The 'Tube' Columns, City magazine 1974–1975: Superstar Sports
May 13, 1975
In City magazine I wrote a column about the debut of the former Stanford and 49ers quarterback John Brodie, a Bay Area hero, as a local news sportscaster. It was so negative it received an item in Herb Caen’s column—the summa of being noticed in the Bay Area (as it happens, Herb Caen was the cover story of that City issue). It was said that Francis Coppola bought City magazine because he was frustrated that he wasn’t a celebrity in San Francisco, because in San Francisco there was only one celebrity: Herb Caen.
So that day everybody knew about my column and its most cutting lines. John Brodie’s agent, a good friend of my father (a San Francisco attorney), and someone I knew well myself, called up my father, asking how he might go about filing a suit for libel or defamation against me. My father, in his attorney mode, began answering the question, then broke off and said, “You’re asking me for advice on how to go about suing my own son? I don’t think so.”
Nothing ever came of it, and I never saw the person again. But years later, when my then widower father, suffering from dementia, was living in his house with caregivers, and had been on a waiting list for the best nursing home in the area for over a year, I got a call from the intake manager of the home, saying that as there was little chance there would be a place for him any time in the next year or more, if I had any strings to pull I’d better pull them. My wife Jenny remembered that Brodie’s former agent was on the board of the home and one of its major donors. I called him, told him the situation, and a room for my father was open the next day. He lived the rest of his life there in a good situation.
There are two performers popping up regularly on the local air whose flair for TV is, to put it mildly, undeveloped. One is President Ford, whose stern demeanor when discussing subjects of great moment to the future of the Republic is constantly belied by his inability to get through two consecutive sentences without stumbling over a word. Either this bothers you or it doesn’t. I find it a nice change from what we had before—Richard Nixon helpless to stop a grin while making the grimmest announcements, LBJ squinting as if he thought the Eyeless Look was sure to be the next big thing.
However, John Brodie, the new “Sports Commentator” on Channel 4 (5:30 and 11 PM, weekdays), is intolerable. He makes the very competent and personable Wayne Walker (Channel 5, 6 and 11 PM, weekdays) seem like Branch Rickey, Jim Brown, and Kareem Jabbar all rolled into one.
I don’t remember why, when I rooted for Stanford back in my grade-school days, I failed to make John Brodie one of my heroes—maybe I saw him interviewed once, and learned my lesson. But I resent his turning up 20 years later to haunt me. I mean, I spent years getting used to Eddie “Good Luck, Everybody” Alexander, who Herb Caen once brilliantly described as what Rodney Allen Rippy would be if someone blew him up like a balloon.
I recall with great pleasure one night when Eddie said his usual '“Good luck,” and his co-host having heard the noxious phrase once too often, went straight up the wall. He punched Eddie on the arm—it looked playful, but it wasn’t. Eddie didn’t quite know what to do, so he half-punched back. The other newsman hit Eddie again, harder, and let loose with a demented grin. Eddie, agai not knowing quite what to do, smiled as broadly as he could and said, “Good luck, everybody,” one more time. Then someone caught on and cut to a commercial. I have wonderful fantasies about what happened next.
By the time Alexander left for LA he had become a perfectly adequate sportscaster, but what pain, what anguish, watching him turn into one! I’m not ready to go through it again with Mr. Brodie.
John is not yet considered up to dealing with complex matters—like reading scores—so he “comments.” That is, after the second-string man tells us who won and narrates the footage, we cut to John, sitting in a chair and looking for all the world like Alfred E. Newman with a prefrontal lobotomy. Then, he talks. Particularly striking was his analysis of the Bill Walton “The FBI is the Enemy” furor a few weeks back. Actually, I can’t remember a thing he said (because he didn’t say anything), but it was the ambience, the style, that I can’t get out of my mind. Brodie sat there for what seemed like several minutes, grinning. Sort of warming up, getting into it, I guess. Time for the straight poop. I don’t know whether you can form words with your mouth while maintaining an ear-to-ear smile—I can’t, I tried it in the mirror—but Brodie could and did. He spoke very slowly, of course, as if he was reading the cue cards upside down. By the time he’d finished I’d completely forgotten about Bill Walton and the FBI and was praying for some excitement, like a Drano commercial.
My wife informed me that the basic points I’d missed included these: Bill Walton is a basketball player, either for Portland or the FBI, who has a right to free speech, or maybe religion. Also, nobody cares about Bill Walton anyway, ’cause he had a lousy year and is too tall to be an FBI agent. The conclusion, I think, was that the FBI should lower the hoops.
Good luck, everybody.
SPECIALS
Wednesday, May 14
8 PM, Ch. 2: National Geographic—The Amazon. Tonight this first-rate series features filmmaker Pierre Gaiseau on a trip down the longest river in the world. Special emphasis on rarely filmed mammals, reptiles, fish, birds. Worth staying home for.
Thursday, May 15
8 PM, Ch. 7: Barney Miller—Snow Job. Miller and his New York station-house pals discover a new perversion in this strange tale of a man exposing himself in the middle of a snowstorm. No kidding.
1 AM, Ch. 4: Tomorrow. Tom Snyder interviews Muhammad Ali and Ron Lyle preparatory to their so-called title fight tomorrow.
Friday, May 16
6 PM, Ch. 7: Ali vs. Lyle. This does not figure to be the fight of the century, but it might be the fight of the week; Ali hasn’t fought on live TV since 1966, when he put Zora Folley away with a punch that no one who saw it has ever forgotten. Ali will likely take this one the distance, or close to it, and some fancy work may be expected. Your Tube critic predicts a decision or a TKO, but no knockout. Howard Coswell will be along with his usual pearls of wisdom and sweat.
10:30 PM, Ch. 5: We’ll Get By. The new comedy series back and inspired by M.A.S.H.’s Alan Alda, and a clear winner any week of the month. Devon Scott is particularly fine as the 15-year-old girl suffering from braces, overweight, and life. Don’t miss it—it’s sure to be canceled soon.
2:30 AM, Ch. 5: Rock Concert. New (we hope) footage of the Rolling Stones, perhaps even with Ronnie Wood on guitar. Waylon Jennings plus Kool & the Gang alone for the ride.
Saturday, May 17
5 PM, Ch. 5: Our own suffering A’s take on the overrated Yanks from the Big Town. There are 8,000,000 stories in the Naked City, and tonight you’ll see at least nine of them, perhaps including Catfish Hunter’s.
11:30 PM, Ch. 4: Weekend. Good so-called “magazine” show, focusing tonight on country music hopefuls and losers in Nashville, Tennessee. A great story; if they tell a tenth of it, this will be a fine show.
Sunday, May 18
10:30 PM, Ch. 44: Lou Gordon—The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. One more chance to see the Zapruder film and think things over.
Monday, May 19
6:30 PM, Ch. 9: Ho and Malcolm. Both of these great political leaders were born on this day, and Channel 9 celebrates with solid stuff on both. An outgrowth of the fine little birthday messages you see daily on KQED, and hopefully only the first of many.
11:30 PM, Ch. 5: TV Movie—Madigan: The Lisbon Beat. These late-night Madigan re-runs aren’t up to the Don Siegel original, but they aren’t bad, either. Richard Widmark is bitter, tough, and burnt-out; this time he’s taking a prisoner from Europe to the US but loses him in Lisbon, always a good place to chase someone.
Tuesday, May 20
8:30 PM, Ch. 7: TV Movie—A Cry in the Wilderness. George Kennedy as a man bit by a rabid skunk. Fearing madness, he chains himself in a barn. Then, left alone with his young son while wife Joanna Pettet seeks help, he realizes his farm is endangered by an impending flood. He orders his son to release him, bites the boy to death, and then is overwhelmed by a wall of water, which instantly picks up the rabies cells and spreads them across all of Utah, infecting the entire population of the state. ABC calls in Hondo Harrelson and his boys from S.W.A.T., who, immune from rabies because they already have it, blow up the flood and exterminate everything else.
Thursday, May 22
8 PM, Ch. 5: The Waltons—The Birthday. Grandpa Walton suffers a heart attack just before his 173rd birthday, and is convinced he is going to die. After two weeks in bed he shows no improvement, refuses to eat, and loses the will to live. The family holds a conference to decide whether to fumigate Grandpa’s room or have him stuffed, and is leaning toward the latter when John-Boy comes up with The Answer—eat the old man for Thanksgiving. “He would have wanted it that way,” says John-Boy.
MOVIES
Thursday, May 15
9 PM, Ch. 5: Dr. Strangelove (’64, Dir. Stanley Kubrick). Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, and Keenan Wynn in the fine comedy about a mad SAC commander who starts World War III. Some of it has dated, but not much—certainly not Sellers’s insane portrayal of ex-Nazi Dr. Strangelove, who just happens to have been based on Henry Kissinger.
Saturday, May 17
11:30 PM, Ch. 2: The Deathmaster (’72). Vampire poses as guru to attract the attention of hippie commune. Based on the adventures of Charlie Manson.
Monday, May 19
10 PM, Ch. 44: 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (’33, Dir. Michael Curtiz). Tough flick about ex-con (Spencer Tracy) accused of murder, on the lam with his woman (Bette Davis). Perhaps the best title in cinema history.
Sunday, May 25
11:30 PM, Ch. 4: Foreign Correspondent (’40, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock). Joel McCrae, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, and George Sanders in one of Hitchcock’s most tangled spy chases, this time involving the American Innocent (McCrae) and the Decadent Englishman (Herbert Marshall). More fun than ten Psychos.
Originally published in City magazine, May 13, 1975
Nice story about Brodie’s agent. Classy people don’t hold grudges. I once grouched to FF Coppola that he bought City magazine, turned out maybe three (I might be exaggerating) issues, and promptly folded. He replied, “Yes, but did you notice all those issues were classics?” A truly Coppola-esque comeback.
I remember John Brodie both as a 49ers QB and as the NBC football analyst on Sundays. He was excellent at the former and not so bad at the latter. Obviously, he had shortcomings as a desk sportscaster it would seem. Greil was more a Y.A. Tittle fan, I suspect.