LEILA FADEL, HOST:
A familiar voice is retiring.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Renee Montagne cohosted MORNING EDITION for a dozen years. She spoke with Steven Inskeep about her career in public radio, which spanned more than 40 years.
STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: You know, here's how I want to begin. I want to begin by playing the first bit of tape.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
ROBERT SIEGEL, BYLINE: In Gaza, celebrations.
RENEE MONTAGNE, BYLINE: Have the Palestinians agreed to territorial compromise just as the Israelis have abandoned any thought of it?
SIEGEL: No, says Middle East watcher...
INSKEEP: Hey, who is that?
MONTAGNE: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: Do you remember that first day on All Things Considered? You're the host of a big, national show.
MONTAGNE: I don't know.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
MONTAGNE: It's all a blur to me. The entire first 20 months is a blur to me on that.
INSKEEP: I got you. But this takes you back to an earlier stage of your career. And we were reviewing various other things that you had done over the years. What drew you to public media as opposed to anything else you might have done with your life?
MONTAGNE: Well, I really backed into it. I mean, my friends, when I was at Berkeley, were all poets and writers and musicians, and gravitated towards a station called KPOO Poor People's Radio in San Francisco.
INSKEEP: There's a poetry to radio. There's writing with radio. There's music with radio.
MONTAGNE: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, and I was none of those things at that time. But I did learn how to wield a microphone. I used to go to a thing called the Commonwealth Club, and they used to have international people there. There was one in particular. It was a Jewish Russian who wanted to go to Israel...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MONTAGNE: ...This was a big deal in those moments - who was in the gulag. And one time I got his wife to talk to me when she only spoke Russian and the TV stations were all walking away. And I went up and said, do you speak any English? And she said a little, and she said, but not very well. And I said, oh, you're perfect. And I ended up getting the interview with her where she was really speaking.
INSKEEP: I think we've identified the beginning of your international reporting.
MONTAGNE: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: Which eventually took you for NPR News to South Africa. And I want to hear a little bit of sound of something that happened while you were there.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
DESMOND TUTU: Welcome our brand-new state president, Nelson Mandela.
MONTAGNE: The old Central Square of Cape Town, known as the Grand Parade, never felt grander as tens of thousands jammed together to celebrate the election of Nelson Mandela.
INSKEEP: What an experience to be present for what felt like a world historical event.
MONTAGNE: I'm highly aware of it, and I knew it at the time. But, you know, when Mandela was first released from prison four years earlier, journalists had surprising access. I mean, I went to his - say he was in a fancy mansion, but he used to go back to his home in Soweto because he always loved this little, tiny, small home in Soweto.
INSKEEP: And you could drop in and see him?
MONTAGNE: Pretty much. There was one time when I went and, like, there was this Dutch reporter who had just showed up from out of town type thing. And it was just he and I sitting at the little breakfast table with Nelson Mandela and not even thinking of taking a picture. But years later, I thought, how did I spend all that time with him and never took a picture, you know?
INSKEEP: When are you going to have another chance?
MONTAGNE: Yeah.
INSKEEP: I just want to mention there's another world historical event in the 1990s that Renee Montagne also covered. Let's listen to a bit of that world historical event.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
MONTAGNE: The bloody glove was one of just a few hundred carefully crafted brown leather gloves that Isotoner had made over the years. That storyline reached an unexpected conclusion when O.J. Simpson actually tried on the gloves and told jurors they were too small.
INSKEEP: Were you present in the courtroom for the famous murder trial of O.J. Simpson when he was asked to try on a glove?
MONTAGNE: I was right there. I was right there in the second row, sitting there watching him struggle with that glove thinking, school of bad acting, how much it looked like he was making sure he wasn't getting that glove on.
INSKEEP: He sold it to the jury.
MONTAGNE: But he sold it to the jury. But it didn't seem like the peak moment it absolutely turned out to be.
INSKEEP: I want to mention something that you did in slightly later years. You became the host, cohost, with me of MORNING EDITION for a dozen years. And you specialized in certain stories, and one of those stories was the ongoing war in Afghanistan.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
MONTAGNE: Follow me now down a street in Kandahar, through a tall iron gate, past a guard with a gun and into a courtyard.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: I like my school.
UNIDENTIFIED SCHOOLTEACHER: I like my school.
MONTAGNE: Eleven-year-old Bilqis slipped away from her English class. She wanted to tell us why for her, learning is more precious than any possession.
BILQIS: Because education is like gold. When you get it, it will be always in your mind. And you can profit from that. No one can steal it from your mind, education. It will shine your life.
INSKEEP: That was worth going several thousand miles to hear.
MONTAGNE: It was. Eleven-years-old.
INSKEEP: One of many conversations you've had over the years on different topics, some of them different tones and moods than others. Let's hear one more.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
MONTAGNE: Mel Brooks is a comedian who makes the unthinkable very, very funny, like a musical about Nazis.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE PRODUCERS")
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Springtime for Hitler and Germany.
MONTAGNE: He also gave us cinema's most famous campfire scene, composed almost entirely of cowboys sitting around farting.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLAZING SADDLES")
BURTON GILLIAM: (As Lyle) How about some more beans, Mr. Taggart?
SLIM PICKENS: (As Taggart) I'd say you've had enough.
MONTAGNE: Is there anything you really - time you think you went too far?
MEL BROOKS: Maybe in "Blazing Saddles," but I don't mind. I like...
MONTAGNE: You mean the whole movie or just one moment?
BROOKS: No, no, the whole movie. The whole movie's in bad taste.
(LAUGHTER)
MONTAGNE: Yeah, couldn't be more different.
INSKEEP: Renee, I want to close with something personal. You were my cohost for 12 years. We came to this program at the same time. I really appreciate the camaraderie. I really appreciate the professionalism and the generosity that you brought.
MONTAGNE: Oh, Steve. Well, can I just say I appreciated all of it, all of the people at MORNING EDITION who made it so that we could do what we did.
INSKEEP: When you think about the ridiculous hours you worked for those dozen years, was it worth it?
MONTAGNE: Oh, gosh, yes. Oh, my gosh, yes. And in a strange way, the hours made it even more intense. Like, we're all in this together.
INSKEEP: I'm going to ask you the same question you asked Mel Brooks. Is there anything now looking back in your career that you would say was in bad taste?
MONTAGNE: (Laughter) I don't know. Bad taste might not have been - but mistakes were made. Let's put it that way...
INSKEEP: OK.
MONTAGNE: ...Going on the air.
INSKEEP: Passive sentence.
MONTAGNE: Including, although it was so much fun, when I sang once in the world's worst voice.
INSKEEP: Ooh. We autotuned you, as I recall.
MONTAGNE: Yeah, autotuned me, but they couldn't fix me with the autotune.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
MONTAGNE: (Singing) Any time he goes away.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah. Well, it's still pretty awful, isn't it?
INSKEEP: All right.
MONTAGNE: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: Renee Montagne, congratulations, and thank you.
MONTAGNE: Oh, thank you, Steve. And thank all of NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MONTAGNE: And for the last time, this is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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