In the early 1950's television was moving from a purely technical medium run by men in white lab coats to a more theatrical medium. They began performing live dramas and comedies that demanded stage production experience. The folks at NBC had only to walk across 50th Street to Radio City Music Hall.
My father became one of the original Unit Managers at NBC, along with a mutual friend, Tom Loeb, (who many years later I worked with at CBS). The NBC studios were a building within a building, part of the larger 30 Rockefeller Plaza complex with separate NBC entrances on 49th and 50th Streets. The NBC studios were only eight stories tall, attached to and dominated by the 70-story RCA (now GE) Building.
So it was about 1950 (that would have made me six or seven) that I got my first inside look at television. On that first trip to '30 Rock', my father took me to see my favorite television show, "Howdy Doody".
That day was a real adventure for me. We rode the 'El' into the city, took a taxicab along Fifth Avenue, visited St. Patrick's Cathedral (where I was christened), had lunch at the Horn & Hardart Automat* (which wasn't really automated at all) and then went to NBC.
Instead of entering through the NBC side entrances, we entered '30 Rock' from the plaza, past the skating rink, the golden statue of Prometheus, the RCA Building towering above us... overwhelming. The plaza provided the sculptural centerpiece for the entire complex, a 'sense of place' like few others in the world.
The lobby entrance of the RCA Building had a mural painted on the ceiling that created an illusion of even greater height above the towering marble columns, straddled by colossal, naked, muscular titans - ego monumental.
We rode the NBC elevators (where years later I would work as an NBC page) to the third floor and entered the studio through a wide hallway. The studio smelled funny, like paint and rubber. It was smaller than I'd expected and darker - until they turned on those terrible, blinding hot lights. There were about twenty of us, five, six and seven year-olds taking our seats on long wooden benches, suddenly frozen like deer in the headlights. One kid screamed and hid on the floor until he was carried out - the first casualty. The rest of us sat blinking, paralyzed in the lights, staring at all the familiar things we'd seen on TV looking so strange here.
I'd been watching Howdy Doody since 1948, a year after its debut. People forget that the original setting of the show was a circus. It makes perfect sense when you think about it; Buffalo Bob was the ringmaster, Phineas T. Bluster (a marionette like Howdy) was the circus owner, and all the other characters - Clarabell the clown (Bob Keeshan before Captain Kangaroo), Salami Sam (Dayton Allen), Chief Thunder-thud (the original "kowa-bunga") and Princess Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring - were all acts in the circus. (Flub-A-Dub? No idea.) It was only years later that they moved the setting to 'Doodyville' and started calling their child audience 'the Peanut Gallery'.
I absolutely believed it was a real circus and, although the show was broadcast in black & white, my imagination saw it in color. But now the curtain behind us, that I was certain was covered in bright red and blue polka dots in 'real life' were just big circles in different shades of gray. In fact, everything seemed to be in shades of black or gray except for some odd accents painted in a strange rust color. It wasn't a circus at all! It was like some parallel universe, a fraud.
Buffalo Bob's makeup was the same rusty color as the floor and started dripping the minute the lights came on. His face looked the size and color of a basketball. And Clarabell the clown seemed to be melting like a snow cone under the lights. But the strangest thing of all was right in front of us on the familiar puppet stage, hanging next to it like a dead body on the gallows was Howdy Doody.
Everything was fake. Buffalo Bob did Howdy's voice when off camera without even the pretense of ventriloquism and somebody else pulled Howdy's strings from above the puppet stage. Howdy was just a block of wood and was treated like one when the cameras couldn't see. And all these other people you never saw on TV seemed to be sharing some inside joke, laughing at us instead of with us.
At the end of every program, Buffalo Bob would tell the boys and girls to be sure to go to church on Sunday and they would show a beautiful church with a tall white steeple, its bell tolling in some sunny, tree-lined New England village. But as we were herded out of the studio after the show, there it was. The church was a cardboard model, the trees a painted backdrop, sitting on a prop table. I thought I saw dust on it.
I would never entirely trust anything I saw on television again.
* In later years, my father would take me to two of his favorite eateries, the Lamb's Club and the Headquarters Restaurant (Eisenhower's 'headquarters' after the war).
Friday, July 31, 2009
Television II: "Uncle Miltie"
We bought our first television set in 1949, a 12" Pilot set with an analog sliding dial like a radio. To this day, I tend to visualize the channels 2 through 13 in the positions in which they appeared on that dial in two vertical rows, 2,4 & 5 in the first, 7, 9 11 and 13 in the second.
One of my earliest and most vivid memories of television was "Uncle Miltie". I usually went to bed after listening to "The Lone Ranger" but it became clear that something odd was happening on Tuesday nights. It seemed as though adults just stopped what they were doing to watch the Texaco Star Theater starring Milton Berle*.
It seemed that everyone we knew (who didn't have their own TV) would gather in our living room to watch Berle, trying to laugh softly so as not to wake the kids. I would sneak down the hall to watch, where they would find me an hour or so later, still chuckling in my sleep.
Milton Berle's impact cannot be overstated. It was a common sight for crowds of people to stand on the sidewalk outside appliance stores to watch the show through their windows. He is undoubtedly responsible for thousands of people buying their first television sets and bringing popularity to the new medium.
It's one of the first instances in which something heard on television became a conversational fad, like pitchman Sid Stone's "I'll tell you what I'm gonna do". Or Berle's "I live to laugh and laugh to live". Or "a committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours".
About that same time we bought our first car, a used 1937 Buick that was both built like and resembled a tank. It gave us additional mobility around Queens and Long Island, but wasn't a practical way of going into Manhattan. Parking in town was simply too difficult and expensive. The train was quicker and cheaper and, for me, a lot more fun.
I had several landmarks along the way, but my favorite was always the neon Goodman's Egg Noodle man. Manhattan was always the center of my universe; when I saw the Goodman's Noodle man, I knew I was halfway there.
* Milton Berle was reputed to have the biggest cock in show business, a fact widely attested to by those who knew him in vaudeville. But when television made him its biggest star, a rivalry developed between east and west coasts, between television and the movies.
The west coast champ was said to be Forrest Tucker, whose cock was known as the 'Super Chief'. A contest was proposed to settle the matter, but Berle was reluctant given his new fame and that it might embarrass his beloved mother. Buddy Hackett is attributed the best line about the matter. He told Berle that he completely understood, suggesting that he "just take out enough to win".
One of my earliest and most vivid memories of television was "Uncle Miltie". I usually went to bed after listening to "The Lone Ranger" but it became clear that something odd was happening on Tuesday nights. It seemed as though adults just stopped what they were doing to watch the Texaco Star Theater starring Milton Berle*.
It seemed that everyone we knew (who didn't have their own TV) would gather in our living room to watch Berle, trying to laugh softly so as not to wake the kids. I would sneak down the hall to watch, where they would find me an hour or so later, still chuckling in my sleep.
Milton Berle's impact cannot be overstated. It was a common sight for crowds of people to stand on the sidewalk outside appliance stores to watch the show through their windows. He is undoubtedly responsible for thousands of people buying their first television sets and bringing popularity to the new medium.
It's one of the first instances in which something heard on television became a conversational fad, like pitchman Sid Stone's "I'll tell you what I'm gonna do". Or Berle's "I live to laugh and laugh to live". Or "a committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours".
About that same time we bought our first car, a used 1937 Buick that was both built like and resembled a tank. It gave us additional mobility around Queens and Long Island, but wasn't a practical way of going into Manhattan. Parking in town was simply too difficult and expensive. The train was quicker and cheaper and, for me, a lot more fun.
I had several landmarks along the way, but my favorite was always the neon Goodman's Egg Noodle man. Manhattan was always the center of my universe; when I saw the Goodman's Noodle man, I knew I was halfway there.
* Milton Berle was reputed to have the biggest cock in show business, a fact widely attested to by those who knew him in vaudeville. But when television made him its biggest star, a rivalry developed between east and west coasts, between television and the movies.
The west coast champ was said to be Forrest Tucker, whose cock was known as the 'Super Chief'. A contest was proposed to settle the matter, but Berle was reluctant given his new fame and that it might embarrass his beloved mother. Buddy Hackett is attributed the best line about the matter. He told Berle that he completely understood, suggesting that he "just take out enough to win".
Television
It was about that time (the late 1940's) we were first exposed to television. I had been listening to radio for years but, although many considered television a fad, it would soon change all of our lives.
My favorite radio shows had been "The Lone Ranger", "Superman"*, "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" (I can still hear the theme music), and "Treasury Men In Action" as well as comedies like "Ozzie and Harriet" (with actors playing David and Ricky) and "Fibber McGee and Molly" ("don't open that closet, McGee!"), most of which later made the jump to TV.
Most of the great radio stars, with the notable exception of Fred Allen, would make a successful transition to television. And television would create new stars as well, like Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason and Sid Caesar. But the great thing about radio was that your imagination was still engaged, more like reading a book than watching movies or television. They called it "theater of the mind".
Jack Benny is supposed to hold the record for 'the longest laugh in radio', something like forty seconds (an eternity in any broadcast sense). His tightwad persona (although not at all the man himself) was already well established when we hear him walking down a dark alley when a thug sticks a gun in his ribs and says, "Your money or your life". Silence. (He's thinking it over.) The laugh builds... and builds... and still he says nothing and the audience roars. Still funny seventy years later.
But at Christmas 1948, the Wagner's, our neighbors across the hall in our apartment in Jackson Heights, bought a television set. It was a big wooden box with a round picture tube. The picture was (naturally) black & white and required a good deal of fiddling with the 'rabbit ears' to get decent reception even though we were in direct line-of-sight with the transmitter atop the Empire State Building.
Living in New York, we had television from its infancy, before most of the country and therefore most of the world. Rooftop antennas were beginning to sprout in our neighborhood as early as 1947.
Our neighbors were incredibly generous with their television. Each weekday afternoon they would let me watch "Uncle Fred's" cartoon show on channel 13 which consisted of crude 1930's animations of some poor bastard named Farmer Gray being tormented by armies of sadistic mice. I realized years later that I was among the first commercial television viewers in history.
My favorite radio shows had been "The Lone Ranger", "Superman"*, "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" (I can still hear the theme music), and "Treasury Men In Action" as well as comedies like "Ozzie and Harriet" (with actors playing David and Ricky) and "Fibber McGee and Molly" ("don't open that closet, McGee!"), most of which later made the jump to TV.
Most of the great radio stars, with the notable exception of Fred Allen, would make a successful transition to television. And television would create new stars as well, like Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason and Sid Caesar. But the great thing about radio was that your imagination was still engaged, more like reading a book than watching movies or television. They called it "theater of the mind".
Jack Benny is supposed to hold the record for 'the longest laugh in radio', something like forty seconds (an eternity in any broadcast sense). His tightwad persona (although not at all the man himself) was already well established when we hear him walking down a dark alley when a thug sticks a gun in his ribs and says, "Your money or your life". Silence. (He's thinking it over.) The laugh builds... and builds... and still he says nothing and the audience roars. Still funny seventy years later.
But at Christmas 1948, the Wagner's, our neighbors across the hall in our apartment in Jackson Heights, bought a television set. It was a big wooden box with a round picture tube. The picture was (naturally) black & white and required a good deal of fiddling with the 'rabbit ears' to get decent reception even though we were in direct line-of-sight with the transmitter atop the Empire State Building.
Living in New York, we had television from its infancy, before most of the country and therefore most of the world. Rooftop antennas were beginning to sprout in our neighborhood as early as 1947.
Our neighbors were incredibly generous with their television. Each weekday afternoon they would let me watch "Uncle Fred's" cartoon show on channel 13 which consisted of crude 1930's animations of some poor bastard named Farmer Gray being tormented by armies of sadistic mice. I realized years later that I was among the first commercial television viewers in history.
* Did you know that Bud Collier, the natty, bow-tied original host of "To Tell The Truth" was the radio voice of Superman?
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Radio City Music Hall
Even as a performer, my father had always been interested in stage production. After months of searching for work, a friend at the Lamb's Club suggested he interview for a job opening he'd heard about, third-assistant Stage Manager at Radio City Music Hall. Joseph managed to land the job and quickly became a student of stagecraft on a gigantic scale.
Located on West 50th Street and Sixth Avenue (what, thanks to Fiorella LaGuardia, non-New Yorkers call the Avenue of the Americas), the Music Hall is the largest indoor theater in the world. Opened in 1932, the Music Hall was part of what was then known as the "Radio City" complex, its principal tenant the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). It became instantly famous for its live stage shows that employed over a hundred singers, dancers, extras and, of course, the world-famous chorus line dancers, the Rockettes*.
One of the biggest stages in the world, with enormous wings and fly-space, it had elevators that could raise and lower colossal sets, even the entire orchestra. It boasted a special effects system connected to a nearby Con Edison generating station that could draw steam to create clouds, fog, even rain on the stage. It was the ultimate train set and Joseph quickly became a master at driving it.
He soon became first-assistant Stage Manager. At his podium just offstage, he could make a 100-foot set-piece disappear into the ceiling with a wave of his hand. This too would prove fateful for the next step in my father's career - this new thing called television.
* The Rockettes had been the 'Roxyettes', a staple at the rival Roxy Theater on Seventh Avenue. But when they abandoned their live stage show, the Rockettes moved a block east to the Music Hall.
Located on West 50th Street and Sixth Avenue (what, thanks to Fiorella LaGuardia, non-New Yorkers call the Avenue of the Americas), the Music Hall is the largest indoor theater in the world. Opened in 1932, the Music Hall was part of what was then known as the "Radio City" complex, its principal tenant the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). It became instantly famous for its live stage shows that employed over a hundred singers, dancers, extras and, of course, the world-famous chorus line dancers, the Rockettes*.
One of the biggest stages in the world, with enormous wings and fly-space, it had elevators that could raise and lower colossal sets, even the entire orchestra. It boasted a special effects system connected to a nearby Con Edison generating station that could draw steam to create clouds, fog, even rain on the stage. It was the ultimate train set and Joseph quickly became a master at driving it.
He soon became first-assistant Stage Manager. At his podium just offstage, he could make a 100-foot set-piece disappear into the ceiling with a wave of his hand. This too would prove fateful for the next step in my father's career - this new thing called television.
* The Rockettes had been the 'Roxyettes', a staple at the rival Roxy Theater on Seventh Avenue. But when they abandoned their live stage show, the Rockettes moved a block east to the Music Hall.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
"The Broadway Brat"
I was born on Flag Day, June 1944 in New York City. World War II still had more than a year to go but, apart from a singular absence of young men, New York was mostly immune from wartime hardships and went on much as before.
My first home was an apartment on West 58th Street in Manhattan, across the street from the backside of the Essex House. (My parents thought it was very naughty when for a long time the neon sign on the roof read "SEX HOUSE".) I spent my first year or so in that apartment but have absolutely no memory of it.
My parents were both Broadway musical performers, my father a singer, my mother a dancer. They were both in the original Broadway cast of "Oklahoma!". They first met during the auditions for the show that became, until "My Fair Lady" the longest-running Broadway musical. Although I was not actually 'born in a trunk', it was the St. James Theater.
My father was a singer in the men's chorus and understudied Alfred Drake in the role of Curly. (Unfortunately, Alfred Drake was famous for rarely missing a performance so my father got few opportunities to shine.) My mother was a dancer in Agnes DeMilles 'corps de ballet'. (Something of a misnomer since these were not waif-like ballet dancers but Broadway hoofers who tended to thunder across the stage like a herd of buffalo.) Alfred Drake and Joan Roberts, the male and female leads in the show, became my godparents, but I'm still waiting for their spiritual advice.
My parents were already Broadway veterans. My mother, Pat Likely, had appeared with Ethel Merman in "Panama Hattie" and "Let's Face It" with Danny Kaye. (My mother used to say she'd nearly married Danny Kaye, but could not because he was Jewish. I never really believed it, but in my child's mind I thought that would have made me 'Ray Kaye'.) My father, Joe Cunneff, had just completed a successful run in "The Student Prince" after coming in second in a singing contest to some upstart named Mario Lanza.
I was the first baby to be born into the cast of "Oklahoma!". My mother somehow concealed her pregnancy, cinching herself in, and danced until days before I was born at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital (which I understand no longer exists). She only missed a couple of weeks afterward before she was back on stage. My birth weight was dangerously small for those days, not much more than four pounds.
I was cared for by an elderly woman I knew as 'Mom Newton', an aunt of my mother's. (She stayed with us for a few years until her health forced he to return home to Massachusetts.) I made my Broadway stage debut at the age of six months when I got out of my stroller parked in the wings and crawled out onto the stage during a Wednesday matinee. I understand I got a big hand from the audience (which may explain many things that happened later).
It wasn't long after that we moved to a larger apartment in a (then) middle-class neighborhood in Jackson Heights, Queens, a short ride on the 'elevated' from Manhattan. By the time I was two, I had it memorized, "eighty-nine-ten, Thirty-Fifth Avenue, Jackson Heights, New York". (Oddly enough, about twenty years later, I was stationed less than a mile away on Thirty-Fifth Avenue at the U.S. Army Pictorial Center.)
My earliest memories are of parties, some at our apartment in Queens, some at big fancy places in Manhattan. I was the precocious kid, some might say the performing monkey, who would sing and dance on tabletops at the slightest provocation. I would recite, or sing commercial jingles I'd heard on the radio ("I love Chicklets candy-coated gum") and they'd capture it on a 'wire recorder'. I remember Ethel Merman, Celeste Holm, Mary Martin and Alfred Drake quite clearly.
Everyone we knew was in theater, everyone was rather grand and flamboyant, everyone had shed whatever regional accents they grew up with and spoke in affected semi-British accents. Many were gay, and not just the dancers, although that seemed just as normal to me as anything did. But a new and younger crop of performers, returning GI's and female factory workers were starting to get the choice Broadway parts.
"Oklahoma!" had a very long run and my mother continued with it for another two years until she became pregnant with my sister Elizabeth. After the show finally closed, my father went on to a featured singing role in "Annie Get Your Gun" with Ethel Merman, but a second child meant my mother's Broadway career was over. She found herself in an apartment in Queens with two young children.
My mother made the best of it (at first) but she wasn't cut out for Queens. We would go into Manhattan frequently on the elevated train and sometimes our old friends would venture out into deepest, darkest Queens for parties. But by the late 1940's, my father's Broadway career was winding down as well. After "Annie Get Your Gun" the jobs began to get scarce.
For the first time in a decade, my father found himself an unemployed singer. He would ride the 'elevated' into Manhattan each day and prowl the casting calls and auditions with his pals, other out-of-work performers who, like Ed Begley, would become well-known later on, but these were their 'salad days'.
Then at the end of the day my father would ride the 'El' back to Queens and I would watch for him from our window on the fourth floor. I could tell from a block away what sort of day he'd had by how badly he was limping from his childhood polio. He was limping a lot. Then, as things were getting desperate, when we couldn't pay the rent, a surprise bit of luck.
He would often have lunch with his friends at the Lamb's Club*, a kind of theatrical men-only dorm. And it was there someone made him a fateful job suggestion.
* The 1904 Sanford White-designed Lamb's Club was gutted in 2007 and converted into a hotel. All that remains is the facade, which was declared a historical landmark.
My first home was an apartment on West 58th Street in Manhattan, across the street from the backside of the Essex House. (My parents thought it was very naughty when for a long time the neon sign on the roof read "SEX HOUSE".) I spent my first year or so in that apartment but have absolutely no memory of it.
My parents were both Broadway musical performers, my father a singer, my mother a dancer. They were both in the original Broadway cast of "Oklahoma!". They first met during the auditions for the show that became, until "My Fair Lady" the longest-running Broadway musical. Although I was not actually 'born in a trunk', it was the St. James Theater.
My father was a singer in the men's chorus and understudied Alfred Drake in the role of Curly. (Unfortunately, Alfred Drake was famous for rarely missing a performance so my father got few opportunities to shine.) My mother was a dancer in Agnes DeMilles 'corps de ballet'. (Something of a misnomer since these were not waif-like ballet dancers but Broadway hoofers who tended to thunder across the stage like a herd of buffalo.) Alfred Drake and Joan Roberts, the male and female leads in the show, became my godparents, but I'm still waiting for their spiritual advice.
My parents were already Broadway veterans. My mother, Pat Likely, had appeared with Ethel Merman in "Panama Hattie" and "Let's Face It" with Danny Kaye. (My mother used to say she'd nearly married Danny Kaye, but could not because he was Jewish. I never really believed it, but in my child's mind I thought that would have made me 'Ray Kaye'.) My father, Joe Cunneff, had just completed a successful run in "The Student Prince" after coming in second in a singing contest to some upstart named Mario Lanza.
I was the first baby to be born into the cast of "Oklahoma!". My mother somehow concealed her pregnancy, cinching herself in, and danced until days before I was born at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital (which I understand no longer exists). She only missed a couple of weeks afterward before she was back on stage. My birth weight was dangerously small for those days, not much more than four pounds.
I was cared for by an elderly woman I knew as 'Mom Newton', an aunt of my mother's. (She stayed with us for a few years until her health forced he to return home to Massachusetts.) I made my Broadway stage debut at the age of six months when I got out of my stroller parked in the wings and crawled out onto the stage during a Wednesday matinee. I understand I got a big hand from the audience (which may explain many things that happened later).
It wasn't long after that we moved to a larger apartment in a (then) middle-class neighborhood in Jackson Heights, Queens, a short ride on the 'elevated' from Manhattan. By the time I was two, I had it memorized, "eighty-nine-ten, Thirty-Fifth Avenue, Jackson Heights, New York". (Oddly enough, about twenty years later, I was stationed less than a mile away on Thirty-Fifth Avenue at the U.S. Army Pictorial Center.)
My earliest memories are of parties, some at our apartment in Queens, some at big fancy places in Manhattan. I was the precocious kid, some might say the performing monkey, who would sing and dance on tabletops at the slightest provocation. I would recite, or sing commercial jingles I'd heard on the radio ("I love Chicklets candy-coated gum") and they'd capture it on a 'wire recorder'. I remember Ethel Merman, Celeste Holm, Mary Martin and Alfred Drake quite clearly.
Everyone we knew was in theater, everyone was rather grand and flamboyant, everyone had shed whatever regional accents they grew up with and spoke in affected semi-British accents. Many were gay, and not just the dancers, although that seemed just as normal to me as anything did. But a new and younger crop of performers, returning GI's and female factory workers were starting to get the choice Broadway parts.
"Oklahoma!" had a very long run and my mother continued with it for another two years until she became pregnant with my sister Elizabeth. After the show finally closed, my father went on to a featured singing role in "Annie Get Your Gun" with Ethel Merman, but a second child meant my mother's Broadway career was over. She found herself in an apartment in Queens with two young children.
My mother made the best of it (at first) but she wasn't cut out for Queens. We would go into Manhattan frequently on the elevated train and sometimes our old friends would venture out into deepest, darkest Queens for parties. But by the late 1940's, my father's Broadway career was winding down as well. After "Annie Get Your Gun" the jobs began to get scarce.
For the first time in a decade, my father found himself an unemployed singer. He would ride the 'elevated' into Manhattan each day and prowl the casting calls and auditions with his pals, other out-of-work performers who, like Ed Begley, would become well-known later on, but these were their 'salad days'.
Then at the end of the day my father would ride the 'El' back to Queens and I would watch for him from our window on the fourth floor. I could tell from a block away what sort of day he'd had by how badly he was limping from his childhood polio. He was limping a lot. Then, as things were getting desperate, when we couldn't pay the rent, a surprise bit of luck.
He would often have lunch with his friends at the Lamb's Club*, a kind of theatrical men-only dorm. And it was there someone made him a fateful job suggestion.
* The 1904 Sanford White-designed Lamb's Club was gutted in 2007 and converted into a hotel. All that remains is the facade, which was declared a historical landmark.
Monday, July 27, 2009
PROLOGUE
D-Day
June 6, 2009
June 6th is always a bit melancholy for me, but especially this year. I was born just a few days after D-Day, so I'm approaching my 65th birthday. I'm having flashbacks about all sorts of things lately, but the D-Day anniversary reminds me of how much that day impacted both my wife's family and my own. It also had a very direct effect on me personally.
My father-in-law, Bill Doyle, was in one of the first waves to hit Omaha Beach on that day in 1944. He was part of a demolitions unit charged with clearing the beach of those large, X-shaped iron obstacles you see in the movies. He was one of only eight survivors of his company. Reassigned after his unit was decimated, he went all the way to Berlin with Patton, but rarely talks about it. He'll turn 88 next month and has been stone deaf since he landed on that beach 65 years ago today.
On the day I was born just over a week later, my parents had planned to name me after my father, Joseph Patrick Cunneff. But on that day, my uncle Raymond and my uncle Vincent were both missing in action. Ray was a fighter pilot and had been shot down somewhere in France. Vince had been separated from his unit somewhere in the North African desert. So instead of 'Joseph Patrick', I was named 'Raymond Vincent'.
When they both turned up later, the family was furious (not really) with them. My Aunt Rose, so the story goes, supposedly said to them, "don't you realize we named this baby after you two?!" Nevertheless, it always seemed very appropriate somehow that I was born on Flag Day.
Bill Doyle went on to a long career as an athletic coach and referee in the San Fernando Valley in spite of his deafness. But his family always said that he was never the same man after he returned from the war.
My Uncle Vincent was actually a cousin, part of the Quinn branch of the family in Philadelphia. He too had lingering problems after the war that, they said, left him at the very least 'eccentric'. The story goes, he had wandered in the desert for many days and that the sun had fried his brain. Although he held jobs and owned property, he never married and lived with his mother, my Aunt Rose, until his death in the 1980's.
My uncle Raymond, my father's brother, went on to become a much-decorated Atlantic City, New Jersey police officer. He died in 1959 of what appeared to have been a massive heart attack. But autopsy revealed that a tiny piece of shrapnel that had been embedded in his shoulder since the day he was shot down had become dislodged and tore a hole through his heart.
As I said, June 6th is always a bit melancholy for me, especially this year.
Afterthoughts
June 10, 2009
As my birthday fast approaches, there are some things I ought to add.
My father never served in the military, although whether he wanted to I really can't say. He'd had polio as a child, what was then called 'infantile paralysis'. He wasn't expected to ever walk unassisted, but my grandmother and my Aunt Anna massaged his legs with oil almost hourly for months and somehow overcame most of the symptoms. He later played baseball, even boxed. But his feet were permanently deformed. As an adult, his shoe size was six triple-E.
I don't know much about my Uncle Vince's life after the war. My most vivid memories of Vince were when my family moved year-round to Ventnor, near Atlantic City, when I was sixteen. Vince lived in Philadelphia, some 90 miles away. He didn't drive, couldn't deal with the bus and would never take a cab, yet would somehow magically show up at our house, do odd jobs, then disappear as mysteriously as he'd arrived. He seemed utterly benign, didn't say much, but was obviously a bit odd (at least from my sixteen year-old perspective).
When I say my Uncle Ray was a much-decorated (and much-loved) police officer, it is an understatement. Ray was an Atlantic City boardwalk cop.He knew just every merchant, colorful character and hustler on his beat. He received numerous decorations for valor, for marksmanship, even took part in a rescue at sea. He was 43 when he died, in the bathroom shaving one morning. They said he was dead before he hit the floor. Over 2,000 people came to his wake.
June 6, 2009
June 6th is always a bit melancholy for me, but especially this year. I was born just a few days after D-Day, so I'm approaching my 65th birthday. I'm having flashbacks about all sorts of things lately, but the D-Day anniversary reminds me of how much that day impacted both my wife's family and my own. It also had a very direct effect on me personally.
My father-in-law, Bill Doyle, was in one of the first waves to hit Omaha Beach on that day in 1944. He was part of a demolitions unit charged with clearing the beach of those large, X-shaped iron obstacles you see in the movies. He was one of only eight survivors of his company. Reassigned after his unit was decimated, he went all the way to Berlin with Patton, but rarely talks about it. He'll turn 88 next month and has been stone deaf since he landed on that beach 65 years ago today.
On the day I was born just over a week later, my parents had planned to name me after my father, Joseph Patrick Cunneff. But on that day, my uncle Raymond and my uncle Vincent were both missing in action. Ray was a fighter pilot and had been shot down somewhere in France. Vince had been separated from his unit somewhere in the North African desert. So instead of 'Joseph Patrick', I was named 'Raymond Vincent'.
When they both turned up later, the family was furious (not really) with them. My Aunt Rose, so the story goes, supposedly said to them, "don't you realize we named this baby after you two?!" Nevertheless, it always seemed very appropriate somehow that I was born on Flag Day.
Bill Doyle went on to a long career as an athletic coach and referee in the San Fernando Valley in spite of his deafness. But his family always said that he was never the same man after he returned from the war.
My Uncle Vincent was actually a cousin, part of the Quinn branch of the family in Philadelphia. He too had lingering problems after the war that, they said, left him at the very least 'eccentric'. The story goes, he had wandered in the desert for many days and that the sun had fried his brain. Although he held jobs and owned property, he never married and lived with his mother, my Aunt Rose, until his death in the 1980's.
My uncle Raymond, my father's brother, went on to become a much-decorated Atlantic City, New Jersey police officer. He died in 1959 of what appeared to have been a massive heart attack. But autopsy revealed that a tiny piece of shrapnel that had been embedded in his shoulder since the day he was shot down had become dislodged and tore a hole through his heart.
As I said, June 6th is always a bit melancholy for me, especially this year.
Afterthoughts
June 10, 2009
As my birthday fast approaches, there are some things I ought to add.
My father never served in the military, although whether he wanted to I really can't say. He'd had polio as a child, what was then called 'infantile paralysis'. He wasn't expected to ever walk unassisted, but my grandmother and my Aunt Anna massaged his legs with oil almost hourly for months and somehow overcame most of the symptoms. He later played baseball, even boxed. But his feet were permanently deformed. As an adult, his shoe size was six triple-E.
I don't know much about my Uncle Vince's life after the war. My most vivid memories of Vince were when my family moved year-round to Ventnor, near Atlantic City, when I was sixteen. Vince lived in Philadelphia, some 90 miles away. He didn't drive, couldn't deal with the bus and would never take a cab, yet would somehow magically show up at our house, do odd jobs, then disappear as mysteriously as he'd arrived. He seemed utterly benign, didn't say much, but was obviously a bit odd (at least from my sixteen year-old perspective).
When I say my Uncle Ray was a much-decorated (and much-loved) police officer, it is an understatement. Ray was an Atlantic City boardwalk cop.He knew just every merchant, colorful character and hustler on his beat. He received numerous decorations for valor, for marksmanship, even took part in a rescue at sea. He was 43 when he died, in the bathroom shaving one morning. They said he was dead before he hit the floor. Over 2,000 people came to his wake.
INTRODUCTION
For someone who's not famous or especially accomplished to write his autobiography and expect anyone to read it seems a bit like public masturbation. But since part of my belief system is that 'an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away', this at least gives the project a certain symmetry.
In thinking about my life and career(s), I've begun to realize that others might find it an interesting, even entertaining read. I've known some fascinating, often very famous people. I've been to some interesting places all over the world. And while in my own community I'm fairly well-known, even influential, even my friends and former colleagues are likely to find a few surprises in my story.
But another reason is that my first two children know next to nothing about me. My first wife and I divorced when they were six and four respectively. It was a particularly nasty divorce and the children and I had only the most occasional contact and, in the last few years, none at all.
So, this is my story...
The short-hand version:
I was the original "Broadway brat", the ultimate child of the television age, actor, soldier, network television executive, motion picture and television writer, computer graphics specialist, radio sales administrator, radio deejay and talk show host, and buff, retired senior who it would appear has too much time on his hands.
I've never been very good at self-promotion - this story notwithstanding.
Back-story
On my father's side, it was a sprawling Irish family that had first settled in Philadelphia, including Cunneff (yes, it really is an Irish name), Porter, Quinn, Bailey, Dougherty, Newell, Lake, Loftus, Canton (and some others I've probably forgotten). Then there were the Hartman's. I still don't know exactly how they got into the mix, but I was a teenager before I figured out their name was German.
My mother's side was English, from Boston and Haverhill, Mass. Their name was Likely and the only other early family name on that side that I can recall was Newton. Later, there was Baldwin in Florida and Edwards in North Carolina. My mother was the second of three sisters but it turned out that only the youngest, Priscilla was actually a Likely. My mother, Patricia, and her older sister, Lavinia (I kid you not) were the daughters of someone named Eastman.
It was a family secret until late in my grandmother Eleanor's life. Many years later, my youngest sister, Catherine, became excited at the prospect of attending a Likely family reunion. It came as a shock when she learned that we were not blood relatives.
In thinking about my life and career(s), I've begun to realize that others might find it an interesting, even entertaining read. I've known some fascinating, often very famous people. I've been to some interesting places all over the world. And while in my own community I'm fairly well-known, even influential, even my friends and former colleagues are likely to find a few surprises in my story.
But another reason is that my first two children know next to nothing about me. My first wife and I divorced when they were six and four respectively. It was a particularly nasty divorce and the children and I had only the most occasional contact and, in the last few years, none at all.
So, this is my story...
The short-hand version:
I was the original "Broadway brat", the ultimate child of the television age, actor, soldier, network television executive, motion picture and television writer, computer graphics specialist, radio sales administrator, radio deejay and talk show host, and buff, retired senior who it would appear has too much time on his hands.
I've never been very good at self-promotion - this story notwithstanding.
Back-story
On my father's side, it was a sprawling Irish family that had first settled in Philadelphia, including Cunneff (yes, it really is an Irish name), Porter, Quinn, Bailey, Dougherty, Newell, Lake, Loftus, Canton (and some others I've probably forgotten). Then there were the Hartman's. I still don't know exactly how they got into the mix, but I was a teenager before I figured out their name was German.
My mother's side was English, from Boston and Haverhill, Mass. Their name was Likely and the only other early family name on that side that I can recall was Newton. Later, there was Baldwin in Florida and Edwards in North Carolina. My mother was the second of three sisters but it turned out that only the youngest, Priscilla was actually a Likely. My mother, Patricia, and her older sister, Lavinia (I kid you not) were the daughters of someone named Eastman.
It was a family secret until late in my grandmother Eleanor's life. Many years later, my youngest sister, Catherine, became excited at the prospect of attending a Likely family reunion. It came as a shock when she learned that we were not blood relatives.
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