Biography

Inducted in 2000

During the early 1950s Sam Ewing III was the San Francisco Bay Area's leading independent television program producer with as many as twelve live shows a week on the air.

Sam's live show lineup included SWEEPSTAKES, WHAT IS IT? and TREASURE TUNE CLOCK with Lee Giroux, CARTOON CIRCUS and MR. BLARE FROM WAY OUT THERE with George Lemont, THE SANDY SPILLMAN SHOW and THE RUSTY DRAPER SHOW. He created and produced San Francisco's first weather program, WEATHERAMA on KGO-TV. His nationally-syndicated production of WONDERS OF THE WORLD played on KTVU and stations across the country, as well as on the Discovery Channel on cable.

Sam has published three self-help books (amazon.com) from TAB-McGraw Hill on TV - "YOU'RE ON THE AIR!", "DON'T LOOK AT THE CAMERA" and "PROFESSIONAL FILMMAKING".

Sam spent ten years at KNTV, San Jose as Creative Director. In 1986 he turned out NASHVILLE TALENT SEARCH in San Jose for the Nashville Network shown on three Bay Area stations.

Sam began his career as a radio announcer in Mississippi and in the late 1940s announced and handled news for KYA, KSFO and KSAN.

Sam lives with his wife Karol in Port Angeles, Washington where he writes short articles and quips which appear in the Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post and other publications. He has a Quotable Quote in the September 2000 Reader's Digest.

Sam Ewing II passed away on May 5, 2001. He was 80 years old.

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THE ADVENTURES OF SAM EWING III - A Chronicle of Jaw Twitching

I.

Several of my sons and my wife Karol have kept after me to put down on paper (in my seventies) a skeletal autobiography of my life and numerous careers within it. I suppose they want me to get at it before my mind snaps and I wander off somewhere. I feel like I'm writing my own obituary ...

Up front I want to announce that with all my radio and TV shows, commercials, documentaries, books and other writings over a 60-year period, I never won a single award. That's because I was always exclusively commercial-
minded, as opposed to artistic. As such I made as much money as I could, appealing to average and below-average schnooks. I don't regret that I spent most of it, just as my ancestors spent theirs.

However, I can look back as a real honest-to-God pioneer in radio, television and cable-TV. That's enough satisfaction. I must also go on record stating that I have hated any job that required selling. There are born salesmen who enjoy peddling. I'm not one of them, even though - out of necessity, I always held my own selling radio and TV time.

II.

First of all, a person has to be born, and my birth took place without fanfare in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on December 13, 1920. That was the year that commercial radio came into being, and it was fitting, I suppose, that I should come right in with it.

They tell me I was named Samuel Fredrick Ewing III, son of an ex-newspaper cartoonist, movie theatre owner and dog trainer. The Ewings had been wealthy, but typically spent it all (as had the Laniers).

My mother, Frances LeClaire Lanier, came from a well-known and well-to-do family that dates back to the court of Charles I of France. The first Lanier sailed to America on a ship on which George Washington's grandfather was second mate.

The Ewings, according to reports from my late half-brother Samuel Albany (my father obviously liked the name "Sam"), were fierce Scottish mountain men who were banished from their native land for stealing the Queen's sheep.

My mother, a nurse and medical secretary, and father were divorced when I was in cloth diapers (Pampers were unheard of in those days). She volunteered into the U.S. Army as the country's 69th military nurse. As a matter of fact, her serial number was N-69. Frances rose in the World War II years to the rank of Major, participating in many battles and landing on Omaha Beach in the second wave, on D-Day, the 6th of June, 1944.

I lived with my grandparents, Wood Edward and Claire Goff Lanier in a huge, decaying old Southern Vicksburg home where reportedly General Ulysses S. Grant set up his command post for the historic Civil War siege of Vicksburg. My great-grandfather Needham Birch Lanier was reportedly a rebel spy, who owned five huge plantations and 169 slaves at the one I was raised on. Most of his property was burned down or otherwise trashed, and his slave colony set free by Yankee invaders. Not all of the slaves wished to be self supporting, history recalled.

The old Lanier family Bible and my great-grandmother's spinning wheel are still displayed behind glass in the Vicksburg Civil War Museum. The family cemetery still exists, though extremely overgrown, and the big marble headstones removed by Yankees after the Civil War. However, the old wrought iron fencing still stands.

My grandfather's only job in his 97-year life was 16 years as Supervisor of Warren County. Karol and I visited his old office in what is now the Museum.

III.

At age 10, 11 or 12, I'm not sure, my grandmother became very ill and I was farmed out to grow up in the home of a Vicksburg family named Hunter, as a paying boarder. I had my own little room, the size of a large closet, and, oddly enough, a private bath. Mr. Hunter worked for the local Coca Cola company. He had three young sons about my age. Two of them died in World War II, along with a half-dozen of my school friends, when a Nazi U-boat torpedoed their troop ship.

I was ambitious as a kid and, through sheer nerve and naiveté, got a job as a cub reporter and teen columnist (The S. Ewing Circle) at the Vicksburg Evening Post and Morning Herald at age 14 while attending St. Aloysius High School, operated by the good Brothers of the Sacred Heart. It was in the black heart of the Great Depression. My Social Security documents bear out the fact that Social Security and I started together in 1935.

The Evening Post editor assigned me to cover the city court every morning. I got my first shocked look at real life - pimps, whores, thieves, perverts, the dregs of humanity, etc. Mentally I grew up pretty fast. It led to considerable cynicism as well.

My high school grades were so-so. I wasn't a dedicated student, but I wrote a great deal for the school paper, The Golden Quill, bound copies of which I have passed on to grandson Sam V.

At age 16 I went to work part-time as an announcer at Radio Station WQBC ("We Quote Better Cotton") in Vicksburg, while also carrying on some duties at the newspaper. The papers, radio station, banks and most everything else in town were owned by the Cashman family. The pay was $9 a week for my efforts. In a time when 5 cents would buy a Coke, 10 cents a hamburger and 15 cents would get you into the movies, that was good money. I saved a couple of hundred dollars.

In 1938 I graduated from high school and, at the urging of my mother, rolled west on a Greyhound bus to enter the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution of learning, majoring in English. I was a corporal in the ROTC program, but didn't participate much in University activities. They bored me.

For a few weeks one summer, I believe 1939, I appeared in the Golden Gate Exposition, a world's fair, on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. It boasted a huge production called the Cavalcade. I was cast as George Washington's drummer boy because of my short stature, and received $40 a week, a small fortune, along with food coupons and passes to such shows as Sally Rand's Nude Ranch and Billy Rose's Aquacade.

Early in 1942, while at USF, I was recruited by U.S. Naval Intelligence and stationed at the District Intelligence Office (DIO), 717 Market St., San Francisco, as an "analyst" petty officer. I didn't go to boot camp; I took only a few days training on Goat Island (Yerba Buena) and I learned to swim at the Fairmont Hotel, compliments of the Navy.

I was first a Yeoman Third Class, then promoted to Yeoman Second, comparable to an Army staff sergeant. I signed a secrecy pledge to never reveal any of the top secret material I handled obtained from FBI, Army Intelligence
(G-2) reports, and ONI sources. Some of the subject matter that crossed my desk has never been made public. And I'm not going to do so now.

IV.

Muriel Regina Clance, a very Irish Catholic secretary, and I met in a San Francisco boarding (guest) house, the Pine Inn, where we were living in 1942, and were married.

"Bud" (Sam IV), Richard, Barry and Larry, a dog Rusty and Holly, a Rhesus monkey, along with a short stint with Bert the alligator, joined us through the years.

Many, many times the expression, "Look out, Dad's jaw is twitching!" was heard from the four sons.

During the early two years of World War II I was stationed at the DIO in San Francisco, living in an apartment, until I was shipped via San Diego south to Dutch Harbor and Cold Bay, Alaska, north in the Aleutian Islands. Through a fluke I had been responsible for the capture of a German espionage agent in the Presidio of San Francisco.

In Alaska I became part of a special, select, seven-man intelligence unit headed by Navy Commander Seeman Gaddis, formerly of the DIO. Many years after the war, from the Commander I learned that he carried a letter from Admiral King, the Chief of Naval Operations and of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that gave him unlimited authority over all ranks. Gaddis was one of America's top intelligence agents. It was said that he broke a Japanese code.

In Dutch Harbor I had coffee with Dashiel Hammet, the famous writer. He was the sergeant editor of the Adak SUN, an Armed Forces daily. My duties in Alaska included editing a daily (coded) newspaper, THE HARBOR NEWS, announcing at the Armed Forces radio station WXLC, and directing a camera crew under the guise of a Navy War correspondent to film as many officers as possible of the 5,000 Russian navy contingent stationed at Cold Bay. Even as allies the Soviets were our sworn enemies. I received a commendation for these activities.

On V-J Day (the surrender of Japan), I was asked by Armed Forces Radio Services to broadcast from Dutch Harbor a "Report From The Aleutians". This broadcast was heard around the world. I read a script prepared, I imagine, by Intelligence.

When World War II was declared ended, I cruised back to the United States, port of Seattle, on a ship in the company of 6,000 men who hadn't bathed or shaved for several weeks. You don't forget things like that. I don't forget how seasick I was, either.

During the war I had written lyrics for several songs that enjoyed a small success: ROUNDUP TIME OVER THERE, introduced on a network NBC radio musical show, and A DAYDREAM IS A LOVELY THING, recorded in Hollywood by Paul Martin's Orchestra.

V.

My wife, sons "Bud" and Richard and I moved to Hollywood, where I first got a job as an announcer for $1 an hour at Paragon Music, a radio-type service piped into 1800 grocery stores and bars in Los Angeles. The 12-hour days eventually got to me. One night I fell asleep at the microphone. Not long after that I was fired.

I wrote letters to radio stations out of state, but as close to California as possible, and landed a job at KYUM, Yuma, Arizona, as Program Director.

At KYUM I originated the SQUARE SHOOTERS PARTY, a Saturday morning game show for kids broadcast from a theatre stage, and escorted winning children and their mothers to Hollywood to MGM, Paramount and Republic studios. We were entertained by Roy Rogers & Dale Evans, child star Margaret O'Brien, and many other celebrities of that era. My greatest thrill was lunching in the MGM commissary with such stars as Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Greer Garson, Danny Thomas and dozens more - not to mention famous directors and producers.

After a year of Yuma we moved to Phoenix where I helped put on the air KRUX as acting program director. The next move was to KSRO, Santa Rosa, where Barry and Larry were born 10 minutes apart.

Muriel was always willing to drop everything and move, a very large plus in her favor. And she was an excellent secretary.

In their young years, the four boys slept in bunkbeds in a single room, which I called a "barracks". I organized them into a "squad". Each week I appointed one of the boys "sergeant". He was responsible for keeping the barracks clean and uncluttered. When I made a weekly inspection I rolled a pair of ballbearings in my hand (an idea taken from Captain Queeg in THE CAINE MUTINY). The lads stood at attention by their bunks, hoping I'd say "okay", and not "unsatisfactory".

At KSRO I became "Sidesaddle Sam", a popular Western DJ, receiving up to 500 fan letters a week. I could have gone to giant KSFO in San Francisco as a top radio personality, but I didn't want to dress and walk Western, regardless of fame and cash.

With a wife and four sons, and very little money, I went into the ad agency business, with two partners - Del Gore and Jim Diamond, in San Francisco. To help ends meet, I worked part-time at KYA as an announcer and newscaster. Muriel worked also.

Each weekday I wrote and announced two agency-produced half-hour shows - HOLIDAY HOUSE as "Buddy Holiday" and SAN FRANCISCO AFTER DARK which promoted the city's leading restaurants.

The agency became a success eventually as a radio and TV production house. At one time I had 14 live TV shows on the air every week with San Francisco's best-known personalities: Lee Giroux, George Lemont, Russ Coughlan, and Rusty Draper. The shows included TREASURE TUNE CLOCK, WHAT IS IT?, STOP THE PRESS, THE RUSTY DRAPER SHOW, SWEEPSTAKES, MR. BLARE FROM WAY OUT THERE, MEMORY TIME WITH STAN NOONAN, THE SANDY SPILLMAN SHOW, UNCLE GEORGE'S CARTOON CIRCUS, WEATHERAMA (San Francisco's first weather show) and others. I also created for DeSoto Sedan Taxicab Company what I believe to be the first advertising placed on taxis.

These TV shows were all presented live, but when film programs came out of New York and Hollywood at lower cost, featuring movie stars, I could no longer compete financially and our agency fizzled out. For a while I voiced a morning broadcast, Commuter News on KSFO. I used the name Ray Rice.

And then, for a time I joined an ad agency, Ley & Livingston, and opened a Phoenix, Arizona branch office for them. But we had a falling out. It was in Phoenix that I met my longtime friend, Pat Cooney.

VI.

Film syndication was an important factor in the '50s and our family moved by Sunbeam Talbot, Plymouth Station Wagon and Bekins Van Lines to Atlanta, Georgia, where I became Executive Vice President of STEVENS PICTURES FOR TELEVISION. We had offices in Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, Dallas, New Orleans, and Richmond, Virginia. We were very successful in this enterprise.

STEVENS handled syndicated half hours and movies sold to TV stations throughout the South. Especially successful was PLAY MARKO, live bingo on television, created by Pat Cooney back in Los Angeles. I sold and produced this show in many cities until the Federal Communications Commission declared the program a lottery, and, consequently, illegal.

VII.

California called. I wanted to take a crack at Hollywood.

Muriel kept us financially afloat by taking jobs, first on the GROUCHO MARX "YOU BET YOUR LIFE" show, and later as show secretary on TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, a program she worked with for many years.

After a time of job hunting I joined Pat Cooney as Executive Producer at Caples Company, a national ad agency. Pat and I produced a handful of moderately successful shows - STRANGE LANDS AND SEVEN SEAS, THE TREASURE TUNE CLOCK, THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE, and WONDERS OF THE WORLD.

Although a minor national success, WONDERS OF THE WORLD helped to end my marriage, which was at best on shaky ground. Selling that show on the road across America for months also terminated my association with the Caples Company. It was my own fault actually. I didn't have the right handle on life. I had many bad months and moments travelling in the USA most of the time for TV syndicators, such as Medallion Films and Richard Ullman Company. I drank too much, was depressed much of the time. Cigarettes and whiskey take their toll.

VIII.

But things started to look up. In the late 1950s I selected to take a 75% cut in pay and quit the road jobs. I moved with Barry and Larry to Bellevue, Washington, to settle down as an announcer and salesman for Radio Station KASY in Auburn, a Seattle suburb. John Mowbray, a friend from San Francisco, had received a permit to build a radio station in Port Angeles, and he asked me to manage it.

While we were waiting for important FCC paperwork and equipment, I covered the Washington State Legislature session for four months as a radio reporter. My daily reports were heard on a network of 17 radio stations in Washington, including all the major ones in Seattle. I got to know the Governor and many high-ranking politicians quite well. I attended the Governor's Ball, quite an event.

When the legislature recessed I found myself out of work, so to keep meat, tuna and chicken pies and canned beef stew on our Bellevue table, I got a job as a rock 'n roll DJ and salesman at KQTY in Everett. It was a hell of a commute and my least favorite job, but I drove "through rain and fog" and thanked owner "Wally Nelscog" for the "opportunity". (While jockeying a daily show on KQTY, two excited teen girls came into the studio to meet "Buddy Holiday". I told them "that's me". They looked shocked. "You??!" A few minutes later they drifted away ... shortly thereafter I left the rock 'n roll DJ field to someone else.)

At last KAPY construction was FCC approved.

IX.

Barry, Larry and I moved to Port Angeles in early 1961 and physically helped to build KAPY radio. I even named the street on which the station stands - Melody Lane. Today you will find that name on all the city maps.

The Port Angeles competition of newspaper and radio, owned by one politically powerful family, hated us, and using every dirty trick possible, including their control of the police department and superior court judges, attempted to drive us out of town. Thanks to our determination and a friend, Gordon Sandison - a state senator, they failed. KAPY became very popular with both listeners and merchants.

The best thing that happened for me in Port Angeles was my marriage to Karol Newlun whom I chose as a station Girl Friday from 70 secretarial applicants. Actually Karol was more like one in a million than one in 70. Completely unselfish, she is the best person I have ever known, and my best friend. As someone said, if I had put all of the characteristics I desired for a wife in a computer, Karol would have come out.

When the KAPY job crashed, due to a serious disagreement between the owners, John Mowbray and Walter Schibig, a millionaire investor, the Ewings moved to Carmel, California, a wonderful area that we all still think of as "home".

X.

I became sale manager at KMBY, Monterey, a rocker - and later at KSBW-TV, AM & FM, Salinas-Monterey. Karol was a secretary for Cypress Press, Barry and Larry graduated from Carmel High and along with their brother Richard, worked at various places in the area, mostly hotels and restaurants. Our income was supplemented by my free lance writing for various humor and men's magazines. At one time I was among the top 5% of free lance writers in the USA.

XI.

Historically, in America, the year 1968 was a "crack in time". Everything was in turmoil. Riots, assassinations, unrest, the war in Viet Nam. It was also a terrible year for Karol and me.

After being fired from KSBW-TV for reasons that were not clear, inasmuch as my billing was good, I took a job thousands of miles away in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, as so-called general manager of radio and TV stations WARD-TV, AM and FM. The town and the broadcast situation were both awesome, and not in the best sense of the word. The facility was owned by an 82-year-old cranky tightwad and alleged crook who immediately backed off our financial agreement. I quit after only a few months.

Karol and I moved everything into storage and drove to West Palm Beach, Florida, suffered a hurricane and one-day employment at a failing FM radio station. Karol went to work for Equifax, known in those days as Retail Credit Company. She was to remain in some capacity in that company for the next 20 years. While she worked in 101 degree Florida heat, I lay on Palm Beach sands, across from the Kennedy estate, and wrote free lance articles for magazines.

Meanwhile, I applied for work at all broadcast outlets in the area. At last an astounding offer came from a Jupiter, Florida radio station. Sales Manager - $50 a week! We couldn't survive on that. A hidden voice told us: "Get the hell out! Go west!"

XII.

Next stop: a visit with Richard, Bjorg and soon to be Michael in Seattle. After a while I landed another strange job at Channel 13 in Tacoma. I was general manager, without authority, for exactly one week. Pay: $200. To collect that amount I had to contact the state's Department of Labor & Industries.

Off to Eugene, Oregon, to help reorganize KEED, a rock 'n roll station whose music I hated. Karol again got a job at Equifax.

We were very short of money, everything was still in storage in Pennsylvania, but saved enough in eight months to get back to California in San Jose where, following one month as a salesman at KICU, Channel 36, I was hired at KNTV-Channel 11, a Gill Industries company, as a writer-producer-announcer. It was the start of an association that lasted for 18 years. During these years Karol remained with Equifax, and eventually became the office manager/supervisor of the San Jose office, overseeing some 40 people.

The more curious among you can read of my many grim and humorous adventures at KNTV-11 in three published books - YOU'RE ON THE AIR, DON'T LOOK AT THE CAMERA and PROFESSIONAL FILMMAKING.

My job was a key one at the TV station, and I was called on for all sorts of special assignments. I made outside deals, too, to write marketing films, training films for IBM, 20 half-hour shows for PBS' "We The People Read", and lots of other presentations. These were busy years. We did well enough financially to go to Europe a couple of times, and visit with Richard, Bjorg, and sons in Norway. Karol won $125,000 in the state lottery ...

XIII.

Gill Industries owned GillCable as well as KNTV-11, and I performed a number of jobs for extra money for that subsidiary - writing, announcing, producing a cable channel, the "G" Channel, and so on. I wrote their Service Manual. I also wrote articles for Gill-owned San Jose Magazine, which eventually went kaput. (Hopefully, not because of my contributions.) When Gill sold KNTV-11, it was logical that I transfer to the cable company.

XIV.

I started with the cable company in April 1979. (Incidentally, on June 6, 1979, I quit smoking forever. Back in 1961 I had given up whiskey and "wild, wild women".)

The cable company job was perfect for me. As Media Services Director I brought into play all of my experiences of the past 40 years, both print and broadcast.

I handled *Promotion
*Voice Over
*Publication of a monthly program guide
*Created and programmed in-house pay-TV channels, such as Rendezvous, an adult service, and the
Classic Movie Channel
* I created Pay-Per-View Channels: Hollywood Premiere along with a 24-hour, 2-channel pay-per-view
service
*I leased and scheduled new movies for the local channels from the major studios
*I produced a quarterly company publication, The GillLine
*I created display ads
*I worked with Ted Turner's people in Atlanta to get CNN off the ground in the San Francisco Bay Area

My position called for Karol and me to attend all of the big cable conventions - Anaheim, New Orleans, Houston - which were great fun. Those were good years. We got to Europe a third time.

XV.

However, in the end Gill Industries proved cold-blooded. Once I got pay-per-view, promotion and other activities organized, and they were planning to sell to a large national company, they decided that, at age 67, I was too old and too costly for them. Out of the blue they fired me with the lame excuse that due to company reorganization, my job no longer existed. They also locked me out of my office, and I could only retrieve my property with a security guard present (a practice that may have been commonplace in some Silicon Valley firms, but that proved Gill's expensive mistake).

Through connections and good luck, I enlisted, on a contingency basis, one of the best Wrongful Termination attorneys in the USA - John McGuinn. Among other big wins, McGuinn had defeated IBM in a landmark case. John was president of the Trial Lawyers Association. He became San Francisco's very first Superior Court Judge pro tempore. President Bill Clinton offered him a federal judgeship, which he turned down.

Over a five-year-period from 1987 to 1992, with many continuations, stalling motions and an appeal by Gill following a jury verdict in my favor, my lawsuit for wrongful termination through age discrimination cost Gill Industries an estimated $1,000,000 or more in awards, court costs, and legal fees. It is published in the law journals as a landmark case.

The lawyers and courts, of course, got most of the money, but Karol and I were happy with the results and some cash. Also, I felt very good that my lawsuit had prevented Gill from firing at least half a dozen other old-time "over-the-hill" employees that were on their termination list. Gill had hoped, I'm sure, that I'd die of old age before the case was finalized, and money paid to me. However, by a twist of fate, it was Gill's owner, Allen T. Gilliland, who died during that time.

XVI.

Karol and I had moved to Port Angeles, Washington, in 1988 and bought a home with savings. I had planned to get a job, but, at my age, couldn't find one. Karol went to work part-time with Camp Fire. She is with them at this writing.

Free-lancing seemed the only way for me to keep busy and bring in a couple of bucks each month. As of 1996, I am published regularly in Reader's Digest, the National Enquirer, National Examiner, Globe, Sun, Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, and a dozen or so lesser-known publications. The Ewings of Norway read some of my quips in foreign publications (for which I do not get paid).

Of the many jobs I've had, though, the one I enjoyed most was working as announcer on dance band remotes, cupping my left ear so I could hear what I was saying in the "big middle" of the music...

Without question, my most important achievement in this life has been to produce four outstanding sons, who are producing their own fine families. All my boys do well. (There's not a crackhead in the bunch.)

Sam IV ("Bud") has a premier show business position as Vice President of a major TV program producer. He has headed up children's programming at NBC-TV and Hannah-Barbera and been responsible for, among others, the Smurfs. He and wife Cary live in Burbank, California.

For years Richard has served as an electrical engineer at ELF, a giant French oil company. Richard is senior with them, assigned primarily to offshore drilling platforms in the North Sea. Richard and wife Bjorg own their home in Kleppe, Norway.

Barry has returned to Carmel. He is a successful landscape architect/draftsman. His wife Susan is a leading artist and muralist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Barry's twin, Larry, has made his career in hotel management, having managed some of the finest hotels on the Pacific Coast, including the Sheraton at Disneyland. He now headquarters for Countryside Inns in Corona, California with his wife Sherry, who succeeds in several areas of health and beauty care.

I'm proud of them all ...

As yet I am not a financial burden to any of my four children. Do I hear deep sighs of relief around the world? Of course, there's always tomorrow ... (to be continued, I hope)