John Reagan McCrary Jr. was born on October 13th, 1910 in Calvert, Texas. He graduated in 1932 from Yale and began working for The New York Daily Mirror. In 1940 he was sent to interview actress Eugenia Lincoln Falkenburg, who was nine years his junior.

She was the daughter of Eugene, a Westinghouse engineer, and Marguerite, a Brazilian tennis champion. By 1937 Jinx was modeling and acting, becoming one of America’s leading cover girls.

When interviewed for the musical comedy Hold On to Your Hats, she was struck by the charming southern gentleman who had a way of getting her to open up. They were to be engaged when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and both spent the duration of the war performing various duties overseas.

They were finally married on June 15th, 1945. The following year, on April 22nd, the duo debuted their morning talk show on NBC’s New York affiliate as Hi Jinx.

It was unique to other breakfast talk shows in that Tex refused to sidestep controversial issues. There were discussions on the atomic bomb, the UN, and this interview with Hungarian photographer Robert Capa, considered one of the best adventure and combat shooters in history.

Capa fled political repression in Hungary when he was a teenager, moving to Berlin, where he enrolled in college. He witnessed the rise of Hitler, which led him to move to Paris, where he formed a partnership with Gerda Taro.

He covered The Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War Two’s European front, and in 1948, the Arab–Israeli War.

During his career he risked his life numerous times, most dramatically as the only civilian photographer landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day. His friends and colleagues included Ernest Hemingway, Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck and director John Huston.

In 1948, the Cold War was in full effect and Capa was one of the only men able to get into the USSR.