Jack Perkins, a longtime NBC newscaster who later served as the urbane, deep-voiced host of “Biography” on the A&E cable network, died Aug. 19 at his home on Casey Key, Fla. He was 85.
He had Parkinson’s disease, said a son, Eric Perkins.
Early in his career at NBC, Perkins was a foreign correspondent in Asia and helped cover many notable stories of the 1960s, including the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War.
In 1968, as a California correspondent for NBC, Perkins covered the killing of the president’s brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, at a Los Angeles hotel. He went without sleep for almost 36 hours, describing the chaotic events of June 1968, while Kennedy was campaigning for the presidency. Perkins later obtained a two-hour jailhouse interview with Kennedy’s assailant, Sirhan Sirhan.
During his 21 years as a network correspondent, Perkins appeared on “NBC Nightly News,” the “Today” show and other programs. With a penchant for whimsical, well-crafted feature stories, he was sometimes described as NBC’s counterpart to Charles Kuralt at CBS News.