable tape recorder.

His memoir, "Touch and Go" is due in bookstores this autumn.

But there is far more to Studs Terkel than the legends, lore and quirks that everyone knows. In this 1989 documentary, producer Scott Craig looked back on Terkel's career as a media pioneer, accompanied him on his daily routine through Chicago's streets both rough and pretty, and talked with some of his closest friends, including another Chicago legend -- Mike Royko.

Studs Terkel can be called brilliant, quirky, radical and most of all, unique. Join him in some of his daily experiences.
 VIDEO: Meet Studs Terkel, A Chicagoan Like No Other

For the documentary, Studs Terkel showed CBS 2 his radio show in production and his Uptown neighborhood home, learn about his family history, and go with him to some places that were important to him in his younger days.
 VIDEO: Learn About Studs Terkel, How He Became A Local Legend

Studs Terkel has become a legendary oral historian. Find out how he practices his craft, and hear what some of his friends had to say about him, including the late, great Mike Royko.
 VIDEO: Learn About Studs Terkel's Oral Histories, Meet His Friends

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