Editing Alistair Cooke (section)

===Media beginnings===
Cooke's first visit to the United States was in 1932 on a two-year [[Commonwealth Fund]] Fellowship (now [[Harkness Fellowship]]) to Yale and Harvard, where his acting and music skills came to the fore with visits to [[Hollywood, Los Angeles|Hollywood]].<ref>Alistair Cooke
As Guardian journalist and [[BBC]] broadcaster [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/mar/31/pressandpublishing.broadcasting][https://web.archive.org/web/20080509194921/http://www.nzorgan.com/vandr/cooke.htm]</ref>
Cooke saw a newspaper headline stating that [[Oliver Baldwin, 2nd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley|Oliver Baldwin]], the Prime Minister [[Stanley Baldwin]]'s son, had been sacked by the BBC as film critic. Cooke sent a telegram to the Director of Talks, asking if he would be considered for the post. He was invited for an interview and took a [[Cunard Line|Cunard]] liner back to Britain, arriving twenty-four hours late for his interview. He suggested typing out a film review on the spot, and a few minutes later, he was offered the job.

Cooke replaced [[Oliver Baldwin, 2nd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley|Oliver Baldwin]] as the [[BBC]]'s film critic on 8 October 1934 and gave his first BBC broadcast: "I declare that I am a critic trying to interest a lot of people into seeing interesting films", he told his audience. "I have no personal interest in any company. As a critic I am without politics and without class." He sat on a BBC Advisory Committee headed by [[George Bernard Shaw]] for correct [[pronunciation]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/alistaircookebio00clar|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/alistaircookebio00clar/page/110 110]|quote=Alistair Cooke BBC committee.|title=Alistair Cooke: A Biography|last=Clarke|first=Nick|date=2000|publisher=Arcade Publishing|isbn=9781559705486|language=en}}</ref>

In 1935, Cooke also became London Correspondent for [[NBC]]. Each week, he recorded a 15-minute radio dialogue for American listeners on life in Britain, under the series title of ''London Letter''. In 1936, he intensively reported on the [[Edward VIII abdication crisis]] for NBC. He made several talks on the topic each day to listeners in many parts of the United States. He calculated that in ten days he spoke 400,000 words on the subject. During the crisis, he was aided by a twenty-year-old [[Rhodes Scholarship|Rhodes Scholar]], [[Walt Rostow]], who would become [[Lyndon B. Johnson]]'s national security advisor.<ref>Cooke, Alistair. ''Six Men'', Penguin Books Ltd., 1985, p. 73,74 {{ISBN|0-14-004834-0}}</ref>