Howie Samuelsohn’s in the basement of his Highland Park home, inserting tapes into a VCR. The monitor shows a Native American woman in a velvet sport coat with a flower in her hair. She’s singing and playing a guitar.
Samuelsohn switches tapes and new faces appear: Joan Baez, John Prine, Harry Chapin. There’s Jesse Jackson, Afro reaching skyward, sitting in a TV studio. Jane Fonda speaks at a Detroit rally. Donald Sutherland solemnly stares into the camera and reads an antiwar poem.
Last year Samuelsohn began to revisit old tapes of the series, after a filmmaker approached him about doing a documentary on his life as a media activist. Then in September he sold an Underground News segment to VH-1 that showed an early performance of the band Styx in a Milwaukee park. He now hopes to put together a 13-episode series of bits culled from the program. But the ultimate reason for Samuelsohn’s reexamination of the Underground News may have been the return of his eyesight.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Samuelsohn had been legally blind for more than 20 years, after being exposed to chemicals at a video shoot. His right eye is covered by a patch, but a new operation and a special contact lens have restored sight to his left eye. This may be the greatest triumph in a life spent battling powerful forces, armed only with a video camera.
After graduation, Samuelsohn applied for a job at Channel 44. Three days after being hired, he was put in charge of the operation. He quickly asked for a slot on the tiny station, and on July 1, 1970, he began to replace the AP wire copy for ten minutes at midnight with news gleaned from other sources. Independent body counts from the war were among the last things viewers saw before the station went dark. “It was classic–after 18 hours of lies we showed the truth for ten minutes,” says Samuelsohn. The spots attracted attention almost immediately. “People were watching us to see the real news and how we contradicted the mainstream outlets.”
“I think it is good to scream,” says Lennon, a famous advocate of primal scream therapy. Yoko Ono nods in approval. “I mean, when we were lads growing up everyone told us you are a boy, you shouldn’t cry. So think about the great release you have after all those years of keeping in your feelings.”
The show would often begin with Collins reading from classified government documents, which were sent anonymously to the station almost daily. “Once Chuck was reading about our dropping bombs on Laos and Cambodia,” Samuelsohn remembers, “and the next day we got a call from an air force pilot who’d participated in the bombings. He appeared on our show at the same time Nixon went on TV to tell the country there was no bombing.” Another former soldier and heroin addict claimed he’d been promised an honorable discharge if he’d go behind enemy lines to kill American deserters. The Underground News was the only TV show that aired an antiwar public service announcement. That’s when, Samuelsohn claims, he and Collins became targets.
