Remembering Studs Terkel on His 100th Birthday


Studs Terkel would have been 100 years old today. We go to the vault for interviews with Studs from many different periods in his life on Chicago Tonight at 7:00 pm.

Studs Terkel was a legendary Chicago author, actor, interviewer and agitator. He hosted a program on WFMT for 45 years. Longtime Chicago videomaker, Tom Weinberg, interviewed Studs dozens of times over the years. Chicago Tonight spoke with Weinberg about his relationship with Studs Terkel. Here’s what he had to say:

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“I listened to him on the radio at WFMT for many years before I knew him. That was before he had written the book: Working. And I was starting to do things with real people and get what they had to say about their lives on video the same way he did it on audio.

We went to him in 1975 and we said we wanted to do a TV show about the same thing as the book, which was working, what people do all day and how they feel about it. So what we decided to do, with our group called Videopolis, is we got some money together and were able to do the show. And we wound up doing three of the people from the book and three other people who weren’t in the book.

Then we turned the camera on Studs to see what he did all day at WFMT, and how he felt about it and he told us. And after that, I got to be friends with him and did many more projects with him.”


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