Marshall McLuhan, the Man and his Message

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Topic spans: 1960 - 1980

Marshall McLuhan, the Man and his Message

He was a man of idioms and idiosyncrasies, deeply intelligent and a soothsayer. He had prescient knowledge of the Internet. Although educated in literature, Marshall McLuhan was known as a pop philosopher because his theories applied to mini-skirts and the twist. For his ability to keep up with the cutting edge, one colleague called him "The Runner." Critics said he destroyed literary values. Today, McLuhan's ideas are new again, applied to the electronic media that he predicted.

10 television clips

8 radio clips

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Growing up at the McLuhans'

Broadcast Date: Nov. 17, 1980

As boys at bedtime in the dark, Marshall McLuhan and his brother Maurice huddled listening to the crystal radio set Marshall had built. Even as a child living in Edmonton, Marshall was always interested in the latest technology, recalls Maurice about his older brother. Before the two boys were born, the McLuhan family moved from the small town of Creighton, Alta. to Edmonton.

It was on the initiative of Marshall's mother Elsie, who desired a larger stage to play out her career as a schoolteacher. Partial to successful and intelligent men, she swayed Marshall's father Herbert to give up his preferred rural prairie for a real estate career in the big town.

Growing up at the McLuhans'

• Herbert Marshall McLuhan was named after his father and went by his middle name. He was born on July 21, 1911 in Edmonton, Alta. His mother Elsie, originally from Nova Scotia, had two boys. Marshall's father Herbert was from a small town outside of Barrie, Ont. called Luther.
• As a boy, Marshall was very quiet and borderline anti-social. This phase passed during his early teens when he joined Boy Scouts and began playing baseball.

• Marshall's mother first taught at the Creighton, Alta. schoolhouse in 1908.
• At a 1938 summer theatre workshop in St. Louis, Missouri, Elsie met Corinne Lewis, Marshall's future wife. Elsie said she wanted Corinne, an aspiring actress and high-school teacher from Fort Worth, Texas, to meet her "handsome son" Marshall who was coming for a visit the following week.

• In 1939 Marshall married Corinne even though there was a flurry of disapproval from her family, who forbade Corinne to date or even befriend anyone the family hadn't known for two generations. After the marriage, Corinne and her mother-in-law developed a close relationship.

Growing up at the McLuhans'

Medium: Radio

Program: IDEAS

Broadcast Date: Nov. 17, 1980

Guest(s): Maurice McLuhan

Host: Derrick de Kerckhove

Duration: 1:47

Last updated:
Feb. 2, 2004

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