We had lived in the house on Edgewood Road for nearly six years when my parents decided in 1958 to build a new house on the other, somewhat more 'fashionable' side of Linden, New Jersey. We found a corner lot on Georgian Drive and the whole family, in varying degrees, had a hand in its design. It was a four-bedroom split-level with four levels (not including the basement and attic). We all loved the new house but would only live there for two years.
Trouble was brewing on several fronts, most prominently my mother's drinking. She had never been much of a drinker until the mid-1950's (her early thirties) when casual, social drinking began to accelerate into something far more serious. When still in the Edgewood Road house, about 1956, she'd had a fall in the middle of the night and knocked out half her teeth against a bedpost. Another night, we awoke to horns honking and found her car in the middle of the road. The birth of a fourth child, my sister Catherine (Cat) seemed to have crushed whatever dreams she still had.
By 1958, her dancing school, which had been so successful, began a long, slow decline as parents became aware of her increasingly erratic behavior *. Student attendance and revenue began to shrink dramatically. The annual dance recitals, that had been so lavish and professional, began to look slapdash, especially as my father's participation steadily diminished. The strain in their relationship was becoming obvious and the financial pressure of the failing dance studio only added to their mutual misery.
And there were other problems. My father was becoming concerned that Linden was not the best place for any of us. I was not living up to expectations (based on several IQ tests) at Linden High School and my father felt the boys my sisters were seeing were unsuitable working-class lugs. He had an image, partly a fantasy, of the sort of young men they would find in Atlantic City where his uncles, aunts and cousins had deep roots even after the deaths of his mother and brother in 1959. He imagined blond-haired, blue-eyed, athletic, college-bound lifeguard types, like my cousin Paul (Hartman). The reality was somewhat different.
So in 1960, we sold the house in Linden and moved to an eight-bedroom, five-story near-beachfront behemoth in Ventnor, New Jersey, just 'down beach' of Atlantic City, to live year-round. Of course, Atlantic City is 140 miles from New York and far beyond any reasonable commuting distance for my father. Perhaps by design, thereafter we saw him only on weekends and, before long, not every weekend. While this arrangement may have been good for my father, it was not at all easy for the rest of us.
My father took a room at the Lamb's Club in New York and, in his absence, I became the titular 'head of the household', a thankless job to put it mildly. We felt abandoned and, as much as I loved my father, I could not forgive him for the situation he put us in. For the first year or so, my mother usually drank herself into oblivion and treated her children with 'benign neglect'. There were no trips to the dentist or the doctor. Later it became far darker. We had a housekeeper for a while, who cooked and cleaned, but, when she didn't get paid, she finally quit.
Our Aunt Rose, the matriarch of the family, came down from Philadelphia and stayed as long as she could, but my mother could not abide her obvious disapproval and ordered her to go home. We lived in what many considered a mansion but there was often no food in the house.
There were problems at school as well. Many of the students at Atlantic City High School had known each other since kindergarten. I was entering as a Junior and my sister Liz as a Freshman. We were an alien species and did not feel at all welcome, at least at first. But I was luckier than Liz. On little more than a whim, I joined the Journalism Club and the Stage Crew. Both would have a significant impact on my future, but it was in Stage Crew that I met the person who would become my best friend, Steve Berger.
I remember the moment it happened. I was in the stage-right wings, trying to get the sound system to feed to the auditorium, when Steve came by and offered me a handful of cashews. I said, "Jesus, Jack. Is that all you got for the cow?" He blinked for a moment, then doubled over laughing. I have no idea where that line came from but Steve was practically rolling on the floor and we became friends from then on. And he introduced me into his circle of friends, including Gary Allen **, Marc Lovitz (the biggest organ in Atlantic City, apart from the Wurlitzer at the Convention Hall) and a number of other members of the "Jewish mafia".
Thanks to Steve, they adopted me as the "token goy", even made me an honorary member of their fraternity, Phi Delta Pi. I will be eternally grateful. In many ways they not only saved me, they turned me from a C-and-D student into an A-and-B student. I had hated Linden High and it showed in my grades. But ACHS would be very different for me. But, as I said, my sister Liz was not as lucky.
* Joanne Woodward gave a witheringly on-the-nose performance in the film "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds" that caught her perfectly at this point. It would get much worse later on.
** Gary Allen died in an auto accident less than a year after graduation.
NEXT: "Back to New York"
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
"Atlantic City"
As I've said previously, I spent my summers in Atlantic City at the home of my grandparents and my Uncle Ray from the time I was two years old. They had a downstairs flat on Florida Avenue, an easy (and aromatic) walk to the boardwalk and the beach. What I remember best about that walk were the smells, the hanging cheeses and meats at the Italian deli, the fresh fruits at the produce market and the smoky, beery smell of the bar on the corner at Pacific Avenue.
My best friend Tommy Gallagher and I would spend every day at the beach *, every night on the boardwalk - Million Dollar Pier, Steeplechase, Steel Pier, Ice Capades - a blur of sights and smells, of ice cream, Planter's peanuts and salt water taffy. From Memorial Day to the week after Labor Day (and the Miss America Pageant **), we took it all in and took it for granted. I loved Atlantic City as it was then, before the casinos destroyed it all.
Before the casinos came, Atlantic City had been a city of great restaurants, especially the famous Hackney's and Capt. Starns lobster houses, elegant boardwalk hotels, amusement piers and dozens of movie houses both along the boardwalk and on Atlantic Avenue. The Steel Pier was probably the ultimate Atlantic City attraction, offering live appearances by the biggest names in show business, first-run movies, a water circus "a mile at sea" (a slight overstatement) and the famous "High Diving Horse".
The first job I ever had (at sixteen) was as an usher at the Apollo Theater on the boardwalk where in the course of one summer I saw "Elmer Gantry" (another Richard Brooks film) and Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" literally dozens of times. Both films made a lasting impression, but I'd never seen anything like the audience reaction to "Psycho". Never before had I seen grown men and women jump out of their seats screaming and run out of the theater in terror, not even stopping for a refund. If the shower scene didn't get them, detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) getting it on the stairs did.
But my favorite movie palace (and it was a palace) was the Warner Theater on the boardwalk at Arkansas Avenue. (For some reason, the locals called it "Ar-Kansas" Avenue.) Seeing a film there was an experience unto itself, with a skyline of Mediterranean-style houses and lighted balconies all around and a dome of blue sky above. And when the lights went down, the stars came out. I saw George Pal's "War of the Worlds" there when I was eight and I've never forgotten the thrill of it.
In 1956, my grandfather died suddenly of a massive heart attack, although some would say he had died years before. He had been Chief of Detectives for the Atlantic City Police Department until be became a fall-guy in a corruption scandal and lost his job, his pension and his reputation. Nearly unemployable, he took a series of menial and demeaning jobs, including bellhop at the President Hotel, carrying suitcases from the curb to the front desk well into his sixties.
The following year, with my father's financial help, my grandmother and uncle moved from the Florida Avenue flat to a small bungalow in the 'down beach' community of Margate, across the street from the Margate Yacht Club. For those unfamiliar with Atlantic City, it occupies the northern part of Absecon Island, with the communities of Ventnor, Margate and Longport to the south. (With all those familiar names from Monopoly: Boardwalk, Park Place, Marvin Gardens etc.)
The summer of 1958 was the summer of Ricky Nelson. (I learned later that he preferred to be called 'Rick'.) His single, "Poor Little Fool" hit number one on the charts a week before he was scheduled to appear at the Steel Pier. I was fourteen and he was eighteen, just enough older that he seemed to have and be everything that I wanted. According to a Life Magazine cover story, he had displaced Elvis as "Teen's Top Throb". And I actually looked a lot like him.
But even after my experience with the Alan Freed rock show, I was totally unprepared for the size and frenzy of the crowds that greeted his Steel Pier debut. Owner George Hamid's staff was clearly unprepared for what they would be dealing with as thousands of screaming fans jammed the pier for the two-day run overflowing the Midway Theater which was probably designed to hold no more than 500 people. He broke an attendance record set by Frank Sinatra that had stood since 1947.
On stage, Rick was like a young god, actually looking and sounding better (and somehow different) than he did on television where he had been performing a song at the end of each episode of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" for the previous year. What had started out as a lark, a brief, funny impression of Elvis to impress a girl, had turned into a full-blown rock & roll career - and he was the real deal. Without his parents' stern supervision, he seemed free to cut loose - and he did!
Like the Alan Freed shows, a back-up band of local musicians had been put together for him, but I found out later that he was very unhappy with it. And when he returned the following year, he had personally put together a truly kick-ass band that included lead-guitarist James Burton (who later played for many years with Elvis Presley and, more recently with the other Elvis, Costello) and this time they performed in the Marine Ballroom which could accommodate thousands. That year, 1959, Rick Nelson *** broke his own attendance record with over 50,000 people, four shows a day, over two days.
But by the early 1960's, as Rick Nelson's fortunes began to wane, so did Atlantic City's. The families that had once come down from Philadelphia and New York for entire summers now came for weekends. And jet travel made vacations in Florida or the Caribbean as easy and affordable as travel by car or train to the Jersey shore. And unlike these other destinations, Atlantic City was strictly a summer resort with a long, cold off-season. Basic economics began to take a toll.
When casino gambling came in a few years later, they didn't want competion from the very things that had put Atlantic City on the map in the first place. They wanted players at the tables and slots. They wanted them eating in the casino, not at some outside restaurant. They didn't even want to give them easy access to the beach. And one by one, the restaurants, the movie theaters, the amusement piers and many of the great old hotels were systematically demolished.
* By the end of the summer, I'd be absolutely black - which explains the skin cancers (basal cell carcinomas) they've been cutting off me for the last twenty-five years.
** My father played a pivotal role in bringing the Miss America Pageant to NBC.
*** Rick Nelson was killed in a plane crash on New Year's Eve 1985 in DeKalb, Texas.
NEXT: "Year Round"
My best friend Tommy Gallagher and I would spend every day at the beach *, every night on the boardwalk - Million Dollar Pier, Steeplechase, Steel Pier, Ice Capades - a blur of sights and smells, of ice cream, Planter's peanuts and salt water taffy. From Memorial Day to the week after Labor Day (and the Miss America Pageant **), we took it all in and took it for granted. I loved Atlantic City as it was then, before the casinos destroyed it all.
Before the casinos came, Atlantic City had been a city of great restaurants, especially the famous Hackney's and Capt. Starns lobster houses, elegant boardwalk hotels, amusement piers and dozens of movie houses both along the boardwalk and on Atlantic Avenue. The Steel Pier was probably the ultimate Atlantic City attraction, offering live appearances by the biggest names in show business, first-run movies, a water circus "a mile at sea" (a slight overstatement) and the famous "High Diving Horse".
The first job I ever had (at sixteen) was as an usher at the Apollo Theater on the boardwalk where in the course of one summer I saw "Elmer Gantry" (another Richard Brooks film) and Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" literally dozens of times. Both films made a lasting impression, but I'd never seen anything like the audience reaction to "Psycho". Never before had I seen grown men and women jump out of their seats screaming and run out of the theater in terror, not even stopping for a refund. If the shower scene didn't get them, detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) getting it on the stairs did.
But my favorite movie palace (and it was a palace) was the Warner Theater on the boardwalk at Arkansas Avenue. (For some reason, the locals called it "Ar-Kansas" Avenue.) Seeing a film there was an experience unto itself, with a skyline of Mediterranean-style houses and lighted balconies all around and a dome of blue sky above. And when the lights went down, the stars came out. I saw George Pal's "War of the Worlds" there when I was eight and I've never forgotten the thrill of it.
In 1956, my grandfather died suddenly of a massive heart attack, although some would say he had died years before. He had been Chief of Detectives for the Atlantic City Police Department until be became a fall-guy in a corruption scandal and lost his job, his pension and his reputation. Nearly unemployable, he took a series of menial and demeaning jobs, including bellhop at the President Hotel, carrying suitcases from the curb to the front desk well into his sixties.
The following year, with my father's financial help, my grandmother and uncle moved from the Florida Avenue flat to a small bungalow in the 'down beach' community of Margate, across the street from the Margate Yacht Club. For those unfamiliar with Atlantic City, it occupies the northern part of Absecon Island, with the communities of Ventnor, Margate and Longport to the south. (With all those familiar names from Monopoly: Boardwalk, Park Place, Marvin Gardens etc.)
The summer of 1958 was the summer of Ricky Nelson. (I learned later that he preferred to be called 'Rick'.) His single, "Poor Little Fool" hit number one on the charts a week before he was scheduled to appear at the Steel Pier. I was fourteen and he was eighteen, just enough older that he seemed to have and be everything that I wanted. According to a Life Magazine cover story, he had displaced Elvis as "Teen's Top Throb". And I actually looked a lot like him.
But even after my experience with the Alan Freed rock show, I was totally unprepared for the size and frenzy of the crowds that greeted his Steel Pier debut. Owner George Hamid's staff was clearly unprepared for what they would be dealing with as thousands of screaming fans jammed the pier for the two-day run overflowing the Midway Theater which was probably designed to hold no more than 500 people. He broke an attendance record set by Frank Sinatra that had stood since 1947.
On stage, Rick was like a young god, actually looking and sounding better (and somehow different) than he did on television where he had been performing a song at the end of each episode of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" for the previous year. What had started out as a lark, a brief, funny impression of Elvis to impress a girl, had turned into a full-blown rock & roll career - and he was the real deal. Without his parents' stern supervision, he seemed free to cut loose - and he did!
Like the Alan Freed shows, a back-up band of local musicians had been put together for him, but I found out later that he was very unhappy with it. And when he returned the following year, he had personally put together a truly kick-ass band that included lead-guitarist James Burton (who later played for many years with Elvis Presley and, more recently with the other Elvis, Costello) and this time they performed in the Marine Ballroom which could accommodate thousands. That year, 1959, Rick Nelson *** broke his own attendance record with over 50,000 people, four shows a day, over two days.
But by the early 1960's, as Rick Nelson's fortunes began to wane, so did Atlantic City's. The families that had once come down from Philadelphia and New York for entire summers now came for weekends. And jet travel made vacations in Florida or the Caribbean as easy and affordable as travel by car or train to the Jersey shore. And unlike these other destinations, Atlantic City was strictly a summer resort with a long, cold off-season. Basic economics began to take a toll.
When casino gambling came in a few years later, they didn't want competion from the very things that had put Atlantic City on the map in the first place. They wanted players at the tables and slots. They wanted them eating in the casino, not at some outside restaurant. They didn't even want to give them easy access to the beach. And one by one, the restaurants, the movie theaters, the amusement piers and many of the great old hotels were systematically demolished.
* By the end of the summer, I'd be absolutely black - which explains the skin cancers (basal cell carcinomas) they've been cutting off me for the last twenty-five years.
** My father played a pivotal role in bringing the Miss America Pageant to NBC.
*** Rick Nelson was killed in a plane crash on New Year's Eve 1985 in DeKalb, Texas.
NEXT: "Year Round"
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
"Rock & Roll"
Our life in suburban New Jersey in many ways mirrored the "Ozzie & Harriet", "Father Knows Best" sensibilities of the mid 1950's. My sisters and I dutifully went to (public) school, did our homework (usually) and as we got a little older began hanging out at the malt shop just like the good kids we saw on TV. But something new was stirring in America, something that would soon begin to change everything.
In Linden, my mother opened the first in a series of ever-larger and more successful Pat Likely Dance Studios. And we, my sisters and I, were all expected to dance, especially in her annual dance 'recitals'. Several of my mother's students went on to professional careers as dancers or in some other aspect of the performing arts. And with my father's stage production expertise, the dance recitals became increasingly large and lavish. It certainly wowed them in Linden, New Jersey!
I was never a great dancer, but it turned out my sister Liz was. She became an exquisite ballerina and before she was eleven was being scouted by George Balanchine of the New York City Ballet. Liz and my mother began spending a great deal of time in New York at auditions and lessons conducted by some of the toughest taskmasters in the world of ballet (and some of those old queens could be real bitches). But if my mother was (back) in heaven, my sister was in hell. She couldn't take the pressure and the lifestyle and abruptly quit, creating a schism between them that would never mend.
I can't be certain exactly when I first became aware of this new music called rock & roll, but it was probably in 1955 with the release of a movie called "The Blackboard Jungle" * and its use of Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock" over the opening titles. But at about the same time I began listening to a 'disc jockey' on WINS-AM in New York named Alan Freed.
Freed is generally credited with coining the term "rock and roll" and popularizing the music, but he was not the first to play it. Although the R&B roots of rock go back to the late 1930's, Freed introduced it and a roster of previously unknown black performers to a much larger (and whiter) audience. In the 1956 movie "Rock, Rock, Rock!" (in which he plays himself) Freed says, "Rock and roll is a river of music that has absorbed many streams - rhythm and blues, jazz, ragtime, cowboy songs, country songs, folk songs - all have contributed to the big beat".
In addition to his radio shows, Alan Freed ** produced and emceed a series of live rock & roll shows (they weren't yet called 'concerts') and I was privileged to have attended one of them.
My best recollection is that it was '56 or '57, which would have made me twelve or thirteen. Memory can play tricks on you and there are some parts of the story that are crystal clear, other parts less so. All the biographical material says that the Alan Freed rock & roll shows were at the Paramount Theaters in Brooklyn or Manhattan. But I am absolutely certain that the show I attended was at Fabian's Fox Theater in Brooklyn.
This was another great adventure for me since my previous trips to Brooklyn had been with my father ("Hallmark Hall of Fame") via the Staten Island Ferry, but this time I went with two friends my own age via a bus ride into Manhattan and subway connections to Flatbush Avenue in deepest, darkest Brooklyn.
The theater was large and decorated in an incongruous 'Siamese-Byzantine' style. I remember sitting in the balcony with an excellent view of both the stage and the first few rows of seats in the orchestra. (This is noteworthy only because we were able to see the kids dancing in the aisles, just like in the movies that followed.) There was one large band that backed all the musical acts, but it was far from our parents' idea of a 'big band'. These guys played rock & roll!
With one major exception, the exact line-up of performers is a little fuzzy. I'm sure we saw Chuck Berry, fairly sure we saw Fats Domino, The Cadillacs, Bo Diddley, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers and The Coasters (or was it The Drifters?) And there were at least a couple of 'white' acts, one a guitar player, but I'm not sure whether it was Eddie Cochran or Gene Vincent, maybe both.
But the major exception, the performance that will remain etched in my brain, was Jackie Wilson. I've seen a few true show-stoppers in my time, from Callas, to Pavarotti, to Ethel Merman, to Striesand in "Funny Girl", to (the unlikeliest of all) Dorothy Collins in "Follies", but it would be hard to rival Jackie Wilson on that stage in Brooklyn. In show-biz parlance, he "burned the place down".
It was about that same time that I bought my first 45 rpm record. It was "Don't Be Cruel" on one side and "Hound Dog" on the other by Elvis Presley.
Except for the early years, I was never a huge Elvis fan. I liked the music but somehow never really connected with him. His movies got progressively more ridiculous and by the time he reached his bloated, Las Vegas period I could not bear to watch him. But in 1957, another music star began to emerge from the pack that I did connect with and, as it turned out, someone I'd been watching on TV and listening to on radio for as long as I could remember - Rick Nelson.
* I could not have imagined that, many years later, the film's director, Richard Brooks, would become my friend, mentor and the reason I moved to California.
In Linden, my mother opened the first in a series of ever-larger and more successful Pat Likely Dance Studios. And we, my sisters and I, were all expected to dance, especially in her annual dance 'recitals'. Several of my mother's students went on to professional careers as dancers or in some other aspect of the performing arts. And with my father's stage production expertise, the dance recitals became increasingly large and lavish. It certainly wowed them in Linden, New Jersey!
I was never a great dancer, but it turned out my sister Liz was. She became an exquisite ballerina and before she was eleven was being scouted by George Balanchine of the New York City Ballet. Liz and my mother began spending a great deal of time in New York at auditions and lessons conducted by some of the toughest taskmasters in the world of ballet (and some of those old queens could be real bitches). But if my mother was (back) in heaven, my sister was in hell. She couldn't take the pressure and the lifestyle and abruptly quit, creating a schism between them that would never mend.
I can't be certain exactly when I first became aware of this new music called rock & roll, but it was probably in 1955 with the release of a movie called "The Blackboard Jungle" * and its use of Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock" over the opening titles. But at about the same time I began listening to a 'disc jockey' on WINS-AM in New York named Alan Freed.
Freed is generally credited with coining the term "rock and roll" and popularizing the music, but he was not the first to play it. Although the R&B roots of rock go back to the late 1930's, Freed introduced it and a roster of previously unknown black performers to a much larger (and whiter) audience. In the 1956 movie "Rock, Rock, Rock!" (in which he plays himself) Freed says, "Rock and roll is a river of music that has absorbed many streams - rhythm and blues, jazz, ragtime, cowboy songs, country songs, folk songs - all have contributed to the big beat".
In addition to his radio shows, Alan Freed ** produced and emceed a series of live rock & roll shows (they weren't yet called 'concerts') and I was privileged to have attended one of them.
My best recollection is that it was '56 or '57, which would have made me twelve or thirteen. Memory can play tricks on you and there are some parts of the story that are crystal clear, other parts less so. All the biographical material says that the Alan Freed rock & roll shows were at the Paramount Theaters in Brooklyn or Manhattan. But I am absolutely certain that the show I attended was at Fabian's Fox Theater in Brooklyn.
This was another great adventure for me since my previous trips to Brooklyn had been with my father ("Hallmark Hall of Fame") via the Staten Island Ferry, but this time I went with two friends my own age via a bus ride into Manhattan and subway connections to Flatbush Avenue in deepest, darkest Brooklyn.
The theater was large and decorated in an incongruous 'Siamese-Byzantine' style. I remember sitting in the balcony with an excellent view of both the stage and the first few rows of seats in the orchestra. (This is noteworthy only because we were able to see the kids dancing in the aisles, just like in the movies that followed.) There was one large band that backed all the musical acts, but it was far from our parents' idea of a 'big band'. These guys played rock & roll!
With one major exception, the exact line-up of performers is a little fuzzy. I'm sure we saw Chuck Berry, fairly sure we saw Fats Domino, The Cadillacs, Bo Diddley, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers and The Coasters (or was it The Drifters?) And there were at least a couple of 'white' acts, one a guitar player, but I'm not sure whether it was Eddie Cochran or Gene Vincent, maybe both.
But the major exception, the performance that will remain etched in my brain, was Jackie Wilson. I've seen a few true show-stoppers in my time, from Callas, to Pavarotti, to Ethel Merman, to Striesand in "Funny Girl", to (the unlikeliest of all) Dorothy Collins in "Follies", but it would be hard to rival Jackie Wilson on that stage in Brooklyn. In show-biz parlance, he "burned the place down".
It was about that same time that I bought my first 45 rpm record. It was "Don't Be Cruel" on one side and "Hound Dog" on the other by Elvis Presley.
Except for the early years, I was never a huge Elvis fan. I liked the music but somehow never really connected with him. His movies got progressively more ridiculous and by the time he reached his bloated, Las Vegas period I could not bear to watch him. But in 1957, another music star began to emerge from the pack that I did connect with and, as it turned out, someone I'd been watching on TV and listening to on radio for as long as I could remember - Rick Nelson.
* I could not have imagined that, many years later, the film's director, Richard Brooks, would become my friend, mentor and the reason I moved to California.
** Alan Freed died broke and discouraged in 1965 at the age of 43, having been caught up in the "payola" scandal of the late 1950's.
NEXT: "Atlantic City"
Monday, August 17, 2009
Part Two
In preparing to write this book/blog, something I've been planning to do for many years, it occurred to me that between my father's career at NBC and mine at CBS you have pretty much the entire history of American network television.
One might get the impression from Part One that my father was only involved with "Kraft Television Theatre" and "Hallmark Hall of Fame" in those early years, but I have a few souvenirs of that time which remind me that he must have been working on several shows simultaneously. I have a single gold cuff link in the shape of a Coca Cola bottle (I'm sure it started out as a pair) that was given to him by singer Eddie Fisher when they worked together on "Coke Time". I have a gold money clip in the form of a St. Christopher medal that is inscribed "For Joe, with love from Talullah" *
In many ways, we were both in the right places at the right times to be eyewitnesses to some of the most pivotal moments in the growth and development of the medium. My father spent the second half of his NBC career with "The Tonight Show" and the ascendancy of its new host, Johnny Carson. My CBS career included double-stints in both the Program Department and the Program Practices Department - much like having been both a defense attorney and a prosecutor - the only person at any network to have ever done that.
We both started in New York and finished in Los Angeles. We both worked with, and in some cases had to deal with, many of the biggest names (and egos) in the entertainment industry. Unfortunately, this account of my father's career will be necessarily incomplete as he is no longer with us to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and memory. And it follows that this account of my career is fresher in memory and will be far more detailed.
But it is not my purpose to embarrass anyone (if I can help it). Between marriages, I 'dated' several well-known women, but I would not like this effort to be characterized as a kiss-and-tell. Similarly, I've had personal knowledge of a number of what might be called scandals but I will try to be discreet, having no desire to spend the rest of my life in litigation.
* Talullah Bankhead was primarily a stage and screen star, but also did a surprising amount of radio ("The Big Show") and television ("All Star Revue"). A very bawdy lady, she was best known for saying "Who do you have to fuck to get off this picture?" Her relationship with my father remains something of a mystery.
NEXT: "Rock & Roll"
One might get the impression from Part One that my father was only involved with "Kraft Television Theatre" and "Hallmark Hall of Fame" in those early years, but I have a few souvenirs of that time which remind me that he must have been working on several shows simultaneously. I have a single gold cuff link in the shape of a Coca Cola bottle (I'm sure it started out as a pair) that was given to him by singer Eddie Fisher when they worked together on "Coke Time". I have a gold money clip in the form of a St. Christopher medal that is inscribed "For Joe, with love from Talullah" *
In many ways, we were both in the right places at the right times to be eyewitnesses to some of the most pivotal moments in the growth and development of the medium. My father spent the second half of his NBC career with "The Tonight Show" and the ascendancy of its new host, Johnny Carson. My CBS career included double-stints in both the Program Department and the Program Practices Department - much like having been both a defense attorney and a prosecutor - the only person at any network to have ever done that.
We both started in New York and finished in Los Angeles. We both worked with, and in some cases had to deal with, many of the biggest names (and egos) in the entertainment industry. Unfortunately, this account of my father's career will be necessarily incomplete as he is no longer with us to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and memory. And it follows that this account of my career is fresher in memory and will be far more detailed.
But it is not my purpose to embarrass anyone (if I can help it). Between marriages, I 'dated' several well-known women, but I would not like this effort to be characterized as a kiss-and-tell. Similarly, I've had personal knowledge of a number of what might be called scandals but I will try to be discreet, having no desire to spend the rest of my life in litigation.
* Talullah Bankhead was primarily a stage and screen star, but also did a surprising amount of radio ("The Big Show") and television ("All Star Revue"). A very bawdy lady, she was best known for saying "Who do you have to fuck to get off this picture?" Her relationship with my father remains something of a mystery.
NEXT: "Rock & Roll"
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Television VI "Lost"
The great tragedy of television is that so much has been lost. Most of the early years of television were done live, the only recording capability a primitive film system called kinescopes (in which they literally filmed from a picture tube) until videotape first appeared in the mid-fifties. The original videotape machines were as big as mini-vans.
"Kine's" deteriorated quickly but even more catastrophic was the loss through deliberate destruction. It seemed that few television executives appreciated the historic value of those early recordings. The real purpose of kinescopes was to 'bicycle' the programs to stations that were in outlying markets beyond broadcast range. Once the kine's were returned to the networks, they were routinely destroyed.
If that wasn't bad enough, much of the early videotape record of television was bulk-erased to make storage space. I won't mention his name, but there was one network executive in the late 1950's who erased NBC's entire videotape library, including their Christmas perennial "Amal and the Night Visitors" - a production that had to be mounted again at an expense far greater than any savings incurred.
Among the many other lost programs was the NBC Opera Company's 1955 production of Puccini's "Madame Butterfly", the original recording of "Peter Pan" with Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard, "Robert Montgomery Presents" (most notably Helen Hayes in "Victoria Regina") and virtually all of producer Albert McCleery's daytime "Matinee Theatre" productions.
We have "I Love Lucy" today only because Desi Arnaz had the foresight to do it on film (and in the process invented the three-camera/live audience form that is so common today). But so many other programs, arguably as good, are lost. A good example is "Mr. Peepers", starring Wally Cox, Tony Randall and Marion Lorne. And what little can be found of Ernie Kovacs, "Your Show of Shows" *, "Texaco Star Theater". "Colgate Comedy Hour" (with early appearances of Martin & Lewis, Ed Wynn, Jimmy Durante and Louis Armstrong) are of poor quality and therefore rarely seen.
Very little of television's 'Golden Age' survives. But anyone who watched it, especially the live dramas, like the (aforementioned) "Kraft Television Theatre" and "Hallmark Hall of Fame", as well as "Studio One", "Playhouse 90", "Producers Showcase", and "Ford Star Jubilee" (to name just a few), felt the special 'opening night' energy that live television had. And most of it is gone.
* One of my most vivid memories of early television was when I attended a rehearsal of "Your Show of Shows" and what turned out to be a classic routine in which the cast (Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner & Howard Morris) played figures in a giant animated clock.
"Kine's" deteriorated quickly but even more catastrophic was the loss through deliberate destruction. It seemed that few television executives appreciated the historic value of those early recordings. The real purpose of kinescopes was to 'bicycle' the programs to stations that were in outlying markets beyond broadcast range. Once the kine's were returned to the networks, they were routinely destroyed.
If that wasn't bad enough, much of the early videotape record of television was bulk-erased to make storage space. I won't mention his name, but there was one network executive in the late 1950's who erased NBC's entire videotape library, including their Christmas perennial "Amal and the Night Visitors" - a production that had to be mounted again at an expense far greater than any savings incurred.
Among the many other lost programs was the NBC Opera Company's 1955 production of Puccini's "Madame Butterfly", the original recording of "Peter Pan" with Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard, "Robert Montgomery Presents" (most notably Helen Hayes in "Victoria Regina") and virtually all of producer Albert McCleery's daytime "Matinee Theatre" productions.
We have "I Love Lucy" today only because Desi Arnaz had the foresight to do it on film (and in the process invented the three-camera/live audience form that is so common today). But so many other programs, arguably as good, are lost. A good example is "Mr. Peepers", starring Wally Cox, Tony Randall and Marion Lorne. And what little can be found of Ernie Kovacs, "Your Show of Shows" *, "Texaco Star Theater". "Colgate Comedy Hour" (with early appearances of Martin & Lewis, Ed Wynn, Jimmy Durante and Louis Armstrong) are of poor quality and therefore rarely seen.
Very little of television's 'Golden Age' survives. But anyone who watched it, especially the live dramas, like the (aforementioned) "Kraft Television Theatre" and "Hallmark Hall of Fame", as well as "Studio One", "Playhouse 90", "Producers Showcase", and "Ford Star Jubilee" (to name just a few), felt the special 'opening night' energy that live television had. And most of it is gone.
* One of my most vivid memories of early television was when I attended a rehearsal of "Your Show of Shows" and what turned out to be a classic routine in which the cast (Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner & Howard Morris) played figures in a giant animated clock.
End of Part One
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Television V: "Hallmark Hall of Fame"
Looking back, I'm always impressed with how much of his work my father shared with me. Over the years we lived in Linden, he would take me with him into the city just about any time my school schedule would permit (and occasionally even when it didn't). And one of my favorites was spending entire Sundays with him when, in about 1955, he became Associate Producer of "Hallmark Hall of Fame".
What had begun in 1952 as a series of half-hour dramas had grown into ninety-minute productions broadcast live on Sunday nights. Produced at the NBC 'color' studios at 14th Street and Avenue M in Brooklyn (color was still a novelty in which only a few programs were broadcast and few people could receive), "Hallmark" boasted the most elaborate productions yet seen on television. Produced by George Schaefer in association with actor-director Maurice Evans, their greatest success was with serious dramas, adaptations of classics and historical plays.
My father and I would leave early Sunday mornings, take the Staten Island Ferry across New York Harbor (the Verrazano "Narrows" Bridge had not yet been built) to Brooklyn and I would spend the day observing the preparations and mounting tension of rehearsals leading up to the live broadcast. There were two studios that opened up to become the biggest television studio I'd ever (or have ever) seen, considerably larger than Studio 8-H in Manhattan. If "Kraft" was big, "Hallmark" was bigger *.
Among the most memorable "Hallmark" productions were "The Green Pastures" with William Warfield, Maxwell Anderson's "Winterset" with George C. Scott and Piper Laurie, "The Lark" with Julie Harris and Boris Karloff, "Born Yesterday" with Mary Martin and Paul Douglas and James Costigan's original drama "Little Moon of Alban" with Christopher Plummer and Julie Harris.
Often**, I was allowed to sit in the back of the control room, watching directors 'prep' the show, seeing how cameras were positioned and shots rehearsed, how all the elements of audio and video were merged into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Given how relatively primitive the technology was, the overall effect depended entirely on creativity and imagination, truly a 'magic lantern show'.
Of the many things that impressed me about "Hallmark", the sets were especially amazing. They were not only full-scale but 'practical', meaning not only did everything work, the sets had a front and rear so that the audience would never see the back of a flat if a cameraman accidentally shot off-set.
I remember one set in particular, a castle built for Shakespeare's "Richard II", starring Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson, complete with battlements, watchtowers, a dungeon and even a working drawbridge over a moat. Unlike my earlier experiences with television production, these sets were complete down to the smallest detail and absolutely exquisite. For me, it always seemed tragic that after the production was over they would wheel them outside and burn them.
* Years later, that enormous stage was often under utilized on lesser-scale productions. One that stands out was "The Perry Como Show", which seemed lost in that massive space. Another was "The Sammy Davis Jr. Show", but it gave me the opportunity in 1964 to meet Sammy's guest-host when he became ill, Sean Connery.
** But sometimes, when things were not going well or there was a director who didn't like some kid in his control room, I would be sent to a nearby movie theater. It was there I saw my first grown-up movie, "From Here To Eternity".
What had begun in 1952 as a series of half-hour dramas had grown into ninety-minute productions broadcast live on Sunday nights. Produced at the NBC 'color' studios at 14th Street and Avenue M in Brooklyn (color was still a novelty in which only a few programs were broadcast and few people could receive), "Hallmark" boasted the most elaborate productions yet seen on television. Produced by George Schaefer in association with actor-director Maurice Evans, their greatest success was with serious dramas, adaptations of classics and historical plays.
My father and I would leave early Sunday mornings, take the Staten Island Ferry across New York Harbor (the Verrazano "Narrows" Bridge had not yet been built) to Brooklyn and I would spend the day observing the preparations and mounting tension of rehearsals leading up to the live broadcast. There were two studios that opened up to become the biggest television studio I'd ever (or have ever) seen, considerably larger than Studio 8-H in Manhattan. If "Kraft" was big, "Hallmark" was bigger *.
Among the most memorable "Hallmark" productions were "The Green Pastures" with William Warfield, Maxwell Anderson's "Winterset" with George C. Scott and Piper Laurie, "The Lark" with Julie Harris and Boris Karloff, "Born Yesterday" with Mary Martin and Paul Douglas and James Costigan's original drama "Little Moon of Alban" with Christopher Plummer and Julie Harris.
Often**, I was allowed to sit in the back of the control room, watching directors 'prep' the show, seeing how cameras were positioned and shots rehearsed, how all the elements of audio and video were merged into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Given how relatively primitive the technology was, the overall effect depended entirely on creativity and imagination, truly a 'magic lantern show'.
Of the many things that impressed me about "Hallmark", the sets were especially amazing. They were not only full-scale but 'practical', meaning not only did everything work, the sets had a front and rear so that the audience would never see the back of a flat if a cameraman accidentally shot off-set.
I remember one set in particular, a castle built for Shakespeare's "Richard II", starring Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson, complete with battlements, watchtowers, a dungeon and even a working drawbridge over a moat. Unlike my earlier experiences with television production, these sets were complete down to the smallest detail and absolutely exquisite. For me, it always seemed tragic that after the production was over they would wheel them outside and burn them.
* Years later, that enormous stage was often under utilized on lesser-scale productions. One that stands out was "The Perry Como Show", which seemed lost in that massive space. Another was "The Sammy Davis Jr. Show", but it gave me the opportunity in 1964 to meet Sammy's guest-host when he became ill, Sean Connery.
** But sometimes, when things were not going well or there was a director who didn't like some kid in his control room, I would be sent to a nearby movie theater. It was there I saw my first grown-up movie, "From Here To Eternity".
"New Jersey"
In 1951, we moved from our apartment in Queens to a rented house in Metuchen, New Jersey. It was really half a house, having been divided to accommodate two families, although we had the larger 'half' that included a wide front porch and big living room the other side lacked. The dividing walls were paper thin and we got to know our neighbors far better than we wanted to.
The house was on Middlesex Avenue, the busiest street in town, and my seven year-old mind found the name very funny. I decided that homosexuals must be the "middle sex" but, since there didn't seem to be any in Metuchen, I could not understand why they would name a street after them. All I knew was that we were getting farther away from Broadway and the life I'd loved.
I had no particular animosity toward New Jersey. I'd been spending my summer vacations with my grandparents and Uncle Ray in Atlantic City since I was two. But living in New Jersey all the time was another matter entirely. Even at seven I was something of a snob toward anything west of the Hudson. My biggest problem with New Jersey was that it wasn't New York.
The move probably had the least impact on my father. He commuted by train into Manhattan each day, continued as Unit Manager on "Kraft" and other NBC shows, lunched at the Lamb's Club with his old pals and was starting to make a pretty good living. And if he missed performing it only showed when he would be asked to sing at family gatherings.
We only lived in Metuchen for a year, second grade for me, kindergarten for my sister Liz (Elizabeth). And if I was less than thrilled with New Jersey, my mother was even less so. I'm sure she tried to make the best of it, but Metuchen made Queens seem positively cosmopolitan. And with another child on the way (my sister Ellen), whatever dreams she harbored must have seemed to be slipping away.
In 1952, with help from my mother's step-father, Parker Likely, we bought a house in Linden, New Jersey for the princely sum of $16,500. It's hard to find a new car for that amount today, but it was a lot of money then. Linden was a mostly blue-collar community of 30,000 and, in retrospect, not at all a bad place to raise a family. Our house was a small three-bedroom on Edgewood Road, a pleasant tree-lined street easy walking distance from the Myles J. McManus public school. So gradually, we all settled into life in the New Jersey suburbs.
The house was on Middlesex Avenue, the busiest street in town, and my seven year-old mind found the name very funny. I decided that homosexuals must be the "middle sex" but, since there didn't seem to be any in Metuchen, I could not understand why they would name a street after them. All I knew was that we were getting farther away from Broadway and the life I'd loved.
I had no particular animosity toward New Jersey. I'd been spending my summer vacations with my grandparents and Uncle Ray in Atlantic City since I was two. But living in New Jersey all the time was another matter entirely. Even at seven I was something of a snob toward anything west of the Hudson. My biggest problem with New Jersey was that it wasn't New York.
The move probably had the least impact on my father. He commuted by train into Manhattan each day, continued as Unit Manager on "Kraft" and other NBC shows, lunched at the Lamb's Club with his old pals and was starting to make a pretty good living. And if he missed performing it only showed when he would be asked to sing at family gatherings.
We only lived in Metuchen for a year, second grade for me, kindergarten for my sister Liz (Elizabeth). And if I was less than thrilled with New Jersey, my mother was even less so. I'm sure she tried to make the best of it, but Metuchen made Queens seem positively cosmopolitan. And with another child on the way (my sister Ellen), whatever dreams she harbored must have seemed to be slipping away.
In 1952, with help from my mother's step-father, Parker Likely, we bought a house in Linden, New Jersey for the princely sum of $16,500. It's hard to find a new car for that amount today, but it was a lot of money then. Linden was a mostly blue-collar community of 30,000 and, in retrospect, not at all a bad place to raise a family. Our house was a small three-bedroom on Edgewood Road, a pleasant tree-lined street easy walking distance from the Myles J. McManus public school. So gradually, we all settled into life in the New Jersey suburbs.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Television IV: Studio 8-H
If "Howdy Doody" was something of a disappointment, "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" was even worse. I'd been watching "Captain Video", starring Al Hodge and Don Hastings, since its debut in 1949, but that was on the Dumont Network and I had no access to that. (A year later, I became a big fan of "Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers", starring a very young Cliff Robertson.)
I also liked "Corbett", starring Frankie Thomas, which began a year later on NBC. But the set, that had looked so big and realistic on television, was in reality like the inside of a cardboard toilet paper tube set on end. Of all the impressive-looking switches, dials and levers, the only thing that actually worked was the ladder. I was beginning to get a sense of the difference between television illusion and reality. But it's a hard lesson and one I would continue to grapple with for my entire career.
As a viewer, I remember many television 'firsts', from Eisenhower's inauguration to the debut of the "Today Show", both in 1952. "Today", like "Tonight" was the brainchild of television visionary Sylvester 'Pat' Weaver (Sigorney's father) and starred Dave Garroway along with newsman Frank Blair, Jack Lescoulie, Betsy Palmer and a roller-skating chimp named J. Fred Muggs. But J. Fred disappeared from the show after tearing up the set one morning and biting a member of the crew. (Chimps are not only very strong, they can be very nasty as well.)
It was on that same visit to NBC that I saw Studio 8-H for the first time. As it turned out, both my father and I would have a connection to that studio in the years to come. It was the biggest stage in the building by far but, when I first saw it, it was still a radio studio. Arturo Toscanini* conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra on that stage. Odd, green acoustical panels were mounted on the walls and ceilings to control the sound in what was a very 'live' room.
The next time I saw Studio 8-H it had been converted to a television studio and was where my father was now Unit Manager of "Kraft Television Theatre". It was the first one-hour drama series on television and it was broadcast live twice a week, Wednesdays on NBC, Thursdays on ABC. "Kraft" set a number of records in its eleven and one-half years on the air, presenting some 650 plays and employing over 4,000 actors.
There was nothing to compare with the 'opening night' excitement, the pure adrenalin rush of live television. If it could go wrong, it likely would go wrong. There were no re-takes, no "let's try that again". Guns didn't fire, doors wouldn't open, dead bodies got up and walked away. (I remember one show in particular, some sword-and-tights epic starring Jacques Sernas in which he leaped into a casement window and he, and the entire set fell over and crashed to the floor. There was nothing to do but get up and keep fencing.)
But week after week, "Kraft Television Theatre" mounted the most ambitious productions ever seen on television, including the sinking of the Titanic in Walter Lord's "A Night to Remember" on that stage in 1956.**
Normally, "Kraft" employed four cameras and rarely had a back-up. If a camera went down, the director was suddenly doing a three-camera show and all his carefully planned 'blocking' was suddenly out the window. One of the cameras was also required to do the live Kraft commercials. With about two minutes to go, one of the cameras was 'released' and pushed out of the studio and down the hall to a small commercial studio where announcer Ed Herlihy would share stomach-churning recipes involving miniature marshmallows and Velveeta.
The next time I saw Studio 8-H was about 1955 and it was also the home of "Your Hit Parade", (at that time) starring Gisele MacKenzie, Russell Arms, Dorothy Collins and Snooky Lanson. The show was already in trouble; they were doing the same squeaky-clean 50's songs ("How Much is that Doggie in the Window") week after week because rock & roll was rapidly taking over the music industry and they simply could not (and would not) perform the new hits.
The next time I saw Studio 8-H, the music battle had already been won and the studio was now home to "Hullabaloo", NBC's go-go answer to the wildly popular "Shindig" on ABC. It had oddball musical guests but the primary interest was the Hullabaloo dancers, especially the "girl in the cage". But 8-H was also sometimes home to Gene Rayburn and "The Match Game" and Merv Griffin's "Play Your Hunch".
But the show that will forever be most associated with Studio 8-H, where it began and where it continues to this day is "Saturday Night Live".
*When, many years later, the original recordings made there were transferred to digital, engineers heard a strange humming sound in the background. Isolating the sound, they realized it was Toscanini humming the score as he conducted the orchestra.
** Imagine just the problem of transporting and controlling thousands of gallons of water in a television studio on the eighth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. Add eight large sets, seven cameras and over 100 actors and you begin to see the logistics problems.
I also liked "Corbett", starring Frankie Thomas, which began a year later on NBC. But the set, that had looked so big and realistic on television, was in reality like the inside of a cardboard toilet paper tube set on end. Of all the impressive-looking switches, dials and levers, the only thing that actually worked was the ladder. I was beginning to get a sense of the difference between television illusion and reality. But it's a hard lesson and one I would continue to grapple with for my entire career.
As a viewer, I remember many television 'firsts', from Eisenhower's inauguration to the debut of the "Today Show", both in 1952. "Today", like "Tonight" was the brainchild of television visionary Sylvester 'Pat' Weaver (Sigorney's father) and starred Dave Garroway along with newsman Frank Blair, Jack Lescoulie, Betsy Palmer and a roller-skating chimp named J. Fred Muggs. But J. Fred disappeared from the show after tearing up the set one morning and biting a member of the crew. (Chimps are not only very strong, they can be very nasty as well.)
It was on that same visit to NBC that I saw Studio 8-H for the first time. As it turned out, both my father and I would have a connection to that studio in the years to come. It was the biggest stage in the building by far but, when I first saw it, it was still a radio studio. Arturo Toscanini* conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra on that stage. Odd, green acoustical panels were mounted on the walls and ceilings to control the sound in what was a very 'live' room.
The next time I saw Studio 8-H it had been converted to a television studio and was where my father was now Unit Manager of "Kraft Television Theatre". It was the first one-hour drama series on television and it was broadcast live twice a week, Wednesdays on NBC, Thursdays on ABC. "Kraft" set a number of records in its eleven and one-half years on the air, presenting some 650 plays and employing over 4,000 actors.
There was nothing to compare with the 'opening night' excitement, the pure adrenalin rush of live television. If it could go wrong, it likely would go wrong. There were no re-takes, no "let's try that again". Guns didn't fire, doors wouldn't open, dead bodies got up and walked away. (I remember one show in particular, some sword-and-tights epic starring Jacques Sernas in which he leaped into a casement window and he, and the entire set fell over and crashed to the floor. There was nothing to do but get up and keep fencing.)
But week after week, "Kraft Television Theatre" mounted the most ambitious productions ever seen on television, including the sinking of the Titanic in Walter Lord's "A Night to Remember" on that stage in 1956.**
Normally, "Kraft" employed four cameras and rarely had a back-up. If a camera went down, the director was suddenly doing a three-camera show and all his carefully planned 'blocking' was suddenly out the window. One of the cameras was also required to do the live Kraft commercials. With about two minutes to go, one of the cameras was 'released' and pushed out of the studio and down the hall to a small commercial studio where announcer Ed Herlihy would share stomach-churning recipes involving miniature marshmallows and Velveeta.
The next time I saw Studio 8-H was about 1955 and it was also the home of "Your Hit Parade", (at that time) starring Gisele MacKenzie, Russell Arms, Dorothy Collins and Snooky Lanson. The show was already in trouble; they were doing the same squeaky-clean 50's songs ("How Much is that Doggie in the Window") week after week because rock & roll was rapidly taking over the music industry and they simply could not (and would not) perform the new hits.
The next time I saw Studio 8-H, the music battle had already been won and the studio was now home to "Hullabaloo", NBC's go-go answer to the wildly popular "Shindig" on ABC. It had oddball musical guests but the primary interest was the Hullabaloo dancers, especially the "girl in the cage". But 8-H was also sometimes home to Gene Rayburn and "The Match Game" and Merv Griffin's "Play Your Hunch".
But the show that will forever be most associated with Studio 8-H, where it began and where it continues to this day is "Saturday Night Live".
*When, many years later, the original recordings made there were transferred to digital, engineers heard a strange humming sound in the background. Isolating the sound, they realized it was Toscanini humming the score as he conducted the orchestra.
** Imagine just the problem of transporting and controlling thousands of gallons of water in a television studio on the eighth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. Add eight large sets, seven cameras and over 100 actors and you begin to see the logistics problems.
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