Humor and Publications
Newman had a blend of seriousness and humor. For a 1964 documentary he traveled from Paris on the Orient Express, talking to people along the way (and ending up in a bubble bath in Istanbul. Newman enjoyed puns; when he worked on The Today Show, his doggerel poem reviewing each year’s events would end "Happy Noo Year to Yoose from Edwin Newman NBC Noose". Around the time Newman left NBC in 1984, he twice hosted Saturday Night Live; on one occasion, to the delight of the audience, he sang "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" as part of the opening monologue.
In 1974 Newman's first book, Strictly Speaking: Will America be the Death of English? reached Number 1 on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. A Civil Tongue followed in 1976, Sunday Punch (a comic novel) in 1979 and I Must Say in 1988. The latter (a collection of his syndicated columns for King Features) ranged over U.S. politics and foreign policy, Newman's journalistic assignments and the state of the English language. Newman served for a number of years as chairman of the usage panel at Houghton Mifflin's American Heritage Dictionary.
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