Good Night Everybody… and be kind
By Dennis Anderson
X-communication
$14.95
Reviewed by Mike Nardine
Original publication: The Reader Weekly
On your television screen he might come across as dour and self-important, but if Good Night Everybody…and be kind, the autobiography of local newscaster Dennis Anderson, is any indication, the author is certainly not your stereotypical, insensitive big ego with no brain so loved by television sitcoms. Instead he comes off as a humble, aw-shucks character with Northland roots, a living, breathing, embodiment of “Minnesota Nice,” and a shrewd businessman to boot.
Dennis Anderson was born to an iron miner’s family in 1944 in Virginia, Minnesota. His parents were hardworking, honest, salt-of-the-earth; their son, like most of his pre-boom generation aspired to something more without scorning and rejecting his roots like the boomers. He says of his youth, “If I could live my childhood again, I would. While not perfect, there aren’t too many things that I’d change. The Iron Range was a fun place to grow up, with the 1940s and 1950s agreeable for kids.”
So what, you say? Big deal! Who cares about the life of an anchorman in a third-rate market like Duluth? The guy is a toupee-wearing joke with an amusing knack for puzzling, one-liner newsflashes on lead-ins for the Ten O’clock News.
Well, yes, he’s all of the above—and more.
He must be a darn good newscaster too: his news shows have won two Emmy’s, an Edward R. Murrow award and three Eric Sevareid awards. And those of us new to this area can imagine his deep voice announcing the assassination of President Kennedy and the sinking of the Edmond Fitzgerald in resounding, sepulchral tones impossible for less well endowed newscasters.
He’s also a father, a pilot, a Catholic Deacon and a friend of Jeno Paulucci—Dennis’s good judgment once saved the aging magnate an ugly public relations “death.” (And no, I won’t do what the editor of this liberal rag demands and tell you the story. If you want to find out how Dennis Anderson kept Jeno from becoming a laughingstock, spend $14.95 and get the book. It’s worth it.) Oh, and Anderson is also the part owner of a funeral home.
But most important for the purposes of this book review, his autobiography makes a very interesting book. He conveys a sense of the hard times and honest people he grew up with in a manner that is neither patronizing nor maudlin. Without an oversize ego inflating a rather ordinary life into something unrecognizable, Mr. Anderson turns an ordinary life into a rather extraordinary book by making his life a metaphor for the ordinary people of the Northland.
Ordinary, in this case, is not a pejorative. The story of Dennis Anderson’s hardscrabble childhood on the range and his ambitious youth as a journeyman newscaster makes for interesting reading precisely because it so typifies the core of hardworking, ambitious (without being uncivil) people that make this area such a fine place to live.
Nor is the word ordinary strictly accurate in Mr. Anderson’s case: few of his fellow Northlander’s have met as many famous, infamous, and near famous people as he has; fewer still are deacon’s in the Catholic Church. But the book still manages to give the impression that he was not impressed with either the famous, infamous, or even himself. He remains a man of his own time and place. His perspective is of a Northern Minnesotan—something he appears proud of.
While he discusses some of the great news stories of his forty years as a newsman—we’ve touched on Kenney’s assassination and the sinking of the Edmond Fitzgerald—and local stories like the Ten Commandments, he remains the reporter even while writing his autobiography. You never get the sense that he is trying to impress you with his part in the story.