- Alex Dreier
Alex Dreier (
June 26 1916 ,Honolulu, Hawaii -March 11 2000 ,Rancho Mirage, California ) was a news reporter and commentator who worked withNBC during the 1940s.He was covering
Berlin for United Press when he joined NBC in 1941. During his year in Berlin he was under surveillance by theGestapo , and he left the city one day before the Pearl Harbor attack.His commentary aired on NBC on Saturdays from 1942 to 1945 and weekdays from 1951 to 1956. Known as Chicago's "Man on the Go," Dreier was the city's top TV anchor during his years on ABC owned-and-operated
WBKB-TV .From 1959 to 1964 he co-hosted the television program Championship Bridge with Charles Goren.
Alex showed great courage at a time of extreme racial tension on Chicago's South Side, when major streets (such as Ashland Ave. in the 7100 block in the mid 1960s) served as defacto racial dividing lines. If a black family dared move even one block across one of these lines, the neighborhood would react as though it were under military siege (in part because they knew predator real estate agents would quickly move in to "change" the entire neighborhood, resulting in a considerable drop in area home prices, then in the area of $17,000, tops. The longer you waited to sell, the less you would get for your house. Systematized racism, one might say). One night, Alex began the most memorable broadcast of his career with words something like, "The streets of one South Side Chicago neighborhood are quiet tonight, because of the decision of one black family" (not to move in west of Ashland after all). Alex then went on to blast the white demonstrators who gathered around this black family's house in the strongest of possible terms. Immediate pressure was put upon his sponsor, Meister Brau Beer. The then popular beer was thereafter removed from many white neighborhood taverns and liquor stores in the area. The white backlash against this broadcast probably ended Alex's a career as a news anchorman in Chicago. Dreier moved to California in 1967, where he worked in the Los Angeles market for
KTTV and also began a new career as an actor in many films and TV shows between 1968 and 1979. He served as chairman of the board for the Annenberg Center for Health Sciences and as a board member of the Eisenhower Medical Center. In 1989 he was inducted into the Illinois Broadcasters Hall of Fame.External links
* [http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/stories/mcneil.htm Reaction of children listening to Alex Dreier during WWII]
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