(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.)
While Jack Lescoulie had been a popular sidekick to Dave Garroway on Today, the guy who could be relied upon for a funny aside or a class-clown moment, the program was changing. When Garroway left in mid-1961, the program was restyled. It had a bent toward harder news, with John Chancellor taking Dave Garroway’s spot. Frank Blair became Chancellor’s sidekick, while Edwin Newman became the newsman.
Jack Lescoulie didn’t fit this new, more serious Today. Instead, NBC put him on a new educational series called 1, 2, 3, Go! with a 10-year-old actor named Richard Thomas.1 Lescoulie was a kind of sidekick and tour guide to young Richard as he went on adventures and imagined himself in various roles. In a program about a haunted house, for instance, Richard met a ghost played by Lescoulie. In another about the Department of the Treasury, Richard imagined himself as a Secret Service agent capturing a counterfeiter…played by Lescoulie. For his part, Lescoulie enjoyed it. “I hope the children watching 1, 2, 3, Go! get even half as much fun out of it as I do,” he said. But it didn’t work out. He later reflected, “We worked hard. We turned out, I thought, good shows. But no matter what we did, we couldn’t get any kind of audience. Those educational things don’t.”
In January 1962 Today celebrated its tenth anniversary. Old friends showed up for the telecast, including Jack Lescoulie. Viewers, happy to see him on the program again, flooded NBC with 15,000 letters. It didn’t take long, and effective July 9 he was back on Today in a permanent role. An NBC executive stated they were “very delighted” to have Lescoulie back on a program he was so long identified with, and that “his delightful sense of humor and easygoing manner will be a valuable addition to the program.”
Paul Jones of the Atlanta Constitution captured what made Jack so special. Jones offered Toots Shor’s observation that Jack was the “pace” of the Today program. “If Jack is in good humor, the show moved along smoothly, swiftly. However Jack feels, that’s the way the show looks on that particular day.” To the famed restaurateur’s observation, Jones added, “Since Jack seldom had a bad day, Garroway’s Today seemed always to have a smooth pace – something it sorely lacked when Jack left.” Another writer, in 1963, called Lescoulie “a fresh-faced, tall, blond fellow with a wild off-beat sense of humor and inborn irreverence whose yeasty comment often saves the program from disastrous monotony. Lescoulie’s unexpected reactions are like a tonic as the earnest news-purveyors of the show busily dig and probe into the news and newsmakers.”
Neil Hickey of TV Guide attempted to pinpoint Lescoulie’s appeal. Hickey wrote that Lescoulie “consciously woos acceptance by casting himself as everybody’s next-door neighbor, by being liked as a regular fellow by regular fellows, by walking the straight and narrow path between big-city sharpness in dress and manners, and the wide-eyed, wide-lapel ingenuousness of the hayseed.” Lescoulie told Hickey that he built a career out of being “a guy you can’t resent for small things.” It meant he bought off-the-rack clothes so he didn’t look too upscale, keeping his hair an average length, never wearing flamboyant neckties. “This gets you to the people,” he said. “It’s being the ideally-dressed salesman. I believe you’ve got to take every edge you can get.”
Yet Lescoulie knew how precarious this image was, having known of cases where “big stars who let it slip out that they were not really nice guys at all, and it damaged their careers.” Lescoulie thus knew that “a quick shot in an off-guard moment” could ruin him, and he took care to keep the on-screen Jack and off-screen Jack in alignment. “The closer you come to being yourself on the screen, the longer you last.”2
Today‘s executive producer, Al Morgan3, called Lescoulie “deceptively good. He’s the darling of old ladies and kids. I’ve never seen a performer get the kind of mail he does – cough remedies, fishing advice, everything.” Morgan said Lescoulie’s on-air persona had not only great warmth, but range. “He kids around a lot, and then suddenly he says something very penetrating.”
Lescoulie’s day began at 3:45 a.m. for the program’s start at 7 a.m. “Sometimes it seems as if all my early training was preparing me for this show,” he said. “Take just the matter of getting enough sleep. I learned in the Air Force to take a nap when I could get it. I can lean my head against a steel pile and go right off – and 15 minutes of that does wonders.” After his duties were complete, he and some pals of what was called the “Sentimental Drinking Society” were off to Toots Shor’s for refreshments and a lot of sports talk. By 3 p.m. Lescoulie was headed back to his home on Long Island to be with his wife and children.
In between his NBC duties Lescoulie continued to do commercials and announcing work. By 1965 he was earning $175,000 per year, much of it from his non-Today work. “For the last seven years I’ve been the highest-paid announcer in television,” he told Hickey, noting that his careful style in choosing only a few accounts helped his earnings.
Yet he continued to feel something was missing. He told one journalist he’d felt he had played things too safe by sticking to the announcer/sidekick role, and that he was “delivering only 10 per cent of the sum total of which I am capable.” Complicating all this was his indecision about what to do next: act in films, act on stage, or host a variety program. Each appealed to him, and “that’s part of my problem. I simply cannot focus my thoughts or energies on one exact area. But I don’t worry about this. I think the pieces will fall into place without my having to set out in search.” Lescoulie predicted that as he went for bigger things, “I think I’m going to surprise an awful lot of people in the next then years. I also think at the same time I’m going to get punched in the nose a lot. But who cares? A punch only hurts for a minute.”
That punch would not be long in coming. On his second day in the Virgin Islands during a 1965 field assignment for Today, Lescoulie asked the unit manager for more cash. This particular unit manager, whose reputation for keeping a very tight hold on funds had earned him few friends, turned down the request. Lescoulie was very unhappy. (Despite later characterizations of this dispute as a fistfight, these tensions appear to have never erupted into physical violence.) But instead of discussing the matter with management, Lescoulie wrote a memo threatening to walk out any morning he came on set and saw that unit manager.
One day in 1966, according to Robert Metz’s book The Today Show, Lescoulie came on the set and that very unit manager was there. Lescoulie stayed true to his threat and walked out. NBC fired him. His last show was September 2. Rumors had circulated about his fate after the dispute in the Virgin Islands, but the firing confirmed things weren’t rosy. The network claimed Lescoulie’s contract was going to expire at the end of August 1966 because he didn’t figure into the plans for the show. Lescoulie’s manager countered, “Of course he was fired. NBC had the absolute right to fire him. It’s their money. They just didn’t want him any more.” For his part, Lescoulie claimed that Morgan “slowly wrote me out of the show.” But he philosophized that he was in good company. “I can’t be too bad if they fired me,” he said. “After all, they fired Bob Kintner.”4
Lescoulie continued working in smaller jobs, doing commercials and announcing chores. In May 1968 he remarried. That summer, he did some work with WLW-TV in Cincinnati, hosting coverage of the Ohio State Fair. “We worked 14 hours a day up there,” he said. “I worked like I never worked before.” He also did some fill-in work in August 1969. His track record led to an offer from WLW’s parent company, Avco Broadcasting, to narrate documentaries, be an on-camera host for sports programs and special events, and fill in as needed. Lescoulie signed with Avco and moved to Cincinnati from Greenwich, Connecticut. “The only place (to be) is where there is live TV,” he said. “The future of TV is in live shows.”5
But New York was never far from Lescoulie’s mind. When the original incarnation of Hurley’s, the legendary watering hole adjacent to the RCA Building, closed in 1975, Lescoulie showed up to join Dave Garroway and Frank Blair for one last drink. “For seven years Frank and I sat in the corner and had breakfast every morning,” he told a reporter.
And Lescoulie showed up for the Today anniversary specials. On the 30th anniversary in 1982, he and Garroway shared reminiscences about the old days and proved their rapport hadn’t lost a step. Six months later, he was back to mourn Garroway as the program paid tribute to its original master communicator.
His last appearance was during the 35th anniversary special, aired on a Saturday night in January 1987. Although his spirits were high and his mood playful, he was suffering from colon cancer. On July 9, he was admitted to St. Francis Hospital in Memphis, where he died on July 22.
In the 1950s, his friend Jackie Gleason had said to Lescoulie, “Do you know why you were never a big hit in radio? Because they couldn’t broadcast teeth.” Although he may be long gone, those who know the work of Jack Lescoulie, his comforting and cheerful voice – and most of all, the grin that was once called “one of television’s most durable monuments” – know why he matters.
Here’s to you, Jack Lescoulie.
SOURCES:
- Associated Press, “Jack Lescoulie, One Of ‘Today’ Founders, Dies of Cancer.” Oshkosh (Wis.) Northwestern, July 23, 1987: 19.
- Bob Considine, “On The Line: Jack Lescoulie Not Worried As NBC Prepares to Fire Him.” Muncie (Indiana) Evening Press, Aug. 18, 1966: 4.
- Sam Dobbins, “Just One Last Drink at Good Old Hurley’s.” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Oct. 13, 1975: 9C.
- “Fame, Popularity and Wealth Don’t Satisfy Jack Lescoulie.” Lansing (Mich.) State Journal, Oct. 16, 1965: 20.
- Neil Hickey, “The Man With The $175,000 Smile.” TV Guide,Jan. 30, 1965: 20-22.
- Steve Hoffman, “Jack Lescoulie Joins Avco Staff.” Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct 10, 1969: 51.
- Julia Inman, “Delighted Jack Lescoulie Finds Country Doesn’t Stop at Hudson.” Indianapolis Star, Aug. 7, 1970: 19.
- “Jack Lescoulie Has Offbeat Parts, But He Finds All Fun.” Dover (Ohio) Daily Reporter, Nov. 11, 1961: 17.
- “Jack Lescoulie’s July Return To ‘Today” Show Is Announced.” The Daily Times (New Philadelphia, Ohio), June 16, 1962: 9.
- Paul Jones, “As I See It: Lescoulie Added, Today Brightened.” The Atlanta Constitution, July 12, 1962: 10.
- Paul Jones, “As I See It: Jack Lescoulie Deserves Better.” The Atlanta Constitution, Aug. 18, 1966: 82.
- Cynthia Lowry, “Cheerful Waker-Upper – That’s Jack Lescoulie.” Binghamton (N.Y.) Press and Sun-Bulletin, Apr. 7, 1963: 56.
- Robert Metz, The Today Show (New York: Playboy Press, 1978), 154-156.
- United Press International, “Jack Lescoulie ‘Fired’ From NBC’s Today.” The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, Calif.), Aug. 11, 1966: 1.
- United Press International, “Jack Lescoulie, Today Announcer.” South Florida Sun Sentinel, July 23, 1987: 26.
- Yes, the same Richard Thomas you’re thinking of.
- Others disagreed with Lescoulie’s self-assessment. According to Robert Metz in his book The Today Show, some accused Lescoulie of thinking he was the star of the program, and that his manager encouraged this mindset. Lescoulie expressed his unhappiness in various ways, such as not engaging in the kind of interplay with Hugh Downs that kept the show going, or complaining behind the scenes that he wasn’t getting enough time on the air. One writer said, “I’m fond of Jack, but if I were Al Morgan I would have taken a baseball bat to him.”
- Lescoulie appeared in Morgan’s production of No Exit in 1950. When Lescoulie came back to Today, he and Morgan did not get along well until the day Morgan said, “I just remember where I’ve seen you…you played the lead in a production of No Exit on television in 1950.” After that, they got along with one another.
- Robert E. Kintner, NBC president from 1958 to 1966, had expanded the resources of NBC News in hopes of surpassing CBS. After he left NBC, Kintner went to work for President Lyndon B. Johnson.
- Click here for a glimpse of Lescoulie in his on-camera role with Avco. The circumstances…well, they must be seen to be believed.