Listen to the only known recording of Robert Capa's voice through his interview with radio pioneers Jinx Falkenburg and Tex McCrary.

“Bob Capa Tells of Photographic Experiences Abroad” was broadcast October 20, 1947 on the 8:30 AM morning radio show “Hi! Jinx.” The interview was part of the press circuit surrounding the publication of Slightly Out of Focus, his autobiographical novel chronicling his adventures during World War II published by Henry Holt and Company that year.

“Hi! Jinx” was national program on NBC radio that started in 1946 by Jinx Falkenburg and Tex McCrary. The husband and wife team were pioneers of what became to be called the talk show format. They eventually had two radio programs, a five-day-a week television program and a syndicated column in the New York Herald Tribune. Falkenburg was a model and had been photographed by Capa in December 1940 following one of her performances in Al Jolson’s musical “Hold on to Your Hat.” McCrary was a journalist and as an Army Air Corps colonel had led the first journalists into the ruins of Hiroshima.

Previous attempts to locate this in national radio archives were unsuccessful. None had recordings of this specific show. The recording showed up in 2013 on eBay from a seller in Western Massachusetts, who had discovered the recording and others in the area from an estate sale several years before. The record is a 33 1/3 rpm microgroove recording made by Associated Recording Services, an archival recording service.

This is the only known recording of Robert Capa. While he gave a few public talks, this was the only radio interview and he was never interviewed on television. Only scant newsreel films show him in action, and none with his voice. He appeared in a few Hollywood productions, but was cast as a mute Arab.

His first language was Hungarian, but he learned, in order, German, French, Spanish, and English. English became his dominant written and spoken language by 1941. His manner of speaking, dubbed “Capaese” by friends, was described as an incomprehensible mish mash of languages, but the interview shows that Capa was not only clear, but highly articulate. His easy style underscores his innate proclivity for self-deprecation, humor, and storytelling.

The interview starts with stories from his recent trip to the USSR with John Steinbeck and then turns to other subjects: poker, the invention of his name, his so-called last image of the war taken of an American soldier killed in Leipzig in April 1945. But it is Capa who brings up his famous “Falling Soldier” image and describes how it was made. He says, “The prize picture is born in the imagination of the editors and the public who sees them.” It is the only public comment we have directly from him about this famous image.