Great site... full of memories for me. It's been quite a few years since I lived in the Tulsa area. I fondly remember watching those "Creature Features"... and Eight is STILL the place....

Hope somebody finds out where Ken Reed is. He was an excellent radio voice. Mike Bruchas thinks he was in DC and with USIA, VOA, or some such. For some reason, I thought he had worked in Boston, but I've been so wrong, for so long, as the old song says....

For those who care, I can probably tell you more than you want or need to know about KOTV's Mariellen Smith, whose name has come up here recently. I used to call Mariellen my ex-wife-in-law because (follow along closely here) her first husband was subsequently my first husband (John Brammer, for you trivia buffs out there). We (Mariellen and I) both had two daughters with him, divorced him and married someone else.

Mariellen married artist Leo Chandler while she was still at KOTV. After she left there, she and Leo bought a resort in Eureka Springs, Arkansas in 1980.

Leo died sometime ago (I'd say late 80s if forced to guess) of cancer. Mariellen is still running the resort with her third husband, whose name I don't know.

On the top of the wedding page, there is a picture of Mariellen and Leo in a gazebo, and a lovely picture of her oldest daughter, Blaire, now 35, who recently moved back to Eureka Springs after years in L.A. and New York as an actress.

Ken Reed - a folksy reporter with a great voice and manner -got a job with some station here in DC but I heard he was shuffled out in a periodic staff re-shuffle. Next I heard he was a voice at USIA for years but no one seems to know where he is. I think I have asked Mike Miller but he too was unsure of Ken's whereabouts.

Date

Hey Sharon, you forgot Haystack Calhoun!

Speaking of drive-in movies, my first trip was to the, long gone, Skyline at 36th St. N. and Cincinnati. Saw 'The Great Escape' with my folks and the next day tried out my Steve McQueen style of bike riding down at the dead end. Got a little cut up on a barbed wire fence. I was a little cut up!

My mother took me to see 'The Ten Commandments' at the Delman Theatre on 15th when I was very young and I saw some Clint Eastwood western (don't recall the title) at the Will Rogers on 11th many years later with my father and brother-in-law. Sweet memories.

Have gun will travel reads the card of a man....

When they tore down the mansion across Memorial from Oertles, we had a reporter at 8 named Ken Reed. Ken's father was I think a brick mason and had worked on the building of that mansion. He did a really nice story on the mansion and how whenever he passed it he always thought of "his old man". It was a very moving piece. I wish I had a copy of it.

I think the old mansion across from Oertles was called the Ma-Hu Mansion. Around Halloween, Campus Crusade or Youth for Christ always built awesome spook houses in the old mansion (they usually had two in the mansion). This was back in the days when Mazeppa was on the air. The line for the attraction was always about a quarter mile long and it took several minutes to go through the house. It was very memorable.

I saw the Don Woods/Gusty commercial. It was cute enough.

I see the Guestbook has developed a tic of occasionally posting the same entry 2 or 3 times. This shall pass. Don't worry about it...I will edit out the duplicates.

Has anyone seen the new Economy Hearing Aid commercial with spokesperson Don Woods acting alongside the moving, colorized, talking(!), and hearing-impaired Gusty? I must say, Don could've been a decent actor! Gusty seems a bit taller than you may remember, as he appears to be just a bit shorter than Don when they walk into the Economy Hearing Center near you. From the sound of his voice and his movements, Gusty seems to be in his early to mid twenties. Part of me was disgusted, and part of me amused when I saw this.

I haven't seen this yet...I'll keep an eye out for it. Gusty has been taking it easy for awhile, so it's probably time for him to get back to work, anyway.

Last guestbook had a question posed by Jim Back & Mike Bruchas re: what ever happened to Betsy Horowitz. You probably remember her as a champion of Maple Ridge vs. the Inner Dispersal Loop. Her husband, Dr. Leon Horowitz, retired several years ago, they sold their Maple Ridge home and relocated to a Dallas suburb to be closer to their daughters' families.

Does anyone remember when Betsy had her mouth wired shut to lose weight??? There were some grateful people at City Hall.

That haunted mansion mentioned by Sharon was MaHu Mansion at 27 & Memorial. When it was occupied there were longhorn steer grazing on the estate. The owners passed away in the late 60's and the heirs to the estate sold if for development as an office park in 1970. I recall as a student as Nathan Hale, that the "eco-warriors" of our day were protesting development of the land in our neighborhood and wanted it to remain in its natural state (whatever that was.) I don't recall their having any plan formulated for land stewardship in the unlikely event they won. They just had to be passionate about some cause. They needn't have worried, the whole deal fell through and the place sat vacant and was picked clean by various trespassers. The whole place was razed in the early 70's due to the fact that it was an "attractive nuisance." It was used for a haunted house previous to being leveled, obviously.

I think that was across the street from Oertle's.

By the way, don't worry if you have comments or memories that seem to go outside the TV/radio realm. As you can see from Channel Changer 2, we like to remember other things about Tulsa besides broadcasting, sometimes, even things unrelated to Tulsa! TV is a convenient launching pad for these memories. Thus speaketh the webmaster!

Back in the 60's before the malls and suburban shopping took over, I remember riding the bus with my Mom downtown to shop and pay bills. I remember that JC Penney's had the only automatic elevator. All the other stores had the women who sat on little stools and ran the elevators, opening up the metal screens before the main doors. I also remember there being ultraviolet lights in the toilets at some of the department stores for sanitation purposes (must not have worked, since they didn't stay around long) No telling what kind of damage they did to our hineys.

Maybe we should have put sunblock on our hineys. Janet visited back in Guestbook 13 and told a couple of funny stories!

I too remember the Otasco guy being named "Timothy." But I appreciate Sharon bringing the whole thing up. Seems funny that has rung a bell with so many people. It is truly a Tulsa "too much" TV memory I guess.

And thanks for reminding me of the Shakey's experience. We used to live off Riverside and spent many a Saturday night doing the Shakey's thang. I can hear those banjos now....

L.A. still has a few Shakey's, but they are now big in the Philippines. I happened to visit Shakey's in Tokyo 10 years ago. You could get corn and/or squid on your pizza...mmm-mmm!

A note to Sharon: The 8's The Place pool was at Jim Leake's house in Muskogee. I think the Otasco kid was named Timothy. The official start of the Christmas season was definitely the Otasco commercials with the animated tag: "I'm Timothy...see this...at Otasco!" Usually Joe Henderson was your "friendly Otasco man".

Don't forget the Kitty Clover Potato Chips!

I was thinking the Airview Drive-In was the Bellaire Drive In. As mentioned, the Bellaire was on the west side of the river. The Airview was between Sheridan and Memorial on Pine and it was the drive-in with the neon jet plane. There was also the Sheridan Drive-In where Sam's sits now, the old Apache on Apache and Harvard and the 11th Street Drive-In.

I agree, when it came to Christmas and tv commercials, Otasco won, hands down. I am sure that is where Santa picked up most of the bicycles that cruised our neighborhood streets in north Tulsa.

I know about the Sheridan, but don't remember it myself. The land previously occupied by the 11th Street and Airview Drive-Ins is still undeveloped for some reason.

Re: hand signals after newscasts, KOCO in OKC had something very similar, except rather than the "thumbs up" sign, it was the "A-okay" sign. That was back in the '5 Alive' days. No channel 5 newscast was complete without that, and the 'swirling' Gannett globe thing at the end. KOCO was owned by Gannett at the time.

Moskowitz Furniture. Didn't that place shut down recently? I remember seeing the Four Day Furniture guy on their ads talking about going out of business. Of course, when hearing of Woodcraft Furniture's going out of business sale, I thought we were rid of their announcer. How convenient that he's now the announcer for Halsey's Furniture, which is in the same building as Woodcraft! Is Snow's furniture still around? "Right on the corner and right on the price, Snooooowwws Furniture..."

Snow's is still there...Halsey's is owned by some of the erstwhile Woodcraft employees. I think you're right about Moskowitz. It seems that the idea of a healthy furniture store in no danger of going out of business isn't very sexy to the customers.

To Mike Bruchas: Leo Chandler was an extremely interesting figure. I met him while he was in the State Pen at Big Mac serving a 50-year sentence for armed robbery. (He was sitting in a car when a friend jumped in after robbing a 7-11 type store.)

Leo was editor of the prison newspaper and I did a story on him since he had taught himself to paint while behind bars. His paintings were sort of wild, abstract views of prison life...like inmates being dropped into a meat grinder. But they were really good. After he was released, TU's Brad Place put his stuff on exhibit.and I believe Leo donated his works to the art department. I did another story on the exhibit.

He smuggled one of his paintings out of prison and sent it to me after my first story. It's hanging proudly on my wall.

I believe Leo has passed away.

What a great website! I have so many Tulsa TV memories I don't know where to start...My all-time favorite station promo was the Channel 8 "Still the One" series. To this day whenever I hear that song I think of Channel 8; The "8's the Place" promo I remember best was the one painted on the bottom of a swimming pool. Remember when they'd end the news with shots of various people giving the thumbs up sign? Seems like at one point all the stations were looking for an identifying hand signal. I used to stay up until 8 went off the air just to see the Indian doing the Lord's Prayer.

I was on Uncle Zeb and my best friend was on Mr. Zing. She lived at the same apartments as John Chick and used to tell me about him coming to pool and playing with all the kids. She always talked about what a kind man he was; In elementary school we did a patriotic program in which we were supposed to sing "This Is My Country, Land That I Love". My friend and another boy who lived next to John Chick sang "This is Green Country Land of John Chick" and were summarily kicked out of the program! At the time Channel 8? was running a Green Country promo!

Don Woods visited my church youth group. He drew Gusty's throughout the presentation and gave them all away afterwards. I had one but dont know whatever happened to it. I always loved Woods Weather Garden. Wasn't it behind the fire station at 51st and Yale? I also had a major crush on Bob Hower...

Jerry Webber coached my brother's junior high school basketball team, and my dad was assistant coach. My dad had great respect for Jerry. None of Jerry's sons were on the team and I remember wondering why someone of his stature (famous tv sports guy) would bother coaching kids basketball. Shows you the kind of guy he was...

When I grew up I wanted to be Ben Barker of the National Weather Service Office in Tulsa; He gave the weather watches and warnings before the weather guys started doing it. I can still hear his voice to this day, listing the counties covered by a tornado watch

I remember the Capri Drive-In, my brother played baseball games at Chandler Park and we used to go out on the edge of the cliffs and watch the Capri across the river in Sand Springs. I remember seeing "Legend of Boggy Creek" at some drive-in, don't remember which one, first drive-in movie I ever went to. Anyone remember the Thursday morning movies? You cut out a little round coupon from the paper and you could go to the movie for a quarter. It was mostly Tarzan and Disney flicks. You had to wait in line forever but it was worth it to be in the theatre with 300 other screaming kids, unchaperoned!

I was a member of the Morning Mouth club... you had to write a letter and beg a club card from Morning Mouth McCarthy, he read my letter on the air.. The person I miss most on radio, though, is "Doc" Nelson. Nobody does traffic like Doc did. Remember "two car doodah and three car rocky"?

Remember Shakey's Pizza, next to Channel 2? It had that great player piano. My 6th grade class did a tour of 2 (some kid's dad worked there). I remember we were more impressed by the built in tv sets and the wet bar in the dad's office than we were of the rest of the station!

Remember Tink, Tink Wilkerson and Eckerd Drugs, Eckard Drugs. My favorite commercials, tho, were the ones for the fair. "Come to the fair, the Tulsa State fair" I still sing that song every year come fair time.

I noticed there are a few old Otasco items for sale on Ebay...mostly oil cans and stuff like that...I was really tempted to bid..those Otasco commercials at Christmastime with "Jeffery" were great, signaled the beginning of the holiday season

Remember "Scream In the Dark"? that haunted house in that old house at 25th and Sheridan. There were always stories about people having heart attacks or breaking their legs. Needless to say my parents would never let me go..they don't have haunted houses like that anymore.

My brother and I watched wrestling every Saturday morning. Some of the ones I remember were Dick Murdock, Bruiser Bob Sweetan, Yellowbelly Buck Robely (out of Waxahatchie TX), Skandor Akbar (of course. Who could forget his secret igniting powder), Porkchops Cash and Argentina Zuma (A little guy who did cartwheels all around the ring) and of course the many Von Erichs.

I know I'm being longwinded, so many great memories... BTW my best friend's mom drove a green Marlin. The headliner was out and green stuff used to fall down into our hair... it was a cool car for it's time tho.. and last but not least I'm proud to say that Betty Boyd is my state representative and I've voted for her every time, even if I did have to wait for her show to be over so I could watch Cartoon Circus!

Well, Sharon, you had a lot of good stuff to say! We'll have some of the "Still The One" video out here in the future, and some of those stills in the very near future. Dick West is the Native American seen at the end of the broadcast day on Channel 8; he was an artist at Bacone College, and has been discussed here several times (try Guestbook 25). Those bargain movies were run at the Village Theatre in my neighborhood. The Peoria Shakey's was wiped out by a 1974 tornado. There is a picture of the aftermath on the Channel 2 page. A "Try Tink" ad can be seen on the Sports Page; Mr. Akbar's fireballs are mentioned on the adjacent Rasslin' page. We've got it covered! Oh, and there is a new Cy Tuma page linked from the top of the News page.

I absolutely loved going to the Airview Drive-In; the last movie I saw there was this absolutely worthless martial arts gem "Kill or Be Killed" in October 1980 — 2 years later, the Airview gets scrapped; I sure miss it and would give anything to have it back!

I was just reminicing today about just how unique a man Cy Tuma was; he could turn an ordinary stock televised product ad and add genius to it just by uttering "Now available at Froug's, Oertle's, and all TG&Y stores"; no one else had this ability, he was a great talent!

Speaking of Will Rogers' 100th birthday bash....always love saying only in OKC could you have 2 airports dedicated to 2 men killed in the same plane crash....Remember which Okie aviation star was with Will?

Wiley Post.

Yeah! What happened to Betsy Horowitz - had forgotten all about her!

Furniture flashback - what about Moskovitz Furniture? Classy spots and really nice people to work with. Thought the family was getting out of furniture and getting into land/shopping center investments at one time. Wasn't this one of the oldest contiuous operating companies in Tulsa? Thought it started as a lumber company.....

Whatever happened to Betsy Horowitz?

The Bellaire Drive-in was on the north side of I-44 just after you cross over to the west side of the river.

I think there is a car dealership there now. Riverside Chervolet? I think that's the name.

The Bellaire was the closest drive-in to our house and we went there often. I remember specifically watching the Vincent Price Poe films there.

This is message is for Liz Beall Eubanks who wrote about the Bellaire drive-in in the previous guestbook.

Liz, where was the Bellaire? Pleez HEP me!

Mike's story of the missing tape op reminds me of the time at 8 when we were doing all sorts of programs for Will Rogers 100th birthday.

We had gotten all this film from the memorial and had edited a 90 minute special in our new 1 inch edit bay. It was edited as an A-B roll and we stayed after sign-off one night to roll it together and put CG's on it.

The director, a guy named Doug Wren, went back to tape and handed the tape op three reels of 1 inch. He told him "here's the A & B rolls and the master record tape."

When it was time to record, it was SOP at the time to record a minute of bars and tone from the control room at the top of the tape. This tape op was difficult to work with anyway, and when Doug asked him if he had enough bars & tone, the guy shot back with, "hey, I've got at least 5 minutes recorded on all 3 tapes!"

It was not a happy night. The editors, who had just gone home were called back and they started over and we ended up doing post the next night.

The Bellaire Drive In was on 11th street, which would be Hiway 66.......fire station number five was where Spanky had his live remote broadcast one year at 18th and Boston... it was a hot year for water coolers and argyle socks...does anyone remember the blimp going over Tulsa and dropping balloons..there was also a woman who had a talk show who was married to Leo Chandler the artist but I don't remember her name ..also heard Riverside Drive used to be a regular city street before it became a famous speedway...

This is Thom again, on channel 51 the call letters are KOPE/K51FR. Don't ask me why two call letters (your guess would be just as good as mine).

A big, dusty, 'Howdy' to Tulsans and Tulsa TV fans everywhere!

I grew up in Vinita, watching Lee & Lionel, after the 3 Stooges, every afternoon. Later, enjoyed the uncanny Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidi, who introduced me to The Marx Brothers. I'll always be grateful to him for that. I hope you're finding this website as marvelous as I am. (Finding it.)

BoogedyBoogedy,

Dave 'Stolen' Karr

Delighted to hear from you, Dave! Found it through TVparty...cool.

Anyone remember the drive-in in Pawhuska? Have mentioned here before the many times I drove back from Winfield, KS to Tulsey at night and found Pawhuska dead but half the town at the drive-in.

Will always remember the Summer that "Saturday Night Fever" was released and all the kids in Pawhuska coming to Tulsa in their pick-ups to buy the soundtrack at Honest John's records. It WAS a big seller on disk, 8-track but so-so on cassettes. They looked "red of neck" but something turned them on to the Bee Gee's and other groups on that album. That movie seemed like it ran for months at the Pawhuska Drive-in.

As a loyal 8 employee - whenever in Barnsdall - stopped by The Hub Shop - to say hi to Mabel (as John Chick would say) but she never seemed to be there when we were there.

Remember folks in Barnsdall talking about going UP to the drive-in on weekends when NOT high school football season - the neat old theatre in Barnsdall had been closed for a long time. Jack Hobson, Matt Bunyan and I all wanted to buy that theatre or run it - we speculated on what it kind of "house" you would need to just break even with it. The theatre had the old popcorn popper in the lobby for years and a lot of neat stuff. I think Matt chased down the owners and they couldn't make up their mind to sell it, lease it or sell the fixtures. Our fear was NOTHING would be done, someone with no sense of history would come thru, throw out the concession stand and seating and gut it to make it into a church or something.

Was last back-in Barnsdall about 8 years ago and it IS a changin' - need to go back some day.....

A reminder: you can find out about all drive-ins in Oklahoma (or anywhere else in the U.S.) at driveintheater.com...a very good site.

Speaking of the Bellaire Drive-in...Does N E 1 know where it was located? I'm seem to remember it was somewhere close to I-44, but I'm not sure.........

Liz Beall Eubanks (who signed the previous Guestbook) knows...

We just finished Guestbook #53. It's well worth a look because it contains...

The Pants America jingle! Not to mention a gripping real-life story from Frank Morrow, a sighting of new Channel 51 here in Tulsa, discussion of "Boss Radio", and a promise that Ed Dumit will be online this year.

And that's not all...we saw Gary Busey on "Bonanza" and in a private birthday greeting to Leon Russell, talked about the old Bellaire Drive-In Theatre, heard from both Robert W. Walker and Mazeppa! We saw a painting of Dee Lundy's sidekick, "Chortles the Dingo Dog" by Gary Brumley, and named a lot of TV furniture salesman. We saw a gag shot of KTUL Newswoman Phyllis Watson.

You must check it out!