JOHN FACENDA DIES; EMINENT ANCHORMAN

John Facenda, an anchorman who dominated local television news for two decades, died yesterday at the age of 71.

Facenda died at 8:40 a.m. yesterday at Mercy Catholic Medical Center, Fitzgerald Division, in Darby. His family declined to disclose the cause of his death.

Every other anchor who has reached the pinnacle in Philadelphia - Vince Leonard, Larry Kane, Jim Gardner - was preceded in pre-eminence by Facenda. When Facenda first sat down to anchor the news at WCAU-TV (Channel 10), the very term anchorman had not even been invented.

Facenda was a rare human being: the scarce sort who was both professionaly successful and privately and personally admirable. His courtesy, kindness, generosity, and class were legendary in a trade in which those virtues are not always in abundant supply.

In a medium where looks are prized, Facenda prospered by his voice. His mellow and mellifluent tones, the pace and measure of his cadences, the compelling sincerity and ringing drama of his delivery, have never been approached by any other broadcaster active here. As the original narrator of NFL Films, Facenda was for a score of years the very voice of pro football, the chronicler of gridiron greatness for millions of nationwide listeners who maybe never even knew his name.

Mayor Goode called Facenda "a monument in this city. I grew up feeling that the only newsperson in Philadelphia was John Facenda. I trusted him."

City Council president Joseph E. Coleman called Facenda "a distinct voice. He was a fine reporter, a fine gentleman, a man of integrity."

John Thomas Ralph Augustine James Facenda was born on Aug. 8, 1913, in Portsmouth, Va., the son of a civil engineer. He was the middle child among his six brothers and six sisters.

His father came to Philadelphia in 1922 to help build the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. His father brought the Facenda family here on July 4, 1926, the day the bridge was dedicated. Young John Facenda was 12 years old when he first arrived in the city where he would achieve fame and fortune.

Facenda graduated from Roman Catholic High School in 1931 and entered Villanova University as an engineering student during the depths of the Depression. The Facenda family was hard hit by the Depression, which virtually halted the highway and bridge construction projects in which Facenda's father specialized.

"I can remember," Facenda once said, "my mother sacrificing her own meals so the kids could eat. She would say she had a little acido, a little acid in her stomach, and that she wasn't really hungry anyway, only because she knew there wasn't enough for all of us."

LEARNING HOW TO SPEAK

The facility in speech that characterized Facenda as an adult began with a childhood game at the family's sparse table.

"To keep our minds off our growling stomachs and tattered clothes," Facenda recalled, "my father invented a game of cards. He wrote a subject matter on each card. We would sit around the dinner table or sometimes in the living room and we would each take a card from the deck. When it got to be your turn, you had to talk on the subject matter of the card for a minute. You could ad lib on it in both English and Italian."

Facenda was forced to drop out of Villanova, probably because of economic circumstances. He went to work for the Philadelphia Public Ledger, a now- defunct newspaper that also owned radio station WHAT. He broke into broadcasting by accident when the announcer for a WHAT program called ''Scholastic Sports Review" got sick and Facenda replaced him that day.

Facenda was hired by WHAT as an announcer and general utility man. When he first went on the radio, he was so nervous he could scarcely hold his script. To steady himself, he thought of his mother and decided to talk straight to her. Later he put his mother's picture up in his booth beside the station's call letters. Here he developed the magnetic technique, which served him so well later on TV, of thinking of and talking to his audience as only one person, not many.

WORKED IN NEW YORK

Facenda's duties at WHAT included knocking ice off the station's antenna during the winter. He quit when the station manager would not reimburse him $5 for a pair of new pigskin gloves he tore while climbing the tower.

Facenda went to New York City for a couple of years, the only stretch of his broadcasting career that he spent outside Philadelphia, to work as program director for a radio operation called Ticker News Service. Returning here, he joined WIP radio in 1935. He remained there 17 years.

The concern and empathy that Facenda later extended to his TV audience first manifested itself during his radio days. As World War II ended, Facenda provided precise details on the arrival of homecoming troop ships. For many wives, fiancees, and mothers, he supplied the first news of their man coming home. "I still get some letters from those people," Facenda said almost 20 years later. "Some of them named their sons after me."

TV was still in diapers when Facenda began free-lancing for the new medium. He was still a WIP announcer when he anchored his first newscast for WCAU-TV on Sept. 13, 1948. The fledgling station had been on the air for less than four months, and its broadcast day lasted only from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m.

In 1952, the year the term anchorman was invented to describe Walter Cronkite's early work for CBS, Facenda finally left WIP and went to work for Channel 10 full-time. He had already developed, at the radio station, what became probably the most famous sign-off statement ever used by a TV anchor here: "Have a nice night tonight and a good day tomorrow. Goodnight, all."

ORIGIN OF HIS SIGN-OFF

Facenda once told how he coined those 12 familiar words:

"I was finishing up a newscast at WIP radio and I was a little light in joining the network. My tagline had always been, 'Goodnight, all,' but I threw in the rest that night. Three days later I received a letter from a woman who told me to go on saying that because, she said, you never know how many people there are who have no one to say goodnight to. She had been bedridden for the previous 13 years."

Facenda's sign-off soon became so famous that it was used in a 1956 movie, The Burglar, that was filmed in Philadelphia. Jayne Mansfield and Dan Duryea portrayed burglars whose target was a rich old woman who lived in a mansion. In a regular night routine of hers, she was shown watching Facenda delivering his tagline on TV before she went to sleep.

"For thousands and thousands of people, that was their signal to go to bed," said Joe Daley, a Channel 10 videotape producer who was Facenda's scriptwriter for many years.

Facenda was on the air before most Philadelphians owned a TV set. "For many people, John was the first thing they saw on their first little nine-inch set," said Herb Clarke, who worked as the Channel 10 weatherman with Facenda for 14 years.

Through the 1950s and most of the 1960s, Facenda was the king of local news, often commanding an audience larger than those of Channel 3 (now called KYW) and Channel 6 (now called WPVI) combined. His newscasts, only five minutes long when they began, expanded to 15 minutes and then to half an hour as his popularity increased and the number of TV sets increased in this area.

At Channel 10, Facenda worked with several people who later became well- known on the networks, notably Ed McMahon, now Johnny Carson's sidekick on the "Tonight" show, and Jack Whitaker, currently an ABC sports announcer. He was a role model for many, including Clarke, who recalled becoming Facenda's weatherman in 1958:

"John was a great teacher. I was a raw country kid, and John was a polished urbanite. I learned a lot of social graces just by going out with him for dinner. People would come over and they could be rude or obnoxious and John would make them feel like a million dollars."

Facenda's unfailing courtesy was legendary. "A cavalier, the ultimate gentleman," WCAU announcer Gene Crane called him.

Tales of Facenda's generosity abounded. Daley told of accompanying Facenda, a devout Roman Catholic, to a church where the monsignor asked Facenda for the time. After learning that the monsignor had no watch, said Daley, "John took his watch off and gave it to him on the spot."

A GENEROUS NATURE

Robert Hosking, former vice president and general manager of Channel 10, said Facenda once gave a blank check to a co-worker who had serious medical problems in his family. "John told him," said Hosking, "not to worry about paying it back. He just told him that if he made it out for more than $10,000, to tell John so that he could cover it."

As a newsman, said WCAU correspondent Edie Huggins, "His credibility was at the top. If John Facenda said the sky would open at midnight and Martians would come down, people would be outside to watch."

Just as he had begun in radio by accident, Facenda became the narrator for NFL Films by accident. It happened in 1965 when he and Whitaker dropped into the now-defunct RDA Club.

To boost business that night, the tavern owner was showing some pro football game action assembled by NFL Films, which had recently set up shop as a producer for the National Football League. Fascinated by the slow-motion sequences, Facenda said, "I started to rhapsodize about how beautiful it was. Ed Sabol, the man who founded NFL Films, happened to be at the bar. He came up to me and asked, 'If I give you a script, could you repeat what you just did?' I said I would try."

Facenda went on from there to narrate NFL Films' game footage and highlight reels for two decades, his rich, dramatic voice a perfect complement to the long passes, thrilling runs and violent line play. Always the perfectionist, he marked his NFL Film scripts with musical notations for his guidance: lento (slow down), presto (speed up), glissando (glide through it).

Facenda also taped the narration for the sound and light show that is presented during each Christmas season at John Wanamaker in Center City.

As an anchor, Facenda's star did not begin to dim until the end of the 1960s, when Vince Leonard anchored Channel 3 into first place in the news ratings. By 1972, Larry Kane anchored Channel 6 into first place and Facenda slipped to last place locally. That same year, WCAU brought in Judd Hambrick
from Honolulu to co-anchor with Facenda, who had always been a solo act before.

Facenda, who seldom spoke ill of anyone, held Hambrick in contempt. "I tried to get along with him," Facenda said, "but he spent more time fixing his hair than in learning how to pronounce Bala Cynwyd."

Facenda, nearing 60 years of age, saw a youth movement closing in on him. Shortly after Channel 10 dumped Hambrick and replaced him with another young co-anchor, Mike Tuck, Facenda stepped down. His last night as a news anchor was March 23, 1973.

Facenda said he wasn't sacked. "It was my decision as much as anyone else's," he said later. "But let's not kid ourselves about the fact that I was very much aware of the swell going in the opposite direction: the new faces, particularly those who were younger. That was the tide of the future, and I wasn't going to fight it. I thought that was a good time to go."

Facenda's departure was an unpopular move that angered many Channel 10 viewers and handicapped the station in the ratings race for years afterward. Inquirer columnist Tom Fox spoke for many when he wrote:

"There hasn't been very much dignity in television news in this town since John Facenda, the scholarly old anchor at Channel 10, was taken off the screen. After Facenda, television news became a Disneyland - a series of schlocky gimmicks and painted dolls and guys who comb their hair with dryers."

For several years after stepping away from the anchor's chair, Facenda served as host and narrator of various Channel 10 public affairs series such as "Eye On . . .," the predecessor of the current "10 Around Town," and ''Sunday Edition," later called "Credo." His last assignment for WCAU was helping cover the Mummers Parade this year. He retained his touch, as Kane recalled in describing how he and Facenda co-anchored Channel 10's coverage of the 1979 visit of Pope John Paul II to Philadelphia:

"John had not been on the air live for almost seven years. He was a little nervous getting back on the air, but during the Mass, he whispered to me, 'I'll take it.' I decided, I think I'll defer to the master. He went on to describe the Mass so beautifully that it brought tears to my eyes. He came back to the moment."

Twelve days before he died, Facenda was presented the Governors Award for lifetime achievement by the Philadelphia chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Facenda was precise in planning and efficient in execution as he sought to meet every test. Once he described being present at his father's deathbed:

"I closed his eyes when he died. He was a magnificent man, a man who taught me how to live. And he taught me, I most certainly hope when the time comes, how to die."

Facenda is survived by his widow, Dorothy, of Havertown, and their son, John Facenda Jr., of Lansdowne. His funeral will be at 10 a.m. tomorrow, with a Mass of Christian burial at 11 a.m., at St. Bernadette's Roman Catholic Church in Drexel Hill.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in Facenda's name to Mercy Catholic Medical Center in Darby.