By Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writer
November 8, 1983

Alfred Friendly, 71, a brilliant writer and tireless reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize in journalism and served as managing editor of The Washington Post during a crucial period in the newspaper’s history, died last night at his home in Georgetown.

Mr. Friendly, who had suffered from cancer of the throat and lung for some time, shot himself while in an upstairs bedroom.

A man of wit, erudition, and wide-ranging interests who joined The Post as a reporter in 1939, Mr. Friendly became managing editor in 1955 and guided The Post’s transition from a newspaper that was essentially local to one about to achieve national and international repute.

Shortly after stepping down from his editorial position, Mr. Friendly covered the 1967 war in the Mideast, sending back dispatches that earned him the Pulitzer Prize.

Known to his colleagues and through his work as a foe of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s, and of senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R.-Wis.) in the 1950s, Mr. Friendly throughout a 35-year career as both reporter and editor showed a passionate concern about the nation and the world, and about the fate of democracy in both.

“We’ve lost a dear friend and a great journalist,” said Katharine Graham, chairman of the board of The Washington Post Co.

“Al Friendly played a critical role in the development of this newspaper and we will always be grateful for it,” Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive editor of The Post, said.

The start of Mr. Friendly’s 10-year tenure as managing editor of The Post came a year after the purchase of the Washington Times-Herald inaugurated a period of phenomenal growth and improvement of The Post.

During those years, according to the history of The Post written by Chalmers M. Roberts, Mr. Friendly as managing editor, together with editor J.R. Wiggins and publisher Philip L. Graham, “propelled The Post into a national newspaper of renown.”

As an imaginative and sophisticated editor, and a man whose own skilled pen was noted for its grace and facility, Mr. Friendly became known for his continual search for the talents and techniques that would improve the professionalism of his newspaper.

He was credited with imparting an intellectual, increasingly thoughtful tone and cast to the news pages and to the newspaper’s Sunday Outlook section.

Under his administration came an emphasis new to the newspaper on analytical stories that explained how and why, in addition to telling what.

More stories began to appear on many of the intellectual topics that characterized or coincided with his interests, such as archaeology, architecture, mathematics and nuclear science.

Colleagues remembered him particularly as a man who could stimulate and inspire, and who could impart to his staff some of his own keen interests.

As an editor, colleagues said, his interests ranged beyond the mere gathering and presentation of the news to the philosophical problems of journalism that included the conflict between government’s desire to keep secrets and the press’ desire to publish, and between the rights of a free press and the right of an accused to a fair trial.

Although several colleagues suspected him of feeling somewhat uncomfortable as an administrator, Mr. Friendly was known for working hard at his tasks, devoting himself to them early and late, seven days a week.

Guests remembered the continual interruption caused at dinner parties at his Georgetown home by the arrival, fresh off the press, of the first edition of the next day’s newspaper.

Sometimes what he saw sent him to the telephone. At other times, he returned to the office.

Among the stories and events whose coverage he supervised were the early days of the civil rights movement, when The Post was among the first northern newspapers to send a reporter to the South for sustained periods; the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and the 1963 March on Washington.

Colleague Chalmers Roberts remembered Mr. Friendly’s tenure as beginning with a certain “fun and chaos,” but gradually growing less free-wheeling and more structured and organized.

As an assistant managing editor, Mr. Friendly was a prime mover in the decision to send the newspaper’s first foreign correspondent overseas. More were to follow, and—a genial supervisor and cosmopolitan himself—he then advised his colleagues on points of cultural interest that should not be missed on their overseas tours.

Mr. Friendly was born Dec. 30, 1911, in Salt Lake City, the son of Edward Rosenbaum and Harriet Friendly. After graduating in 1933 from Amherst College, where he excelled in—among other things—economics and Latin, Mr. Friendly came to Washington to take on his first job.

One of his economics professors had been named an official in the Commerce Department, and he hired Mr. Friendly.

The appointment, high-salaried for the time, encountered objections both in the press and in Congress, and the job was short-lived. Some of Mr. Friendly’s colleagues suggested that it may have served as an early and useful introduction to the rough-and-tumble interactions between journalism and politics.

In 1935-1936, Mr. Friendly spent months traveling through the United States, which was struggling in the grip of the Depression. He tasted the hardships of the unemployed, and shared the burdens of those who worked long hours for low pay.

Shortly afterward, he joined the old Washington Daily News, where he became after a time the author of a government employee’s column. In April 1939 he was hired to write the same kind of column for The Post.

His responsibilities expanded quickly, and soon he was assigned to one of the major national stories of the time, the nation’s mobilization for World War II.

Eager and enterprising, known for his determination to dig for the facts, he was assigned to investigate strikes believed instigated by Communist-dominated unions. These were the first of many labor disputes about which he was to write.

His work was credited with giving rise to a series of stories that appeared under the heading, “Guns for Soldiers.” They proved devastatingly critical of the use for consumer goods of raw materials needed for preparedness.

Earlier in 1940, he had left The Post for a short time to work for his former professor in reorganizing a public utility company. During World War II, he spent three years in the Army Air Forces, achieving the rank of major.

During a period in England, he was involved in the breaking of sophisticated German military codes.

After the war, he spent another year away from The Post, as a press aide to W. Averell Harriman, who was directing the Marshall Plan, feeding war-ravaged Europe.

In 1952, he became assistant managing editor, and three years later, succeeded Wiggins as managing editor.

In 1966, as associate editor and foreign correspondent, he set up headquarters in London.

From there, Mr. Friendly, who spoke good German and passable French, roamed Europe, seeking stories and indulging his interests in music, theater, art and archaeology.

On Sunday, June 4, 1967, The Washington Post carried on its front page a story written by Mr. Friendly that hinted strongly at the imminent outbreak of the Six-Day War.

It was a story that played a substantial role in staking Mr. Friendly’s claim to the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting, which he was awarded in 1967.

Mr. Friendly retired from active daily journalism on his 60th birthday in 1971. He continued, however, to contribute stylish and sometimes astringent letters, columns and book reviews to The Post.

He was coauthor of a widely hailed 1967 book, “Crime and Publicity,” dealing with the free press, fair trial issue. In 1977 he published “Beaufort of the Admiralty,” a biography of a British Navy hydrographer. A reviewer called that book a masterpiece of its kind.

Survivors include his wife, Jean, and five children, Alfred, Jonathan, Lucinda, Nicholas and Victoria, and 13 grandchildren.