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| - Benjamin Franklin Grauer (June 2, 1908 – May 31, 1977) was an American radio and TV personality, following a career as a child actor in the 1920s, both in film and on Broadway. He started his career in David Warfield's production of The Return of Peter Grimm. Among his early credits were roles in films directed by D.W. Griffith. Grauer was born in Staten Island, New York. After graduating from Townsend Harris High School, he received his B.A. from the City College of New York in 1930. Grauer started in radio as an actor, but soon became part of the broadcasting staff at the National Broadcasting Company. He was the main announcer for the NBC Symphony Broadcasts on radio and TV from 1940 till 1954. Arturo Toscanini said he was his favorite announcer. Grauer's other close personal associations in broadcasting included Walter Winchell and Eleanor Roosevelt. It is for announcing the Toscanini radio concerts that Grauer is best known to modern classical music buffs. Several reissues of them on CD have included those announcements, to give the listener the feeling that he/she is listening to the NBC Symphony radio broadcasts exactly as they sounded when first aired. However, on the videocassettes and dvd's of Toscanini's television concerts, Grauer's voice has been replaced by that of Martin Bookspan. This was done because the music tracks now heard are not taken from the actual 1948-1952 television audio, which was very inferior, but from live, hi-fi magnetic tape sound recordings made of these very same concerts at the studio. They are exactly synchronized to the visual images so that it now appears that these programs were made with high-fidelity sound. In order to maintain a complete illusion of superior sound, the announcements had to be redone; the difference in audio quality between Grauer's announcements and the music tracks as they are now heard would have been blatantly obvious. Starting in 1932, Grauer covered the Olympic Games, presidential inaugurations, and international events. He married interior designer Melanie Kahane in 1954. Ben Grauer is best remembered by TV viewers of the baby boomer generation as the onetime NBC radio and TV host of the annual New Year's Eve broadcasts live from Times Square. For decades, these broadcasts were part of the NBC Tonight Show, where he worked not only with Johnny Carson, but his predecessors. During his 40-year broadcast career, he hosted over half a dozen TV programs on NBC including game shows, quiz shows, concerts and news programs. His career at NBC ended in 1973, from which he went to CBS, joining Guy Lombardo's broadcasts until both Grauer's and Lombardo's deaths in 1977.In the decade before his death, Grauer also collected material for a projected history of prices and pricing, with special attention to book prices. He was active in several professional journalistic organizations as well as the Grolier Club. Grauer always had a great interest in the graphic arts; he even printed his own Christmas cards.An archival recording of Grauer's voice, calling, "Here It Is," begins Harry Shearer's Le Show., New York. (en)
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