Author, "Stars Came Tumbling"
ROBERT BROWN
Bob Brown spent most of his fifty years in broadcasting as an ABC News Correspondent. In his early years at ABC, he was a New York-based correspondent for the ABC Evening News with Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters, later titled World News Tonight, with Frank Reynolds, Peter Jennings, and Max Robinson. In 1980, he was transferred to the staff of the news magazine 20/20, where he remained for the rest of his career. He is the recipient of six Emmy awards from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He won an Alfred I. duPont award for story entitled "The Gift of Life," about a desperately wounded Vietnam soldier and the Army surgeon who had saved his life, then wondered whether he should have let him die.
He was honored with the Investigative Reporters Award and an American Bar Association Gavel Award for "To Prove Them Innocent," a report that prompted the release of three men wrongly imprisoned in Pennsylvania. He also received an honor from the American Women in Radio and Television for his profile of a powerful, ambitious, 96-year-old woman who runs a furniture empire in Nebraska. He was given a National Headliner Award for an Outstanding Feature by a Television Network for "Children of Yesterday," about a West German town tracing Holocaust survivors who, as children, had been driven from the town. He was a member of the ensemble of reporters who won a George Foster Peabody Award for a 24-hour ABC News Special on the dawn of the new millennium.
Many of his stories and profiles inspired Hollywood screenplays. Films based on his stories include the children's classic "Fly Away Home," about an inventor who led a flock of geese on a migration from Canada; "Door-to-Door," which won a best actor Emmy for William H. Macy, about a door-to-door salesman (Bill Porter) with cerebral palsy who became an inspiration to the clients he visited as he walked his routes; and "The Pursuit of Happyness," for which Will Smith received an Academy Award 'Best Actor' nomination, about a homeless man who became a millionaire stock broker.
His travels as a correspondent took him to all parts of the world, and to every continent except Antarctica.
In Vienna, Austria, he tracked the disposition of art stolen by Nazis during World War II. Numerous assignments in London and Paris included profiling the great British film director David Lean in London; and the controversial director Costa-Gavras at his studio in Paris.
In Istanbul, Samsun, Ankara, and Malatya, Turkey, he investigated the life of the man who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II; in Seville, Spain, he covered an historic celebration of the voyage of Christopher Columbus. He reported on the mass killings of members of the Baha'i faith in Iran. He traveled throughout Sicily with the family of a boy who was shot by criminals while on vacation, and whose organs were donated to Italian children. In the Dominican Republic, he told the story of a medical mission that changed the lives of two unlikely missionaries and of a charismatic young boy in need of their help.
In Scotland, he profiled a murder mystery writer, Anne Perry, who was revealed to have committed a murder herself as a teenager. He went to Australia to report on a study of brain functions at the University of Sydney in which a scientist was hoping to produce savant-like skills by repressing some brain activity with trans-cranial magnetic stimulation. In New Zealand, he visited the photographic studio of the world famous children's photographer Anne Geddes.
He traveled to a village on the plains of northern India to visit a girls' school that was funded with tips collected by a New York City taxi driver in memory of his mother. In Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, Mr. Brown reported on an outcast, the daughter of an American serviceman and a Vietnamese mother, who rose to become one of Vietnam's most popular entertainers and discovered her father in the process.
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mr. Brown also worked behind the Iron Curtain. He reported from East Germany on what was believed to have been the most polluted town on earth. In Moscow, he witnessed an extraordinary meeting between veterans of the Vietnam War and Soviet veterans of the Afghan conflict, men whose common bond was that their sacrifices were not adequately recognized when they returned from war, nor were their traumas adequately treated (Subsequently, he investigated the inadequate record-keeping that led to the government denial of benefits earned by many U.S. combat veterans). In Rostov-on-Don, near the Sea of Azov, he reported on the man believed at the time to have been the world's worst serial killer, whose earliest crimes were kept hidden by the Soviet political system.
In the world of music, theater, and entertainment, Mr. Brown has profiled Ray Charles, George Burns, Billy Crystal, George Carlin, Willie Nelson, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Reba McEntire, Sammy Davis, Jr., Fleetwood Mac, Merle Haggard, Lionel Richie, Waylon Jennings, Erma Bombeck, Warren Beatty, Sir Georg Solti, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt, Burt Reynolds, Steve Martin, Kris Kristofferson, John Williams, Mel Tormé, Carly Simon, Diane Schuur, Dana Carvey, James Caan, Carol Burnett, Ron Howard, Raquel Welch (twice), Kenny Rogers, James Garner, Minnie Pearl, Josh Groban, Henry Mancini, Tom Jones, Bob Newhart, the playwright August Wilson, and Stephen Sondheim.
He has lectured as part of the Park Foundation Distinguished Visitor Series at Ithaca College and, on numerous occasions, as a guest at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Before he joined ABC in 1977, his television reporting career was spent at KOTV in Tulsa; KHOU-TV in Houston; and WFAA-TV in Dallas. He served two years in the U.S. Army (1968-1970) as a Broadcast Information Specialist.
He retired from broadcasting in 2010. 'Stars Came Tumbling' is his first novel, inspired by work he did in Texas, tracing the legends and history of the state while at WFAA-TV.
Many of his stories and profiles inspired Hollywood screenplays. Films based on his stories include the children's classic "Fly Away Home," about an inventor who led a flock of geese on a migration from Canada; "Door-to-Door," which won a best actor Emmy for William H. Macy, about a door-to-door salesman (Bill Porter) with cerebral palsy who became an inspiration to the clients he visited as he walked his routes; and "The Pursuit of Happyness," for which Will Smith received an Academy Award 'Best Actor' nomination, about a homeless man who became a millionaire stock broker.
His travels as a correspondent took him to all parts of the world, and to every continent except Antarctica.
In Vienna, Austria, he tracked the disposition of art stolen by Nazis during World War II. Numerous assignments in London and Paris included profiling the great British film director David Lean in London; and the controversial director Costa-Gavras at his studio in Paris.
In Istanbul, Samsun, Ankara, and Malatya, Turkey, he investigated the life of the man who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II; in Seville, Spain, he covered an historic celebration of the voyage of Christopher Columbus. He reported on the mass killings of members of the Baha'i faith in Iran. He traveled throughout Sicily with the family of a boy who was shot by criminals while on vacation, and whose organs were donated to Italian children. In the Dominican Republic, he told the story of a medical mission that changed the lives of two unlikely missionaries and of a charismatic young boy in need of their help.
In Scotland, he profiled a murder mystery writer, Anne Perry, who was revealed to have committed a murder herself as a teenager. He went to Australia to report on a study of brain functions at the University of Sydney in which a scientist was hoping to produce savant-like skills by repressing some brain activity with trans-cranial magnetic stimulation. In New Zealand, he visited the photographic studio of the world famous children's photographer Anne Geddes.
He traveled to a village on the plains of northern India to visit a girls' school that was funded with tips collected by a New York City taxi driver in memory of his mother. In Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, Mr. Brown reported on an outcast, the daughter of an American serviceman and a Vietnamese mother, who rose to become one of Vietnam's most popular entertainers and discovered her father in the process.
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mr. Brown also worked behind the Iron Curtain. He reported from East Germany on what was believed to have been the most polluted town on earth. In Moscow, he witnessed an extraordinary meeting between veterans of the Vietnam War and Soviet veterans of the Afghan conflict, men whose common bond was that their sacrifices were not adequately recognized when they returned from war, nor were their traumas adequately treated (Subsequently, he investigated the inadequate record-keeping that led to the government denial of benefits earned by many U.S. combat veterans). In Rostov-on-Don, near the Sea of Azov, he reported on the man believed at the time to have been the world's worst serial killer, whose earliest crimes were kept hidden by the Soviet political system.
In the world of music, theater, and entertainment, Mr. Brown has profiled Ray Charles, George Burns, Billy Crystal, George Carlin, Willie Nelson, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Reba McEntire, Sammy Davis, Jr., Fleetwood Mac, Merle Haggard, Lionel Richie, Waylon Jennings, Erma Bombeck, Warren Beatty, Sir Georg Solti, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt, Burt Reynolds, Steve Martin, Kris Kristofferson, John Williams, Mel Tormé, Carly Simon, Diane Schuur, Dana Carvey, James Caan, Carol Burnett, Ron Howard, Raquel Welch (twice), Kenny Rogers, James Garner, Minnie Pearl, Josh Groban, Henry Mancini, Tom Jones, Bob Newhart, the playwright August Wilson, and Stephen Sondheim.
He has lectured as part of the Park Foundation Distinguished Visitor Series at Ithaca College and, on numerous occasions, as a guest at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Before he joined ABC in 1977, his television reporting career was spent at KOTV in Tulsa; KHOU-TV in Houston; and WFAA-TV in Dallas. He served two years in the U.S. Army (1968-1970) as a Broadcast Information Specialist.
He retired from broadcasting in 2010. 'Stars Came Tumbling' is his first novel, inspired by work he did in Texas, tracing the legends and history of the state while at WFAA-TV.