SANDY HOWARD PRODUCTIONS
I learned a a lot about data analyses at the NRDGA which served me well in later years. But the work was dull. I wanted something connected with theater. I began to scan classifieds (lists of available jobs, apartments, etc. in newspapers, "want ads" we called them, which today are but memories to seniors like me.)
Finally one day, there it was. An ad for a Production Assistant (signifying gopher) at a TV producing company.
I applied and got the position with Sandy Howard Productions. The firm “packaged” television and radio programs including Luncheon at Sardi’s (radio) and The Merry Mailman (TV). The production company's TV programs were purchased by the Mutual Broadcasting Company, and broadcast via WOR, their New York Metropolitan area channel, from a studio in a one-story building on 11th Avenue. (Later they moved us to the 83rd floor of the Empire State Building where Mutual’s transmission equipment was located.)
Sandy Howard headquartered in a strungout apartment on 55th Street and Seventh Avenue right over the ground-floor “Chock full O'Nuts” Coffee Shop. Sandy occupied a tiny front room office. I, and the two associates who booked guests for our programs, were housed in a windowless room right off his office with a door to the elevators outside. Our area would have been the apartment dining room. Adjoining us was the kitchen, converted to office use. It was rented to a booking agent.
Our three person space opened on to a long hall leading to three bedrooms, interwoven with two bathrooms, and a rear service entrance. The service entrance served as convenient escape route when Ray occasionally needed to duck out if his wife happened to show up between shopping forays while he was ensconced with his pretty young "production assistant" whose sole service was his pleasure.
My initial jobs were to dress the set of the Merry Mailman set with props for various segments of the show, to assist the star, Ray Heatherton, and second banana, Milt Moss, with any of their needs for costume changes or glasses of water. And to arrange displays (Kellogg’s Corn Flakes boxes, for example) on a table for commercials.
Innocently, on my first day I brought several boxes from backstage onto the set. But quickly learned from a dressing-down by Abe, the boss stage-hand, that while I was permitted to arrange these boxes on the display table, I was absolutely not to carry even a single one of them from the backstage sidelines onto the set. I discovered, in other words, the royal power of local # 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (I.A.T.S.E), the legendary father-and-son union that ruled New York’s backstage performance world. (Several weeks after I began, Abe, having come to acknowledge my quiet respect for the workers in that "grandfathered" union, graciously granted me permission to carry the cornflake boxes on set without his crew’s participation.)
Another of my tasks was to escort the guests, kids who had tickets, from their holding room to the set proper. While waiting in the wings they received gift packages of our sponsors’ products which included Marshmallow Fluff and Bosco, a rival to Hershey’s chocolate additive for milk. This part of my job unfortunately included wiping up the remains of the occasional dropped bottle. Bosco made a helluva mess, cleanup of which regrettably was not within the I.A.T.S.E contract obligations.
I was also responsible, along with everyone else, no matter what their role, for keeping the kid-guests in line during commercial breaks -- and with sign language when one of them became obstreperous during the program.
The first-floor studio with easy ingress/egress to the street, was a boon for us, as we often entertained guests such as the naturalist Ivan Sanderson, who brought with him “pets;” including an adult eagle and a baby elephant.
Soon we moved to the Empire State Building where I could wander into the control room and watch Sandy direct from scripts he prepared daily. That led to some new possibilities.
Sandy’s frequent grumbling to Ray about the time he devoted to script preparation seemed to offer a career opportunity.
JUMPS IN STATUS
Though my writing background was sketchy, scripting our daily kids’ show seemed simple. The bold time notations on the material he worked from, as I looked over his shoulder, seemed largely a matter of scheduling. I proposed to Sandy that I take a crack at writing the daily scripts. I might be able take the burden off his shoulders.
Sandy played me like Tom Sawyer’s fence-painting victim. The time strain he complained to Ray about, he said, was just to remind Ray how valuable his producer’s efforts were. Then he mused. Maybe, he thought, I might just possibly master the job. The truth was that Sandy actually liked the idea of someone taking on the script responsibility. After running it by Ray, he asked me to take a crack at it.
What I thought was a snap actually wasn’t. It wasn’t of course, actually writing. More like painting by the numbers. Or putting together a daily jigsaw puzzle with some pieces, dialogue interludes, missing ‘till I shaped them.
- First Heatherton’s opening song, “I am the Merry Mailman.” Then a bit of banter between Ray and puppets manned by Milt Moss (the “second banana”) hidden behind the little stage I was still responsible for setting up daily.
- After that two musical interludes by our three man band, often accompanying a song by Ray (until all live music went belly-up when the American Federation of Musicians lost a dispute with WOR).
- Three or or four commercials.
- Usually Heatherton interviewing a guest accompanied by an animal. Or introducing a performer (occasionally his daughter, Joey Heatherton).
- Other time slots: Ray, and Milt now live in clown outfit, Ray putting him down complete with loud slap or slight seltzer spray. Ray talking to the kids. Milt or Ray bantering with Tiny our lovable drooling white Great Pyrenees. A cartoon. Ray’s sign-off wave.
All it took was fitting these episodes into precisely 57 ½ minutes of airtime. It presented a challenge. But seemed easier than navigating from Guam to Japan and back.
After a few attempts, and discussions about timing anomalies and camera logistics, Sandy pencilled in some edits to my masterpiece and took my latest offering live. In a few weeks I got the hang of it. And soon was generating our daily script, Sandy out of the picture. Each of them geared to kids’ ears, and laid out episode-by-episode with dialogue suggestions as needed, simple conflict situations, and filmed commercials. They went something like this snapshot of one part of a script:
- 5:45: 00 to 5:49:59 Camera on puppet stage, puppets up.
- Alex [a puppet] # 1] threatens to take away Jacko’s [puppet # 2] Slinky.
- Jacko cries.
- MM in, tells Alex to go to his room Alex, mumbling, drops from sight
- Jacko tells MM he loves him,
- MM: “you’re a good little feller.” To audience: “At least today.”
- 5:50:00 to 5:51:30: Roll Kellogg commercial.
Spotting a glutton for punishment Sandy had a new idea soon after I began scripting. If I could relieve him of writing, why not directing too? He needed time, he told me, to develop another show.
It was hardly something I could turn down. We sat together in the control room for several days while I observed the niceties of moving the two iron horse cameras, they seemed the size of backhoes, around the studio. Enormous cables trailed them challenging the camera men, and director, not to cross one-another's cable as they moved from take to take on the director’s command. The logistics were a huge challenge.
Direction precipitated a strange need. My name was Robert Goldeman. This was 1954. Screen credits like that were taboo in those days. Fran already had a stage name, Wallace. Now I needed one. My recently acquired stepfather’s name was Michl Gibson. Fittingly he was in the business, a well regarded Yiddish actor. Why not “Director-Bob Gibson” flashing up on the screen. It would be my daily moment of glory. Soon after, August 23rd, 1954 Fran and I changed our names officially to Gibson.
With this whimsical turn of phrase our attorney, Joe Russell spelled out the reasons for the new name, Gibson, in Article 8 of the approved application:
Petitioners desire to change their names for the following reasons: that petitioner ROBERT EDWIN GOLDEMAN'S father deserted his family in 1929 when such petitioner was but four years of age, and was subsequently divorced in New York State by such petitioner’s mother, who in 1950 re-married one Michael Gibson, for whom petitioners have a great deal of affection and with whom petitioners have formed a strong family bond; that though seemingly simple, petitioner’s present name is constantly misspelled and mispronounced, the second syllable being generally omitted completely, which misspellings and mispronunciations have heretofore been the source of considerable confusion and some embarrassment; that for the past year petitioner ROBERT EDWIN GOLDEMAN has been using the name of Gibson professionally, with the consent and approval of his other and step-father aforementioned.
And during the same period I became a union member.
Off camera moments with Sandy Howard Productions were as varied as the time devoted to the programs themselves. Ray running down the hall to hide comic-strip-like infidelities, politics, editing racist cartoons left over from before the war, papers shoved aside for dinners delivered fro the Carnegie delicatessen across 7th Avenue, Milt Moss's excessive vulgarity, all made appearances. And directing another children’s program, Colonel Venture, which Sandy created and performed in.
Perhaps the most fun of all was Tiny, the huge dog. (Other than cleaning up after him when he was penned up in our office too long.)
Tiny was an anomaly. The Empire State Building did not allow animals. This might have been insurmountable were it not for our ingenuity, and a maintenance staff that happily looked away as we carted him, contained in a rolling commercial canvas laundry container with a wooden hinged cover, via three freight elevators, changing twice along the way to our 83rd floor broadcasting studio. And after the show, down again with the same elevator changes.
Then one of us walked him along 34th street before driving him back to the office. To my chagrin, when it was my turn to parade him so. Chagrin because he was invariably recognized by kids in the street. They swarmed about him. Had he been human he’d have signed autographs galore. I craved such adoration, but got none.
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