John Cameron Swayze

 John Cameron Swayze (April 4, 1906 – August 15, 1995)

Swayze was a news commentator, spokesperson, and game show panelist during the 1950s. In Los Angeles, NBC hired him for its western news division before moving him to its New York City news operation in 1947. During 1948, Swayze provided voiceover work for the Camel Newsreel Theatre, an early television news program that broadcast Movietone News newsreels. At the same time, Swayze proposed and obtained a radio quiz program, Who Said That?. The radio version lasted only a year, but Swayze was an occasional panelist in the television version of the program, which was broadcast on NBC from 1948 to 1955. In the series, celebrities tried to determine the speaker of quotations taken from recent news reports. In early 1955, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, maker of Camel cigarettes, reduced its sponsorship to three days a week. Chrysler's Plymouth division sponsored the other days, and on those days the program was labeled the Plymouth News Caravan. In time, Swayze's almost manic style seemed frivolous compared to that of Douglas Edwards, whose rival show on CBS, Douglas Edwards with the News, Swayze once outrated but whose anchor sounded sober and no-nonsense. During 1956 Swayze was dismissed in favor of a new anchor team, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. The Huntley-Brinkley Report soon became the nation's top-rated television newscast; Edwards was replaced during 1962 by Walter Cronkite. He appeared in a Volvo advertisement, driven in an early 1970s two-door model on a muddy racetrack by a professional rally driver. Swayze also appeared in commercials for Studebaker promoting the automobile company's 1963 model line. He also appeared in a 1984 commercial for radio station WHTZ in New York City, which was broadcast in other markets promoting different radio stations.

John Cameron Swayze and the actor-brothers Patrick Swayze and Don Swayze were sixth cousins once removed. He died in Sarasota, Florida, on August 15, 1995. Swayze is buried at Round Hill Community Cemetery in Greenwich, CT.