Last July, when I first started writing weekly here on Substack, I recounted my childhood dream to become a Jungle Cruise captain at Disneyland, which was too far from where I lived to commute when I was old enough to actually do it, and how I’d been offered the next best thing, being a tour guide on the monorail at Busch Gardens in Van Nuys, just after my 19th birthday.
Before starting that job, however, I got a call from my good friend Jonathan Biatch, who worked at Los Angeles’ premiere independent television station KTLA, with an offer to join him there as a page. The pages at KTLA primarily seated the audiences for TV shows that taped on their six sound stages, but also spent time answering phones on the set, or working in the mailroom.
It was May 1976, a few months before America’s bicentennial, and while the country was celebrating, I was celebrating as well in my new job.
I had a blue blazer, a name tag, and reported for the first day of my first job in television as an usher on “Steve Allen’s Laughback.” Steve was the first host of “The Tonight Show” in the mid-1950s and a legend from television’s early days.
Jon & I would corral the audiences lining up outside by KTLA’s front gate and bring them in to be seated for what was a reunion of Allen’s old Tonight Show pals, including Don Knotts, Louis Nye, Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme.
Steve Allen remains on the short list of television’s most brilliant comedians. I got to know him and by the time of the series’ wrap party six or so weeks later, he introduced me to someone by saying “I’ll be working for Doug someday.” That didn’t happen, but when I met Steve at an event 25 years later, I was proud to tell him what I’d achieved in television as both a writer and marketing executive.
Over the next two and a half years, I drove hundreds of miles making deliveries for the station (in a car that didn’t have a radio, much less a tape player), spent countless hours in the mailroom, seated audiences of course, and worked backstage on dozens of TV shows where I had the opportunity to meet and spend time with scores of celebrities.
Here are a few of my favorite recollections of my time as a KTLA page between 1976 and 1978.
ROSE PARADE 1977
On New Year’s morning at 3am, I was at KTLA getting in a van with Penny Johnson, a beautiful young woman who was also a page, and driven to Pasadena, where we each had our assignments assisting in the production of the station’s broadcast of the annual Tournament of Roses Parade. Mine was to stand next to the camera on the sidewalk and keep any pedestrians from walking in front of it during the broadcast (at $2.50 an hour, I suppose I was paid what I was worth).
At 6am, a few hours before the parade was to begin, Penny and I stepped into the Elk’s Lodge, which was right behind the bleachers where our other cameras were being set up for the show. The Elk’s Club was serving breakfast to members and VIP guests; working for KTLA made us VIP guests.
Penny and I walked into the giant room where breakfast was being served in very elegant, old-world surroundings, and sat at a table in the middle of the room.
During the course of our meal, Penny and I couldn’t help but notice that many of the Elks or others sitting around us, almost all of whom were much older men, gazing in our direction, and not in a fawning way. It was making us a bit uncomfortable. I asked Penny if we were in the wrong place.
“It’s not you,” Penny said. “It’s because I’m black.”
Remember, this was 1977 in lily-white Pasadena, California. I was 19 years old and had never experienced anything like this. Penny shared a few thoughts, and we continued our meal, not oblivious to what was going on around us.
When we were done, we got up and started to leave, and in that moment, I did something I knew would shock everyone in the room. I put my arm around Penny and we walked out like two young lovers. I didn’t need to look back to know all eyes were on us and only God will judge them for what they were thinking.
CHEVY CHASE
Having just left “Saturday Night Live,” the show which made him a national celebrity, Chevy Chase set up offices at KTLA from where he produced a one hour comedy special in 1977.
Chevy would often sit on the steps of the production building where his staff was located, and jokingly harass passersby. One day when I was driving the golf cart we’d use to assist handicapped visitors, he stopped me, asked me to move over, and hopped behind the wheel to take us on a crazy wild ride around the lot.
That same week, I was leading an audience of 100 from KTLA’s entrance gate toward one of the stages on the other side of the lot. The audience was walking single file, and I was perhaps twenty yards ahead of them. I waved at Chevy on his steps as I walked by and didn’t look back until I arrived at the end of the alley. At that point I turned around but all there was to see were four people…the very tail end of the line of 100…filing into Chevy Chase’s office, where he’d led them in and then out the other side of the building. Ten seconds later and I would have had no idea where my audience had gone!
THE BRADY BUNCH
I was 12 years old when “The Brady Bunch” debuted. I loved the iconic sitcom as a young teen, and as many kids do with TV shows, imagined what it would be like to be part of their world. The show ended its run in 1974, but in 1976 the cast reunited for a series called “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour” that taped at KTLA.
Years before cell phones, I was assigned to answer a phone on the set which would light up instead of ring so the taping wouldn’t be disrupted. On breaks I would sometimes sit on the couch in the reconstructed set of the Bradys’ living room with the cast, and experience the eerie, unreal feeling like I was in a world of make-believe. There I was, in The Brady Bunch, talking to the actual people who were the Bradys!
One embarrassing moment did occur during production. I was manning the phone but must have been distracted by something, because I didn’t see the light flash, which was my prompt to answer an incoming call. The way I found out was hearing actor Barry Williams, who played Greg Brady, standing just two feet away from me, yelling out to everyone to—in the studio “Doug Friedman! Call for Doug Friedman!” The call had been for me, and he answered it. Everyone was looking. Ouch!
RALPH ANDREWS and THE LIAR’S CLUB
Ralph Andrews was the executive producer of “The Liar’s Club,” a game show where four celebrities would take turns saying what an unusual object was, or what it was used for, and a contestant would have to choose which one was telling the truth.
The show was a virtual revolving door of celebrities, including Betty White, William Shatner, Joey Bishop, David Letterman and Jim Backus.
Among my favorites was Burt Reynolds, who I asked only a year after his disastrous appearance in the movie “At Long Last Love” if he’d ever do another musical, to which he said, “not a chance” (a few years later he’d star in the much more successful “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”).
Peter Lawford, one the bona fide movie stars to appear, was an amazingly gracious man who befriended me during his appearance and invited me to connect with him in Palm Springs, giving me the name of who to call at his favorite restaurant there if he’s not in town.
Buddy Hackett was a semi-regular. When I told him I’d tipped five bucks (a lot of money for a 19-year-old kid at the time) to get in to see him in Las Vegas and ended up getting a seat in the back, he asked if there were girls sitting at the table, to which I responded affirmatively, and he said “they sat you with hookers!”
Ralph Andrews, who produced the show, was not a nice man. One evening after a taping, long after the audience, actors and crew had disappeared, I was in the Green Room with two of the other pages, grabbing one of the leftover donuts which would otherwise have been tossed in the trash that night. Andrews walked in and proceeded to ream us, “you should not be in here…that is not your food…” I was making $2.50 an hour and this millionaire was taking food out of our mouths.
Twenty years later I was a successful senior vice president at Genesis Entertainment making significantly more than that, when I was in the Fry’s Electronics store in Woodland Hills. I was at the magazine rack when I looked over toward the next aisle and saw Ralph Andrews, the man who’d given me such grief so long before that. I debated in my mind, should I say hello? Should I ignore him or let him know how much I’d grown and succeeded in my career since we worked together?
I decided to say hello. As I walked around the end of the aisle toward him, he turned and walked toward me. And that’s when I saw it…a name tag that said “Hello. My name is RALPH.”
This man who’d been so terrible to me when at the height of his career was now working at Fry’s. Oh, how the mighty can fall.
DONNY & MARIE OSMOND
I wrote in detail about my work backstage with the Osmonds last year and you can read it at DONNY & MARIE (and DOUG) - by Doug Friedman (substack.com)
It’s truly worth a column by itself, getting to not only know and work with Donny and Marie, but also the hilarious Paul Lynde and guests including Desi Arnaz, Bernadette Peters, Glen Campbell and Cyd Charisse.
SHA NA NA
Another show where I covered the phone on the set on days without an audience, and then played usher on days when the colorful retro rock group performed in front of a live audience. I loved both tasks, because on days with an audience it was a live concert with Sha Na Na performing so many great ‘50s classics. On the other days they’d shoot comedy sketches and sing more hits with all the greatest rock stars of the day…Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell and Paul Anka were my favorites.
Years later, when I was working in television syndication at TeleVentures, I was responsible for marketing the show to new audiences, and struck up a friendship with Jon Bauman, who was the iconic “Bowzer” in the group. Years after that, while at Genesis Entertainment, Jon and I were reunited once more to work on a show called “Karaoke Showcase” (which shot in Orlando; one memorable day we left the set to buy Jon a new tie, and half an hour later we were back in the employee commissary at Universal Studios watching in horror as riots were breaking out back home in LA after the Rodney King beating…another story to come).
FRED ASTAIRE
In October of 1978, one of my lifelong dreams came true. The first time I saw Fred Astaire on the screen was when I was eleven years old in 1968 at a matinee of “Finian’s Rainbow,” a movie that moved me and was one of those that inspired me to work in film and television. In the years that followed, I discovered his entire body of work…the RKO musicals with Ginger Rogers, the MGM movies with many other Hollywood stars. And I was in awe. So on what I thought would just be another day as a page at KTLA, this happened:
From my Journal, October 9, 1978:
Dinah! And a super special day, because one of today’s guests was Fred Astaire!
I flipped when I heard he would be there, and tried to think what I could possibly say to him that wouldn’t come off like just another flaky fan. I missed him coming in at the gate, but before the show started, off in the wings, I saw him talking to one of the producers. And I slowly approached.
“Mr. Astaire,” I said at a moment when it seemed finally okay to break in. “It’s an honor to meet you.” I don’t think I even said who I was…I awkwardly asked for an autograph for Judy S (I don’t collect autographs myself), which he graciously gave me, and that was it. My mind was blank. What else could I have said? I was shaking for minutes afterward. This was the thrill of a lifetime.
THE DATING GAME and THE NEWLYWED GAME
Late in 1977, I was given an assignment to work on the Dating Game during its return to television syndication (the network version on ABC had ended a few years earlier). But instead of seating audiences, the production company gave me another backstage assignment, mostly babysitting contestants in the green room before the show, but also getting to play a contestant in run-throughs and other fun things that made me feel part of the Chuck Barris team.
It was loads of fun. I was pulled off many of the other shows on which I’d worked to be “their guy” a few days a week every week for the better part of a year. Chuck Barris, who owned the production company and both shows, had become a star in his own right as the host of “The Gong Show,” and my opinion of him (without knowing him) was that he must be crazy!
September 8, 1978:
Today was The Dating Game --- five more shows, and during the fifth, Ellen Metzger introduced me to Chuck Barris, who doesn’t come to the tapings very often. I said to him, “Ellen told me if I worked here five years, we’d get to meet each other.” Chuck is the kind of person you want to greet, slip a joke or cute line, and vamoose. I was wearing my Newlywed Game shirt --- I told him I was a walking advertisement for his show.
He wasn’t crazy that day, but one month later I got an offer to come join the staff full time as a Chuck Barris employee, and I got to know Chuck very well. And yes, he was a little bit crazy. I’ve written about Chuck in past columns and have expressed great admiration for the man.
CARTER COUNTRY
One of my favorite shows to work on over my years at KTLA was the sitcom “Carter Country,” in which actor Victor French played a redneck sheriff in a small Georgia town with a staff and mayor portrayed by an incredibly talented cast. The show ran for two seasons and is long forgotten by many, but for me, the Carter Country set was the perfect place to be on my last day as a page at KTLA.
October 13, 1978:
I had an autographed picture of the Carter Country cast as a memento, and everyone wished me the best. I got a tribute from all (and cheers), Peter Baldwin, the director, included. They have all been so kind --- Victor French, Richard Paul, Harvey Vernon, Guich Koock, Vernee Watson, Kene Holiday, Barbara Cason.
Went by the KTLA offices too, to say goodbye. Greg Nathanson and Lisa Mateas, Joetta, Kieth Lee, Tony de la Paz, even John Reynolds and Don Patton. The unforgettable Larry Cass who runs the guard gate…we worked together since the start. Fellow pages Claudia Puig, Richard Sandoval, John Revell, Joanne Diaz (not forgetting those I started with, Amaana, Lourdes, Penny, Steven Golightly and Jon Biatch, who got me the job and told me all my career steps going forward will be opportunities I make myself).
This job is one I’ll reminisce about for many years, and the people I worked with as pages will soon be working with me as directors, writers, actors, etc. I met people I like a helluva lot – Mike Henry for one (behind the scenes on Liars Club along with Chuck Foster, Jim Schwab, Larry Hovis)…I’ll miss them but I’ll be back on the lot next month in a different capacity.
Burt Reynolds and Betty White on “The Liar’s Club” (above)
Interestingly, one of the sensations I felt today, and probably the one which made me feel best, was a sense of respect. I do feel a lot of respect now. The pages were all envious, and I am growing to have a lot more respect for myself too. I recognize a growth I am going through…the next few months should be the beginning of another stage in my personal and professional development.
My time at KTLA as a page ended in October 1978 with an offer from Chuck Barris, but I would return to the station in 1981, this time as a full-time member of the Promotion Department; the first marketing job in a line of creative positions that would continue for another 40 years.
Those years…1976 to 1978…may not have been considered television’s “Golden Age,” but they were pretty darn golden to me.
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Great gesture on your part. I grew up in Arcadia and finished Pasadena City College’s broadcast production program before transferring to CSUN. PCC was great but Pasadena’s social establishment was still white. Just look at footage of Tournament of Roses officials from pre-parade coverage and you’ll see that.
What great experiences you had as a page and from there, wow. You have rubbed elbows and hob nobbed with so many stars, and to actually meet Fred Asraire! Wow.