Category: Awesomeness

A new home for some old friends

I’ve written on here before about the importance of preserving television history. That’s not just in writing books about people like Dave Garroway, but also in preserving the things that remain. Some of those things are easy to preserve, like books and documents. Other pieces are a little more substantial, but still manageable. And then there’s some that require some effort. That’s what led to an adventure last week.

I’ve been friends with Bobby Ellerbee for several years, and on a few occasions I’ve visited him and his dogs at his home in Georgia. Over the years Bobby amassed a collection of television cameras that spanned a good half-century of the medium’s history. The first time I visited, two rooms were awash with just about every studio camera you could imagine, and his garage had just about enough surplus equipment to start a network.

Over the years, some of Bobby’s collection found new homes at museums or with film prop companies, but his camera room was still nicely populated. Recently, though, he bought a new house. It’s a nice house, but it doesn’t have the display area of the house he’s vacating. Bobby had to make some hard choices. To make a long story short, I got a phone call, and last week I rented a box truck and drove over to his house.

The more the truck filled up, the more I realized this was real, and I started to think about the two happiest days in the life of a boat owner.

In the space of about two and a half hours that Thursday, Bobby and three movers and I loaded four cameras and pedestals, a few boxes of equipment and books, and some other stuff we could put to work in our building. Bobby had told me to rent a truck with a lift gate, and it’s a very good thing I did. Camera pedestals are heavy. By 11 that morning the truck was loaded up and I was headed back home. I spent the afternoon and evening unloading the truck at the office, and that night I drove it back and reclaimed my car.1

The brave rental truck at the end of its travels with me. This was a happy moment, likely for both of us.

So, let’s see what we have.

Longtime readers will be familiar with this: the RCA TK-47. I already had one, but I certainly was not going to pass up another. Unlike mine, the internals of this one are still intact, and as I was cleaning it up I was interested to look inside.2 Bobby had installed vinyl lettering on either side to honor NBC’s flagship stations in New York and Los Angeles. Inside is a property tag from WISH-TV in Indianapolis. Part of me thinks it would be fitting to restore the WISH-TV livery, but I’m awfully fond of the genuine NBC stickers on there, especially since I associate the TK-47 with Saturday Night Live and David Letterman’s late-night NBC show.3 Fortunately, I’ve got a while to decide what to do.

A contemporary of the TK-47 is the Ikegami HK-312, which Bobby had decorated as an ABC camera of the 1980s. It’s appropriate, because ABC used Ikegamis a lot. The Ikegami doesn’t get recognized a lot but it was one of the workhorse cameras of its day, and you’ve watched a lot more television that was brought to you through these machines than you may realize. This particular one has some interesting labels inside about its history, and the box lens has an ABC property tag on it.

Now, here’s a rarity: a Marconi Mark VII. This one actually did belong to Tele-Tape Productions back in the day, which meant it spent a couple years at work in the early days of Sesame Street. What looks like sheet metal damage in the photo is really the reproduction logo, printed on vinyl, separating from the side of the camera. I’m going to replace that as soon as I can get the printing done (the design is pretty much done, but I just need to find someone who can print it to my specifications). In the meantime it’ll wear a rare and very interesting livery that a few Mark VIIs wore for a short period.

No, that’s not the pedestal they used under these when they were in service. Although, given their weight, you can sort of understand it.

And this stylish beast is the RCA TK-42. I’ve seen it described as RCA’s attempt to combine the color of the TK-41 with the sharpness of the monochrome TK-60. Unfortunately, ambition didn’t match execution and the TK-42 was not a hit. NBC itself really didn’t want anything to do with them, so TK-42s and TK-43s were often what brought local stations into the color era.4 The TK-42 was soon superseded by the great and durable TK-44. This one somehow made it to modern times, and even has the proper RCA pedestal and head most often seen beneath them. Unfortunately, it’s missing a few of its internals and has to be balanced with some weights inside, but from the outside you couldn’t tell. The black-and-gold RCA logo disappeared from the right side somewhere along the way, but a very helpful designer with a 3D printer was able to print up a replacement that looks just like it’s always been there, and I’m very happy.

We look much happier wearing the General’s lightning bolt. Now imagine how we’ll look once we’re back on our big ol’ pedestal and we can get a good all-over clean-up and shine.

There’s plenty left to do on these cameras. I’ve done some initial clean-up on them, but when I have time I want to give each one a good going-over to make them look as good as they can.5 There’s also a few things I may do as I find period-correct hardware for these machines. But all that’s down the road. Right now, what matters is that these old machines are safe in their new home, where young eyes will be able to see the equipment that helped make possible what they now take as a given.

The things that matter most

You spend years working on a project and you learn a lot of things. There are times you look at what you’re doing as a fun challenge. Other times you look at the project as a goal to be met. Other times, you curse the day you took the project on and wonder if you’ll ever get it finished. On a handful of occasions you want to assume a new identity and pretend the project never existed.

If you’re lucky, though, the day comes when you realize the project has given you gifts beyond what you ever imagined, and you’re thankful you decided to follow the path. You get to meet some interesting people, go new places, see new things, have new experiences. If you’re lucky and if you keep the right mindset about it, the project becomes this amazing adventure. Maybe not something on the order of an Indiana Jones adventure, of course, but one that’s fun and fulfilling and exciting in its own way.

And if you’re really lucky, you make friends. I have already. It’s how I met Brandon, who has been with me on this project since long before the website began. It’s how I came to know Mitchell and Judie Hadley, and how I came to know Carol Ford and Dennis Hart and some other genuinely good people who have added so much color and fun to my life.

Sometimes, though, you can’t believe who you get to know. I’m presently working through that right now, because two weeks ago I had the privilege of spending a few days visiting Dave Garroway’s daughter Paris. She’s retired to a sunny part of the American West, and there’s lots of cool things to see and do out there. Although we’d talked on the phone every so often, we hadn’t seen each other since 2018, and it was therefore a lot of fun to have the chance to be together again.

It was a long trip there by air, and it wasn’t helped by bad weather complicating my connection at O’Hare, and then turning my connection at Denver into a sprint through a busy concourse.1 One bumpy flight over the Rockies later, I was there, and there was Paris waiting for me at the airport.

We packed a lot into our time together. There was a road trip or two, some hiking, a wine tasting, some photography in some of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in the Lower 48, some really good meals together, visits with her friends and members of her family. And, of course, we talked about her life and her memories of her dad, and we also reminisced about dear Dave Jr. What mattered most of all, though, was the time we shared talking to each other as friends. We weren’t a biographer and the daughter of the biographer’s subject. We were two women sitting on the back porch, watching the sun set while we had some good wine and listened to some fine music, talking about life and what had gotten us here and what we’d learned along the way, sharing insights and hard-earned wisdom from our lives, because both she and I have had some adventures along the way.2 There were moments when we laughed, other moments when I felt my eyes get a little damp, but all of it was good. And, too soon, it was time to come home. It was time well spent.3

All too often it’s easy to think of a book project as this clinical, self-contained thing. It’s not. If you do it properly, you are essentially absorbing another person’s life story into your own life. That’s why you have to be careful to choose someone it’s easy to live with, because the subject of that book is going to be very, very close to you for however long it takes. And, beyond that, the people who were special to that person are probably going to become names you will come to know and sometimes care about. They become part of that story within your life, too.

But if you are extraordinarily lucky, some of those people will become part of your own life, and although you met them because of their relationship to the subject of your project, the relationship you build with them becomes independent of that. That’s certainly what happened here, and that friendship is one of the true blessings of this whole project.

I have so much to be thankful to Dave Garroway for. Most of all, I’m thankful to him because through this project, so many neat people became part of my life. That’s maybe my biggest piece of advice for anyone who wants to be an author or researcher. Keep your eyes, ears and heart open, because the chances are good that this whole enterprise is going to change your life in unforeseen, and often wonderful, ways.

Happy birthday, Dave! (And happy birthday, us!)

Happy birthday to Dave Garroway (he’d be 110 today, you know!) – and happy birthday to our website, too. Six years ago today we went live with this ongoing tribute to our Dave, and the book was but an aspiration. Six years later, the book is now an actual thing that you can buy (and if you haven’t…well, what’s keeping you? Hmmm? C’mon…you know you want it!).

In these six years we’ve chronicled a good bit of Garroway lore and made several friends, some of whom provided important insights and materials for Peace. There have been times I wished the book could have been out years before, but if that had happened, we would have missed out on several discoveries that made the book that much better. Sometimes a project knows its own timing better than we do, and we have to take a step back and let things unfold at their own pace, and a miracle happens. That certainly happened here.

Right now I can’t tell you what’s to come in the ongoing story of the Dave Garroway story, and that’s because the project has yet to decide where it wants to go next. There could be follow-on projects, perhaps, if the opportunities present themselves. I’ve ruled nothing out. For now, it feels like enough of a victory to finally have the book out there. I thank all of you who have bought it and read it, and I hope you’ll spread the word.

— And word is getting out. My employer issued a nice press release about the book a few weeks ago, and a local radio station had me in for a brief interview about it, which I enjoyed because it was a chance to be in a good old-fashioned radio studio for the first time in forever. Earlier this week I gave an online presentation to a local group, and that was a lot of fun. I am hoping more opportunities to speak are to come (and if you’re interested in having me speak, drop me a note through the contact form).

Not to mention, this very, very kind review was published last week. I’ve known this writer for years and have high regard for his work, both in newspapering and in his own books, and I’m still floored that he wrote so kindly about something I had a hand in creating. Wow.

Pre-flight checks

There come times when you have to make big decisions. A few weeks ago, I made one. For a variety of factors, a deal I thought I’d made to get the book published wasn’t progressing as I’d hoped. I’ll spare details on this, but some thoughts came to mind, and they were provoked by people I admire.

The first was from the subject of my previous book, who had struggled to get his first novel published. One night, talking about the frustrations he’d suffered, he suddenly had an inspiration: “Hellfire, we’ll publish it ourselves.” And so he did, raising some money and getting it privately printed.1

I also thought of an observation Natalie Merchant2 made in a recent interview. When she went solo she could have become a big-time pop star, but that’s not what she wanted. What mattered to her was doing the work she wanted to do, and doing it her way. One of her projects3 took a long time and required her to spend a massive amount of her own money, which took her nearly a decade to recoup. But it mattered that much to her to stay true to her vision, so she took charge, spent the money and did the hard work, and has never regretted it.

That kind of thing chewed at me as I thought about Peace. I’ve spent this long working on the book, rounding material up, doing all the things one must do in order to write a biography. I’ve been through it before, how it feels to turn over the product of a very intimate and personal process to a publisher, who will then turn it over to people you don’t know and who don’t know you, and then your work becomes subject to their vision. I had a vision of how I wanted Peace to look, how I wanted the cover to look, how I wanted the interior to look. I couldn’t be guaranteed of that if I went with an outside publisher. I wouldn’t have the control I wanted. I knew what I wanted, I knew how I wanted it to look, and I didn’t want to sacrifice that. This had to be done my way.

As it happened, I had the tools and know-how already. I have InDesign and Photoshop and Illustrator. I have close to 35 years of experience with document layout and design. I’ve got more than two decades’ experience with Photoshop and Illustrator. Why not see what I could do? One long weekend4, that’s what I did. I had Brandon give the text a very careful read, and he caught a lot of things that got past me and made the whole thing much stronger.

A scene I know very, very well. But it’s an amazing tool.

The other bonus is that it’s really easy to self-publish these days, especially if you can supply press-ready PDFs. And, as it happened, that’s what I know how to do, and IngramSpark could do the rest. And, last Friday, the result came in the mail:

And here it is, almost ready for your shelves.

Mind you, this is the printed proof. The moment you send something off, you find a whole lot of things got past you, and I have spent the last several days fixing those last little things. Some of them were fairly important, and others of them were tiny. I knew, though, if I didn’t fix them I would kick myself every time I saw them. As the great Dan Gurney once observed, “If you have the chance to make something beautiful, and you don’t…well, what does that say about you?”

Even then, even with all its imperfections, I was impressed by how it looks. It’s a solid book. The dust jacket is even more gorgeous than I imagined it would be. The paper inside is bright and opaque. The binding and cover feel nice and solid. This book looks and feels the way I hoped it would, and I am happy with it. It’s not the deal I would have gotten had I been able to interest a big-name publisher, but I’ve more than made that up by the fact that I have been able to this my way and make the book, in appearance and in substance, the way I wanted it to be.

The final revisions will be sent to Ingram in the next few hours. Once that file is properly in place and I’ve approved the e-proof, expect the book to go on sale really soon after. You’ll be able to get your local bookstore to order it in, and I’ll also be setting up a link here for you to buy it through this website.5 There’s also a chance I may have a limited supply of signed copies later on, too.

Stay tuned. It’s almost here, at long and blessed last.

Remembering Barbara Walters

A post I regret needing to make: Barbara Walters has died at age 93. I can’t say I’m surprised, as I knew she was not in the best of health, but it doesn’t make the news any less of a punch to the gut. There’s no way to calculate what women in journalism, and women in broadcasting, owe her. It’s better for others to cover that ground, as they will, and so I shall leave that to others better qualified than I am.1

Instead, it’s worth remembering that someone who helped her get her career started was Dave Garroway. It was while he was host of Today that she was hired as a writer, and she spoke often of how important that was in helping her get her start.2 As part of this hastily-assembled memorial post, here’s a clip in which she talks about Dave Garroway, what she remembered about him, and what made him special.

Time machines and buried ledes

It’s been busier than I’d like of late, and that’s where I’ve been. On the other hand, it means a lot of cool stuff has accumulated. Let’s begin with this image, which is from a large-format negative I recently acquired. It’s from December 7, 1954, and Dave’s expression captures what I’ve spent a lot of time feeling because of work.

Next up, check out this really cool interview with my friend (and collaborator) Brandon Hollingsworth on my friend Mitchell Hadley’s It’s About TV. The topic isn’t Garroway, but Brandon is always worth listening to and Mitchell’s blog is always worth reading.

Now let’s take a trip back in time: it’s 1958, and here’s a brief glimpse at the RCA Exhibition Hall. No glimpse of the Today set in its final months, alas, but it’s the Exhibition Hall and that’s worth checking out any time.

Finally, here’s a chance to see just how well I can bury a lede: at this link, you can get a glimpse of the image that will be on the cover of Peace: The Wide, Wide World of Dave Garroway, Television’s Original Master Communicator. (It’s also a chance for me to say that working with the estate of Raimondo Borea, and with Jon Gartenberg, could not have gone better or happier, and I gladly recommend both to you.)

The Starmaker returns

You may recall that several years ago I wrote about one of my most cherished artifacts, my RCA BK-4 “Starmaker.” The Starmaker, you may recall, was that unusual foot-long microphone that Dave Garroway and his fellow on-air staffers on Today used for the first few years.

Dave wearing a BK-4 on a harness for hands-free operation. (NBC photo)

My Starmaker was in excellent condition, with only one weird scar across the front below the RCA emblem. I figured it was just something that happened while it was being used. From time to time I toyed with the idea of sending it to a microphone specialist for a checkup, but figured it would be one of those “someday” things when I had fewer pressing needs.

A few weeks ago, somebody contacted me about something and, in that way conversations go, the topic of the BK-4 came up. It occurred to me I should pay the little one some attention, so I got it out of storage. What I saw broke my heart. I’d spooled up that super-long cable and placed the microphone atop it. Bad idea, it turned out. The old cable jacket had eaten into the paint, leaving two big and ugly scars across the front of the microphone. The microphone itself was not damaged, but the paint was ruined. I felt kind of sick about it, especially since my own negligence had done this. (I think that weird little scar I mentioned earlier, the one that was already on the microphone, was the result of a similar cable jacket burn.)

I’m going to spare you pictures of the microphone with the paint damage. Instead, here’s a photo of Gilda silently reproving me for being such a doofus with a priceless artifact.

Now, I could have fixed this myself with some careful sanding and a can of spray paint, but I didn’t feel right doing that. An artifact like this deserves the best treatment I could find. And that’s what I decided to do.

I boxed the Starmaker up and sent it off to New Jersey. That’s where Clarence Kane runs ENAK Microphones and Repair Service. Clarence worked for RCA back in the day and, when RCA got out of the microphone business, set up his own service center to keep microphones going. Clarence is now assisted by Luke Petersen, who has been very busy the last several years learning the ins and outs of dozens of microphone types. But instead of telling you about these two, maybe I should let this neat little film speak for me:

I sent my Starmaker off a few weeks ago, and I expected it to take a while. But early last week I got an invoice, and last Thursday UPS brought me a box, and with my heart wedged between my adenoids I cracked the thing open. Inside, very carefully packaged, was my beloved Starmaker…

Complete with a neat little thank-you from Clarence and Luke. I appreciate that, gentlemen…but it is I who should be thanking YOU.

…looking better than it’s looked in forever. Not only had the paint been accurately redone (while preserving the NBC-TV rollmark on the back!), but at my request they had also given it a check-up and installed a new cable with a standard XLR connector (and, also at my request, returned the old cable for historical purposes). All I need is a good pre-amp, and I could put this little one back to work, which is what I think it wants to be doing anyway.

To say I’m happy is an understatement. I was positively giddy over it. And while the reconditioning job was not inexpensive, I have absolutely no regrets. I owed it to that microphone, not only for what my carelessness had done, but also to make sure that microphone will be in good shape for its next 70 years.

If you have an old microphone that needs service, give the folks at ENAK a call or send them an e-mail. I highly recommend them.

:: Things are quiet on the book front, which is much of why you haven’t heard much from me in a while. Right now the main thing is waiting for some paperwork to come down, and waiting for the recommended edits from the copy editor. Things are in work, though, so stay tuned.

The Chicago School lives on

Some time ago, we1 here at Garroway At Large World Headquarters received an inquiry. A group near Chicago was planning a Garroway tribute. There was only so much I could do from my far remove, but I was happy to help where I could, of course.

Last week, the result made its debut. Somehow a group of very talented and creative folks put together a live, hour-long tribute to Dave Garroway and the Chicago School, and it is pure enjoyment from beginning to end. It’s a wonderful tour through Dave Garroway’s life, the good stuff as well as the more serious stuff (handled with respect, thankfully), and along the way there are some neat tributes to some of his contemporaries. There’s an interview with a television historian, who gives the context for what we’re seeing. There’s some neat musical moments, including a duet about early television that’s just plain fun (and that itself would have been right at home on Garroway At Large).

Garroway, charmingly brought back to life.

The production has a handmade feel to it. You will notice there’s not that much about it that’s fancy. A time or two it reminded me, happily so, of a school play, which only adds to its charm and makes it feel that much more heartfelt. Not to mention, it’s right out of the Chicago School aesthetic. The real Dave Garroway didn’t mind showing you that there was a stagehand above the set responsible for the falling leaves in a musical number, or incorporating a boom mic into a sketch. In this tribute, you’ll see some equipment, and you’ll see other signs that “it’s a show.”2

I’ve spent the last five years working on Dave Garroway’s life story, and yet if you’d asked me to write a show about him, I could not have captured the man’s spirit any better than this delightful show did. These folks did their homework, and what a surprise and a joy it was to watch this presentation. And from what I know about the man, I can’t help thinking Dave Garroway would have felt very honored by, and very happy with, this tribute, too.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone remembers Dave Garroway.3 I wonder if, for all he took part in that shaped the medium as we know it, he will forever be a footnote. This wonderful presentation reminded me that some people do remember Dave Garroway, and why he must be remembered. To all of those responsible for this tribute, a heartfelt “thank you.”

The 11:60 Club at 11:60 p.m.

When Dave Garroway came back to Chicago after serving in World War II, he found himself occupying the midnight slot on WMAQ.1 He turned what seemed like a dead-end assignment into an unusual program of music, patter and whimsy that gained a following everywhere WMAQ’s signal could be heard. And he named this unusual program The 11:60 Club.

It even had membership cards, sent to fans who wrote in. (Author’s collection)

As it happens, The 11:60 Club took its name from a popular song of the time, which I’m happy to share here.

And as a bonus…notice how Garroway is listed as “Eagerest Beaver” of the 11:60 Club? That’s a reference to….

You can say many things about Dave Garroway, but there is no disputing that the man knew good music.