Andy Rooney retires from “60 Minutes” after 33 years

A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney ends its weekly appearances on CBS’ 60 Minutes.

 

On Sunday, October 2, the veteran radio and television writer, Andy Rooney, is expected to make his last regular attendance, he discusses the decision on  his 1,097th signature essay.

The 60 minutes‘ curmudgeon told TVNewser in June 2010 he wanted to work on the show until he “dropped dead“. “Until somebody tells me different, I’m not going to quit,” he said.

“There’s nobody like Andy and there never will be. He’ll hate hearing this, but he’s an American original.” He “will always have the ability to speak his mind on ’60 Minutes’ when the urge hits him,” said Jeff Fager, chairman CBS News and the executive producer of 60 Minutes.

 

 

Andy Rooney, who turns 93 on January 14, 2012, started to work with CBS as a writer for Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts in 1949 and began to appear on the show (started in 1968) in 1978 with an essay about the reporting of automobile fatalities on the Independence Day weekend.

His end-of-show part, Three Minutes or So With Andy Rooney (later A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney), began as a summer replacement for the debate segment Point/Counterpoint featuring Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick.

Andy Rooney began his career in journalism in 1942 writing for Stars and Stripes newspaper. He was one of six correspondents who flew on the first American bombing raid over Germany (1943) and one of the first American journalists to visit the Nazi concentration camps.

“I can’t deny that The War–we call World War II ‘The War,’ as though there had never been another–was the ultimate experience for anyone in it,” he wrote in his book My War.

His wife, Marguerite, died in 2004 of heart failure, after 62 years of marriage. He has four children, the twins  Emily and Martha, a daughter Ellen, and a son, Brian.

At 60 Minutes longevity seems to be a habit. Mike Wallace, 93, worked full-time until 2006, then occasionally until 2008. Don Hewitt, the show creator and executive producer, was 81 when he retired in 2004. He died in 2009.

 

Andy Rooney has become known for his folksy, often curmudgeonly, TV essays on life, culture and news events.

 

He presents satire on everyday life (the cost of groceries, annoying relatives, faulty Christmas presents) essays on life, culture and news events, or politics.

His essays have been published in books, Common Nonsense (2002), Years of Minutes, (2003). He has won three Emmy Awards for his essays, and a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2003.

He has been target of parodies and impersonations (Frank Caliendo, Rich Little, Beavis), and served as subject for one of Saturday Night Live’s parodies on NBC network.

The Andy Rooney Television Collection – His Best Minutes (1993) and Andy Rooney On Almost Everything, Things That Bother Andy Rooney, and Andy Rooney’s Solutions (2006) include his commentaries and field reports.

The writer was criticized he does not want to adapt to the modern times and he is out of touch with contemporary culture (contemporary music). He said never had heard of Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Usher in 2009 and said young people probably did not listen to Ella Fitzgerald.

 

 

Found dull by some people, but in the same outstanding, interesting and funny by others, Andy Rooney remains a living legend and a respectable active old person.

 

He has always considered himself a writer who incidentally appears on television behind his famous walnut table, made by himself.

“The process by which each of us acquires a reputation isn’t independent of our character. It almost always depends more on the decisions we make than on chance occurrences,” he wrote in his book, Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit.

Andy Rooney on vacation: “Avoiding work is hard work”.

Andy Rooney on presents: ”In spite of the old sayings to the contrary, the best presents come in large packages.”

Andy Rooney on cats: ”I have never met a cat I liked.”

Andy Rooney on commerce: ”There are idiots who will buy anything as long as it costs enough.” “Money is a strange concept, right? What ever happened to the beads and shells?”

Andy Rooney on politics: “The best president of my lifetime? Rutherford B. Hayes.”

Andy Rooney on opinion: ”If you wonder what anyone thinks of you, consider what you think of them.” ”Not everyone has a right to his own opinion. If he doesn’t know the facts, his opinion doesn’t count.”

Andy Rooney on sports: “Darryl “Chocolate Thunder” Dawkins was the best player to ever grace a court.”

Andy Rooney on medical advances: “Pray you never live this long.”

Andy Rooney on Heaven: ”My idea of heaven would be to die and awaken in a place that has all my lost things.”

 

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