Radio and television news anchorman Chester Robert Huntley was born in Cardwell, Montana, on December 10, 1911. Although he began his education at Montana State College with plans to become a physician, he left school in 1932 when he won a scholarship to study oratory at the Cornish Schools of Arts in Seattle, Washington. This experience convinced him to alter his career plans, and in 1934 he graduated from the University of Washington with a major in speech and drama.
While in Seattle Huntley worked at station KPCB where his duties included rewriting and announcing the news. This job soon led to other reporting positions at other stations: KHO in Spokane, KGW in Portland, and KFI in Los Angeles. In 1939 Huntley joined the staff of KNX, the CBS-affiliate in Los Angeles. From 1951 to 1955 he worked for ABC. Late in 1955 he was hired by the NBC Pacific Division to work as West Coast commentator and reporter for the Today show and to broadcast his own news program on KRCA. In June 1955 NBC transferred him to their New York headquarters. His first major national assignment came in 1956 when he covered the Republican and Democratic national conventions with David Brinkley. Viewers and network news officials were so impressed with the informative and witty style of the two men that they were chosen to co-anchor NBC's evening news program in October of that year. For the next sixteen years, the Huntley-Brinkley Report was one of the most highly regarded and highly rated news programs on television, eventually becoming a virtual media institution and winning seven Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards. In addition to the Huntley-Brinkley Report, he was involved with several other news programs at NBC. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Huntley edited and narrated a series of Sunday evening news broadcasts. Variously titled Outlook, NBC Kaleidoscope, and Chet Huntley Reporting, this show presented expanded commentary on various news events and issues. Throughout the 1960s he also wrote and narrated a five-minute program of editorial comment: the daily Perspective on the News and Emphasis: Plain Talk, its weekend equivalent. Throughout his career Huntley was frequently a source of controversy when he expressed his own liberal political philosophy on issues ranging from segregation in the Little Rock, Arkansas, schools to the presidency of Richard M. Nixon. While the majority of his opinions were uttered off-camera, one observer charged him with editorializing on the air with his eyebrows.
Huntley retired from NBC on July 31, 1970, to launch Big Sky, a 15,000-acre resort in Montana. He died of cancer on March 20, 1974.
