Graham McNamee's father, John B. McNamee, was an attorney and legal advisor to President Grover Cleveland's cabinet, and his mother, Anne, was a homemaker, who also sang in a church choir. Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, McNamee had early aspirations of being an opera singer. He studied voice as a youth and sang in churches, and in 1922 gave a concert in Aeolian Hall, New York. In 1922, while serving jury duty in New York City, he visited the studios of radio station WEAF en route to the courthouse and, on a whim, went to audition as a singer. Someone noticed his voice and asked him to speak through a microphone. He was given an audition and hired as a staff announcer on the spot. Along with fellow WEAF announcer Phillips Carlin, whose voice was so similar that few listeners could tell them apart, McNamee quickly became famous. Over the course of the next decade McNamee worked for WEAF, and for the national NBC network, when WEAF became the its flagship station.
Sportscasting
McNamee became well-known for his broadcasts of numerous sports events, including several World Series, Rose Bowl games, championship boxing matches, and Indianapolis 500 races. Radio broadcasting of sporting events was a new thing in the 1920s. The announcers were a rotating group of newspaper writers. At the time baseball was America's most popular sport, and the reporters were at the games to write stories about them for print newspapers. Their descriptions were matter-of-fact, boring at best, had a lot of dead air, and were given in the past tense after a play was completed. In 1923, announcer McNamee was assigned to help the sportswriters with their broadcasts. One day, Grantland Rice, told McNamee to finish the game on his own, and left. McNamee was not a trained sports writer, so he immediately began to describe what he was seeing as it happened, thus originating play-by-play sports broadcasting. He wasn't a baseball expert, but had a knack for conveying what he saw in great detail, and with great enthusiasm, bringing the sights and sounds of the game into the homes of listeners.
Other work
McNamee also broadcast the national political conventions, the presidential inaugurations, and the arrival of aviator Charles Lindbergh in New York City following his transatlantic flight to Paris, France in 1927. He opened each broadcast by saying, "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience. This is Graham McNamee speaking." He was featured on the cover of the October 3, 1927 issue of Time magazine. McNamee continued to broadcast into the 1930s, as an announcer on such weekly programs as Rudy Vallee's, and Ed Wynn's. He played straight man on the latter, reacting to Wynn's gags. He worked in motion pictures, narrating Krakatoa, Universal Pictures' weekly Universal Newsreels, and Camera Thrills, an Academy Award-nominated short subject produced and directed by Charles E. Ford. On April 20, 1936 he also worked in Circus stars bring joy to hospital's little shut-ins, by Universal Newsreel. In the same year, on July 7, he was briefly reunited with Ed Wynn for an ad-libbed spot on an experimental, NBC television broadcast. In the early 1940s his principal activity was as a newsreel commentator, but he maintained much of his radio work as well, hosting Behind the Mike for NBC.
Personal life
He was married twice: the first time, in 1921, to concert and church soprano Josephine Garrett. They were divorced in 1932, and he married Anne Lee Sims in 1934.
