Sander Vanocur

Life and career

Vanocur was born Alexander Vinocur in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Rose (Millman) and Louis Vinocur, a lawyer. His family is of Russian Jewish descent. Vanocur moved to Peoria, Illinois when he was twelve years old. After attending Western Military Academy in Alton, Illinois, he earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the Northwestern University School of Speech (1950). He began his journalism career as a reporter on the London staff of The Manchester Guardian and also did general reporting for The New York Times.

Broadcast journalism career

Described as "one of the country's most prominent political reporters during the 1960s," Vanocur served as White House correspondent and national political correspondent for NBC News in the 1960s and early 1970s. He was one of the questioners at the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960 and was also chosen as one of the questioners in the 1992 presidential debate as well as one of NBC's "four horsemen," its floor reporters at the political conventions in the 1960s—the other three were John Chancellor, Frank McGee, and Edwin Newman. While White House correspondent during the Kennedy administration, Vanocur was one of the first reporters to publicly ask Kennedy to justify the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Vanocur also dubbed Kennedy's coterie the "Irish mafia."

Later, Vanocur covered the 1968 United States presidential election in which Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Vanocur, who had interviewed Kennedy on June 4, 1968 shortly before the Democratic candidate was shot, reported on the incident from The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California for the entire night. On the final night of the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, during a convention-wrapping Thursday night round-table discussion with his fellow NBC floor reporters in the vacated folding chairs on the convention hall floor, Vanocur suggested that the Republicans had "kissed off the black vote" in 1968, a comment which caused a media uproar in the ensuing week.

Vanocur also served as host of First Tuesday, a monthly newsmagazine that premiered in 1969 and continued after Vanocur left the network. His work at NBC earned him a place on the Nixon administration's "enemies list".

After leaving NBC in 1971, Vanocur worked for PBS and as a television writer for The Washington Post. He joined ABC News in 1977 and worked there until 1991, holding various positions, including Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, Senior Correspondent in Buenos Aires, and anchor for Business World, the first regularly scheduled weekly business program. He covered the 1997, 1998, and 1999 World Economic Summits and was Chief Overview Correspondent during the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. In 1984, Vanocur moderated the Vice Presidential debate between incumbent George H. W. Bush and Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. He made a cameo appearance as himself in the movie Dave and was one of the major performers, again playing himself, in the sci-fi television special Without Warning as one of the main news anchors linking the various scenes together.

Teaching career

He was professor of Communications at Duke University.

Television hosting career

For two seasons (1969-1970), Mr. Vanocur hosted the TV news show First Tuesday.

Vanocur is currently the host of two of the History Channel's primetime series: Movies in Time and History's Business.

Family

Vanocur married his first wife, fashion designer Edith Pick, in 1956, and they had two sons, Nicholas and Christopher Vanocur. His son, Chris Vanocur, is a television news reporter and anchor and was a local news anchor in Salt Lake City. After Edith's death, in 1975, Vanocur subsequently married Virginia Backus Wood.