Oh man, how could I have forgotten Sonny Fox?
I forget which sequence Becker and Fox were in on
Wonderama. Could have been Fox first, then Becker. I lived in the Bronx until I was five, then my family moved 30 miles or so out into the suburbs. Most of the rest of the extended family on both sides stayed where they were, though, and we returned almost every Sunday for dinner with my mother's parents and for all the major holidays until my grandparents moved to Florida in the 80s.
Oddly enough the Four Seasons figure in another memory connected to New York in the time period we're discussing - they were guests on the only
other TV show I've ever been in the audience for, although this one was live, not taped.
They did
Wonderama from Freedomland in the Bronx one time, and my parents took all the kids (me, my sister and two sets of cousins) to see the show.
I listened to Imus in his various incarnations between firings in New York, and still catch him on MSNBC sometimes, when I'm up that early and I remember to tune in. (Does anyone remember when he was replaced by the comdey team of Brnk and Belzer? That was Scotty Brink and
Richard Belzer, now better known as Det. John Munch from
Homicide: Life on the Street and
Law & Order: SVU. "The Belz" was then much better known as a stand-up comedian and radio personality. I have no idea what happened to Scotty Brink.
)
I first heard Stern when I lived in the Baltimore-Washington area for a couple of years, and wondered how a jerk like that ever got his own radio show. When he disappeared from the local airwaves I assumed he'd been demoted to some tiny market somewhere, not that he'd made the big time in New York. I was astonished when I moved back north and found him doing the afternoon drive time show on WNBC. I did sometimes listen to him then, because I only had an AM radio in my car and because that was also all we could pick up inside the office where I was working. One day he was looking for mimics for a "dial-a-date" thing he wanted to do, and at the urging of my co-workers I called in. As a result I was the in-studio guest the next day with him, Robin and Fred, doing my best Woody Allen between commercials, traffic, news and weather. I never got the date, and Stern turned a joke I'd made off-the-air into a bit that he debuted the next day and ran with for a week. Bastard should have sent me a check.
(Fame, fortune and the passage of many years may have changed him, but I found Stern to be a completely different person off the air than he was on. Fairly quite, very polite and attentive.)
Still, my two main memories of the day have nothing to do with Stern:
The first was getting off the elevator at NBC and seeing the doors of the elevator opposite me just closing. I caught a glimpse of a sweater-clad arm and elbow before my view was blocked. As I turned towards the studios an intern or page or something rounded the corner, out of breath, and asked if I'd seen Imus. I hadn't, but I'll bet I know who was attached to that elbow I'd seen. I was very disappointed. I would have been much more excited in those days about meeting Imus than I was about going on the air with the relatively unknown Stern.
That night my mother was in the Bronx visiting her sister. They were listening to the show because my mom knew I was going to be on. (Good thing, to, because Stern decided to make me do the entire show as Woody Allen, and only mentioned my name at the very top and bottom of the segment.) Towards the end of the show my cousin arrived from Long Island - and was stunned to find her mother and mine listening to Howard Stern of all people. She was even more stunned to learn that I was the guy doing Woody Allen. She'd been listening to the show since shortly after it started (and laughing, I'm happy to report) and had no idea it was me.
Regards,
Joe
