by Dick Wolfsie
As it happened, the man who had inspired me to pursue a humor column of my own lived right here in Washington. And ever since I’d begun college, I had wanted to meet him, the number-one syndicated writer in the country: Art Buchwald. So I finally got up my courage and looked up his home number in the phone book—not that he would be listed. But there it was.
Incredibly, Mr. Buchwald answered his home phone. I told him I was a fan. That I wrote a humor column, just like his. Yeah, right. Silence on the other end. I also informed him that I attended the university just a few blocks from where he worked. “Call my office,” he said. “Let’s see just how funny you are.” It was like an Old West gunfighter throwing down a challenge.
A week later, I entered Buchwald’s office with a stack of Hatchets under my arm. He put both feet up on his desk. Not one at a time; instead, he propelled both of his hefty legs together onto the mahogany surface with a thud. There was a hole in one of his shoes.
Buchwald stole a glance at me and snapped, “Let me see one of those newspapers, kid.” He ripped open the current issue and began reading my column. I watched his face. Nothing. He grabbed a pen off his desk and scribbled a few words over my byline. He apologized that something had come up. With that, he left. The entire meeting with him lasted but ten minutes.
Dejected, I shuffled along Pennsylvania Avenue back to my apartment, but I stopped at the first corner bench and opened The Hatchet to the page that Buchwald had read just minutes before. I stared in delight at these words scrawled on the page: “Wolfsie, stay out of my racket.”—Art Buchwald. To this day, I assume he meant he saw me as a potential competitor, but I suppose at the time it could have been just good advice for someone with no talent who needed to pursue a more realistic line of work.
In l969 I graduated from the George Washington University, and with diploma in hand, I headed home. That May, only a war in Vietnam stood between me and the rest of my life. I did oppose the war, but the truth was that even if I had embraced the politics of the conflict, the idea of shooting a gun and killing anyone was unthinkable. Being shot at, I wasn’t good at thinking about either. Knock ’em dead with jokes was my way of dealing with people. “Stop, you’re killing me” was the refrain I looked forward to hearing someday in a comedy club in New York. Not in Vietnam.
What do you do with a degree in American Studies? I knew I was creative and a fairly good writer. Maybe advertising? But writing spots for Pepsodent on Madison Avenue was not going to keep me out of the draft.
Teaching had always intrigued me, although I had this unrealistic notion that to teach something, you had to know something. Despite my four years of post-high school education, I didn’t think I’d feel any more confident in a classroom than in a rice paddy. When I learned that teaching positions were open at my alma mater, New Rochelle High School, I decided it was worth a try.
When I called to make an appointment at the central office, the secretary said the superintendent of schools wanted to know if I was the same Dick Wolfsie who had gone to New Rochelle High just four years earlier. Stupidly, I told the truth, and I’ll never forget her retort: “Dr. Misner said to come in anyway.”
I did get the job, but the department chairwoman who hired me had a clear memory of my senior year, just five years earlier. She had also taught my mother, apparently another poor student, she kindly shared with me.” This is the worst hiring I have ever made,” she told me, wagging her finger. Fact is, she was desperate. School began in a few weeks.
Faculty members who had disciplined me for my antics, teachers who had rolled their eyes at my one-liners and admonished my parents about my lack of appropriate reserve, were now my colleagues. For nine years, I taught psychology. Then English, as well. Teaching psychology allowed for more innovation and demonstration in the class. When I blindfolded students and had them run through a maze of chairs, the chair of the department heard about my technique and informed me that I could have just as easily taught the concept through lecture, not a demo that caused a great deal of disruption in the room. She was wrong, of course. I knew how to work an audience.
The teachers and the students nicknamed me Kotter, a reference to the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter, where Gabe Kaplan in the title role returns to teach at his alma mater. I was also dubbed “rookie of the year” by the more experienced teachers. I instinctively knew how to inform and entertain at the same time, the one-two punch for effective teaching and hosting of a talk show. But the latter was still a decade away.
The summer of’78 looked like it would be typical, chasing girls and golf balls, but a call from a friend would soon mean the beginning of a roller-coaster series of events that took me from a high school psychology teacher to the host of the number-one local morning show in the country in only two years.
The call was from Burt Dubrow, a high school buddy, whose obsession with TV had resulted in a myriad of media jobs since college, including emceeing and producing a revival of the legendary Howdy Doody Show on college campuses. Burt was producing a series of shows for Warner Cable in Columbus, Ohio. Viewers had their homes hardwired so they could interact via a tiny box, not unlike a TV remote. Based on questions elicited from the game- and talk-show hosts, viewers could register opinions and provide feedback, which then appeared on the screen fully tabulated. It was so advanced for its time that Phil Donahue did a show from one of the studios, heralding the new technology.
I became a writer and associate producer for the evening talk show as well as a weekend kids’ program. I moved from New York to Columbus, Ohio, to start a new life. I watched the host of the evening program each night read my questions verbatim and knew that I could do it better and more spontaneously. How did I know that? Because for a decade I had managed to keep the attention of thirty hormone-charged adolescents for forty minutes five times a day with a technique that combined just the right mixture of information and entertainment. That’s exactly what a good talk-show host does. But how would I get a job like that? Not a clue.
In the early fall, Burt’s wife introduced me to one of her friends, a stunning redhead who was not looking for a husband but was seeking an MBA at the University of Michigan. Mary Ellen drove from Ann Arbor to Columbus for the blind date and we had dinner at Burt’s home.
Mary Ellen and I were total opposites by any observable criteria. She was measured and reserved. She actually let people finish sentences when they were speaking. This really threw me because in New York the only way you know you are done talking is when someone interrupts you. Initially, she was put off by the interaction between Burt and me, which often bordered on the juvenile as we relived our childhood together and fell into fits of laughter during the meal.
But in the three days that followed, Mary Ellen and I had more time to talk one-on-one. Despite the obvious differences in demeanor and style, we shared some common values. It was love at fourth sight.
The romance blossomed quickly, maybe too quickly for Mary Ellen, who was interviewing for jobs all over the country and was reluctant to commit to a relationship with a guy who wrote cue cards for a living. When she secured a consulting job in Chicago, we decided to move to the Windy City together, and I would look for freelance work as a writer there.
Before we left for Chicago, on several occasions I had filled in for the evening host, who eventually left the show for the business world. The bosses liked my style and for almost a year, they flew me in from Chicago on Sunday nights, then jetted me home on Wednesdays. I was hosting the show three nights a week.
I don’t recall exactly why QUBE took a chance with me, but I think that, like my teaching job, I was the beneficiary of being at the right place at the right time . . . when the people in charge were desperate.
Columbus Alive reached only a small audience, but because the technology was unique, so state of the art, it was not uncommon for reporters from all over the world to be in the control room watching the show. I became a master at what was called a PQ, also known as an interactive quest
ion. “Do you think gays should be allowed to teach school?” I asked the audience during a related debate. Then I would proclaim: “touch now,” which meant the home viewer could push the appropriate button and register his opinion. Once, during a particularly boring interview, I polled the audience, asking if it was time to excuse my guest and go on to the next portion of the show. The viewers voted. The guest was soon history. And I made a little history. Had something like this ever happened before on a television show? I’m sure not.
One of my first guests on the evening show was Jack Hanna, director of the Columbus Zoo and now a regular with Larry King and David Letterman. So nervous was Hanna on his first TV interview that when I asked him whether the snake he had wrapped around my neck was poisonous, he just stared at me blankly. During the pause, my eyes widened in mock fear. Timing is everything. The crew broke into laughter. I told Jack after the show, “That’s a funny bit. Just pretend you’re not really that informed about the animals ... be a little surprised by what they do.” Almost thirty years later, Jack is still doing that very act. Is Jack pretending he’s clueless or is he acting? You’re never sure. That’s what makes Jack Hanna so much fun to watch.
The show was like my classroom. There was no live audience, but I often imagined there was a roomful of kids in front of me. It worked. In fact, it worked so well, I became the first cable talk-show host to win a regional Emmy.
We wanted kids, but not quite yet. How about a dog? Enter Sabra, a terrier mix from the Humane Society. She was our first dog together and soon became the central focus in our lives.
Sabra must have always wanted to be a mother because after being spayed, she would steal socks out of our laundry hamper, distribute them on the floor, and guard them as if they were her puppies. If we approached her, she snarled. Socks only a mother could love.
Sabra did fill a void in our lives. We were past twenty-somethings, but an immediate plunge into parenthood did not seem advised given the uncertainty of the TV business. Caring for a dog might give us a little confidence that we could be good “parents,” or at least provide some comfort we could move on to the next level of parenting.
In 1980, I received an Emmy Award for Best Talk Show Host in a three-state region of the Midwest. This was the first time in history that the prize had gone to a cable host, as opposed to someone in traditional broadcast TV.
Within weeks, a Boston network affiliate offered me a job as a late-night host, moving me from the tiny Columbus market to the number-five station in the country. While Mary Ellen was off to Bean City searching for an apartment, another call from Burt. “Dick, WABC in New York just called me. They want you to audition for their morning show.”
This program, along with its counterpart in L.A., was the number-one local morning show in the country. As a New Yorker, I knew the time slot had a history of turnover after the exit of host Stanley Siegel, a certified neurotic who had left television, probably for long-term therapy. He was a therapist himself, so he probably spent the next few years just talking to . . . well, himself.
Dozens of hosts from around the country had tried out for the gig. But the spot was still vacant.
Incredibly, I was not the least bit nervous during the live on-air audition. I had a firm job offer in Boston, and I was getting the hang of this talk-show thing. And what did I have to lose?
My first guest that morning, a flamboyant fashion designer from Manhattan, was demonstrating the proper beachwear for the summer. He placed a huge sombrero on his own head and said, “No sun will ever touch me.” I did a take to the audience, then: “No son of mine, I’ll tell you that.” Laughter and applause from the spectators and crew. But it was better than that. My mother loved it, too.
The next day I was offered the job on Good Morning, New York. My salary was five times what I made in Columbus. But something didn’t seem right. And for the next six months nothing was right. My career in the Big Apple was brief, less than a year. Big stars like Woody Allen, Mickey Rooney, James Mason, and Louis Armstrong sat across from me promoting their books and movies. But overall, it was a painful experience. Lots of politics and backstabbing. And not the TV market where they give you much time to grow into the job.
Memories of those years have faded, but there were two people I met who I will never forget. They, along with Art Buchwald, shaped my developing sense of how to connect with people. And how to make them laugh.
I had watched Steve Allen on TV in the ’50s. When my parents were glued to CBS at 8 PM on Sunday nights watching Ed Sullivan, I took the hipper option and retreated to the basement to watch Steve Allen on ABC. Steve was The Tonight Show’s first host and the inventor of late-night TV talk shows. Many of the routines we are so familiar with today, from Johnny Carson’s Carnac to Jay Leno’s man-on-the-street interviews, were Steve Allen’s creations.
Steve would smear his body with dog food and unleash a pack of assorted dogs. He strapped a kite to his back and ran into a huge fan. Mr. Allen put a live camera on the corner of Hollywood and Vine and commented on the people who walked by. Sound familiar? Carson, Letterman, and Leno have all copied it in one form or another.
I first met Mr. Allen during an interview on Good Morning, New York. We were talking about the great comic actor Stan Laurel. “Where can you find people of that ilk anymore?” asked Mr. Allen. “You could join the Ilks Club,” I said. It was a Steve Allen kind of joke. And we both knew it. He laughed. Yes, I had made Steve Allen laugh.
If there was anyone sillier than Steve Allen, it was Soupy Sales. As a twelve-year-old, I was glued to the TV while Soupy sparred with his off-camera puppet friends: White Fang, “the meanest dog in the U.S.A.,” and Black Tooth, “the sweetest dog in the world.” Only the paws of these puppets were shown, and White Fang did little more than grunt. Soupy would then translate the incomprehensible sounds. I had the opportunity to work with Soupy Sales for a week while at WABC. It almost made the gig worthwhile. Almost.
Six months after I started in New York, I was done. My cohost didn’t like me. The producer didn’t like my style. The general manager, I discovered, didn’t know who the hell I was. He had been in Europe when his station manager hired me. I knew things had been too easy. I was toast. The meeting with the station manager was short and ugly. “I’m afraid you’re not quite what we are looking for, but we wish you the best of luck.”
All of a sudden that $1,100-a-month apartment on Third Avenue didn’t seem like such a good deal. I spent Tuesdays in the unemployment line, often signing autographs for people who thought I was doing some kind of news story. I tried to find freelance work doing commercials, but I was so bad at it that I auditioned to play a talk-show host in a beer ad, and I wasn’t even good enough for a second audition.
Mary Ellen had a good job as a marketing director at one of the local hospitals. The first six weeks, we lived in the Essex House near Central Park until we found an apartment. Everything was courtesy of WABC, including meals. A dream come true. My wife compared herself to Eloise, the little girl in Kay Thompson’s 1950s children’s book, who lived at the Plaza Hotel and endlessly roamed the hotel in search of adventure. Why not take it easy for a while and enjoy the Big Apple? We had not anticipated how rotten things would get.
Mary Ellen and I moved back home to my mother and father’s house in New Rochelle, just a mile from New Rochelle High School, where I once held the world’s most secure job. I bartended for a few months and Mary Ellen, America’s best-looking MBA, took part-time work as a Kelly Girl temp at six bucks an hour. Two months earlier I had been picked up in a limo to get to work. Now I had no idea what we were going to do. I was thirty-five years old, newly married, and living at home with Mom and Dad.
After I left WABC, another entourage of hapless hosts tried to make the cut, rarely lasting more than a few weeks. Within a year, WABC finally hired my permanent replacement, a guy named Regis Philbin, who was then in L.A. doing a similar show. People tell me he’s done okay.
In August of �
��81, I responded to an ad in Broadcasting Magazine. The local CBS affiliate in Indianapolis needed male and female hosts for a new show. At the time, Indy was more the butt of jokes than a mecca for media, but I was in no position to be choosy.
For the audition, I had been paired by pure chance with a midwestern gal who had been on the radio in Dayton, Ohio. Patty Spitler was a feisty, quick-witted blonde. The chemistry between us was evident to everyone. The next day the general manager called the two of us into his office and offered us the job. Then this:
“Dick, this may be the dumbest decision I have ever made.”
I had heard this before. That was the kind of insightful thinking that had gotten me my high school teaching job.
“Our viewers will not like you at first. You’re too New York. This is Indiana. But the show needs an edge. I think you will grow on people.” Nice—he made me sound like some kind of fungus. But at least I had a job. Like most mushrooms, I lasted little more than a season.
In a cost-cutting move, Indianapolis Afternoon was dumped. Now I had been canned twice in two years. When most TV personalities lose a job they split to another TV market. You look like damaged goods. But Mary Ellen had a good job. As for me? Writing, teaching, bartending? Something would come up . . . wouldn’t it?
WPDS was a new independent station. Maybe there was something there. I marched myself over there after managing to wrangle a meeting with the GM, whom I convinced to let me create a late-night show, not unlike the one I had been offered in Boston, to feature what I called fringe people, locals who didn’t usually get much air time because of their out-of the-mainstream lifestyle and beliefs.
It was quite a ride for over a year. I interviewed Holocaust deniers, professional wrestlers, and the KKK. Pornographers, transsexuals, transvestites, gay teens, prostitutes, they all appeared on Night Talk. But the show aired only once a week. Lots of mayhem. No money.