The veteran CBS newscaster gets a private lesson on fiddle playing from the legendary comedian/vaudevillian Jack Benny. It’s not just any violin. It is a 1729 Stradivarius. First Benny polished the fiddle stick, explaining, “I always keep my violin sharp because I play flat all the time.”

Benny said he was delighted to be the guest entertainer at the International Radio and Television Society dinner that honored Cronkite at the Waldorf-Astoria on March 14, 1974. He prefers giving concerts to anything else in the world. “Isaac Stern gets me a lot of concerts and I give him ten percent of nothing. That’s what I get paid for all those benefits he gets me.”