"Online since 1999"
Bob
Walker's
Pete Fountain has been a friend to most of the people at WDSU-TV. I met him while he was still in high school. One day I ran into three young men walking down Canal Street playing Dixieland music. They were in their Warren Easton High School band uniforms. They also were collecting donations from shoppers to get enough loot to send the Easton band to an out-of-state music contest. The clarinet player was a young Pete Fountain. I brought the group the the Channel 6 studios on Royal Street and was lucky enough to get them on "Midday." It was Pete's first TV appearance. We've been friends ever since.
For a while, Pete had a young, dark haired singer with his group. Her name was Doris Mae Yacich, my sister.
In later years, when I visited Las Vegas, Pete escorted me to his favorite haunts on the strip. He introduced me to several of the strip's great entertainerslike Red Nicholls (and his Five Pennies).
In New Orleans, Pete was in the Ch. 6 studio to do a commercial for a Mississippi housing development. In the commercial with him was the joy of life, my little wife, Rita. After the standard countdown, I cued Rita, who was playing the part of a newsgirl (ala Laraine Newman from SNL). Rita thrust a portable mike in Pete's face and said: "Tell me. Pete..!" She didn't finish her question because Pete yelled and fell off the bench where they were seated. He told Rita, as the studio crew roared with laughter: "You scared the (hell) out of me!" (Note: We used the word "hell" herein but the actual word Pete spouted out was a bit more descriptive). Although it took quite a while to regain the decorum of a professional video recording studio, we did finally complete the commercial.
For the record, we did another commercial for yet another Mississippi land development site with Rita interviewing a popular entertainer. This time it was singer Pat Boone. Rita and Pat completed the spot in one or two takes. Rita didn't scare Mr. Boone!
The first time we took our TV remote unit and its cameras to a night club we witnessed a mass exodus of patrons from the darkened lounge. Apparently here were a large number of people in the club who were accompanied by people they shouldn't have been with at that time.
When we brought cameras into a New Orleans favorite, Lenfant's Marine Room , on Canal Blvd., an innovative method of saving the patrons from any possible embarrassment was employed. On evenings of telecasts from the club, the management posted someone at the entrance to pass out cards to men entering the lounge. The card bore a message similar to: "If you're not with YOUR wife, fiancé', or girl friend, remember, tonight we're on TV!" The Marine Room was the origination locale for a program called "Brown's Dixieland." Sponsored by Brown's Velvet Dairy Products, it featured a very young Pete Fountain and the Basin Street 6. The show was opened by Gay Batson who introduced M.C., Bill Elliot, a WNOE staffer. The show also featured singer Pam DuPraye.
When we began televising the seventh race from the Fairgrounds on Saturday afternoon, we decided to keep our cameras high above and behind the track's paying customers. We didn't think it was a good idea to pan the "railbirds" and show who was there with who or what bank vice-president was at the track playing the horses. Our cameras featured only the horses, the tote board, and the winner's circle.
It wasn't too difficult to carry our first TV cameras up the stairway to the track press box. The black and white cameras were bulky and moderately heavy but were a piece of cake compared to our first color cameras. They were like carrying a Sherman tank up those steps. It took four technicians to wrangle the massive RCA color camera and its viewfinder up to the press box.and, according to Sir Isaac Newton, what goes up gotta come down! Today, if you set your color camcorder down on a park bench you're in danger of having it carried off by a squirrel!
At most public events, TV directors do not try to feature people in the crowd unless they have agreed to be interviewed. Of course, this did not apply to Mardi Gras Day TV coverage where everybody was fair game. If a camera has some kind of marking identifying it as a TV station camera, no matter which direction it's pointed it is going to find someone, or more likely, a group of people, waving excitedly at the camera. Engineers have theorized that it must be the high frequency sound emitted by the camera's horizontal scanning circuitry (some people can hear the "squeal" coming from their home TV sets) that causes this waving phenomenon. There is, however, no proof of the theory.
The popular "Perry Como Show" came to New Orleans in the 60s. The NBC-TV program originated from the Municipal Auditorium. One of the features of the network show was to be the coverage of the Comus parade on Mardi Gras night. The technicians handling the show were from NBC in New York. The director had never seen a Comus parade. He knew, however, that WDSU-TV was televising the parades every night and called to ask if he come to the control room to watch me direct the parade the Friday night before Mardi Gras. He was, of course, invited to sit with me in the control room.
My crew and I had worked together for many years in brining the parades to the television audiences of New Orleans and the surrounding area. I had developed my "formula" for handling the parades early in the history of WDSU-TV. During a parade, there is so much noise, yelling and screaming, etc. that the cameramen had a hard time hearing my instructions through their headsets, so all my shots were described to them before the parade ever reached our vantage point. There was very little, if any, intercom communication while the parade passed.
The Como show director came into the control room after the parade had arrived. He was somewhat amazed at the shots we were using and asked: "How are you getting the cameras to get the shots you want when there is such a racket outside and you're not talking to the camera guys?" I replied: "Simple.we rehearsed last year!" He said he didn't think his crew would be able to do as well in shooting the parade and asked if my crew and I would do the parade coverage for the Como show. Sure we would and we did, bringing the Mardi Gras to the audiences nationwide for the first time on a regularly scheduled network television program.
We were a little disappointed, however, that the show credits (you know, all those names that go by so fast at the end of the show that you don't read but we in the biz read religiously!) showed that the NBC technicians and the Como show director were responsible for the parade presentation. WDSU-TV later received a letter, from the Perry Como show producers, apologizing for their mistake. I would have answered the letter but I didn't know how to spell a Bronx cheer!
On April 11, 1968, I was in Baton Rouge on an assignment to direct the videotaping of a speech delivered to the thirteenth annual convention of the Louisiana AFL - CIO by the vice-president of the United States, Hubert H. Humphrey. After the speech, the videotape was reviewed by the vice-president and his staff. I was contacted by one of his representatives and asked if I would like to join Humphrey's staff and assist in his bid for the presidency of the U. S. My response was that although I considered it a great honor to be asked to join in the campaign for the presidency, I would have to leave my association with WDSU-TV and that was not something I was ready to do. I left Baton Rouge to return to my home.
While I was enroute, the vice-president wanted to tell me something personally and called my home. It was about 11:30 PM when the phone rang at my house. My wife, Rita, answered the phone. The vice-president asked if I had arrived home. Rita, somewhat agitated by the late night phone call, asked: "Who is this?" The caller replied: "This is the vice-president of the United States." Rita responded: "Oh! Yeah! And I'm the Queen of Sheeba!" and hung up on the late night caller.
When I got home and Rita told me about the phone call, I called the vice-president's hotel in Baton Rouge, but the operator was told not to put any calls through to his room. The next day I got a call from a staff member of the vice-president's office. He said the vice-president wished to speak with me. I was little anxious about what he might have to say and was delighted to hear the vice-president thank me for my efforts in directing the videotape and said he understood my reluctance to leave WDSU-TV.
As we were saying goodbye, he said: "and Paul, would you please tell your wife that I am the vice-president of the United States?"
It seems like WDSU-TV had cooks on the staff from day one in the station's history. At one time there were four who appeared on various shows.
Scoop Kennedy was a reporter for the New Orleans Item newspaper and somehow got a cooking show featuring his Epicurean delights on a daily basis. Scoop could speak French like a native of the City of Lights and could cook French as expertly as the chef in the Prince Edward hotel in Paris.
Amanda Lee was also a featured cook. Her New Orleans dishes could fill a cookbook.and they did! WDSU-TV published her recipes in a cookbook that has become a collector's item.
Another culinary expert, a feature of the "Midday" show, was Chef Paul of Brennan's Restaurant. Just mentioning his name causes your taste buds to scream for Bananas Foster.
Then there was Marie Matthews, a young African American girl, who came to WDSU-TV as a maid in the building maintenance department. Everybody loved Marie. She was like a house-mother to the engineering fraternity at Ch. 6. She helped clean up the studio kitchen set and smuggled dishes featured on the cooking shows into the main control room. She soon became a station telephone operator and receptionist. While holding down that job, Marie was also asked to assist the featured cooks on TV. Then she became a featured cook with a show of her own and she still smuggled dishes to the guys in the control room so that the locusts that gathered around the kitchen set after the cooking shows didn't devour everything.
Marie is retired now and her friends nominated and inducted her into the Greater New Orleans Broadcast Association Hall of Fame. She is still a lot like the young girl that applied as a maid...a delightful, always smiling, witty, wonderful friend. AND she can cook! In my humble opinion, Marie Matthews is one of the bright lights of the Hall of Fame.
Many people have asked how and why Mr. Edgar Stern, Jr. became interested in TV and chose to invest in a new and relatively untried medium. The answer to that question was found in an interview with Lester Kabakoff. Mr. Kabakoff was a close friend and legal advisor to Edgar Stern, Sr., a very wealthy man in his own right and caretaker of the fortune his wife, Edith, inherited from her father, Julius Rosenwald. Rosenwald was the retail genius who changed Sears and Roebuck stores into department stores instead of merely mail order catalog stores. Edgar Stern, Sr. became Chairman of the Board of Sears and the largest single stockholder in the Sears empire.
Paul Werner and I interviewed Lester Kabakoff for a project underway at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans. At the time of the interview, Paul Werner was a teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School. The project was a video presentation about the early days of TV in New Orleans. Mr. Kabakoff had become legal advisor to Edgar Stern, Jr. and the Royal Street Broadcasting Company, Stern's company that owned and operated WDSU AM - FM - TV.
We asked Kabby (he said all his friends call him "Kabby" and, since I had known him over a quarter of a century, that I should call him "Kabby"): "How and when did Edgar Junior decide to get into TV?" He said: "What makes you think Edgar Junior decided to get into TV? Let me tell you the story of the man and his station. One evening, while I was relaxing after dinner and flipping through a magazine, the phone rang. It was my friend, Edgar Stern, Sr. He said: "Kabby, I need your help. My son just got discharged from military service and we have got to find some kind of business to get him involved in right away." I was about to answer when something in the magazine caught my eye. It was an ad for an RCA television set. So I said: 'Television...that's what we'll get him into." Edgar Senior agreed and we set about making plans to purchase WDSU from the Stephens Broadcasting Company. Stephens was the guy who owned the Stephen's Chevrolet dealership in the CBD.
Now, if the ad on that page in the magazine had been about waste management, guess what business Edgar Junior would have gone into?" We laughed and had a good ole' time joking about different businesses that could have had an ad on the magazine page. But, make no mistake, Lester Kabakoff wasn't just making up a cute story! Speaking for myself and my family and probably for everybody who has ever been employed at WDSU AM - FM - TV: "Thank you, Kabby!"
When WDSU-TV opened its Royal Street studios in 1950, the 10 PM newscast was sponsored by Standard Oil or ESSO. The newscaster was called "The Esso Reporter" and was an on-camera gig that was desired by every reporter in the WDSU-TV newsroom. The first Esso Reporter in New Orleans was Pat Michaels. Another reporter/announcer at Ch. 6 coveted the job and resorted to some underhanded tactics to get it. We'll call him "Brandex" because I really don't want to identify him as one of our reporters who were mostly all fine gentlemen.
Brandex found out that reporter Pat Michaels was investigating a story concerning a brothel reportedly run by the N.O.P.D. Michaels and a cameraman were filming members of the police department entering a suspected brothel on Toulouse Street. Brandex hired a cameraman to secretly film Michaels and his cameraman and was handing the film to the police department. Somehow the police were able to request for Michael's arrest, by California authorities, on a bad check charge. Police were in the studio as Michaels was finishing a newscast and arrested him immediately upon the end of the news program. Some accounts of this action report Michaels' arrest was on-camera and seen by TV viewers. That just isn't true. The police waited until the newscast was over.
Some time later Mr. Brandex was arrested on charges of making movies of nude young ladies and selling them without the consent of the ladies. Eventually he left New Orleans and wound up in New York where they appreciate his talents.
The Esso Reporter job was assumed by one of the most respected newsmen ever to report TV news, Bill Slatter. Older viewers still compare the new breed of Ch. 6 anchormen with the excellence and dignity of former news anchormen like Slatter, Ed Planer and Doug Ramsey. These guys were class acts. Unfortunately, because they were so good, we lost them to the networks and other large news syndicates just as we recently lost the great news ladies, Hoda Kotb of WWL-TV News and Susan Roesgen of Channel 6 News.
All of the engineers at WDSU-TV were technically proficient when it came to electronic equipment construction, operation and maintenance. A couple of them were perfectionists when it came to construction. Edward Tong and Tom Metz could build electronic equipment that was better than that of the big electronic corporations like RCA, Philips, and General Electric. When these two set their minds to a job copying a piece of electronic equipment, the product they turned out was an exact duplicate, an electronic carbon copy. There may have been some debate about the legality of their efforts in duplicating equipment for WDSU-TV but no one ever questioned them about the copies. On the other hand, no one ever told RCA or Philips or G.E. about what they were doing.
Some of the other engineers found alternate uses for certain TV equipment. The 25" lens that was used by the TV crew aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carriers in TV coverage of space capsule recoveries and saw some use in early TV sports programs was found to be just the right lens to mount on a camera in the engineering shop which could then pan the 2nd floor windows of the buildings across Toulouse Street. Several windows were those of apartments rented by certain ladies whose business depended on encounters with men on the streets of the Vieux Carre'. The engineers reported being surprised, several times, by the camera finding people, framed by those windows, who were well known to them! Especially in the window belonging to a lady named "Ouida." How the gang found out her name remains one of the top secrets of the WDSU-TV engineering department.
When set up for the Sugar Bowl game, that same 25" lens could scan, only as an exercise for camera operators, the windows of dormitories of Tulane University. This excellent TV learning exercise opportunity was lost with the construction of the Louisiana Superdome.
Prior to 1950, I lived with my parents at 1826 Independence Street in the lower ninth ward. I was a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve. With a name like "Yacich" my family constantly received unwanted mail from countries supporting Communism as a form of government. We would find magazines like "China Today" and "The Romanian News" regularly stuffed into our mailbox. Not surprisingly, the Navy knew about this mailbox stuff. In 1950, I was called to active duty during the Korean Conflict.
(NOTE: I was more than a little unhappy about having to leave WDSU-TV.)
After surviving a thorough investigation, I became a member of a unit of the Office of Naval Intelligence and was cleared to handle top secret material.
After 2 years service, I was honorably discharged and returned to WDSU-TV. In May of 1967, the name "Yacich" again attracted the attention of some people living in a communist state. This time, however, the U. S. I. A. was responsible for the attention. The U. S. government information agency sent three members of RTB (Radio Television Belgrade- the Yugoslavian version of a broadcast network) to visit me. They were escorted by a member of the U.S.I.A., agent Harold Morlock. Morlock told me Slavic broadcast people knew about me and wanted to see how a Yugoslavian director lived in the United States. The three visitors were Serbians and I am of Croatian descent but we got along just fine.
My wife, Rita, invited them to our house. Morlock said that he would be there to guide the conversation during the visit. Rita told him that, in our house, visitors could talk about anything that interested them. When Morlock arrived with the communist broadcasters, they found Croatian, Serbian and Russian music playing on our "hi-fi" system and a copy of Das Kapital on the coffee table. Agent Morlock told Rita: "I give up. You know how to keep them happy a hell of lot better than I do!" The trio watched my kids in our pool then they joined the kids watching color cartoons on TV.
We went out to the lakefront where they wanted to see the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, which was considered by the Yugoslavs to be a miracle of construction. They asked Morlock if they might shoot 16 mm film of the bridge from the air. Morlock tried to get clearance to take the group up in a helicopter but was told that was not possible because of the nearness of the NASA facilities. The U. S. I. A. got clearance to let me go in the 'copter to shoot the Causeway film. I shot a couple of hundred feet of film and gave it to Morlock, who sent it to the C.I.A. for their examination. The film was cleared and was sent to RTB in Belgrade after their three visitors to new Orleans had returned to Yugoslavia
Another request of the three Belgrade broadcasters was to see a local newscast produced at WDSU-TV. Morlock brought them to the Channel 6 studios on a Saturday night when Mel Leavitt was the newscaster and I was the director. The group was with me in the control room as the newscast went on the air. As the newscast was coming to an end, I asked Mel, via the studio intercom system, to cut two stories which would make the newscast run too long and get to the wrap-up. I heard the Yugoslavs whispering: "Censorship!" I told them it was not censorshipwe were just running long. They didn't believe me. So I told Mel to do the stories and that I would be responsible for any consequences for running long. That satisfied the commies that I wasn't censoring the news. When I explained the situation to our General Manager, A. Louis Read, He agreed that the situation called for that action on my part.
I received letters of thanks from the Yugoslavian RTB, from the U.S.I.A. officials and from Harold Morlock, who said: "I remain indebted to you for the above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty assistance in hosting our Yugoslav guests. You made my assignment not a job, but a pleasure. When I asked about the trio's opinions of their visit, Morlock reported that although they were impressed by New Orleans, the Causeway and WDSU-TV, they talked more about my wife, my kids, and me. They said "Those Dalmatian kids really know how to live!" The comment about Dalmatian kids was because my grandfather came to this country from the Dalmatian island of Brac, a part of Croatia and "how to live" was because of the pool. I stopped receiving information about the three visitors after the breakup of the Yugoslavian federation when Croatia and Serbia again became separate states.
One of the first statewide commercially sponsored TV programs and the first special of its type to be produced in the south aired on Monday, May 23, 1966, pre-empting NBC TVs "Hullabaloo." The program, originated by WDSU-TV, was also carried simultaneously by WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge and KLFY-TV in Lafayette. Newspaper promotion of the show said: "WDSU-TVs Paul Yacich has written, produced and directed this hour-long special, "Testing: Do You Know Louisiana?" which features a multitude of varied and interesting questions and answers on Louisiana history, geography and politics and is sure to interest a wide viewing audience."
Test papers (with fill-in answer slots) were distributed, throughout southeast Louisiana schools, through the office of the Superintendent of Education. A fill-in form was also published in various newspapers. The program was co-hosted by Mel Leavitt and Bart Darby and was sponsored by E. J. Ourso's Security Industrial Insurance Company.
Following the airing of the special, Jerry Romig, WDSU-TV Program Director, wrote in a press release: " We had a marvelous response to our testing special via the switchboard Monday night." He said many calls were received and included comments like: "Excellent," "Magnificent," "When will it be repeated?" etc. Many callers identified themselves as teachers and nuns. Many children also called to compliment the show. He also said a couple of callers wanted to debate the answer to one particular question. He wrapped up the memo with: "This was a most difficult undertaking for us and I would like to give full credit to Paul Yacich for a tough job - well done."
Needless to say, Jerry remains one of my treasured friends and both of us miss our WDSU-TV.
On October 16, 1965, TV viewers in New Orleans saw, as reported in the Times-Picayune, "an unprecedented simulcast of the ceremonies of installation for Archbishop Philip M. Hannan and the concelebrated Mass which followed." The telecast originated at the St. Louis Basilica. All three (at that time there were only three stations) commercial stations - WWL-TV, Channel 4; WDSU-TV, Channel 6; and WVUE-TV, Channel 12 (again, at that time...later became Ch. 8) carried the special program which aired from 4 to 5:30 PM. The pool technical facilities were handled by WDSU-TV . The program was produced by Jerry Romig and directed by Paul Yacich. Radio stations WWL and WSMB also broadcast the ceremonies.
Many people have asked how and why Mr. Edgar Stern, Jr. became interested in TV and chose to invest in a new and relatively untried medium. The answer to that question was found in an interview with Lester Kabakoff. Mr. Kabakoff was a close friend and legal advisor to Edgar Stern, Sr., a very wealthy man in his own right and caretaker of the fortune his wife, Edith, inherited from her father, Julius Rosenwald. Rosenwald was the retail genius who changed Sears and Roebuck stores into department stores instead of merely mail order catalog stores. Edgar Stern, Sr. became Chairman of the Board of Sears and the largest single stockholder in the Sears empire.
Paul Werner and I interviewed Lester Kabakoff for a project underway at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans. At the time of the interview, Paul Werner was a teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School. The project was a video presentation about the early days of TV in New Orleans. Mr. Kabakoff had become legal advisor to Edgar Stern, Jr. and the Royal Street Broadcasting Company, Stern's company that owned and operated WDSU AM - FM - TV.
We asked Kabby (he said all his friends call him "Kabby" and, since I had known him over a quarter of a century, that I should call him "Kabby"): "How and when did Edgar Junior decide to get into TV?" He said: "What makes you think Edgar Junior decided to get into TV? Let me tell you the story of the man and his station. One evening, while I was relaxing after dinner and flipping through a magazine, the phone rang. It was my friend, Edgar Stern, Sr. He said: "Kabby, I need your help. My son just got discharged from military service and we have got to find some kind of business to get him involved in right away." I was about to answer when something in the magazine caught my eye. It was an ad for an RCA television set. So I said: 'Television...that's what we'll get him into." Edgar Senior agreed and we set about making plans to purchase WDSU from the Stephens Broadcasting Company. Stephens was the guy who owned the Stephen's Chevrolet dealership in the CBD.
Now, if the ad on that page in the magazine had been about waste management, guess what business Edgar Junior would have gone into?" We laughed and had a good ole' time joking about different businesses that could have had an ad on the magazine page. But, make no mistake, Lester Kabakoff wasn't just making up a cute story! Speaking for myself and my family and probably for everybody who has ever been employed at WDSU AM - FM - TV: "Thank you, Kabby!"
When WDSU-TV opened its Royal Street studios in 1950, the 10 PM newscast was sponsored by Standard Oil or ESSO. The newscaster was called "The Esso Reporter" and was an on-camera gig that was desired by every reporter in the WDSU-TV newsroom. The first Esso Reporter in New Orleans was Pat Michaels. Another reporter/announcer at Ch. 6 coveted the job and resorted to some underhanded tactics to get it. We'll call him "Brandex" because I really don't want to identify him as one of our reporters who were mostly all fine gentlemen.
Brandex found out that reporter Pat Michaels was investigating a story concerning a brothel reportedly run by the N.O.P.D. Michaels and a cameraman were filming members of the police department entering a suspected brothel on Toulouse Street. Brandex hired a cameraman to secretly film Michaels and his cameraman and was handing the film to the police department. Somehow the police were able to request for Michael's arrest, by California authorities, on a bad check charge. Police were in the studio as Michaels was finishing a newscast and arrested him immediately upon the end of the news program. Some accounts of this action report Michaels' arrest was on-camera and seen by TV viewers. That just isn't true. The police waited until the newscast was over.
Some time later Mr. Brandex was arrested on charges of making movies of nude young ladies and selling them without the consent of the ladies. Eventually he left New Orleans and wound up in New York where they appreciate his talents.
The Esso Reporter job was assumed by one of the most respected newsmen ever to report TV news, Bill Slatter. Older viewers still compare the new breed of Ch. 6 anchormen with the excellence and dignity of former news anchormen like Slatter, Ed Planer and Doug Ramsey. These guys were class acts. Unfortunately, because they were so good, we lost them to the networks and other large news syndicates just as we recently lost the great news ladies, Hoda Kotb of WWL-TV News and Susan Roesgen of Channel 6 News.
All of the engineers at WDSU-TV were technically proficient when it came to electronic equipment construction, operation and maintenance. A couple of them were perfectionists when it came to construction. Edward Tong and Tom Metz could build electronic equipment that was better than that of the big electronic corporations like RCA, Philips, and General Electric. When these two set their minds to a job copying a piece of electronic equipment, the product they turned out was an exact duplicate, an electronic carbon copy. There may have been some debate about the legality of their efforts in duplicating equipment for WDSU-TV but no one ever questioned them about the copies. On the other hand, no one ever told RCA or Philips or G.E. about what they were doing.
Some of the other engineers found alternate uses for certain TV equipment. The 25" lens that was used by the TV crew aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carriers in TV coverage of space capsule recoveries and saw some use in early TV sports programs was found to be just the right lens to mount on a camera in the engineering shop which could then pan the 2nd floor windows of the buildings across Toulouse Street. Several windows were those of apartments rented by certain ladies whose business depended on encounters with men on the streets of the Vieux Carre'. The engineers reported being surprised, several times, by the camera finding people, framed by those windows, who were well known to them! Especially in the window belonging to a lady named "Ouida." How the gang found out her name remains one of the top secrets of the WDSU-TV engineering department.
When set up for the Sugar Bowl game, that same 25" lens could scan, only as an exercise for camera operators, the windows of dormitories of Tulane University. This excellent TV learning exercise opportunity was lost with the construction of the Louisiana Superdome.