FUN TIMES WITH LARRY VAN NUYS

The funniest, warmest announcer I ever worked with!

In our travels through life, in school, in business, in daily life, we meet people of all stripes.  Some are great men or women, some are not.  Some are soon forgotten; others leave memories indelibly etched in our brains.

As I looked back through my journals sparking ideas for future Substack columns, one name kept popping up, not over one week, or one month, but over many years.

I met Larry Van Nuys when I was hired in the Promotion Department at KTLA in 1981.  Larry was one of two voice-over artists on staff, along with Ron Boltz.  They were the men who recorded the promos and commercial bumpers, but were also on site in case an emergency break-in to regular programming was needed and information needed to be relayed to the public.

Larry and his wife Marsha became good friends and remain so to this day.  Though we’ve been separated by many miles since I moved to San Diego, my feelings for and good memories of working with Larry remain as strong as ever.  After KTLA, when I was working in syndication, I fought for him to do the voice-overs for “Real Stories of the Highway Patrol” as an AFTRA member, which was a big deal for a company that had only used non-union talent to that point.

We got together socially, and Larry would even join Wayne Lepoff and other friends and neighbors of mine for an occasional poker game in Oak Park.

There are too many Larry stories to recount in one column, so I will share two which will tell you a lot about Larry, including his sense of humor and versatility.  Additional stories would reflect other qualities including his kind heart and genuineness, his lust for life and dedication to Marsha that is unbounded.

THE KTLA “ALL-TIME PROMO RECORD”

We had three or four full-time promo producers on the staff, who would write and produce the :30, :15 or :10 spots that ran all day promoting the station’s upcoming programs.  Along with Kerry Cummings, Cindy Stanley and a few others who were there over the years I worked in the department, we had a good time dividing up the assignments and sometimes flipping coins to decide who would get the movies or shows for which we wanted to produce promos.  When the Channel 5 Movie theatre theme week would be MGM Musicals or other classics, there were enough films for us to divide equally and all be happy.

When it came to sports, though, by mutual agreement it was all left to me.  KTLA broadcast Angels Baseball, as well as UCLA Football and Basketball.

Sometimes it was tough getting time in an editing or sweetening room (sweetening involved adding music and voice-overs to the edited promos), so it was critical that the process move quickly, with the editor, producer and voice-over artist working as a team to crank them out efficiently without losing quality.  One day in particular the team must have been highly caffeinated, as I recalled in my nightly journal, factually but also tongue in cheek.

From my Journal, August 11, 1983:

            Thursday.  A record was set today at KTLA which will likely last for a long time: sweetening 94 promos with Larry Van Nuys in just over two and a half hours.  Granted they were all sports promos and many only ten seconds in length, but we flew!  And it’s a record nonetheless.  94 spots!  Beat Kerry’s record of 84 by ten!  And her 84 took a full eight hours!  I was able to finish off the Angels baseball spots through September (barring any unforeseen surge in the Angels’ performance, that’s when the telecasts will end) and completed a full season’s worth of UCLA football promos.

While I was humorously ribbing my fellow producer Kerry about it, Larry also decided to give a little ribbing to our other announcer, Ron Boltz, in a most creative way.  A Western Union Telegram!

DEAR RON:

ON THIS DATE, AUGUST 11, 1983, LARRY VAN NUYS AND DOUG FRIEDMAN AND THE THURSDAY PROMO TEAM BROKE THE EXISTING CONSECUTIVE PROMO PRODUCTION RECORD WHICH HAD BEEN HELD WITH DISTINCTION BY MR R BOLTZ AND MS K CUMMINGS, THE NEW RECORD WHICH I AM SURE WILL STAND FOR MANY YEARS TO COME IS AN UNBELIEVABLE 94 CONSECUTIVE PROMOS IN ONE THREE HOUR SESSION.  MY CONDOLENCES TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, HOWEVER, I AM SURE YOU REALIZE RECORDS ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN.  CORDIALLY AND WITH RESPECT,

            THE KINGS, LARRY VAN NUYS AND DOUG FRIEDMAN

Whether it was promo sweetening or simply recording “next-ons” (voice-over credits teasing the night’s movie and “now stay tuned for…”), it was always a joy to work with Larry in a recording session.

THE $100,000 PYRAMID PROMO

In the summer of 1985 I found out that KTLA would be running the syndicated version of “$100,000 Pyramid” the coming Fall.  At the time I was acting as interim director of the department, hoping to have a shot at the job permanently, so I worked hard on ideas for a blockbuster way to promote the new show.

June 24, 1985:

            Presented an idea for an original “$100,000 Pyramid” promo to GM Steve Bell, which he liked after I acted all the parts out for him in one frenetic minute.  He told me to pitch it to Fox (the distributor), and if they buy in, we’re a go!

On July 2, only one week later, Nick van Hoogstraten on his first day as the new director of the department, and I met at CBS at Beverly & Fairfax to record the more traditional launch promos with Dick Clark, at which point we received the okay to shoot my promo idea two weeks later.  I noted in my journal that night this spot would earn me a job offer somewhere else.

The first task when I got back to the station was to hire the actors, and the first call of that first task was to, of course, Larry Van Nuys.  Before we knew it, the day of the big shoot arrived.

July 17, 1985:

            The highlight of the day would come at 5:30, when I met Nick van Hoogstraten, Larry Van Nuys and actress June Barrett at CBS on Fairfax were we shot a KTLA promo for the “$100,000 Pyramid.”

            During a recreation of the big money round that comes at the end of each game. Larry gave June clues from which she’d have to guess the category.  She nailed the first nine and the nailbiter at the end (“The $100,000 Pyramid weeknights at six on Channel Five!”) came just before the buzzer as the clock was to hit zero.  Applause from the audience, Larry and June jumping for joy, and Dick Clark stepping into the picture to add “now there’s an answer that’s worth a fortune!”

            The shoot went well, taking only ten minutes after their final show of the day.  I was particularly pleased to have brought Larry in on this…couldn’t stop smiling watching him in the role of the “celebrity clue giver.”  He’d certainly be a great game show host himself (oh wait, he has been one!) and this spot will certainly be at the top of my demo reel next week.  Fox’s Promotion Director Jerry Minnucci liked it enough to tell me he’d introduce me to some people at KABC who may consider me for a producer’s job at that station.

A few weeks later, once the spot hit the air, Jerry sent Nick and I baskets of fruit and champagne to thank us for our job on the promotion of the show.  It was a classy thing to do.

And only two months later, that spot and others on my reel helped land me the management job I was looking for, at WGBS-TV in Philadelphia.

I said goodbye to Larry but we remained friends for years; he donated time to record PSA’s for charities with which I was involved, we worked on those “Highway Patrol” promos I mentioned before, and after I had moved to San Diego in 2005, we were in close contact again as he and Marsha rented our home in Oak Park.

Thank you, Larry, for the amazing coworker and friend you’ve been to me over the years!

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Post script…I wasn’t going to put this in my original column, but so many years later, even though embarrassing at the time, I thought Larry wouldn’t mind my sharing another of my favorite “Larry Van Nuys moments”:

March 25, 1982:

            The highlight of the day was Larry Van Nuys’ next-on for 3:58pm, which was miscued by the air TD and went over the air on the wrong cut.  That wrong cut: “Today at 4:30, Priscilla Barnes and…oh, God damn it.”  It should have been erased before a second cut was recorded.  Twelve viewers called in.  We had quite a good laugh about it in the office.

Sorry, Lar!