I came to ABC HOLLYWOOD shortly after my graduation from UCLA (Theater Arts/Radio TV Division). After graduation, I had attended a radio school to secure a FCC Radiotelephone Operator’s First Class License that was very valuable in securing a job in the industry. Starting out in the television industry is difficult. I had a series of interviews with radio and TV stations and most all of them were in the "sticks" for no money.
     Fortunately, I had a close friend from UCLA who had secured employment with ABC as a page in their guest relations department. I signed on as a part-time page and was on my way. I believe my starting wage was $1.60 an hour. The behind the scene stories started in the page staff. Here are just a few of those behind the scenes moments.

     I was assigned to a daily kiddie birthday show called Chucko the Clown. Two birthday children, their parents and guests would gather at an extremely early hour in the morning under the guidance of another page/partner and myself. We would get them all to the rest room and guide them, and their party to seating in the studio. After that, they were in the hands of Chucko, a marvelous performer who was great with children. The children were treated to fresh orange juice and tons of Birthday cake, along with balloons. It was a fun time for them.
     One memory that remains with me was a time when we were lining up the children outside the restrooms in preparation for going into studio A. The mother of one of the birthday children raised her hand and said she had to get her little girl "dressed." There, in front of everyone outside she stripped her little girl naked and completely redressed her in front of everyone in the chilled morning air, the little girl was just one big goose bump. This accomplished; we then went into the studio.
     Our Chucko on-air announcer was a famous personality who was nearing the end of his career in broadcasting. He drank a bit: heck; he drank a whole lot. Even plastered, the guy was a pro, but that was only if he showed up in the booth. A young announcer, Mark Lawrence, started his career at KABC by just being around to sub for the missing announcer and later on went on to be a staff weatherman with the station for many years.
     Next door to Chucko on Stage B was the new soap at the network, General Hospital. Each morning the technical director sneaked onto our set so he could scrounge his breakfast of orange juice and birthday cake.


     General Hospital was one of the first shows to use body pack wireless microphones. At that time we were using industrial units and the microphones were large lavaliere mics about twice the bulk of your thumb and hidden under their hospital gowns. We soon found that the mics did not like rubbing against the nylon doctor gowns; they created a static electric charge and a swishing noise. We finally ended up wrapping the mics in Teflon tape to remedy that. Due to the size of the hidden mics there were some drawbacks. Once, the lead, Dr. Hardy, leaned over to kiss his current love, a nurse, and their microphones collided on camera. It sounded like two tanks crashing into each other. Later on, with the the advances in design of small lapel microphones, the embarrassing technical problems were eliminated.
     Many entertaining moments were provided to the engineering staff as the actors would often go into the restrooms with their mics still turned on…aside from the obvious, there were conversations that covered everything from their latest plastic surgeries to their love lives. The engineers always prayed that no actor would accidentally drop a transmitter pack into the toilets, as the acids present immediately attack the circuit boards and there would be a scramble to attach a new unit and make adjustments for different frequencies.

   One of the big shows of the sixties was Queen For A Day starring Jack Bailey. ABC telecast this show from the former Errol Carrol’s Vanities Theater on Sunset Boulevard. in the midst of Hollywood. It was a cattle call. Hundreds of women would line up for hours in the hope of being chosen as a candidate for "Queen" where they might win kitchen appliances etc. As a page, keeping people contained in the lines was a real job. I once encountered a pregnant young lady in the beginning throes of labor who refused to even sit down as she thought she might lose her place in line. One family in line had come directly from the funeral of one of their children who had been burned to death in a fire that had destroyed their home. The lady of the house was proudly announcing to all in the line that she would be “QUEEN FOR A DAY” as nobody had as sad a story as hers. One thing she did not know was that the series was basically an entertainment show and such genuine tragedy did not play well on camera. The show producers were aware of her presence and warned us all to keep an eye on her table when she was led in.
     All audience members were seated at tables and were "allowed" to buy themselves lunch. A more nasty fare was never put before people. We got our lunch free and were all warned that only one meal was edible and we always picked that one.
     Back to the show…sure enough, as the contestants were announced, our fire victim was not among them. A gasp escaped her and she stood up and began to rush the stage and the host Jack Bailey. Fortunately, we caught her and managed to remove her, sobbing, along with her embarrassed family from the premises. I asked off this show as soon as possible, even Chucko the Clown was preferable.

     One of the most desirable shows to work was The Soupy Sales Show. Soupy was taped late at night with no audience. The funny moments that happened on that show were often the completely un- predictable ones that were off-camera. Soupy lived in his house with his puppet dogs "White Fang and Black Tooth" and a little Lion puppet "Pookie" that was always getting him into trouble.
     Soupy often was hit in the face with a pie. I would watch Bobby, the prop man generously fill small pie crusts with shaving cream. Upon impact, the sound effect engineer would fire a live .38 blank pistol to punctuate the pie hitting Soupy.
     The big gimmick was that somebody would knock on Soupy’s door, he would open it and a comedy bit would insue. The audience at home never saw who was at the door, as the talented Clyde Adler (who supplied voices for the dogs and the lion) did all the voices behind the door as well. Soupy often times was unaware of what was going to happen. A case in point would be when the knock came to the door and Soupy answered it and there was a completely naked woman with balloons and music being supplied by David Rose’s recording of “The Stripper”. Soupy had to adlib himself out of that one fast, but she kept coming to the door and knocking repeatedly during the show.
     Another time, the door knock came, and Soupy went to the door where there was a live cow … Clyde once again supplied the voice of the cow. The bit was that the cow asked Soupy if he would like to hear his "horn" and supposedly jazz trumpet sounds would issue forth from the cow’s real horns. Well, the complication came from the fact that stagehands were pushing the cow to keep her in the doorway. All of a sudden, she got a call to nature and let loose all over the floor, causing the two stage hands to slip in the mess and fall on their behinds into the big gift the cow had given them. The entire studio was in an uproar, but Soupy had to recover in such a way that he kept the show going for the audience at home, who saw none of this. He did so with great success. Soupy always said that he never did a show for kiddies, and he was right. It just looked like a kids show.
     One time Soupy edged up to the camera and told the kids to go into their parents bedroom when they were asleep and remove from their wallets and purses those "little green pieces of paper" and then send them to him at the station. Lots of dollar bills were sent to Soupy to the station’s embarrassment. Soupy got called into the office for that one. Soupy stories at the station are legend.

     Roy Rogers and Dale Evans did a comedy variety show from ABC in 1963 and it was a real revelation to us all. Roy was just the friendliest down-to-earth guy around. He loved to talk with the stagehands, as some of them had been actors in a few of his Westerns before television killed the B-Westerns. He would hide out backstage with the behind-the-scenes people until he was missed. Now, Dale Evans was another matter, she pretty much told Roy what to do and many of us thought that while Roy may have ridden into the studio on Trigger, we all knew that Dale had ridden in on a broom. To Roy’s credit, he never had a bad word to say about anyone and dearly loved Dale and it showed on and off-camera.
     One time Roy had as guests on his show Cliff Arquette and Martha Raye…during their rehearsals, they turned the air blue with their sexual innuendoes and Roy and Dale beat a path to their dressing rooms. If the rehearsals had ever been taped they would have to have been rated “X”.
     The night of the taping of that show, Cliff alerted the page staff to watch the visitors lining up as he was expecting a "special guest". Sure enough there was a "lady" in line telling everyone that she was to be Cliff’s guest. She looked like the personification of a hooker. We informed Cliff jokingly about her and he told us to immediately show her to his dressing room. The lady must have had talent, but somehow she never made it out of his dressing room.

     I began to move up in the page staff. I became a cue-card person. It got me out of the gaudy uniform and permitted me a degree of status. I did cues on Lawrence Welk’s live TV show (more about the Welk Show in another article) and game shows such as Seven Keys with Jack Narz.
     Jack Narz had started as a staff announcer at KABC in the 1950s. He did commercials on Space Patrol, pushing Ralston cereals, Nestle’s Quik and told us often to send in our boxtops for those great premiums. ;He was a master of reading cue cards. The first time I held cards for the wonderland of prizes on Seven Keys, a big game show in the 60s, I was shaking like a leaf. Jack had no difficulty reading my shaking cards expertly and came over during a commercial break and congratulated me for my first time under fire. He was a nice man, well liked, and very professional.
     One evening the senior cue card page on the show arrived wearing white pants. He was going over some last minute changes on the cards and leaned across the table where the large marker pens were and instantly there were two big black dots in the crotch area of his new white pants. He would not go on camera that way and went to clean the area. He flooded it with ink remover and got the annoying spots out, but he also soaked his genital area with the remover. It soaked through his clothing to his bare skin underneath. The ink remover was naptha based and could burn sensitive areas. As he stood holding cards for Jack, the naphtha made it to his bare skin and he was on fire. He stood at the side of the camera doing a little dance while he changed cards as professionally as he could. Jack was trying to conceal his amusement at seeing this weird behavior, but he carried on as usual. When he found out what had caused the cue card dance, he got an even bigger laugh out of it. My friend failed to see the humor.
     Pinky Lee did a kiddy show for a period of time at ABC and his history as a baggy pants comedian in burlesque and as a foil in B-Westerns had never quite left him. Like many performers, he sort of worked on two levels…the jokes were there and the kids loved him, but there were also a lot of inside jokes contained in his material that were played to the crew. One day on set, it was his birthday and a hooker arrived from some friend who thought it would be a great gag-gift. Pinky accepted the “gift” and disappeared with her into his dressing room. He did an especially funny show that day for the children.

     After toiling in the page staff for about eight months, I was called into the chief engineer’s office to be interviewed and was accepted into engineering. At at the end of the summer season, I was made a permanent staff member at the network. I was finally on my way into the technical side of the business that I loved.
     I would not trade my experiences in the page staff for anything, but I was glad to get out of there and into what I had trained for. Even more funny occurrences happened in engineering. Those stories will be shared at another time…stay tuned.

Copyright Tom Mason 2001