Interview of Larry McCormick

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 18, 1998

WHITE: I'd like to first say that it's an absolute pleasure for us to have this opportunity to interview you. We're all very much looking forward to the culmination of this effort. So I thank you in advance.

McCORMICK: Let me say that on behalf of yourself and Alva [Moore Stevenson] and everybody at the UCLA Oral History Program that I feel tremendously honored to have even been selected as a subject for this project, tremendously honored. I'm looking forward to a good result, and I hope it comes out to the satisfaction of you at the Oral History Program and everybody who perchance someday has a chance to read it. I hope I can provide some useful and enlightening information on this tiny little item that I call my life.

WHITE: I'm sure that won't be a problem at all. Okay, I'd like to start by chatting with you about your background, your family background in particular. I would like to go back as far as your grandparents. We can begin by you just telling me the name of your grandfather, say, on your father's side. We can start there.

McCORMICK: My grandfather on my father's side was Lawrence W. McCormick I. Actually, I'm "III" even though I'm called "Junior." I never met him. I never met either of my paternal grandparents; they both died at an early age long before I was conceived by my father and mother. And I only know them from the stories that my father told me about them, which was really sparse and which I don't think he had a strong recollection of, because he was raised mostly by in-laws and other family members after the early demise of his mother and father in Odessa, Missouri. So I don't really have a great deal of information about my paternal grandparents.

WHITE: Okay. Can you tell me your grandmother's name on your father's side?

McCORMICK: No, I don't know. I've never known what my grandmother's name was. He never mentioned what my grandmother's name was--only that I was Lawrence W. McCormick III. He was Lawrence W. McCormick--actually II--and he named me after his father.

WHITE: Okay. Very good. Well, how about with respect to your mother's side, your grandfather on her side?

McCORMICK: Yes. My grandfather on my mother's side was also deceased before I could remember. His name was Lankford. He lived in Kansas City, Missouri. My grandmother's name was also Laura, as my mother's name was, Laura Lankford. And they were both very prominent and active, particularly in St. Stephen's Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri, which is one of the largest black Baptist churches both by size and by membership in the country. At least it was at that time, with some five thousand members in like 1933, '34, '35. My maternal grandfather I never met. My maternal grandmother--it is my understanding, according to my mother--passed away when I was about six months old. She passed away--I was in the bed where she passed away--of pneumonia, I believe. She had been ill and fighting this off and on for some time. So I was not yet a year old when she died. That being the circumstance, the people whom I really remember as grandma and grandpa were my maternal great-grandfather [Earl Shellner] and greatgrandmother [Irene Shellner]. My great-grandfather, Earl Shellner, was the product of a marriage of a German plantation owner and a slave, who was my [great] greatgrandmother. He looked like a big, tall, six-foot-three-inch, dark-haired, swarthycomplexioned German, and my great-grandmother was very dark skinned and looked very, very African American. But I remember them very fondly because of the closeness that we had. They lived only three blocks or so away in Kansas City, and they really became-- We always knew them as Grandma and Grandpa, because they were the only grandparents that really grew up with our family members. Grandpa Earl Shellner and his wife, my great-grandmother Irene, owned the Kansas City Star newspaper route for the community that we lived in, and my brother Tommy [Thomas F. McCormick] and I eventually were paperboys and threw that route for them. But that's really about the extent of my grandparents or greatgrandparents. Grandma and Grandpa Shellner were the only grandparents that we knew all our lives. And they did live long lives. Grandpa died when he was ninety-three and Grandma died when she was eighty-eight. Now, they were both very active until the last, oh, year or so of their lives. He actually ran the paper route until he was about eighty-eight or eighty-nine. As a matter of fact, I remember in those days the area that we lived in was fairly undeveloped. It was a suburban area that they had tried to develop with a primarily African American population. But in the early years of my life there was only one paved road that kind of ran through the neighborhood, and the rest were either blacktops or just muddy roads. And Grandpa used to deliver the papers before Tommy and I started working for him, delivering the papers ourselves, walking with these huge paper bags on our shoulders. He delivered the papers by horse and wagon.

WHITE: Oh, my. Okay.

McCORMICK: I remember very clearly-- His horse's name was Bess. Grandpa Shellner liked to tip the bottle occasionally. He became kind of well known in the neighborhood for that, to the extent that some days when he would go out with his buddies and he'd have a few drinks-- At that time the Kansas City Star had both a morning and afternoon edition. Before the afternoon edition was to be delivered, about three thirty or four o'clock, he would have had a few with his buddies. I remember on two or three occasions, Bess, who had been with him the entire time he had the paper route, the horse, walked the entire paper route with Grandpa Shellner teetering on the seat at the front of the wagon never throwing a paper. But as routine she walked the entire paper route, came back to the house with a full wagon of papers, and I remember Grandma Shellner-- Grandma Irene used to just get on his case, and she would really get on his case when he would do something like that. And he would finally go in the house to sleep it off, and she would have to go and deliver the papers. I guess we kind of solved that for them by the time Tommy and I took over the paper route and they got delivered on a timely basis each and every day. And then, not too many years after that, Grandpa Shellner started to become kind of infirm and didn't work anymore and kind of sat around the house. He would still have his nips every now and then. And then, not too many years after, he got sick and then he went into the hospital and he passed away. And then Tommy and I kind of outgrew the paper route and went on to other jobs that paid a little bit more. But that was Grandma and Grandpa. They're really my great-grandparents who are the ones who filled that role.

WHITE: Wonderful. Who took over the paper company?

McCORMICK: They sold it.

WHITE: They did sell it.

McCORMICK: They sold it. They got older and nobody else wanted to do it. And at that time that wasn't a great deal of money. They made a sustenance, and I guess they had Social Security, and they lived simply. Grandma Irene, as was the case with many women then, had-- They had a huge orchard with all kinds of fruits, and they had vegetable gardens and things like that, and she canned at the end of each summer. And various neighbors along with Grandma and Grandpa-- Well, Grandpa would go hunting. That was their sustenance. The house had long since been paid for. It was a small but comfortable house, nice little house, still there. So they would live off the canned fruits and vegetables--peaches and pears and all that kind of stuff--all winter long and then plant their gardens the next year. It was almost like they had transplanted the Arkansas area where they came from right into Kansas City, Missouri, the lifestyle of being self-sustaining and all that kind of stuff. They did that pretty easily. She would go to the store to buy a piece of meat now and then, but I don't think she ever bought any vegetables, because they didn't have to.

WHITE: That's wonderful to be able to live off the land that way. It certainly is. So to your knowledge they were born in Arkansas and then migrated to Kansas City?

McCORMICK: Migrated to Kansas City. Migrated to Missouri, yes.

WHITE: So as a young man did you spend much time at their home?

McCORMICK: Oh, a lot, yes. Especially in the middle of fruit ripening season. We got scolded more than once, my brother and I and a couple of our little buddies--we were six, seven, eight, nine, ten--for raiding the orchard and eating the pears off the trees. She had an apple tree--several apple trees--and pear trees, plum trees, and she had a grape arbor. She had cherry trees. She had all kinds-- The backyard was a veritable cornucopia of nice, delicious, fresh fruits, so we got scolded more than once for stealing fruit.

WHITE: Okay. I'd like to shift to your mother at this point. Can you tell me your mother's full maiden name?

McCORMICK: Laura Lee Lankford. Rather unusual by today's standards but I guess not for that time, my mother was one of four siblings, two girls and two boys, and each had a different father. Mr. Lankford was my mother's father. And then the oldest [sibling] was an uncle named Essie Harris, who was the first one. That "Big Laura," as they called my grandmother, the one who was deceased-- Mr. Harris died, and she married Mr. Lankford. And then she and Mr. Lankford had a parting of the ways. Then the next brother was Marion Lewis. She married Mr. Lewis, and he passed. And the baby sister, my youngest aunt who was a nurse [and] who just died in Denver last year, was Zenobia Dawsey. So Mr. Dawsey was the last of the husbands. But there were those four: Essie Harris, Marion Lewis, Laura Lankford, and Zenobia Dawsey. They were spread out to the extent that Zenobia was just three or four years older than I was. So we hung out and buddied around a whole lot. She was in the nursing school class with the same young women that I had gone to high school with.

WHITE: More like a cousin than an aunt.

McCORMICK: More like a cousin than an aunt, she really was. That's a good description. She really was.

WHITE: Can you tell me when your mother was born? The date?

McCORMICK: Oh, let's see. That would have been-- My dad was 1902, so Mom was ten years younger-- Nineteen twelve.

WHITE: And the month and the day?

McCORMICK: Let's see. I should be able to recall my mother's birthday. It was May 15, I think, 1912.

WHITE: Do you know where she was born? I would assume it's in Kansas City.

McCORMICK: In Kansas City.

WHITE: Were there very many hospitals there in Kansas City?

McCORMICK: There were only two available and accessible to African Americans, as was the case in many cities. Back then Kansas City was a segregated city. The hospital where I was born, which was Wheatley Provident Hospital--named after Phyllis Wheatley, obviously-- The other was one of the two municipal hospitals at that time, Kansas City General Hospital Number 1, which was exclusively for Caucasians, and General Hospital Number 2, where I later worked, for African Americans.

WHITE: Do you have a sense of which one she was born in? The Wheatley or the Kansas City General?

McCORMICK: The Wheatley, I'm sure.

WHITE: The Wheatley. Okay. Can you tell me about your mother's education?

McCORMICK: My mother [was] educated in Kansas City public schools, and then she, after graduation-- She had already received quite a bit of piano training and had a beautiful, beautiful singing voice. And then she attended a religious institution called Western Baptist Seminary, where she also studied music and the scriptures and theology, etc., because she had been raised in the church--that same St. Stephen's Baptist Church--and had become a member of the choir. And she was furthering her education there. She never graduated there. She was furthering her education there, and there is where she met and married one of her teachers, who is my father.

WHITE: [laughs] Aha.

McCORMICK: My father had been educated at Wilberforce University.

WHITE: Wilberforce?

McCORMICK: Wilberforce, in Ohio, which is still in existence. It's a Methodist college. He was a member of a singing group that toured the country representing Wilberforce and raising funds for Wilberforce, and he ended up in Kansas City, Missouri. He liked it there, and he began teaching at this Baptist seminary, Western Baptist Seminary, where he met this student, you know, Laura Lankford. They ended up getting married, and he ended up staying in Kansas City, Missouri.

WHITE: Interesting. Do you have a sense of what he was teaching exactly?

McCORMICK: Theology.

WHITE: Theology, okay. When did they get married?

McCORMICK: They got married-- Let's see. I was born in 1933, so they would have gotten married in 1931.

WHITE: Do you know what year they met?

McCORMICK: No, I don't. They've told the story before, but it's kind of hazy as to just what year they actually met and how the courtship evolved. There are various little anecdotes about how he was attracted to her in the classroom. He thought he saw something special there, etc., etc., and they just liked each other. Those were days of a much more, for many people, different kind of premarital relationship than we have now. I got the distinct impression that there was no sleeping together, no fooling around. They walked in the park and held hands and things liked that. They went to church a lot and never lived together until after they were married.

WHITE: Very traditional. So is it your understanding, then, that after having met your mother, your father shortly thereafter moved to Kansas City?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Well, actually he had moved to Kansas City to teach at Western Baptist Seminary when they met.

WHITE: Okay. Of course.

McCORMICK: He didn't move there because they met.

WHITE: Okay. From that point they got married. What occupation did your mother hold outside of the daily family responsibilities?

McCORMICK: Really, she didn't work at all after that. She was just a mother and a housewife. My dad had not achieved his own pastorate yet. He was an assistant minister at several churches around Kansas City, but he held a regular job at a bakery. He had to to sustain the family. Not very many African American churches back then could be the sole support of a minister. There just wasn't the money; there weren't the funds. When they paid for the mortgage on the church and the taxes and the other attendant expenses there was really only a small stipend left for the minister. So you couldn't live on it.

WHITE: Right. And which church would you say that he was affiliated with for the longest period of time?

McCORMICK: Before he got his own church, Thirty-fifth Street Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri, which was located in our community, about three blocks from our house. And there were only really about three really active, thriving churches in the community at that time: a church called Pilgrims' Rest Baptist Church, which was several more blocks away; Thirty-fifth Street Baptist, where we spent most of our youth, the early years; and a couple of other Methodist churches, which thrived to some extent but weren't nearly as successful as Thirty-fifth Street Baptist Church and Pilgrims' Rest. He was the assistant minister there for many years.

WHITE: He was. So is it your understanding that his affiliation was mostly with Baptist churches?

McCORMICK: Totally.

WHITE: Totally at that point. Just shifting to your father, then, can you tell me where your father was born or the date that he was born?

McCORMICK: My father was born July 4, 1902.

WHITE: Independence.

McCORMICK: Independence Day, in Odessa, Missouri, a real country town, but a lovely little town of which I have some fond remembrances, about thirty-eight miles from Kansas City. Born and raised there. My father's early life was not filled with a lot of happy moments. His parents, as I said earlier in this interview, died early on, and he was raised by a cousin, a vibrant, wonderful woman named Jeanette Stewart, whom we've formed a close relationship with over the years, who lived in Odessa. Eventually he got his first pastorate at St. Mark's Baptist Church in Odessa, and every other Sunday we would make this thirty-eight-mile drive, which if you live in L.A. seems like nothing at all. But back then it was a trip to the country, in those old smoky cars that my dad owned back then. He got his pastorate at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Odessa. Mrs. Jeanette Stewart, who was a huge woman, a very forceful woman, but who loved my dad and who really kind of ran things on the Sundays when he wasn't there at church-- And she was a very important figure in the community, highly respected, and one of those women who morally-- I think her moral compass was very good. She knew it, and when something was going down in the community that was not right Jeanette Stewart was somebody you didn't want on your case, because she was very upright. My father kind of looked at her as a family figure. I got the feeling from time to time--there was a resemblance between them--that she was related in some distant kind of way, but it was never explained to us just what it was. Miss Jeanette, as we called her--everybody called her Miss Jeanette--was a figure that played a prominent role in our lives at that time. But he was born in Odessa. You can't see from those photographs or that drawing that in his early years he was very fair, and it was obvious that there had been some Caucasian parentage somewhere back down the line.

WHITE: You're referring to the black-and-white photograph there on the wall?

McCORMICK: Above the portraits that my niece did of them from another photograph. He was a very handsome man when he was younger.

WHITE: Very much so.

McCORMICK: Striking looking.

WHITE: Did he have brothers and sisters? Or was he an only child?

McCORMICK: He had one sibling, one sister. When I was very young-- I only saw her once. Her name was Mae. She lived in a town, one of those little outlying communities-- I think it was Lee's Summit in Missouri, not too far from Odessa. She had a troubled marriage, and she came up to visit us once when I must have been, I guess, six years old and Tommy was four. And she was gorgeous. I remember she looked like Lena Horne. I thought she was one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. And she was married to a guy who was really a brute named Floyd who, we learned later on, had some kind of minor criminal background and had some problems with alcohol. He had beat her up, and she had come to my dad, and my dad begged her to stay in Kansas City and not to go back. But she went back, and a couple of years later he came home from work and had a few and was furious because his dinner wasn't ready and started screaming and yelling at her, and in a fury he went and got the shotgun and blew her head off.

WHITE: Oh. So sorry--

McCORMICK: I've never seen my dad or anybody so crushed and filled with so much chagrin, that he couldn't convince her to come and stay with us. That might have saved her life. But he walked across the schoolyard almost all night long crying, bemoaning the fact that things couldn't have turned out differently, bemoaning the fact that the last member of his family that he knew was gone. He had no more family members left. I was about eight by that time. And I remember walking behind him, with him, all night long, because I didn't want him to be by himself. So that was the end of his family on his side.

WHITE: Must have been an incredibly devastating experience.

McCORMICK: It was. And we were filled with even more chagrin when Floyd was given, I think, a five- or six-year prison term for killing Aunt Mae. But then they put together some evidence that indicated that he had also been guilty of raping two white women in the area. For that they executed him.

WHITE: Of course. Yes, sure. You mentioned earlier that your father went to Wilberforce. Can you tell me a bit about his education prior to that?

McCORMICK: I don't really know much about his education before that. Most of it was done in and around Odessa. And then I'm not really sure how-- You know, we never learned how he got from Kansas City public-- I guess he did go to public schools in Kansas City for a while and got a scholarship and ended up at Wilberforce. But I really don't know very much about his early education. I don't think any of us do.

WHITE: You mentioned earlier, of course, that he was an assistant pastor at a number of different churches and then he also worked as a baker. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

McCORMICK: Well, he wasn't a baker, because-- I hate to sound-- The same old story-- African Americans weren't allowed to be bakers, but you could work at the bakery. He cleaned slicing machines and mixing machines. He was a part of the force that worked all night long cleaning up the bakery, getting it ready for the bakers to start doing their thing the next day. They'd get off at about six o'clock in the morning when the bakers came in. And I had part of that experience, because when I was in school I worked at a-- It was Continental Bakery, which was in a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, for a while. So I got to know-- It was hard work, because you were using air blowers. Brooms couldn't satisfy the sanitation demands for getting all the used flour; people had [been] walking in it all day long. So you use these air blowers, air hoses, much like gardeners use now, to blow the flour across the floor into piles where it could be shoveled up and thrown away. Then the floor had to be mopped, then dried. But I cleaned the slicing machines, and I did the mopping and the cleaning and the air blowing for-- I guess I worked there for the better part of a year. You were always down on your knees or under machinery cleaning. It was not easy at all. He did that for a long time before the church finally-- When he finally got his own pastorate in Kansas City, where the church was large enough and had a large enough membership that they could pay him enough so that he didn't have to have an outside job-- But it was a lot of years before that happened.

WHITE: Sure. So he was working in the bakery, of course, to sustain the family. But his aspiration all along was to have his own church.

McCORMICK: To have his own church. Oh, yes. And he carried out, even after he got his pastorate at St. John's Baptist Church, where he finished the rest of his career as a minister-- But even while he was working, before that he still did all the things that-- I have such admiration for his commitment as a minister and his commitment to his family, because I know it must have been enormously difficult to work eight hours a day and visit the sick and visit the bereaved and do weddings and christenings and all the things that ministers do. He had many, many long days. And I've sometimes seen him so exhausted that he would come home from work and sit on the couch and-- Especially in the summertime Mom would always have a big, cold glass of lemonade for him. And in five minutes he'd be asleep--just be zonked out.

WHITE: Very strong work ethic.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Very strong man, very strong man. He's still my hero. I've never known anybody as strong or as good. He never screamed at people, he never had a bad-- He was a disciplinarian, but he had a-- We knew as kids growing up when we had done something that really displeased him or that he really thought was bad, because he had a way a pursing his lips which meant "Get out of the way." And we knew what that signal was. But he never, never-- I never heard him or my mom swear at each other or swear period. The most-- Every now and then, if he was extremely provoked, he would say "shit." But they never fought. I never saw him raise his hand to her or her to him. They were quite a couple. But I know life was not an easy road for him. It got better, oh, perhaps when he hit sixty and could enjoy some of the more leisurely moments of life and didn't have to have two jobs. But by the time he was sixty he had started to battle diabetes. So infirmity really kind of characterized the last five or six--he lived to seventy-five--years of his life because of all the complications of diabetes: the failing vision and having to take the insulin and other things. But he had some years in there when he could sit back and reflect and receive the honors of the family and of the community and of the church. So I'm glad he had those six or seven, eight years to really say, "Well, I think I've done a pretty good job, been a pretty good man, pretty good father, pretty good human being." And he had the infinite respect of everybody who knew him, because he was a good man, and he made no enemies. He took some terrific stands but he never made enemies. Just on a voluntary basis he sponsored the citizenship of a number of Jamaican immigrants who moved into the community. Now, that's a serious thing, because when you sponsor them you're in essence responsible for them. And if they do anything wrong--what?--commit a crime or something like that, they come to you, and you may have to post bail or-- They never did anything wrong since several became members of the church. But he did things like that. Just had a good heart.

WHITE: Sounds like an incredible human being.

McCORMICK: Oh, he was. He was just fantastic.

WHITE: Of all these wonderful characteristics that you describe, what are some of the things that you feel that you have taken after him?

McCORMICK: Oh, I hope I've taken on any of his characteristics. I think I've definitely taken on the one-- I don't know whether I could have said this ten, twelve years ago or not, but I think I can now, with some reflection: the ability to see things from other people's perspective. To understand why human beings do what they do. To be compassionate-- I think I've definitely taken that on. To feel for other people. To feel a sense of responsibility and commitment that, when there is something you are supposed to do, you've committed to do, you follow through and you do it. Those are some of the things I think I've taken on. His sense of kindness I think I've taken on, although I can't say with the thoroughness with which he embraced theology and religion and all that kind of thing. I think my personal point of view on that is probably a little different from his in that respect, in that I am not as imbued with the spirit. But that probably is generational. That probably is just more contemporary--like other people of my generation--than anything else. Although I do believe in the idea that there is a greater good. You can call that "God" or whomever you want to call it, whatever you want to call it. I do believe there is a greater good, a sense for good, an instinct for good in human beings that is godlike. And I think that's very similar to what other people believe where God and religion and the supreme being and the essence of good in humanity is concerned.

WHITE: Absolutely. Okay, if I could also add to that-- After having read quite a bit of your biography and some of your news clippings and things like that, the strong work ethic I certainly would attribute to your father, because it's certainly, even from what I have read, a strong characteristic of yours.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. I think so.

WHITE: Extremely committed.

McCORMICK: That was something that he imbued in us, something that was imbued in a lot of the young men, the boys I grew up with, in our community. When I was growing up it was a big, big deal to have a "gig," even when you're six, seven years old, to have some kind of little job. I grew up with the notion that you should work if you can. Fortunately, in the forty years I've been in California I've only been unemployed for a month. I should knock on wood--without disturbing the mike, I hope. Before I came to California-- When I was in high school, in college-- I think between the beginning of high school and the end of college I had probably fourteen different kinds of jobs. I'd always have some kind of little job, whether it was delivering prescriptions for a drugstore on a bicycle or operating an elevator-- This was when a lot of the apartment buildings and other buildings, commercial buildings, in Kansas City did not have automatic elevators. They had operators. I worked on a trash truck for my uncle, Uncle Essie, the one I mentioned before. He had a government contract with the Veterans Administration with the Department of Defense. They were building these huge housing projects for the vets returning from World War II all over the place, and somehow he wrangled a contract to pick up the trash at every one of them. So he was doing very, very well. He had three or four trucks, and guys who worked for him-- Bought his new Cadillac every year. Compared to most African Americans in post-World War II Kansas City, Uncle Essie did very well. He had a lovely home. So for a couple of summers-- Even though it was part of, you know, what my dad had taught us about having jobs-- Uncle Essie was always hunting up new jobs for me and Tommy, and they were always rough, tough, gritty, grunt jobs. Tommy and I used to always say, "Oh, I wish Uncle Essie wouldn't bother." We'd see him coming. Always, he always got another job. Because he was coming to my mother, "I've got a job for this boy." You know, you don't dare tell Mother, "I don't want to do that." And he got me one of the hardest jobs I ever had in my life. I lasted all of two days, because I was, as I am now-- I never was a huge, muscular guy. I was always kind of on the slim side, even though I was strong. He got me a job--it was in the wintertime--on a construction site carrying hod. I don't know whether you know what that is. You have a big board that they put on your shoulders, and they pile it full of bricks or concrete, and you take it up a ladder or someplace for the masons.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness!

McCORMICK: And that's a job for a guy who's six [feet] three [inches] and two [hundred] twenty [pounds]--you know, some big, muscular guy. And I worked that Friday-- I worked that Thursday, and I don't know how in the world I made it back, and I worked Friday. And I told the foreman, "You can either pay me now or you don't have to pay me at all, but I will not be back Monday." [mutual laughter]

WHITE: You'd had your fill of that particular assignment.

McCORMICK: Oh, God, everything in my body hurt! I was cold. Oh, it was really--

WHITE: Well, it sounds like-- Of course, the opportunities were limited in Kansas City for African Americans. I'm curious-- If we could go back to your father's job in the bakery, was this the kind of job that best fit in with his schedule, with his ministerial duties? Or was he limited to that type of employment? Did he have other opportunities? I've read quite a bit about Kansas City and employment there around between 1912 and 1920, and it seemed that there were quite a number of occupations-- on a limited basis, of course--that were open to African Americans. So I'm curious as to why he stayed within that particular vacuum.

McCORMICK: The job was there, and he took it. For example, something that a lot of African American men did was to be a dining car waiter or dining car porter or something like that. But that would have taken him away from the family three weeks out of a month, so that was not an option. About the other options that were available, most of them-- If you weren't a trained professional like a doctor or an attorney-- And even doctors and attorneys didn't do real well at that time, because there was no Medicare for their payments, and many of them really had to struggle. I don't know what your research shows, but in my experience there were not a lot of other options. Working in plants--in metallurgy plants or in foundries--or mostly in janitorial service and things like that were, as far as I can recall, the options that were open. And they were all-- I wouldn't call them menial labor, but they were hard jobs. So I don't know what his other options were or what he considered the other options, but he settled into that one. Also, working at a bakery afforded him the chance to be a member of a union. There was the Bakery and Confectionery Workers Union, and of course, that meant some fringe benefits.

WHITE: Of course.

McCORMICK: So I suppose those were among the reasons why he chose that particular job. But I can recall very clearly-- When I think back about it sometimes, given the way life is today, it almost seems unreal, but racial lines were very strong in Kansas City at the time. Segregation was very firmly implanted in Kansas City, even though Missouri is not really a deep southern state. It's part of what they call the "Mid-South." But the workforce that cleaned up the plant, all black. Six o'clock, when the bakers and the other professionals came in, all white. [mutual laughter] And at the time your questioning of it was just a vague observation. That's just the way it was. All the blacks went home at six o'clock in the morning and all the whites came in.

WHITE: Very clearly delineated.

McCORMICK: Oh, very clearly delineated. And of course, I went to an allsegregated school system--all-black elementary school, all-black high school.

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 18, 1998

WHITE: We were just talking about your father's employment and through the occupational issues in Kansas City. I'd just like to ask you-- You indicated that your father had diabetes toward the end of his life. Can you tell me how long he lived?

McCORMICK: Actually, he had diabetes-- The onset of it probably occurred a good fifteen years before he died. He died in 1977--at the age of seventy-five--which was one of the most difficult years of my life. I had been back to Kansas City on two or three occasions when they thought the end might be near--and the year before that, and a couple years before. My dad was part of a generation which did not accommodate itself well to taking medicines as therapy. They had been so accustomed to taking medicines for symptomatic relief, like an aspirin for a headache, it was hard for many of them to get the notion that there were some medicines you take to keep from getting sick.

WHITE: Preventive.

McCORMICK: Preventive, yes, as a therapy. He wouldn't take his insulin until he didn't feel well. It was just not the way it's supposed to work, you know. You take the insulin to keep feeling good. But he always used it to seek symptomatic relief despite the pleadings of my mother and other family members: "Dad, you've got to take your insulin." He almost went into insulin shock a couple of times. As the symptoms began to bother him, I think he finally learned that he had to take it. But in the meantime they were causing some of the other side effects of diabetes. His eyes started getting-- The bifocals got thicker and thicker. And he still preached, because he knew the scriptures, you know, forward and backward. He didn't have to read the scriptures off the Bible.

WHITE: Absolutely. It came from the heart.

McCORMICK: He knew it all by heart, and he was still a forceful gospel Baptist preacher. But about seven or eight years before he passed away he got some kind of a little cut on the toe of his left foot. As you know, the extremities in diabetics do not heal well.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: And he got some of the normal home treatment: a few spray antibiotics, cleaning it with alcohol and things like that. But it kept getting worse, and he didn't go to see his doctor until the toe had become gangrenous. And the doctor couldn't stop it in time, so the whole foot became gangrenous. His doctor said that the only way they could save the leg was to amputate above the knee, which they did. He had to have a prosthesis, so he had to live with that. Then that very same doctor-- We have our family opinion about his competence or his lack of competence. That same doctor who told about the importance of keeping his nails trimmed because ingrown toenails could also cause an infection-- The same doctor, trimming the big toe of his right foot, cut his toe--accidentally.

WHITE: Oh, no.

McCORMICK: So that foot became infected and they had to remove that foot. Then the eyes started giving him trouble, and, as you know, diabetes also has an effect on the kidneys-- One thing after another. And the last three years of his life--oh, two years of his life--were fairly infirm. He had a couple of scares with insulin shots, and I went back because we thought we were going to lose him. Finally, on our anniversary, October 16, 1977--

WHITE: Yours and your wife [Anita Daniels McCormick]'s anniversary.

McCORMICK: Our anniversary. I came home-- I think I'd been doing a Dodger game--World Series game, I believe, at Dodger Stadium. In fact, I'm sure it was. My wife met me at the door, and my sister-in-law was here, and she told me, you know, "Kansas City just called. Your father just passed away." And then my mom, who was ten years younger than dad, two months later-- She had had breast cancer, but it had been in remission. Two months after my father passed away, December 20, my mother passed away.

WHITE: But she discovered she had breast cancer quite a few years prior to his death?

McCORMICK: Oh, several years, quite a few years before. She'd been taking treatment; it had been in remission. And she was the one who was leading the charge to look after him. It seemed as though as long as she felt she had to be there to look after him, there was a reason to live. You know, I was living here. My younger brother and I-- My sisters and then the brother who's next to me, Tommy, all lived there. And my sisters and Tommy all say that she just seemed to cave in after he passed away.

WHITE: Understandably so.

McCORMICK: They tell me some things about what they would hear her saying after everybody had supposedly gone to bed at night. She was still talking to him. "Why did you go away and leave me here?" and all that kind of thing.

WHITE: Deeply mourning, of course, the loss of someone who she had spent a good deal of her life with. Sure. So that was in December of 1977 that your mom passed.

McCORMICK: December of '77.

WHITE: Do you know if they actually passed in Wheatley Hospital?

McCORMICK: Where they passed away-- At Wheatley Hospital? No. My dad passed away in Martin Luther King Hospital, which was one of the newly constructed hospitals, one of that wave of new buildings that came out of the civil rights conflicts of the sixties, when African Americans finally started demanding the things that we should have had a long time ago. That one hospital was built not too long after our own MLK hospital, [Los Angeles County Martin Luther] King-[Charles R.] Drew Medical Center. That's where my dad passed away. Mom passed away at home in her bed, in her bedroom.

WHITE: Do you recall having lived in the same house during your childhood? Or did you move from place to place?

McCORMICK: Oh, no, we didn't grow up in the same [house], but all the houses we lived in were in the same community. It was a community very, very much-- It was a poor community, like-- Well, this wouldn't be an apt description now because the demographics have changed so much, but it was a community like Watts/Willowbrook when I first came out here: kind of poor, a lot of wonderful people--but mostly poor people, which we were--and a lot of unpaved roads or a lot of roads with no sidewalks and things like that. Watts/Willowbrook reminds me so much of this area that they call Leeds that I grew up in. Now, every house that we lived in-- I can remember the earliest house, which was down along the Blue River, which is a tributary of the Missouri. I can remember a flood. I must have been two years old. Sometimes when I'd tell my mom and dad about this they were amazed that I could remember the flood and the house where we lived. And I can remember one neighbor--I can almost see him now--who lived next door. He was a nice, nice man, used to buy me ice cream. And one story that I remember so well-- No, I shouldn't say I remember it so well. I remember fleeting, frightening pictures of it. As I said, we lived like half a block-- There was only the river, then a road, and then this street where our house and the other houses started. We were right on the corner. And this huge river rat had somehow gotten into the house. It was just me and Mom and Dad. I don't think Tommy was born yet. I don't think-- Yeah, Tommy had to be a little bitty baby. And this river rat-- My dad was trying to run it out of the house, and he cornered it. And this rat bared its fangs-- This rat was the size of a small cat. And my dad, who had been a World War I veteran--he didn't see combat, but he trained for it, and he still had his World War I bayonet--crept up on this river rat and thrust this bayonet right through him. Blood flew and-- It's a gruesome memory. And he just kept it on the bayonet and threw it in the trash. But a lot of people who live right along there-- I guess this is true. I understand from various people that this is sometimes true in New Orleans and other cities that are close to rivers or bayous, that these big river rats-- And they do grow to a pretty good size. That's one of the reasons, as you know, when-- One of the worst problems that seamen have when they are ferrying cargo or people is rats onboard. That's why they have those things on the lines that they tie the ships up with. They have those big dishes facing backwards, because the rats can't get around them.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: But I remember that. So we lived there on the river, and then we lived, let's see, one, two, three, four, five-- We lived in the house that I liked the most, which was, as I said, the one about three blocks from Thirty-fifth Street Baptist Church and was on a corner. It sat up on a hill, and it was wonderful. Some of the best years of my life I thought were spent there.

WHITE: And what community was this in?

McCORMICK: This is still in Leeds.

WHITE: Still in Leeds, okay.

McCORMICK: It was not a separate or cooperative city. It was part of Kansas City, just as Koreatown is a part of L.A., but it has a different name for the subdivision. This was the house where we had our first TV set, where we had this big radio console, where I-- The house where I really, really listened to the soap operas and, more specifically, the announcers. I loved listening to the announcers. It was sunny and bright and had a huge yard. This is where my dad grew some vegetables and had a couple of chickens back there, where we had our first basketball goal, where my brother and I used to pitch and catch outside. This is the house we lived in when we had the paper route. Some really great years there. And we were always fixing it up. And we had, as is the case with so many people in the Midwest-- They don't seem to do that in California too much. Everybody during the summer months sat on the front porch, and we had this big, long swing on the front porch, and a couple of rocking chairs. And we could sit out there and be content on into the night just watching traffic go, watching people go by, just sitting out there, just talking. I remember some really blissful nights there.

WHITE: Absolutely. You really develop a sense of community by doing that.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. Oh, you do.

WHITE: It's sort of a southern tradition.

McCORMICK: It is, yes. Sitting on the front porch. And I had hoped-- All of us had hoped we would just grow up there, just live there for the rest of our lives. But the Kansas City school district got the city to declare eminent domain, except my dad didn't want to sell. And the school district bought the house, and we had to find another house to live in, which was--we lived right across the street from the school-- just on the other side of the school. And that's where [Paul Laurence] Dunbar Elementary School, the new one, not the one I attended, is located today, right where our house used to be.

WHITE: Oh, really? Interesting.

McCORMICK: My dad had that house built. The house that had been there previously-- There was a tornado, a horrific tornado that had cleaned off-- There was a concrete block, the foundation. And when the tornado came through, when it left, the only thing standing on that lot was a refrigerator.

WHITE: Oh, my.

McCORMICK: Like somebody had taken a giant broom and swept everything. It was all scattered out in the yard and everything. But this refrigerator stood like a sentinel in the middle of this block there where the kitchen was.

WHITE: Sounds like something right out of Twister.

McCORMICK: It does. I saw that with my own eyes. I saw a lot of damage. I was in four tornadoes in Kansas City.

WHITE: It must be quite interesting adjusting--you know, having lived here for quite some time in Los Angeles--to the different natural disasters, so to speak.

McCORMICK: Yeah. Tornadoes were really the most fearsome things in Kansas City. Tornadoes, and then in the dead of winter the snowstorms, the blizzards. But those are more a matter of inconvenience and discomfort, having to slog through this stuff to go to school or to work, and all these layers of clothes. We wore rubbers that are called galoshes and the earmuffs and the watch caps down over the ears and the scarves and the layers of clothes and underclothes and all that kind of stuff. When you got to school or work, wherever, you almost had to undress--you know, take off all these layers of clothes just to function and then put it all back on.

WHITE: Very tedious process just to get around town.

McCORMICK: It was. Oh, I don't miss that at all. But other than that-- As I said, during the whole time I was growing up there were four tornadoes that came through Kansas City. The one that cleaned off that lot that I spoke of a minute ago and just left the refrigerator and lifted the roof right off the house of Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson, who lived next door to us-- It didn't do any harm at all to our house.

WHITE: Leaped right over yours.

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: It's fascinating how that happens.

McCORMICK: And a couple of others that really hit in parts of Kansas City that didn't affect us except for the incredible rain and the winds but killed a lot of people. I went out to see in kind of a suburban area that would be like Pasadena is to L.A. We drove out, and I actually saw broom straws embedded in the doors of cars.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness.

McCORMICK: Trees, that was a given, but embedded in the doors of cars? Then the winds of 250 miles an hour or so. And a lot of cars that were practically, from the sand and gravel and dust and debris, stripped of paint. You see some astonishing things. But they didn't affect Leeds. Only the one when I guess I was about five and Tommy was about three that affected Leeds and really did a lot of destruction in Leeds, killed one person.

WHITE: Excuse me. Just for clarity's sake, when you referred to Tommy, Tommy is your brother next in age to you?

McCORMICK: Right.

WHITE: Is it Tommy or Thomas?

McCORMICK: It's Thomas F. McCormick. Thomas Frederick McCormick. Reverend T.F. McCormick they call him now, but we always just call him Tommy.

WHITE: Okay, let's back up a little bit and talk about your birth. When were you born and where were you born?

McCORMICK: I was born February 3, 1933, at Wheatley Provident Hospital. I think it was on Forest Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. I believe it's no longer there. I think it's been torn down for a housing project or something. But it was a hospital that was operated by a combination of city funds and charities. It was all black. A lot of African American doctors cut their eyeteeth there, did their residency there, or their internship there. There was no school for-- Most of the black doctors at that time came out of either Howard University or MeHarry Medical College, and they could do their internship either in Kansas City, generally-- There were three places primarily when they came out of MeHarry or Howard. Either you [went to] Cook County Hospital in Chicago or--I'm trying to think of the hospital in St. Louis [Homer G. Phillips Hospital--General Number 2 or Wheatley in Kansas City. So that's where I was born, at Wheatley Hospital.

WHITE: Okay. Now, you were the first child to be born to your mother and father. Did either of them have children prior to you?

McCORMICK: No.

WHITE: From what you've been told, was your birth an occasion to celebrate?

McCORMICK: It was in a quiet kind of way for this young couple. You know, I was their firstborn. My mom tells me--used to tell us--that in the early years she spent a lot of time with me while my dad was at work. She would put me in the stroller and take walks along some of the tree-lined streets in that part of Kansas City. The part of Kansas City where African Americans lived at that time was pretty nice--not rich, you know, small houses, but people had a different kind of mind-set. They respected property, they kept their property up, the lawns were mowed, the streets were clean, and it was not an unpleasant place to live. So she would just take me-- I was the only one until Tommy was born eighteen months later. And for that year or so she just kind of doted on me. When I cried or anything I got attention instead of a bottle, so those fat cells didn't store in my tissue as they did in all of my brothers and sisters, all of whom have weight problems.

WHITE: Oh, interesting.

McCORMICK: My mom said even then-- I get kidded right now by Anita and my kids and others about being such a slow eater. But she says even then I drank my bottle slowly and leisurely. I would drink up for a while, and then I would play with her or something else would grab my attention, and then I would go back and drink the rest of my milk. But even then she said I was not a big eater or a fast eater.

WHITE: Never really hurried in any of those functions. That's certainly an attribute.

McCORMICK: Well, it's paid off now that I have never known the name of the word "diet."

WHITE: Yeah, that's definitely fortunate. Do you recall, in your early childhood, if in fact there was extended family that came to your house on a regular basis? You did mention your great-grandparents, but outside of that-- Aunts, uncles, cousins that interacted with your family?

McCORMICK: Now, when you say early, you mean--

WHITE: Yeah, up to, say, when you were ten.

McCORMICK: Yeah, they visited a lot. Uncle Essie especially visited a lot, and Grandma and Grandpa, who only lived about three blocks away, the Shellners, visited a great deal. The rest of the family lived farther away in other parts of Kansas City, so they weren't around all the time--fairly frequently but not all the time. Mostly it was my mom's friends, women friends, right there in Leeds, in the community, who visited very frequently--all the time. They became, kind of, almost-- I was going to say surrogate moms. But in the days when I was growing up, any other adult who had the respect of your mother and father was a surrogate parent who would chastise you and get after you and around whom you watched your behavior. We had a lot of parent figures, a lot--not just uncles and aunts and relatives, but everybody who-- Every adult who belonged to the church would not be reluctant at all to admonish you if you were doing something of which they knew your parents wouldn't approve. And they would tell you, "I'm going to tell your mother" and "I'm going to tell your daddy." Well, "I'm going to tell your mother" was the second-class threat. When Mother said, "I'm going to tell your daddy," that was the biggie. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: You're really in trouble then.

McCORMICK: You're really in trouble. That was the biggie. Those are the words you didn't want to hear: "I'm going to tell your father."

WHITE: I often hear that there is a lack of that sort of sense of community that occurs today and sort of contributes to some of the problems that we have in adolescents these days.

McCORMICK: I have no doubt whatsoever about that. And as I'm sure it has occurred to you, that probably started from a kind of hypersensitivity that parents developed--I must have been, oh, I'm sure I was out of school by then--about not having teachers discipline kids. I think that's where it started. Sometimes I think overly sensitive--well-meaning but overly sensitive--I don't want to say just liberals, but just people who abhor child abuse but who removed a force for discipline that I think was very vital for kids-- We don't have those surrogate parents everywhere. Then, as that kind of sensitivity or over sensitivity grew, parents became overly zealous, I think, in demanding that not only should teachers not lay their hands on kids or spank their bottoms, but no other adult should chastise their kids. And it became a matter where if you chastise a kid for doing something wrong you had to fight the parent, even if the parent acknowledged that they were doing something wrong. There was a whole societal change of attitude about that, which I really don't think-- And God, I abhor child abuse or anybody who intentionally brutalizes children or anybody else. But there was a trust, I think, when I was growing up that most adults would do the right thing and had the best interest of the child at heart. And I have no doubt whatsoever that that kind of surrogate parenthood that existed among all African American adults--and I won't speak for any other community--shaped a generation of African American men and women who are better for it.

WHITE: Yeah, I totally agree, totally agree. Well, that's sort of a nice segue, actually, just in talking about your childhood-- I do want to talk a bit about your education both in primary school and in secondary school. But just speaking generally of your childhood, how would you describe it? What kinds of things would you do as a very young person? Did you have hobbies, for example?

McCORMICK: We had a lot of hobbies. My brother and I, who, as I said or might have said before-- Tommy and I were buddies as much as brothers, only being eighteen months apart, being raised in a pretty tightly-knit family. And in an area of town where we didn't have a lot of the amenities that kids who lived in the heart of the city had, we didn't have easy access to movies and stuff like that. So we spent a lot of time together. We spent a lot of time, Tommy and I, with our buddies, in the fantasy games that boys enjoyed back then. We played a lot of cowboys and Indians, even though I abhor the thought of it now for kids. We had those cheap six-shooters, and we'd listen to The Lone Ranger on television. And we did all the things that kids did back then--send in a cereal box and get the "X-ray spy ring" and all that kind of stuff. And we hiked down along the river and did a lot of the things that kids do now. A lot of the groceries were delivered--or you carried them home--in orange crates, wooden orange crates. Those wooden orange crates turned out to be the best, least expensive toys that poor black kids--or poor kids anywhere, I guess-- could possibly have had, because we took those things and we made all kinds of stuff out of them. We made skateboards out of them, skate scooters out of them. Tommy and I used to make pretend fire engines out of-- We'd take any kind of old wheel or anything that looked like a wheel and attach it. Boys were--maybe no more because they see so much of this on TV--but absolutely fascinated by fire engines back then. So we imitated firemen, and we did all that kind of stuff. We played a lot of games. We played a lot of volleyball on the playground. We played a lot of softball, a lot of kickball, and a lot of softball. A lot of baseball as we got-- Softball, which was just an all-summer-- It was almost like an addiction. Every day. The playground was a very short distance away. Playing softball for all those years was really what whetted our interest in baseball. All summer long we pitched horseshoes. We used to love to do that. The school became the site for the Department of Parks and Recreation summer playground with all the equipment that they had, and we played basketball and other games. Mostly all summer long we either played softball or we pitched horseshoes.

WHITE: That sounds like you were very creative in keeping yourselves entertained.

McCORMICK: Oh, we did. Or we'd sit around somebody's house. We would fix hot dogs and have-- I guess at that time Kool-Aid was a big thing in the summertime. Lemonade and Kool-Aid, but Kool-Aid especially, because they came in these packages, the powder, where you just dump it in a big pitcher of water and stir it up and put in ice and you've got a nice, sweet, cold drink. And during the summer we spent Sundays in church pretty much all day long. We usually used to have morning service from eleven [o'clock] to one [o'clock] and then some kind of afternoon program at three [o'clock], and then the rest of Sunday was kind of a kick-back time. You'd do your homework and then listen to the radio, and then around 1949, 1950, watch TV. There was hardly anything on but wrestling-- test pattern and wrestling. But our summers I remember as the most pleasant time, and I also remember that back then the summer seemed endless, this endless day after day of bliss of really not much to do. If you had a little job even--you know, throw the papers--[it would] take an hour, an hour and a half in the morning, an hour, an hour and a half in the afternoon, and then other than that just days of idyllic pleasure--playing the games and visiting with friends, going to other people's houses. Really as joyful a time as really poor people can have. Then Saturday afternoons Tommy and I and maybe two or three of our buddies-- Every Saturday afternoon was the movies. We'd catch the streetcar--this was before they had buses in Kansas City--and go to what we called "downtown"-- actually, downtown would have been like going from Watts/Willowbrook to Compton [California], where a lot of the businesses were and the African American businesses and the theaters--and see those cowboy movies Saturday afternoon. A cowboy movie or a comedy and then a serial that would leave you at some point of suspense and resume the next week to bring you back to the theater.

WHITE: Cliffhangers.

McCORMICK: And then the feature. So that would be a well-spent Saturday afternoon for me and Tommy and the guys our same age.

WHITE: What age would you have been at this point?

McCORMICK: Oh, from six to about ten.

WHITE: Okay. To what extent were you exposed to radio at that time?

McCORMICK: Quite a bit. Well, radio was the primary form, other than movies, of entertainment, because there was no television, and you didn't go to the movies all the time. That was a once a week kind of thing. So the radio was always on. And in the daytime it was all soap operas and a few comedies. Early comedies like Fibber McGee and Molly, Henry Aldridge, I remember, were much like the family sitcoms that we have on TV today. And then, of course, there were the headline comics who had their own shows, like Jack Benny and Red Skelton and people like that. Amos n' Andy, which-- This was in the days before sensitivity was heightened, and it was a funny show and extremely popular among African Americans as well as the American radio audience in general. They were huge, huge stars, and it was a very popular show. And then late at night the mystery shows: Inner Sanctum, I Love a Mystery, and things like-- The "scaries," as we'd call them. Everybody would turn off the lights. For us that was real late, nine o'clock at night. We'd be getting ready to go to bed and turn off the lights, and there would be nothing but the light maybe of one lamp in a corner and the light of this big radio dial. These radio consoles got to be a pretty good size. If you've seen those old-- They were as big as TV sets, yes.

WHITE: Exactly. Comparable to a television set.

McCORMICK: And had this rich sound. And we'd lay there on the floor, sometimes get a pillow off the bed and rest our head on it. We'd lay on the rug on the floor there. Mom and Dad would be sitting on their big easy chairs--usually my dad by that time would be snoozing--and we'd listen to these dramas and get scared out of our wits and then go to bed. But the radio was on almost all day long. At that time there were no such-- The notion of disc jockeys and all-music programs, all-music stations, was an idea that was a long way from birth.

WHITE: Nonexistent.

McCORMICK: Nonexistent. The other fact of life about radio then, except for a few exceptions, I mean rare exceptions, there were very few African Americans on the radio. The only exceptions were part of the cast of Amos n' Andy. The lead characters, Amos and Andy, were both white guys. A few others of the remaining cast-- All of the remaining were African American. And the only other regular on radio at the time was Eddie "Rochester" Anderson [in] the Jack Benny Show, who was tremendously popular. He was as popular as any of the rest of the cast. Later on Hattie McDaniel had a show called [The] Beulah [Show], I think.

WHITE: Right, she sure did.

McCORMICK: Yeah. The only other time you would hear of an African American would be on-- There were a number of musical programs that would last about an hour that were broadcast from the ballrooms of hotels--you know, "Coming to you live from the rooftop gardens of the Whatever Hotel in Boston, it's Artie Shaw and his orchestra." So you would hear Count Basie or Duke Ellington or Lionel Hampton as occasional guests on some of those programs. And quite occasionally but very, very rarely you would hear highly, highly accomplished African American performers on some of the shows that were hosted by major stars like Bing Crosby. Occasionally he would have an Ella Fitzgerald. Every week they would have a special guest, and occasionally that would be an Ella Fitzgerald, or in some rare occasions a Billie Holiday--very rarely a Billie Holiday, because a lot of Caucasians didn't like her lifestyle. But Ella-- It was probably too soon at that time, much too soon, for Sarah [Vaughan]. She would have been the type who would have been a guest. Billy Eckstine. Let's see-- Oh, Ethel Waters. She would guest. She was very popular among those shows. I can't really think of anybody else, though, who would guest on those musical programs that were hosted by people who were already big stars like Bing Crosby. Frank Sinatra had his own radio show, Dinah Shore had her own radio show, among many others. But the big bands, especially Basie, Ellington, Lionel Hampton, would make appearances on those shows.

WHITE: And with the comedy shows--

McCORMICK: Oh, Cab Calloway. I don't want to forget him. Yeah, don't want to forget Cab.

WHITE: Of course, Cab Calloway. Can't forget him. And turning to the comedy shows, of course, there were a number of people--I think most people--that assumed that both Amos and Andy were African American.

McCORMICK: Yeah.

WHITE: How did you come to the realization that the supporting cast was in fact not African American?

McCORMICK: Not until publicity pictures later on. I don't know whether it was intentional that they didn't-- At least I don't remember seeing many pictures of the cast or any pictures of the cast for all those years when the show was at the height of its popularity. I think one of the white guys' name was Freeman Gosden. I can't remember the other guy's name [Charles Corell]. But not until I saw pictures of them in a kind of a blackface--you know, typical of the minstrel days--later on did I realize- - And then they eventually-- A picture would appear. The Kansas City paper equivalent of the L.A. [Los Angeles] Sentinel-- There was a paper, which is still in existence, called the Kansas City Call.

WHITE: Kansas City Call?

McCORMICK: Still going. As a matter of fact, the woman--I can't believe she's still living--who was the publisher back then and used to put pictures of my dad and mom when my dad was going to have a church anniversary-- A woman named Lucille Bluford. I asked one of my relatives around, and they said she's still there. Apparently somebody else is doing the bulk of the work now, but Lucille Bluford is still there. She was the Kansas City equivalent of Mrs. Washington, Ruth Washington.

WHITE: Boy, that's what you call longevity.

McCORMICK: It is. I can't imagine how old she must be right now. As a matter of fact, she has a very famous relative. One of the black astronauts who was killed, Guy [Guion Stewart] Bluford [Jr.], was her nephew.

WHITE: Oh, okay. Well, of all of the radio shows that came on--the music shows and comedies--

McCORMICK: Oh, what I was going to say-- The Kansas City Call had pictures of the cast, and that's how we know about the other guys.

WHITE: Of course. That's how you were able to identify them. You named several shows. Can you cite any of those that tended to be your favorite, that spoke to you in a special way?

McCORMICK: Yeah. They were different shows at different periods of that part of my life. Very early on, five, six years old, Tommy and I loved the adventure shows. Many of the adventure shows on radio were adaptations from the comic strips.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: Shows like The Lone Ranger on the radio, Terry and the Pirates, Hopalong Cassidy--

WHITE: Wasn't Amos n' Andy originally a comic strip?

McCORMICK: I don't think so. It might have been. Not that I remember.

WHITE: I thought I read something like that.

McCORMICK: I don't think so. But Steve Canyon, Blondie. But mostly the adventure shows: Terry and the Pirates and The Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy-- Cowboy themes fascinated little boys at that time, little boys of all colors. Some of the biggest sellers at Christmas were the cowboy guns and gun belts with the bandoliers for the bullets, the little wooden bullets, and things like the cowboy hats and cowboy boots. Cowboys and soldiers were really big among little boys at that time. Then, as I got a little older, I started to become infatuated and listened, paying a great deal of attention, to the soap operas, especially all summer long, because my mom would have them on constantly: My Gal Sunday, The Romance of Helen Trent, All My Children, which is still around.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness, All My Children! Was that originally a radio show?

McCORMICK: It came over from radio.

WHITE: That's fascinating.

McCORMICK: It is. I think it's the only one left from the radio, that started on radio. And I was really fascinated. I was fascinated by--even though I couldn't have spoken about it this way then--the structure of the plot and how the actors used their voices. But mostly I was struck by the announcers, who had these grand, mellifluous tones. And I guess I didn't realize it at the time, but that stuck somewhere in my mind that that would be a nice thing to do. And these soap operas presented kind of a spirit of adventure. There were all these splendid places, as there are today. Everybody does so well. There are no poor people in soap operas; there were no poorly dressed people in soap operas. They all have a profession, they all have all this time to do all this stuff. They never seem to be at work. And that was the way it was then, and I was fascinated by that. Then, as time went along, I became fascinated with the evening dramas, the Lux Radio Theater being one of the biggest-- And Cecil B. DeMille hosted these radio dramas. I really got caught up in those, which created an interest in drama that lasted right on into high school and college. Later, of course, sporting events became very popular--baseball games on radio. As a matter of fact, it started-- That was one of our earlier-- Well, no, it was later, because-- But at this time we were really interested in baseball. We were playing baseball. And Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier and was playing with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Well, we didn't have a major league team in Kansas City, and the only time we wanted to listen to the radio was when the Brooklyn Dodgers would come to play in the town that was the nearest we had to a big league game, which was St. Louis.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: And we could barely-- If we manipulated everything just right we could pick up the radio signal from WMOX in St. Louis. And Harry Carey was the broadcaster, the late Harry Carey. We could pick it up, and it would fade in and fade out. But we would sit there in rapt attention. We'd make everybody else be quiet so we could hear and see what Jackie Robinson--and of course later Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe--was doing. We really got caught up in that. We didn't pay very much attention to any sports other than the local teams, which were the University of Missouri and KU [University of Kansas]--especially Kansas University and K[ansas] State [University], because at that time African Americans couldn't attend the University of Missouri. So it was not-- MU [University of Missouri] was not a bigtime favorite among blacks.

WHITE: Of course not.

McCORMICK: But Kansas, where you could go, was a big-time favorite. In those years we always wanted KU to beat MU.

WHITE: Inevitably.

McCORMICK: Inevitably. Or Kansas State.

WHITE: And did they often meet?

McCORMICK: Yeah, they did. They had a number of successes against the University of Missouri. But it didn't matter, because the conference was the Big Eight at the time, and the team that absolutely dominated the conference year in and year out was the University of Oklahoma. They were one of the nation's powerhouses, but they won the Big Eight championship ten straight years during that period.

WHITE: It seems as though radio really sparked an interest in you in a number of different areas: drama to a certain extent, sports, baseball, as well as the broadcasting. The radio announcers, they really sparked interest for you. So it really made a huge difference in your life, I would imagine, in retrospect.

McCORMICK: It did, despite some things that were going on that were kind of endemic to the black community then. And I'm sorry to say--I've been hearing lately-- that it still exists to some extent. I cultivated that interest in speaking and in the spoken word and in doing it skillfully despite the fact that I was criticized by a number of my classmates and good friends at the time for--to use the expression they used back then--for "talking proper" and for trying to sound like I was white. And that puzzled me, hurt me, because I had an idea back then that people who communicated well had a chance of doing pretty well in life. But I hear, disturbingly, that that kind of thing still goes on.

WHITE: It certainly does. It still exists. My nieces and nephews in school, they still have to deal with that same sort of backlash, so to speak.

McCORMICK: Yeah, it's really sad.

WHITE: If they speak properly or speak English clearly you're ridiculed for it, because it's-- I guess culturally speaking it removes one, I suppose, from their cultural background. And there is an impression that they're trying to emulate another, you know, which is quite puzzling.

McCORMICK: Yeah, it is puzzling, and it's dismaying. Despite the fact there are obvious examples, certainly far more examples for young people today than we had back then, that communicating well and speaking English well is the pathway to success, with all these sports announcers that we see on TV, African American, and African American newscasters. Even the people in the sitcoms for the most part are well-spoken. You would think that that would have disappeared.

WHITE: Absolutely, but it still carries forward.

McCORMICK: Yeah.

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
SEPTEMBER 1, 1998

WHITE: At the end of our last interview we were talking about how you had cultivated the interest in the spoken word and that, despite some criticism received from classmates who viewed your strong command of the English language as talking "proper" and/or trying to sound "white"-- I certainly do want to talk about that in a little bit more detail, but before we do that I'd like to go back and revisit a couple of things from our interview just to clarify a few things, if that's okay. The first thing I wanted to find out is that-- You indicated that though you are officially named Lawrence McCormick--that is your birth name--you were often referred to as "Junior." My first question is, is your father actually referred to as Lawrence McCormick I or Lawrence McCormick II?

McCORMICK: Actually just Lawrence W. McCormick Sr. early on in my life, and then after I changed my name to Larry it was just Reverend L.W. McCormick. Actually, as I think I explained before, I'm really Lawrence W. McCormick III. My father was Lawrence W. McCormick, and his father was Lawrence W. McCormick, but they never really used "II" or "III". Only with me did it become "Junior," and that's why they call me "Junior," because by this time my grandfather, Lawrence W. McCormick I, had long since passed on, since my father was a very young person.

WHITE: Okay, that clarifies it. Now, is your name in fact Lawrence? Or is it Larry? Is it just a stage name? Can you expound upon that, please?

McCORMICK: Legally my name is Larry. It's been Larry almost ever since I've been in radio, especially. I was still Lawrence when I was in college and I was in the theater, local theater around Kansas City, Missouri. But certainly after I got into radio I changed it legally to Larry McCormick, because it was more euphonious; it sounded less formal for a radio personality. So that's when all of my documents, every document I have, credit cards, all kinds of I.D. [identification], except my Social Security card, say Larry W. McCormick. Insurance papers, contracts, everything else is Larry W. McCormick, except my insurance card. And I think my draft card also says Lawrence McCormick.

WHITE: Really? Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. On another note, at a certain point during our interview you indicated that your father had been an assistant minister at a number of different churches including Thirty-fifth Street Baptist Church. We then later discussed the fact that he got his pastorate at Mount Zion Baptist Church. We also talked about his getting his pastorate at Saint John's Baptist Church, and that was later on, towards the end of his career. So I wondered if you could clarify where he actually received his pastorate. Was it at Mount Zion Baptist Church? Or was it at Saint John's Baptist Church, to your recollection?

McCORMICK: It was at Saint John's Baptist Church. And that would have had to have been-- Let's see, if my memory serves me correctly-- I might have to call my brother Tommy [Thomas F. McCormick] and have him refresh me on this. It was around the time I was a sophomore in high school, so that would have been around 1947 or '48 that he finally got his own church in Kansas City. The other in Odessa, we went every other Sunday-- And though in titular fashion he was the pastor, this was his first real church where he was the minister, at Saint John's Baptist in Kansas City.

WHITE: Is this the one where you and the family would drive thirty-eight miles?

McCORMICK: No, that was Odessa. That was Mount Zion in Odessa.

WHITE: Okay. Thank you for that. On another note, we were discussing how sporting events, particularly baseball, had become very popular on radio, and that you and your brother Tommy had really developed an interest in baseball. This was at a time when Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier. And you indicated that Kansas City didn't have a major league team, so you would listen to the radio when the Brooklyn Dodgers would come to play in St. Louis. I wanted to find out about the Kansas City Monarchs. Did you have the opportunity to watch them?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. The Kansas City Monarchs were a part of what we called the old Negro leagues--they still call them the old Negro leagues--which were comprised of all-black baseball teams from all around the country. There were twelve or fourteen of them with some very good players, including the Kansas City Monarchs, the Birmingham Black Barons, the Baltimore Elite Giants, the Indianapolis Clowns, the Memphis Blues. They were triple-A quality or better, triple-A being the first step down from the major leagues. Many of them had major league talent, and they only had the opportunity to prove it in the off-season, when they would barnstorm and play against white all-stars from major leagues, because at that time baseball players didn't make a whole lot of money, so they had to supplement their income by touring. When the regular season ended they would barnstorm at cities all over the country, especially cities that didn't have major league teams and had never seen them. And in many of those cases they would play against all-black teams comprised of people like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. And a lot of times they would get beat. So we knew for absolute sure that the black guys could play at a major league level. But it was just that ownership at that time just didn't include the black fan or the black player.

WHITE: Right, absolutely. So this phrase "barnstorm," it means just that the teams would go around to different communities and--?

McCORMICK: Yeah, just get on the bus or the train.

WHITE: And storm the barns, so to speak?

McCORMICK: Well, they call them barnstorming because most of the games were played in agricultural settings and baseball fields in small towns that were usually on the edge of a farm, because it was the only level place to play. And you had a screen at the backstop, a few seats, and maybe even a few bleachers on the first and third base sides. And that's where you played. I remember a lot of the small towns that we played in around Kansas City were still like that even when I played. You didn't hit the ball over the fence. If you hit a ball that went over the outfielder's head it went into the cornfield, and he had to go find it.

WHITE: Oh, no!

McCORMICK: So it was usually-- You know, the barn was a place where they stored the refreshments and sold the sandwiches, the hot dogs and stuff like that. But literally that's why they called it barnstorming, because they would go from farm to farm, small town to small town, on these buses and play each other to supplement their income.

WHITE: Fascinating. Okay. On another note, we had talked a bit about your mother [Laura Lee Lankford McCormick] and that she had attended Western Baptist Seminary, which is of course where she met your father, and they later wed, of course. You also mentioned that she had a beautiful singing voice and that she was later a member of the choir. Now, in my research, looking through some of your documentation, there has been an indication that she at a certain point in her life had been a music director at the church. I wondered if you could expound upon that. Was she involved in the choir or worked to facilitate that process?

McCORMICK: She was a wonderful vocalist. She had a beautiful soprano voice, and she was a wonderful pianist. She gave piano lessons to other kids in the neighborhood, which was an irony, because of the eight of us only one of us could play the piano. There was always a piano in the house, and I guess we took it for granted. It was always there, and we never took lessons. But she was the choir director at Thirty-fifth Street Baptist when my dad was an assistant pastor there. And then, of course, when my dad got his own pastorate she was the music director and the choir director until she passed away.

WHITE: Oh, okay.

McCORMICK: She conducted, she rehearsed the choir, she accompanied them on the piano or organ, and sang lead. She was a wonderful musician. On many occasions when the great Mahalia Jackson would come to town, if for whatever reason Mahalia's regular accompanist couldn't be with her she would call Mom, and Mom would go-- Usually her appearances were at the very large churches, and my mom would accompany her for her local concerts.

WHITE: Wow. What an opportunity that must have been!

McCORMICK: And she enjoyed that. She tells the story about the fact, when she was sixteen, seventeen years old, singing at this huge African American church in Kansas City, St. Stephen's Baptist Church, and she was invited by an opera singer by the name of Lillian Ivanti to join her troupe because she had such a beautiful soprano voice. And her mom would not let her go because she thought show business-- There were too many temptations, and it was the devil's work, and it was a place a young girl could get in trouble. So she probably missed a great opportunity there. But that's the kind of voice she had--a beautiful, wonderful soprano with great range, clear. She was quite something, really special.

WHITE: It sounds like she was quite talented indeed.

McCORMICK: She was. Extremely talented.

WHITE: The kinds of opportunities that that would have presented to her would have changed her life tremendously, and I'm sure yours as well.

McCORMICK: Yeah. I might not be here, as a matter of fact.

WHITE: Exactly. [mutual laughter] Exactly so. Well, thank you for clarifying those couple of things. We can now continue to move forward in our interview. Again, I do want to bring up the issue of your receiving some criticism from your classmates and things like that about your interest in the spoken word. But just to begin that process, I would like to talk about your education, particularly in primary school, and would like it if we could start there. First of all, can you tell me how old you were when you started primary school?

McCORMICK: I started primary school-- I had to get special permission. My mom was a good friend of my elementary school principal, Daisy Trice Adams, and because I would not have been five years old until that February my mom wanted to start me to school that previous September, which would have made me four years and seven months [old] or something like that. And they would only do that if they had got special permission, which they did. So I started grade school at four and finished high school at-- I skipped the second grade, went from the first to the third, because they seemed to think that I was progressing that rapidly. So I never went to the second grade, I never went to the eighth grade. So when I graduated from high school I was two years younger than all the kids I grew up with.

WHITE: Wow. Fifteen or so.

McCORMICK: I was fifteen, that's right.

WHITE: That's exceptional. Okay. Well, tell me, what type of school did you attend?

McCORMICK: Well, Kansas City at that time had a rigidly segregated educational system. So I went to [Paul Laurence] Dunbar Elementary School, named obviously after the great Paul Laurence Dunbar. And it was in a rather poor but friendly and warm community in Kansas City known as Leeds--all-black community, all-black school, all-black teachers. Probably 250 or so enrolled in the school, not very large, but all 250 were friends and neighbors. It was a school that we lived very close to, just a couple of blocks from--in one case we moved even a block away from--and we always walked to school. We could even wait until five minutes before the bell and dash across the playground and be in class. But that was especially important for us to live that close to school on those terribly, terribly snowy winter days when the snow was up to your hips and knowing that you only had fifty yards to get inside the school doors compared to kids who lived six, eight, ten blocks away and had to walk.

WHITE: That's certainly convenient. Now, you indicated that the school building was rather small and had sort of an intimate setting. Was it just one classroom? Or were there multiple classrooms?

McCORMICK: No, there were multiple classrooms.

WHITE: One classroom per grade level? That kind of situation?

McCORMICK: Each grade level had its own classroom. There was a kindergarten, and then the first grade had its own room, and the second, etc., etc., etc. So one room for each class. And then there was a separate room for the boys to take shop, as they called it then--woodwork and that kind of stuff. And for the girls-- To show you how rigidly segregated things were, all the boys took shop, all the girls took home ec., home economics, and had to learn how to make mayonnaise and cook and do all of that stuff, and there was the separate room for that. We didn't have a cafeteria at Dunbar. Everybody just ate their lunch in the classroom, or they-- We all lived so close, a lot of kids just went home for lunch. We often just went home for lunch. But there was no lunchroom. There were cloak rooms. Everybody at least had to have cloak rooms, because when you got to school you had these fur caps on and scarves and overcoats, sweaters, and galoshes, which were the rubber boots that we used to wear in the cold weather, and all that stuff had to be put in the cloak room, which is usually in the back of the room. You had to practically undress. And then when school was out and you got ready to go home you had to practically dress again.

WHITE: It's a huge effort. Layer upon layer of clothing.

McCORMICK: Layer upon layer. Ear muffs, scarves-- That cold, as I think back about it now, it was not easy to deal with. The wind was blowing and was icy. You needed all those layers of clothes. They really protected you. But it complicated life a little bit, as I think back about it now, because that's something that kids in L.A. don't even have to think about.

WHITE: Not at all.

McCORMICK: I don't think there are any cloak rooms in any schools in L.A.

WHITE: No, it's a rarity. It's a rarity actually to find one. I don't recall having one in my school. No, there just isn't the need for it. Yeah, the conditions are so much more harsh, obviously, and there's so much more to think about in the morning.

McCORMICK: There is.

WHITE: How many layers you'll put on and if you're going to be adequately dressed.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah.

WHITE: So lots of things that kids these days don't even have to ponder.

McCORMICK: They don't have to worry about it at all.

WHITE: Not at all. Okay. So, now, there was only one school, elementary school, in Leeds, correct?

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: Or only one school that would allow African Americans to attend?

McCORMICK: Only one for African Americans. There were two others in the white section of Leeds, which was across the river, across the bridge. Now, there were two others over there, but the thought never even occurred to us to even look at those schools.

WHITE: Well, you mentioned the river and the bridge. Was that sort of the delineation between the two communities?

McCORMICK: It was kind of the point of demarcation between the white community and the black community. It took the place, I guess, as happened in other towns, of the railroad track.

WHITE: Right. That was my point.

McCORMICK: Across the river was where all the amenities were, where the stores were, where the post office was. The bank and all those things were in the business section across the river. The fire station. I remember so many times going to get stamps and other things, all of us, all the kids in the neighborhood running errands across the bridge, across the Blue River, over to the post office or anywhere else where they needed something that wasn't available in our neighborhood.

WHITE: Very interesting. In a [biographical] sketch written while you were working at KFWB radio station in Los Angeles in 1964 it states that when you were growing up in Kansas City you were informally known as a "whiz kid," and that you did skip a number of years of grammar school, which you did mention just a moment ago. Can you tell me if in fact you remember being referred to as the "whiz kid"?

McCORMICK: By some people, especially some doting members of my father's church. I was the oldest of the eight and the oldest was always kind of looked up to. And people--the sisters and the brothers in the church--would always say, "You've got to set an example for the others" and all that kind of thing. And they kind of called me a whiz kid. Some of my classmates thought I was particularly bright. I happened to think there were two or three other of my classmates, all girls and one other guy who later became a Kansas City police detective [Alvin Brooks], who were exceedingly bright and did very well in school later on. But I kind of had some respect for being fond of books, of education, of reading, of information. And I also--just by virtue of being the oldest of the eight-- In the Baptist Church there are periodic programs you have for the holidays all through the year, particularly Mother's Day, Father's Day, Children's Day, Christmas, of course, and Easter. And kids in Baptist churches and other churches too put on little pageants and say little poems and do little plays and all that kind of thing, particularly for those holidays and those events and those occasions. And being the oldest I always got the longest poem. I always got the longest speech to memorize. And that, when I thought back about it, was really the germination of my interest in speaking. I learned, discovered, that I had a little skill there that I could nourish, and that's what I started to do. Pretty soon I looked forward to the poems. And of course, one of the things that it helps you do, especially if you're going to go into drama, which I did sophomore year in high school-- Memorizing the lines to plays, of course, is a skill and something that's not easy to do. Today it's not easy to do. And that skill, how to do it, devising my own technique for doing it, had already been developed by the time I got to high school because of all those church plays over all those years of learning, of committing to memory some kind of system, device, some kind of system for visualizing the lines and the copy from the page as I spoke them. And then, of course, after practicing and everything, to say them with greater expression and more feeling and all that kind of thing. So that's really, I guess, almost where you could say it started.

WHITE: That's interesting how church was sort of the impetus for you to hone your skills in that area.

McCORMICK: Church has been the great developer of talent for African Americans ever since our people were brought over here on the slave ships. It's developed most of our great leaders, our great speakers. Our most learned people in the early years came out of the church. One of the things that people may not think very much about regarding church is starting at a very early age in Sunday school, when you're five, six, seven years old, you're asked by your Sunday school teacher to read scriptures in the Bible. Well, that's education. That's reading. And in many cases you're really reading Middle Eastern names that are not very easy to pronounce.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: So by the time you're fifteen, sixteen years old, not even because of school, because of church, you become a pretty good reader. If you read well enough to read the Bible you're a pretty good reader.

WHITE: Absolutely. And of course, there have been a number of studies that indicate that the more one reads, the more effectively one is able to write and just to communicate in general. So that's certainly a good forum for that. I'm sure a lot of people never think of it as such, and a lot of young people sort of-- They don't always look forward to going to Sunday school, I guess, after having been in school five days a week and then on Sundays when perhaps they want to rest. But it certainly does have some strong, strong points.

McCORMICK: Oh, some very strong points.

WHITE: Excellent reasons for young people to be there.

McCORMICK: So much of our leadership, so much of the leading cadre of African Americans, whether they're singers, entertainers, even lawyers, got their basic skills in church. So many of our elected political officials came out of church, and almost all of our great entertainers came out of church. That's true in many cultures but not all. But that's been the nourishing ground for a whole lot of what there is about African Americans.

WHITE: Absolutely. It serves as a real strong social center, you know, just religion in general.

McCORMICK: Yeah. For many, many years the church was the social center. Sunday morning at eleven o'clock, that was when everybody dressed up, put on their good clothes, and went to see everybody else and to socialize as much as to worship. But it was a tremendous reservoir of learning about all kinds of things. And then you learned about all kinds of things from the speeches and the sermons that the ministers gave. A lot of it in many cases was fire and brimstone, but a lot of it was information, historical information that came from the Bible and certainly promulgated one point of view, but it was information that you didn't get anywhere else.

WHITE: Absolutely. It's important to take things in as information and adjust it and use it accordingly.

McCORMICK: And then later in life you decide how much of that you want to accept and how much you want to reject, but at least it's better than having nothing.

WHITE: Exactly. It sets the foundation. Exactly. So other than Sunday school, did you go to Bible class? Or were you involved in the choir? You said you were involved with the drama program there at church, but--

McCORMICK: I was in the junior choir. Almost every black church has a junior choir, a young adult choir, and a senior choir, and sometimes they have-- They call it the mass choir when everybody sings together. I was in the junior choir until I was twelve or thirteen, and then I became a member of the usher board. And that really was how I functioned in my father's church for almost the rest of the time I was in church, as a member of the usher board, president of the usher board. And I felt I fulfilled a particularly important role, because it was not only to take guest ministers and others to their seats when they came in but to conduct people as they came in to sections of the church where there were seats available, to make sure that in those unair- conditioned churches back then that everybody had fans. They would get the little funeral home fans that the funeral homes donate with the advertising on them.

WHITE: I remember those.

McCORMICK: And if anybody was in distress from the heat or from getting too filled with the spirit, you had to go and assist them, get them water, cool them off. Just in general be on call for any purpose that you're needed kind of thing. And of course, there was always the collection, and you conducted which section would stand and go by the collection plate, and then the next section, and kind of took care of all that. And I kind of liked that. It also gave me the chance-- The ushers usually stationed themselves at the rear of the church where they could see if anybody was having a problem, when they had a good overview of the entire congregation. But on those nights when you hadn't had enough sleep, the ushers could also inconspicuously grab a few winks, you know, sitting in the back, and you would hope nothing big-time happens. So while the choir is singing or the minister was preaching-- You weren't that clearly in view; there was a way that you could position yourself so that you weren't conspicuous.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: And I remember I took--especially after I got to be eighteen, nineteen years old and was staying out a little later--advantage of that on more than one occasion. When it would get quiet-- Especially in the warmer months it was warm, and there was just beautiful music, and you get in this comfortable seat, and you just couldn't keep your eyes open.

WHITE: Relaxing.

McCORMICK: So I'd have one of the other ushers--there were usually four to six of us--keep an eye out for me, just nudge me if anything happened where they need my services.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness! Of all the people to get caught catching a few winks in church, that would have been--

McCORMICK: The minister's son.

WHITE: Yeah, the minister's son. That would have been something to talk about. Okay. So a lot of things in church obviously helped to groom you in a number of different areas, helped you to hone your skills, develop some different skills in a variety of ways--the sheer responsibility of being on the usher board and those kinds of things as a young teenager.

McCORMICK: And the speeches and things-- And remember, all these speeches--the Easter, Christmas, Father's Day, Mother's Day, Children's Day--were delivered before the full church, in the full congregation.

WHITE: Right. Quite an audience.

McCORMICK: So by the time I got to high school and actually started taking drama classes I was not intimidated by an adult audience at all, because I had done that over and over again. My kids often ask me--not just my kids, other people--"Don't you get nervous when you get up there to emcee a program or on the air?" And I tell them, "No, I've long since gotten over that." The only time that me or anybody else might get a little nervous, people who do this regularly, is when you really don't know what you're going to do or what you're going to say.

WHITE: Right. That can be very intimidating.

McCORMICK: As long as you have some idea of what you're supposed to do and what you're going to do there is no stage fright. Not for me. I remember the great Russian dramatist Stanislavsky said that the time the artist performs the best is when he or she is least aware of himself and you're into what you're doing.

WHITE: Absolutely.

McCORMICK: And there's no fear, no nervousness, no anything. No matter who's in the audience or how big it is or how important it is, you just do it.

WHITE: Absolutely. Move into full character.

McCORMICK: Yeah. Unless you don't know what you're going to do. That could be--

WHITE: Very intimidating. We were just talking about how it builds character for one in the church and the different skills that one acquires.

McCORMICK: The skills one acquires-- I think I would really like to see more and more and more young African Americans today attend church no matter what the religion is, the primary reason being that this life doesn't come with an instruction manual, and you have to get your moral base from somewhere. For us it was the church. We got the moral foundation of what was right and what was wrong, what was good and what was bad, about how one should comport one's life with regard to other people, loved ones, family. And I see many, many young people whom I really think are not so much immoral today as they are amoral. They don't have a set of rules by which they feel compelled to live because they've never been given any. This doesn't come by osmosis, by magic. Somebody has to kind of tell you at some point in life what the general rules are.

WHITE: Absolutely, instill those values in you.

McCORMICK: Instill those values in you, tell you a little bit about what the social contract is that brings peace between various groups and individuals not only in the country or a city but in almost any given setting. And nobody has ever told them that or they've not had that inculcated into their thinking, into their being. So I think the church and religion generally serve a great purpose in our lives in that respect, because we did get a moral foundation from that. And I think only the people who are morally bankrupt are the ones who get that moral foundation and then violate it. That's what Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] used to say all the time. He bet people knew right from wrong but they were morally bankrupt, because even knowing right from wrong they did wrong.

WHITE: Right. Therein lies the dilemma.

McCORMICK: Spike Lee says-- You know, there is another succinct and basic statement of morality, [and it] is "do the right thing." But you have to know what the right thing is. Somebody has to tell you what it is.

WHITE: That's true. Someone has to tell you. Someone has to tell you at an early age so you can digest it and live your life by those rules.

McCORMICK: That's right.

WHITE: Very important. Okay, well, back to your primary schooling. We had digressed a bit and talked somewhat about church and some of the things you learned and how it sort of propelled you, I guess, in certain academic disciplines to sort of move ahead of your classmates. Did you ever feel as though the work was easy? Were you ever bored? Do you recall feeling bored in the classroom? This is before you were skipped a grade.

McCORMICK: No, to me it was exciting. It was very exciting. I had this thirst for knowledge. I could remember losing myself in thought when I'd read the books on geography, adventures-- And it would be years before I could even think about having the experiences that they actually had, but it would get the imagination really going and working and thinking. And it was exciting. The only thing I found-- Well, even some of the early math through elementary school I found very exciting. Later on math and science subjects didn't appeal that much to me, and I found them boring. The arts, the humanities, always I found interesting, invigorating, challenging. And of course that's ultimately the direction I kind of went in, the arts and humanities.

WHITE: Of course.

McCORMICK: But physical science and trig and all that stuff, all those things I just didn't-- I didn't care that much about them, and frankly I didn't do that well at them.

WHITE: Okay, sure. Now, were there any teachers in your primary school that influenced in a profound way?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Mrs. McCoy, my sixth grade teacher, who seemed to-- I guess it's a skill that teachers develop. You know how you see a celebrity on stage and everybody in the audience swears that the celebrity is talking directly to them?

WHITE: Right. Of course.

McCORMICK: Well, I always had the feeling that Mrs. McCoy was talking directly to me. And she and the woman who was another teacher and who was also the principal, Mrs. Daisy Trice [Adams], also had that profound effect on me. They made me feel that I either was something a little special or could be something special. And they followed my career for a number of years--Mrs. Trice until she died in her nineties about two or three years ago.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: She had a profound impact. But she did tell me when I left Dunbar Elementary--she was the one who had been instrumental in my skipping the other grades--that she thought I was special and she didn't want me to disappoint her and that she wanted me to do something very good with my life. And she kind of followed my career. And I exchanged letters with her over the years and finally-- She had been very ill and was in a rest home in Kansas City, and I wrote her a long letter telling her about the profound effect she had had on me and how she-- Every time I thought about getting discouraged or failing I remembered what she had said and the hopes that she had for me. So she had a profound effect. And then the other absolutely profound effect was when I was in high school, my drama teacher, Dr. J.O. Morrison. He really brought it all out about what you can do with your instrument and the skills that you have and all that kind of thing. And he gave me the lead in I think every play from the sophomore-- You know, there was always the spring play and the winter play, fall play, and he gave me the lead in play after play after play and held me up as an example to the other students. And then, later on, there was a drama group formed in the community, not of school kids but of adult actors, called the J.O. Morrison Little Theater Group. And they were the ones who gave me my scholarships-- If not for them-- And I also was in plays with them. But J.O. Morrison had a profound effect and was a wonderful, wonderful teacher and a tremendous inspiration. Those three I think more than any others, although there were a lot of good teachers. Dr. Gerard T. Bryant, who was a teacher and a viceprincipal.

WHITE: At what level?

McCORMICK: At Lincoln High [School], and then Lincoln Junior College. He was vice-principal of the high school, and he had this booming voice, and he also had this tremendous command, a sense of command, and also demanded the best of you and admonished you not to disappoint teachers. We had wonderful teachers. It was explained to us later on by Dr. Bryant that because of the segregated system, because talented black teachers couldn't teach anywhere else, we had the cream of the crop. We probably had the best faculty in Kansas City. We had teachers from Yale [University] and Harvard [University] and the University of Chicago. It was years before I thought back about that. My classmates and I, whenever we would get together-- Was it our imagination? Or did we have some really good teachers? Dr. Bryant told us years ago when he moved out here and retired, "No, you had really good teachers, because they didn't have any other choice."

WHITE: It's so wonderful that in your life in the educational system that can really help you to maximize your potential, to see something in you and really help you to groom that.

McCORMICK: You know, Renee, I think that is one of the important things--in fact, I know that's one of the important things--about the historically black colleges in the United States today. The faculties in those colleges by and large take very personal interest in each individual student. If you fail they feel like they failed. You really don't get that at other major institutions unless you're some kind of whiz kid whom the university sees as being able to benefit them somewhere down the line.

WHITE: Exactly, some special talent.

McCORMICK: It's such a nourishing atmosphere. I don't want to sound like I'm championing segregated school systems, because I think you have to deal with all the other people in the world. So the more you're exposed to them at an earlier age I think the better you're able to deal with all the different kinds of people you're going to have to deal with in life. At the same time, it's undeniable that in the segregated school systems--except for the fact that we often got inferior supplies and things like that, we didn't really get our share of the money--

WHITE: Right, the resources were limited.

McCORMICK: Resources. But the teachers, the faculty, were much more nourishing and took much more of an individual interest in each and every student.

WHITE: That certainly is the up side, one of the up sides.

McCORMICK: That's one of the up sides. No doubt about that.

WHITE: Well, tell me, now, when you were skipped to-- You skipped the second grade, went to the third grade. Do you recall any of the students teasing or treating you as a youngster or what have you or "How is it that you were able to get into our class?" Any sort of things like that from the other students?

McCORMICK: I don't really remember anybody making any big deal out of it. I was in the first grade, and then the next year suddenly there I was in the third grade. Some did express a little surprise. As I said, each grade had its room. "You're in this room this year? You didn't go to Room 2?" That was literally the way-- Room 1 was first grade, Room 2, etc. I said, "No. No, I didn't." But nobody said anything.

WHITE: Well, that's good. These days it would probably be different, you know. Kids would always want to know, "Why is it that you got a chance to skip the second grade?" Then, too, it was more of a close-knit community, I would imagine. Most of the kids from the same neighborhood and families knew one another.

McCORMICK: And all of us knew all the teachers.

WHITE: Right, you knew the teachers.

McCORMICK: No, nobody made any really big deal of it.

WHITE: You mentioned a moment ago that it never dawned on you to think about going to any of the other schools, obviously because of the segregation. Do you recall it feeling limiting in any way, the fact that you had to go to this one school and there wasn't an option for you to, say, go across the river or the bridge to venture to these other schools?

McCORMICK: No. We were aware of the fact, obviously, that we were going to an all-black school, that we were passing a number of other schools on the way to this all-black school, but that our parents did too, and our grandparents did too. And we had traditions. My dad and mom went to R.T. Coles [High School]. My dad helped build Lincoln High School. There was only one; it was just R.T. Coles before that. But we had these traditions that we followed from year to year to year. Probably faculty and other black educators were painfully aware of the segregated system, although it guaranteed them jobs and a place to work, but we weren't as painfully aware of going to segregated systems as one might imagine. We just weren't. It was just the course of life. And the only time we interacted with the white kids anyway was in ROTC [Reserve Officers Training Corps] on these field days, when all the units from all the schools participated in this one big show at some big auditorium or actually sometimes out in the military field before an audience, and we'd strut our stuff and-- That's the only time we interacted. We didn't play them in basketball, we didn't play them in football, compete against them in track. We just didn't interact with the kids at the other schools. It was almost like two different worlds. It was two different worlds.

WHITE: Absolutely, absolutely. Of course, you wouldn't miss something that you didn't know, and who's to say that that experience would have been any better or worse or what have you? You just felt enriched and comfortable in the atmosphere in which you were in.

McCORMICK: Yeah. We were in a very fulfilling atmosphere, and we just didn't really-- There was really hardly any association socially between blacks and whites until around the time I left there. There were a few nightclubs where whites and blacks went to hear some of the major black acts, although blacks couldn't attend any of the major white clubs where only whites appeared. But places like the Orchid Room and the Blue Room, when Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, people like that-- They were in the black community, and half the audience would always be white and felt very comfortable with it. Of course, the clubs were owned by whites too.

WHITE: Right, so naturally they would be the patrons there as well.

McCORMICK: But other than that, we really didn't have-- Churches didn't interact with each other, black and white churches. I guess I was a senior in high school before we finally started to play little pickup games in the summertime--football--with the white kids across the river. But that had nothing to do with the schools or anything; this was just pickup games. We got together among ourselves. And we got along okay. Later on, when I was playing semipro baseball, we played a lot of white teams, but there was no interaction. You know, we'd arrive and say hello, shake hands, play the game, we're gone. There wasn't much interaction at all.

WHITE: Okay. Quite interesting. Well, I do want to proceed to your secondary school, but before doing that I'd like to digress a bit and talk a bit about your siblings. Because I know, of course, that your siblings, particularly your brother Tommy, who is, I guess-- You guys are eighteen months apart in age. He would have been involved in the same school and in some of the same activities. So I wondered if we could talk a little bit about your siblings. Can you tell me about your sisters and brothers, their names and their ages?

McCORMICK: Okay. Their ages I'll have to figure out by a process of deduction, just remembering how much younger somebody is than me. Tommy is the second-- I'm the oldest of the eight. Tommy's eighteen months younger than I am. We could say basically that the others are about two years apart, because I can't remember exactly. The next one is Captolia [McCormick Donahue]; she's the oldest girl.

WHITE: Captolia?

McCORMICK: Captolia. But we have always called her Toby for short. She was named for an aunt. Thomas was named for a great-uncle. And after Captolia is Dorothy Jean [McCormick Boyd]. We call her D.J. D.J. was named after a very, very good friend of my mom's who belonged to Thirty-fifth Street Baptist Church whose name was Dorothy. And then Rosena [McCormick Lindsay], who is not really named for anybody. And then Auretta [McCormick McGee], who was not really named for anybody. And then Charles [E. McCormick], the youngest brother, who was named for an uncle. And then Laura [Mae McCormick Mitchell], the baby daughter, who was named for my mom. And there are about two years between each one.

WHITE: They were all born in Kansas City.

McCORMICK: All in Kansas City.

WHITE: Now, did they attend the same schools as you attended?

McCORMICK: Yes. They attended the same schools until you get to Charles. By that time the Kansas City school system had integrated and that same Central High School that we used to pass on the bus every day-- He was one of the basketball stars at Central High School. [laughs]

WHITE: Isn't that interesting?

McCORMICK: That's the way things change. But other than that, all of them, Dunbar Elementary, R.T. Coles, Lincoln High.

WHITE: So you and Tommy were two grades apart, as well, until you got skipped, and at that point there were three grades. And then Captolia--is that correct?--

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: --she would have been in school at the same time. And Dorothy Jean, as well?

McCORMICK: And Dorothy Jean.

WHITE: By the time Auretta came to elementary school you would have gone on to secondary school.

McCORMICK: Right.

WHITE: Tell me, do they currently have children?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. I'd have to go get my book, because I have to jog my memory to get all the group names. But I probably have, between the seven of them-- I'm sure I must have twenty-five--

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
SEPTEMBER 1, 1998

WHITE: We were speaking about the children of Mr. McCormick's siblings.

McCORMICK: Okay. Tommy had two children by his first wife, whose name was Rosetta [Ward McCormick], who passed away, Thomas [McCormick] Jr. and Katherine [McCormick]. We call them Rusty and Kat. Tommy is now married to Cleo [Buford McCormick], who is also a longtime member of the church. Toby and Leon Donahue--Leon is also deceased--had Cassandra [Donahue], Eric [Donahue], Marjorie [Donahue], Deanna [Donahue], and LaDonna [Donahue]. Auretta and James McGee had baby Jimmy, James [McGee Jr.]--he's in the military; Virgil [McGee]; Teresa [McGee]--we also call her Missy; and Lauretta. She's got four grandchildren. Rosena and James Lindsay had James [Lindsay] Jr., whom we call Jay; Darrel [Lindsay]; Terry [Lindsay]; Stephen [Lindsay]; Lora [Lindsay], and then she has grandchildren. Laura Mae [McCormick Mitchell] had Edward [Mitchell], "Doc"; "Ticky" [Charlotte Mitchell]; and Dana [Mitchell]. And then Charles and Marian [Draffin McCormick] had Camille [McCormick Lewis] and Marland [McCormick]. Dorothy Jean had Dorita [Boyd] and Albert [Boyd] and Drachelle [Boyd], who has a grandchild. I've never even stopped to count them. There were fifty-three when they came out for the family reunion.

WHITE: My goodness, quite a large family! That's wonderful.

McCORMICK: And that's just immediate family. There are more cousins and all those kinds of things.

WHITE: Do all of your siblings live in Kansas City at this point?

McCORMICK: Except for Charles.

WHITE: Except for Charles. And Charles lives where?

McCORMICK: He lives here in Los Angeles. He moved here in Los Angeles, being an entertainer, with the group Bloodstone. They were called the Sinceres back in Kansas City, and they moved here. I was still kind of involved in the radio business, and I told them, "You got to get a little hipper name than that." So they changed their name to Bloodstone, and they had a couple of really big hits, one called "Natural High."

WHITE: Right, I recall.

McCORMICK: He wrote that, and that's his voice, the lead singer.

WHITE: Okay.

McCORMICK: Now, in this retro period, when all the seventies groups are coming back, they're working more now than they did then. They're on the road all the time. He's the only one who lives here; everybody else still lives in Kansas City.

WHITE: Now, can you tell me about the occupations of your other siblings?

McCORMICK: Well, of course, Tommy is the minister of St. John's Baptist Church; he succeeded my dad. And the others are just housewives, hair dressers, postal clerks, just ordinary working people. And I think they all sing in the choir at church. [laughs] They call it the "McCormick Choir Plus." But they're all very talented singers. But they're pretty much average people. The husbands of my sisters-- One is a long-range truck driver. And that's the kind of job that they have, you know, just general hardworking guys.

WHITE: Now, when you were growing up, would you consider your family a very close-knit group?

McCORMICK: Oh, absolutely.

WHITE: You would.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: I know, you mentioned you and Tommy did a number of things together, obviously because of the closeness in age. But what about you and your sisters, the one next to Tommy? Would you do different things together?

McCORMICK: The things that we did with our sisters mostly had to do with church, either just family gatherings or church. But we didn't really buddy around or hang out with the girls. They kind of had their own little cliques and their own little groups and did their own thing. But Tommy and I-- You know, we hiked and we played baseball and played soldier together along with a couple of other buddies our age. Our family was tight-knit in that I can remember year after year after year, night after night after night, all of us sat down to the dinner table together. My father would ask a blessing on the food and we'd all have dinner together, year after year after year. We would sit around on the floor and listen to the radio together. Tommy and I used to make a mad dash for the-- There being no TV then, our entertainment was the radio and the comic strips in the newspaper. And we'd make a beeline for the comic strips. We did a lot of listening to the radio, did a lot of listening to gospel music, went to a lot of church events together, all of us in a group. But mostly it was Tommy and I who kind of hung out together. And later on, as we got older, Charles kind of tried to tag along, but I don't think he was ever very successful.

WHITE: He must have been--what?--six or eight years younger than you.

McCORMICK: Yeah. I think more than that, maybe ten years.

WHITE: Maybe ten years or so, okay. Now, can you tell me, as the oldest sibling, did you feel a certain protectiveness over your sisters? Or at one time did you feel as though you didn't want them to date? Or when they had suitors come around, did you--?

McCORMICK: No, by the time they had suitors I was probably involved either in college or the beginnings of my own professional life. But I was very protective early on, because that's what my mom and dad wanted me to do. Whenever they had to both be away at the same time I was in charge. So I was the protector, the disciplinarian. I never exercised it that much, but they pretty much respected me. But I was protective of them later on. I think brothers are. If anybody-- Between Tommy and I, Tommy had a little quicker temper than I did in those times. If anybody bullied them or anything like that, oh, yeah, they had to come by us. [laughs] Oh, absolutely. They had to come by us.

WHITE: I know that can be quite a challenge, to be the oldest sibling.

McCORMICK: It was just an assumption. That's what big brothers do, and that's what we did. And we had more than a few fights.

WHITE: Oh, really? Okay.

McCORMICK: No knifings. Fights at that time were so mild compared to today. Nobody ever got hurt. You might get a bloody lip or something like that, but we never took knives or chains and certainly not guns. It was just a fist fight. And then the guy that you fought-- You'd be playing horseshoes with him half an hour later or playing baseball with him. They were never long-held grudges. A lot of those guys with whom I had those battles at eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen were friends for life. They were just kids having a little scrap.

WHITE: Much more healthy way to express yourself, even if it is a bit of anger. But much more expressive and healthy in that way than the way in which--

McCORMICK: I guess the only advice or counsel we had about conflict resolution really, again, came from the church--ministers in the church, the deacons, the sisters. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It was just bad to fight, and it was uncivilized and all that kind of thing. We really didn't-- There were no gangs when we were growing up. We were all just one big group of kids who tried to find our moments of enjoyment and fulfillment in life however we could. Didn't have a lot of toys. Only one or two kids had bicycles. We would sometimes get ahold of scrap skates and make skateboards out of old orange crates, the wooden orange crates. We kind of made-- We made our own joy--pitch horseshoes, very simple things. But I look back very fondly on those years. One of the things I remember-- Except we realized that we were poor. We realized that we couldn't have a lot of the things that we saw in the catalogs--the Sears [Roebuck and Company] catalog that would come out every year, the Western Auto, the other catalogs with color pictures of these shiny toys. But we made our own joy.

WHITE: You can definitely become much more creative in that way, express yourself in a creative sort of an atmosphere, if you don't have the kind of toys and distractions that so many kids have these days. You know, that doesn't call upon that inner spirit to entertain yourself, think of things.

McCORMICK: And make your own toys. We took hammers and nails and made our skate scooters and our wagons, and even when-- Later on, when they finally let black kids take part in the soapbox derby, we made our own cars. Some of the older guys in the community would help with the wheels and things like that, but-- It did cause us to be creative and inventive, because our mothers and fathers couldn't afford to go and buy those things.

WHITE: That's right. So moving on to secondary school-- Now, Dunbar Elementary School went up to grade six. Is that correct?

McCORMICK: To grade seven.

WHITE: To grade seven. So interesting how things have changed these days.

McCORMICK: K [Kindergarten] through seven.

WHITE: Now it's K through five and middle school is six through eight, etc., etc. So you graduated from Dunbar Elementary School in the seventh grade and went on-- You skipped the eighth grade.

McCORMICK: I skipped the eighth, even though a lot of my classmates did go to the eighth. If you had a certain grade point level in Kansas City at that time you could skip the eighth grade and go right on to the ninth.

WHITE: Oh, really? It was based on your grade point average?

McCORMICK: Yeah, and your achievements. And there was a test that you took to evaluate your potential for performance at the next level. So I went straight from the seventh to the ninth grade.

WHITE: Wow, that's excellent. And what school did you attend?

McCORMICK: Lincoln. Well, first R.T. Coles. The setup then was that most freshmen went to R.T. Coles, which was the older of the high schools, for a couple of reasons: Because Lincoln would have been too crowded, and R.T. Coles was-- You could spend all four years at R.T. Coles if you wanted to. It was in a poorer section of town. Lincoln was the new school. In fact, my dad helped build Lincoln High School. As a matter of fact, it was built the year after I was born, because it was part of the WPA--the Works Progress Administration--of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he worked for them.

WHITE: Oh, really? And this is before, of course, he began working at the bakery?

McCORMICK: Yes, before he began working at the bakery, because I'd just been born. So I spent my freshman year at R.T. Coles. And it was kind of a pattern that most people established: freshman year at R.T. Coles, immediately after which you would go to what we called the "Castle on the Hill"--this brand-new, beautiful, brick high school.

WHITE: Lincoln High School.

McCORMICK: Lincoln. R.T. Coles was kind of in an industrial area and was thought of generally as the poorer cousin, especially after Lincoln High was built. So my freshman year at R.T. Coles, and then, after that, Lincoln High School.

WHITE: But one could stay at R.T. Coles for four years, you said, for the eighth grade, ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade?

McCORMICK: And twelfth. It was a full high school. But as I recall, the classes, the curriculum, at R.T. Coles was geared more-- You could get your high school diploma, but it was geared more toward occupations, toward learning how to be a mechanic or a brick mason, that kind of thing.

WHITE: Vocational-type school.

McCORMICK: You still got your education, but the kids-- They were kids who were not preparing to go to college; they were preparing to get a job. But they still got their high school diplomas. Whereas Lincoln High was really more a college prep school.

WHITE: So then, after the ninth grade you went over to Lincoln.

McCORMICK: Went to Lincoln.

WHITE: Lincoln High School. And of course, Lincoln is a public school. How far was it from your home?

McCORMICK: Lincoln High School-- Let's see, how can I--? I'd have to take first streetcars, and they eliminated streetcars. Detroit decided they could make more money by selling buses and gasoline and tires. We had a wonderful rail system in Kansas. That's typical of so many cities, including L.A. And the petroleum, automobile, and rubber industry combined to convince a lot of municipalities to go to buses.

WHITE: Of course.

McCORMICK: But I took the streetcar, and probably the distance would be from where we live right now probably to UCLA. It's a good little distance. That's why you'd pass so many schools.

WHITE: Okay. Twelve miles or so.

McCORMICK: Yeah, about twelve miles.

WHITE: Wow. So you would pass a number of different schools on your way to Lincoln High School.

McCORMICK: Pass all the little white kids going to their schools, walking to their schools. Maybe not quite that far, but far too far to walk.

WHITE: Do you recall at that point feeling sort of limited in the sense that you had to go to Lincoln High School and by the mere fact that you had to pass a number of other schools to get there?

McCORMICK: No.

WHITE: It was a little bit different at Dunbar Elementary because you were very close, so you didn't see the other schools. But did this pose any dilemma for you?

McCORMICK: No. It was something that we knew we had to do, that we did, and we didn't pay any attention to it one way or the other. We never interacted with the other kids, even the kids that were getting on the buses to go to their schools and got off to go to their schools. We just let it be.

WHITE: Continued on your merry way.

McCORMICK: Continued on our merry way, went to our school.

WHITE: Can you describe Lincoln High School? You mentioned before that it was a brick building and it sort of had the essence of being sort of up the hill. And in comparison to R.T. Coles--

McCORMICK: It was literally on a hill, on a crest where you could see it from all around the community. It was a beautiful school. It was at that time brand-new--all the classrooms, all the seats, the auditorium. It was just a gorgeous school, archetypical of the architecture of the American high school. And it was a proud school; everyone was proud of Lincoln High. We had good drama groups, good basketball teams, nice new gymnasium, new auditorium, new lights, new draperies, new rifle range for the ROTC team, new ROTC classrooms, a stage for the drama class-- It was state of the art for that time. So we were very, very proud of Lincoln High School and had some wonderful experiences there.

WHITE: Wonderful. And did it have a large library, do you recall?

McCORMICK: It did--large library, large, well-equipped carpenter shop for the guys, and, again, a large home ec. center for the girls with brand-new stoves and all that kind of stuff. But it was a great school. It was about, I think, four or five stories high. Big school.

WHITE: Oh, really? So it started at the ninth grade? Or the tenth grade?

McCORMICK: It started at the ninth.

WHITE: Was the ratio of boys to girls pretty much the same? Or did a lot of the boys tend to stay at R.T. Coles and get vocational training?

McCORMICK: Pretty much the same at Lincoln High. I would say the boys probably outnumbered girls at R.T. Coles, but at Lincoln High it was pretty much the same.

WHITE: Well, tell me a little bit about your interests once you got into secondary school. You said that you were sort of drawn to the humanities in primary school. Was that consistent? Did you have favorite classes?

McCORMICK: My favorite classes were classes in history, in art, in music appreciation, and drama, of course, speech. Math was not one of my favorite classes. Science was not one of my favorite classes. I had some interesting times and some fun in shop learning how to use different tools and how to make different things. But generally speaking my interest was in the humanities, in the arts, in history and government and how things worked and how the society worked and all that kind of thing.

WHITE: And you did, of course, discuss some teachers that had a strong influence for you at the secondary school level--J.O. Morrison.

McCORMICK: J.O. Morrison in theater. And Mr. Washington in history. He was a wonderful history teacher. Let's see, I'm trying to think of some of the other-- There was a fellow--I think he's still at college--Mr. Jeremiah Cameron, a dynamic English teacher, who had a very profound effect. And of course, Gerard T. Bryant. And the others were all good teachers. Mrs. Pennington, Mrs. Wilson, the Spanish teacher, were all good teachers but didn't really impact my life for whatever reason like the others did. The others were just memorable.

WHITE: Now, you mentioned your English teacher. I'm curious about your interest in English and public speaking and how well you may have done in those classes and to what degree those particular teachers really influenced you to really develop and hone your skills in the spoken word.

McCORMICK: J.O. Morrison, the drama teacher, of course. There was also an outstanding English teacher who whetted our interests because she was so good in the classics named Trussie Smothers. I'll never forget it. It sounded as if she was a spinster, never married. I remember it sounded so much like a spinster teacher, "Trussie Smothers." But I'm sure all my classmates remember Mrs. Smothers because she did engender in us a great appreciation of the great Greek classics and the English classics and others.

WHITE: Well, was there a particular teacher that inspired you to want to really enunciate and to really pronunciate the English words in just a precise way?

McCORMICK: Oh, Mr. Morrison.

WHITE: Mr. Morrison, of course, with drama and the creative arts, performance arts. More so there in drama than, say, in English or in public speaking?

McCORMICK: Oh, I'd say so. Absolutely. J.O. Morrison.

WHITE: Now, you've mentioned J.O. Morrison a number of times, and also you talked during a previous interview about your interest in drama and how it was sparked by the Lux Radio Theater and by some works by Cecil B. DeMille. Tell me a bit about your introduction to drama--outside of the church, of course--but once you integrated that interest in high school. Did you actually see a play? Was there a production? Or did you try out for a particular--?

McCORMICK: I read in Mr. Morrison's class-- Well, one of my classmates, Vivienne Starks-- I didn't really have an interest in it until the second semester of the ninth grade. No, it was the tenth grade, I guess, by the time I got it, because I spent the ninth grade at R.T. Coles. One of my friends, who was about a year ahead, who lived in Leeds, had told me about how much fun and how much interest and everything she found in the drama class, in J.O. Morrison's class. She said, "You ought to take that." So I did the next semester. You know, you would do readings in front of the class. And I guess he was impressed, and that's why he started giving me the leads in plays and things like that. And he was always a stickler for trying to get people out of having lazy mouths. Sometimes I talk to kids even today, when I'm talking on high school campuses or college campuses-- It's one of the things that most people are guilty of. They just don't use all the muscles and the whole instrument. They get very lazy mouths. And Mr. Morrison used to be a stickler for that, for completing all your word endings and everything properly and that kind of thing. When you concentrate on it, well, one of the things that happens is it makes people accuse you of "talking proper." [laughs] But, as I said, I'm so glad I did, because if I hadn't persisted, everything else that has happened probably wouldn't have.

WHITE: Was this actually the beginning of the students teasing, I guess, about you talking proper, trying to sound white?

McCORMICK: Well, a wider range of students, even the kids in Leeds, when I was in grade school, would sometimes accuse me of trying to talk proper. But then after, in college, when my diction came better and better and better and more pronounced, yeah, they really would speak in derisive tones about talking proper. But then, as I began to play the leads-- And being a poor kid, I didn't have the same kind of tremendous self-confidence that the other more affluent kids had at school. I was kind of laid-back and even shy. But when I started getting the leads in the plays and I started being the announcer at the assemblies, my own sense of-- Not ego, but my sense of self-confidence-- That's what really started to bring my sense of selfconfidence. And by the senior year I was one of the class leaders, because I-- I wasn't a great basketball player, I wasn't a great jock, and they weren't really aware of my playing baseball, because that was all during the summer when everybody was dispersed. Some of the guys that I went to school with, by the time we were seniors, whom I did play against, expressed surprise. They didn't know I was an athlete; they didn't know I could pitch like that. This is what really generated my sense of selfconfidence, my sense of importance, of having a place in school, when I began to be out front, on the stage, doing these things, and to get the respect and admiration of my classmates for that.

WHITE: Absolutely. You had found a nice and important niche.

McCORMICK: That's what I did. I found my niche and gained the respect, I think, of my classmates that I wouldn't have had before. Although there's nothing wrong with this, that's what kept me from being just another student and kind of put me out front.

WHITE: Propelled you into some leadership role.

McCORMICK: There was some value to speaking, to "talking proper." [laughs]

WHITE: Absolutely! Now, you mentioned being the announcer at the assemblies. How did that come about?

McCORMICK: Through Mr. Morrison, through the drama club. I'd read the announcements or things like that or read the upcoming events and then introduce the principal, who was going to make some remarks. It was very simple things like that. But it was up front.

WHITE: Up front and personal. Wonderful. Okay, now, talk to me a little bit about the other extracurricular activities that you may have been involved in. You mentioned a moment ago about sports. Of course, that occurred during the summer, and I would like to talk with you about that in a moment, but in other arenas within the school system, outside of drama and the public speaking--

McCORMICK: Actually there wasn't any. Other than that I was just another student. All my other extracurricular activities were pretty much involved with church. I held offices in the church, my dad's church, and even at Thirty-fifth Street Baptist Church before my dad got his pastorate. I was a church clerk for a while; I had to make these reports to the business meetings of the church. I was really very, very much involved in church. We all were. I would introduce the speaker when we'd visit at various other churches. I was involved with some of the organizational apparatus of the National Baptist Convention on a local basis, the district boards and things like that, and I would attend these various conferences and conventions, sometimes with my parents and sometimes, if it involved just young people in some kind of organization, I would attend. But it was pretty much involved with church.

WHITE: At that time, as far as you were aware, do you know if it was true that parents would take their children out of school as soon as the law would permit them to do so? Was it important for the oldest child of the family to go to work as quickly as they could in order to help sustain the family? Are you aware of anything such as that in your community?

McCORMICK: I'm not aware of parents actually taking their kids out of school to do that. I know some kids who did when they reached fifteen, sixteen years old, before they finished high school, who did if they could find a job, help support the family. But there was never any coercion or never any pattern that I can recall of people intentionally taking their kids out of school to do that. No, I don't think so. In fact, there was the expectation-- The principal, teachers, parents, everybody, all the adults who acted upon your life actually encouraged everybody to finish high school. I don't remember anything like that happening. I mean, it might have, or a kid might have just voluntarily said, "Well, I've got this good job, so I'm just going to bail," but there was actually every encouragement to finish high school.

WHITE: Wonderful. That's good to know, good to hear.

McCORMICK: I would say that would be the opposite of what the situation actually was.

WHITE: In my research I discovered that there was a bill called the House Visitation Act of 1911 that required at least one teacher to visit the home of every family that was represented in the school in order to study the conditions under which the student lived and studied. Do you recall having any of your teachers come to your home to visit?

McCORMICK: No. Unless they were friends of my mom's. But not for that purpose. In fact, this is the first I've ever heard of that.

WHITE: Oh, really? Okay.

McCORMICK: Most of the teachers, I'd say two-thirds of the teachers, didn't live in Leeds. They lived in the black community but not in the Leeds part of it. So the only reason they would come to the house would be if they came to visit Mom. But not as part of their duties.

WHITE: Now, what would you attribute that to, the fact that they did not live in Leeds?

McCORMICK: Because Leeds was poor, and they wanted to live in a little better neighborhood. And I think there was also-- There has been for a long time-- Even Anita [Daniels McCormick]-- I asked her about this once. I think there was a feeling among teachers that probably persists today, but probably to a lesser degree than it did back in those days, that they really didn't want to live in the same community that they taught in, because they didn't want students to become too familiar with them. They wanted to keep that kind of distance--I don't know what you'd call it--because that engendered respect. That if they saw them at the grocery store and every day out on the street and when they weren't dressed, you know, when they were just in their home clothes, that that might engender disrespect. Anita has told me before that she wouldn't want to live in the same community in which she taught for that same reason.

WHITE: Sure, you sort of lose a sense of autonomy and some privacy.

McCORMICK: I think so. So that's one of the reasons why. Because certainly many of them could have if they wanted to. One or two did, and I don't remember particularly disrespecting them for it, but I think that was the general feeling, that they wanted that separateness, so that you only saw them in the teacher role and not in the role of, you know, when they were sweeping the front porch and all that kind of stuff.

WHITE: Of course it would sort of water the boundaries a little bit there if you allow them to see that.

McCORMICK: One or two who were good friends with my mom would drop by after school and chat. But even the ones who lived in the neighborhoods would-- I guess they shopped at other places, because I don't remember seeing them in the stores or walking down the street or driving down the street or out in the community. They kind of kept that distance.

WHITE: Now, in the school setting, did the teachers often act as disciplinarians at all?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: To what degree? Can you expound upon that?

McCORMICK: To a considerable degree. Not to an abuse degree, but-- Among black students at that time, not only in Kansas City but all across the country--because I've known many other of my contemporaries who told me that this was true of the schools that they went to, too--black teachers had wooden paddles, and they used to give them names like Sammy or Johnny or whatever, and they had the absolute permission-- If they were really screwing up, if they were really misbehaving, the teacher had permission to give them two or three whacks on the behind. And sometimes they kept them right on their desk. They did! And if you got in trouble-- this is right on through the seventh grade--and had to get a couple of whacks or be sent to the principal's office to get a couple of whacks, you can be sure it was going to be reported, and you were going to get another couple of whacks when you got home.

WHITE: Oh, my!

McCORMICK: So they did it, but never more than that. Nobody ever-- There were never any beatings or anything like that. Two or three whacks on the backside, and not very hard. It was embarrassing more than anything else with these paddles. But they had these paddles, a foot long or so, almost like a Ping-Pong paddle, and they would give you some whacks with them. But nobody ever used a switch or a belt or anything like it. They had these paddles. And it was quite common.

WHITE: It certainly seems that in those days there was more of a community effort to educate a child. "It takes a village to raise a child." So tell me, to what degree were your parents involved in your education, say, when you came home from school or checking your homework, that sort of thing?

McCORMICK: Oh, absolutely. They would try to see that we did our homework and did our studies, and they were really forces in our education as much as they could be. They were very busy with a lot of church affairs, I think because my dad, in addition to being minister, also had a job. But through fatigue, through their other responsibilities, they pushed us to do our homework, absolutely. And at that time our teachers and especially the principal would not hesitate, since it wasn't a huge school district or a huge school, to call home and say, "Larry or Tommy didn't turn in his homework, and I thought you ought to know." That was a bigger threat, that we were going to get chewed out at home. So we were pretty diligent about doing our work.

WHITE: And your parents, do you recall there being any incentives to excel in school? Did you receive a certain allowance or anything of that degree? The ability to go out and do something a little bit special if you excelled in the classroom?

McCORMICK: Not really. We had the paper certificates and things in school. But there really wasn't the kind of money in our family to get any kind of monetary rewards, or in the school either, for that matter. So that really never played a part in it. Just the compliments and the honors and sometimes little certificates and things like that were about the limit of what we would get for any unusual achievement.

WHITE: Where do you feel that you most acquired the will to succeed?

McCORMICK: I think that comes from a number of sources. I think it came from the expectations of my parents, some of my teachers-- A lot of my teachers. I don't know whether this is true today, but in those days our teachers told me and my peers, men and women, that in order to achieve anything in this world-- Unfortunately--I shouldn't say unfortunately--this is really one of the only times in which race really became a considerable factor. They preached to us that "You're going to have to be twice as good as the white person to achieve the same thing. The playing field is never going to be level for you. You have to make up in your mind that when you go on to college or whatever you do, you're going to have to be twice as good as he is." I think this thinking pervaded the sentiments of athletes--the baseball players, football players. I think it still, in a sense, does, whether that message is still passed down or not. But we were always told, "You're going to have to be twice as good, so you're going to have to work twice as hard." And that's what we did, what those of us who managed to succeed in our professions did. We worked twice as hard. There had to be no doubt in the minds of a prospective employer or somebody else who was going to evaluate your ability that you're better than anybody else that they could hire, that they could consider.

WHITE: Was this the point in your life where, as an African American, you felt that there could be the potential for you to be discriminated against by the larger society?

McCORMICK: Yes. Well, it was a little bit later on, actually, because there was nothing really to discriminate against yet, because there were no opportunities. When I got to Kansas City University [now University of Missouri, Kansas City], I think that's when it really started to dawn on me what totally different worlds I and the white kids, my classmates, had lived in. I really hadn't thought about it up to that point, because there was no need to think about it. My intention and my attention was in competing against my own classmates at Lincoln High School. But in that atmosphere where there were so few of us and where you really became sharply aware that you were really different from these other kids-- I mean, these other kids have their cars and all of that kind of stuff and their nice clothes and everything. That's when it really dawns on you. I think that's when it probably really dawned on a lot of black kids, the first experience in an institution in a setting that was not all black. That's when, "Wow! There's this whole other world that I've been passing by every day and not being a part of and didn't worry about, and now suddenly I'm some kind of part of this world, or I'm supposed to be." And that's when the differences between how you were treated as compared to them come into sharper focus.

WHITE: Absolutely. Let me just ask you a few more questions about your extracurricular activities; I just wanted to go back to that for a few moments. You mentioned that Mr. J.O. Morrison offered you the lead in a number of plays. Can you tell me if you recall any particular roles that were outstanding for you or impacted you in a special way? Can you just name a couple of the roles?

McCORMICK: Well, there was one in which I played an attorney. The Night of January 16th was the name of the play. It takes place in a courtroom, and there is just reams and reams and reams of dialogue. I remember it was the hardest thing I had to do, to learn that dialogue. Because it was all in courtrooms and cross-examination and these speeches and all that kind of stuff. And that was one of the hardest that I had to learn under J.O. Morrison. There was some other, more difficult ones when I went to the Kansas City University and took part there. And then at the Jewish Community Center, at what they call a resident theater in Kansas City, some harder roles. But that was the hardest one under J.O. Morrison, because there was so much dialogue to learn, and the blocking was so hard. As you know, when you're blocking a stage show you have to remember where to move and where you're supposed to be when you say this line and who you're supposed to speak this line to and where you're supposed to throw away a line. It was just-- I thought it was the most difficult thing I ever did. But I did it, and it came off wonderfully well, they said. Other than that it was just your regular plays--Shakespeare, Ibsen, things like that. And a lot of exercises, especially in class. I'm trying to think of a couple of the others. There were a couple of them later made into movies. Born Yesterday, The Importance of Being Earnest.

WHITE: Very popular.

McCORMICK: Particularly for college. Oscar Wilde.

WHITE: Did you have access to any other stage productions or plays outside of church and outside of school?

McCORMICK: Just the J.O. Morrison Theater [Group]. But they even had to use Lincoln High School's auditorium, because there was no other auditorium that was available to us.

WHITE: Now, tell me about the J.O. Morrison Theater Group. Was it comprised of just students in your high school?

McCORMICK: The J.O. Morrison Theater Group was comprised of adult actors in Kansas City who had been in theater in Kansas City or in whatever cities they might have come from or who had come through Kansas City. There really wasn't enough work to make a living as a black actor then. So it was really more an interest in the craft that brought them together. And by the time I graduated from Lincoln High School I was the youngest member of the J.O. Morrison. And they gave me the scholarship to Kansas City University. But I was the youngest member. I went right into the J.O. Morrison Theater Group, and we did a number of plays, almost all at Lincoln High School, in their auditorium, because there really wasn't any other auditorium that a black group could do plays in.

WHITE: So your audience would have been comprised of the adults in the community as well as your fellow students?

McCORMICK: Anybody who would come--fellow students, adults, whoever we could drag in there. And there were some pretty well-attended-- I don't think any of them were sellouts, but they were pretty well attended. Because as far as live theater, legitimate theater, was concerned, we were the only game in town.

WHITE: That was it. That's exciting that you were such an instrumental part of that group and that you were the youngest member. That's quite an accomplishment.

McCORMICK: It was interesting in that it threw me into a situation in which I had to interact with nothing else but adults. It advanced, I think, accelerated my learning to act more and more. Because these were people with a lot of experience, and to hold your own with them you had to accelerate your development. So I think I did.

WHITE: Hone your craft very quickly and be very mature about it, as well.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. And I looked like "Junior" up there.

WHITE: [laughs] I'm sure that everyone was aware that you were the youngest member, of course. Well, you mentioned briefly about your athletic prowess, to the extent that your interaction in sports took place in the summer. Can you expound upon that a bit?

McCORMICK: Actually, in Leeds we loved all kinds of sports. We played kickball, we played volleyball, we pitched horseshoes, we played basketball, and we played softball all summer long. And we developed some really good skills and some really good players. There came a point where, oh, I guess we were maybe thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, and-- I can't recall exactly how this challenge to play what we then called the "hardball"-- You know, the big softball couldn't hurt you or anything like that. Suddenly this interest in hardball developed, and I can't really remember exactly how it came about. I started taking a tennis ball-- One part of Dunbar--we still lived close to Dunbar Elementary School--that was just the back of this large assembly room was just a huge wall, a huge stucco wall. So I would take the tennis ball, and I would go out there and stand sixty feet away from the wall and take a marker--this is almost like graffiti--take a felt-tip and put a mark on the wall that would be the strike zone, and I would just throw this tennis ball, sometimes for an hour, an hour and a half. And it would bounce right back to me--I had my glove--hour after hour after hour. And then I finally started learning how to throw a curve, to make it break, to make it curve.

WHITE: On that note, I'm going to suggest that we continue this--because it sounds like it's going to be quite an interesting story--for our next interview.

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 6, 1998

WHITE: Well, it's been well over a month since we had an opportunity to tape. The last time we spoke, at the end of our conversation--well, during a couple of conversations--we had talked about your interest in sporting events, particularly baseball and how baseball had become popular on the radio, and that you and your brother Tommy [Thomas F. McCormick] had really developed an interest in baseball. So at the end of our interview we had talked a bit about how you started playing hardball during the summers. You took a tennis ball, and you began to hit it against the wall in the strike zone, and at that point you began to learn how to perfect a curveball. So I do want to talk a bit about your interest in athletics more specifically, and baseball, and to talk a little bit about your semiprofessional career in that sport. But before I do that, there were a couple of questions that I wanted to clarify or see if we could expound upon from our interview of August 18. The first one would be, during that interview you mentioned that there were a number of great African American leaders that were groomed in the church. There are a number of great speakers and some of our most learned people. Can you tell me who, for example, in your mind, would represent some of those individuals?

McCORMICK: Well, the person who obviously leaps to mind immediately would be people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Reverend Jesse [L.] Jackson, but many, many others too, including James Allen, who's the founder of the AME [African Methodist Episcopal] Church, who was a Baptist preacher and theologian. And many, many others who have risen to leadership positions in the society began as ministers. And I think there is a very important reason why. As leaders, as people who gravitated to the leadership of their congregations, as their congregations and memberships of the churches recognized the leadership qualities and kind of pushed them along-- And they've even been accused in some cases of being self-appointed leaders. But the process of leadership by which black ministers are selected or arise to leadership positions is very much like that with any other group; they are pushed into those positions because the people around them recognize those abilities and gradually encourage them to move on up, and they do. And being at the leadership position in those churches and in those congregations, they often were the most articulate--one of the reasons why they got there--the most thoughtful or among the most thoughtful, the most outspoken, the most influential, the most persuasive, all those things that go to make up a leader. Equipped with those skills and refining those skills as they got more and more experience-- [These skills] equipped them to become leaders in other segments of the society. That's not just how particularly African American leadership evolves but actually how leadership evolves almost anywhere in any group or in any setting.

WHITE: It's just a natural transition, basically. You do certainly acquire the kinds of skills that are applicable for any type of leader if you're actively involved in the church. A very important grooming ground.

McCORMICK: It is. Particularly for us, because we didn't have many other options in those days when we couldn't be elected to government at any sub-level--city government, county government, local government, commissions-- When we were frozen out by the system by being denied the vote, or when we did get the vote when it was so manipulated by fees and things like that, poll fees and gerrymandering and other things, it was hard for us to rise to those positions of leadership except in the church where we had nobody to answer to. Our leadership had nobody to answer to except other African American people, their congregation. So there was also, in addition to all things else, an economic kind of independence that they also developed because they didn't have to answer to any other power groups.

WHITE: Absolutely. That certainly makes complete sense to me. Well, thank you for clarifying that. In another area we were discussing about Kansas City and talking about the nightclubs there. We talked a little bit about some of the nightclubs where blacks and whites went to hear major black acts, but of course the blacks could not attend places where there were only white acts. You mentioned places like the Orchid Room and the Blue Room. I wondered if you could tell me if your parents actually frequented these places. Was that a part of your family life as you were growing up? Or were your parents and their peers going to those clubs as a form of entertainment?

McCORMICK: No, no, no! My father [Lawrence W. McCormick II], as you know from previous interviews, was a Baptist minister and a very devout man. My mom [Laura Lee Lankford McCormick] was his right hand--his director of music, the choir director, the choir accompanist on the piano and organ, and also very devout. They never in their lives set foot in any of those clubs. And their peers were pretty much other ministers and their wives or members of the church, the deacons and others. That was their not only religious group but their cultural group. That made up almost the totality of their adult associates. So none of those people ever frequented the clubs. No, they were more people who were not really terribly church oriented, although a lot of members of the church, of our church and other churches too, would be attracted to the big names that were coming to the clubs like anybody else, and they would attend the clubs, and they would always beseech anyone who saw them there, "Please don't tell Reverend McCormick that you saw me at the Orchid Room" or the Blue Room. Because they'd know that in his own philosophy he didn't approve of drinking and partying and all that kind of thing. Although he was not a stupid man. He recognized that that was what human beings were going to do, but as a minister he thought that it was his mission to save them from those iniquities. So it was not something that they wanted particularly him to know that they had done. But by the time I became an adult, certainly, members of my peer group very, very often frequented the clubs, because the major-- That was really the only place we could see that, along with the big municipal auditorium, the largest venue in downtown Kansas City, where the really huge acts like Norman Granz Jazz at the Philharmonic-- Where they would have twelve or thirteen acts on the program. So they had to have a big venue to make money enough to pay these people.

WHITE: Where would this be held?

McCORMICK: At the municipal auditorium, which is still there, by the way, in downtown Kansas City. That was where most of the major events, when I was growing up, were held. That was the place where the enormously popular people whom the nightclubs like the Orchid Room and the Blue Room just couldn't pay-- Their concert would be held-- I mean people like Billy Eckstine and Ella Fitzgerald, people like that that were just too big for the clubs. The clubs didn't have the capacity to make enough money to pay them. But the other acts, very popular acts like LaVern Baker and Ruth Brown and the popular groups like Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters and Jimmy Ricks and the Ravens, and certainly all the blues stars, Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King and all those people, played [inaudible] at clubs like the Blue Room and the Orchid Room.

WHITE: Excellent. You mentioned a moment ago that as you got older, as a young adult, some of your peers would go to some of the clubs there--the Orchid Room or the Blue Room. Did that include you? Or to what extent were you exposed?

McCORMICK: Yes. Oh, yes. It included me by the time I was twenty-one [years old]. I would go on a Friday or Saturday night, but I'd be in church on Sunday, of course. But Friday nights and Saturday nights, as has always been the case, were really big nights for entertainment. I, as a young person, would listen to the music on the radio. I wanted very much to see these acts when they came to town, so my buddies and I would go. I didn't really date a lot per se. There was a group of guys whom I kind of hung out with, and we would go to hear music and sometimes go chasing girls. You know, we would be looking for girls, "looking to score," as they said. But I wanted to see these acts, and I found it exciting. And it was particularly exciting for me. I didn't really start going to clubs until I was about twenty-one, and having had such a religious upbringing, this entire world of nightclubs and entertainment and finger popping and drinking and that whole atmosphere was a totally different world for me. This was a brand-new experience for me. "Wow! These people are having fun. How long has this been going on?"

WHITE: Laughter and music.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Laughter and good music, and generally good times. And I enjoyed it very much.

WHITE: Excellent. Well, you mentioned that, of course, your parents did not take part in these particular activities. Were they involved in other outside activities, outside of the church that is? Community activities, politics, anything of that nature?

McCORMICK: Not necessarily politics, but certainly in other community activities-- the PTA [Parent-Teacher Association] and community improvement associations and other organizations like that. And that was really about it. They were really very, very much involved in religious affairs and associations and visiting other churches. And of course, being a minister, my dad was very busy. Being the minister of a church, particularly if there are only one or two of you--you're the senior minister and there's maybe one assistant--the duties that you have to your membership can really be time consuming. You are expected to be the central figure or the officiant at weddings and funerals. There are any number of ill and ailing that you have to visit in hospitals or at homes and have prayer with them, the bereaved, birthdays-- There were two or three meetings during the weeknights at church--a business meeting, a prayer meeting, a choir rehearsal--which my father wouldn't always go to. Of course, my mother would. You can be kept very, very busy. And the larger the church, of course, the busier you are, because the more of your flock, as they call them--"tending to the flock"--the more numbers there are in the flock the busier you are. Each member of the church comes to expect and to want, to demand in some cases, the individual attention of the minister, because they want that hands-on, press-the-flesh kind of relationship with the minister. Often the minister feels compelled to do that, because that brings comfort to people who are ill, some of whom may have terminal illnesses or chronic illnesses they've suffered with a long time, and they really want and need that attention. Certainly in more contemporary times men and women of the faith have been tremendously involved in the politics of the city, certainly in various other aspects of life that have to do with the culture beyond religion. The great churches of Los Angeles are involved in child care, in senior care, drug counseling, teen counseling. Many of them have schools attached to them. So the African American church really, really broadened itself as a community force as compared to the days when I was growing up.

WHITE: Absolutely.

McCORMICK: And necessarily so. I think we're all far better off for it.

WHITE: We're very fortunate to have that a part of our community. Very much so. Well, that clarifies the questions that I had from our previous interview. We're continuing at this point, and we were just about to begin discussing your interest in baseball. You talked about the ways in which you had honed your skills with the curveball. Can you continue from that point?

McCORMICK: Sure. As we said before--and I don't want to be redundant--it actually started with my interest in softball. All the kids around there played softball. We kind of naturally graduated to the tougher, faster game of baseball. I didn't really realize that I had developed or had in my possession some skills that I wasn't aware of until I started throwing a tennis ball, just really as kind of a way of entertaining myself. At Dunbar Elementary School there was one huge wall which had no windows. I marked a little place for the strike zone on the wall, and I would get out there with a tennis ball and just throw and try to hit that mark. Of course, it was easy for me to do by myself because the ball hit the wall, and bounced right back to me, and I could throw again and again and again. The more times I threw it accurately, the straighter the ball would come right back to me. If I threw it off on an angle, then I found myself running all over the place to get the rebound. Then I began to experiment. Somebody had taught me--I can't recall who or under what circumstances--how to snap off a curveball, how to make the ball actually change course. And with a tennis ball, of course, being lighter than a regular baseball, you can really make it do some fancy things. I really learned how to throw a very good curveball. I learned the mechanics and the motion of a curve--what the body has to do, what the arm has to do, what the shoulder and everything has to do to make the curveball more and more and more effective--so that by the time I started doing it with a baseball, playing catch with my brother, who was a catcher, I had a really good curveball. Somewhere along the line, maybe it was when I was a paper boy, young and athletic, I developed strong shoulders, so I could really throw the ball hard, very hard. Once we began to play little games on the playground I would pitch and found it difficult for the hitters to hit my pitches. That's when I discovered that I had this little skill. And it was more than a little skill. As the years kind of went by and people started recognizing--the old men especially-- When I say old men, at that time they were probably thirty, many of them still playing baseball. They'd say, "Have you seen Junior pitch?" That's what they used to call me. "The kid can really throw." So with that kind of adulation, if that's the right word, certainly that kind of recognition of the skill, my interest in being a pitcher just developed and developed and developed until I got pretty good. I had the remarks and the compliments of other baseball players in the community to attest to the fact that I had some unusual ability. So that's why I played semipro for about eight years with different teams around Kansas City.

WHITE: It was more of a summer hobby, that sort of thing?

McCORMICK: When I say semipro-- We really didn't get paid that much: two or three dollars a game. We played really more for the absolute exhilaration of playing, for the love of the game. Sometimes, after I was eighteen or nineteen, all we'd play for was the losing team would buy the other team a couple of cases of beer. So we'd hop on the truck and go back to our park and sit on the park bench and have our-- They were hot days in the summer down in Kansas City, so a cold beer was just wonderful. [We'd] talk about the game and talk about baseball, and that would be our pay for that game. We only got paid for a few games, but still, since it was not strictly amateur it had to be categorized as semipro.

WHITE: Of course. Do you recall how old you were when you actually stopped playing semipro?

McCORMICK: Oh, I was in college. I played the first year in college, and then after that it was time-- I had to have serious jobs, because the scholarship stipend that I got was small. So I really had to make some money to support myself. There just wasn't time to play baseball anymore. I would try an occasional pickup game. And then, eventually, one unusually warm winter day--it must have been in January, in Kansas City--it got up to about fifty degrees and the sun was shining, and my brother and I said, "Let's get the ball and go up to the stadium"--we called it Dusty Stadium--"go up to the stadium and just throw some. It feels like baseball weather." So we did, and it started to cool off. And I knew I never should have done what I did. Pretty soon a guy would stop in his pick-up truck to watch us throw, because they knew who I was. A couple of girls would come up and stand around, a couple of more guys-- Pretty soon there were eight, ten people standing around.

WHITE: Fan club.

McCORMICK: First thing you know, instead of just tossing the ball as you should do in the wintertime and wait until spring training to really work out, I'm just busting strikes in there as hard as I can, snapping off curveballs. And I thought I felt a twinge in my arm. As it turned out, I had hurt my arm, because when baseball season came I really couldn't throw the way I did before.

WHITE: Oh, really? You lost some of the agility.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. And the pain. I just couldn't because of the pain. So that was pretty much the end of it. Then my interest started to go to other things. Although I still played some; I would play other positions. I could still pitch a little bit, but not as effectively as I could before. I still loved the sport. I would play first base or other positions. It was something we just did every summer, whether we were doing it for money or not. But pursuing it semiprofessionally, I just kind of gave it up after that.

WHITE: It sounds like an excellent hobby, and it sounds like you really enjoyed it, had a lot of fun.

McCORMICK: I still enjoy it. I've got baseballs and gloves in the closet in there right now. When my stepson [Alvin C. Bowens Jr.] and my grandsons [Daniel and Benjamin Bowens] are here we get out there in the backyard or in the front yard or go up on Queen Anne [Recreation Center] playground or someplace and throw the ball.

WHITE: Okay. Well, we had talked quite a bit about your days at Lincoln High School and your interests there and some of the professors and teachers or what have you that influenced you, some of the classes that you enjoyed and helped to inspire you in a number of ways. I wanted to continue in that vein and talk a bit about to what extent do you feel the students at Lincoln High School were encouraged to pursue higher education?

McCORMICK: I think they were encouraged. We had an excellent faculty who was an all-black faculty, because the school district in Kansas City was still segregated at that time. We had excellent teachers who really had the best interests of their students at heart and who really encouraged all of us to seek higher education. I think a fairly large percentage of my class did go on to attend some college--at Lincoln University, which was a black college in Missouri, in Jefferson City, or at University of Kansas or Kansas State, K. State as we called it. Primarily because we couldn't attend the University of Missouri; it was still segregated at the time. Finally I attended Lincoln Junior College, and then, by the time I did my second year at Lincoln Junior College, Kansas City University [now University of Missouri, Kansas City], which was a private school, had integrated. And I think I went there the second year after integration, but still a tiny number of African Americans, maybe ten or twelve out of three thousand people. So it was kind of a lonely feeling. But yes, they did encourage us. Our faculty members--because they too, because of the segregated system, were limited in their opportunities in Kansas City--were graduates of some of the finest schools in the country, I mean Ivy League schools and places like that. So they were good teachers and very much interested in our pursuit of higher education and our pursuit of certain ideals that they had been imbued with as they grew up by their teachers. I don't see that being passed on much by teachers. Well, I don't want to condemn everybody. I don't think it's passed on to the same extent anymore. One of the reasons being, of course, that here in Los Angeles--and I guess it's true all across the country now--teachers have multiracial classes. So just emphasizing the importance of African Americans succeeding is probably not as easy as it was back then.

WHITE: Sure. It's sort of a challenge in and of itself. As someone said, "It's a separate course on multiculturalism."

McCORMICK: It really is. I like the way you put the idea. It is.

WHITE: It's a very challenging aspect of teaching these days, that's for sure, because of the background and history of the students in the classrooms. So if you're teaching English or humanities or social sciences, it's difficult to actually talk about their individual histories or what have you and bring that into the discussion, particularly in Los Angeles.

McCORMICK: It's so diverse and so multiethnic. The last I heard there were some 143 cultures--different, separate cultures--represented.

WHITE: I've heard that figure as well.

McCORMICK: That's astounding.

WHITE: I can't even imagine. Right. So at your school the college adviser or the guidance counselor would direct you toward higher education as opposed to sort of vocational training? Was that more the function of R.T. Coles High School, the vocational training?

McCORMICK: Yes. The vocational training was in existence much more at R.T. Coles. At Lincoln High they really were interested in promoting the attendance of college on the part of all the graduates. One of the primary problems that they had and that, I guess, a lot of all-black schools had back in those days was that the average income for the students at Lincoln High was--the average family income--not that high. So there was a constant pursuit of scholarship money, and there just wasn't much around, not one hundredth of what there is for African American students today. Not even to attend the predominantly black colleges. There just was not that much scholarship money. Kansas City at that time did not have a large group of affluent people at the top, say, like Los Angeles or New York City does today, just a small core of people, and they just couldn't generate the funds to give-- I'm sure they would have loved to have given everybody in the graduating class--there were more than two hundred people--a scholarship to go somewhere. But it just wasn't to be. So either your family had to scrape to send you to Lincoln University or Kansas University or K. State. More than likely your father, if you were lucky enough to go to college, was a dining car waiter, a dining car porter-- that was considered a good job--or a civil servant, postal worker, something like that, and your mom was a teacher, which was about the highest of aspirations. Or if you were really lucky and your mother or father were physicians or attorneys or something like that, you were pretty well off. Those were really the elite of the society along with the ministers of the really, really large churches; they could afford to send their kids. Everybody else just had to hustle and do it, get out and get a job yourself on the train as a waiter or as a waiter in a restaurant. And at that time in Kansas City--at the restaurants around K.C.--most of the waiters and the busboys were African Americans.

WHITE: This was late forties, early fifties?

McCORMICK: Yes. In Los Angeles it's so striking: most of the waiters, busboys, at all the restaurants are Latino.

WHITE: Absolutely. Things have shifted.

McCORMICK: When I first came out here a large number of the waiters at various hotels and dining rooms were African Americans, but there has been a real demographic shift in that respect. But at that time, anyway, there really were not that many affluent blacks. A few business owners--people who owned some taverns and successful bars and nightclubs and restaurants and things of that nature--of course could afford to send their kids to school and did. But it was not easy. The expectation was there, the encouragement was there, but in many cases the money wasn't there. Some of my classmates, whom I've kept up with over the years, made it to their second year at Lincoln and just couldn't hold out anymore. The money wasn't there. Or they made it to their junior year and had to bail. Some just went their freshman year, and then they would end up getting a civil service job or a job at a bank or something else like that and more or less just had to settle. The ones who were really the most successful, I think, were the ones who went on--and this was a considerable number--and got their bachelor's degrees and then their teaching certificates and entered the Kansas City school system as teachers. That was one of the highest things that you could really aspire to at that time.

WHITE: That's quite unfortunate that finances would be--

McCORMICK: It is. And I'm sure Kansas City was not the only city for which that was true.

WHITE: Absolutely. That happens today in Los Angeles. Educational growth is stifled because of financial constraints.

McCORMICK: Yes. Unfortunately it does. But I've been involved in so many educational efforts here in Los Angeles. It seems like every group--hallelujah--is raising scholarship money so that at least for a larger number of African American students money does not have to be the barrier. Although you still, even today, and with the large number of affluent people in Los Angeles who support these organizations and events, don't see that many kids, even bright kids, getting a free ride for four years.

WHITE: It's true. It's a daunting effort to actually become familiar with those funding sources.

McCORMICK: Oh, it is. It's almost like they don't want you to know it's there.

WHITE: And then to be persistent and consistent in finding the information and following through on the specifications. That's where a lot of things fall through the cracks. It seems like such an overwhelming task, one, to find it, and then to follow through with letters and follow-up and what have you, that I think some students get intimidated by it.

McCORMICK: Or discouraged.

WHITE: That's why there are so many dollars that are available that go unused year after year.

McCORMICK: So that might be an area in which some one organization or entity might use somebody who has the skills to ferret this information out and make it available to more African American students. I don't know what profession and what purview that lies in, but it would certainly be a worthwhile thing.

WHITE: Well, speaking of scholarship funding, I understand that you did receive a scholarship from the J.O. Morrison Theater Group. Can you share a little bit about that? What were the requirements or the stipulations for that? Or how were you awarded the scholarship?

McCORMICK: I was chosen, I think--because I was never told the exact basis on which I was chosen-- I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I played the lead in every play from my sophomore year on in high school--the spring play, the summer play--and was a speaker at the assemblies and things like that.

WHITE: Well, that would certainly make you a strong candidate.

McCORMICK: Yeah. I don't know. Well, there was one other fellow whom I think got a partial scholarship from J.O. Morrison. Marvin Brooks was his name. We became good friends. He was a fine speaker. I think Marvin went on to become a teacher and returned to the Kansas City public school system as a teacher. But Marvin was in a number of the plays I was in. I don't think they had the funds. They couldn't generate the funds to provide a lot of scholarship money. So I still had to work and have different little jobs to abet the scholarship money. I think it was $150 a year, which-- Kansas City University at that time was $63 a unit.

WHITE: Oh, okay.

McCORMICK: So that scholarship didn't cover a whole lot. So it was really hard to scrape and keep it together.

WHITE: Even then, it seems like $63 a unit is a little bit expensive. I know it was a private institution.

McCORMICK: It was, yeah. I remember that number specifically. So it was not easy. It was never easy. I guess it's never been easy for most of us. But there certainly was not enough money to give very many students a free ride, even though I don't know what it cost to go to Lincoln University, which was the only traditionally, historically black university in the state of Missouri. There was another Lincoln University in Pennsylvania which was also a part of the black college family, but it was inexpensive enough to-- At least you could get in the freshman year, maybe get through the freshman year, but after the sophomore year, unless you could generate some kind of income to pay the tuition-- And you had to live on the campus. You couldn't commute from Kansas City a hundred miles to Jefferson City. You had to stay on campus or in town. For young people of our means at that time it just was not easy.

WHITE: Well, I understand that when you left Lincoln High School you actually went to Lincoln Junior College. Can you tell me a bit about the transition there? Did you have a scholarship? Was it in place to go to the junior college?

McCORMICK: The junior college, and then they stayed with me right onto my first year at Kansas City University. The junior college was a small junior college, and it was a good alternative for graduates of Lincoln High School because it was not terribly expensive. In fact, the first scholarship from J.O. Morrison almost covered all the expenses for Lincoln Junior College. A separate group of professors, even though the chancellor of the junior college was also the vice-principal of Lincoln High School--he took the junior college job as an additional job--Dr. [Gerard] T. Bryant. We had perhaps 150 enrolled in the junior college, and we used an unused portion of the high school--it was still a nice, fairly new, lovely high school--for the junior college. We had a football team, although not a very good one, a basketball team. Everybody who was there almost-- Except for some people who came from out of state, everybody who was enrolled were kids I'd gone to Lincoln High with. We just made the transition right in the same building.

WHITE: There was an option to go directly to the university?

McCORMICK: You mean to Lincoln?

WHITE: To Kansas City University.

McCORMICK: No.

WHITE: You had to go to the junior college first?

McCORMICK: Or go on to Kansas City University or Lincoln. The only other option, which didn't really open for two more years, even though it was in the works and the whole notion of integrating the school system had been talked about but nothing had ever been done about it, was Kansas City Junior College, which we also couldn't attend. So that would have been another option, but that wasn't to come for two or three more years.

WHITE: What year did you graduate from high school?

McCORMICK: 'Forty-nine.

WHITE: Did you ever consider going out of state? Did that ever come up in conversation with you and your guidance counselor? Or it's just something you understood to be the situation?

McCORMICK: No. Economically it was-- It came up, you know. We were all asked by our guidance counselors about our sources of income, what they were. The options were generally explained to us, and generally they fell along the lines of the choices that I mentioned: Kansas University or Kansas State or Lincoln University in Jefferson City. Because those were the options. A few of my classmates, very bright people, did get scholarships--maybe the five or six top students--to some good schools. One young woman whose name I can't remember, extremely bright, she got a scholarship to Vassar [College]. And there was another fellow named Brown--I remember his name--who got a scholarship to West Point [Academy], although I don't recall whatever came of that, whether he ever finished or what happened with that. And a few others got scholarships to K. State and KU and to Lincoln University. But there was not a great deal of economic help forthcoming.

WHITE: To make that sort of interest manifest itself. Okay. So you stayed at Lincoln Junior College for two years. What was college life like there? Was it significantly different from high school? I know most of your peers were the same. In terms of your interests, did you feel there came about a great deal of growth for you?

McCORMICK: Yes, I think so. And I think we all experienced growth. Of course, the courses were more difficult. The biggest difference, actually, that I noticed was-- and I guess this is always the first thing that leaps to mind when you make that transition from high school to colleges--is the sense of independence. That you're on your own, nobody's going to make you go to school or make you do your homework or whatever. You have to do it. I also held jobs this whole time. So I was fairly well disciplined. I did what I had to do. I didn't, really, at that period-- I graduated from Lincoln when I was sixteen, so I was still seventeen, eighteen, and I wasn't hitting the clubs or anything like that. I think the legal age was twenty-one then to go into clubs. Well, some people younger than that snuck in, as always. But I was still busy at my father's church. I had, I think, eleven different jobs going through college. So I was pretty occupied doing stuff at school, really not hanging out very much, seeing them during the day and having fun. I played on the basketball team, although I was not a great basketball player. I was not bad, but I was small, so I wasn't a first ringer. I tried to play on the football team. I was a good quarterback only because from pitching I still had a strong arm and I could really pass, but I was strictly forbidden from running the ball, because I was so small and skinny they said "You'll get killed." I remember I almost did. We got on the bus and went down to Little Rock to play a school called Dunbar Junior College, another black junior college. There were a lot of black junior colleges. Dunbar Junior College, much like Lincoln, was located on the campus of Dunbar High School, but Dunbar Junior College, unlike our team, had on its team a lot of-- Football, as you know, has always been huge in Arkansas and Oklahoma. It's almost like the national pastime for those states. There were on Dunbar Junior College's team a number of returning vets who were considerably older than we were, ex-army veterans who had played football in the army after they finished high school. These guys were so tough. We'd had a long bus ride from Kansas City to Little Rock. And these guys were so good. I played quarterback, and I think these guys beat us 56 to 6, and for most of the second half it was their second team. They were so good. So on the bus coming back, everybody had some kind of injury. Everybody was bandaged or was hurting somewhere. But to drive all that distance and get licked like that-- And then we played other local teams mostly from-- We even played the high school team in Lincoln High School and they beat us. They had a very good team that year. We weren't very good. We played Western Baptist Seminary, which I told you was where my father met my mother. They had a little football team. Some vocational schools that were out in Kansas. Those were really our only opponents, because we couldn't play at the white schools.

WHITE: Of course. A little bit limited but enjoyable nonetheless.

McCORMICK: Enjoyable. Yeah, some fun times.

WHITE: Now, you mentioned a Dunbar Junior College, and you indicated that that was on the Dunbar High School campus.

McCORMICK: In Little Rock.

WHITE: In Little Rock. Oh, okay. Because you attended Dunbar, Paul Lawrence Dunbar Elementary School in Kansas City.

McCORMICK: Yeah. They were just both named for Paul Lawrence Dunbar. As I understand it--as I understood it at the time--that was the case in many black high schools, around the Midwest especially. There would be a junior college directly affiliated with it, because there were so few options for blacks who couldn't go away to a Langston [University] or a Hampton [University] or Howard [University] or Morehouse [College], who just didn't have the funds to leave the city and go that far away. Today it's a common thing; you just go. But back then getting farther away from home than Kansas University, which is only like eighty miles down the freeway from Kansas City-- Because Kansas entered the United States as a free state, and Missouri as a slave state, that's why that dramatic difference in just going across the state line and you were in another world.

WHITE: Absolutely. There was a great deal of danger and cause for concern.

McCORMICK: That's right. So a lot of high schools had a junior college adjunct to help at least some students make the transition.

WHITE: Do you recall what your personal and professional goals were at that time in your life, when you were in junior college?

McCORMICK: My professional goal-- Because by that time I was still doing things, taking part in plays with the J.O. Morrison players. So I had begun pretty much conceding now that there was not going to be a career in baseball, even though I was still an avid fan, and my brother and I were both avid fans of Jackie Robinson and Don Newcombe and, by that time, Larry Doby-- I don't think Willy Mays; he was just on the cusp of coming along. We would go to see the minor league games. Kansas City was a minor league AAA affiliate of the New York Yankees--we didn't have a major league team in Kansas City--so that was our only chance to go and see some maybe future stars of baseball play. We would do that. But because I was still taking part in plays with the J.O. Morrison players while I was at Lincoln Junior College, I began to--and I told you about the background of listening to the announcers on the radio-- think more seriously about cultivating this skill, not really knowing where it was going but perhaps thinking that there might be a career somewhere in the future using those skills. I actually think I thought I was going to be an actor. I remember one of my female schoolteachers [Mrs. Pennington] told me that-- I guess I'd made an announcement or something at an assembly up on the stage, and at that time I had a thin little moustache. And she said, "You know, you look like a black Clark Gable." Somewhere that kind of stuck in the back of my mind. Because he wore back then a thin little mustache. I don't think I looked much like him, but-- Whether she just said that or whether she really thought it off the top of her head-- So I started to think more and more of maybe using speech in some kind of way to make a living. I really think at the time, though, I thought I was going to be in acting, because that's what I was doing most of.

WHITE: Dramatic acting?

McCORMICK: Yes, dramatic acting. There were really no black actors to point to as role models or as people that I aspired to be like, because the only blacks we really saw in movies were the occasional all-black movies like Stormy Weather with Lena Horne. And there were no real black actors. There were no real black actors in those movies, Cabin in the Sky and movies like that.

WHITE: Paul Robeson?

McCORMICK: Paul Robeson was in Othello.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: But I never saw it. I don't know why. I guess maybe it wasn't widely distributed in Kansas City. I knew of Robeson. All of us knew about Robeson, but I never saw that movie. The "black talkies" and the "black shorts" that we saw were just featurettes to go along with the main feature, which were always featuring white stars like the Clark Gables and the Gary Coopers and people like that. But there would be shorts that featured Duke Ellington or other popular entertainers of the day. And the few movies that would come out would feature--like Stormy Weather, Cabin in the Sky--really not the great black actors. The great black actors of that time really were only on the New York stage or mostly in Europe. But they'd feature Lena Horne, Ethel Waters--the same old cast--Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five. They loaded up with music stars because they were only interested in putting bucks in seats at the theater, as they still say that today. They'd have a little plot line, but there really was nobody to point to to say, "I want to be like him." This was before Sidney Poitier had come to the attention of the wider world. I guess they were aware of Sidney in New York City. Before the first real black star leading man-- And I'm trying to recall what year this was. It had to be mid-fifties. His name was James Edwards. The movie was called Home of the Brave, in which Edwards played a military officer--a combat film. I got to meet James later on.

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 6, 1998

WHITE: When we ended side one we were talking a bit about some of the first black actors and some of the influences that you had as an aspiring actor.

McCORMICK: There were really none that I could point to as, you know-- We have so many today who you could say, "I want to be like--" Wesley Snipes or Denzel Washington or any number of--Danny Glover--the other leading men: Morgan Freeman, Louis Gossett Jr. Oh, if we had had those kind of people to look up to when I was growing up-- There was a producer, an African American producer, named Oscar Micheaux, who put together some films that he tried to find an audience for across the country. But they were mostly just deals of-- He would put together five minutes of the film and take that five minutes and go out to distributors and try to raise the money based on speculation. That was the way he tried to finance his films. He even had singers, again, like the great Herb Jeffries playing the singing cowboy [the Bronze Buckaroo] and things like that. Well, those were the people that we had to look up to as actors. So we really didn't have anybody to look up to as actors. Kind of beating the path on our own. There's only one place that I knew of at that time that really was the center of African American theater culture, and my advisers tried--they really tried--to get some funds to send me there. It was in Cleveland, Ohio, and it was called Karamu [House] theater.

WHITE: Karamu?

McCORMICK: Yes. And they really wanted to, but it just never happened. They couldn't put the money together, and I couldn't put the money together. But everybody knew about Karamu, and some of the actors who later did very well had come through Karamu theater. But it wasn't until James Edwards in Home of the Brave in the midfifties-- it must have been 1955 or so-- It was a daring move at the time. He played one of the leads in this movie, and he wasn't playing an Uncle Tom. He was a bright, articulate, defiant African American soldier who was fighting the pressure of racism in this movie. It was a combat film. I had a chance to meet James Edwards later on. In fact, he's one of the guys who was in that workshop where I met Anita [Daniels McCormick], at Ebony Showcase [Theatre and Cultural Arts Center]. But I started to feel that maybe I could do something with this skill, and certainly it continued at Kansas City University, where I was in a number of plays. As a matter of fact, one of the early, I consider, triumphs of my life is I played Telvegin in Anton Chekov's play Uncle Vanya. There are, as you know, no blacks in any of Chekov's plays.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: So I had to put on all white makeup, on my hands too. I had to stand by a window and simulate playing the balalaika, which is a small Russian guitar. I stood by the window because there was a tape recorder right inside the set of the window that was playing, and I had to simulate what was going on on the tape with my fingers. In fact, in the green room after one show, one lady told me she thought I played beautifully. I thought that was-- But I looked at the cast picture. I happened to see a cast picture taken once, and you couldn't tell there was an African American up there.

WHITE: You could not tell?

McCORMICK: No. But my drama teacher at that time decided that he was going to give me that part. He wanted me to be in the part. All the rest of the cast wanted me to be in that show. It took an hour to put the makeup on every night, and we ran for, I think, three weeks. That was an interesting experience. And then we did Twelfth Night, in which I had a small walk-on role as an African American at that time, and I was also the lighting manager. And then we did another show, The Country Girl--I think that was what it was--in which I was the stage manager and the lighting manager. So those experiences kept my interest whetted in doing something with theater or speaking until, you know, I got this call. We were working on Twelfth Night, rehearsing. I got this call from the radio station, broadcasting department.

WHITE: There at the college?

McCORMICK: There at the college. We had a campus radio station. They needed some volunteers. We had a program called KCU Radio Playhouse, a one-hour drama. One hour? Half an hour? It was a half-an-hour drama. It was played back on a local commercial station as a public service every Sunday afternoon. Our station was only heard on campus. I played this part in an Edgar Allan Poe piece called The Cask of Amontillado. Amontillado was a wine. And I liked it so much and surprised myself that I fell into radio and using my voice and playing all-- You could play four different roles in one show, in one play.

WHITE: So unlike theater.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: You could shift.

McCORMICK: So I just switched all the way over to broadcasting. I was in one play after another. I loved it. And having developed these skills and still in broadcasting-- At that time broadcasting technically--and theater too, technically--were all actually under the English department, so technically you were an English major. And then the opportunity came along-- And it was still economically an enormous struggle. So then this job opportunity came along. An African American fellow [Ed Pate] had acquired the first license to broadcast an all-black station in Kansas City, KPRS. And I had heard it. I really didn't pay all that much attention to it, because they played a lot of R and B [rhythm and blues], and I was a real jazz fan. I loved jazz. I guess it would be honest, candid, to say that I kind of looked down my nose at R and B at that time, because it didn't seem as sophisticated as jazz, with its improvisations, and the whole cult of jazz stars: Dizzy Gillespie and Lester Young-- the "Pres"--and "Bird" [Charlie Parker] and all those people.

WHITE: All the greats.

McCORMICK: All the greats. But then a job opportunity came at the station when one of their announcers, one of their disc jockeys, was drafted into the army. And even at my mother's and my aunts' insistence, I still didn't think about auditioning for the job. They said, "You'd better go audition. That's a good job. That's the only black-owned station anyplace where a black radio personality can work for hundreds of miles around, probably not until you get to Chicago." So I did.

WHITE: At what point were you in your college career?

McCORMICK: I was at the end of my first semester, almost starting the second semester of my senior year. I was up to about 116 credit hours, and about 124 were needed to graduate. I auditioned thinking, "I'm not going to get this job because I'm not going to show that much interest. Because that's not really what I want to do, even though I want to do something in entertainment--I want to use my voice and my skills in some kind of way." And as fate would have it, I think I went over and auditioned on a Tuesday, and they asked me if I could start Wednesday. I said, "Yeah."

WHITE: Do you remember the audition? What it was like?

McCORMICK: Read five minutes of news, read a couple of live one-minute commercials, just improvise a couple of introductions to a record. They told me the name of the record. And I did it. He said, "I listened to the tape. You're pretty good. Can you start tomorrow?"

WHITE: Wow. So the experience that you had gained at your college radio station had really prepared you.

McCORMICK: That and the theater, because I could speak well. I could really speak well, and I knew that. As a matter of fact, what they really wanted me to do-- He recognized that I was a good announcer. So he wanted to make me a good disc jockey by getting me to use more colloquialisms and more slang. He never said so, but I think he wanted me to sound what they would call a little "blacker," because I just sounded like an announcer. But he really liked the fact that I could read the commercials really well. And the sponsors, the advertisers, liked that.

WHITE: That's interesting, because that sort of feeds into that sort of stigma that you had had from school where you "spoke proper." And for this particular assignment, well, certainly that was appropriate as it related to certain aspects of your job assignment, but for others they wanted you to sound a little bit more "ethnic," so to speak.

McCORMICK: A little bit more, you know. I tried to comply, but I knew I was never going to go whole hog and just use what I'd call the "dialect." I heard a lot of other African American disc jockeys, principally from the South, and I was not going to do that. So that's really what you could consider, for all practical purposes, the start of my career.

WHITE: The start of your career. Now, back in school, did you take any classes, actually, in broadcast journalism? Or were there any offered? Or in radio or anything of that nature?

McCORMICK: Only broadcasting, the techniques of broadcasting. How to get the right effect of inflection, articulation and everything on the microphone. A few of the technical aspects of "riding the gain," which means the VU [volume unit] meter like you have on your tape recorder there-- Sound would become distorted if the meter went into the red. And other things about how to edit tape, at that time, which was a far more cumbersome-- I mean, you don't even need to do it anymore with CDs. I learned some things about how to create sound effects. Some of the basic aspects of just radio broadcasting as it was known then, because there was no television. And how to use the voice on the microphone to get different effects, different dialects. To create the effect of moving across a room by moving away from the face of the microphone a little bit. Just general broadcasting techniques and microphone techniques for radio. So those stood me in good stead on the first job. And then the ability that I had developed from theater and the training from theater, where they also teach a great deal about elocution and articulation and about inflection and about how to use the throat, the eyes, the teeth--not so much the eyes and the teeth--the tongue, and the teeth with the tongue, with the lips and everything. All the things that you learn about rounding your sounds and all those kinds of things. They were things that I had begun to do without thinking about it, because I'd been doing it so long by the time I got on radio. So that's the way it started.

WHITE: Were you still involved, at that time, with the J.O. Morrison Theater Group? Or had you stopped doing that?

McCORMICK: Only peripherally. I still, after I got the job, contributed to them. I went to some plays. I was never in any more plays with them because there just wasn't time. This first job at KPRS-- I tell people about this now and they probably either think I'm lying or exaggerating. But the schedule was-- And of course, it was the only game in town for a black announcer, so the owner could pretty much set whatever schedule he wanted and could tell you "take it or leave it." There were four of us, only four of us at that time for the whole station. And each of us had every third Sunday off. That was just every third Sunday. Actually, every third week we worked half a day Saturday and had all day Sunday off, so we had a day and a half off every third week.

WHITE: My goodness. That's quite intense.

McCORMICK: You really didn't have time to do anything else.

WHITE: That's for sure.

McCORMICK: So it was more than full-time. So there wasn't really time to do much else. And since I had the early morning shift, I had to be in bed fairly early every night. It was what was called then a "daytime station." It was a license that the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] issued for some stations that were small stations. I think KPRS was five hundred watts--and maybe later a thousand watts--at the outset. It's probably more powerful now. But they issued these licenses for a lot of thousand watters. One of the big concerns of the FCC is that signals not overlap. So they want you to be in the clear, your signal to be in the clear, and that limits the amount of power you can have. Since radio signals travel far better at night than they do in the daytime, that became a problem too. They didn't want these stations' signals overlapping other stations' at night, so they made them what they called "daytime stations." So the station was on the air from sunup to sundown. In the wintertime that made for a much shorter schedule because there were fewer hours of daylight, but in the summertime it was a long day. The sun might rise at six o'clock and set at eight o'clock at night. So it was a long, long day all summer long.

WHITE: Interesting. So at this point it was quite all-encompassing. This was not sort of a part-time job. This was definitely moving toward a career. At that point did you decide not to go back to school to finish? Or were you able to finish your senior year?

McCORMICK: No, I never finished my senior year. I've often regretted that, and I've often thought of going back to school to get my bachelor's degree. And even since I've been here in Los Angeles I've laid out a schedule for doing it a couple of times and then just got enormously busy. I was going to do it once at Cal[ifornia] State [University], L.A. [Los Angeles]. Dr. Jim Rosser, who had become a friend, referred me to some people out there to lay out a plan to get the bachelor's and then my master's. I would still like to do that one day just for the sake of the achievement, especially since both my wife and my daughter [Kitrina M. McCormick] have their bachelor's and master's degrees, and our oldest son has his bachelor's from San Francisco State [University]. I've thought, "I'd like to complete that family picture." The opportunity to really do it has presented itself, but I haven't been able to take advantage of it, because seemingly every time I get ready to do that, a whole flood of other events start to come out. The station becomes involved in something. When I was at KGFJ we did so many things in the community off the air. All the disc jockeys were very, very much involved in the Watts festivals and the talent programs that we did at the various high schools in South Central [Los Angeles], which at that time were predominantly black. So the plate was always so full that when there would be a pause and I would think: "Well, this would be a good time to talk to somebody at UCLA or Cal State, L.A., someplace, about going back and getting my degree"-- I even got my transcript from KCU [Kansas City University] from their microfiche records. But the opportunity has just never presented itself where the time was right, where I had enough time to study, enough time to pursue a course. But it's something I still hope to do and still plan to do.

WHITE: Sure, just a personal accomplishment or what have you.

McCORMICK: Just a personal accomplishment, yes.

WHITE: You are certainly, of course, educated in so many ways.

McCORMICK: I feel like I probably at least have got the equivalent of a couple of master's or maybe a couple of Ph.D.'s just from sheer knowledge of the business and of the profession.

WHITE: Absolutely, yeah. Well, I know that must have been very interesting to be at a radio station, at KPRS. You said that that was, of course, a black-owned radio station, and their format was primarily R and B--black music.

McCORMICK: And gospel.

WHITE: And gospel?

McCORMICK: Well, on Sundays, on Sunday mornings. Gospel music programs and a live broadcast from I guess one of the largest African American churches in the United States and one that's rather famous all around the country called Saint Stephen's Baptist Church in Kansas City, which has a sanctuary that seats about five thousand people. It's enormous. They had a broadcast that lasted for an hour every Sunday. Preceding that I would play--or whoever the disc jockey was, depending on how that every-third-Sunday-off rotation came about--the records of some very famous gospel groups, some gospel groups and singers who have gone down in history as great performers: Reverend James Cleveland, who was in his prime at the time; Sam Cooke, who sang with a group called the Soul Stirrers at the time and was really good; Lou Rawls, who was the lead singer with a gospel group called the Pilgrim Travelers; Mahalia Jackson; and some of the real greats of gospel.

WHITE: Absolutely. Some wonderful music going on at that time.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Absolutely. Five Blind Boys of Alabama. The quartets, the male singing groups--and a few female singing groups, but the male singing groups-- there were dozens of them. They were enormously popular. They would travel all over, especially the South, the southeast, the central United States, and the eastern United States, to the major population centers where there were large African American populations, and give concerts just all year long. Those groups are still famous. In fact, the Five Blind Boys, even though I'm sure it's not the same guys from back then, is still a group that's still in existence and still sing a lot. Sister Rosetta Thorpe was another; she had a famous group. Sister Clara Ward, she had a famous group [the Ward Singers].

WHITE: There is one question that I wanted to ask you before we moved on to your position at KPRS. When we had spoken during previous interviews we had talked a bit about how race-- If it became a considerable factor for you. You had indicated that it had at a certain point in your life, when teachers preached to you that you would have to be twice as good to achieve some of the same things, that the playing field would never be quite level. When I asked you at what point you became aware that as an African American you could be discriminated against by the larger society, you indicated that that occurred much later in life. We were talking about some of your primary school education, and you mentioned that some things happened while you were at college. You would get to notice the differences. Is this the time period when you became more aware of the fact that as an African American the likelihood that you could be discriminated against was prevalent? And, if in fact that is the case, in what context did that occur?

McCORMICK: Our teachers had always told us that we did-- "You're always going to have to be, no matter what endeavor you become involved in, better than your white counterpart, a lot better, maybe twice as good, to get a profession if you go into headto- head competition with them for something and to keep your job in that profession." That was kind of imbued in the back of our minds. Then I actually experienced it when I thought I was going to be graduating from Kansas City University. I started to take my tape around--and people had begun to know who I was--to various then allwhite stations in Kansas City. I was told point blank that Kansas City was not ready for a black personality. "I'm sorry. You're good. We know you're good. We've heard of you." But I was told that point blank.

WHITE: So this was a tape that you had created from your volunteerism at the radio station at your college campus?

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: And you had taken it around to a number of different stations in Kansas City?

McCORMICK: Yeah. To two in particular. The response I got there gave me to know that there was not even taking it to the third one. There were only about four or five stations. The number of the radio stations and the markets were much smaller then. There were only four, I think, in Kansas City, Missouri, and one in Kansas City, Kansas. The one in Kansas City, Kansas, was all country-western, so I didn't even bother going over there. KCKN. I remember the call letters. But that was when I had come face to face with it. This was shortly before the opening came at KPRS and I guess is another reason why I jumped at the opening. I didn't jump at it, because, as I said, I wasn't really terribly enthusiastic about it. I thought I was good enough to do what the disc jockeys on the white stations were doing. In fact, I knew I could do what they did. In fact, one of the guys, I think named Lee Vogel, who went to Kansas City University with me, was in a couple of plays there, involved with the radio stations, had already gotten a talk show at a late-night-- And he played music, too, on one of the stations in Kansas City. I thought, "Well, I'm as good as Lee. I can do that."

WHITE: Now, outside of your work at the radio station on the college campus, I would anticipate that radio played an active role in your life. Did you find that you listened to the radio a lot at home?

McCORMICK: Yes, I did. I listened to the radio a lot. Not for any instructive reason, but just because I liked radio. We have begun to come to a time now--this is 1955, '56-- Television had made its debut in 1949. My dad bought our first set in 1950. I remember the first thing I ever watched on TV was the 1950 World Series--in black and white. Radio had begun to change. That's one of the reasons why these jobs, the disc jockeys, had started to evolve, because the old radio dramas and the old radio game shows and quiz shows just couldn't compete with TV anymore. And the transition was becoming obvious that the future, the immediate future, of radio was going to be really all music and news--no more dramas and soap operas and things like that. The soap operas that were still in existence were dropping like flies, going by the wayside, or making the transition--although it was a rocky, rough transition--to television. Some of the early soap operas that were on radio did make the transition to television. Some succeeded. Most failed, because the actors and actresses whom the radio audience had been listening to for years, [the audience] had a picture developed in their mind about what the person looked like, and very often when they came on TV they didn't look like what you thought.

WHITE: That's so true.

McCORMICK: One of the magics about radio is everybody can imagine what they're hearing or the person they're hearing in their own way. You use your imagination much more in radio, and certainly for those dramas back there you have a picture of the person looking any kind of way. So radio was changing. And I recognized that the future of it was going to be music and not soap operas. But I didn't really--I never saw myself, even though we watched sports and we watched wrestling, news, and soap operas and that kind of stuff on television-- I started to watch more and more TV and listen to less and less radio, except for the music. But not for instructive things anymore, not for development of style or anything like that, because what was developing was really far different from what I had learned in school. I guess I did listen for the new sets of skills for being a disc jockey or conducting a music program for pace, for all that kind of thing, for blending a vocal style as an announcer or as a disc jockey with the music. So I was listening for those kinds of changes, but even then I think I was a little ahead of it, because the really prominent white disc jockeys were really not very good. They were kind of slow. They hadn't evolved to the hysterical guys that you hear today. The guys you grew up with were wild. These guys were soft spoken. They were kind of like the old announcers who were just playing newer, rock kind of music. So I listened to that, and I picked up on that, but I had really-- Radio was a job, a living. Then I watched television and did what everybody else did for entertainment.

WHITE: So there wasn't a particular disc jockey that made a great impression upon you?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: Oh, really? And who would that be?

McCORMICK: A fellow who lives here now, who, when I was on KPRS, was a big, big disc jockey in Chicago that all of us had heard of and many of us admired with this deep mellifluous tone, named Sid McCoy. He was my hero. Sid had a syndicated program that was sponsored by Pet milk. It was called Sunday Morning. He would have various singers, religious singers. Sometimes he'd read poetry and do a lot of things on his show. I think it was an hour show that we got on tape that we played every Sunday morning. I used to listen to him and think, "Boy, I'd love to be able to talk like that." I thought I was pretty good, but I loved Sid McCoy's voice. We communicated sporadically. Sometimes I'd get his mail. I'd get his mail and [that of] another black disc jockey in New Orleans named Larry McKinley. The record companies would get their things mixed up. We communicated briefly. He knew who I was because some of my syndicated things--I didn't get any money from them, the station did--he had heard in Chicago, and word spreads around when somebody new and who's pretty good comes on the scene when there are so few of you. The only guys who were really known all around the country were myself, Sid McCoy, a fellow in Ohio named Eddie O'Jay--one for whom the O'Jays are named; he started the group--whom I knew of, and another fellow named Hal Brown, I think, in either Philadelphia or New York City, and a guy in Michigan named Sir Walter Raleigh, then Larry McKinley in New Orleans. So people knew who those guys were, because we were kind of the big guys. Then, years later, I moved to Los Angeles--I'll have to try to remember sometime in some future interview what year this was--and there was a television show on the air, the first show to have a black female lead, a show called Julia. It starred Diahann Carroll. I auditioned. My agent sent me to audition for a part. I was still very much interested in acting, even though by that time I was on the radio in L.A. I'm getting a little bit ahead of, I know, the sequence of where you are, but I'll just tell you this. So when I showed up, I got the part on the Diahann Carroll show, on Julia. When I showed up the director was Sid McCoy. He said, "Larry, we finally meet after all these years back in Chicago and Kansas City. We finally get to L.A. and this is how we meet." So I finally met Sid. He directed that episode.

WHITE: Small world.

McCORMICK: Yeah, it is a small world.

WHITE: So he had moved to another career.

McCORMICK: He had moved to another career, but he still does a lot of announcing. I think Sid still does all the announcing on Soul Train. In fact, I know he does. That's his voice. And he does commercials. He's been very, very busy since he's been out here. He's a terrific guy, terrific guy. I run into him every now and then.

WHITE: Oh, really? Okay. So that's made a significant impression upon you. You both shifted more or less to different careers but nonetheless still sometimes travel in the same circles.

McCORMICK: Yeah.

WHITE: Okay. Well, tell me a bit about KPRS. I know, as we indicated before, it was a black station, and the format was obviously R and B, some gospel music. Tell me about the structure of the radio station. How many disc jockeys worked there?

McCORMICK: We had four disc jockeys: Chuck Moore, Jimmy Jones, Dave Butler, and myself. We spread our schedules out. None of us was on the air only once. Well, Jimmy I think for the most part was on the air once a day except on Sundays. I signed the station on every morning. I had an apartment which was four or five blocks from the station. I had to get up--snow, whatever---go to the station, turn on the transmitter, take all the meter readings and write them down. This was before airtime. Say if we went on the air at six [o'clock] in the morning and something was wrong, you'd call the chief engineer so he could come over. Our transmitter was in an area behind the parking lot at the baseball stadium about three blocks away on a kind of high location, where the signal could go out around the city. Especially the African American part of the city; that's where they wanted it located. So if something was wrong I'd call Skip Carter, who was the chief engineer, to come over, if the transmitter wasn't coming on or wasn't performing as it should. And after it warmed up four or five minutes, then I would put the station on the air, which just consisted of flipping a number of switches and taking a number of meter readings. And then we had prepared a pretaped sign-on for when we went on the air. If we were supposed to go on the air at six o'clock, I would just put the tape in the machine, and at six o'clock I would push the start button with the tape, and it would say, "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is KPRS in Kansas City, Missouri, operating on five hundred watts" or whatever, and all that kind of stuff. "We now present--" It had the opening of the first show, Morning Melodies, or whatever it was, which was always gospel. And I would just come on. I would stop the tape and open the microphone. I had to have music on one turntable cued and ready to play the first song, and the other would already be playing, and I would put it beneath me, so I'd be voicing over the music. And I would say my good mornings, tell who I was and everything--you know, welcome. We had a formula. When I first started I had to read it. There's a thick book you call the copy book that sits on top of the console where all your buttons and controls and everything are-- At first I would have to read--it was like six or seven lines--"Brought to you every morning by so-and-so and so-and-so, featuring so-and-so and so-and-so. And now we invite you to sit back and relax and enjoy and so-and-so." And after a while you know it by heart so you don't have to-- And then you have a log that tells what commercials are supposed to come at what time. The announce book-- The traffic department is supposed to have put the announce book for the next day in order so that each commercial that you turn--you turn the page--is supposed to be coordinated with the log. So you read the announcement. So you stop the record, you read, you cue up the next record while this one is playing--turntables on each side. When the record stops you back announce--you know, say who it was, what the name of it was. Then you give the time, and you read the next commercial. And then you start the next record. And you take this one off, put it back in the rack, and cue up the next one. It's a constant source of keeping the next record ready. And then while the record is playing you have to turn around to the typewriter--the log is actually in the typewriter--and log what time the commercial started and what time it ended. If it started at 8:06:30, you put "Started 8:06:30, ended 8:07." That's why the typing skills that I told them I had but I didn't--

WHITE: You had to acquire those on the job.

McCORMICK: You know, "Thirty-fourth Street Chevrolet, started 8:16 or 8:07:30 and ended at 8:08." It was a thirty-second commercial. And if there were two or three commercials back to back you would have to write the names of each commercial and what time it started and what time it ended. We didn't always have to write; sometimes they would be written on the log approximately what time they were supposed to go and we just had to put in the time. Others, if they were late additions, we'd have to write the whole thing.

WHITE: How were these logs used? Just for future reference? Or just to check to find out if things had been on schedule?

McCORMICK: To ascertain that commercials had been run, and the record had to be sent to the FCC. So if an advertiser challenged whether a commercial ran, that was your proof of what time it ran.

WHITE: Oh, I see. All right. What was your schedule? When you first started you were there you said sunup to sundown?

McCORMICK: I was there from sunup until-- I had the sign-on show, which went about two hours, and Dave Butler did the news. There was a ten-minute newscast each hour. He did the news on my show. I was on, I think, till ten [o'clock]. He came on at ten. His first segment was ten until noon, and I did the news on his show. Then both of us would go to lunch, and Jimmy Jones came on. He was on from noon to two. This was in the long summers; it varied during the shorter days. Then Dave or I would do the news on his show. Then in the real long days Jimmy Jones would do noon to four, and he would get off, and I would have to come on and finish the day. So it got to be-- We would work all these things out depending on whether anybody had to do any-- We would trade shifts with each other. Ed didn't care as long as there was somebody there who knew what to do and who was on the air. So the shifts were kind of broken up like that.

WHITE: The name of the station owner?

McCORMICK: Ed Pate.

WHITE: Did your responsibilities change at all during your tenure there at KPRS?

McCORMICK: No. Only in one respect. I think I got the title of the "religious news director," because they had to have somebody during the gospel programs on Sunday mornings. As a matter of fact, as I recall we opened with at least an hour of gospel every morning. Then it was gospel pretty much during the day on Sunday. I remember during the gospel hour--they didn't call it that, but the hour in which we played the gospel music--I would read church announcements. So finally they had to mail all the church announcements to me, because these were written in longhand and they were absolutely illegible, and you would never pop a microphone open and go on the air. So I had to type them all, and then I could sit and read them between records. "Reverend Dan Boyd and his wife are celebrating their fortieth anniversary with a program at Saint John's Baptist Church this coming Sunday at three [o'clock] P.M. Guests-- The vocalist will be Mahalia Jackson," etc. etc. About thirty seconds. As a matter of fact, one of the things that Ed wanted me to do was--because some of them were long and rambling--to reduce them down to no more than five lines each. So nobody could call and complain, "Well, Thirty-fifth Street Baptist Church, why did they get a one-minute announcement and we only got ten seconds?" So he could say, "They're all the same length." So that was-- I can't remember the title, the little title he gave me then. That was really the only title that I had then. I read announcements from other organizations, too. So it became kind of like a community relations kind of job, because they sent the mail to me. Other than that it never changed. It never changed until I left. That's when it changed.

WHITE: That's when it changed. Okay. Now, before we move on to that, your departure from KPRS-- I know that when you were working there this was a time when many radio stations, as you had mentioned before, were facing bleak economic prospects due to the arrival of television, and radio station owners then began to cultivate the new black urban market in order to avoid going out of business.

McCORMICK: Sure.

WHITE: Do you recall some of the ways in which this station continued to cultivate the black market?

McCORMICK: First, they fully believed that they had a product which African American listeners would embrace far more because they could identify with it than they would the formats that the predominantly white stations were playing. They figured correctly that it would be far more likely for masses of African American radio listeners to listen to James Brown or B.B. King than they would to listen to Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra or Doris Day. And they were right. Then the record companies started to produce more and more products. The biggest problem at the outset was that there just weren't enough African American license holders. Most of the license holders for even the black-oriented stations were Caucasians. And this is particularly true through the South, where there was a whole chain, all of whose call letters ended in--the last two letters were--"OK." There'd be WAOK, KCOK, WNOK-- It was called the "OK." Each station's call letters would end in "OK," such as WCOK or WYOK. This enabled them, through their national sales rep, to sell commercial time to a whole bunch of advertisers for a whole bunch of stations and make more money.

WHITE: Of course, a monopoly.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. Then there were others who owned other small chains. The OK chain was among the first to start to own the names of the disc jockeys. You didn't use your name. They had a couple of rather famous African American women, the first two African American women to become disc jockeys. Their names-- I can't remember, it was so many years ago. Let's say they were Loretta Smith, but she became Dizzy Lizzy. Another one was Chatty Hattie.

WHITE: And these names were owned by the station?

McCORMICK: Owned by the station. So if Betty Smith had a falling out with management and decided to leave, they would have just brought in another Chatty Hattie. White stations did that, too. The guy, the disc jockey who came on at nine o'clock would be named Johnny Dark. And if your name was Bob Smith or whatever, you were Johnny Dark.

WHITE: For that moment in time.

McCORMICK: For that moment in time. The station owned the name. If you were a woman and you were on in the morning, say you did the traffic or something-- As a matter of fact-- I'll tell you about this after the tape. But her name would be Dawn O'Day. They actually owned these names. The black-owned stations--well, the blackoriented stations--were among the first to start doing this. I had a friend whom I worked with when I first started at KGFJ here in Los Angeles who came from New Orleans. And the New Orleans stations, where he worked in the same market with Larry McKinley, whom I mentioned before-- [His] name was Robert Decoy, but they nicknamed him Ducky Decoy. They always had to have a nickname because it was catchy. I think B.B. King started as a disc jockey in Memphis, and I think they called him Blues Boy. He shortened it to B.B. He'd kind of sing along with the record sometimes and kind of strum his guitar, and finally people discovered, "Hey, you do that better than you are a disc jockey."

WHITE: Another shift in careers about to take place. But they didn't do that? They didn't develop those kinds of station-owned names at KPRS?

McCORMICK: No, not at KPRS. But at the other stations-- This is an interesting tie between the present and the past. One of the skills that a lot of disc jockeys, particularly in the South in outfits like the OK chain and others in the South, developed early on, many of the disc jockeys--and that became their stock in trade-- was rhyming. I think there's a relation between that and rap. When I first heard rap I said, "They were doing that in 1950."

WHITE: That's the truth. It has history. It's cyclical. Very interesting. Well, tell me, what did you find most satisfying in your career? Because you did not aspire necessarily to become a disc jockey. This profession or career just sort of evolved, and then opportunities presented themselves to you. You took advantage of them. What did you find most rewarding about your position at KPRS as a disc jockey, your first professional position as a disc jockey?

McCORMICK: One of the things I found most rewarding and in many ways surprising, and it's an impression that has never really left me, is the awesome power of the media. I wasn't on KPRS two days, certainly not a week, before everybody knew who I was. I took on, I think, a new kind of esteem, even in the eyes of my exclassmates at school. They looked at me in a different light. Because when you're on a radio station-- And I can't remember what the black population of Kansas City was at that time, maybe a hundred thousand, maybe seventy-five, ninety, a hundred thousand. And you were one of the only four people who were on the radio every day. I realized how powerful that was and how if you thought it made you too big it could get you in a lot of trouble, if you overinflated the importance of it. I think KPRS was really the ground on which I learned to just keep being an ordinary guy.

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 28, 1998

WHITE: The last time that we taped was October 6, and during that conversation we talked a lot about your initial employment at KPRS. We talked about your responsibilities there in a number of different things. When we ended the interview I had asked you what you had found most rewarding, and you had mentioned that you had discovered the awesome power of the media. You had found out that within two days or so of working at KPRS that everyone knew you, that you held a sort of a new kind of esteem in their eyes. And this was the ground upon which you learned how to stay an ordinary guy. I wonder if you could continue to elaborate on that, some of the things that you found most rewarding. And how did you manage, with all the attention and adulation you received, to just remain an ordinary guy?

McCORMICK: I think part of it is just what was instilled in me by my parents, by my upbringing, by my entire family setting. My dad [Lawrence W. McCormick II], being a Baptist minister, my mom [Laura Lee Lankford McCormick], being very religious, both of them coming from religious backgrounds-- The virtues that they taught included humility, compassion for others, and it was somewhat frowned upon back then to be thought of as even modestly braggadocio. That kind of humility, I think, was taught by my parents and was characteristic of many of the people, most of the people, in the community that I grew up in. So it wasn't difficult for me to remain humble and be a nice guy, be an ordinary guy. Another thing that probably influenced all that is that my associates, the people whom I hung with, were people whom I'd grown up with. Then the new ones who became aware of me because I was on the radio-- It was flattering to kind of have that little feeling of prestige and power in the African American community there. It was, as I think I said before, the only game in town for blacks to listen to the radio. So if you were on there, you were a member of a very, very, very small club, and it was not difficult at all to become very conspicuous in those sorts of circumstances. You were one of three or four voices that people heard every single day. But remaining pretty much an ordinary guy was not difficult for me for all the reasons I just outlined. By then, even, it was part of my nature.

WHITE: Can you think of other things that you found particularly rewarding about your experience at KPRS?

McCORMICK: Well, one of the rewarding things, as I think back about it now, about working at KPRS was its uniqueness for a young African American guy. First, it was a total departure from the kinds of jobs that were there for most African American young men of that age. Many of them involved manual labor, difficult labor, labor under difficult circumstances in very hot weather or very cold, snowy weather. So to have a job where you simply sat and talked on the radio was a far cry from the other difficult jobs that African Americans had--waiters, dining car waiters and things like that, maintenance workers, things like that. So suddenly it thrust you up in status as far as the prestige of the job is concerned with those other people who enjoy professions where there wasn't a great deal of manual labor, where your hours were not killer hours, where the work that you did didn't take a terrific toll on your body, like doctors, lawyers, teachers. The broadcast professional was soon thrust up there with all the others in these very, very respected professions. That was one of the things I enjoyed about it. I had a lot of those hard jobs, really hard jobs. So I thought this was a godsend, this was really not difficult at all. Psychologically, mentally, there's a lot of pressure, because there is the pressure that people experience in any other profession of trying to be as near perfect as possible. Just like a doctor doesn't want to make mistakes. Well, that's even more important than being a journalist or a broadcaster or an attorney or a teacher. You realize you're in the spotlight, and so you figure there's a reason. "There has to be a reason why I'm doing this and lots of other people aren't. And the reason must be because I do it well. So my goal should be to do it as nearly perfectly as I can."

WHITE: Absolutely. You have a positive attitude. Can you recall some of the things that were most challenging about working there? Other than what you just mentioned-- You really had to rise to the occasion, of course, and because of your tenacity you wanted perfection and that sort of thing. What were some of the things that were challenging about working there?

McCORMICK: Well, two challenges which come to mind immediately. First, it was what they called a daytime station--KPRS--at that time. The FCC [Federal Communications Commission] had created this special kind of licensee because of interference with other signals of other radio stations. It would only broadcast during daylight hours. They were called daytime stations. They'd broadcast from sunup to sundown, which meant a much longer day in the summertime with the long days and a much shorter broadcast day in the shortest days of winter. So the biggest challenge to me, since I was the first early morning disc jockey and newsman, was just getting up and getting to work. On cold, wintry days in Kansas City, to get up and be ready to go on the air at five o'clock in the morning-- It means getting up at three [o'clock] or three thirty, and it's cold, and your apartment is cold. It's chilly. You've got to get out of a warm, comfortable bed and get out there and plunge into the snow and icy winds and everything at five o' clock in the morning. That was a challenge. The other challenge was-- One of the requirements for that first job was to be able to have at least some typing skills, because you had to type the log, keep the log of the commercials and what time they aired. What time they started, what time each thirty-second commercial began--or one-minute commercial began--and ended had to be typed in. The name of the commercial in some cases. So you'd have to do that while a record was playing. And the phonograph records were two minutes and thirty seconds, some three minutes long. Three minutes and thirty was a very long record at that time, because one of the goals was to play as many records in the course of an hour as possible. So the two-minute-and-twenty-second phonograph record that you played on the radio was very common. And I had never taken a typing lesson in my life. And I guess you could say in retrospect that I was not entirely forthcoming when my employer asked me if I had typing skills. I had hurriedly--when it occurred to me that I was going to do this--borrowed a typewriter from one of my classmates and just kind of worked out a hunt-and-peck system, enough to be able to do this thing with the log. So that was a challenge. It was a challenge that I really came to terms with in a very short amount of time. I worked out a little hunt-and-peck system where I actually could do that in thirty [or] thirty-five seconds, forty seconds, and have plenty of time to turn back around to the console when all the announcements-- A lot of the announcements at that time in radio were live instead of on card or cassette as they are now, prerecorded. So you had on top of the console, where all your controls were for the turntables and everything, for the microphone, a copy book. And the traffic department at the station, which is the department at every TV and radio station which arranges the schedule of the commercials for all day long, would put together the copy book for that day. And it would be sitting up there waiting for you when you went on the air, beginning with the very first commercial to the very last one. So you turn the page of the copy book, make sure to check with the log to make sure that was the commercial you were supposed to do then, cue up the next record that you would play next--because you can't obviously cue it while you're talking--cue up the tape if there was a tape to be played-- Some of the commercials were on tape. You get to do all that stuff and type the commercials that you just aired on the log, which meant turning around from the console, because the typewriter was behind us, and then turning back around for the last thirty seconds or so of the record, look up to see what time it was, what the current temperature is, and then recap the name of the record that you just heard and who the artist was and whether it was number one or number two-- I learned that you can do a thousand things in two minutes and twenty seconds. That was another challenge. But the biggest challenge was the typing point. But it didn't take me too long to get over that.

WHITE: Quite a coordination effort.

McCORMICK: Yes, it is. If you saw a disc jockey in those days--and I saw a lot of them at different stations--the guy looked like a whirling dervish. Because you were constantly busy for that three or four hours, whatever your shift was. You were constantly busy doing something while thinking of something clever, supposedly, to say about the record that was just played and what transition you were going to make from the record to the commercial to the next record. It can be demanding.

WHITE: Absolutely. You really have to be able to think on your feet.

McCORMICK: And you really would be mentally exhausted at the end of your shift, I mean really exhausted, because in addition to all the other things, you were expected to project energy on the air, excitement, enthusiasm.

WHITE: Captivate your audience.

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: And then you guys had very, very long shifts, as I recall.

McCORMICK: Yes. At that time we did have long shifts, so that at the end of your shift you were really exhausted. It wasn't like the physical exhaustion of a jackhammer working on a construction crew or something like that, but mentally exhausting. And just talking for four or five hours is physically exhausting, if only for your respiratory system and your head. You get headaches from trying so hard to be so enthusiastic and so energetic for four or five hours. It really is exhausting.

WHITE: Sure. The difference between mental fatigue and just physical fatigue, I think, is comparable in many respects.

McCORMICK: I think so. Well, with physical fatigue-- I think they are comparable, as you said, but there are also some significant differences. With physical fatigue, you can usually relax much more quickly when your work shift is done because your body just demands the rest. But [with] mental fatigue there is a kind of buzz that keeps going. Even though you're tired and you've finished with your work shift, there is still a kind of hyperactivity going on in your mind, because it's just too hard to come down from all that projection of energy real quickly. I find that to be the most significant difference.

WHITE: Absolutely. I'm very familiar with that. Well, tell me about your departure from KPRS. What brought about the shift?

McCORMICK: I probably could have spent the rest of my career at KPRS. The employers liked me. The community liked me. We seemed to do well. Because it was the only game in town, the owner of the station realized that he didn't have to pay a very large salary. So you were going to kind of be stuck, for broadcast markets, at kind of a low-end wage. You weren't going to be able to maximize your potential financially at KPRS because there were no other choices at that time. An African American couldn't work at any other radio station. It was the only game in town. I would probably have been content to stay there for many more years, but a fellow [Earl Grant] who had been a visiting occasional teacher at my music classes at Lincoln High School and who was an organist at a local church in Kansas City had moved to Los Angeles and had become really quite a celebrity in Los Angeles. Even before he left Kansas City to come out here he'd become a major celebrity in Kansas City.

WHITE: In what industry?

McCORMICK: He was a musician. He played the organ and the piano, sometimes simultaneously--the electronic organ--and he sang. He had a wonderful repertoire, a wonderful way with songs, and he happened to sound a great deal like Nat King Cole. His act in person was different from Nat King Cole because he did a lot of things with the piano and the organ. Then he came to Los Angeles and was a huge hit in L.A. and ultimately released a couple of records that became big hits. But he was loved in L.A. And he would come back to Kansas City, where his mother still resided, to do occasional gigs. His name was Earl Grant. "Earl's coming back to town." You know, "He's going to be at Millie's or the Blue Room" or wherever. And it would be a big thing to go out and see this prodigal son who went to the West Coast and became so successful come back home.

WHITE: A star on the West Coast. His reputation preceded him at that time.

McCORMICK: So I interviewed Earl on my radio show on KPRS early one summer. The summer, I think, of 1957 or '58 maybe. And after the radio interview he said to me, "You know, you're really very talented. I don't know whether you can ever hope to maximize your potential here in Kansas City, because there just aren't the opportunities. You ought to check out L.A. You ought to just come out on vacation and see what's going on out there, because I think there would be a lot of opportunities for you in Los Angeles." I had never thought about-- L.A. seems to be ten thousand miles away when you're in Kansas City and your whole support group is there and your life is nice and comfortable and everything is set. You don't even think about uprooting, at least I didn't, to do anything like that. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "You know, I think I will take a vacation and go out to L.A." Mostly just for a vacation. I was single and really didn't have anything but rent and the car payment to make. So I saved some bucks, and around September--

WHITE: This would have been around 1958?

McCORMICK: Yes. I came to Los Angeles, ostensibly on a two-week vacation. I stayed at a hotel on Adams [Boulevard] and Western [Avenue]. The building is still there, but it's an apartment building now. Now I'm blocking on the name of it. I was just about to say it-- Watkins! The Watkins Hotel on Adams and Western. Actually on Adams just west of Western. They had a very, very popular restaurant and nightclub downstairs in the Watkins Hotel at the time called the Rubaiyat Room.

WHITE: Rubaiyat?

McCORMICK: Rubaiyat, just like Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, spelled the same way. So that's where I would often have dinner or go down and have drinks or listen to-- They had top-of-the-line artists who came in, jazz artists who came in, especially on weekends--Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And I was in the Rubaiyat Room having a drink and getting ready to have dinner one night, and I happened to be seated adjacent to a handsome couple who thought they had seen me before. And as it turns out, that picture in Ebony is what they had seen.

WHITE: Which picture in Ebony are you referring to?

McCORMICK: It was the picture that-- Anheuser-Busch, whenever they sponsored a new disc jockey show anywhere in the country, would buy a full-page ad. It's the one you saw on the table in there.

WHITE: I did see that.

McCORMICK: For KPRS. That was the full-page ad in Ebony magazine. This couple didn't know where they had seen me before, but that was where it was. So I struck up a conversation with them, and in the course of the conversation I learned that they were both extras in the motion picture Porgy and Bess, which was being shot at [the Samuel] Goldwyn Studios, which at that time was located at Santa Monica [Boulevard] at Formosa [Street] in Hollywood. I told them I was a theater major, and they asked me what I was doing. "I'm on vacation. I'm a radio disc jockey from Kansas City," etc., etc., etc. And they asked me if I'd ever done any acting. Was it my first visit to Los Angeles? Had I ever seen a movie studio? Of course, my answer was yes, it was my first visit to L.A., to the West Coast. No, I'd never seen a movie studio. And they said, "Well, tomorrow"--this was a Sunday night--"we go back to shoot some more scenes on Catfish Row." That was one of the settings in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. They were extras. They said, "You ought to come out there with us. You can ride up with us. We just live in--" They lived in an apartment right up on Adams and Hobart [Street], very near the First A.M.E. [African Methodist Episcopal] Church. And they said, "Walk around, or we'll come by and pick you up, and we'll take you out there. At least you can say you saw a movie studio before you go back to Kansas City." So I did. I got out there. [I was] standing outside the Formosa Street gate, and all these extras were going in. I was reading about the Dodgers. I got a morning paper. I thought, "They're probably not going to let me in and just tour, so I'll find a restaurant someplace and I'll have breakfast. Then I'll go back to the hotel." I was standing there reading the paper, and a guy's reading over my shoulder--I [wasn't] paying attention--and he said, "Can I have that sports section when you're finished?" I said, "Sure." I turned around and it was Tony Curtis. Tony and Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe on a stage adjacent to where they were shooting Porgy and Bess were shooting Some Like It Hot. So I'm thinking, "I've just seen a movie studio, and I just gave my newspaper to Tony Curtis." So anyway, I'm getting ready to leave and the AD--I didn't know what an AD was, an assistant director--comes out and he says, "We're running late. You'd better go on back to wardrobe and get your wardrobe and report to the set." I said, "What? I'm just a visitor. I'm not--" He said, "You wanna work? We're way short of extras. Would you like to work in this movie?" I said, "Well, what do I have to do?" He said, "Just go down that street. Make a left to go to wardrobe and tell them you're in the Catfish Row scene." I mean, that's how it happened. So I said, "What the heck, sure." So I went down there. Now I'm on a studio lot, I'm heading for wardrobe, this whole world that I've only heard of before. And I go and get my costume, I get into costume, I get around on the Catfish Row set, and I am just astonished. There is the great Otto Preminger. There is Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge and Pearl Bailey and Sammy Davis Jr., all these people I'd only heard about or seen on TV. I'm standing on a movie set with all these people and actually watching major stars shoot a major motion picture.

WHITE: How wonderful.

McCORMICK: So I worked that day. Then I worked the next day. And now the wheels started turning, the wheels that really set in motion my career in Los Angeles. The third day I asked the AD, "How long do you think this movie is going to be shooting?" This was in September or October. He said, "Oh, we won't finish this until maybe January or February, maybe even later then that." So I'm thinking, "I know by January or February I will have myself a job somewhere, doing something. Hopefully I'll have a chance to scout around and get into radio. Maybe I'll be in another movie. I don't know. Looks like the sky's the limit."

WHITE: The sky's the limit here.

McCORMICK: I'm here. I'm working. I called back to Kansas City, told my mom and dad that I thought I was going to stay in L.A. I told them I was working in a movie, all that kind of thing. I called my employer at KPRS and told him I was not going to come back; I was going to stay in Los Angeles. It's funny how those things work. He immediately offered a raise.

WHITE: Oh, really? I was going to say, "How'd he respond?"

McCORMICK: A generous raise. "You really have a great career ahead of you here in Kansas City." Suddenly things were--

WHITE: You were a hot commodity at that point.

McCORMICK: But I did that. I kind of severed ties-- Not severed ties with my family, because obviously I wasn't going to do that, but severed ties with KPRS. And that Friday they announced that all the extras were being laid off.

WHITE: Oh, no!

McCORMICK: I didn't know anything about the motion picture process. I didn't know that they got the extras off the payroll as soon as they could to save money. So they just shot all the scenes in which the extras were involved in as short a time as possible so that they could get them off the payroll. So I still had some bucks left. But now I'm here in L.A., I've called back and said I'm not coming back, the money's going to run out sooner or later.

WHITE: And this was just the Tuesday of that week that you had called?

McCORMICK: Wednesday.

WHITE: Wednesday of that week, and Friday they laid you off.

McCORMICK: Friday they laid off all the extras. And I was stunned. I stretched my money until I realized that the Watkins Hotel, which was not expensive but not cheap when you're-- I didn't have that much money. I didn't bring that much with me. So I started thinking, "I'd better find something to do." And I literally went out and started walking up and down Sunset Boulevard--looked in the Yellow Pages to see where most of the radio stations were, and there were lots of them along Sunset. And to make a very long story short, I walked into a lot of stations, and I was-- At that time, even in Los Angeles there was no great demand, there was no demand at all, for African American radio announcers or disc jockeys. But one station was just in the midst of making the transition from an amalgamation of all kinds of programming to all-black programming. It was KGFJ. I walked into KGFJ, and they had just recently hired, two or three months before I got there, a very, very talented black disc jockey to be program director. His name was Jim Randolph. He had come out to California from Oklahoma. He was one of the first blacks to attend the University of Oklahoma. And Jim Randolph looked at me and said, "Don't I know you? Haven't I seen you someplace before?" It was that picture in Ebony. So he said, "Look, I'm in the process, the station is in the process, of going all black. Right now we still have some spots where there's big band programming and other stuff, but we're making the transition, and I think the timing may have been just right for you." He asked me, "Would you make a tape for me?" I said, "Sure." So I made a tape. Ordinarily it was customary to make a tape. You introduced a record, you gave the time of day, gave the call letters, read a commercial live, read a weather forecast--about a five- or six-minute tape. And I did it. This was maybe on a Tuesday, I think maybe ten days or so after the movie ended. And he asked me, "Can you start tomorrow?" And since that time I've only been unemployed for a month in the forty years since then. But that's how I happened to leave Kansas City and began a career in Los Angeles--a number, I guess you might say, of fortuitous incidents. When they laid off all the extras for Porgy and Bess, that did not seem like a fortuitous incident. That was a terrifying incident.

WHITE: I'm sure.

McCORMICK: But I figured-- I had a few days to think about that, and I thought, "I could go back to the comfort of my support group in Kansas City--my family, my friends. I could go back and would never have to really worry about working, about a job, about a sense of security, about a place in the community." But I understood that there were tremendous differences in the opportunities available here in Los Angeles as opposed to Kansas City. I knew there was a low ceiling on how big you could get in Kansas City, how far you could go. It didn't take me long at all to understand I had made the right decision. Opportunities to do commercials, opportunities to do a lot of other things, to get into theater groups, to be in movies and TV shows-- And one of the striking things that really cemented my decision to stay here after I started at KGFJ was that my salary was immediately, immediately three times what I was making in Kansas City.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness. That's quite an incentive to stay.

McCORMICK: That is a very terrific incentive. And that's how that transition occurred.

WHITE: My goodness. Do you recall the salary range for a deejay in those days?

McCORMICK: Yes. At KPRS I was making $98 a week, and I was the highest paid one on the staff, as I said, having every third Sunday off. It was the only game in town. I started at $300 a week at KGFJ.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness. Okay.

McCORMICK: So immediately I recognized the difference between a major market and a medium or small market.

WHITE: That's right. So there must have been a certain point in time when you felt quite liberated by your choice to stay in Los Angeles, and fate, as it would have its way, propelled you to stay in many ways.

McCORMICK: I did feel liberated. The only troubling thing about that liberation is that I did miss my family and my close friends, but especially family. I felt that I was kind of isolated from them. At that time--well, still, even today--L.A. is a long way from Kansas City. So I called often. I talked to them often. But that was the only drawback. I was entering a whole new world and making new friends and adjusting to a new life, and Los Angeles was not then and is not now an easy place for somebody from another part of the country to put all those facets of life together, to find your circle of friends. Almost anything you'd like to do, almost anything that you want to incorporate in your lifestyle, is in L.A. L.A. and New York: whatever you want to do, however you want to be, you can be that and not be alone. So it takes a while. I was intimidated by this big city for a while. I lived a very quiet life, and I made friends, expanded my circle of friends a little at a time. Many of them [were] in the music business, in the record business--record distributors, record promoters. And then I began to get out into the community. I didn't have a church affiliation at first. I was busy just trying to settle down and settle in. But as I began to get around in the churches and because of my work on KGFJ began to emcee some shows at some local clubs and emcee some shows for some local community groups, attend some churches-- I started to be a part of theater workshops, and the circle of friends started to expand. My California life started to take shape. I often tell people who come here from other parts of the country, especially from the Midwest or the Southeast or the Southwest-- I think Chicagoans, New Yorkers, Philadelphians make the transition easily, or more easily, because they've been part of a big city, a big, fast-moving, energetic city, metropolitan areas. But there have been people who've come here from Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Shreveport, New Orleans, "I hate L.A. I can't stand it. The people are cold. The lifestyle is too fast. It's too hard to get around." I tell them, "This is a city that you have to wait on. You have to wait and establish your life a little bit at a time." Some people find they can deal with it and find it exciting, as I have found it, and energetic with a variety of things to do, an endless variety of things to make life interesting and exciting and entertaining in this city. Others, and they have been in the minority, I have found, just never adjusted, had to go back home to be comfortable.

WHITE: I've discovered that amongst several people that I know. They've found it very difficult to find a place for themselves in this city.

McCORMICK: Yeah. I always think about that Gladys Knight song "Midnight Train to Georgia." A lot of them end up taking that train back home and feeling comfortable, and, you know, heaven bless them.

WHITE: Sure. Well, tell me, how did--? Obviously, your parents, I'm sure, were sad to see you leave, but were they encouraging? How did they respond when you told them, when you called them, when you were supposed to be gone for two weeks and decided that it would be a much lengthier stay?

McCORMICK: My mom especially was worried. Lots of African American moms and dads from close-knit communities in the Midwest, the mid-South, the South, have those old fears about "What's going to happen to my son or daughter in the big city? All those evils and temptations in the big city--" First, they're worried because they miss that hands-on kind of thing where they can influence your life, take care of you, look out for you, call to see if you're home, worry about what time you get home, and all that kind of stuff. And when one of the birds leaves the nest-- They had those same kinds of pangs and worried about how I was doing, whether I was getting into any trouble, if I was taking care of myself. They were worried about "Are you going to church?" Naturally they're going to ask that.

WHITE: That's the first question.

McCORMICK: My brothers and sisters, they were all kind of stunned that I made such a quick decision to stay, but I never heard them express any real anger or any specific kind of sadness that I decided to make the change. My mom was concerned. My dad just-- He wished me well and reminded me of all the characteristics that they had tried to instill in me, the qualities-- "Remember who you are, the kind of person that we wanted you to be" and all that kind of stuff. The first time I went back home on vacation two years later it was just a joyous reunion. Everybody was very-- They were really curious about L.A., about "What are you doing? Did you see movie stars?" All the questions people would ask of somebody who visits another smaller city from Los Angeles or New York, especially L.A., because so many of the major personalities and so much of the entertainment product that the whole world enjoys comes from people who live and work here. So they were curious about how I lived and where I lived and what I did every day. They had become kind of familiar with my popularity from being on the radio in Kansas City, so that was not new. They weren't curious about that. They knew what I did and how that fit into my life. But there was never any chagrin expressed to me. It might have been expressed between them, but there was never any chagrin expressed to me about making the move.

WHITE: Okay. So shortly thereafter you were making the tape for KGFJ. You were hired and started there, I guess, immediately. Tell me about the format of KGFJ. I know it was black owned at that time. Had they phased into the black oriented?

McCORMICK: Not completely.

WHITE: What was the structure at KGFJ at the time?

McCORMICK: It was a strange, strange situation. My air shift was from five [o'clock] A.M.--my first air shift--to nine [o'clock] A.M. The first hour of programming that I did was gospel, from five to six, and then from six to seven there was a series of-- I don't know if you could call them syndicated. They were programs that were sponsored by various lotions and other things like that. One was called Dr. Murphy, who even back then was talking about antioxidants and stuff like that, kind of a philosopher-preacher. There were little bits and pieces of very eclectic programming right in the middle of this, from gospel into all these different kinds of programs for which, I guess, the station-- [They] were residual programs from what the station had on before as they were making the transition to all black. So I played some of these polyglot, different kinds of programs. Then, from eight [o'clock] to nine [o'clock], I would play R and B [rhythm and blues] from something like eight to maybe nine fifteen, and then there was another fifteen-minute program of somebody else talking. And then at nine o'clock a fellow-- white--disc jockey, who became a very good friend, named Johnny Magnus, came on playing big band music. And then Johnny was on from nine until one [o'clock], and at one o'clock in the afternoon the fellow who hired me, Big Jim Randolph, came on playing nothing but R and B from one to six [o'clock]--a shift which I eventually took after Jim unfortunately passed away. And then we had rhythm and blues from six to nine with a fellow named Herman Griffith. And then we had another polyglot from nine to midnight. And then beginning at midnight, another friend who's a disc jockey named Charles Trammel broadcast live from the storefront window of a record store in South Central [Los Angeles] called Dolphin's of Hollywood. That was the all-night show. He was on from midnight until four [o'clock], playing music from Dolphin's of Hollywood. I had the opportunity to substitute for him a couple of times. To sit in that window is kind of scary, sitting out there, all kinds of strangers coming by looking at you. You were very vulnerable. Looking right at you. And then from four to five there was a gospel program on that was hosted by a fellow who was not really a minister but kind of a pseudo-minister named Brother Joe Matthews. He played gospel until I came on. So that was the way the first shift-- And then on Saturdays and Sundays we had an hour of polka. We had another hour of old forties music. It was a real polyglot until I had been there maybe a year or so, a year and an half. It was finally all R and B all day long except for Johnny Magnus. He played some of the higher class--well, not R and B--he played music by a lot of black artists, a few white artists, but mostly it was the end of the music spectrum, not toward R and B but more toward jazz and big band jazz. He would play the Ella Fitzgeralds and the Lena Hornes, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, things like that. He never really played all R and B, although some of the R and B selections that we were playing by black artists he could incorporate into his format. He was allowed to have his own little format, and he had a little gimmick called "Weather with a Beat," in which he would do the weather--the temperatures all around the country--with a little Count Basie music. So he had his own little niche. He had what you would have to call a niche program in this otherwise R-and-B-all-day-long [station]. It was really-- Eclectic has to be the right word for the format when I started there. It was a little bit of everything.

WHITE: It sounds like a plethora of music there.

McCORMICK: It was.

WHITE: Now, was KGFJ owned by Tracy Broadcasting at that time?

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: Okay. Whom did you work for directly? What was the organizational structure there at the time?

McCORMICK: There was a general manager whose name I'm going to have to try to remember and fill in later on [Thelma Kirschner]. It was a woman who had been an associate of the real owner of the station, who lived back East or I think maybe even in Europe, and he just let her run it.

WHITE: So she was the general manager?

McCORMICK: She was the vice president, general manager-- She ran the station. A Caucasian woman named Thelma Kirschner. It was a Caucasian man who owned it.

WHITE: That's interesting that there was a female with that level of responsibility at that point in time. It's quite unusual.

McCORMICK: It is. I don't know whether I should say this for the record or not. There had been rumors--and I never heard any substantiation--that giving her that job, letting her run the station, was kind of a payback for a romantic liaison that had gone wrong. So the guy who owned the station kind of said, "Here, this is my gift to you" after the relationship ended. There was also a rumor that one of the other women who worked in traffic was a product of this relationship, a young woman who also worked there, her daughter. So that was the structure. She ran it. Jim Randolph was the program director, the African American guy who was also a disc jockey. There was no news director; he ran the show. Jim ran the show on the air. She ran the station.

WHITE: Was it considerably different in terms of the demands placed on your time between KGFJ and KPRS? I know that you had very lengthy workdays at KPRS. Was it quite the same at KGFJ?

McCORMICK: No. KGFJ was a six-day week, same shift Monday through Saturday and every Sunday off, which was a break. Then later on-- No, it was always a six-day week at KGFJ. Even when I went back after a stint at a couple of other stations-- which we'll talk about later on--it was a six-day week. At least I was off every Sunday.

WHITE: Not every third Sunday.

McCORMICK: No, not every third Sunday. Oh, that was--

WHITE: So according to my research, you held a number of positions while at KGFJ, and I know that you worked there on two separate occasions, I think from 1958 to approximately 1963, and then I believe you returned there in 1964 or so.

McCORMICK: No, '67 to '71.

WHITE: During the first stint, did your level of responsibility increase from music host to program director or community affairs director, news reporter, that sort of thing?

McCORMICK: A community affairs function-- I didn't specifically have the title, but that's really what I was doing. I did hold that title during my second stint before I became program director; I became community affairs director. But I did a lot of community affairs work for the station. I represented the station at a lot of events and things like that, but I didn't really have any management responsibilities during the first stint. No, no, not really. Not by title or anything. I was just one of the personalities on the air. And as I said before, in addition to being a music host or a disc jockey you also had to run to the AP [Associated Press] wire machine or the city news service machine and rip copy during one of those two-minute-and-thirty-second records and do a fiveminute newscast at the end of each hour, at fifty-five minutes after the hour up until the hour.

WHITE: When you say rip copy--?

McCORMICK: Rip the wire copy right off the teletype machine and do a really fast-- That's how I learned to condense material, take what would be a five-minute story and condense it down to thirty seconds by knowing automatically-- Doing it while the record is playing, or maybe two records. By deleting what was not necessary. Just get it down to the bare-bones facts. I became really good at condensing material, because you had to. So we would play the tape at that time, the card that had the introduction to the news on after the last record, read the news for five minutes, and then you would again play the card that had the reintroduction of your theme on the radio, and right out of that theme you would start the next record. That was really a growth period. Having to do that all the time whetted my interest in the news. I didn't just read it. I would go back after I was off the air and really read the stories, the wire copy. It gave me a kind of approach to world affairs, to the things that are going on in the world, in the city, that I probably would not have had if I had just blown it off, so to speak, and just gone through the motions of just reading it. But it really got me interested in world affairs, and probably that interest in keeping up with what was going on is what led to the opportunity to do a couple of talk shows later on. Because I was up to speed on everything that was going on.

WHITE: A plugged-in citizen.

McCORMICK: Yeah.

WHITE: That's excellent. That's certainly one way to prepare one's career, just keeping in touch with what's going on around you, as opposed to just your designated duties.

McCORMICK: I think that's important, and I think it's something that could serve anybody well, whatever your profession is--to know what's going on in your life, in your city, in your town, in your state, in your country, and the world, to stay abreast of everything that's going on. Not only do I think it can enhance your performance in whatever job you do--knowledgeability is always a benefit--but I think it also keeps you mentally invigorated and sharp and alert. If you are always in the process of accumulating, being exposed to, and digesting information, I think maybe things like Alzheimer's [disease] don't come on you so soon, or senile dementia. If you're mentally engaged I think that helps you stay mentally engaged.

WHITE: That's very true. It's a muscle, so it has to be worked.

McCORMICK: Precisely. You said it. It has to be exercised.

WHITE: Exercised, exactly. And if it's not, then it deteriorates. It atrophies. That's right. So you would say the most significant difference in your position at KGFJ versus KPRS was one where you were working in the community. You would go out. And then reading the news reports. Those were the largest differences between positions?

McCORMICK: I think the biggest difference is that I had every Sunday off. [laughs]

WHITE: And were paid three times as much. [laughs]

McCORMICK: Yes, and paid three times as much. The duties on the air were very similar. Except that at KPRS in Kansas City, when I was doing my air show the disc jockey who was on behind me would do the news during my air show. When I went off my air show and the next disc jockey came on, I would do the news during his air shows. We only had four personalities, so everybody kind of doubled up. One would do the news on the other person's show. But at KGFJ at the time, you had to do your own news and run around and rip it off, just rip the paper off the UPI [United Press International] wire machine. Those machines-- It's so different now in this computer age, but at that time the wire machines were so loud, the teletype machines--you're going to hear them clicking, "click-click-click-click," as they typed--that they had to be in enclosed rooms or they would disturb everything else on the air.

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 27, 1998

WHITE: As you were saying, Mr. McCormick, the differences in retrieving the news from the time when you were working at KGFJ to the time now, it's quite different. And you were saying--

McCORMICK: At KPRS we alternated doing the news on each other's programs-- music programs. At KGFJ the disc jockey or the music personality, music host, had to run out from the control room where you were broadcasting--where your microphone and the turntables and the tape machines and the console and the copy book and all that stuff was--down a little hallway to a room next door that was closed where all these clattering wire machines were, teletypes that were typing the news stories and kicking them out. After a certain while you knew the schedule of the AP or UPI, whichever wire service your station subscribed to. Many stations subscribed to both. Many stations subscribed to three: AP, UPI, and City News Service for local news. So all these machines were clattering away. You opened this door, and it would be like-- And then you knew each hour what time a summary of the current news reports, news stories came out. Go back, recognize it, rip it off--take your ruler, rip it off--take your pen, take it back while the record was playing on the air and begin to condense, to scratch out elements of the story that weren't important or were less important and that you didn't have time for anyway. After a while you could tell when you had a five-minute newscast. And then do the weather at the end. Sports--a couple of sports notes--and then the weather at the end, and then back into the next hour of your music program. So that's the way it went at KGFJ for a good little while until they developed a news department and had newscasters. They didn't really have that until I went back for the second stint.

WHITE: Okay, later sixties. So now, in your position, how would you determine your level of success? How would you be able to ascertain if in fact you were successful in your position as a music host?

McCORMICK: If you mean the feedback I got as to how I was being accepted out in the market, in the community--

WHITE: Or by your superiors?

McCORMICK: Oh, well, my superiors seemed to have a great deal of respect for my ability, for my creativity. They liked my gift of gab. They liked--and I was really, really pleased to find this out--the fact that I did what I did with the effectiveness that I did it without resorting to the southern dialect, without resorting to the kind of dialect that a lot of the stations that appealed to black markets in the South and that a lot of disc jockeys who came out of there did. I spoke clear, clean English. I threw in some hipisms, you know, some slang and stuff like that, but always as a good announcer. They admired that. I think some tried to emulate that. They seemed to think I had a good gift of gab, a good understanding of music. They seemed to think I had a good understanding of how to cause the public to react to the music that I had just played. There's a psychological game that goes on with being a music host. You have to try to anticipate how the public--the person out there in their car, in their kitchen, in their living room, in a bar, in a nightclub, wherever, laying in bed at night, listening to the radio--responds to a given record or to a given artist. You really have to be in tune with the public. The more effective disc jockeys are attuned to the public in such a manner that they can put into words what that person is feeling because they're attuned to that record, that artist--Ray Charles or whoever--just as much as the public is. And you get a reputation for being able to say the right thing at the right time and strike the same mood that everybody who's listening strikes. You really have to think like the public. If you're really lucky and if you're paying attention, you do. You have to think like the public in order to be effective as a musical host or a disc jockey. If you say something that doesn't reflect what the public feels about that record, that artist, in that time frame, you're not very good. You're not very good at communications. Being a good communicator, after all, is being sensitive, perceptive, about the public that you're dealing with. That's the essence of it. I think my peers and obviously people in the community thought I had that. I think that's still very important as a newscaster. It's not so much in-- Everybody's doing the same stories. But in the way you project your personality and exchanges with your fellow anchors and fellow reporters, that's where the public gets a chance to perceive who you are and how much you feel and understand what they are and how they are.

WHITE: Right. And who you are in relation to them.

McCORMICK: Yeah. So that part of communications, I think-- My peers, my employers, the general public, people in the record industry, the rating services, I think all of it came together to indicate that I was having an effect, having a strong effect, as a radio communicator.

WHITE: Excellent. Well, tell me now, in the late 1950s radio and television were shaken by two scandals. I know this was a time of very conservative ideology--the red scare, McCarthyism, lots of interrogations of anyone thought to be communist. It was sort of an uncomfortable environment for those in the minority such as people of color, homosexuals, that sort of thing. It was understood that there was a fixing of quiz shows in 1959. The House of Representatives conducted a publicized hearing to show frauds. And then also in 1959 it was found that disc jockeys were bribed to play certain records, known as payola, which I'm sure you're very familiar with.

McCORMICK: Sure.

WHITE: It was my understanding that in the aftermath of the payola scandals, radio stations adopted a top forty radio list format, which I understand is a playlist based on hit records charted by Billboard [magazine]. This was a dominant new trend. How did these issues affect the policies of KGFJ? The whole issue of payola-- Was your work scrutinized as a music host because of the scandal? And then in the aftermath of stations adopting the new top forty format, how were you affected?

McCORMICK: Well, at KGFJ we were affected to a lesser degree than the so-called pop stations that played predominantly white artists or rock and roll. We had a playlist, but our playlist was comprised of records which were established hits or records that were on their way to becoming hits in other markets in addition to records that each individual disc jockey thought they heard something of value in or something that might appeal to the public. It was about fifty-fifty. We didn't have a top forty playlist at KGFJ. We had a playlist from which we were expected-- Say if you played twenty records in an hour, you were expected to play at least twelve records from that playlist. This was something that Jim put into effect. That's one of the ways in which you establish your niche and one of the ways in which you identify with this market, this population that you're going for. But it was a loosely organized playlist at KGFJ. Each disc jockey at KGFJ was given by the record distributors every week and record producers their own copies of new records, which you would go home and audition. I spent a lot of time in those early years at KGFJ on the weekends. I would have maybe two hundred new records to go through and listen to. Out of that two hundred-- And I played it very straight: the ones I thought had a possibility of becoming very popular I would give some exposure to, and-- It would be maybe three out of two hundred. The people don't understand how much product there-- I don't know whether it's still true today or not, but at that time there was so much product, and so little of it had a chance of really becoming successful.

WHITE: I think there's even more now.

McCORMICK: Is there more now? The chance of, in any one given week, any one of those two hundred or so records even making the top ten, much less number one, was really small. But each one garnered some popularity with some listeners, and they bought some. I don't think KGFJ was very much affected by the so-called payola. We were the only real black-directed station in the Los Angeles market at the time, so it was incumbent upon us to try to be as successful as we could. We did have some competition later on from another station called KDAY, but they were really not terribly strong competition. So we had to have as strong a playlist as we could to keep building that audience and building that listener base. And I don't know of any disc jockey at KGFJ, including myself, who was ever caught up in any of the payola scandals. There were some from some of the other stations who were here in Los Angeles. The radio stations that adopted the top forty formats didn't really do so because of payola; they adopted the top forty formats to generate greater audience. The theory being that nobody is constantly listening to the station all day long, any station. Audiences come and go and ebb and flow. So if you play only the forty most popular songs twenty-four hours a day you're going to attract a larger audience. And one of the dictums after I moved into the pop station that integrated KFWB was "When you have heard a given song for the eightieth time and are sick of it, somebody in Los Angeles has only heard it for the third time and is just beginning to like it." So you have to plant that thing in your mind. And that was the reason for the top forty. Later on, because of payola, of what happened, radio stations started having music committees comprised of the music programmer along with sometimes the entire staff of disc jockeys. We'd have meetings and sit down and audition new records and vote on adding certain new records to the playlist with the music director and the disc jockeys. Sometimes it would just be a committee of the program director, the music director, and one or two of the most popular disc jockeys to sit down and listen to all the new product, to read the Billboard and Cashbox magazine charts to see which records were performing well in other markets to give you a heads-up that this might be a record you might want to put on a playlist. That's the way they finally tried to get around payola so that any one popular disc jockey didn't just have full command and could make big bucks because of his popularity and make hit records. Of course, you can't make a hit record out of a record that's not going to be a hit. If it's not in the grooves, it's not going to happen. I don't care who pays you. And then there was another phenomenon that a lot of people may not be aware of which was payola but was not really payola. There were disc jockeys here in Los Angeles and in other cities across the country who had a printed set of fees that they charged record companies to play their new records. Now, this was all out in the open. It was like buying time, advertising time. You would say, "This is what I charge for playing your record three times on my show." And they had these lists. I won't name any names here. That was well-known. It was legal. It was aboveboard. It was advertising. It was not money under the table; it was straight up-front.

WHITE: The fees, would it vary depending upon the company?

McCORMICK: The fees were pretty much set. These individual disc jockeys set their fees themselves. Now, I should point out that these were not staff disc jockeys like at KGFJ; they were on other stations where they bought their block of time. So they brokered their time. So they were able to sell that time that they had paid for any way they wanted to. They could charge you for playing a record. They could charge you for doing a commercial for your business.

WHITE: Oh, okay. That's a different approach.

McCORMICK: Unfortunately, some people thought of that--because they were being paid to play records--as payola. But it wasn't; it was a business.

WHITE: That's interesting. That's not very well publicized, either.

McCORMICK: One fellow who became a good friend, who did later on become a staff disc jockey, was a fellow named Hunter Hancock; and that was the whole thrust of his business.

WHITE: Do you know how long this sort of business took place with deejays that brokered their time?

McCORMICK: Oh, my goodness, from the earliest days of--that I remember--radio in every market in the country. Because in many markets, and at a number of radio stations here in Los Angeles, they didn't really want to go to the expense of having sales staffs which they had to pay both salary and commission. So anybody who had the money could go in and buy a block of time--and a lot of people did this--and then resell it. You would buy two hours of Monday through Friday, say from eight [o'clock] A.M. to ten [o'clock] P.M., and maybe that would cost you $400 a week. And then you would go out and sell commercials in your time block to any business in the community that would buy. If you managed to build up a big enough audience--

WHITE: And by whom was this regulated?

McCORMICK: Well, it was regulated by the FCC.

WHITE: It was, okay.

McCORMICK: It was completely legitimate. There are--probably still today, I'm sure--many instances in which there are radio brokers who buy their own block of time and then resell commercials in that block of time. Perfectly legitimate.

WHITE: That's quite interesting. I wasn't aware of that.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Fairly common practice. And particularly at smaller stations, stations with weaker signals which don't want all the expense of hiring personnel, they just have a bunch of people who have brokered time.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: That happens at smaller stations, and it happens a lot in smaller markets where people are interested in holding down expenses.

WHITE: I guess that's just typical, just like any other brokerage firm. I mean, it happens in real estate, it happens in the beauty business, it definitely happens in certain segments of the entertainment business, so why not? I'm surprised that it's not more popular.

McCORMICK: I tell you, with the advent of cable it's becoming more popular. If you have cable TV you probably have seen on A&E [Arts and Entertainment Network] or the History Channel or the Discovery [Channel] an outfit called Guthy- Renker [Company].

WHITE: I have not seen that.

McCORMICK: Well, they have a lot of infomercials. They buy up blocks of time, and if you're selling hair cream or face cream-- That's the Guthy-Renker network. They do consider themselves a network where they buy up these big blocks of time on cable stations and sell all kinds of infomercials. So that brokering kind of thing goes on very much today, and it became even bigger with cable.

WHITE: Right, of course. Okay. So given the fact that a lot of stations did not necessarily adopt the top forty format, per se-- They instituted a committee, a system of committees to determine what songs would be played. Do you feel that this was debilitating at all to any of the-- particularly African American--deejays that were popular during that time? Because they kind of lost their ability to introduce some new music and sort of had to follow the dictates of management a little bit more precisely?

McCORMICK: It's not only African American deejays, it's deejays period. It became for a lot of deejays kind of boring and made-- Instead of allowing them the freedom to-- let's see, how can I put this?--anticipate what records the public was going to like and be right and use their instincts, it removed your instincts from it, and you were just a-- You became more like a machine. I think that stilted the enthusiasm of a lot of disc jockeys, even though as the radio stations grew in power they were paying more. So it became a better job, a better-paying job, but I think it's fair to say there was less enthusiasm.

WHITE: For sure. That would be understandable. Do you feel that the audiences responded well to this new system?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: That was one of the primary reasons, as you indicated, for doing it.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. The audiences-- The record industry, as you know, just mushroomed. It exploded. One of the reasons for the explosion was the top forty list. As the number of stations that went to music formats increased-- Bear in mind that after the days of old radio--when they had soap operas and all that stuff and sitcoms and things on the radio--waned, the only thing that could really replace it was music programs all day long, which is how the evolution of the disc jockey came about. As more and more stations became successful with this format, more and more stations adopted this format. So that, along with one incredibly important technological innovation, is what caused the music industry to just explode and become huge. And that was the manufacture, the creation, of the 45-RPM record. The creation of the 45- RPM record did a number of things. First, it brought the purchase of music to take home and play down to where anybody could afford it.

WHITE: That's true.

McCORMICK: One single record. Second, it greatly simplified the manufacturing process. The process by which you manufacture a 45-RPM record was much cheaper than manufacturing those big 78[-RPM] vinyl records, much cheaper. So the technology and the booming number of radio stations playing the product just caused the music industry to become one hundred times the force in American business that it was before and led to, indirectly--well, directly--what we know the music industry to be today. That's what caused the explosion: the increasing number of stations with the top forty format which were doing no daytime dramas, no soap operas or anything, all music all day long, and the development of the 45-RPM record. Of course, since then the cassettes--the eight-track and then the little audio cassettes and now the CDs-- The vinyl album helped boost record sales because of the attractive packaging and the fact that you could get twelve songs on two sides instead of just the one, but still the album was out of the price range for a lot of teenagers to purchase. But the 45 was just right. Not only that but its size made it less expensive to ship. You could ship more of them faster, cheaper. It really revolutionized things.

WHITE: Absolutely. I would imagine that it sort of simplified the logistics of your work, as well.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: Working with the large album, you have to find out where the song is on the album and the track and all that. So you could just flip the little 45s over and simplify things.

McCORMICK: Well, the 45-RPM record also revolutionized the technology, because it meant that manufacturers of broadcasting equipment now had to produce turntables that you could play 45-RPMs on.

WHITE: You had that little adjustment to put on the stereo player.

McCORMICK: The industry boomed so much. The top forty, the burgeoning number of stations--which meant greater competition--and the 45-RPM record all combined to create an industry in which there was so much money that-- Let's see, how can I put this? There was so much money that people started buying not just one or two radio [stations] but there were chains of radio stations. There were entire groups in the South. There was a group called the OK chain, which was the only group of stations directed towards the black community. But Gordon McClendon and other groups that we see are very much in evidence now-- There was so much money to be made there that conglomerates started to buy groups of stations, and they would have one person in one city select a playlist for all seven stations.

WHITE: Gosh, a monopoly.

McCORMICK: Yeah. I mean, the stations [were] in different cities, and there would be, instead of having-- Maybe in a big market like Los Angeles they would have a local sales manager. But they had stations spread out so much across the country that they would have--they still do-- They call them the national rep. The national rep would be the person based in New York City, usually, or Los Angeles--usually New York--who sold the commercial time for all the stations in the chain.

WHITE: I see.

McCORMICK: So the people who wanted to buy commercial time--Chevrolet, Budweiser--could get a good deal instead of just buying on their Los Angeles station. If you buy on all seven stations, instead of charging you $100 per thirty seconds we'll only charge you $30.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness! And imagine the publicity from that.

McCORMICK: Oh, sure.

WHITE: All over the country, or certain segments of the country.

McCORMICK: TV and radio stations still have national reps who sell commercials for the entire group.

WHITE: That's interesting. Now, the OK chain, that was the same chain I think you mentioned before that began to take ownership of the deejay names, right?

McCORMICK: Yes, that's right.

WHITE: They were quite active.

McCORMICK: You have a good memory.

WHITE: Thank you. Okay, well, let's see now. To what extent did, say, the civil rights protests, political protests, of the era alter the programming at KGFJ? For example, I understand that during the Watts rebellion--which I know was a little bit later, after you left KGFJ the first time--75 percent of the African American homes within the range of the signal listened to Magnificent Montague, who used the term "Burn, baby, burn" to introduce the hot records. This became the battle cry of the 1965 Watts rebellion. Did changes such as this one take place while you were working at KGFJ, having to do with other types of civil protests or unrest? Was there any sort of connection between the kinds of music that people wanted to hear and how they may have been motivated by those sounds during the early sixties, say, or the later fifties?

McCORMICK: During the time of the Watts riots, the summer of '65, August of '65, I was at KFWB. I was at an otherwise all-white station, and it didn't obviously have any effect on their playlist. We did the news about what was going on like every other station did. But in the aftermath of the Watts riots I became--even though I was still going to be at KFWB for a short while longer; I was shortly to go back to KGFJ--involved, as did a lot of other people, in the community to an even greater extent than I had been before. And that's because that was a period of intense activism that followed the Watts riots, and anybody who didn't get caught up in that activism and want to do something for the community, to join this movement or that, didn't have a life. You have to wonder where they were, if they were awake or asleep. So I got involved. I emceed the first Miss Watts Beauty Pageant following the riots and got involved with the Watts Summer Games, the Watts Festival with Tommy Jaquette, emceeing programs. My activities in the community at that time just exploded. Sometimes I would be emceeing two programs in a night, because my air shift was one [o'clock] to six [o'clock] in the afternoon when I went back to KGFJ. I'd go to two meetings in the afternoon. I was emceeing ninety programs a year. Really, really busy, on the boards of a lot of committees, making a lot of decisions, and trying to be a part of not only the rebuilding effort after the riots but trying to be a part--compelled to be, not that I was trying to be-- I just felt compelled to be a part not just of the rebuilding or the healing process but of the growth and correction of the wrongs that had preceded the riots that had to come out of that if there was going to be any justice. So I and a lot of other people got caught up in that activism. That activism lasted right on through the remainder of the sixties, all through the seventies. It led to the election of more political officeholders. It led to the election of Mayor Tom [Thomas] Bradley later on. And a lot of the major steps that African Americans and other minorities--but especially African Americans--made in this community and in other communities too came in the wake of the Watts riots. And then, of course, later in '68, in many cities it happened all over again when Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] was assassinated. But then, this was also all caught up in the early stages of the Vietnam War. There was early and virulent opposition to the Vietnam War by a lot of Americans. It was a fascinating, sometimes worrisome, sometimes confusing, always dynamic period to live in, because there was always something happening. There were either demonstrations on campus or on city streets, major universities around the country. The anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, were all mixed up with the hippie movement in music and in culture. It was a dynamic time to live in and to see all of this stuff going on. Oh, all of this stuff going on! And it was confusing, really, really confusing for a lot of our more traditional leaders, particularly white leaders who had no idea where they were going vis-à-vis their relationship with minority groups, had no idea where they were going vis-à-vis their relationship with their kids--white kids. When you look back on it, it was a turbulent period.

WHITE: Volatile, exciting.

McCORMICK: Very volatile.

WHITE: Like you said, dynamic.

McCORMICK: And sometimes frightening.

WHITE: Well, let's see now. I just want to go back to your first stint at KGFJ for a few moments. Based on some of the information I've read from your scrapbook, I understand that you were voted the most popular deejay in 1961, which is just a few years after you'd been there, I guess three years or so. Can you share some of the programming ideas that you instituted to elicit the kind of audience support that propelled you to this status? I know the top forty, so to speak, format was in place. What kinds of things did you do to propel yourself?

McCORMICK: Well, a lot of it was, as I think I alluded to earlier, the things I said. I thought about life. I thought about the music. I thought about a lot of things. I came up with clever sayings and clever quotes and things like that. As I said, I would not revert to the black dialect that a lot of disc jockeys used at that time, so I had to be clever in other ways. In some of the introductions, self-produced introductions-- Because at that time you could go in, unlike now-- Now you have to have a union engineer if you're going to mess with some equipment. But I could stay after at the station. After we went to Charlie Trammel and his remote broadcast out of the window of Dolphin's of Hollywood, the equipment at the station was no longer being used on the air, so you could do a lot of production work. There was a switchboard. You could make it so it wouldn't go out over the air. You could hear everything right in the studio. So you could mix your program introductions and all that kind of stuff. And I did a lot of that myself.

WHITE: So you invested interest in your work.

McCORMICK: Yeah, yeah. So I developed my radio persona. I kept up with what was going on in the community and in the world, and I would incorporate quips and jokes and things about things that were going on that everybody knew about in the news or in the community. That's just kind of the way I built an audience and a following.

WHITE: Excellent. Now, I understand that soul music became the programming choice for most black-oriented radio stations, and the role of the disc jockey became more influential. Black deejays became sort of a potent force in urban cities. Do you feel that this increase in prominence among black deejays also contributed to your rise in popularity at KGFJ?

McCORMICK: Oh, I think so. Oh, I think there's no doubt about it. It was universal, not just here. In San Francisco, KDIA actually was the KGFJ of the Bay Area. There was a powerful station, WDIA, in Philadelphia, a couple of powerful stations in New York, powerful disc jockeys in all those cities--in Atlanta, in New Orleans-- I'm trying to think of-- In Ohio there was a fellow named Eddie O'Jay for whom the group the O'Jays were named. He was a disc jockey. We never met, but we communicated with each other a lot. There was Tommy Smalls in New York, who was very powerful. There was a fellow whose mail I used to get, and he used to get mine--he was the most popular black disc jockey in New Orleans--named Larry McKinley. And in other cities, in Texas, in Tennessee, in Kentucky-- There were two notable black female disc jockeys, Dizzy Lizzy and Chatty Hattie, part of the OK chain. There was Sid McCoy in Chicago. For a number of years there was Magnificent Montague in Chicago before he went to St. Louis and then came out here. There was a fellow named Bill Mercer, who later became a good friend and is still with CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System] in New York. Roscoe in San Francisco, who was the big disc jockey in the-- All of us knew who the big deejays were in the various cities pretty much.

WHITE: Of course. Small community, relatively speaking.

McCORMICK: Sure. So black disc jockeys-- It was definitely a time of burgeoning popularity for us whether the market was big or small, because in many cases you still were the only game in town. There were hardly any situations in which there were two black stations and you had competition. Usually for the black radio listener you were it. So inevitably you became very conspicuous.

WHITE: Absolutely. That's great. It seems like a very memorable stage of your career.

McCORMICK: It was. I'm not terribly sure all of us fully understood how critical that was, how important that was, or how unique we were at the time. It was, after all, a way to make a living as much as anything else. But I think many of us kind of understood it and acted upon it, and I think many of us--most of us, I would say--tried to do something in this kind of privileged position to make the community better. I think that was definitely in our minds.

WHITE: I know that at the time it's going on it's very easy to just be sort of in it and not really understand the momentum that you're carrying, but historically speaking, of course, that was quite a movement--the relationship between black deejays and the black community and the importance that music plays in the African American community and therefore those that are spearheading that effort. It would be great for some sort of exposé on the first African American deejays in the major metropolitan cities.

McCORMICK: That would be-- Somebody should probably write a book about that. I was not the first. The first here in Los Angeles was a fellow who's still a good friend of mine and who still for all these years has been Ray Charles's manager. His name is Joe Adams. He's still very much alive and kicking, and he manages Ray Charles. Joe Adams was the first major popular black disc jockey in Los Angeles. I call Joe the Godfather of the Black Deejays in L.A. He was on a program on a station that was in Long Beach. The call letters have been changed now. But Joe was multitalented. Joe could sing, Joe could act-- He even played a couple of parts on Broadway. But he had a radio show here in Los Angeles on which he played-- He took the high road. He played Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington and Count Basie and the great black artists. They had parades for Joe Adams. I mean, in the black community he was popular. He was big before I ever hit this town. Joe Adams was a legend.

WHITE: He set the precedent for you.

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: Well, tell me now, this was your first assignment in Los Angeles as a music host, and you had a great deal of success, the first stint in which you worked at KGFJ, 1958 to 1963 or so. Can you describe some of the most memorable moments spent at KGFJ during that period of time?

McCORMICK: The first stint? During the first stint--this was even before the Watts riots--KGFJ was extremely active in the African American community. We did--I guess today a social scientist or psychologist would call it outreach programs--a lot of things for student body funds at the various high schools. During that time-- demographics have changed a great deal since then--it was extremely easy to identify predominantly black high schools, grade schools. You knew Jordan [High School], Jeff [Jefferson High School], Locke [High School], Manual Arts [High School]--that was the heart of the black community. Today they are probably 65 to 70 percent Latino, those same schools.

WHITE: They are.

McCORMICK: But there was a readily identifiable black community in Los Angeles that KGFJ served that went roughly from maybe Pico [Boulevard] to 103rd Street or 125th Street, and from La Brea [Avenue] all the way to the East Side, all the way to Alameda [Street]. That was the black community. Now, there were other people sprinkled in other communities, but that was a large, identifiable African American community, and almost everything in it was identifiably African American. We did a lot of things at churches. We did a lot of things at clubs. We had a contest for people who wanted to get into show business in various high schools; we called them "Soul Search." We just did a lot of things in the community. I can't remember a lot of them because we kept changing them; there would be something new every week. And the individual disc jockeys were very involved in a lot of things in the community. I run into people today who say, "Boy, KGFJ was it!" I mean, they have seldom seen an entire community identify with one broadcast outlet like the black community identified with the KGFJ of that time. I run into people now who are in their fifties who say, "I've been listening to you since I was in high school."

WHITE: That must really give you a great feeling.

McCORMICK: Oh, it does.

WHITE: Well, then, of course, I have to ask you the flip side of that question. What was the most challenging aspect of working at KGFJ during that first stint?

McCORMICK: Probably the most challenging aspect was that we really didn't get the recognition, I think, that we deserved. The audience measurement services--and this, I understand, is still something of a problem today--only included stations that appealed to minority communities, in this case specifically the black community, in a niche kind of fashion. We might have been somewhere among the top three or four stations in the city, but we were never measured with the others.

WHITE: Oh, I see.

McCORMICK: And because of that we could never charge the same rates for broadcasting as the others, so we couldn't make as much money as the others. The station management couldn't make as much money, so they couldn't pay us as much money.

WHITE: So they're only compared with one another.

McCORMICK: Yes. We weren't included in the Nielsen [Media Research], or--then, for radio--the Arbitron [Company] rating audience measurements. It's my understanding that minority stations still somewhat have that problem. You look on the ratings today, the overnights that we get from Nielsen, and you don't see KMEX and KVEA, the two Mexican stations on there.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness.

McCORMICK: So it's one of those ongoing problems where the advertising world seems to value the loyalty of the minority consumer less than the mainstream consumer. So that was one of the frustrations at KGFJ at the time. Also--and I think it was frustrating for the management too--recognizing that KGFJ was a really good thing, was a powerhouse, they tried to get an increase in power, in wattage. They couldn't get it from the FCC. The FCC has done a lot of changing since then. If we had, instead of five thousand watts-- If we'd been fifty thousand watts like KMPC or KFI, think of the audience we could have reached. Being the only ones playing that format, we could have been the number-one station in L.A. We might have been close if the audience measurements services had ever included us in surveying our audience the same way they did for the mainstream audience. But it was an interesting time. We were a dynamic force in this community. We know we were because we know--and later on this was confirmed by some of the radio personalities at the white stations--that they used to listen to us all the time. They used to check out our little expressions, the way we approached records. They used to listen to see which of the records were being played on the all-black station. They thought it could cross over and make the playlist on their station. I know they listened all the time. They told me later on that they did. "We used to check you guys out on KGFJ because," they said, "you guys were cookin'. You were really cookin'." So we didn't play a lot of namby-pamby, bouncing ball, white "sanitized" versions; the kind of records that they-- Because the white disc jockeys were very hip, very hip about all kinds of music. They knew there were certain songs they had to play to placate their larger, mainstream audience, but they knew the kind of music they really wanted to play; they wanted to play R and B.

WHITE: And they couldn't, really.

McCORMICK: And they couldn't. So they used to check us out and really have a personal good time for themselves listening to us, but also checking to see which of the records we were playing might cross over. And a lot of them did. It got to be where they would-- It really started with what I call the Motown revolution. It got to be that a Motown [Records] record didn't even have to be auditioned. If they heard us playing it on KGFJ Tuesday, Wednesday it was on their playlist.

WHITE: Is that so?

McCORMICK: From [the] Supremes to Stevie Wonder to Mary Wells, [the] Temptations, Smokey [Robinson], whoever. That's part of what made Motown such a monster in the industry. Because the black stations knew that good product was there and practically forced the white stations to play their records, because the people at the white stations knew that a lot of the young white people were listening to KGFJ. And I've been told that by so many whites recently in the intervening years, that "I used to listen to you all the time." Because it was kind of verboten at first. Not too many years before I came into the business, stations that played black music-- It was still called "race music."

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: And a lot of white parents did not want their kids listening to the music, because it was supposed to have a demoralizing effect on their morals and values and all that kind of stuff. So they had to do it clandestinely.

WHITE: Which I'm sure they did. That made it more exciting.

McCORMICK: Oh, and you can see the effect that it has-- The movers and shakers, the people who are in decision-making positions--meaning Caucasians--in television today, you hear so many of the musical themes that they choose for their shows that are black records.

WHITE: That's right.

McCORMICK: So you know what they were listening to in their formative years and when they were teenagers.

WHITE: Exactly. It had a huge influence on them.

McCORMICK: It's been true in motion pictures. Like in Platoon, all the Motown stuff they did in Platoon. You hear them as the themes of a lot of TV shows. I never thought I'd hear so much R and B in mainstream commercials; it's all over the place.

WHITE: Right. Isn't it amazing?

McCORMICK: Yeah, it is. But you know the people who are making those decisions who are in their mid-forties, late forties now, you know that had to come from a frame of reference.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: That's what it was. Now there's going to be a TV show called The Temptations.

WHITE: Is there?

McCORMICK: Yeah. I think it's on ABC [American Broadcasting Company].

WHITE: Is it about the Temptations?

McCORMICK: Yes, with actors playing the parts. I don't know whether it's-- I just saw a blurb for it. I don't know whether it's a one-time special. I think it's a series based on the Temptations.

WHITE: Okay. We'll see if that will be effective with the audience. That's interesting.

McCORMICK: So we knew clandestinely, and the radio stations knew, that a lot of their kids were listening to us, and they had to get a lot more crossover on their playlist to keep attrition from happening in their audiences.

WHITE: That's right. They would have to have that crossover appeal or something.

McCORMICK: Sure. When that started-- That's been one of the buzzwords of the entire American--particularly where selling product is concerned--society now, "crossover." Producing a movie, you've got to have crossover. You either have to have African American musicians do the music or something to try to attain crossover.

WHITE: I guess there's just a real clear realization that African Americans are consumers, and now we do have the funding to sustain our interests, and we're very attractive to the advertisers. So large, big-budget vehicles, whatever it may be, musicoriented or film ventures, they need to have crossover appeal if they want to have a large level of success.

McCORMICK: The largest possible audience. And I might add that conversely it works the same way with black artists. If Whitney [Houston] doesn't get some crossover into the white audience she can't nearly maximize the kind of-- There are not enough African American consumers to make her record number one by themselves; it's got to cross over. Or Luther Vandross, or certainly-- Boyz II Men is a great example. If you cross over, you hit the big one. If you only sell within your group-- If you're country-western and you only sell to country-western fans, or you're black and you only sell to R and B fans, you could have a big hit but you can't have the big one. You've got to get crossover. The same thing is true of motion pictures, of any kind of entertainment merchandising. In order to maximize your success, you've got to have crossover. Believe me, the people who produce these products understand that very clearly. They've tried to get it down to a formula, but that's not possible, because anybody who can-- The only person who's come close to guessing what the public is going to like every time has been Berry Gordy [Jr.].

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
NOVEMBER 10, 1998

WHITE: At the end of the last tape we had talked about the phenomenon of "race music," and how it was prevalent at that particular time when you were working at KGFJ and just sort of in general and how Caucasians had listened and in some respects appropriated black music. Black music has influenced a number of different vehicles including films and mainstream commercials. A lot of the Caucasian kids and a lot of the Caucasian deejays listened to KGFJ, and they realized, as well as a number of other groups, that they must have crossover appeal in order for their music to be prevalent and for the artist to have the widest level of success. What I wanted to ask you is, as we're talking about race music, can you tell me what you would define as a race label, for the record?

McCORMICK: A race label?

WHITE: Yes.

McCORMICK: Oh, there were several of them. Okeh Records was pretty much a race label, Duke Records, VeeJay Records. There were several others. Chess- Checker and Argo [Records] out of Chicago, and certainly King [Records]. Although they wouldn't consider themselves as race labels. They were if you mean labels that specialized in music that appealed to black people. The two biggest of all, of course, were Atlantic Records and Motown Records.

WHITE: Okay. And then the notion of black-oriented radio or a black format: Does that necessarily mean that the songs--? Obviously the songs were sung by a black artist, but must the song be produced by a black artist and/or distributed by one of the race labels in order for it to be categorized and used under the black-oriented radio and black format segment?

McCORMICK: No, not necessarily produced by black artists. In fact, early on the producers were almost invariably not black, because they didn't have the financial means to set up studios and all the costs that are concomitant with producing phonograph records and pressing machines and all that kind of stuff, wide distribution systems. They didn't own that. Many of the arrangers were Caucasian. Many of the arrangers were also black. But blacks by and large did not control the manufacturing and distribution and sales processes; those were controlled by other people, although blacks were the artists making the music. Many of them probably did not--I'm sure did not--make nearly the money they should have made because they had no control of the process. But mainstream labels like RCA Victor [Records] and Columbia [Records], recognizing that there was a market there, also produced music designed to appeal to blacks featuring black artists. After some of the early small labels like VeeJay and Chess-Checker and Argo and Duke and Okeh Records had such tremendous success, almost every record company in the world had its own R and B [rhythm and blues] division, because they wanted a slice of that market.

WHITE: Absolutely. Okay. Before we continue I wanted to just follow up on a question that I had from an interview of last week. We had talked a bit about the individuals that were responsible for running KGFJ. You had mentioned that there was a female at the time who was, I guess, the general manager or vice president of KGFJ.

McCORMICK: Vice president and general manager.

WHITE: You were going to see if you could recall her name.

McCORMICK: Her name was Thelma Kirschner. She managed it for an absentee owner who lived outside the city of Los Angeles--might have even lived outside the country for a while--and kind of just left it to her to run. It was originally known years and years ago, years before I came out here, as Hollywood House. That's what it was. It was a frame house that stood on Sunset [Boulevard] near Vine [Street], exactly where the Cinerama Dome theater sits now. It was a wooden-framed, two-story house. Upstairs were the business offices. Across the hall was the library, and then there was a studio where they used to do live music. There was a big baby grand piano. I guess some of the residuals of old-time radio still existed. And then there was the disc jockey booth from which most of the broadcasting was done, where the tapes were played, where records were played, and all that kind of thing. But it really was a house. As a matter of fact, it was so old that sometimes when it rained in Los Angeles, because there was no air conditioning--it would have made too much noise on the air--we would crack a window, and you could actually hear it rain on the radio. On the air you could hear the rain that was climbing down on these pieces of metal that were right outside the window.

WHITE: Oh, how interesting.

McCORMICK: It was.

WHITE: And is that same facility there?

McCORMICK: Oh, no, no. Where it was is now where the Cinerama Dome sits on Sunset right now, on that exact spot.

WHITE: On that same spot?

McCORMICK: Yeah. There was KGFJ radio, which was this house, second building from the corner, and then immediately adjacent to KGFJ was an auto dealership known as Muller Brothers. So where the Cinerama Dome sits right now is where KGFJ and Muller Brothers sat. Now it's all torn down.

WHITE: Okay. Still a historic site, though, that's for sure.

McCORMICK: Well, there's nothing left of the site now, but inasmuch as it's the Cinerama Dome, yes, it is an historic site.

WHITE: Right. Well, today I would like to talk a bit about the media and black radio nationally as well as in Los Angeles. In my research I found a number of interesting facts and wanted to get your insight on them. I noticed that Jack L. Cooper in 1927 launched the first black radio venture on WGBC in Chicago called the Negro Hour. It was a pioneering achievement in radio history. It was a breakthrough program that set an important precedent for what would follow. He featured later recordings of the leading black dance bands such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie, as well as famous vocalists, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Fats Waller. This enabled him to build up a loyal black audience since he was the only person on the air in Chicago playing the popular black music recorded on the race labels. By 1949, he was a millionaire who owned his own broadcast studio and advertising agency, and he paved the way for other African Americans to break into commercial radio. On another note, I discovered that the Harlem Broadcasting Corporation was founded in 1929, and it was the first independent African American radio venture of its kind. It operated its own radio studios on the corner of Lennox Avenue and 125th Street in Harlem. The Depression, unfortunately, forced them out of business. I wondered if you are familiar with the pioneering efforts of Jack Cooper or other pioneers outside of Los Angeles who actually were some of the first African Americans in their field to run or own a radio station?

McCORMICK: To own a radio station? I never met Jack Cooper. I'm familiar with the story of Jack Cooper. I don't know, really, many other African Americans who owned stations, except, of course, the one I'm very familiar with is the fellow that I worked for in Kansas City; Ed Pate, who owned that station, was the first African American to own a radio station in that part of the Midwest. No, I'm not really familiar with any other African Americans. I know there were some. There was a doctor, it seems to me, in Ohio who owned a station, but I can't recall the name. One of the disc jockeys I worked with at KGFJ [Herman Griffith] worked for him before he left to come to Los Angeles. But I can't remember the doctor's name. He did own a station, a small, thousand-watt station.

WHITE: They are few and far between, obviously, even to this day. And that was some seventy-odd years ago. So it's quite interesting, I guess, the lack of progress in that area that has been on a national level. I discovered that in 1949 there were only four radio stations in the country that had formats that directly appealed to black consumers. By 1954 there were two hundred, by 1956 there were four hundred, and by 1965 there were six hundred. So of course, some of the things that you were saying about how the black audience-- They were a commodity, and it was very important that a lot of the stations take up songs and recordings that were attractive to black consumers.

McCORMICK: And there was another economic and technological development, too. I think I might have discussed this a little bit earlier. In the days when we had the big 78-RPM records, they were expensive and were not really within the range of purchase of a lot of African Americans. The creation of the 45-RPM changed all that. First, they brought the price down to where the average African American teenager, grownup, whatever, could afford to buy them, which increased the audience for recorded music enormously. That was one of the things that contributed to the enormous popularity, the burgeoning popularity, of rhythm and blues music. They now had an audience who could afford their music. So the number of stations appealing to that audience obviously grew and grew and grew and grew.

WHITE: Now, are there radio industry specialists on the West Coast that you would consider to be pioneers in black radio? For example, [John] Lamar Hill, who was considered a pioneer in the broadcasting business in Los Angeles? He was one of the first African Americans to obtain an operating license from the Federal Communications Commission.

McCORMICK: The two principals would be Lamar Hill, who owned KJLH, and of course the great former Green Bay Packers [football team] star Willie Davis, who owned KACE. He got a broadcasting license for KACE and a number of other stations across the country. Willie for a while, I think, owned seven or eight stations in addition to some beer distributorships. Willie eventually got pretty much out of the broadcasting business and concentrated on other things, but by that time he had done so, so well. Willie was one of those athletes who was a great football star at Green Bay, a graduate of Grambling [State] University, and the whole time he was playing football he was doing more than having a good time. He was getting his M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. So by the time his playing days were over he was a good, solid businessman and did very well. He was on the boards of directors of a number of major organizations around the country, profit and nonprofit. But those two--John Lamar Hill and Willie Davis here in Los Angeles--were the only two that I know who actually owned broadcasting licenses.

WHITE: Definitely pioneers in their own right.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Then, later on--I'm not sure what the time frame is--a good friend of mine, [William] Bill Shearer, bought the license for KGFJ radio. I was a disc jockey and program director, and he was the sales manager at KGFJ once. So I thought it was kind of a feat. I can't remember exactly what year it was. I could put it in a time frame for you. Bill, as a matter of fact, might have bought the KGFJ license before John Lamar Hill got his or Willie Davis got his, but it was all within a five- or six-year span that all of that happened. But those were the only three that I know of in Los Angeles who have ever owned their own broadcasting licenses--African Americans that I know owned their own. Now, of course, Stevie Wonder is part of the group, because he bought KJLH from Lamar.

WHITE: Exactly. That's excellent, though. They have set a precedent. The stations still tend to be thriving and doing well.

McCORMICK: Yeah. It's a more fragmented market today. It's not as easy to do well as it was when I was on KGFJ, because we were pretty much the only game in town. But in the greater Los Angeles community now, the Los Angeles market, there are something like eighty-seven radio stations all competing for a piece of the pie. So it's that same-- Well, it's a much larger pie, actually, than it was then because the population of the metropolitan area has increased so much. It's a huge market, but that huge market is divided by a lot more stations now than it used to be. I think when I first came out here there were maybe thirty-three, thirty-four stations, hardly any FM stations that were competitive, so everybody who was a major player had a pretty good slice of the market. But now a much larger market but much smaller pieces of the pie to go around.

WHITE: Yeah, that's for sure. That sort of leads me into another question that I had about the piece of the pie, because, also based on my research, I understand that KJLH offered the first sort of opposition or competition to KGFJ, I guess in addition to KDAY, particularly since it was black owned and black oriented and black directed--

McCORMICK: KDAY was not black owned.

WHITE: Right. I mean KJLH.

McCORMICK: Oh, KJLH. Yes. They were a part of a transformation in radio broadcasting which continues to this very day. KGFJ in its heyday, when I was a part of the station, was a part of what we can look back in retrospect now and see was really the dying days of AM radio as far as music was concerned. We knew that FM had a better signal, but FM didn't have the technology to broadcast its signal to a wide range of people, nor was it that affordable. As FM became more affordable, so you could begin to buy it in very small, inexpensive units, we knew that music sounded better on FM than it did on AM. But they just didn't have the power to compete. We knew as soon as they began to develop technologically and get a better, stronger signal that AM radio was going to have some problems. KGFJ and KJLH exactly represent this schism. KGFJ eventually was forced by the quality of the music, quality of the sound, on KJLH to try to adopt other formats, because even playing the same music the FM sound was so much better, so superior. KGFJ tried the top forty R and B. They tried oldies R and B. Before Bill Shearer finally sold the station they'd gone to all religious. Anything trying to find a niche, to make music sound good. They eventually sold the license, and they made it all talk, all inspirational or self-motivational or something like that, and I think since then they've changed formats again since Bill sold it. But KJLH and KGFJ were classic examples of how FM stations would win the battle for music lovers and AM stations had no alternative but to go all talk, because when you're talking it doesn't matter whether you get a big, deep bass sound or whether you have all that stuff. And you'll notice that most of the AM stations now have gone to formats other than trying to compete in music--either all sports, all talk, all commentary, all news-- KFWB, I think--and I left there shortly before they became all news--saw that handwriting on the wall. They also saw a companion piece growing in this country that people were more interested in daily events and world events and national events-- If the technology had not made it possible to get instant coverage by telephone or wire from a story almost anywhere in the world, all-news radio would not be possible. What do you fill twenty-four hours a day with? Sometimes they still have trouble filling twenty-four hours a day, because you hear the same stories repeated and over again in kind of a cycle. So they had to have the ability to fill programming for twenty-four hours a day, and as soon as they saw that writing on the wall they knew that the days of music were finished, because they couldn't compete with FM. So KGFJ and KJLH are, I think, great examples of that division that was going to come between what FM radio did for its listeners and what AM radio did for its listeners. And sure enough, today, out of the top thirty radio stations in Los Angeles, probably twenty-five are FM all music and maybe five or six are all news or all talk. There are several talk stations now, maybe six. But that's how much things have changed.

WHITE: AM is slowly fading.

McCORMICK: It is.

WHITE: Becoming passé. Well, when you first arrived in Los Angeles--late fifties, early sixties--the degree to which African Americans were working in the radio industry was pretty dismal, and then things did progress. We talked a bit about the number of disc jockeys that were quite popular in the early sixties and in the later sixties and how they responded to a lot of the different types of unrest or the various movements that were going on. Do you think that things have changed significantly today in contrast to that period of time? Are there opportunities for African Americans in the radio industry, do you feel?

McCORMICK: There are, but they are more limited than you might think. There are probably greater opportunities on television today for African Americans and other minorities than there are on the radio. Especially for African Americans. In the greater Los Angeles market there are five or six, maybe seven or eight stations that cater to the Latino market, play Latino music or Latino talk shows, whereas in the African American community there are still just three, basically: KJLH, KACE, and the Beat [KKBT FM]. But I doubt seriously that there are that many more, for example, major African American radio personalities on music stations than there were on KGFJ, KJLH, and for a long time KDAY back in those days, and very few on talk radio. You can point to Larry Elder, and beyond Larry there are really not that many. You listen to all the other pop stations and hard rock and middle-of-the-road and all that, and there really are very few African American personalities on those stations, very few.

WHITE: Absolutely true. In my notes here I was noticing that back in June of 1963 AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, declared one of the most broadly based nonbias statements to date. To what degree do you think this affected employment opportunities for African Americans in radio? And do you think that that statement, that nonbias statement, still holds true at this point in time?

McCORMICK: I don't think it's much more effective now than it was back then. After 1963, as far as I can recall, I became the only African American on a radio station which did not broadcast primarily to the African American community. There were no other black personalities on the radio at that time. On KDAY, KGFJ, that's where the black personalities had their jobs. But I was the only one on any other radio station. Today there are not that many on KNX or KFWB. Bob Howard , who used to be at KGFJ, was a newscaster, is still with KFWB. There are really not that many on the radio. Warren Wilson, who works with us at [KTLA] channel 5 now, came from KFWB radio. But there still are not that many.

WHITE: What do you attribute that to? What's your take on that?

McCORMICK: You know, I really am not terribly sure. I think the market is so fragmented that I think a lot of station managers-- Well, first, there are hardly any more just independent stations; they're all owned by groups now. And many of the disc jockeys who work at these stations are syndicated. So you hear Rick Dees in Los Angeles, you also hear Rick Dees in Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., all over the country on the morning show. I don't think, except for the case of Bob Joyner-- He's a disc jockey. They called him the "flying disc jockey" for a while, because he did shows in both Texas and Chicago, flew back and forth every day. And he's become a big, big-- He's probably the major black radio personality in the country now and has done extremely well. But other than Joyner-- And I must admit that I don't know what's going on in radio in the other major markets around the country as far as black personalities are concerned. Because frankly, you know, I haven't really kept up with it, and there's no way to do it anyway, no way convenient for me to do it except by conversation. So I don't know what the status is in other cities. But as far as I know, around the city of Los Angeles there are really very few African American radio personalities beyond the stations that appeal to blacks.

WHITE: That's quite interesting. Okay, as we were continuing on with the conversation, the National Association of Radio Announcers, NARA, ceased to exist as a viable entity due to internal conflicts in the early 1960s. Did a lack of cohesiveness, as far as you know, in that trade organization seriously constrain the impact of black radio at the national level?

McCORMICK: I don't think it constrained it. I went to the very first NARA convention, which was held here in Los Angeles at the old Ambassador Hotel, and it was a nice convention. I got to meet a lot of people I'd heard a lot about and I'd never met before.

WHITE: What year was that? Do you recall?

McCORMICK: Nineteen sixty-three.

WHITE: Okay.

McCORMICK: We had some great shows. The featured entertainers were Lou Rawls with a full orchestra one night, Dionne Warwick another night. And there maybe were two or three hundred people in attendance. But NARA never really-- You could almost say it was doomed from the start, because African American disc jockeys were not the most affluent group as a group in the broadcast industry. Most of us were not able, both because of the lack of finance and because our schedules were usually six-day schedules, to participate in a national organization--attend meetings, travel across country, and all that kind of thing. I think that's one of the biggest reasons why NARA just kind of evaporated. We certainly had a lot of causes in common, a lot of problems in common. There were a lot of things that we could have rallied around. But I think the scope of it was just too much to deal with for people who didn't have either the time or the economic wherewithal to make all these meetings. Some might say that stronger central leadership might have caused the organization to flourish for a while. But then the leadership, if you're talking about other black disc jockeys, were the same people who had the same problems of trying to-- You just couldn't hop from Cleveland to New York to Los Angeles to San Francisco for all these meetings. The success, as you know, of any national organization depends on the freedom of people who are in the leadership positions to get around and communicate and to travel, and that's what they do a lot of. Some people say that's what they do most of.

WHITE: Right. That's their biggest charge.

McCORMICK: It is. But the cost of doing that was just prohibitive for-- We deejays were just working guys. None of us were making $100,000 or $150,000 a year, in command of our own schedules where we could tell our bosses, "Well, I'm going to take off the month of August and organize this convention and go to--" Not possible. Probably not possible today.

WHITE: Right. That's the truth.

McCORMICK: NABJ, which is a very strong organization--National Association of Black Journalists--has the same, even today, kind of problem, even though they managed in many ways to overcome that problem. Because the leadership is able to travel more extensively today than they were then and because a lot of members of NABJ do better economically than we did back then. We were a powerful horse but a small horse economically. We had a major effect, major effect on the recording industry and on record sales and on developing that huge audience for recorded music, but ourselves, we were not a particularly affluent group. Not at all.

WHITE: Okay. Well, thank you for your insight on that. Now I'd like to shift a little bit. In looking at your records and your scrapbook, I noticed a number of significant things transpired for you in the late fifties, early sixties. Through some of my research I discovered that you were affiliated with the Ebony Showcase Theatre [and Cultural Arts Center] in Los Angeles, the one that's owned by Nick and Edna Stewart, the same gentleman who played Lightnin' on the Amos n' Andy show. I wonder if you could tell me how you first became affiliated with the theater? How were you introduced?

McCORMICK: There was a disc jockey--by the way, the one that when I told you that I auditioned for Jim Randolph, for KGFJ-- I think it was on a Tuesday, and he asked me if I could start on Wednesday. The guy whom I replaced starting Wednesday was a guy who turned out to be a good friend for a number of years, a fellow named Bob [Robert] Decoy from New Orleans. His disc jockey name was Ducky Decoy. He never expressed any envy or anger or resentment. He said, "Look, I heard your tape. You're good. You're real good. You're better than I am." He joined the sales department and also produced a public affairs program called This Is Progress. But Bob also was an actor. He was a graduate of Yale [University], a very bright man--the Yale drama school [Repertory School of Drama]. He still was playing bit parts in movies and things like that as he'd get them, and he got me interested in attending Ebony Showcase Theatre and coming into contact with a lot of the local Los Angeles black actors. That's how I got involved with Ebony Showcase, through Bob Decoy, because he would go there for theater workshops and things like that, and I would tag along. And that, coincidentally, is how I met my wife [Anita Daniels McCormick].

WHITE: Right, exactly.

McCORMICK: Yeah.

WHITE: That's what's leading me to this.

McCORMICK: That's how we met. But in that theater group were people who went on to do very well, some who had already done well whom I knew and was really honored to meet and to be associated with. People like the late James Edwards.

WHITE: Right. Your favorite deejay, right?

McCORMICK: No, no. James Edwards was the real first black leading man along with a fellow named Canada Lee, who played the lead in some early films, and of course Sidney [Poitier]. But James had the first big black lead in a motion picture called Home of the Brave.

WHITE: Right, okay.

McCORMICK: James was in the group, and Nichelle Nichols, who later went on to star in Star Trek, was in the group, and Greg Morris was in the group.

WHITE: From Mission Impossible?

McCORMICK: Mission Impossible, yeah. He was in the group. Al Freeman Jr. was in the group, who went on to have a very fine career and played one of the leads in Malcolm X. He played Elijah Mohammed in Malcolm X and was on a soap opera for years and years and years. Isabel Sanford was in the group, who went on to be in The Jeffersons. And on and on and on. There were a number of people there who did very well.

WHITE: How interesting. I know that in an earlier session you said that as a young man you thought that you would probably be an actor at first, as opposed to a broadcaster, so I wondered about your interaction there at the theater. To what degree did that speak to you on a very personal level? Were you going there first to accompany Mr. Decoy and then just to get involved in a workshop? What were your thoughts at the time?

McCORMICK: At the time I didn't think-- I knew I could make a living as a disc jockey because I thought I did that well. I had no notion, no idea whatsoever, no thought, no desire to be a disc jockey for the rest of my life. I knew that was not what I wanted. I still thought maybe I had a chance to make it as an actor. Doing skits and improvs and things at Ebony Showcase showed me that I could hold my own with all of these talented people. So I was spurred to have more hope that maybe I could make a career in motion pictures. I was doing skits with these very famous people and all that kind of thing--or very talented people. But that was not to be, because economics, as you know, sometimes dictates if you're going to try to be a professional actor. Economics sometimes dictates that you're probably going to have to live a life of privation until your big break comes along. You're going to have to wait tables or maybe live in a rooming house or something like that. And then shortly after I met Anita--within the next two years--we had started a family. So gainful employment began to take precedence over trying to eke out a career as an actor with no assurance that I would ever have really done very well. In the meantime, in broadcasting things started to get better and better and better and better. And the acting, which I still did-- I'd been in a lot of plays and a lot of motion pictures-- Because of the experience in acting-- And directors like people-- even today when I play newscaster parts--who can hit their mark and who don't wander out of their light, who know their lines and can say them with conviction and can do it over and over and over again, and they don't like to take somebody and try to train them when they're shooting a movie. They want somebody who can do it, who can walk in and do it. So having done all that, I got quite a few calls over the years for parts in motion pictures and television programs and things, but I knew-- That was the point at which I knew that I was not going to pursue theater acting as a career. It became very clear. You know when you-- Kids and then house and then car and then various obligations-- And if your career--in broadcasting in my case--really begins to pay off and you begin to develop a certain reputation for excellence and therefore make yourself attractive to broadcasters, it just makes sense to forget that dream. It was there, tantalizingly, for a while, and I got to taste a little of it. But that was a point-- And it wasn't too long after Ebony Showcase, maybe four or five years, even though as late as 1967, '68 I played the lead in two plays at Ebony Showcase Theatre--

WHITE: A Thousand Clowns.

McCORMICK: A Thousand Clowns. First The Odd Couple and second A Thousand Clowns, and each one for five or six months while holding other jobs. It was really a demanding schedule. So it wasn't until after, I think, A Thousand Clowns that I thought, "I really can't do this anymore. I do this at the risk of killing myself, because I'm not making a living out of doing--" Nick Stewart at Ebony Showcase couldn't really pay you enough to make a living at it and probably never would be able to. I thought, "After this I think I'm going to say 'fini' to theater, to a genuine effort at being a successful actor and trying to be a successful broadcaster."

WHITE: Simultaneously. That would be quite a feat.

McCORMICK: Really difficult.

WHITE: Yes. I do recall in some of your literature there was an article. The Hollywood Reporter talked about your starring in A Thousand Clowns, and this was a play that opened on Broadway and ran for more than a year before it was adapted to the screen. This was quite a popular and obviously successful play.

McCORMICK: It was. Very profound play. I played the role that Jason Robards Jr. played on Broadway--very difficult role in that you carry the show. If the play lasts two hours, you're on stage an hour and forty-five minutes. A lot of dialogue, a lot of moving, a lot of blocking. And one of the things I think that helped me make up my mind about broadcasting was the first couple of weeks or so-- That live audience just does something, gives you such a lift as they feed back to you and respond to you. But after a couple of weeks, working two other jobs, doing the news on [KCOP] channel 13 daytimes, six days a week on KGFJ six to nine in the morning, and then doing the play at night at Ebony Showcase-- After about two months of that I was ready to throw in the towel because it was so exhausting. And one night I actually-- When they gave the five minutes to curtain time, the five-minute call, and I was standing offstage ready to make my entrance, for just maybe twenty seconds I couldn't remember the first line. That's the dread of every actor in a live show, that you'll forget a line, or not a line so much as to forget the first line, that you'll go blank. You'll just go blank. And some actors have not been able to remember anything. On TV that's okay; they stop the tape and you start again. Movies they just say "cut." It's a real challenge to do a live stage show, because you have to be good every night. You have to remember everything--remember all your moves, all your reactions, all your lines. And you have to project that energy every night. Because the closest person to you is in the front row of the audience, and they're twenty feet away, and you've got to project to the person who's a hundred feet away in the back of the audience. So it really is exhausting, and you feel-- You know in your chest and your diaphragm and everything, your whole body. You're tired, really exhausted at the end of a performance. So at the end of A Thousand Clowns I pretty much knew "I can't do this anymore." But yes, it was a demanding role. I felt some sense of achievement that I was able to do it as long as I was.

WHITE: That's excellent. And also The Odd Couple that you played in, I guess that was in June of 1968, whereas A Thousand Clowns was in 1969. There was an article in some of your literature also that said that you made an "auspicious stage debut" as the cynical character Speed in The Odd Couple. Do you recall your experiences in that?

McCORMICK: Actually I played another role, one of the four guys who played cards. Speed was the lead, and the fellow who was originally cast as Speed, an actor named Morris Erby--who is no longer with us now, he's passed on--became ill, and I assumed the role of Speed. That was a fun show to do. One of the co-stars of the play--there were two sisters--has remained a good friend for all these years, still acts. You see her in a lot of commercials and things like that. And she's also a professor of theater at Cal[ifornia] State [University], North ridge, named Lillian Lehman. She's still around. We run into each other every now and then. Out of the whole group of that cast, Lillian and I, I think, became the longest lasting friends. I just saw her at an event that the 100 Black Men of Los Angeles put on at Cal State, Northridge for our Young Black Achievers program earlier this year, and Lillian was a part of the program. It was so good to see her again. We've maintained our friendship all these years. But that was a fun-- That was rollicking-- You know, you're familiar with the story, and it's a rollicking, funny story, the story that Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon made so famous in motion pictures, and then I guess on TV it was Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. If you get the right person playing opposite you, you can have a lot of fun, a lot of fun. And that guy, Neil Simon--"Doc" Simon--is one of the best comedy writers who's ever hit the stage. He is just a genius. So beginning with the fact that it's a Neil Simon work-- The fact that basically culturally the whole thing is kind of Jewish but that we could bring it off showed Neil Simon's universality, that it applied to anybody.

WHITE: That is quite interesting, just in speaking about the Ebony Showcase Theatre, how it helped to jump-start or spearhead some really significant careers, some of the people that you just named. And because it is the oldest African-American-run theater in the country it has quite a bit of significance in terms of theater in general and then theater in Los Angeles more specifically.

McCORMICK: In Los Angeles I think it is the oldest. The only one older in the United States--I don't know about New York City--[is] Karamu [House] theater in Cleveland, Ohio, if it's still there. That was the place I had aspired to go to when I left Lincoln High, when I graduated from Lincoln High.

WHITE: You mentioned that earlier.

McCORMICK: Karamu theater was very well known around the United States. I think that might have been started before Ebony Showcase Theatre, but Ebony has been around for a long time.

WHITE: It was owned by African Americans, Karamu?

McCORMICK: Yes. But Nick and Edna Stewart have to be given a lot of credit for keeping legitimate theater alive in the Los Angeles African American community, because for a long time, until Marla Gibbs came to Los Angeles and opened a theater [Vision Theater Complex]--first down on west Pico [Boulevard] and then over in Leimert Park--Ebony Showcase was really it. A theater opened briefly on south Vermont [Avenue] in the wake of the Watts riots, but it didn't last very long. So Nick and Edna really did a service. They had problems basically with their location on west Washington [Avenue], problems that every business located similarly to theirs suffers in Los Angeles, and that is no parking.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: One of the things that you notice that has contributed to the success of the minimalls and the larger malls is a lot of parking. Years ago in Los Angeles it was possible to get a large walk-in customer base with just street parking. That has long since changed. It changed a long time ago.

WHITE: Everyone drives.

McCORMICK: There are not enough parking spaces along the curb for people to safely come into your theater, and that's important in many parts of the city. They've learned that lesson. On every street that has become popular there's been a huge battle between businesses. For example, on Melrose [Avenue], since it became a hot street, the residents who live on the side streets can't park their own cars.

WHITE: Exactly. It's very troublesome.

McCORMICK: It is. For some reason the Los Angeles City Council has not seen fit to do what Beverly Hills has done, and that is to build parking structures where you can park free of charge. That certainly helps business. And along the hot streets-- Melrose, Santa Monica Boulevard, Sunset [Boulevard], Hollywood Boulevard-- Hollywood Boulevard has some parking, but Santa Monica Boulevard, Melrose, and now along La Brea [Avenue], it would make sense to build four or five parking garages. Another street that's really hot right now and doing very well, that finally learned that lesson, is Larchmont [Boulevard]. They finally built a parking structure and opened up some parking, because there just isn't enough parking on the street to keep a string of businesses, to keep a district, flourishing. So that's one of the things that really hurt Nick and Edna Stewart. I had so many people tell me. Occasionally if a church bought out the house we'd have a full house, and it was so great to play to a full house. Or if a business group bought out the house or some other entity filled the seats in, they could park and kind of walk in with each other. Other than that, we played to small houses most of the time--eightyfive, ninety people--because they didn't want to park and walk down Washington [Boulevard] six or eight blocks at that time. They didn't consider it entirely safe. The street, that portion of the street, was not well illuminated. They weren't sure about parking on the even darker side streets. There was no parking behind it. There was no parking. That became a major problem. Lots of people in the community wanted to support Ebony Showcase Theatre, but it was simply not convenient to go.

WHITE: Yes, and I'm sure a lot of companies that buy or lease these buildings, that just wasn't something that they took into consideration when they chose it, where their patrons would park. It was sort of secondary.

McCORMICK: I remember the success, the tremendous success of the early movie theaters. Up until the time that the cineplexes came into being and the huge theater centers and multiplexes-- Going to the movies in Los Angeles, in Kansas City, Chicago, New York, every city in the country, was a walk. You walked. The theater was a community place. You didn't have to worry about parking.

WHITE: Exactly.

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
NOVEMBER 10, 1998

WHITE: Mr. McCormick was just speaking about the parking situation as it relates to the Ebony Showcase Theatre.

McCORMICK: Nick and Edna tried a number of innovations. They tried to open a little restaurant in one part of the building. They tried to open a little TV studio in another part of the building to try to teach students video. But the problem remained the same; it just was not convenient for people. Nick had some support from the motion picture industry from time to time, from successful African American actors from time to time, but the basic problem remained the same; it was just not physically in a place that would work. And I think over the years more and more people realized that, and finally I guess Nick and Edna had to sell the property because they just couldn't keep up the payments on it.

WHITE: That's so true. I noticed in one of the articles in your collection from L.A. Life newspaper in February of 1993 that the theater was threatening to close at that time because of a loan default or some debts that were owed by the owners, by Nick and Edna Stewart, and that some people came to their aid to try to rescue and support them, and they contributed a great deal of money, including-- Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby and Barbara Walters, among others, offered donations in the two years leading up to that closure. So it not only had an influence obviously for the African American community but the community at large.

McCORMICK: I think there were a lot of people. You know, Bill lived here for a number of years when he was shooting his shows, I Spy and the Bill Cosby Show. He was a resident of Beverly Hills but was very active in the larger Los Angeles community, Bill Cosby. The other people knew of the importance, and Nick could be very persuasive in pleading his case. But a part of his case was absolutely right: it was very important to keep the legitimate theater, just the notion of the legitimate theater, as a presence in African American Los Angeles. I think that spurred altruism in a lot of people who are fans and supporters of theater and who recognize what a vital role a living and vigorous theater can play in the life of a community. I think that's one of the reasons why they contributed, but again it was difficult to overcome all of the obstacles that had always been there. He didn't have enough money to buy another building with adjacent parking so that that problem would be solved. So he was really kind of stuck, I guess. I admire Nick and Edna for hanging on as long as they did.

WHITE: To your knowledge, is there any other vehicle in Los Angeles that would somewhat compare to the Ebony Showcase Theatre?

McCORMICK: Only Marla Gibbs's place in Leimert Park. That's the only one I know of right now.

WHITE: Well, let's go back to your first bit of interaction at the theater, which you mentioned a moment ago-- I was of course going to ask you about that very fact of your meeting your wife there, Mrs. Anita Daniels McCormick. Can you tell me a little bit about that first interaction? Was she in a workshop class with you?

McCORMICK: Actually, I had gone with Bob Decoy to the workshop that night, and Anita's sister Harriet [Daniels Bernal] was very active in theater, was a singer and a dancer--principally a dancer--and had danced in a number of shows at the Hollywood Bowl and the Greek Theater. She was very, very serious about it. So Harriet is the one who had heard about the workshop from one of the other members who was a friend of hers, and she had decided to come to the workshop, and she had asked Anita just to come with her for company. Anita had no interest in acting. She was a schoolteacher; she'd just started her career as a schoolteacher. So she just came with Harriet that night. And we, Bob Decoy and I, introduced ourselves to these two nicelooking women. Then I think I didn't hear from Anita for a couple of days, and then I called her and asked if she'd like to go out, and she responded positively. Our friendship just grew, and the first thing we knew we were dating. But she still had no interest-- She did an improvisational skit, because everybody there-- They had kind of a rule, "You don't come here and just sit. You come and you perform. You participate." Everybody had to do improvs, and she did an improv and violated every rule of theater stage you can imagine. When she finished I thought, "No, you're right. You shouldn't be an actress." She did everything wrong. She turned her back to the audience in delivering her lines, she upstaged her fellow actor. He would move to try to clear himself in the audience, and she would just go and stand there. Just everything wrong. Then I thought, "Well, she's not an actress. She's not trying to be." But the rule was you had to participate. So one thing led to another, and then I guess shortly thereafter we were getting married in Las Vegas--Little Chapel of the Flowers.

WHITE: What year was this, when you got married?

McCORMICK: This was 1960. October of 1960. October 16, 1960.

WHITE: It was a short courtship.

McCORMICK: Well, we'd been courting each other for about nine months--because this was in January, I think, when we met--and then we'd been dating steadily for about six months before we got married. But that was how that happened. So I have the Ebony Showcase to thank for that, never knowing when I went there that night that I would meet-- I had no idea. First, I really had no idea. I was really interested in theater, and none of us really treated it as a place to pick up a guy or pick up a girl. Everybody was serious. So I really had no idea that I would meet the woman who was to become my future wife in that theater that night.

WHITE: It happens when you least expect it.

McCORMICK: It sure does.

WHITE: And of course, this was your first marriage. Was this her first marriage as well?

McCORMICK: Her second.

WHITE: Her second marriage. Okay. And the two of you had children. Can you tell me a little bit about your immediate family?

McCORMICK: Okay. Anita was married previously to an aerospace engineer, the late Alvin [C.] Bowens [Sr.], who actually became a good friend of mine as time passed, and she had a son from that union, Alvin [C. Bowens] Jr., who was about eight or nine years old when I met them. We just took an immediate liking to each other. We were like father and son but really more like buddies. That's how our relationship developed over the years. I never envied his relationship with his dad; his dad never envied my relationship with him. As I said, his dad and I became good friends and kind of had a mutual interest in Alvin's well being, and Alvin I think understood that and appreciated that even to this day.

WHITE: What a healthy relationship.

McCORMICK: It was very healthy, and very fortunate, because it doesn't always happen that way. And then in 1961 the first of our children--with Anita and me--was born, Mitch [Mitchell D. McCormick], our middle son, and in 1963 our baby daughter Kitty [Kitrina M. McCormick]. So that's been the family. Two grandkids [Daniel and Benjamin Bowens] now, both Alvin's sons. One is a freshman at the University of Maryland, just started there, and the other one is a freshman in high school back in Montclair, New Jersey. That's where they live.

WHITE: You said your wife was a teacher when you first met. Did she continue teaching throughout most of your marriage?

McCORMICK: Yes. Yes, she did. She taught in the Compton school district, her first job after she got her teaching certificate from Cal[ifornia] State [University], Los Angeles. She's an alumnus of Fisk University, moved out here, got her bachelor's degree from Cal State L.A., then her teaching certificate from Cal State L.A., then later on her master's from Pepperdine [University]. She was a schoolteacher in the Compton school district, which was a little, at that time mostly all-white, school district in Compton, at a small school called Laurel Street Elementary School. I went out there with her many times. It had a faculty of about 13 and about 250 students, just nice and comfortable. She had a really great relationship with her principal, a fellow named Mike Drakulich. I really have developed an understanding for good, sincere teachers, because I saw her work on lesson plans. She used every amount of ingenuity she could muster every single day to be a good teacher. She was a great teacher. Then the voters decided--I can't remember what year it was--to unify Willowbrook and some other school districts with Compton, and it became Compton Unified School District. And I think that the district really became unwieldy, because they began to have shortages of materials and funds and everything like that. But Anita kept studying, kept working and being a good teacher. Finally she got her master's and she became a reading resource specialist.

WHITE: A reading resource specialist?

McCORMICK: Yes. They had reading resource specialists. This is when they were still pretty flush with money from the state, before the Republicans started to change everything. Reading resource specialists, math resource specialists, and science resource specialists, who were special teachers who really managed books and [curricula] for the other teachers of these subjects. So it was a pretty prestigious position. And then when they started to run into economic troubles they eliminated all the resource teachers and said, "Everybody go back to the classroom." Then the commute started to bother her. What was a really fairly comfortable eighteen-, twenty-minute commute, even at that time, to Compton became forty minutes, forty-five minutes. By that time, I think, she was not that enamored at being back in the classroom. She really had gotten her master's degree with the eye toward the promise that this would put you in line for being a reading resource teacher, and she kind of looked at that as wasted time. And I really have tremendous admiration for what she went through to get that master's degree in eighteen months while still teaching full-time, still being a mommy full-time. I had great admiration for how she did it, what she went through to achieve that and do everything else in life that she was doing.

WHITE: That's quite ambitious.

McCORMICK: Oh, it was.

WHITE: That's a tremendous accomplishment.

McCORMICK: Oh, it is, tremendous. Oh, I can't tell you. I saw her do it night after night, do the lesson plan and then get in her books, and sometimes till three [o'clock A.M.]. I was scared sometimes. Until three [or] three thirty in the morning, knowing that she had to get up at six to go to school, and I was so afraid she'd go to sleep at the wheel or something. But she kept her nose to the grindstone for eighteen months. By the time she graduated Pepperdine had moved to their Malibu campus, and that's where they had the graduation. When she was going it was by Vermont [Avenue]-- Seventy-eighth [Street] and Vermont, somewhere around there, where [Fred] Price's church is.

WHITE: Right, exactly.

McCORMICK: When she started they were there. When she finally got her M.A. they were in Malibu. That's where the graduation was, in the gymnasium there. But I was really proud. I think it's an amazing accomplishment to do what she did under those conditions. So finally she got tired of the commute. She's been retired for about five years now. She got tired of the commute, and I had been telling her for a while--because I could see the toll that it was taking on her-- And then the discord and turmoil in the district-- There was a lot of turmoil in the district internally with the board and all that kind of thing, and I thought, "Why don't you--? I have a lot of chits to collect for all the favors for everybody in the LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District], from the superintendent on down"--career days at schools and academic decathlons. I did all kinds of things.

WHITE: I noticed a lot of those community efforts in your scrapbook.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah.

WHITE: Very active.

McCORMICK: So I said, "There are a lot of people who owe me. Let me call in some of those chits." So I made connections with a couple of people and said, "She wants to come back to LAUSD, and she wants a school that's close." So some of the people I contacted--I don't know whether I should use their names or not but who were very influential-- To make a long story short, very shortly she got an assignment at an Alta Loma school, which, before they closed this neighborhood, was two minutes away, right on the other side of West Boulevard. So that worked out for about five, six years until again she-- She was getting close to retirement age, to the earliest age that she could retire. And then the LAUSD-- Again, fiscal matters started to enter the picture. They were about to change the rule that would allow you to retire at your three highest years' pay. They were going to change it so that her retirement benefit would have been downward from that. That in combination with the fact that--she taught K [kindergarten] and 1 [first grade]--she was starting to get so many crack babies, who were distractions, you know, all day long.

WHITE: Hyperactive.

McCORMICK: Hyperactive, unruly, uncooperative, talked disruptively in the class. And she had spent so much of her time and energy just trying to keep them under control and then battling their parents when they'd come to school. So she said, "I've had it, I'm out of here," and about five years ago she retired. But she was a really, really good teacher, terrific teacher.

WHITE: I would imagine. She has a very warm demeanor. It looks like she would have been well received.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. No matter where we were, whatever we saw, vacation, wherever she-- "I could use that in school. I could use this to teach the kids." Anything. She created a lot of things on her own. She had a vivid imagination. She was a terrific teacher.

WHITE: That's wonderful. Well, tell me, how about your children? Are any of your children following in your footsteps? Were they attracted to entertainment or to publicity or anything like that?

McCORMICK: Well, indirectly. The oldest, Alvin, my stepson--and with no influence from me whatsoever--attended San Francisco State University after graduating from L.A. High [Los Angeles High School], got into the technical end of the business. He had always had some technical acumen, because he had learned a lot of things about electricity and all that kind of stuff from his father, who was an aerospace engineer, and he spent a lot of time with his father, especially on weekends. So he got into videotape editing at San Francisco State and movie production, and eventually, when he graduated from San Francisco State, he taught videotape editing and production at Skyline College in the Bay Area. Then finally he got his first job actually as a videotape editor at Bank of America's headquarters in San Francisco. I'll fill in the years for you later; I can't remember what they were [1976 or '77]. When he came down on vacation he complained that that wasn't-- "That's not television," he said. "All I'm doing is putting videotapes on a cart, taking them from one floor to the next in the headquarters building. I want to work. I want to create." So we were in San Francisco, Anita and I. At that time I was very active with AFTRA. I've been a member ever since I've been in Los Angeles, but I was very active on their committees, and I went to AFTRA conventions. At a number of them during that time I was a delegate to the conventions, been elected by local AFTRA. And the convention that year was in San Francisco. I had been at KTLA for three, four years by then. So we were there to see [2001: A] Space Odyssey, which was a big technological breakthrough then for motion pictures. We were standing in line--when convention business was over--at this theater in San Francisco, Alvin and Anita and I. He was living there, working there at B of A. And we said: "Come on. Let's go see the movie when the convention session is over at six o'clock--have some dinner, go see a movie." Well, there was a fellow who had produced the first afternoon newscast that we had at channel 5 named Jan Minagawa, about a six-foot four-inch Japanese guy-- which made him an oddity to begin with--a really nice guy, really sharp. Jan had left Los Angeles to go back and work at a station in San Jose to be near his family, his parents. And from there he had gotten the job at San Jose. Something happened there, and then he had gotten a job at KPIX in San Francisco. So we're standing in line to see the movie--and I hadn't seen him for about five or six months--and who walks up but Jan Minagawa! We exchanged greetings and everything and "How are you doing?" and all that stuff, and I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm working at KPIX. I'm assistant news director." I said, "Well, this is my stepson Alvin." I said, "I don't know if you've ever met him, but he's interested in getting into news." Jan said, "Well, come by and see me tomorrow."

WHITE: Oh, my goodness.

McCORMICK: That's the way he got his first job as a news editor at KPIX in San Francisco. One of the secretaries in the newsroom at KPIX [Lynn Johnson] was a graduate of Stanford [University], and she was so bright that she told the news director one day, "Look. I've been watching the newswriters. I know as much as they know. I can do what they do." She became one of KPIX's top newswriters. She and Alvin met, and they got married.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: Yeah. They are now divorced. They have been divorced for five or six years now, but they were married for about eleven years--eleven, twelve years. So they got married. They both worked at KPIX, and they shared an apartment there. And then I guess they had been married a year, maybe two years, and they moved to Los Angeles. And Lynn, his wife, came to work at KTLA as a writer and ultimately produced my weekend news when I first started doing the weekend news.

WHITE: Oh, really? Small world.

McCORMICK: And Alvin became a video editor at channel 2 [KCBS] for a show called 2 on the Town and also did some--

WHITE: A very popular show.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. It was very popular. Connie Chung was the first host. Alvin also did a lot of editing on the news and other features and things and won a couple of Emmy [Awards], won for a thing he did called Billy Martin, Billy Martin. And he won another Emmy for a show he did with-- I'm blocking on the singer's name now. [Melissa Manchester] There's a picture over there. And he won an Emmy for a number of the 2 on the Town shows. He's a really good editor, and he's fast. He's been to three winter Olympics with CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System]. They asked him to take a leave of business from his job in New York City and go with them.

WHITE: He's quite accomplished in his field.

McCORMICK: He went to [Nagano] Japan, he went to Albertville [France]. He's good. He's good. And because he knows music he can edit--which a lot of editors can't do--to the beat if they want something to go with the music. He knows what's going on, so he can insert a lot of little stuff that other people leave-- He's a good journalist.

WHITE: Right. He sounds like he has really great skills.

McCORMICK: Yes, he does. So he's got the two sons, our grandsons, and he still lives in Montclair, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City. Our middle son has had his problems. He got as far as Santa Monica City College, and then he had some troubles with mental illness and ultimately was diagnosed with schizophrenia. So he still suffers with that. He's still on medication, but he's home every weekend and lives at a board-and-care here in Los Angeles. That's Mitch. He showed a lot of promise, but this mysterious illness which strikes young people when they're starting to get off into the most productive years of their lives and nobody knows why, or how it happens or why it happens--

WHITE: One of those strange phenomena.

McCORMICK: It is. It's been one of the sadnesses and one of the trials in our lives, mine and Anita's, because we're just so sorry for all that he's missed because of his affliction. But he deals with it now better, far better, than he did when he was younger. Like a lot of people, they fight the medication. They don't want to take the medication. They even come under the illusion that the medication is what's making them sick. And it's not been easy at all with him.

WHITE: Sure. I can understand that.

McCORMICK: And then, of course, the baby, Kitty--

WHITE: Whom I've met a number of times.

McCORMICK: You met Kitty. She was the one I thought might follow my path into my career, because she went to USC [University of Southern California] and studied communication and then broadcast journalism. But when she graduated from USC, when she got her B.A.-- She graduated the same year, the same class, as Cheryl Miller, the great basketball star. In fact, she was sitting just a couple of rows behind Cheryl. And she had a couple of jobs--with an advertising agency and with a game show producer. She worked for about four or five years in fields like that. That's as close-- She did an apprenticeship, an internship at channel 5 news, but then finally she told me, "I don't really want to do news." So she got into some other facets of this business. Then finally, about three and a half, four years ago, she came and announced to her mom and me that-- She had been volunteering at a shelter for abused children and then a shelter for battered wives, and she'd become very active in those kinds of things just for altruistic purposes. She started thinking more and more and more about that and about those problems and about the needs that she saw that needed to be filled there, and she told us, "I want to get my master's degree in social work. That's what I want to do." And that's what she did.

WHITE: Good for her.

McCORMICK: So she is now doing postgraduate work in social work with an aim toward becoming a counselor for either LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District] or some school district. That's her ultimate aim. She's got about eight more months to go and she will have filled the requirements for that certificate.

WHITE: Wonderful. That's excellent. People with her skills are very much needed.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. And I think it will be more and more and more so as time goes along.

WHITE: Yeah. The emotional challenges that students have to face just to come to school and just to learn, be comfortable.

McCORMICK: And hope that they get out alive.

WHITE: Yes, exactly.

McCORMICK: But with all the kids--you make a very good point--with all the stresses-- I thought we had a rough time growing up. We did physically and economically, but socially and psychologically we didn't face nearly the stresses and the pressures kids do today. It must be a challenge to be a young person today and not get into any kind of difficulty with all the forces that are pulling at you one way or another--your peer group, television, video, extracurricular activities. We didn't have cars. Young people have cars now. They have great mobility, which creates more stresses, and just more stresses that they have to live under. So counselors I think are going to be needed. You go down to the grade schools and you've got all these on Ritalin and all that kind of stuff, so--

WHITE: Right. Prozac.

McCORMICK: Prozac, yeah. So counselors are going to be very, very important I think for years to come. And I hope she'll find not only some success career-wise but a sense of personal satisfaction in that field.

WHITE: Absolutely. Well, wonderful. You have a lovely family, very lovely. For the most part you have raised your family in this very home. This home, I understand, is the former home of Joe Louis's wife Martha [Jefferson].

McCORMICK: Yeah, it was, Joe Louis and Martha Jefferson. She was an attorney, and Joe Louis, of course, the former heavyweight champion of the world--when I was growing up in Kansas City. When I was a little boy he was one of my great heroes, one of our great heroes. All young African American men-- Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, those were our great heroes. And as you said, life takes some strange turns, and I had no idea one day I would be living in what was Joe Louis's home. But that's the way it turned out. We like to think it's been a comfortable place for the kids to grow up.

WHITE: Yes. It's a lovely neighborhood, Lafayette Square.

McCORMICK: It is. It really is. And it's retained all that as long as we've lived here.

WHITE: There's lots of history.

McCORMICK: Yeah. A number of houses in the square were designed and built by the renowned, famous black architect Paul [R.] Williams, who lived in the square. And his granddaughter today lives in what was his house, Karen [E.] Hudson.

WHITE: Yeah. I noticed in one of the articles that you were sort of the unofficial spokesman for Lafayette Square. If there's anything that's going on in city hall or what have you that has to do with your community--

McCORMICK: Kind of. Actually I emcee all the block parties. We're one of the few communities I know that still has-- Every summer we have a big block party. There are about 250 homes in the four-square-block area of Lafayette Square. We've remained a pretty close-knit community. So every year when we have the big block party, it goes without saying, whoever's the president of the association that year says, "Larry, of course you're going to emcee." So I always say, "Yeah, of course I'm going to emcee."

WHITE: That's for sure. You've had your share of emceeing.

McCORMICK: Oh, my goodness.

WHITE: It will be interesting when we begin our dialogue about that, some of the many, many opportunities that you've had to emcee and your extensive community outreach efforts. They've been stellar.

McCORMICK: There have been a lot. It stems from the feeling that my father instilled, tried to instill, in all of us that we really are our brothers' keepers. You have to give something back. "To whom much has been given, much is required," as the old saying goes.

WHITE: Absolutely. That's a wonderful saying. Well, let's see. Let's shift back a bit, back to your career. We, of course, talked about your first stint at KGFJ. I know that from that point you moved to KIIX TV, channel 22. Can you tell me about your departure? What prompted your departure from KGFJ the first time?

McCORMICK: Well, KIIX TV, channel 22, was going to be an experiment, the first one in Los Angeles in all-black television. I thought I wanted to be a part of that. I was not terribly happy with the way things were going at KGFJ at the time anyway, because I felt that my show, the show that I was doing, was too long. It was five hours a day, one [o'clock] to six [o'clock] P.M., six days a week, which for a hard-driving show like that-- It really takes it out of you. So I thought, "Well, this will be both a good alternative," and I also thought about using it for a wedge to get a better deal from KGFJ. And it would have worked.

WHITE: Oh, it did? Okay.

McCORMICK: When I told them I was going to channel 22 they were ready to make a deal.

WHITE: Right. Of course. That's usually the case.

McCORMICK: It always happens that way.

WHITE: Like KPRS.

McCORMICK: Yeah, like KPRS. So I said, "No. No, thank you. I don't think so. I think I'm going to become a part of this experiment and see what happens." By that time I was beginning to get vaguely familiar--not totally, but vaguely familiar, because I didn't have any figures--with the fact that once you get your feet wet and you get into it you make considerably more money in television than you do in radio. Because the whole financial picture is different for television. It's bigger. The audience is bigger. Rates that they charge for commercials are more, and for a variety of reasons. So I thought, "I think I'll see what I can do." I didn't really understand how underfunded the effort was. The two southern-- Caucasian--men who had owned a string of those black radio stations in the South had thought that the Los Angeles market was ready for an all-black television experiment. But they really did not appreciate how much money it takes to do that, to do TV, and they had a very important technological problem. At that time channel 22 was what we called a UHF [ultrahigh frequency] station, and in order to get its programs you had to have a UHF receiver, which you had to go buy [at] $25 a unit. So they were not only in the television business, they were in the business constantly, all day long, of trying to sell UHF converters. Of course, you don't have to do that anymore. But they were not able to overcome that problem. And the audience did not grow because of the problem of the technology. And we didn't really have very much good programming on there. There was no-- We didn't have any sources like BET [Black Entertainment Television] does today of all these sources of programming. They didn't have enough money to buy predominantly black movies. They made the mistake of trying to go live for I think it was only six hours--three [o'clock] P.M. to nine o'clock] P.M., something like that. It didn't work, and it fell through. We had some indication several weeks before they finally put the notices in our boxes that we were no longer broadcasting, that it was going to fall through. I took a month off. That was the same summer, during that period I had off, when they had the NARA convention at the Ambassador.

WHITE: Right, 1963.

McCORMICK: So I just cruised and met people at the NARA convention. I'd been contacted even shortly after I left KGFJ by KDAY, which was the nearest thing to a rival KGFJ had at the time, so I knew if I wanted a job that income was not going to be a problem. So I just said, "I'm just going to take a little vacation and going to the NARA convention and kick around and do some things." In the meantime I had also been contacted by the Hollywood-Beverly Hills branch of the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]. The fellow who was the president of the branch at that time, an attorney named James [A.] Tolbert-- James was, among other things, the attorney for Lou Rawls and a lot of other major stars. He was a player--he's mostly retired now--in Hollywood. He had been talking to KFWB, which was the number-one station in the world. It was the king of rock and roll, top forty station, king of Los Angeles by far. He had been in discussion with them about integrating their staff. And it later came to me--Jim himself told me later on-- I didn't even know that any of this was going on. I was cruising. I told KDAY, "Look, I'm going to take August off. I'll start in September." I kind of had an arrangement, an agreement that I was going to start over there. I'd been talking to them.

WHITE: So how long had you stayed at KDAY? They had sort of recruited you after you had taken some time off?

McCORMICK: When I left KGFJ, when I was at KIIX, they had been talking to me and calling me periodically to see if I was interested in coming over there and doing their morning show. I just put them off and put them off. So finally Jim told me, "The program director at KFWB-- We've had some negotiations with them." Jim Tolbert knew some people and said, "You know, being the number-one station in Los Angeles, you really ought to be integrated." He told me later they said, "Well, there's only one black guy we know who can do what we do at KFWB, and that's Larry McCormick." So he told me before I even started at KDAY, "Early next year--I want you to just plan on this--you're going to be at KFWB. You're going to integrate KFWB." I said, "Jim--" He said, "It's already set. Don't worry about it." He said, "If KDAY wants you to work in the meantime, take the job, but tell them that you can't make a promise past next March because something else is developing for you."

WHITE: [laughs] Okay. He's planning your career.

McCORMICK: Planning my career. So early the next year I got the call from KFWB, and of course, as I think back about it now, it was a big deal. All the record people in Los Angeles and all the other disc jockeys and people who just listened, who were even tangentially associated with radio, called me to congratulate me for the big breakthrough. "I can't believe you made KFWB. You must really be--" All the other black disc jockeys around the country, "You're on KFWB?" You know, channel 98 was the big horse.

WHITE: Wow. And this was particularly, because it was one of the most popular radio stations in general, and then also by the fact that you were integrating the staff.

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: Those were significant.

McCORMICK: It was the most popular station in Los Angeles.

WHITE: It was the most popular, right.

McCORMICK: And one of the three or four top rock and roll stations in the entire United States. Everybody in New York, Chicago, Miami, Kansas City, Philadelphia-- Everybody knew about KFWB in Hollywood. We were the West Coast heavyweight. Any other station-- We were the West Coast heavyweight. People in other parts of the country modeled their programs and their disc jockeys and their jingles and their contests and everything after KFWB. It was the big horse.

WHITE: So you'd hit the big time in terms of your career in radio.

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: What were some of the most significant differences between being at a major--super major, I guess--radio station as opposed to being at one of the minor stations?

McCORMICK: One of the things is you had to step up your performance, your alertness, your sharpness, your knowledgeability about a much broader field of music. Now instead of just being knowledgeable about Ray Charles and James Brown and Etta James and people like that, I had to be knowledgeable about the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and that whole other galaxy of stars out there without losing my retention and my connection to the black stars.

WHITE: Right. Quite a feat.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. And I recognized I had to do that right away. I also recognized that I had to adopt a lot of the format strategies and things like that that were so much different from what I was doing on KGFJ. They didn't want, and I didn't want, to "go dialect." So I had to use good English.

WHITE: "Go dialect." [laughs]

McCORMICK: Yeah. But I also had this show, in whatever way I could, where I could invest some of the soul and the spirit and energy that they had liked. The KFWB guys told me later on, "Hey, we listened to you all the time on KGFJ. We know what you can do. We know how good you are. We said all along that you belonged on KFWB because you were one of the best." But they started to pick up on a lot of little things I did coming out of soul radio, R and B [rhythm and blues] radio. And I had to figure out how to incorporate those into top forty radio and make them work. And I think I was fairly successful at that.

WHITE: Did you feel that they emulated your style to a certain degree?

McCORMICK: Some did.

WHITE: Some of them did?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: Okay. One of the articles that I read having to do with your stint at KFWB, particularly when you started, states, "He is a fine and fortunate man and a wonderful broadcaster. He will show radio, KFWB, and all the world what a good Negro deejay can do." I wondered if you could tell me what your thoughts are about that? Were there challenges involved in being the only African American? I'm assuming you were the only person in the entire station at any level.

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: What were some of the challenges that you faced, if at all?

McCORMICK: Well, there were challenges. The first and foremost challenge--and this is the challenge every African American male I think especially, I think it is fair to say, has faced on being a first--is you dare not fail. Because if you fail it is tantamount to failure of your entire race, your entire group of people. So the first is a challenge of dare not fail--don't be late, don't screw up--and be, if you possibly can, the best on the air. Don't give them any excuse for saying that you couldn't cut it. So that challenges, and it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on you, too. That challenge is always there. There were really no challenges inside the station. I guess--I came to understand later on--a couple of disc jockeys who weren't that hot on my joining the staff-- But I made some friends among the staff and among the newscasters at KFWB. Some of them are still friends today like Cleve Hermann, who quietly took me aside and told me who my enemies were, or potential enemies, and who to watch out for and kind of watched my back. So I never had one moment of conflict with any of the disc jockeys. Several of them remain good friends today.

WHITE: Really?

McCORMICK: Several of them really took me under their wings to show me the format. Sam Riddle, who up until just recently produced Lou Rawls's Parade of Stars for the UNCF [United Negro College Funds] for a number of years, has his own production company, and had me as on as one of the cohosts. Sam Riddle sat up there on a double shift night after night for the better part of two weeks to show me the format, to show me what to do, when to do it. And the format for top forty stations was a lot trickier than the ones on KGFJ.

WHITE: In what respect?

McCORMICK: Oh, the technical part of the jingles-- It was just more complex than KGFJ's format. It depended on a lot of technical stuff instead of just the utilization of your voice to project everything. Jingles were on cart [cartridge machines], and little stingers [a musical "button" for audio impact] on cart, and the tightness of the format, and what they called "imperceptible overlap," where there was an overlap between element one, this song, and the next song to such an extent where it would almost seem like a continuation--techniques that had to be learned that Sam showed me. Wink Martindale and I became good friends. Wink is still around doing game shows and all that kind of stuff. I see him every now and then, and the other disc jockeys. The two who I was told were not that hot on my being there later turned out to be friends.

WHITE: They learned to appreciate your expertise?

McCORMICK: You had to prove yourself, and after you've proven yourself they say, "Well, I guess I was wrong."

WHITE: That's professional.

McCORMICK: But I never really had, never ever, any confrontations, as a matter of fact. After I worked there for about a year some things started happening that I really never thought would happen, and I wasn't really that concerned about the social aspects. Every time the other guys had something I was invited. If they were going to go out partying or go do this, "Come on, Larry, come on." So we just started hanging out together.

WHITE: They became sort of your social circle.

McCORMICK: Yeah. They pulled me right in. After a couple of years or so I was very near the center of the social circle, because as disc jockeys come and go I became one of the veterans who was always there. So I never had a-- I can't remember one really bad experience in a racial sense, or any other sense, that I had at KFWB until very near the end--and it wasn't just me, it was all the other disc jockeys--when it became obvious that they were going to go all news. They were going to make some drastic changes. It started to go down in the ratings, because KRLA and KHJ had started to come on strong, and the management wasn't very good at the station. So, they-- Westinghouse [Corporation] bought the station from the then owner, Crowell Collier Broadcasting [Company], and they brought in hatchet men, whose job was to-- As much as you can do it--this happens regularly in every business in the country--without riling up the union you have to turn over the personnel. So what they would do is take an enormously popular disc jockey like Wink Martindale, who was a popular disc jockey, and by that time he was already hosting game shows and things like that, and put him on the all-night shift, midnight to six [o'clock]. The desired result was that he'd say, "To hell with them. I'm not going to do this. You can't offend me like this," and quit. And it worked with three or four guys. And they did it to me. That was the least favorite time of my-- I had been the number-one disc jockey from noon to three [o'clock] on KFWB in the city.

WHITE: For a good amount of time.

McCORMICK: For about a year, better part of the year. I even got an award once, a check, for being number one in my time period. But anyway, they finally did it to me. They told me I was going to be moved from six to nine P.M. or nine to midnight or midnight to six. And they just had such a cold way of doing it. They made no excuses about it. "Your shift is going to change." So KGFJ-- I didn't want to contact KGFJ, which at that time was really strong, and say I wanted to come back, because that would have put me in a poor bargaining position.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: So I got the word around that I wanted to leave KFWB, and KGFJ called me. You've got to play those things just right, you know. I just let the word out that I was thinking of leaving.

WHITE: Feeling a little unrest there.

McCORMICK: So I was called by-- By that time the general manager of KGFJ was a fellow named Arnold Schorr. So I got a call from Arnie saying, "Do you want to come back? Why don't you come back and do the morning drive time show? You know, we're really cooking over here now." They were. They were getting stronger all the time. They hadn't even reached their peak yet. I said, "Oh"--playing it--"I don't know. I'm not sure what I'm going to do."

WHITE: The bargaining chip.

McCORMICK: The bargaining chip. So we finally struck a deal, and I came back to KGFJ in 1967, I think it was.

WHITE: Okay, I think on that note we'll go ahead and end for the day, and we can pick up on the conversation on our next recording. Okay, thank you.

McCORMICK: Back to KGFJ.

WHITE: Back to KGFJ.

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
NOVEMBER 17, 1998

WHITE: The last time we spoke you were giving me information about how you had worked at [radio station] KFWB until it had gone all news. You told me a little bit about your experiences there and that you had decided to return to [radio station] KGFJ in 1967. There are a number of questions I wanted to ask you just to follow up on our discussion of last week about your stint at KFWB. I wanted to chat a little bit more about that, because in doing my research it did seem as though your stint at KFWB was quite a significant one in that you were working for the number-one rock station in the United States, and this was somewhat of a high point in your radio career. This was a much sought after position. I'm sure that they decided that you were the best man for the job. You were then at the top of your field, so to speak. It was extremely significant for you as a disc jockey, but also it was an important and crucial step for the radio industry in that you once again had the opportunity to become a maverick, and at this point you were integrating an all-white radio station. Can you tell me how long it was before other people of color actually joined the ranks at KFWB, if in fact they did?

McCORMICK: No, they didn't, not while it was still a music station. A couple of people did join KFWB after it became an all-news station, notably Bob Howard, who is still there after all these years, and of course Warren Wilson, who is now one of our reporters at [KTLA] channel 5. But I was the only African American and, as a matter of fact, the only minority period, because there were no Latinos or Asians who worked at KFWB while it was still the top rock and roll station. I can't even recall whether we had anybody in sales. I think I may have been the only one in the whole place who was African American. So it was significant in that respect, but no general movement to employ African Americans in broadcast stations that were not directed towards the African American community was really active at all.

WHITE: That's very interesting. Also according to my research, I discovered that you were given titles while you were there or assumed titles or began to call yourself different things such as the "Midnight Mayor of Los Angeles," or you were referred to as the "Slender Sleepwalker" or the "Grand Master of the Graveyard Shift" at one point, and that you were also part of what they referred to as the "Good Guys Team."

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: I understand that you even had a fan club while you were there.

McCORMICK: Yes, I did. All of us did, all of the disc jockeys. KFWB was enormously popular. When I was on the all-night shift, the promotion department at KFWB, as is the case with many stations, had a contractual arrangement with various producers of jingles, what they call jingles, the logos and the little slogans and things that you hear. They're the ones who came up with the "Midnight Sleepwalker" and all that kind of stuff. And they produced jingles which-- If I have the opportunity some time--I think I still have them upstairs--I will play one for you and let you hear what it sounded like. But they came up with those kinds of titles; I didn't myself. But they worked well, and they seemed to become popular with the public. And it was a way of identifying the individual personality and his time slot on the air to better endear that person, I guess, to the listeners at that time of the night. So I have jingles that say musically [sings], "Larry McCormick, the 'Slender Sleepwalker' on KFWB." As a matter of fact, the same thing they use for the news right now. That's the same little jingle that we had back then.

WHITE: Is that right?

McCORMICK: Thirty-five years ago.

WHITE: Wow. The same one?

McCORMICK: The same one.

WHITE: Creatures of habit. My goodness.

McCORMICK: It worked, and it stuck. For the demographic group that KFWB still tries to appeal to it brings memories. So it still works for them.

WHITE: Okay. It's one of those memory tools or jargons that you associate certain things with when you hear a particular sound.

McCORMICK: And a favorable association.

WHITE: Exactly. Now, about your fan club, would you actually receive fan mail?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah.

WHITE: You would. And did you respond to it?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. I answered every letter. For a while I was a columnist for a newspaper that KFWB published, as was the case with-- Usually the top rock and roll station in every market will have a little five- or six-page newspaper that they publish either biweekly or once a month. It was called the KFWB Hitline, and I would answer a lot of my fan mail in the Hitline, and then I would write columns on various subjects and titles. You might have seen a couple of Hitlines.

WHITE: Right. I did, actually. I was going to ask you a question about that, because I noticed that you really established a great rapport with the youth. And in doing my research I did find a photograph--it was December 22 of 1965--and an article showing students from Compton. They were greeted by you at an open house at KFWB, and in the article it said that they were reporters who contributed to your column that appears in Hitline. So I was going to ask you about your interaction and your assignment with working with youths on that particular document in Hitline.

McCORMICK: It was a very interesting experience. First, I recalled and I had to fall back on some of the training I had had and the education I had had in studying journalism at Kansas City University. You really have no idea what you can do until you start doing it. I've always liked writing, so I found out that "Hey, I can still write and make it very cohesive and enjoyable and pleasurable." In writing the information about the KFWB Hitline, it was interesting in a number of ways, because I was in essence an African American guy in what was basically a white world and trying to relate and see how other people related to me, especially teenagers--white teenagers. Our lifestyles in growing up and everything had been so different. And they really did relate to me, and I think I related to them. And they came to look at me by and large as just one of the other disc jockeys. After a while, in writing the Hitline, one of the things I tried to do--and I think I had some modest success--was to get KFWB to involve more and more African American and Latino teenagers. So when we had the open houses I was always delighted to see African American kids coming up to look at the studios and to visit with the disc jockeys. And far more African American kids listened to rock and roll than I had imagined. I don't know whether that was because of me. I suspect part of it was, because generally African American kids are R and B [rhythm and blues] fans, and they were listening to my old alma mater KGFJ. But they did come, and I did involve some of them in some of the stories I did for KFWB Hitline, but I recognized that it was not likely that there would be any wholesale movement of African American music fans over to rock and roll. That was not going to happen. So I think I just wanted to make them feel included. And on KFWB we did play a lot of songs by African American artists, because a lot of African American artists had big hits, when you think of all of the Motown people among many, many others. So it was not as though I was playing songs only by Caucasian artists but a lot of black artists. And I think that helped make the connection with African American kids, and they could kind of listen and see which songs by African American artists had made the crossover from R and B stations like KGFJ to become crossover hits--big, big hits. So there was that feeling of inclusiveness, and I sure tried to foster that. As I said, my success probably was only modest, but it also-- Doing the things at KFWB, which had far more sophisticated, creative resources behind it for promotion and otherwise than KGFJ, because they could borrow on the experiences of rock and roll stations all around the country-- And I did, I think, learn about a lot of things that ultimately I took back to KGFJ with me to make them a more sophisticated operation.

WHITE: Absolutely. You diversified your experience. That's always a good path to take.

McCORMICK: I think so.

WHITE: Broaden your perspectives and sort of your angle of vision.

McCORMICK: I didn't know it at the time because I had no idea I was going back to KGFJ, because I had no idea that KFWB was on the verge of this sea change of formats, but as it turned out I was able to call on some of those things and use them at KGFJ.

WHITE: Excellent. While you were at KFWB, because you received the highest ratings of any Los Angeles deejay in the twelve [o'clock] to three [o'clock] time slot, in your files you described sort of the standard qualifications of a top deejay as: "Dependability. One who is very punctual. A healthy, professional attitude toward work and toward those with whom one works. One must be informed about the business, about artists, about songs, about trends in the music, about the broadcasting industry, about competing market stations, trends in public taste, seasonal trends, listener interest trends, and about the station--the whats and the hows and the whys of that particular station." In past conversations that we've had, you've indicated that to be an effective communicator you must be sensitive and in touch with your audience. Now, outside of your fan mail and things like that--maybe having other people come to the station or the students come to the station--are there other ways that you can recall in which you really kept your finger on the pulse of what was important to your audience, what was important to the community at large at KFWB?

McCORMICK: Being involved in any number of ventures: meetings, appearances, emceeing programs, things that brought me in direct touch with the community. "Keeping," as the old saying goes, "your ear to the ground." Listening. Just-- Conversations at the barbershop, at the grocery store, just talking to people and feeling them out about how they felt about this, that, the other, about music, about what was going on. And going into some of the restaurants in the community, whether it was the African American community or another community, listening to the songs people played on the radio, on the-- They pretty much didn't have juke boxes then, although some still did. But in places where they could select the music, see what was playing, what they were listening to. If I pulled up beside somebody in traffic at a stoplight in a car, I would roll my window down if their radio was on to see what they were listening to. By the way, I found-- As I traveled around L.A. later on, when I went back to KGFJ, I came across-- When you're in traffic and you see somebody bobbing their head rhythmically, you know they're listening to music. A lot of white people were listening to KGFJ. But in all those ways-- Every time you're in touch with the public being attentive to see what their sentiments and their feelings were and what they were talking about. And I guess a lot of people considered me to be affable, because they didn't have any reluctance about opening up to me and talking to me about what they liked, what they didn't like, their favorite artists, or they'd say, "I turn the radio up every time you play so-and-so and so-and-so." And these are both African Americans and Caucasians that I'd run into in public. I wasn't as widely recognized in person outside the African American community, where I was very active in church, in various organizations, in emceeing programs, because it wasn't television. A lot of people really didn't know I was African American.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness. Okay. Of course, they didn't associate the way in which you speak English--

McCORMICK: I can't tell you how many times I would run into people, particularly outside the African American community, who would say, "You're Larry McCormick? I listen to you all the time. I--" and then I knew what they were going to say "--I didn't know you [were black]." That made it very interesting. But just generally by paying attention, by being aware of what was going on in the entire community around me and not living, so to speak, in a vacuum. A lot of disc jockeys do that, and they lose touch. A lot of radio personalities, a lot of TV personalities, a lot of politicians live in a vacuum, and they lose touch with what people are really thinking. The most recent election, I think, is a graphic example.

WHITE: That's for sure. Not paying attention to your constituency, right. I think that formula is indicative of anyone who wants to be a professional in whatever industry they're looking in.

McCORMICK: In public life. If you're going to be in public life you have to keep your finger on the pulse of the people, because if you don't you really do lose track.

WHITE: That's so very true. And keeping abreast of what was going on in the station--what their goals, what their prospectives were at that time, or market trends nationally--how would you stay informed of that? Was the management there very communicative with the disc jockeys or the staff about what the goals and expectations were?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. We had weekly meetings at that time at KFWB, as was the practice at a number of other music stations. All the disc jockeys, the program director, and the music director, whose name was Don Ante, met once a week. I think it was every Wednesday. It might have been Thursday. At any rate, we met once a week. We'd have a meeting for about two hours at the station in this one large room where each disc jockey had his own cubicle and locker and desk and everything around the room. We'd all meet in that room, and we would discuss the latest trends and what was happening with this artist or that artist or this record or that record, various trends in the industry that we thought it was important to touch on. Sometimes the sales manager would come in and speak to us briefly, but usually it was the station manager or the program director and the music director who would tell us about the latest trends, about events that were upcoming--if we were going to have an open house and the Beatles were going to be the guests or Mick Jagger was going to be the guest or Otis Redding or Marvin Gaye or somebody. Then we would vote. We were a top forty station. We had a top forty play list and, given all the information from around the country about what records were doing well and everything, we would vote on the three or four or five records that we were going to put on the playlist for the next week. So through that method and through interdepartmental memos and other means of communication, we were pretty much kept abreast of what was going on. And of course, it was incumbent upon us individually to read the trade papers--Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and the two music trade papers, Cashbox and Billboard, to see what was going on.

WHITE: Okay. There's always curiosity about if in fact the communications industries do communicate effectively internally. I've often heard stories that even though that is their charge as a representative in the communications industry, certain companies don't necessarily have effective communication tools within. So that was a matter of curiosity.

McCORMICK: Some--in television too--do a poor job, despite the fact that we are in the communications business, of communicating with their employees to let them know what's going on, company trends and all that kind of stuff. They've become, most companies, more sophisticated about that recently. At KTLA--and we're a part of Tribune Broadcasting [Company], which is a part of Chicago Tribune newspapers [the Tribune Corporation]--we have a weekly newsletter that comes out of Chicago that details what's going on at all of the twelve or thirteen Tribune stations around the country, and KTLA is frequently mentioned in there. But one of the problems that we always struggle with and always have, and I think this is true with many stations, is internal communications. I mean really mundane things like knowing that somebody's going to be off on a certain day or knowing there was supposed to be a meeting at a certain time or things like that. It's amazing how sophisticated enterprises still don't communicate very well internally.

WHITE: Yes, it certainly is. I'm always curious about the functioning of that at particularly large corporations or those that are perceived as top in their field or number one--for example, KFWB being the number-one rock station at that time--how effective they were internally.

McCORMICK: It's amazing how that happens. And it still happens with an alarming degree of frequency--maybe alarming is too strong a word--at KTLA. I'll arrive at work, and somebody will say, "You weren't at the meeting today." And I'll say, "What meeting?" I think one of the paradoxes, Renee, today is that we have so many means of communicating, whereas twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago, it was the straight old interoffice memo. Everybody got it, everybody read it, it said the same thing, so you knew. Now you've got E-mail [electronic mail] and you've got C.C. mail [carbon copy mail] and you've got interdepartmental memos and you've got bulletins posted on boards-- I think if the people in management--or the employees generally but especially in management--could kind of settle on one dependable means of informing everybody about everything that's going on, communication would be a lot better. It would be greatly enhanced. But any given week I'll be asked by somebody, "Did you get my C.C. mail?" I'll be asked by somebody else, "Did you get my voice mail? Did you get my voice mail message to you about so and so?" And now it has really complicated life. Because when I go to work now, every night I've got to get on the computer and check the C.C. mail. I've got to get on the phone and check the voice mail. I have to go through my stack of mail and check all the interdepartmental memos. So it has really-- Instead of simplifying life as this computer age was supposed to do, it's really complicated life.

WHITE: Absolutely. Information overload.

McCORMICK: It is. It really is.

WHITE: I was about to make that same comment. When I go home it's E-mail, voice mail, and the regular mail before I can basically get started with anything and return any of those.

McCORMICK: That's right.

WHITE: It's quite interesting, this day and age. Okay. Now, I know that you had become, as you mentioned a moment ago, very active in the community while working at KFWB, and through my research in your literature I discovered that you were at the first annual Watts Christmas Parade with Los Angeles Dodger [baseball player] John Roseboro, and you were an emcee for the Centennial Rose Parade Committee float in the New Year's Day [Tournament of Roses] Parade in 1965. I thought that was really great. Now, was this kind of a requirement of your position that you go out into the community?

McCORMICK: No. No, it wasn't a requirement at all. It was something that I just felt not only obligated to do but I enjoyed doing, because I like my community. I like being a part of it. I like my culture. I like just immersing myself in my culture. I've always been that way, because that's the way I was kind of brought up. The culture was just a vital part of my being, every facet of it--the music, the food, the way we greet and treat each other and everything. These were things that I wanted to do and I like to do. And fortunately a lot of things that I was invited to do, to participate in. John was a very popular Dodger. He's still a good friend. I just ran into John Roseboro at Roscoe's [House of] Chicken 'n' Waffles a couple of weeks ago. I walk in and there's "Gabby," as we used to call him. We used to all call him Gabby because he didn't talk very much. He was very quiet.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: I just ran into him. In fact, he and his wife used to live right around the corner in Lafayette Square, in this big white house back here. So being invited to be grand marshal, to be emcees at parades, and the first Miss Watts Beauty Pageant with Greg Morris--we were coemcees--and all those kinds of things, it made me feel grateful that the community looked at me as being such an important part of the community or looked at me and included me so much and wanted me to be a part of what was going on. It was very gratifying, fulfilling.

WHITE: Very wonderful experience. Did that increase your notoriety now that you were more visible in the community?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah.

WHITE: So they began to associate your physical presence with your voice.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely.

WHITE: Did people stop you on the street at that point and ask for your autograph?

McCORMICK: Oh, absolutely. Everywhere. At churches, at record shops, at high schools. We made a lot of high school appearances, the emcee shows and talent shows and all that kind of thing. Oh, absolutely. Everywhere. It was kind of surprising at first, delightful and surprising, that people would want my autograph. I don't know what I thought about autograph seekers before that, but it became an interesting phenomenon, at times a mild kind of nuisance, especially if-- I really was enormously busy then. Here in the last few years I've tried to cut back a little bit, because I just don't have the vigor and energy that I had back then, and I also-- When you're on television, the critical moment for you is that hour that you're on the air. If you are fatigued from trying to do stuff all day long you're not going to come off very well. It's just not possible. So I've tried--and as I've gotten a little older and I have a little less energy--to scale back a little bit. But at that time I was sometimes making multiple appearances a day.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness.

McCORMICK: I'd have my radio program at a given time of the day. Then I'd go to Jefferson High School to do this. And then I'd go to Golden State [Mutual Life] Insurance Company to do this. And the only time signing autographs became kind of a hassle was when I had finished a given commitment and was in a hurry to get out of there. I soon became sophisticated enough to ask, if I was at a career day at a school, at Locke [High School] or somewhere, the principal, "I'll just ask you to do me one favor. You've got to bail me out of here at three o' clock." What I took to doing: "I will sign an autograph, and then you just--" At that time, mimeos. (What ever happened to mimeographs? There's a relic from the past. Now you just make copies.) "You just make copies of it and give out as many as you can, because I really can't stay." There have been times that I would be held up for an hour signing autographs after an appearance. At least I can't say no, especially to young people, so that early on that happened a lot. Then I would get to wherever the next commitment was, apologize for being late, and say I was signing autographs. And I'm sure it sounded highly pretentious to a lot of people. I'm sure a lot of people said, "Yeah, right." But it was true. And even back then-- L.A., as you know, Renee, is not a city that you can get around in quickly, particularly at certain times of the day. It just takes so long to get from point A to point B because of the volume and the distance.

WHITE: Sure. You have to fold that into your schedule.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: An extra hour here and there for travel to get to someplace that should normally take twenty minutes. You were mentioning that very fact when we were talking about your wife Anita [Daniels McCormick] and how things had changed for her. Her commute to Compton, which when she started was about eighteen or twenty minutes, and soon became forty-five over the years.

McCORMICK: Yeah. She'd breeze out the Harbor Freeway and be there in a flash, but later on it got to the point where it was almost debilitating. She would get to school-- She started leaving earlier and earlier, which meant a shorter and shorter night's sleep. She started not eating breakfast at home but waiting until she got there and then going into the teacher's lounge--she just wanted to get there and be there--and having a Danish [pastry] and a cup of coffee or a glass of juice or something. And she was getting home later and later. And as the kids were growing up, that meant she was fixing dinner later and later. It really got to be an enormous hassle after a while.

WHITE: It's difficult when you have those overlapping priorities in this day and age. So during the time that you were working at KFWB, the mid- to later sixties-- There were many events, of course, that occurred in the sixties that were burned into the collective consciousness by television--things such as the National Guard escorting black youths back and forth to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, or the attack dogs and fire hoses, or club-wielding enforcement officers attacking demonstrators who sat at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Plus burnings, angry mobs defending the white-only public facilities, the assassination of NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] leader Medgar Evers, just generally images of racial strife. So I wonder if you used your status as one of the most important black disc jockeys to play a role in furthering any political or social causes at that time.

McCORMICK: Not on the air, of course, because on the air, when I was doing newscasts in the early morning hours, I would basically just report it like all the other newscasters did. I think my presence at KFWB afforded me the opportunity--and I did--to educate or to try to [educate] some of my white coworkers about the whats and whys of why things were going on as they were. Some were very receptive and I think found it a learning experience. Others had an attitude that was typical of many Caucasians, that it was "just wrong," it was "criminal," and-- They were resistant to change, probably the same ones who were resistant to my being there when I first started there. But they had the typical attitude of "That's not the way to change. Do it within the system." That was a phrase you heard so often. "You don't have to riot" or "You don't have to have a demonstration. Just do it within the system." Of course, the system was resistant.

WHITE: Right. It's a contradiction.

McCORMICK: Yeah, a contradiction in terms. But off the air I was very much involved in many things in the community and proud of [being] so. And I was never questioned about it by the people at KFWB.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: I never got involved in any wild riots or anything like that. I was never arrested or anything like that. But I got involved in a lot of things, like my early interest in the Los Angeles Urban League--even though I didn't actually become affiliated with the Urban League until 1969, just shortly before Mr. [John W.] Mack became the president of the L.A. Urban League. But I was involved in many things in the community. But I didn't talk about it or announce about it. I wasn't an on-the-air activist, because I obviously couldn't be on KFWB. It was different when I got on KGFJ.

WHITE: Right, of course. So those two roles that you assumed--not necessarily roles, but in your position at KFWB versus some things that you were doing on a personal level to advance any social or political causes--they never sort of overlapped?

McCORMICK: Not while I was at KFWB. Actually, when I was at KFWB I was in many ways--and this is one of the feelings that comes back to me every now and then- -living in two different worlds. I was working at KFWB in August of 1965 when the Watts riots broke out. I really hadn't started my career in journalism then, but it tore at me to some extent, because I was in a position where I couldn't enlighten large numbers of people, with that venue that I had at KFWB, about why this was happening, about all of the grievances that had piled up, that this was not just a spontaneous thing; it was an accumulation of things that had happened that caused the riots. So I was in that world when I was on the air and involved in activities at KFWB and then in this other world, the African American community and culture, when I got off the air and in all my other activities. I made a lot of appearances. As a matter of fact, in the wake of the Watts riots there was a lot of resentment, a residual of antagonism, a residual of anger among African American students even as they were integrating Los Angeles high schools. Interracial strife would break out or there would be incidents. I remember one year-- I think it was in 1967, '66-67, that a number of African American students had gone to other schools. They were just integrating Hamilton [High School] and Fairfax [High School]. I went to a number of schools to make appearances, to talk to the African American students in an assembly--just with them--about how to reach compromises and how to reach agreements with the other students and resolving grievances and antagonisms and everything in a more diplomatic manner without starting fights and things like that.

WHITE: So you were invited to come to speak?

McCORMICK: I was called by-- Usually it would be by an African American member of the faculty of the school who knew me, who knew I was active in the community, who would call and say, "I'd like for you to come over and talk to these kids." Sometimes it would be as a result of making appearances at career days or open houses or speaking to the faculties of various schools in the African American community--Manual Arts [High School] or Locke or Jefferson or one of those schools, or in Compton--that they would invite me to come and make these appearances. So it really was a dual world, that world in which on KFWB I was kind of going through the disc jockey motions. I was doing it well, I think, and projecting energy and being knowledgeable about all the things that were going on in the music world, about the artists, and all that kind of thing, while, when I was away from KFWB, being involved in this other turbulent world of change.

WHITE: That's interesting. Did that feel fragmenting in any way?

McCORMICK: Yes, it did. Sure.

WHITE: It did. How would you reconcile that?

McCORMICK: I didn't reconcile it. I just went through it and grew because of it, I think. And I think maybe one of the ways in which I was able to help bring some understanding between both groups is because I had exposure to both groups. That's something a lot of people didn't have, particularly at that level. There were obviously lots of African Americans who worked, unfortunately, in menial jobs where they really weren't privy to the real communication between whites.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: I was. I could hear exactly how people felt. I was delighted to find that a lot of people--Caucasians--had a very fair and even-minded attitude about what was going on and why it was going on and understood why it was going on. And disc jockeys, because of the nature of what we do, as a group are a little hipper than most people.

WHITE: Right. You have to be right in touch.

McCORMICK: The people who were basically rather staid and conservative and had an opposing point of view were basically the other newscasters and some of the sales people. This was disruptive to their lives and their lifestyles and to their enjoyment and all that kind of stuff. But the disc jockeys were pretty hip. And they had been around African American entertainers and partied with them and traveled with them, so African Americans were not a mysterious or unknown entity to them. As I said, they were hipper and more progressive than the general population.

WHITE: Right. That's interesting. That is certainly an advantage to having been the first, I think, in a number of ventures--being the only African American or one of only a few--because it affords you an opportunity to wear that role as the liaison. You can cross the cultural boundaries and get a real sense of the perspectives of multiple groups of people. That is definitely the advantage to having had that opportunity on a number of occasions. There are disadvantages, I'm sure, but in terms of advantages I think that that's great.

McCORMICK: Yeah. It can be an advantage. It can be an asset, because in my experience I've noticed that the finest of our leaders, both black and white, or of any ethnic group in this country, have been people who did have the ability and the facility for crossing back and forth, for speaking with conviction and believability in almost any setting. And I think that people like the late, great Whitney [M.] Young [Jr.], I think that people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., like John [W.] Mack, like Hugh Price, like Andrew Young, like Cornel West, like a lot of our great leaders, who were just as comfortable speaking in the corporate boardroom as they were in the First Baptist Church--

WHITE: That's right.

McCORMICK: --their dual exposure, their multiple exposure gave them, I think, this ability to be a liaison between groups. Because unless you can speak believably to groups in every facet, you can't be effective.

WHITE: That's true. It can be a real strong asset.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Absolutely. The same thing is true of Caucasian leaders. Witness in the recent election how easily and effectively a number of Caucasian politicians, how at home they felt in black churches communicating with African Americans in terms that they are familiar with, that they believe. You can only get that from exposure to people. You can't guess about that. It's not book learning. You can only get that from rubbing elbows with people on a very regular basis.

WHITE: Making yourself accessible.

McCORMICK: That's right.

WHITE: Let's see, now. Do you feel, just generally speaking, that radio has been inherent in contributing or in some respects worsening race relations?

McCORMICK: That can be looked at in a number of ways. Particularly with the advent and the improvement of FM technology, the pie has been sliced into smaller and smaller portions among a great many more players. Radio has become fragmented. It's become really a niche business with everybody trying to slice off his little niche of the general audience and playing to that audience. In that respect, I guess you could say it's been divisive. But in a larger sense it hasn't really been divisive, because it hasn't tried to pit one group against another. It's just tried to appeal to one group or another. But it has been fragmenting, yes. There is one-- I should not let this opportunity pass. There is one facet of radio that has been divisive--I think this needs to be said--and that's been talk radio, because there have been and are a number of commentators who, it seems to me, try to increase their ratings by intentionally bringing about antagonism of one group for another. I don't have to name any names; I think you know who they are. They do this regularly. They try to pit one political group, like liberals, against another political group, say conservatives. They take a very--let's see, how can I put this-- uncharitable attitude towards people who have problems, towards other ethnic groups. They're just sources of antagonism, which I personally would rather see off the air, because I think they are divisive, and they do more to divide America-- And they do it for the worst possible reasons, just for ratings and money. They're not upholding any great principles or anything. They're just simply doing it for money.

WHITE: For their own selfish reasons. Like you said, ratings, notoriety, that sort of thing, to maintain their status or so-called status in the industry. Unfortunately, it does work to a certain degree in that it does improve ratings.

McCORMICK: Unfortunately. And when somebody does that, takes that approach-- And I really have to fault station management for a lack of responsibility, but then they're motivated by the same thing; they want to make money. When somebody does that and enjoys a certain amount of success, inevitably there are the imitators. So it proliferates, and you get more and more and more until the trend dies, as they all do. It's all cyclical. It goes round and round and round, and everything that's been around comes around and goes around again and leaves.

WHITE: Right. Let's see, now. Also in some of your literature I ran across a letter that you had written. It's February 14 of 1965, and it was a letter to Mr. Don French, the program director at KFWB at the time, where you wrote that you were interested in having a shot at a "rated-period program," that you were not completely content with working the all-night program, and you state that you still "have the largest Negro following and the largest Mexican following in Los Angeles." I wonder if you recall writing that letter, and if so, what was the outcome of that letter?

McCORMICK: The outcome of it was that I eventually did get a better time slot, but I felt that I was being-- I felt that having the assignment from midnight to six had put me in a time slot ghetto, that it really implied that I was a token, and even though I was on the staff of the disc jockeys of KFWB I really was not able to comport myself competitively in a more important time slot. And that's the message I was trying to get across to Don French. It was not Don French who ultimately promoted me to another time slot, it was another program director named Bill Wheatley, who was the same one who presented me with an award for being number one in my time slot.

WHITE: Did he replace Don French?

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: Oh, he did. Okay.

McCORMICK: But I felt-- If you don't make things known, nobody's going to change anything. Nobody knows. So I felt I had to write that letter. And I wanted to do it in a civil way, and I wanted to do it in a way that explained logically and rationally my reasons for wanting to change, rather than irrationally and in an angry, confrontational sort of way, so it could just be dismissed as bad vibes or a bad attitude. You know how we are. Certain other groups, if you say something you're eccentric. If one of us says the same thing you've got a bad attitude.

WHITE: Exactly. Right, yes. Perspective. That's interesting. Do you recall how long you had been on the midnight to six shift before you--

McCORMICK: I was on there altogether for about fifteen months or so, twelve to fifteen months. About a little more than a year. And then there were a series of changes, and I went nine to midnight. And then I was on from six to nine. And then for a while I was on from noon to three. That was the time when I was number one in the time period.

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
NOVEMBER 17, 1998

WHITE: We're continuing on the point of your time slots and when they changed and how that came about.

McCORMICK: I eventually had a number of better, more important time slots where I could better showcase what I could do--obviously before a much, much larger listening audience. Because the listening audience from midnight to six, though faithful, sometimes kooky-- Strange people up and around in L.A. at that time of the night. But obviously the listening audience is much smaller from midnight to six than it is, say, for what are called the morning and evening "drive times," six to nine in the morning and three to six in the afternoon. And I finally got shots at both those audiences, and I think comported myself pretty well.

WHITE: Excellent. Good for you. Do you think that--or to what degree do you feel-- your leverage was increased by the reminder of the strong ethnic following that you had in your letter to Don French?

McCORMICK: Oh, I think considerably. Radio and television stations are only interested in numbers. They make their money by selling advertising time, and the basis on which they sell advertising time is a formula that they call cost per thousand. How much money does it cost me to reach every one thousand people in your audience? Does it cost me thirty-five dollars per thirty seconds? Thirty-six dollars? Forty dollars? So that's their only concern: how many thousands of people can I reach with what I pay you for commercial time on your station? So everybody out there counts. So the African American consumer counts as much as any other consumer, because he or she is spending money. So it did have an impact, knowing that there were large numbers of African Americans listening to me because of who I was. It also gave KFWB the opportunity to blow their horn a little bit and say that they were inclusive.

WHITE: Of course.

McCORMICK: So that became important in that respect.

WHITE: Good. I'm glad it made a difference for you. Sometimes it's just very important to take a stand.

McCORMICK: Take a stand on it and also to say to them in essence "I am not alone." [laughs]

WHITE: Right, exactly. "I do have support in this endeavor." There was also an article-- Quite a bit of information in your literature, actually, about KFWB. That's why I wanted to spend a bit more time talking about your career there. It talked about the fact that you were a host of a show called Teen Topics? This was another vehicle with which you interacted with the youth, and you had an opportunity to speak with them and talk about issues of the day?

McCORMICK: It was prerecorded. It was taped, and the tape was broadcast, I think, on Sunday nights from seven to eight or something like that. We'd have various music artists on, people who were big stars at the moment, and sometimes not big stars. We'd have school principals, counselors, other people on to talk about subjects that were important to teenagers of the time. I remember one of the guests on one of the shows was Nancy Sinatra, the first time she had been interviewed on radio in Los Angeles. She had a big hit called "These Boots Were Made for Walking."

WHITE: I remember it well.

McCORMICK: I was the first disc jockey to play that, and she [had been] appreciative ever since that. She was saying what a big hit it was in Hawaii, and nobody would play it in L.A. I played it, and it became a big hit in L.A. And we became friends. But a number of the other artists who were very popular at the time-- And as you know, in Los Angeles there's always somebody of tremendous world importance in the recording industry who either lives here or-- Sooner or later everybody's got to come through L.A. You've got to come here to record, or you live here, or your manager lives here, or you've got to do something in L.A. So we had access-- As is the case today, every talk show with just an unending series of artists. They would appear on Teen Topics, and we would talk about dating and hygiene and staying away from drugs and music and literature and movies and just everything that was popular with teens. That was really one of the first experiences I had at hosting a talk kind of program and learning how to keep the conversation moving and moving from one topic to another and creating a rapport with guests and all that kind of stuff. And since it was taped and played back, I had the opportunity--even though I didn't do it that much, because I really have never liked listening to myself or watching myself on TV, on tape-- The only way you can learn what you're doing right or what you're not doing right is by listening. So it gave me a chance to hear the playback on Sunday nights and see what I was doing wrong or what I could change, what I could improve on doing. So that was another learning experience, a very important learning experience.

WHITE: Very much so, yeah. Like you said, the first opportunity that you had to basically perform, so to speak, as a host. It is somewhat of a performance, because you're on stage.

McCORMICK: And when I was first asked to do it there had been another disc jockey who had been doing it, and I can't recall now the reason why that person stopped. But I was asked by the program director if I would like to do it, and I said yes. And one of the things that arose from that is that I found out whether I could do it or not. I learned that I could do this. So if you don't accept a challenge, you won't find out whether you can do it or not.

WHITE: Exactly. You don't know if you can rise to it or not. Right. That's excellent. Speaking of which, so that meant that you were both a disc jockey and a talk show host. Did you have other titles while you were at KFWB?

McCORMICK: No. Disc jockey, talk show host. I wrote a column for the KFWB Hitline, the newspaper, and that was pretty much it.

WHITE: Did your salary change as a result of your shifting or taking on new responsibilities such as that? Do you recall?

McCORMICK: Not largely, because we were all union disc jockeys--AFTRA, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. We got the regular increments. It was never any financial bonanza. And I got no additional fees for any of those, for the Hitline or for hosting Teen Topics, no.

WHITE: Oh, okay. So it's a good thing it was gratifying, then, and a chance to experience-- That was part of the reward.

McCORMICK: That was the only recompense.

WHITE: Do you recall your salary at KFWB at the highest point? We had talked before about-- I think when you first came to KGFJ it was $300 a week or something of that nature.

McCORMICK: About $250 a week. At KFWB it was about $400 a week.

WHITE: $400 a week?

McCORMICK: Which was big bucks then.

WHITE: Yeah. That was a lot of money then. For some people it's a lot now.

McCORMICK: Yeah. It sure is.

WHITE: Okay. Let's see now. In another article that I noticed, in 1964-- It was entitled "My Experience on an Integrated Staff," where you actually discussed the path that you took to get the job at KFWB and how you thought you might be an actor but that you seemed to have more of a natural affinity for radio. You talked about how one of your less favorable experiences was working in [television] broadcasting-- I guess the short stint that you had at KIIX [channel 22]--but that experience actually opened the door to what was at that time one of your brightest experiences, i.e. working at KFWB. You talked about how you prepared to be a top-notch professional and how you continued to sharpen your professional abilities in every area. And you end by stating that "surprisingly," in fact, you were informed that you were "overly sharp" in some areas, and you were asked to tone down. I wonder if you can recall that request being made of you and how you responded?

McCORMICK: I think when I first started at KFWB--and in a number of other instances--I had this tendency to overenunciate. This can also be a problem in acting, too. Instead of overenunciating I had to rethink what I was doing and just talk. My diction, as I came to understand, was okay when I just talked. I didn't have to overenunciate and cross e-ver-y "t" and put every "est" ending on everything just precisely [as if] I were a British actor or something. So that's really what I was referring to there, in just communicating honestly and forthrightly and not worrying so much about what people thought about my enunciation. I think that can be a problem for-- That has been a problem for a number of--particularly, but not exclusively-- African American broadcasters and communicators, the tendency to overenunciate until it can almost become irritating. Again, I won't mention any names, but you've probably heard some.

WHITE: Right, sure. You have a tendency to feel like they're sort of speaking at you, not to you or with you when carrying on a conversation with you.

McCORMICK: Or saying "Listen to my lovely voice and my lovely enun-ci-a-tion." [mutual laughter]

WHITE: Right. Forget about the message that I'm trying to send. All right. Also, in other notes that I discovered while going through your literature you state that music trends, like most other things, travel in cycles. You mentioned that a moment ago. Things are very cyclical. And then one-- It was in the liner notes for Arvee Album #433, called Golden Echoes, you state that "Undeniably, today's happiness is made up of, in great part, the happy memories of yesterday, and few things, in fact, bring more joy than reliving those moments. For some reason, it seems that each of those memories, whether completely happy or bittersweet, is punctuated by a song or songs which add extra meaning." And I know that you have a stellar collection of music, and I know that music has played a pretty significant role in your life. Is there a song or songs that have a special meaning for you?

McCORMICK: Yeah. It's difficult to pin down, because there have been so many songs, obviously, in my life and in my career. In my life, going back to the songs that were sung in churches-- I was growing up, and one of the most prevalent that leaps to mind right now is a song by one of the great African American composers of gospel and traditional religious music, a fellow that my mom just revered, a composer named Thomas A. Dorsey. And he wrote a song called "Precious Lord, Take My Hand."

WHITE: I know it well.

McCORMICK: Which is one of my favorites and probably is as much of an anthem in the Protestant church as "Amazing Grace." Any African American who has never heard "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"-- And it was my mom's favorite. That's been one of the great, great songs in my life. Other--nonreligious--songs were by a great variety of artists. I've always been someone who loves a terrific song or a terrific performance. I don't care which facet of music it's in, whether it's gospel, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, jazz-- So my favorites--and I can't really pinpoint any one song--my favorites just run the gamut from "Sophisticated Lady" by Duke Ellington to Billy Eckstine favorites to Bobbie "Blue" Bland and B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Tina Turner--a lot of people who have been friends over the years and acquaintances--Ray Charles, of course, the late Sam Cooke, the great, great Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Lou Rawls. And in a very real sense I like the singing of Dean Martin. I like Whitney Houston. I like Celine Dion. I also like all the great jazz artists--"Bird" [Charlie Parker] and "Pres" [Lester Young] and "Diz" [Dizzy Gillespie]. And I got a chance to hear Dizzy Gillespie play on a jazz cruise to the Caribbean two years before he died. Etta James. I've been fortunate here in Los Angeles to have known so many artists personally. Buddy Collette, a great jazz player. So there has not been any one song--except for those old gospel songs like "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"--that sticks out in my mind, just a panoply of all kinds of music. I am right now, I guess you could say, for the last-- Well, for almost all my life I have been a distinct jazz fan. But I like dance music, all kinds of dance music. I played records through all the dances, from the twist to the mashed potato, all those things, and I could do them all.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: I like Latin jazz. Some of my favorite artists are Latin jazz artists like Tito Puente and various others, among those Mongo Santamaria. There is that visceral connection between Afro-Cuban jazz and African Americans that-- It's all a part of our history, and we feel that in our bones when we hear that music. So it's just music-- I love classical music. I really am a big classical music fan, particularly of the modernists. I guess you would have to say that one of my favorite composers is Rachmaninoff. I'm not a big Wagner fan. I like Chopin, particularly his piano music. Probably my favorite after Rachmaninoff, just for the sheer beauty, for almost the tone poem kind of music he wrote, would be Claude Debussy. I love that kind of beautiful music. Liszt I love, particularly songs like his preludes. But I just like music, all kinds of music.

WHITE: That's interesting. Very provocative. I thought that that statement was wonderful, because it is so interesting how just hearing a song can punctuate a particular memory, and it plays that role for many, many people, I know. It can take you to a different space and time.

McCORMICK: If I really thought about it-- I remember at a great, great party once-- It was a Christmas party that the Los Angeles Urban League had over at Marla Gibbs's [Marla's] Memory Lane, and we just had canned music. We didn't have an orchestra. And I remember one of the greatest times ever, one of the most exhausting times I had, dancing with one of the staff members from the Urban League. And it was more than just the Urban League. The whole place was jammed. This was not too long after Marvin Gaye's record "Keep on Dancin'" came out, and for that time it was a long record. And I started dancing. And everybody was having so much fun on the dance floor. I got so caught up that I remember before the record ended I was dripping sweat. I remember that moment because that was one of the times I had the most fun just dancing. And I used to do that a lot growing up in Kansas City.

WHITE: It is an enjoyable activity.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. We'd go to the clubs in Kansas City, and some of the groups that would come in were really good groups like Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and James Brown and the Famous Flames. That was the name of his group before he went single. Before he went single that was the name, James Brown and the Famous Flames. And Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters would come in. Especially if it was summertime, I would literally dance until not just my shirt but my suit was wet. My whole suit was wet.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness. Wow. Yeah, I know that music has played quite a role in your life.

McCORMICK: Oh, it has.

WHITE: That's nice to hear, how your taste has evolved over the years. That's great. And speaking of that, let's see-- Just one more article that I noticed that was really quite of interest was in May 1965, an issue of TV, Radio Mirror. You reiterated about how music trends, like most things, travel in cycles. You reiterated that, and then you were saying that the kind of music that was played was a nervous kind of music for a nervous kind of age. The psyche of the era dictates what will be in demand. That sounds maybe kind of like a personal motto, but can you offer any comments about the music of today? Do you think that the kind of music that tends to be most popular today--and I know that that's wide-ranging--dictates anything special or unique about our society, about our social consciousness in this age of computers and technology and fast pace and information overload? Do you think that the music that tends to be most popular says anything about that?

McCORMICK: I think probably less so today than it did back then, because, as I mentioned earlier, it is so fragmented. There are so many different kinds of music. When I surf up and down the dial I hear stations with formats that I didn't even know existed--mostly FM stations, and probably not very powerful or certainly not very important stations--but each playing a different kind of music. As you know, oldies-- music from the sixties and seventies--have become popular again, both R and B and rock and roll, and there are three or four different stations specializing in those. There are stations specializing in what they call jazz--it's not really jazz--like the Wave [KTWV]. Then there are stations that play straight-ahead jazz like KLON. And the classical stations. You can find everything, including several stations that play music from the Middle East, what they call Persian music and music from other Middle Eastern cultures, and some North African music and music from Asia. There's such a panoply out there today [that] I probably couldn't make that statement with validity today, because there is just such great variety. There are motion picture soundtracks. They begin merchandising those the minute the movie's released. Sometimes the motion picture soundtrack comes out before the movie comes out. So there's such infinite choice. And then when you throw in music videos, you throw in MTV [Music Television network] and other stations like that, BET [Black Entertainment Television]-- I don't think there's anything that would characterize people's music taste today except variety and except that there seems to be a constant demand for something new. There's even a radio station now, KMPC-- which used to broadcast [the then Los Angeles] Angels baseball and used to be a big band station--which [the Walt] Disney [Company] purchased and is now a kids' radio station.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness.

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: What a shift.

McCORMICK: It is. So today is characterized by a variety, and a great variety of different kinds of sounds on the radio, and by a demand for constant change.

WHITE: That's very much in sync with what we were saying before [about] just having accessibility to information and the different ways in which we retrieve information. I think probably in terms of our musical taste or just our interest in art or creativity-- In creative arts it is very much the same; variety is important, and it is important to have access almost immediately. The immediacy of it is imperative.

McCORMICK: On my way home after the news, the last thing I want to hear, at least right then, is more news. So when I get in my car the first thing I go to is the FM button, and I will find myself, just in the twenty minutes or so it takes me to get home--at that time of the night there's not much traffic-- I will listen to five or six different stations to see who's playing something that strikes my mood at the moment. I'll punch up KLON first, from [California State University] Long Beach, the jazz station. If they're not playing something I like, the next button is KUSC, classical station. If they're not playing something, the next is the Wave. If they're not playing something, the next is KJLH. Then there's Mega 100 [KCMG]; I'll see what they're playing. I'll just go up and down the dial, and if nobody's playing anything that seems to strike my mood or captures my fancy or is a favorite of mine at the moment, I'll just go to the CD [compact disc player].

WHITE: Oh, right. Right. Interesting variety.

McCORMICK: I think that's typical of a lot of people. There is such choice, so much choice, that you begin to look for something that appeals to you at the moment.

WHITE: Exactly. I think that that certainly captures the mood, captures the era quite succinctly. Well, let's see. It seems that your working at KFWB was quite a defining moment for you and your career. I got that sense based on the literature that you have maintained in your files, in your scrapbook and what have you. Is there anything you can think of at this point that you would have done differently while at KFWB or anything that you would have liked to have seen, changes to come about?

McCORMICK: If there is any one thing I would like to have seen and have done differently or have seen occur differently it would have been if my experience there could have lasted perhaps another year. Looking back in retrospect, it was too short. Just when I was hitting my stride and starting to do really well and gain the greater respect of my peers and my employers and everything, this impending format change was coming along. So I had to begin thinking about what I was going to do after that, because it was clear I was going to be leaving KFWB and that all the music personalities who had been there were going to be leaving. So that's the one regret, that the experience being in the spotlight in a prime music slot, in a prime assignment, didn't last longer.

WHITE: I can certainly appreciate that. From that point, of course, after KFWB went all-news you were offered the opportunity to come back to KGFJ. That was 1967, I believe. And I understand that KGFJ was at a high point of success. What was your responsibility at KGFJ when you returned there for your second stint?

McCORMICK: When I came back to KGFJ they wanted me specifically to do "morning drive," six to nine A.M.

WHITE: That's one of the most popular time slots?

McCORMICK: Morning drive is the most popular time slot on radio. "Evening drive" used to be equally as important as morning drive when we lived in a less complex and congested city. Now evening drive-- It's more fragmented. People tend to need more services in morning drive--to know where the traffic is bad, what alternate routes [there are], what the weather's going to be like, all that kind of stuff. So morning drive has become much more important than evening drive as compared to the way it used to be. So it's really the power slot in contemporary radio.

WHITE: Right. That's what I thought. Okay. So they offered you that time slot?

McCORMICK: Yeah. When I was asked to come back to KGFJ they offered me that time slot. I recognized the importance of it. I had fun when I came back. I didn't enjoy getting up at five in the morning. Fortunately we didn't live that far from the station, so it was just a ten-minute drive. But Anita [Daniels McCormick] used to fix a thermos of coffee for me every morning and have it ready to go and I needed it at that time, because you need to get some adrenaline flowing. In other words, you need to get wired. Because nobody is capable, I don't think, of projecting that kind of energy as soon as they get out of bed. You're still a little sleepy and everything, a little lethargic. But I would get on the air, and I had a fast, hard pace with the music and everything, and my vocal style was high-pitched and fast. I recognized that that's the way I was going to have to be in morning drive, so I kept it rolling and got everybody awake. And a lot of people today that I run into, except for the old, old timers who remember the old KGFJ-- That's the period they remember most, because I called myself "Mr. Mack and the Record Rack."

WHITE: What were you called? Mr. Mack and the Record Rack?

McCORMICK: Mr. Mack and the Record Rack. So I had a lot of energy, upbeat, and we had the news and the current trends of what was going on and who was hot and what artist was hot and just had a very fast-moving show in the morning drive.

WHITE: Sounds like it was rewarding.

McCORMICK: It was rewarding. And one of the best things about it--I remember this and I think of this sometimes-- It was not fun because you didn't really have a social life. You had to be in bed no later than ten o' clock at night--ten, ten thirty. But one of the things about it was when I got off the air at nine o' clock in the morning all the other employees would be coming in bleary-eyed and sleepy, just putting on their makeup and getting their hair combed--you know how people are--still half dressing and getting together, and I'd be saying, "Bye, see you later, have a good day. I'm out of here. My day is over. I'm out of here." [mutual laughter] That's always fun when you're morning drive. At nine o' clock you're all done.

WHITE: You're free and clear. Boy, you can't ask for anything better than that. You had your entire day, for the most part, to do whatever you deemed appropriate. All right, well, having had the experience of working for an integrated staff at KFWB, what in your opinion were the most significant differences between working at the two stations other than the obvious, the fact that KGFJ had a black format? What were some of the differences?

McCORMICK: I think one of the differences is that I certainly felt like I was under less pressure. I felt more at ease.

WHITE: Less pressure at KGFJ?

McCORMICK: At KGFJ. The disc jockeys were all good friends. Even though after a while I did socialize with the disc jockeys at KFWB. I socialized with the disc jockeys at KGFJ on a personal basis, at their homes and things like that, to a much greater extent, and I felt much more comfortable. At that point in my life I didn't feel I had anything to prove. So I just got on the air and did my thing and used all my imagination and all my resources to try to do a good show, and of course I felt freer to become much more involved and to talk about things that were going on in the African American community and culture and to relate the music or however I wanted to incorporate that into my approach to what was going on in the African American community. Whereas I didn't feel free to do that at KFWB, because our purpose there was to appeal to a general audience, not to one community. Whereas it became much more focused at KGFJ. So I could be much more me.

WHITE: Right. And it's sort of more of a unifying effect in that you were talking about having the two Larry McCormicks, one at KFWB--

McCORMICK: I wasn't living in those two different worlds anymore.

WHITE: Right. It was more in sync. That's great. I'm sure it must have been a very relaxing and calming experience.

McCORMICK: It was. It was pretty much as the program manager said when he invited me back; he said, "Come on home."

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: And it was like coming back home.

WHITE: Absolutely. And I understand that you were promoted to program director-- I think in 1970--at KGFJ following the death of Jim Randolph. Or around that period of time?

McCORMICK: Jim Randolph had died several years earlier, but I was promoted to program director maybe in '68.

WHITE: Just a year after you arrived--

McCORMICK: After I arrived. There was a fellow who had been community relations director named Tom Hawkins, who was kind of acting as program director, but in essence they really didn't have one. I was asked by Arnold Schorr, the general manager, if I would take that position, and by that time we were getting ready to move. We moved into new studios in a high-rise building on Wilshire Boulevard, the Mutual Benefit Life building, right across from the [Los Angeles County] Museum [of Art]. That move kind of coincided with my being program director. It was at one and the same time an interesting experience-- It really was my first experience [in management] other than being community relations director at [radio stations] KPRS and at KDAY, but I didn't feel like that was really a part of management. But being program director was really being a part of management, an important part of management. And it was dichotomous for me, because that made me a part of both management and labor, because I was still a disc jockey on the air. So I was a staff member, a part of the union and labor, and being program director I was also a part of management.

WHITE: Was that challenging at certain points?

McCORMICK: It was. It really was challenging. [tape recorder off] It was uncomfortable. It was a challenge. It was also, like all those things in life, one of those things where, "Let's see if I can do this." I wanted to accept the challenge. But here I am, one week I'm one of the guys, I'm just one of the disc jockeys, one of the boys, we're all buddies and everything; the next week, I'm in a supervisory position, a management position, where I suddenly have to discipline these same guys that I've been buddies with. I have to chastise guys for being late, for saying inappropriate things on the air, for messing up commercials, for doing any number of things that a member of management has to do. That was not very comfortable. I even had to fire one guy who had been a friend.

WHITE: He was a friend?

McCORMICK: Well, he was one of the disc jockeys, one of the buddies, one of the guys. Because he just messed up royally and there was no alternative. He lives in Texas now. We still keep up with each other. He sends me a Christmas card every year, and we've remained good friends. And he understood why I had to do what I had to do, but it was not terribly comfortable for me. There were times when I regretted having taken the job. I think I rationalized my accepting the job--and some of the other guys did, too--because it would have been far worse if another person they had in mind had taken the job. It also put me in a unique position in that being a member of both labor and management that-- Just this once while I was program director we had this AFTRA negotiation. The guys were talking about striking and all that kind of stuff. I was in the unique position of knowing just where management would compromise and just where the guys, the staff members, would compromise. So I was able to facilitate arrival at an agreement, because I knew what was totally unacceptable to everybody and what was acceptable to both sides.

WHITE: That's a very powerful position, actually.

McCORMICK: It is. And it was a position in which I think I was able to avert a work stoppage at that time. So that probably is in essence the greatest value that came out of the experience of being program director. Because I didn't like the-- I like people. I think most people, particularly professionals, do their best most of the time, and I did not like having to chew guys out. That's not my nature. So I was not terribly happy with that. And I stayed program director until I left KGFJ and went into TV.

WHITE: What other assignments did you have as program director? You're responsible for the deejays and that sort of thing and, like you indicated, reprimanding them. But what other responsibilities does a program director have?

McCORMICK: You have the responsibility of supervising the playlist, making sure that disc jockeys don't-- The record companies inundate you with new releases every week, and making sure that nobody went out on a limb and played records that were not on the playlist. Trying to make sure as much as I could--because you can't listen twenty-four hours a day, but to the nearest of my ability--that no record was being played with such frequency that it was obvious that somebody was being paid to play the record--payola. Keeping schedules: scheduling people to be off on vacation and scheduling somebody to substitute for them and all that kind of thing. Sick days. All the things that have to do with management. Trying to come up with new and innovative ideas for programs, working together with-- I appointed a news director, the late Booker Griffin. He just died a couple of years ago. Booker and I together conceived a couple of community outreach programs that were broadcast on Sundays, actually recorded during the weekend and played back on Sundays on KGFJ. We upgraded the news department so they were more on top of things and were able to get more and a little better equipment in the newsroom. We reformatted-- The news previous to that on KGFJ was kind of loose and disorganized. We nailed down a solid format where it occurred precisely at a given time and ended precisely at a given time and there were precise elements in the newscast. And we created promos--this is part of what you do when you're program director--for the various programs, which you have to go into your production studio and produce. You have to use your creativity, just like they had done at KFWB years earlier, calling me the "Slender Sleepwalker." You try to create a little persona for each disc jockey. You have to try to make sure that each disc jockey is in a time period that his style and pace and everything fits. You don't want a slow, laid-back kind of guy doing morning drive time.

WHITE: Right, putting everyone back to sleep.

McCORMICK: Yeah, put them back to sleep. So the total sound and feel of the station are in great part the program director's responsibility.

WHITE: Quite a huge level of responsibility it sounds like. I suppose gone were the days where you could say goodbye to the people at nine o' clock in the morning and that your day was over.

McCORMICK: The days were hard. They were long, and they were hard. My commitment was to try to get everything done that I had to get done. After I got off the air I'd either go to a little coffee shop downstairs in the Mutual Benefit Life building--they didn't have the nice restaurants then that they have in there now--and get a Danish [pastry]-- By that time I was usually coffee'd out. I'd get a Danish and an orange juice or something, have a little breakfast, and go back, and be back in my office by ten o' clock and start the other part of my life as program director. I'd usually stay until about three [o'clock], try to get everything done by three. Then sometimes, if Anita couldn't do it, I'd have to go pick up the kids from school or something like that. And then I'd come home and have dinner, watch TV for a while, and then by about nine or ten o' clock it was time to go to bed, because there was the other part, the disc jockey part, that I had to do, to get up at five the next morning. The last earthshaking experience that I can remember in my dual roles as morning disc jockey and program director was-- I was going down San Vicente [Boulevard]. We were living here in February of 1971. At this time Lafayette Square was not enclosed, so I could drive straight down Wellington Road to Venice [Boulevard] and make a left down Venice, and then down San Vicente and down to Genesee [Avenue] by Midway Hospital [Medical Center] there. And I thought I had a flat tire, because the car was wobbling, and I thought, "Oh--!" It was like ten minutes to six. I had to be on the air at six. And then I noticed the palm trees; the trees were swaying. God, the wind came up all of a sudden, and I remember my car shaking. I thought, "I'm just going to have to ride on the rim, because I don't have time to do anything, and get to the station." Then I turned to go up Genesee, which goes right into the back of the Mutual Benefit Life building, this thirty-one-story high-rise, and I noticed these concrete light standards shaking. And I was thinking, "Oh my God. What's going on?" Well, of course, it was the [1971 Sylmar] earthquake. So I stopped my car. I parked it on Genesee. I had my little briefcase and my little suit, and I jumped out, and I could see the transformers. I could just see the lightning; it was like lightning, the transformers popping above these apartment buildings which lined the sides of the street. And I see the windows start to pop out of the apartment buildings and dust coming from the foundations and the windows falling from the high-rise. It was terrifying. And then-- At that time we still had the air-raid sirens, and the earthquake had set off the air-raid sirens. And my first thought when I got out of the car was somebody had dropped the bomb. "I'm going to die here in the middle of Genesee." It was still dark. "I'll never see my family again." And then about two seconds later it occurred to me: "It's an earthquake. It's a huge earthquake." So I started running back away from the building in case glass and stuff started falling towards me, and I stood there really scared to death and waited until it stopped. And it went on for about forty seconds.

WHITE: Seems like an eternity.

McCORMICK: It seemed like an eternity. Then I went up Genesee, and by the time I got up to the building-- I was about a block away by that time, and I was not running to get in; I was walking, because I was still-- The whole thing was just-- Visually, audially, it was just an incredible experience. By the time I got up to the entrance to the building--there was a front entrance on Wilshire and a rear entrance on Genesee--my all-night disc jockey, my all-night newsman, and my all-night engineer were all running out the door all covered with dust and plaster. The station was on the fifth floor; they had come down five flights of stairs, because all the elevators went out. If I had gotten there on time I would have been on the elevators when they went out.

WHITE: You sure would have been.

McCORMICK: And they came down the stairwells, and there was debris on the stairs. They were all covered with dust and all kinds of stuff, and they were scared to death. So we stood out there about ten minutes. It probably wasn't that long, but it seems like-- It might have been ten minutes. And they said, "Well, Larry, you're the program director. You're the boss." [mutual laughter]

WHITE: You're the one in charge. So you had to think cohesiveness even in times of earthquakes.

McCORMICK: "So what are we going to do? Are we going to go back in and go back on the air?" I said, "Well, yeah. We've got to go back on the air, because we have to tell-- For people who were listening, the vast majority of the black community, for people who listen to KGFJ, they're going to be depending on us for something about this and what they should do, safety precautions. They need us. They need information from us." So we went back up, climbed up these five flights of stairs through the dust. There was debris, plaster, hanging from the walls. We went back in the studio. They had left the studio doors wide open. We had half of the fifth floor of the building. So we went in. Everybody was really nervous. I got everybody to go in, and I sat down-- on the air, oh, ten minutes after six. I sat down, and I opened the microphone--

WHITE: On that note, I think we are going to have to end the tape now, but I'd like to pick up on that. It sounds like a very exciting and interesting story. So we can pick up on that on our next interview.

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
DECEMBER 1, 1998

WHITE: The last time we spoke-- It's been a little over a week and a half. Last time we were chatting a bit about your position at [radio station] KGFJ and your position as the program director, and you were sharing a rather profound story about the earthquake and the level of responsibility you had dictated that you step in and take charge. You had spoken with us about some of your staff members coming outside of the building, and how you had instructed them to go inside. At that point you were about to tell us exactly the approach that you took.

McCORMICK: Yes. I'll never forget that February day in 1971. It was frightening. The station, KGFJ, was located in a high-rise building on Wilshire Boulevard. And despite the assurances of seismic engineers and others that modern high-rises are relatively safe to be in during an earthquake, of course there's always that specter that's in the back of everybody's mind that something catastrophic is going to happen in an earthquake. And it certainly can't be the most reassuring place to be in an earthquake, because there is a lot of movement, and the higher up you are, the higher a floor you're on, there's more and more movement. But at that time I think a lot of us didn't know as much about all the advances that had been made in seismic engineering, so it was a frightening experience. I was about to go into the building, and my whole overnight crew was running out of the building covered with plaster, because they had come down the stairways. All the elevators went out. And they were covered--their hair, their clothes, and everything--with plaster that had been falling off the walls. That earthquake lasted about forty seconds, so that gave them ample opportunity to bolt out of the studio doors and hit the stairways while it was still rumbling. And that's why they were covered. Stuff was still falling as they came out the door. So being the program director, it became my decision as to what to do now. We're standing outside. It's five minutes after six or so, just a few bare minutes after the earthquake itself. So they were all looking at me, saying, "Well, what should we do? Are we going to go back in and go on the air?" It was my decision at the moment. And I don't recall any particular heroism about it. It was just a matter of "We can't just stand out here. We have a responsibility to our listeners," to tell them what had happened, to reassure them, to impart to them whatever knowledge that we had about safety procedures, to advise them that there may be aftershocks, that there probably would be aftershocks, and that they should check their gas lines and make sure the gas was turned off, stay away from heavy objects, don't run into the street, stay out from under power lines, and all that kind of thing. Which we did. We went back up, all of us. We weren't thrilled about it, but we went back up there. I went on the air, and I gave all of these things. Earthquakes don't happen --thank God--very frequently. So you have to begin to recall all of this language that you use in an emergency like that, and it just started coming to me. We didn't know what the magnitude was or where the epicenter was. We hadn't had any immediate reports of damage, although we expected that there was some, because it was a pretty severe temblor. I did this five-minute spiel, and then the phone rang from our transmitter on Mount Wilson, and it was our engineer saying-- You usually have an engineer at the station, and then every TV and radio station has other engineers at the location of their towers. And he said, "I think I'll have you back on the air in about five minutes or so." So my whole spiel had gone for naught. In that moment of tension, the way that happened was kind of an icebreaker. It kind of broke the tension, and all of us just laughed and laughed and laughed. So then we did get back on the air, and I did it all again. And then we started getting reports from around the city. And I started doing those reports and playing music and giving the latest news, the latest information we were getting from the wire services and that our news director was getting, our newscaster was getting, from the scanners--police, highway patrol, fire department scanners. And we began to really learn of the magnitude of the earthquake and that it had really been a big one. And then, as I recall, I was still on the air about an hour later when there was a huge aftershock. Sitting at the console where all the buttons were that controlled all of the turntables and the tape machines and the cartridge machines--"cart" machines we call them--and the microphone, of course, and everything, I was seated in a chair that was on casters, on wheels. And one of the reasons why the disc jockey or the newscaster who was on the air had a chair on casters was so that we could easily move back to cassette racks or to wherever it is that's not practical to do with a chair that just has legs. So this aftershock hit, and my chair must have gone back about a good five or six feet. And the first thing you think is, "How long is it going to go on?" Aftershocks, of course, are usually very brief. I was a little nervous, but I wheeled back up and got back on the air and kept doing my thing. There were a couple of other minor ones after that. But then I got off the air at nine o' clock. My shift was six to nine A.M. I got off the air at nine. Then I had to change hats and go into my program director's duties and meet with the station manager. He had come in by then. People had started to drift in. Some couldn't because of downed trees and other things. Some of the employees--not air staff but some of the other employees--were late coming in or couldn't get in at all. It was a hectic day, a very hectic day, and a nerve-racking day.

WHITE: Quite a memorable moment, though, that's for sure.

McCORMICK: Oh, it was. Sometimes, if I just sit and think about it--which I try not to do--I can visualize that panoply all over again of all the things as far as sound and what I saw and all that kind of thing. At that time of the morning, still dark, it was a pretty unnerving experience.

WHITE: Absolutely. It really made you realize the level of responsibility that you had as the program director, the responsibility to not only the station and your staff but to the community at large.

McCORMICK: Yeah, it did. And I'd like to think I brought it off as well as I could. That seemed to be the opinion of others. But for a while after that, every day when I went to work--the aftershocks continued--for a good six or seven weeks I was not really comfortable in a high-rise building. I was going to meetings of various organizations downtown and other places in high-rise buildings, and I was always somewhat relieved when the meeting ended and I got back on the ground floor. I was told by a psychologist whom I spoke with later on that that is about par for the course for most human beings. There's something magical about six weeks where human healing is concerned. A broken bone heals in about six weeks. Other maladies last about six weeks. And the trauma of an earthquake, he said, lasts about six weeks, and after that you begin-- Unless there are more earthquakes, you begin to get desensitized. If there are more earthquakes you get resensitized, and every rumble of every truck that goes by gives you a start. But after about six weeks I got to be okay, and I just figured, "Well, if you're going to live in Southern California you have to live with this, and you can't be afraid of your shadow or be preoccupied with thinking that one is going to happen at any time. If it happens, and you live for the first thirty seconds, you're probably going to be okay."

WHITE: That's true. That's a great attitude to have. Well, that's great to hear one of your most memorable moments there at KGFJ. I'm sure there are others, and I'd like to explore that a bit later. There was something that I was interested in after having looked at some of your literature during my research. There was a unique arrangement that you had with KGFJ, I believe in 1967, whereby you continued working there while simultaneously working for KLAC radio 57?

McCORMICK: For about five years--I think back about it now and I wonder how I did it--I worked seven days a week. I had the Monday through Saturday job responsibilities at KGFJ radio six to nine in the morning, and then at various times I had a weekend talk show Saturday nights and Sunday nights on KLAC. KLAC at that time was a very hot talk station. It was the chief competitor to KABC. And they had a number of rather famous personages on KLAC at the time, fellows like Joe Pine, who was one of the pioneers of talk radio in Los Angeles, the late Joe Pine, and another was Joel A. Spivak, and a number of other very well-known people and very popular people on KLAC. I was approached about doing a talk show on Saturday nights and Sunday nights, which I did with varying degrees of success. It was very difficult to attract a large audience for anybody on a Saturday night or a Sunday night in a city like Los Angeles, because everybody has so many other options. So you get the die-hard talk-radio listeners who are there all the time, and one of the things about that--and I'm sure talk shows even today try to overcome this problem--is you have this hard core of people who are going to listen every Saturday and Sunday, or all the time, really, and you get repeat callers, and they want to talk about the same subject. So you have to develop some kind of device for recognizing and knowing when it's a repeat caller. Now I understand that talk stations have rules whereby the same person will not be allowed to talk on the air to the host more than once every month or something like that.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: Because the same people calling about the same issues over and over and over again-- You start to recognize their voices, you and your producer. You have a producer who sits in a booth that's glassed off from yours, and during commercials and things like that you can either speak by telephone to the producer or the producer gives you hand signals. It's much more sophisticated now. I've seen some of the talk radio studios now, and they have computers where the producer can write the name, and you can read the name and what line the call is coming in on, what the person's first name is or sometimes the entire name, and what city they're calling from. But [back then] he had to kind of write it on a card and hold it up to you or something like that, or would signal you if they thought they had somebody very interesting on line three. They would just signal to pick up three next, and you'd punch the button, and they were on the air, and you'd talk. But it didn't last very long, about eight months or so. The entire station's ratings were beginning to suffer. And I was frankly getting a little tired of doing it because of getting the same people talking about the same things--the Vietnam War, hippies. And then one Saturday or Sunday night--I can't recall which day-- And also I had guests that I interviewed on the air, usually somebody pushing a book, almost invariably somebody pushing a book. Some were interesting, some were less interesting. But there was a woman who called who identified herself as being from the African American community at that time--she was from south L.A., and south L.A. at that time was predominantly African American--and she talked about whatever subject it was she talked about. And at the end of our conversation on the air she said, "I just want to tell you how proud people in the black community are of you, and we're proud of the positions that you take and the example that you set" and all that kind of thing, and I thanked her. I think for a lot of listeners it was the first time they had an inkling that I was black. After that at least half the calls were hostile.

WHITE: Really?

McCORMICK: Yes. When they heard that, they would call and challenge me on things. They would try to set me up. Somebody would call and ask a question about-- Was it true about this or that or the other about the Vietnam War? And I tried to read everything. And I did. I kept myself pretty much up-to-date. And then they'd say, "Well, I want to tell you, you're wrong, because I served over there five years." They would set you up like that, really kind of vicious. And then I got a death threat.

WHITE: Did you really?

McCORMICK: KLAC at the time was on the corner of Wilshire and-- Right near where that whole new courtyard system of buildings is.

WHITE: Just west of La Brea [Avenue]?

McCORMICK: Yes. It was right across the street. The building's still there. The studios were, I think, on the third and fourth floors, right across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits. The parking lot was in the back of the building, and the exit from the building that you had to come out was in the front of the building, and you had to walk around the corner to the parking lot. And this person, who obviously knew what the layout was, said, "When you get off the air tomorrow night"--next Saturday, whatever-- "somebody's going to be waiting in the dark in the La Brea Tar Pits and is going to take a shot at you."

WHITE: Really?

McCORMICK: Yeah. This was not on the air. But we did record it.

WHITE: Oh, okay. This was not on the air, though, just a call that came in to you and you responded?

McCORMICK: My producer, a young woman, said, "This is pretty serious. I'm going to leave a note for the management." So then after that I told the general manager of the station, "I don't think we're making much progress." They had put out flyers and done some publicity, some of which you might have seen. The ratings weren't going very well. I wasn't enjoying it very much, and it was starting to put me on edge a little bit. So we finally came to the conclusion that I wouldn't do the show anymore. Then, not too long after that, they changed formats.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: I guess the ratings weren't going well. I think they went countrywestern not too long after that.

WHITE: So was this program in place before you arrived?

McCORMICK: No, no.

WHITE: It was not.

McCORMICK: No. They built the show for me.

WHITE: For you. Oh, I see. Okay. Well, that's very exciting. In my research it indicates that you were considered a "communicaster."

McCORMICK: That's the term they used. They couldn't call them-- They weren't disc jockeys. I don't even know whether they called them talk shows back then or not. Probably the term was just coming into use. But that's what they called us, "communicasters," a combination of communicators and broadcasters. But it was just-- It was a promotional gimmick. They had to call you something, so they came up with what they thought was a fancy word that worked.

WHITE: Yeah. That's a very interesting term. I had not seen that term before until I looked in some of your literature and discovered it through my research. That's very interesting. Was one of the programs that you moderated called Generation of Decision on that show?

McCORMICK: No, not that I recall.

WHITE: Okay.

McCORMICK: But I also hosted another program while I was at KLAC that was sponsored by--I think the organization is still fairly active--Junior Achievers of America. It was a youth program that was designed to get youngsters interested in business. At that time American youth generally had an antiestablishment attitude and were generally, particularly college students, hostile towards business.

WHITE: Sure. Late sixties. It's indicative of that time period.

McCORMICK: Yeah. In fact, I think I have a citation from them somewhere. I'll get the name of it for you. But they presented me with an award later on [Junior Achievers Award of Honor]. That was pretaped and played back, I think, on Sunday mornings. So actually, as I recall, I had three shows on KLAC at the time.

WHITE: My goodness. And this was basically over an eight-month period?

McCORMICK: Less than a year.

WHITE: So you actually had to prepare or--

McCORMICK: Oh, it was like going back to school.

WHITE: Absolutely, for three different shows. None of them overlapped with one another, though?

McCORMICK: No.

WHITE: Okay. They were different points in time.

McCORMICK: I was on from five [o'clock] to ten [o'clock] on Saturday nights, from five to eleven [o'clock] on Sunday nights. And you cannot imagine how long that seems when you're sitting there.

WHITE: That is a long time.

McCORMICK: It's a long time. And then, of course, six o' clock Monday morning I was right back on KGFJ. So Sunday nights became a very, very difficult transition. I coped with it for a good little while. It was an invaluable experience, because it was an opportunity to develop another facet of my career and develop some skills, in interviewing particularly. Because all you're doing in effect, even when you're taking a call from a listener, it's almost like an interview. Of course, with every guest that you have on you're doing an interview. I had a fellow on one night who was perhaps one of the dullest guests in the world. He was a little old man, and he had written a book about-- I think it was Anatomy of a Poltergeist or something like that. And he had a soft voice. The host, in this case myself, sat there facing the console with the telephone buttons and all that kind of stuff, and the engineer sat on another glass side, and the producer on the glass side over here. There was kind of a table in between, and this is where the guest sat with the microphone here. So I would turn this way and talk to the guest. For some reason, this particular night I was really, really tired. The engineer had to get up out of his booth, go through another hallway, come into the broadcast booth, and wake me up. I had started to doze. It was so embarrassing. But this little fellow, he talked on and on and on and on. The engineer said, "Well, I don't think he ever paid any attention, because he had a book in his hands that he was kind of reading from." This is one of the producers or somebody else who had lined up this guest. I very seldom lined up guests myself because I very seldom had a chance to do it. But that was one of the most unusual experiences. The engineer came up to me and said, "Larry. Larry. Larry." He woke me up.

WHITE: Thank goodness this is radio and not television.

McCORMICK: And not television. That's the only time in my life that I've ever actually sat up and dozed on the air. But I must have been really, really exhausted.

WHITE: Sure. Understandably so. I'm curious about that work schedule. We had talked some time ago, and I remember you were saying that when you were a disc jockey and then when you were also working at the Ebony Showcase Theatre [and Cultural Arts Center] how grueling that schedule was. So you were sort of doing that all over again in the late sixties. Of course, you had a wife at this point.

McCORMICK: Then I did it again after KLAC. I started anchoring the weekend news on channel 13.

WHITE: Right, [television station] KCOP.

McCORMICK: That seven-day-week thing kept going right on through then. It kept going until 1971, when I started at [television station KTLA] channel 5. I was working seven days a week. Actually I say "eight days a week," because it was really six days a week on KGFJ and then a double job on Saturday, getting off the air at nine o'clock in the morning on KGFJ and then going in to put together-- Because they didn't have a news staff at KCOP at that time, and I had to practically put the entire newscast together myself. So even though the news didn't come on until ten [o'clock], I was in there at six o'clock, sometimes earlier than that. So there was this little interval of time between getting off the radio show at KGFJ and going home, grabbing a bite to eat, a nap if possible-- But of course, I had to keep listening to news radio and to other sources so that when I got to channel 13 I would know what was going on. So it was a pretty primitive setup at that time. It's obviously much improved by today. But I had to rip the wires myself and edit it. And we didn't have a TelePrompTer, so I had to paste the copy together. It was really primitive. And I had to try to find-- We had wirephotos at that time. Now they have very sophisticated satellite pictures and other ways to generate photographs, but for visuals we didn't have chroma key; [we] just had a rear screen projector. So if President Lyndon [B.] Johnson was in the news-- The wirephoto machine sent pictures of sports activity and others constantly, but they were stills. I had to take them off, and there was a way I had to frame them for the camera so the camera could project them on the rear screen over my shoulder, much like we do chroma key now except they're vivid color pictures and generated in an entirely different way. The technology has really changed. That was not easy or simple or quick to do.

WHITE: Absolutely not.

McCORMICK: And I'd have to have all of that done and be ready to run to makeup at a quarter to ten and then get on the air at ten o'clock and do the news.

WHITE: So, I'm sorry, what time would you have to arrive in order to prepare and do all those things?

McCORMICK: Oh, at six o' clock. No later than six.

WHITE: At six o' clock.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness. A solid almost four hours of preparation.

McCORMICK: And even then I was pushed right up to time. I was always pushed right up to time to run to makeup, really working hard and working fast. And if there was a late-breaking story it was chaotic, because with the state of the technology we had then it was really difficult to get all the elements of a late-breaking story. There was just me, the news director at that time-- There was a three-man news department; it was one cameraman, the news director, and myself. And the news director was gone, he had long since been gone home, and he would only come in if something big happened on a Saturday or Sunday. Other than that I had the keys to the newsroom and the keys to-- It was one office that the previous anchorman had had--well, the Monday-through-Friday anchorman. I used that office, and I ultimately did the Monday-through-Friday news when this fellow left. I ended up doing the weekend news, and then I had the six to nine A.M. disc jockey program on KGFJ. This lasted from '68 or '69 to '71. And when I got off the air at nine o' clock I would run over to channel 13. I started doing the midday news just before a program, a game show, called Dialing for Dollars.

WHITE: That's right.

McCORMICK: Well, the guy who hosted Dialing for Dollars got into some kind of personal trouble with the station, and they asked me if I would do it. So I ended up doing the news and Dialing For Dollars and doing the weekend news. That was every day. So every day after my KGFJ duties were over at nine I would run over to channel 13 and do Dialing for Dollars and then the news.

WHITE: And you were still the program director at KGFJ at the time?

McCORMICK: Yes. As I say, I look back on it now and I think it must--I hope it didn't--have taken years off my life, because it was a difficult period. For some reason, sometimes I have to search my memory and my consciousness now-- I'm trying to think of what I was feeling at the time that I even accepted all those challenges. I knew a few other people in this city, in this business, who worked as hard, who did a lot of things. It was not uncommon to have multiple jobs at that time. But to do it seven days a week-- I have to say, even in retrospect it was difficult. Sometimes things that happened during that period are hazy, because I was sleepy most of the time, it seems. I would get up for the show or for the radio program or for the newscast or for the game show, but other than that-- And I was still making appearances in the community and various functions. That was one of the periods when I didn't really have time to do a lot of things. I would emcee some community programs, and I served on some committees, some boards of directors and things like that, but I couldn't really attend many meetings or anything. There was just no time.

WHITE: Absolutely. Nor energy to expend. That's quite interesting that you were able to maintain such a grueling schedule. You were talking about KCOP channel 13, and according to some of the research that I've done, according to the November 1969 annual report, KCOP at that time was one of the largest independent non-network-affiliated broadcasters. Would you agree with that statement that they were probably one of the largest independents?

McCORMICK: One, one of the largest independents being here in L.A., and it was owned then by Chris-Craft [Industries] company, which was a company that was in the business primarily of manufacturing yachts and boats and things like that.

WHITE: Oh, really? Chris-Craft.

McCORMICK: Chris-Craft. It was owned by Chris-Craft company, and they had a number of stations in other markets around the United States. But Los Angeles, certainly, KCOP, was one of their important stations.

WHITE: Yeah. It indicated that they were ranked among the industry leaders. So just thinking about the technology of that period--

McCORMICK: They "ranked among the industry leaders" might have been a puff piece that they did, beating their own chest. Here in Los Angeles KCOP was not known as one of the top stations in town, although KCOP did make every attempt to be very competitive. I think for whatever reason Chris-Craft's board of directors didn't feel compelled to invest more in the technology that it would have taken and in the programming that it would have taken to make them very, very competitive in the market.

WHITE: Sure. Okay. Well, tell me now, when you were working at KLAC as the "communicaster" and then also at KGFJ, the opportunity to go to KCOP, did someone approach you for this assignment? Or how did that come about?

McCORMICK: A fellow who is a good friend of mine to this very day, who didn't know me at the time but had been a fan, he said, for a long time-- He had been doing some management work, an African American fellow named Dick Cochran, Richard Cochran, who is now--has been for a long time--one of the top producers for KLCS, the Los Angeles Unified School District station downtown. And I got a call from him, and I returned the call. He said, "Larry, you don't know me, but I've been a fan of yours, I've been a listener of yours, for a long time. I admire your style, the work you do. I like your articulation and the way you speak and everything. Have you ever done any television?" I said, "No, I haven't really. A little flyer at it back in 1963 at [KIIX] channel 22, but I haven't really done any television." He said, "Would you like to do some? Would you be interested in doing it?" I said, "Well, what?" He said, "Would you like to do the news? I'm doing some work here at channel 13, KCOP, and just in an almost casual conversation I told the station manager"--who also turned out to be a friend for a long time, whose name is Bill Stierwalt--"'You ought to add an African American, and I know just the guy.' Bill Stierwalt said, 'Well, who is he? See if he's interested.' " He said, "Would you like to take a try at it?" Never being one to turn down a challenge, a challenge that I thought I could meet, I said, "Yeah, sure. I'll do it." So I went over and met with Dick Cochran and Bill Stierwalt, and that's how that came about, from a telephone call from Dick Cochran. Our friendship has continued through the years, and over the years-- Because he really is the one who had a major part in initiating my television career-- When he produces programs, usually every year or every other year-- Since the magnet program began in L.A. Unified School District, he produces a half-hour program every year updating the magnet schools. It's called Choices.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: For each year. This year's choice is [Choices]'98, next year's choice is [Choices]'99. They usually have one Latino host and one African American host, and for the last ten or twelve years I've been the African American host, primarily to try to help Dick Cochran and because he asked me. He invited me. So it's been a good relationship for all those years. But I do feel indebted to him for being the one to make the initial inquiry as to whether I wanted to go into TV. If he hadn't made the call, who knows? I might never have done it.

WHITE: That's very interesting. I thought that was quite exciting when I discovered that you had worked for KCOP for a period of time and that it was in essence the beginning of your television broadcasting career.

McCORMICK: The real television-- I don't consider channel 22 the beginning. It was an experiment that didn't go anywhere. I wouldn't call it an entire waste of time, because I began to learn some elementary things about TV. But really KCOP was the beginning.

WHITE: Absolutely, in terms of broadcasting the news.

McCORMICK: Instead of being-- Yes, broadcasting the news and developing television techniques. At channel 22 I had never really tried to develop any technique. At channel 22 we didn't even have videotape machines, so you couldn't videotape yourself and see what you were doing. Whereas I started to really develop broadcast techniques and news techniques at KCOP.

WHITE: So this was the first opportunity for your audience to actually see the individual that they had heard for so many years?

McCORMICK: Yes, it was.

WHITE: Did this bring about a change in your style at all? Was there a difference in the way in which you approached your daily work?

McCORMICK: Yeah. Television and radio are of necessity different technologies. They're different media. They're part of the same general medium, but they each have their own unique characteristics, and I did have to develop a TV persona as opposed to the radio persona. I was by no means the same person on KCOP that I was on KGFJ. The techniques, everything was different. Except my voice, obviously, was the same thing. But even the way I used my voice was different. I recognized that it required a whole different approach. And of course I had watched other newscasters in Los Angeles on other stations. Being a TV anchor was still a relatively new thing at that time, so everybody was kind of growing together, and techniques were evolving. And all of us, as is the case in almost every profession, you borrow from other people--borrow a little bit here, borrow a little bit there, borrow a little bit here, borrow a little bit there. And when you combine all those little elements you've borrowed or ones you've developed yourself, that becomes you.

WHITE: Absolutely. Developing your own sense of style. Now, was there any fear or trepidation or hesitation about appearing live on TV, actually broadcasting the news?

McCORMICK: No.

WHITE: Do you recall any?

McCORMICK: No. Stage fright--and I guess that would be a form of stage fright, nervousness--has never bothered me in broadcasting. It did once at Ebony Showcase when I was very fatigued and had been doing the play for a number of months along with all the other things I was doing, and I was so exhausted that at the two-minute call one night, before we went onstage, for just a few seconds I couldn't remember my opening lines. That's the thing every actor dreads, that moment when you just go blank. But no, I was never nervous on television, and certainly not on the radio. But on television I was prepared with my material. I knew what I was going to do and-- Certainly sometimes there would be technical mistakes--I'd take the wrong camera, or the stage manager would direct me to the wrong camera. But I was always pretty well prepared. And the axiom in broadcasting and particularly in television--actually, making a speech before a live audience or anything else--is if you know what you're going to do and you're prepared you will not get nervous, because you'll be so involved in what you're doing there won't be time to be nervous. Over the years you also develop various techniques for putting yourself at ease. And it's more than putting yourself at ease, it's for building your confidence [in order] to do with energy and vitality what it is that you're about to do. Where a live audience is concerned--and I've tried to tell this to a number of other people who are deathly afraid of appearing before live audiences-- "Nobody in this room is your enemy. You know everybody here. Look directly at each face as you talk, as though you're talking just to them." It works the other way in television news. You treat the camera as one person. You don't think that behind that camera there are five hundred thousand people. You will get into major trouble if you start thinking that you're talking to great masses of people. Treat the camera as one person. Talk to that one person. And that technique works best for everybody.

WHITE: That's interesting.

McCORMICK: But I was never nervous.

WHITE: Never nervous. Now, did you feel sort of a real interesting or a positive tension at that time, given the fact that part of your day was spent on the radio and then another part of your day was spent on television? Did you feel a desire to actually expend your energies more in television? Were you finding that you enjoyed that medium a bit more?

McCORMICK: No. Radio was still enormously exciting. It was an exciting time to be on the radio, because-- Particularly rhythm and blues was just beginning to be a burgeoning success, and rhythm and blues stations, particularly stations like KGFJ, which was a powerhouse in Los Angeles, and some other powerhouse stations in a few other cities across the country. And everybody knew about KGFJ. It was an exciting place to be. There was huge community recognition and loyalty to KGFJ at that time. I run into people now who still say, "KGFJ was really cooking. It was one with the community, bound with the community." We did a lot of things in the community and for the community. We were the voice of the community. It was still exciting. Television news was different. It was really going in a different direction for me, and certainly very different from what I did on the radio. Although KGFJ had no objection if, when I ended my air shift in the morning, I said, "I'll see you at ten o' clock tonight on the news on KCOP." So they let me cross-pollinate and crossgenerate. And KCOP the same thing: "I'll be with you tomorrow morning on KGFJ radio." So that cross-pollination, I would like to think, benefited both stations.

WHITE: Sure. That's interesting that they were so cooperative.

McCORMICK: They were because they were not really in direct competition. One was aimed at an audience that was very general--the television newscast, for all of L.A.--and the other was very specifically aimed at a specific audience. But it was interesting, something I still find fascinating, how the power, the very power of television, how being recognized on the street-- A lot of people, particularly in the African American community, knew me because I made so many appearances in the community on various events. Or certainly as soon as I started to talk, they'd say, "Ah, I recognize that voice." I can remember so many people saying that before I was ever on TV. But being on KCOP, being on television, can be a very powerful thing. People recognize you. They treat you with a different kind of feeling, almost a kind of awe. It sometimes gives you almost a movie star feeling, even though-- Only if you were foolishly, stupidly bigheaded do you let that go to your head. But the mere fact of being on there and the fact that out of a huge community like greater Los Angeles, with nine or ten million people, the number of people who are television anchors is a very small club.

WHITE: Absolutely.

McCORMICK: In all of L.A. it's less than a hundred people, maybe fifty.

WHITE: And then break that down into ethnic groups and then it diminishes even further.

McCORMICK: You're in a smaller club. So you're a member of a very, very small club. And that may not make a great deal of difference if you're in a real small town, but being a tiny member of a select club in a city this big can be very significant. And it does push you out front and can, if you stay in it long enough and do well enough for enough years, kind of carve out a special niche for you in an entire big city. And I was just beginning to get a taste of that at KCOP. It didn't have the largest audience in Los Angeles, but in Los Angeles, even if you are the last station in the ratings in town in your newscast, you're still talking to a hundred thousand people.

WHITE: Right, which is significant.

McCORMICK: It is. And now, on an average night at channel 5--this past weekend, for example--we're getting sixes. The way Nielsen [Media Research] has it set up right now, in Los Angeles each rating point is worth about a hundred and five thousand people. So if you get six you're talking to more than six hundred thousand people. That's more people than there are in most towns, most medium-sized cities in America. That's what makes New York and Los Angeles so powerful and so important. Because even if you have a modest rating in a market that size you're talking to hundreds of thousands of people--if the Nielsen system is accurate. Like the old saying goes, "When the ratings are good you swear by them. When they're bad you swear at them."

WHITE: Right. That rating system is quite an interesting phenomenon which I would like to speak about later on. Well, that was just really exciting for you I'm sure, just the introduction at KCOP to television broadcasting and some of the challenges that you faced. Tell me, what kind of effect, if any, did it have on your life with your family or just your general lifestyle with you working those kinds of hours, those long days, seven days a week, three jobs? The challenges that were inherent in each one of those, what effects did that have?

McCORMICK: It meant that I certainly had less time to spend with the family, even though I tried to make the most of the time I did spend with them. I didn't anchor the weekday KCOP news for very long--I'd say maybe a year, a year and a half--and during that period we didn't have a lot of time to spend together. But before I was anchoring the weekday news I was going into KGFJ in the mornings and then doing Dialing for Dollars and the noon news on KCOP, so we had the evenings to spend together. So we had some quality time before the kids had to go to bed. And I had to go to bed early because, being on the air at six, I had to get up no later than five. So we all went to bed at the same time. But we did have dinner together, and at that time we went to church almost every Sunday, the Church of the Advent.

WHITE: I'm sorry. What was the name of it?

McCORMICK: Episcopal Church of the Advent.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: On Adams Boulevard just this side of La Brea [Avenue]. So we managed to get in some pretty fair quality time. But the period when I started doing the news every night and the disc jockey show every morning was a period when I really had to rely on Anita [Daniels McCormick] to do most of the parenting, because there just wasn't time.

WHITE: That's good, the joint effort. That always seems to work.

McCORMICK: I really have to commend her, because at the time she was a full-time teacher. So being a full-time educator and a full-time mom, too, I'm sure was not easy for her. I have great admiration for her, for what she did during that period. Fortunately that only went on for a couple of years. And by 1971, when I started to do-- Actually, in '71 I didn't do TV only, because when channel 5-- When I was invited to come to Golden West Broadcasters I was technically-- They'd seen me on KCOP, and they wanted to add an African American to their news team. The fellow who was-- At that time KTLA and KMPC radio were sister stations, both owned by Gene Autry and Golden West Broadcasters, as they called it, and I was invited by the general manager of KMPC to work there, and he would facilitate my entry to KTLA. They were looking for somebody, too, so he had got together with the general manager of KTLA, and the only condition on which I could sign and get onto KTLA was to commit to do three hours of radio news every day on KMPC. So I did that. It turned out to be an eleven-hour day, because I did the radio news from eleven [o'clock] to two [o'clock] and then I got a bite to eat and went down to-- At channel 5 at the time we had a five to six [o'clock] newscast and then a ten to ten thirty newscast, and I had to prepare and do and set up the weather forecast for each one of those newscasts. So it took me after I got off the air at two [o'clock] at KMPC--

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
DECEMBER 1, 1998

McCORMICK: My first responsibility was to do three hours of radio news down there. I was pretty much allowed to do whatever special reports I wanted to do. They wanted me to do reports, where possible, about the minority communities generally, about the African American communities specifically. But I did reports about everything. And while I was at KMPC I also produced and wrote and narrated and reported a documentary called Watts--Six Years Later, which was nominated for an award. But it was still a long day, because I was technically on the lot from eleven o' clock in the morning at KMPC until two [o'clock]. And then I would simply walk down to the other end of the lot to KTLA, after taking an hour or so to get a bite to eat, and start to put together the weather forecast for the five o' clock news, which was a one-hour newscast from five to six. Then either Anita would meet me for dinner or I would go to dinner with one of my colleagues, and then [I would] come back and put the weather together for the ten o' clock news. We had another half hour from ten to ten thirty. Later most independent stations stopped doing the multiple newscasts. In fact, it wasn't until we started adding morning newscasts that-- The independent stations-- that is, those that are not affiliated with networks--finally just started doing only a ten o' clock newscast, an hour at ten, because they just couldn't battle the demographics of the prime-time programs. The audience for the five-to-six news kept shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. But that was the kind of day--eleven in the morning to eleven at night-- virtually for the first two years, as I recall, of my stay at KMPC-KTLA. Well, the first thing I wanted to do when my contract came up for renewal-- I wanted to say, "No more radio. No more eleven-hour days. I just want to do the news."

WHITE: Okay. You took a stand.

McCORMICK: Yes. About 1973, I think it was. That's when I really started doing just TV and when I began to have more quality time to spend with the family and do other things, and my schedule became a lot saner.

WHITE: A lot more manageable, I'm sure.

McCORMICK: Yes, much more. And being on KTLA, which was one of the early powerhouses-- I was being exposed to a much larger audience than I had been on KCOP, and many, many more people. I was recognized on the street and in the community by many, many more people as a result of that.

WHITE: Now, prior to going to KMPC and KTLA, did you also have a stint at KABC channel 7?

McCORMICK: That's right. I forgot that. I did the weather. Actually, that's where the people on KMPC saw me, doing the weather on channel 7. I was invited by the news director, whose name was Bill Fyffe. He had seen my work on KCOP and invited me to come over to do the weekend weather on Channel 7 Eyewitness News. So I did have a stint over there. That lasted only about a year before I got the offer to come to KMPC, and I was asked if I wanted to do the weather full-time instead of just the weekend.

WHITE: What was it like to work at KABC? How did that differ from KCOP?

McCORMICK: It was another step up, because the technology was a little better, the talent was a little higher level--that is, all of the talent--the writing was better, the set was better, everything was better. It was another step up. [Since it was] a network affiliate, that was to be expected. The interesting thing about my beginning at KABC was the news director told me to just come over and do a cold audition. I said, "Well, can I practice a little bit?" He said, "No, I want you to just come over. We'll give you a little weather information, and you just do it." He said, "I want to see you at the worst you're possibly going to be." So I did it. He said, "Just as I thought. You worked out. You're fine. You're going to be fine." So he had the weekday weather forecaster, a fellow named Alan Sloan, who'd been on TV for a good number of years here-- He showed me the format that they used, where they got the information from, where I went to get the graphics and the technology and all that stuff put together.

WHITE: How did that function?

McCORMICK: Well, there were a number of steps to it. You get all the wire copy. You study the local conditions. You begin to learn the weather symbols and things like that for cold fronts, warm fronts, secluded fronts, for high-pressure systems and low-pressure systems, different kinds of clouds--cumulonimbus and cirrus clouds and all that kind of stuff. You learn about weather fronts, the path that they take coming across Southern California. You learn about what the mountain ranges do to weather. You learn about how Santa Ana [wind] conditions develop. [Alan Sloan] showed me various literature on the KABC lot over at Prospect [Avenue] and Talmadge [Street]. Just as is the case with every station, there are different areas you have to go to get some technical individual to do this. You tell them what you want. You want this front to look like this. You almost kind of draw a picture. So you put all that together. The thing about doing weather forecasting-- I really commend the guys who do it today, people like our Roland Galvan, Mark Kriski in the morning [both on KTLA], Dallas Raines on channel 7, Steve Rambo [on KCBS, channel 2], and Christopher Nance [KNBC, channel 4], and the other guys. That's almost all ad-lib. They are not reading anything. When you look at the TelePrompTer where the writing normally appears, when the weather guy starts to do his thing he sees himself. There's a switch they can throw. So he sees the same picture in the camera, on the TelePrompTer, that you see at home, except he can see-- There's nothing behind him but a "green screen," what they call a chroma key screen, or some just call it a green screen.

WHITE: Chroma key?

McCORMICK: Chroma key, on which all the things that you see on the air-- You can't see that in the studio; that's all electronically projected. So he can't see anything, and he can't tell where his hand is pointing to except by looking at the screen on the TelePrompter and pointing to various places. I've done it before. It's an eerie feeling. It's a spatial relationship that you have to get accustomed to. You can't be too close or people could see the shadow of your hand. It has to be specially lit. It comes off-- The electronics work brilliantly. They look great. There's a technique you have to develop. And you also have a little switch in your hand with which you have the power to change the pictures to put the clouds, the frontal systems, in motion. You do that yourself, but you have to remember all of that, except there's information that's on the screen that you can see: "The high in Palm Springs today was 79," or "77." When you start talking about frontal systems and what they're doing, you just have to kind of remember that.

WHITE: Wow. That's fascinating.

McCORMICK: It's an ad-lib exercise. It's not easy.

WHITE: No, it's not at all.

McCORMICK: For some weather forecasters, for most here in the city of L.A., you've got to do that for three minutes. That might seem like a short amount of time, but when you're up there ad-libbing for the most part, it's a long time.

WHITE: Sure it is. That's quite extensive.

McCORMICK: But you've been in the graphics department, right? Most stations, as we do now, have a computer expert who is also an expert on weather systems. They now have various systems that they have developed especially for television weather forecasts--one system in particular, which most people use, called Kavouras. So you send a person to train on the Kavouras system. That person can come back and design the graphics that you're going to use on tonight's weather forecast just the way you want them. And you sit in there. Roland sits in there with the guy--I can't think of his name right now--and they go over the whole thing together. So you can anticipate. You know what's coming, but you have to remember it and all the language that goes with it.

WHITE: Now, how long would that training take, approximately, on the Kavouras system?

McCORMICK: You get into it gradually. You do it a little bit at a time, and maybe after two months you add a little bit more and a little bit more until you can handle five or six different things. But you definitely have to have some training. You have to get with the guy and sit there right with him and learn about all the things you can do with the Kavouras system. Now, the Kavouras system can probably do more things than the average weather forecaster really wants to handle, even today. I was watching Steve Rambo on channel 2 one night last week, I guess, and I see in addition to all of-- Everybody tries to be a little bit different. They're all doing the same weather, obviously, but Steve has added little sound effects now, so when the temperatures pop up they go "ding, ding, ding, ding." Whether that helps or is a distraction, I guess they're going to try to find out. They're going to see. You're always trying to do something a little different. It's the old question that a radio program director told me way back when I first started at [radio station] KFWB. He used to tell us disc jockeys, "Look, we and all of our competitors are playing the same records. We have to give the listener some reason to listen to us as opposed to the others. Why should anybody listen to us, if we're all playing the same records, rather than another station? You have to do it in how interesting you make it, in the insights that you use, in thinking about how the listener feels about the song, so you can say something that coincides with how they feel. Do the same things everybody else is doing but more interestingly and better." Today it's the same thing. We're all doing the same stories on the news. In fact, sometimes, if you have three or four sets, you can see stations almost doing stories in tandem. So the question arises, "Why should they watch us?" The answer is you try to do it a little bit better, with a little more authority, with more interesting visuals--whether it's video or graphics or whatever. And that usually makes the difference. And over a period of years, if you build a comfort zone with a large number of viewers they will start to be very loyal to you and very faithful to you.

WHITE: Absolutely. That's excellent. So have you been trained on some of the new equipment?

McCORMICK: No. Kavouras came along long after I finished doing the weather. I stopped doing the weather in 1980, and Kavouras and other computerized weather systems came along well after that. So I really would have to start as a beginner if they asked me to do the weather. I read it now sometimes. When my coanchor is off- - On the weekends we do not have a separate weather forecaster, only Monday through Friday, so one of the anchors has to do the weather. But we don't stand up before a screen and do it like the regular weather forecaster does. It's just pretty much copy and graphics.

WHITE: Okay. Get the same information across.

McCORMICK: The same information. And I do remember a lot of the language, but I don't really get that involved to where I have to stand up and ad-lib it. It's virtually all copy now.

WHITE: Okay. That's interesting. So you certainly had some interesting and provocative experiences at KABC as the weekend reporter, and then for the nightly news. I recall in a previous interview you had indicated that you remembered that you had to rip the news from the wire copy at KGFJ, and that helped you become more interested in world affairs. I would imagine that now you were able to call upon those experiences that you had had.

McCORMICK: Oh, absolutely. I should say I have been interested in world affairs ever since college. Some of my best grades were in political science and history--U.S. history and world history. I've always been fascinated by that. When I was a paper boy, every day, after my brother and I had finished our paper route, I would read the paper. So years later, when stories about World War II would come up I would think, "I remember that name. I remember that word. I remember that incident. I remember reading about that." So that interest was always there. I went through the same period [all] teenagers [do]--and on up to college--where it was all baseball and drama, and then girls, but I always had that interest. And then on the radio at KGFJ, having to rip and read the copy and having to do very, very quick condensations, condensing it down to the bare essentials, because we only had five minutes, and then in five minutes you had to do thirty seconds of sports and thirty seconds of weather. So you really had four minutes of news. So you really had to condense really fast: "This is not important. That's not important. This is the essence of the story right here." So I kind of had experience at that by the time I got onto television.

WHITE: Strong editing skills you developed.

McCORMICK: You do, but, as the saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention." You develop those skills because you have to. There is no other choice.

WHITE: Now, in my research I understand that you were one of the first African Americans to anchor the news when you were working at KABC. You were one of the first, once again.

McCORMICK: Not at KABC. I did the weather at KABC.

WHITE: Oh, okay.

McCORMICK: On KCOP I was one of the first.

WHITE: Okay. You were one of the first at KCOP.

McCORMICK: I might have been the first. I can't recall there being anybody else at that time. There might have been-- I think they did experiment with the great Olympic athlete Rafer Johnson at KNBC channel 4 for a while, but it became obvious before too long that Rafer was not really a broadcaster, and that didn't work out. But I think I might have been the first who anchored the television news on a regular basis.

WHITE: I know, of course, that you were a pioneer in a number of other areas of your life. In my research I was just noting some of the pioneers in the broadcasting industry--Mal Goode at ABC TV, for example, being the first black network correspondent. And Lee Thornton; I know that he received a Media Pioneer Award in the 1970s. And there was Max Robinson, the first [African American] to anchor prime-time network news. Then, of course, later on Ed Bradley, anchor of the weekend news, who then joined the 60 Minutes cast. And then, of course, Bryant Gumbel, the first [African American] to host NBC [National Broadcasting Company]'s Today show.

McCORMICK: And there's a young woman who's still with the ABC [American Broadcasting Company] television network named Carole Simpson, who's been around a long time and is an excellent, excellent anchorperson and television journalist.

WHITE: I believe she's the first African American female to anchor the news.

McCORMICK: Yes. Still, when you look at it over the long run, over all the years, there have not been that many. There have been in the last five years far, far more African American males and a few females who've broken through in sports with ESPN [Entertainment and Sports Programming Network] and CBS [Columbia Broadcasting Network] and NBC, some fellows who are very, very, very capable. I think Bryant and his brother Greg Gumbel kind of got the ball rolling in that respect, because Bryant, long before he hosted the Today show, was a sportscaster here in Los Angeles at channel 4 and I think before that was a sportscaster in Chicago. But Bryant led the way. And now there's James Brown and any number of guys who are doing very, very well on ESPN, ESPN2, on CBS sports, on ABC sports. There are quite a few around now. I think one of the things that has assisted them is the fact that many of the sports they cover are dominated by African American athletes.

WHITE: Oh, that's true.

McCORMICK: So I guess the network powers figured, "Look, it's ridiculous to have these white guys sitting up there describing and not having black athletes who can relate to these people."

WHITE: Sure. Offer another perspective.

McCORMICK: And there have been a few, just a few, [African American] females like Cheryl Miller who have made that breakthrough on the women's side of sports. There was one woman who was very, very good, Robin Roberts, who is terrific on ESPN, who I think is the best. She is really, really good. You'll see Robin being the lead host [covering] a number of women's professional basketball events--the ABA [American Basketball Association] and the WNBA [Women's National Basketball Association] and a lot of the college games. She's always the lead, and she is good.

WHITE: That's really good to hear.

McCORMICK: I'm not only glad to see them get the opportunity, it always makes me feel good to see them do well, be just as good as anybody else or better than anybody else.

WHITE: Absolutely. Particularly in a male-dominated not only industry but then male-dominated sports. Sports are dominated mostly by males, and to have a woman commentator--

McCORMICK: Robin, she's often kidded because she has the same name as one of the greatest pitchers who ever lived, Robin Roberts, in the major leagues. I read an article recently, a piece that they did on her, and she said that she's often asked about that and kidded about that. She said that she had never met the other Robin Roberts, who is in the Hall of Fame, but I think they had corresponded. But it's been helpful to her to have that name, because the name was already famous when she came along. So it's an easy name to remember. Just remember the pitcher, Robin Roberts, and her name is Robin Roberts. She's well-groomed and attractive, and more than that she's sharp. She's very good. And Cheryl has developed into a very good broadcaster, too.

WHITE: She certainly has. Well, there are certainly a number of African Americans in the industry that blazed the trail.

McCORMICK: There is now an award named for Mal Goode, who was the first [African American] correspondent at ABC, the late Mal Goode. And I was fortunate enough to be a recipient of the Mal Goode [Lifetime Achievement] Award on one event.

WHITE: Right. You certainly were.

McCORMICK: But he was-- Somebody's always got to break the ice. And I think it's important to always remember the pioneers and the people whose backs we walk on, who led the way, who paved the way for us. Because if not for them, who knows what the situation would be today? And of course, the first people-- Just as with Max, you have to take a lot of slings and arrows if you're a pioneer. You're up front, and you've got to be a target just like Jackie, Jackie Robinson. It can destroy you. It can have a profound effect on you physically and mentally. You have to be a very strong person to do that. I only had the chance to meet Max once, at a fund-raiser here in Los Angeles, but he was always a very impressive guy. I thought he was a fine, fine anchor. I also thought that ABC did not really extend to him the fullest opportunity to show them what he could do as an anchor. They had this strange triple-anchor system, the first time they ever had that.

WHITE: Now, are you referring to Mal Goode or Max Robinson?

McCORMICK: Max Robinson. All those guys-- We owe a debt of gratitude to all those pioneers.

WHITE: Absolutely. Do you recall when you were developing your skills or refining your techniques as an anchorperson, as a weatherman, a newscaster, if you emulated the style of any of the individuals that we're talking about now?

McCORMICK: No, not really. I think mostly, as I said, you borrow a little bit sometimes, even subconsciously. You don't even realize you are. You borrow a little bit from a vast number of different sources and different people, either because-- One person does something that impresses you, that you like very much, and somebody else does something that you like very much, and what you become, your air persona becomes an amalgam of all those borrowed things. But to really imitate somebody, no, not really. I didn't try to emulate anybody. Situations are always different. You can't really emulate somebody else, because you are after all interacting with a whole different set of people, your other anchorpeople, in a different setting with a different amount of time in a different city. So if you try to emulate somebody in a totally different setting it probably ain't gonna work. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: Right, right. Absolutely. You have to define your own individual style based on your audience and the environment in which you're working.

McCORMICK: If you're smart and you're perceptive you will recognize all the things that come to bear on how you do what you do as opposed to or compared to how somebody else does it, because every situation is different.

WHITE: Sure, yeah. And then, speaking about defining oneself and speaking about mavericks and pioneers and things like that, of course you were a pioneer at KCOP, one of the first African Americans there, and I wanted to ask you about KABC. Do you remember what kind of diversity there was? Were there other people of color working at this station?

McCORMICK: Yes. As a matter of fact, on the weekend team one of the anchormen, the late Hugh Williams, was African American. They had an African American and a European American guy. No women. That's one of the other revolutionary differences that have occurred since I was at KCOP. When I first came-- Well, let me finish this first. Yes, Hugh Williams was a very good anchor. He was one of the coanchors on the weekend news. We did two newscasts, the one at five [o'clock] and one at eleven [o'clock]. Then I was the weather guy, and then there was a Caucasian sportscaster. So we had two African Americans on that newscast even back in 1970, which was at that time kind of remarkable. They had none on during the week, but you did do field reports during the week. There was not that much diversity at any of the other Los Angeles TV stations. There would be one or two guys who were usually field reporters, like a Rafer Johnson or a Tom Hawkins [on KNBC, channel 4] early on, but not really more than that. We were really a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny-- We could have had a meeting in a phone booth, there were so few of us then. In 1971, when I started at channel 5, there were-- I want to be accurate about this, now. I know when I started at KCOP, around '68, there were no African Americans on the air--maybe Rafer Johnson at channel 4--and no women at all.

WHITE: None? In any area?

McCORMICK: None. Zero. It was a white guy's world. The whole television journalism news thing was a white guy's world. Then channel 2 pioneered with a woman who became and still is recognized and respected as one of the great pioneers for women in Los Angeles broadcasting; her name is Ruth Ashton Taylor. She has since retired and lives up Santa Barbara way, I think. I ran into Ruth at a fund-raiser about a couple of years ago. She still looks terrific; she still looks great. Great woman. She was the lone-- She was a field reporter, not an anchor. There were still no female anchors. But Ruth Ashton Taylor was a fine field reporter, well respected by everybody, and had a long and fine career here in Los Angeles. Then the first anchorwoman became Kelly Lange at channel 4. Actually Kelly started as the weather girl.

WHITE: She did? Okay.

McCORMICK: She started as the weather girl. She was the first female to be a part of the regular news team in Los Angeles, and then, of course, not too many years after that she became an anchorperson. But it was a world that was strictly for white males at that time. I have seen that evolve. Now, of course, there are probably more women anchors than male in today's market, and many, many minorities at every station. Although I still think, as far as anchors are concerned, African American men especially are not very well represented in Los Angeles television, and probably not women either. I don't think there are many African American anchorwomen. At one time there were several--Felicia Jeter [at KNBC] and a few others, Pat Harvey at KCAL, channel 9. There are a few now. Particularly I do see a few young ones coming along like Leslie Sykes. I still don't think where African Americans are concerned that the diversity of this city is represented. More and more it is with Latinos--

WHITE: Sure.

McCORMICK: --but not with African Americans. So we still have a ways to go.

WHITE: Back in the late 1960s, it was my understanding that, as a result of the urban unrest, Watts riots and things like that in '65, that there was a need for more African Americans to actually work in the newsroom, particularly, I suppose, as news reporters, because they were I guess a bit more adept at going out into the community and getting the information firsthand from those that they were most familiar with. So it was my understanding that there was an increase in African Americans that joined the television newscast industry. Is that your understanding? Perhaps not as anchors but as news reporters during the late sixties?

McCORMICK: There are several answers to that. Certainly the Watts riots of August 1965 made everybody who wasn't absolutely nuts in this community--the greater Los Angeles [community] and every city across the country--aware that there was a tremendous problem in the African American community, that it had become tired of accepting second-class status, that it had become tired of being denied equal opportunity, not just in broadcasting but in other professions. It was a restive, turbulent time in the minority communities generally but in the African American community in particular. And it certainly heightened awareness on everybody's part that we have to do something. On the part of the leadership, both white and black leadership, there was a notion that we have to do what's right. We can't just do something, we have to do something meaningful if we're going to deal with these problems and keep these kinds of urban crises and urban explosions from occurring, or it's going to happen again and again and again if the system, the community, the city, continues to be blatantly unfair to African Americans. This had a number of effects. Some were good; some were not so good. What a lot of television stations started to do was just virtually run out and get any African American they could and slap them on the air with some kind of public affairs program--disorganized, not really-- There was some really bad TV. No professional experience, just somebody who could talk the longest, strongest game. Or some television executive who thought they had a read on the black community and saw some charismatic figure at some meeting or something that impressed them and they slapped them on the air. It took a while before they started to really seek out trained black professionals. They just took whoever made the most noise and gave them the worst time or threatened to demonstrate against the station or whatever. So they submitted to pressure not by going and seeking or seeking to train African Americans who could compete with everybody else on the air as far as training and preparation were concerned, so it had that effect, too. It took three or four years for management generally in television broadcasting here in Los Angeles to become more sophisticated about how they sought out minority talent. And ultimately they started using the same criteria for minority talent. They were putting people on the air who were going to be an embarrassment, who obviously were not prepared. And a lot of African Americans, including myself, and a lot of other African American leaders felt--this may or may not be true; we might have been being paranoid--that there was a kind of conspiratorial attitude to the whole thing. They were going to put people on the air who were destined to fail to prove that there were no people who could really do it. "You see what we told you? That's why there are no African Americans on the air." And that happened a lot, unfortunately, in the earlier days, right after 1965 and the civil unrest in the other major cities. It always takes people, it seems, a while to learn a lesson. The old saying--I'm paraphrasing now--"Power never gives up anything without a demand and never surrenders anything without a demand." So there had to constantly be pressure, pressure, pressure, demand, demand, demand, demand, until management generally in broadcasting--not just in Los Angeles but everywhere--began to see, "They're not going to go away!" [mutual laughter] "The problem's not going to go away, so maybe we'd better start being smarter and more sophisticated about this and start looking for talented people to put on the air." And certainly they did.

WHITE: Absolutely. Case in point, your being one of them at KABC, a talented individual, equipped and trained for the job, who could handle the experiences and the challenges that you would be presented with.

McCORMICK: Yeah. Well, I like to think so. Thank you.

WHITE: Did you have much autonomy, as far as you can recall, when you were at KABC?

McCORMICK: Well, when you're doing the weather you've got all the autonomy that you want, because nobody's going to tell you what to say, what to do. And what you do is pretty much cut and cleared from the wire service information that you get from the National Weather Service and from the other satellite services. How you do it, how you inject your personality into it, yeah, I pretty much had autonomy. "However you want to do it." I think I was discreet enough as a broadcaster and as a gentleman not to do anything vulgar or dirty or unacceptable in any kind of way on the air, but I think I managed to project my personality. And I certainly was not restrained in any kind of way. Coming out of radio, having emceed so many programs in the community and so many programs in nightclubs and things like that, I had kind of a comedic gift, so I would incorporate a little humor into all the weather forecasts. The other anchors liked it. The viewers liked it. And I continued to do the same thing when I went to KTLA. But no, I didn't really have any parameters put on what I could and could not do. I didn't have any power, obviously. But then nobody who was not in management had any power. Some of the powerful anchors-- The early anchors like George Putnam [at KTLA and KTTV, channel 11] and some of the other people had a lot of power, a lot of clout, because they had very high ratings, and when you have very high ratings that translates into power. You can up to a certain extent dictate how you want to do things and how the news should be. You have a lot more input when you have high ratings. But then, that's not just in broadcast journalism; that's in any phase of TV.

WHITE: That's very indicative of one's success, isn't it?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: The rating systems. And it makes a difference in the level of power, of course, that you have at a station and the kinds of demands that you can make or can't make.

McCORMICK: If you're a Roseanne [Barr] or a Jerry Seinfeld or an Oprah Winfrey and you're making tons of money for your employer, of course they're going to concede all kinds of power to you. And if you are prudent and smart and intelligent, as Oprah certainly is, you can use that power to develop other programming, more opportunities to do more of the things that you want to do, and you can do it with less resistance.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: If you're lower down the line you're not going to have that much power. You get some resistance because the people who are the very top management in broadcasting are ultimately going to make the decisions. But nobody who's in his right mind or her right mind is going to tell an Oprah Winfrey what to do and what not to do.

WHITE: That's for sure. That's for sure.

McCORMICK: Not going to happen.

WHITE: That's quite interesting because of the way in which the Nielsen [Media Research] rating system actually works and how it was constructed from the onset, just in terms of who gets-- They're interviewed, I guess. The Nielsen rating systems--

McCORMICK: They get a box.

WHITE: They get a box or what have you. But which families are selected to have those boxes and therefore--

McCORMICK: I have never in my life-- I've been forty years in this business in Los Angeles. I have never met a person that acknowledged that they were a Nielsen family, a Nielsen household. I don't know how they do it. I've never been privy to how they select the people who are in the sample. I have learned that they keep both a box, a device, and a diary, and that they are given some training on how to do it. But other than that they really try to keep their methods very secret. Certainly they have perfected it over the years; their technology has improved. Nobody can be absolutely certain that they're absolutely accurate. But they're the only game in town.

WHITE: That's so true.

McCORMICK: So everybody has to-- All broadcasters make a tacit agreement to live by those rules, and it's been broken down now into-- Now Nielsen has gotten sophisticated to the point where they can give you a demographic breakdown. If you want to know how many viewers you have, how many male viewers eighteen to thirtynine [years old], they can tell you, and they say it's pretty accurate. If you want to know how many female viewers you have of thirty-nine to fifty-nine-[year-olds], they can tell you. How many young people you have fourteen to eighteen or twenty [years old]. They can even break it down, because they know the individual households that are parts of the sample. They can break it down for income. They can break it down for educational level.

WHITE: That is so fascinating, because even if a household is chosen, who is to determine if everyone in the household is actually looking at television?

McCORMICK: You know, I wish I could tell you that, but I don't know.

WHITE: That's very interesting to see how that works.

McCORMICK: It's my understanding just from what I've heard, because I have no way of verifying this, but they actually are able to count, and to count for households in which there are multiple sets, for all the sets in use and what each person is watching. So the secret of how they break it down-- All they will tell us for public consumption is approximately how many viewers each rating point accounts for. And that changes, too, from market to market. It has to, because a six in L.A. cannot be the same thing as a six in Des Moines [Iowa]; it's so much smaller. So that number means a different thing in Des Moines than it does in Los Angeles. And then, of course, it means a different thing for the network programs. They break it down to the number of households. A one is 50,000 households, but there are considered to be 2.1 viewers in each household. So that's how you break it down to viewers.

WHITE: Oh, really? That's fascinating. It seems that it's a little bit secretive. If you inquire as to specifically how this is done and how those calculations are gathered--

McCORMICK: It very definitely is. Another audience measurement service works primarily for radio. It's called Arbitron. They measure the radio ratings, radio audiences. And theirs is very secret. They do it by device and by diary. But [the] Arbitron [Company] and Nielsen--and there was one other company that was fairly popular for a while and then it went out of business--have tried as much as they could, without drawing the ire of the Congress of the United States, to keep competitors at bay. There was a fellow, a rather famous story years and years ago--perhaps I had just come out here, hadn't been too long in Los Angeles--who had developed a means of driving a truck-- During World War II there were a lot of Resistance workers in the nations in Europe that were occupied by the Nazis, and these Resistance workers had to try to send or receive-- If they wanted to send radio signals to the Allied forces stationed in England about where German munitions were, German troop concentrations were, they had these clandestine radios. The Germans, the Nazis, developed a system whereby they would equip a radio truck, and they would drive through the city, and they could pick up these signals, these frequencies. And they could finally pinpoint exactly-- And then they'd go arrest and probably execute the people.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness.

McCORMICK: Based on that system, this guy, an American, devised a truck that could drive down the street and tell what everybody was listening to.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. And he had it pretty much perfected. Of course, if you take ten trucks you can cover the whole city, twenty trucks cover a city the size of L.A. Well, the established audience measurement services beat him down. You heard the story of the Tucker automobile?

WHITE: I haven't, no.

McCORMICK: This guy [Preston] Tucker came up with a brand-new automobile, and the big three at the time--Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors--just forced him out of business.

WHITE: No, I take that back. I do know now. I recall.

McCORMICK: Well, the big audience measurement services went to Congress and would not allow this guy to develop his technology, forced him out of business. Because they said he was driving down the street listening, monitoring on all his machinery and everything. I mean, he could give you the most accurate audience measurement possible. He could tell you exactly what everybody was listening to, because he could pick up the frequencies on his thing. They said that was an invasion of privacy. That's what they sold to the Congress. They said, "We are not invading privacy. People are voluntarily being a part of our sample." And that's how they kept this fellow from developing his technology. But there are a couple of other companies that are just in the formation stages now that I think may ultimately give A.C. Nielsen [Company] a run for their money and maybe even displace them, because this is based on satellite technology.

WHITE: Oh, really? Okay.

McCORMICK: So that's one of the developments I expect is going to come full circle in the future. I understand that A.C. Nielsen now in a defensive posture is also trying to develop the same kind of technology.

WHITE: Is that right? Okay.

McCORMICK: But they know that their days of being the only game in town may be numbered.

WHITE: That's interesting. A.C. Nielsen, is that a person?

McCORMICK: I think it was. [Arthur C. Nielsen Sr.] I don't think he's alive anymore. I think he passed away a long time ago.

WHITE: He developed this concept?

McCORMICK: Yeah, of audience measurement.

WHITE: Exactly. That would be very interesting, to do some research on that to find out, just, first of all, if it's possible to get the kind of information and data that one would require to do a thesis or a dissertation or something on the whole system of Nielsen ratings, or just an exposé of some sort, even on a show like 60 Minutes. It would be fascinating.

McCORMICK: An exposé would be fascinating. People have tried to do some very slick things with audience measurement. Here in Los Angeles--oh, maybe ten years or so ago--KABC channel 7 came up with an idea for one of the sweeps, either February sweeps or May or November sweeps--the three important books [ratings periods]--in which they said-- I don't know how they put it. They said, "We know that there is an unending fascination-- You'll hear us say, 'during these rating periods,' talking about the ratings and all that kind of stuff, about 'sweeps.' We're sure that it would be fascinating for everybody in Los Angeles to know just how these ratings are done. So what we're going to do is talk to some actual Nielsen families about how they keep their diaries and how they make their preferences." So they had a little thing-- I'm trying to think of how-- It was underhanded and sneaky, because it really put everybody, every other station-- Naturally, every Nielsen family was going to watch them and skew the whole rating thing. They said, "So anybody who's a Nielsen family or has been in the past contact us, and we'd just like to talk to you." A number of people did contact them. But Nielsen, because of the protest of all the other stations, kicked it out. They disallowed it, which was the right thing to do. But every other station thought, "God, I wish I'd thought of that first!" That's pretty slick.

WHITE: Oh, sure. It is nice and interesting to hear, though, that there may be someone that is going to be competitive with Nielsen.

McCORMICK: It is. I think it's nothing but healthy for the business. First, I think, particularly in a diverse market like Los Angeles, the ratings will more fairly and fully reflect minority viewership than Nielsen does. Because I really don't-- Again, it's so secret that I'm not privy to any actual numbers, but I would almost be willing to bet that there are not as many African American families among the samples as there are others, because I think Los Angeles broadcasters want to see the market a certain way, because they want to appeal to certain advertisers.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: That makes all the sense in the world to me. I would be willing to bet that that's the situation.

WHITE: So the way in which the families are selected or have been selected in the past is tailored accordingly, according to the ultimate outcome--

McCORMICK: I think broadcasters in essence tell Nielsen, "This is who we want you to sample."

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: I'm almost sure of that. Because they're figuring, "We want to see a sample that we can sell Mercedes-Benzes to or other high-line items to. We don't want in your sample one-third poor Latino immigrants, because we can't go to advertisers and sell them anything that we can make money on." So I'm sure there's some collusion there.

WHITE: Very interesting. Very interesting. Well, on that note, Mr. McCormick, we're going to go ahead and end our interview for the day, and we'll pick this up next week.

McCORMICK: Okay.

WHITE: Okay. Thank you very much.

McCORMICK: And when this comes out Nielsen will probably sue me.

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
DECEMBER 22, 1998

WHITE: It's been a few weeks since we spoke last, but as I recall we were talking a little bit about your roles [and] your functions at [television station] KABC [channel 7] and [radio station] KMPC, and some of your duties there and what have you. And we ended our tape by talking about the Nielsen [Media Research] ratings and how there may be some more competition in the very near future for A.C. Nielsen [Company], and how the ratings are actually derived and that sort of thing. So from that point I wanted to just continue on with a couple of other things having to do with television. I want to talk a bit about [television station] KTLA [channel 5], quite a bit about KTLA today. But before we do that, I wanted to speak with you about some of your experience in television. I understand that you had a number of different roles where you played different characters. Through some of your literature I noticed that you'd made several appearances: a sitcom and a couple of the thirty-minute news programs that were out during the seventies. And one thing that I learned is the last half of the sixties was considered kind of the golden age for blacks in American television. Did you agree with this statement?

McCORMICK: Well, I don't know whether I would call it a golden age for blacks in American television. It was certainly an age following the civil uprisings in 1965, '66, when a lot of African Americans got an opportunity to be on television and to have their own television programs, when television station management responded to the community by offering those opportunities. That was a very good thing to at least get the perspective of the African American community on television where it could be exposed to the general audience. The not-so-good thing is that management of television stations, I suppose under the pressure and urgency of getting programs on the air that would kind of take the heat off them, didn't do a terribly good job of selecting the people that they decided to have host the programs and participate in the programs. And generally they did not really, in my memory, seek out talented African American professional broadcasters. A lot of people were leaders of various community groups, and they got a public affairs program, and things like that occurred. The management of TV stations just kind of reached out and grabbed, in many instances, almost anybody they could, whether that person was really representative of professional journalism or professional broadcasting among African Americans or not. It wasn't until later on that-- Oh, and then I do recall some station managers cancelling programs as time went along, saying, "Well, we just can't find anybody." Obviously, nonprofessionals couldn't live up to the standards on a week-in, week-out basis. So then the hue and cry became, "Oh, we just can't find anybody who's qualified who can do these things." Well, obviously you see how television is peopled today, and we knew then that there were lots and lots of people who could do it but who just didn't get the opportunity until a considerable number of years later. So I wouldn't call it a golden age unless one wants to say you go from nothing to something. Then in that respect it was a good time.

WHITE: Okay, good, good. I know that acting was at one point one of your aspirations back when you were in college--

McCORMICK: That's right.

WHITE: --and of course during your stint at the Ebony Showcase Theatre [and Cultural Arts Center]. And then I also understand that in July of 1969 you played a key role in a show that was out at that point; Adam-12 was the name of the show.

McCORMICK: Yeah, yeah. I played a part on Adam-12 and a lot of the police series, always--almost always--as a reporter. Only a few times did I play parts where I was not a reporter, particularly after I started my television news career--once on The Jeffersons when I was the guest star and I was Marla Gibbs's romantic interest, which was a lot of fun. And those were wonderful people to work with. And years ago there was a movie called Assault on the Wayne, which starred the late Lloyd Haynes, who was one of the costars of Room 222 along with Denise Nicholas. And Leonard Nimoy was in it. I played a crew member of a U.S. submarine. That was one of the departures. And then very early on, when I first came out here, I played a Harlem numbers runner, a teenager who had fallen in love with, of all things, a detective's daughter. And the guy who played the role of the detective whose daughter I fall in love with was the late James Edwards, who was a terrific actor. So other than that-- It got to be they saw me on TV, and they wanted me to play a TV newscaster, a TV anchorman, sometimes a weatherman. And as a result of that, I was-- Barnaby Jones, McMillan and Wife, and a number, probably sixty or seventy TV series, episodic series. And motion pictures, too.

WHITE: McCloud, I noticed, and the Bill Cosby Show.

McCORMICK: The Bill Cosby Show--well, both Bill Cosby shows [Bill Cosby Show (1969-72) and the Cosby Show (1985-92)]. And the show that-- Diahann Carroll was the first black actress to have a lead role in her own series, called Julia, and I played a part on Julia. And very, very, very many of the shows that, oh, beginning particularly in 1970, '71, a lot of the shows-- One of the advantages of living in L.A. is that the people who produce and cast those movies watch you on TV all the time, so all they do is call the station and say, "Hey, can you do this? We like what you do, and can you do this?" So that was the result of many of them.

WHITE: So of course they could see obviously that you're very comfortable in that environment.

McCORMICK: Yeah. I think one of the reasons I was fortunate enough to get a lot of roles then is because they knew I did-- In addition to broadcasting and journalism, I also had a background in theater. And there are some things involved in acting that a lot of newscasters, even though many of the newscasters have played parts on TV, just are not familiar with that have to do with the technique of making motion pictures. Things like walking to a certain spot and hitting your mark. You have to do that and say your lines and be very natural, because that's where they lit-- They've lit that spot because that's where they want you, and the camera has already locked in and measured that spot. So if you're supposed to walk three feet and there's a mark on the floor, and that's where you're supposed to stop and do your line, you have to be able to do that. And a lot of professional newscasters have a lot of problems with that. A lot of people who are not professional actors have trouble hitting the marks, staying in the lights. All the blocking that goes with making a motion picture you have to be familiar with and comfortable with. And you have to be able to do that while dividing your mind with the lines and the business that you're supposed to do. So hitting your mark is something that you shouldn't have to think about if you have some professional acting experience.

WHITE: Absolutely. Can you recall, say, your most memorable moment while you were performing in some of these shows or on a particular show?

McCORMICK: Oh, let's see. The most memorable moment I would have to say was The Jeffersons, because it was so much fun. And almost everybody there were people I had already known--Roxie Roker and the others. I had met Marla before, because I had introduced Marla on a number-- Marla, as you know, is very active in the community, and I had introduced her at a number of functions in the community. Isabel Sanford I had known before. I had not met Sherman Hemsley or any of the other cast members before, but it was almost as though I had. They welcomed me so graciously, and of course they knew who I was. And the experience was just terrific, because it was so much fun working with them and because of all the episodic TV series and all the motion pictures that I've been in, that-- I got more reaction-- For years, after that show was in syndication, people would tell me, "I saw you on The Jeffersons." And also I guess because it was such a departure from what I do that it really stuck in their memories.

WHITE: Right. Exactly.

McCORMICK: So I'm going to have to say that was the most memorable. The others, their qualities of being memorable were just in having the opportunity to work with some pretty important actors--with Rock Hudson in McMillan and Wife and with "Cos" [Bill Cosby], of course, on a couple of shows, and several others. I'm trying to think of the name of the show that starred the two women detectives.

WHITE: Cagney and Lacey?

McCORMICK: I worked on Cagney and Lacey, and they were really, really nice. Well, all of the people I've worked with have been very, very, very nice people to work with. But again, you know, The Jeffersons, because it was such a big, big show at the time, a huge hit, and because they were so much fun to work with, and because it's really the only one in which I legitimately was a costar, a guest star.

WHITE: As Marla Gibbs's love interest. The Bible-toting boyfriend of Florence.

McCORMICK: That's right. That's right. That was a lot of fun. Even now when I see her all the time--she knows who I am--instead of saying "Hi, Larry" she says "Hi, Buzz," which was the character.

WHITE: It was the character's name. That's great.

McCORMICK: It was a lot of fun.

WHITE: Okay. Are you approached for those shows that are on today? Are you approached periodically to play roles?

McCORMICK: Yeah. As a matter of fact, the last couple of years-- Not as much-- There was one period when it seemed like I was almost playing a role a week. The woman who was my agent then has since retired, and I haven't actively pursued it. Mostly they've called me. But yes, a couple of times I've been on a show called Sliders that's on the Sci-Fi channel, I think.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: Most recently about a month ago. And I get calls every now and then about performing roles, mostly on TV, and some motion pictures. I was in a movie called Father Goose. And mostly people call who see me on TV and they like what I do and they think I fit the niche that they want in a particular TV show. A newscaster's part in a motion picture or on a television program is very similar to a device they used to use in movies. When they wanted to show the passage of time in certain old movies, you may remember, they would show newspapers flashing with the dates and everything, when they wanted to advance time. Well, the role of a television newscaster can be very, very handily used by a writer or director almost like the Greek chorus to move the plot from one step to the next by revelatory information and having the viewer or the person in the movie theater understand-- The newscaster can really do that very, very well, because you can say, "It's been seven days since so-and-so and so-and-so, and now today we are--" I mean, you're just advancing the plot.

WHITE: Right. That's true.

McCORMICK: It's a good device for advancing the plot.

WHITE: Absolutely. Okay, I'm sure those have been very memorable moments for you.

McCORMICK: They have.

WHITE: And obviously you've been able to maintain dual roles, because you were working at KTLA at the same time as many of these performances in these various shows in the early seventies and what have you.

McCORMICK: KTLA's only stipulation-- The only thing the management and the news management at KTLA ever ask--and this made very, very good sense to me--was that they said if you're playing a newscaster, a straight newscaster, a news reporter, a field reporter, a weathercaster, something like that in a movie, that's fine. The only thing that we ask is that you never accept a part or play a part that denigrates the profession of broadcast journalism. Well, [between] that and my own common good sense I wouldn't do that. So all the roles have pretty much been straightforward, friendly, affable, sometimes serious, but never one that denigrated either me or anybody else or the profession of broadcast journalism.

WHITE: That's interesting. Have there been very many of your coanchors or fellow employees there at KTLA that have also been called to the movie industry or the television industry to play various roles, whether they be broadcasters or otherwise?

McCORMICK: A few. Not very many. A few have played roles on television. I think Michelle Ruiz, a former colleague who's now with [KNBC] channel 4, was in a movie. And I think Jan Karl might have been. Jan Karl was in a movie; Jan Karl was in Bulworth.

WHITE: Oh, okay.

McCORMICK: Yeah, she was one of the coanchors in Bulworth. And a few others at channel 5. A few other anchors, a few other newscasters from other stations around town, have also appeared in movies. I doubt seriously whether any of them have been in as many TV series or movies as I have. Another anchorwoman [Barbara Beck at KTLA] appeared in the movie-- The one with Will Smith.

WHITE: Independence Day?

McCORMICK: Independence Day, right in the opening sequence. Who was also a friend. But over the years, oh, sure, over the years a lot of them have played parts in movies.

WHITE: Okay. Now, was this a stipulation, say, in your contract with KTLA when you were first hired? Or was there something that they had to develop along the way? Because you obviously--

McCORMICK: It kind of evolved. We had no idea that I was going to get calls to play those parts. So it just kind of evolved. And at the outset I would almost have to get permission on a one by one by one basis, for the first two or three times, from whoever the news director was at the time. And that's when this arrangement kind of evolved about "Don't play anything that denigrates broadcast journalism. Obviously, we don't want you to play any heavies, no pimps, no dope dealers, stuff like that." If you're playing a broadcast journalist and they're pretty much straightforward, or you're playing good guys-- But no real heavies, no real bad guys, because it's difficult to have what I do on television for a living on KTLA accommodate a bad guy image. So early on I understood very clearly that if I accepted a role like that-- And I was offered one or two by producers. But it occurred to me that "If you do that, then what you're doing in essence is changing your profession from a broadcast journalist to an actor."

WHITE: Absolutely.

McCORMICK: "And you'd better be prepared for that, because that's what's going to happen."

WHITE: Repercussions or what have you, both positive-- I'm sure positive, but could tentatively be negative.

McCORMICK: Sure.

WHITE: Absolutely. Okay. So we're talking about KTLA. In my research I discovered that in 1947 it was the first commercially licensed station west of the Mississippi. It truly has a very pioneering spirit resulting in a long list of technological firsts. Just for example, I noticed that in 1947 they did the first on-the-spot news coverage. It was a Pico [Boulevard] electroplating plant explosion. It was quite some time ago. In 1955 it was the first to telecast the [Tournament of Roses] Parade. In 1949 it was the first to telecast from a ship from sea, in 1952 the first to telecast the explosion of an atomic bomb, the first station to cover a major political convention, in 1958 the first to regularly operate a flying remote unit, in 1955 the first to originate color programs, in 1947 the first to present man-in-the-street broadcasting. Also something quite interesting is it was the first to provide Spanish language telecasting. It was the first to receive the [George Foster] Peabody Award [bestowed by the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication] for its local news coverage of the Watts riots of 1965. It was the station that delivered the sorrowful news of the assassination of Robert [F.] Kennedy in 1968. Also it was the station that broke the news of the Rodney King beating, with photographer George Holiday handing over the tape to your coworker Stan Chambers, 1991. It was the only station to deliver gavel to gavel coverage of the O.J. Simpson criminal trial. It has won over a hundred Emmy Awards [bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences] and numerous Golden Mike Awards [bestowed by the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California], and of course an Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] Award in 1978 for Scared Straight. And I understand, of course, in 1995 it became the home of the WB [Warner Bros.] television network. And then in 1997 it celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a two-hour special, KTLA's Golden Years. So it would only seem natural--after my doing the research on KTLA and of course having done so much research on your life and your life's history--that you would spend over a quarter of a century at a news station where you were also the very first, because you have been a pioneer in so many areas of your life, and KTLA has been a pioneer. So that match seems so very appropriate. I understand, of course, that you were the first black anchor, coanchorman, on a daily major television news program. Tell me a bit about how that all came about.

McCORMICK: Well, it's interesting. I've never thought of the points about my being a pioneer and KTLA's being a pioneer and that being a good marriage. I hadn't thought about that. You make a good point. Being the first regular weekday black anchorman actually occurred first at [KCOP] channel 13--although that didn't last very long--when the man who was the anchor-- And as I think I told you before, I was hosting a game show and doing a noon newscast every day, which I guess made me the first black anchor to be on Monday through Friday every day. And then later on I started doing the news every night there. But to formally be named the first black coanchor at a television station came in the summer of 1971, when Barney Morris--who later had a fine career with KABC channel 7--and I were named coanchors of KTLA News, with the appropriate publicity in TV Guide and TV Times and all that kind of stuff. My family and I, when they made the decision, were vacationing in San Diego. We got a call down in Vacation Village there asking me to fly back up to L.A. ASAP [as soon as possible], right then that day, because they wanted to take some publicity photos with Barney Morris and me. And they took some photos and video and film on top of the Transamerica [Center] downtown as we were getting off a helicopter to do a story. But we became coanchors at KTLA News. And I think I was probably the first black regular coanchor, although that didn't last very long, because a few months later the station, which was owned by Gene Autry at that time, decided to bring back veteran anchorman George Putnam. So the tenure of Barney Morris and me as coanchors only lasted about six months.

WHITE: Oh, really? Okay.

McCORMICK: But for the record, I guess we were first.

WHITE: You were absolutely the first. Sure. I did understand that Gene Autry owned KTLA as well as the [then Los Angeles] Angels baseball team. Is that correct?

McCORMICK: Yes. And KMPC Radio. KMPC and KTLA were sister stations.

WHITE: Sister stations, exactly. Do you recall earlier on in your career there being any sort of any conflict of interest in terms of the coverage of the Angels baseball team with KTLA? Was there a real commitment on the station's part to cover their games and to put a positive spin or anything like that?

McCORMICK: I don't think our sportscasters went out of their way to put a positive spin on the Angels. They certainly would not go out of their way to put a negative spin on them. Certainly since we were the Angels' station the story of what the Angels did on any given day was usually the lead story unless there was something else very, very significant. Sometimes if the Angels were not competing for a title, if they were not a contender and the [Los Angeles] Dodgers were, then just common sense-- To appeal to the public you have to lead with the story that is of the greatest interest to the public, and that's kind of an editorial decision for people in the sports department and the news director. But yeah, we were the Angels' station, so we did a lot of promotion at KTLA with KTLA personalities, and we had KTLA nights at Angels Stadium. And since there was a direct relationship between the two, yeah, I think it's fair to say that we did perform as the Angels' station. I think one of the reasons why is because that's the way Mr. Autry wanted it. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: Of course.

McCORMICK: Actually, I've been told that one of the reasons why he bought KTLA and KMPC was to have a radio and TV station on which to broadcast his Angels games. He was really first and foremost a big, big baseball fan, a genuine baseball fan. A genuinely sharp businessman. So he realized, along with his partners, the signal companies which formed Golden West Broadcasters, that these three complemented each other: the radio station, the TV station, the baseball team. Also, owning the TV station and the radio station prevented him from having to go out and sign probably very expensive broadcast deals with other stations that he did not own. If you own it you can set your own terms down. And it's still a business. The Angels, the time that they took on the air cost something, but not what it would have cost if they had to have some kind of arrangement with another independent contractor. So it all made business sense.

WHITE: Absolutely. Did Gene Autry make his presence known at the station? Did you see him? Or would he come out? He wasn't around?

McCORMICK: He wasn't around a whole lot. He had a very lovely office at the KMPC radio station studios, which was-- I had the pleasure of having lunch up there with several other employees and Gene on a number of occasions, and it was-- He could live in the office.

WHITE: Oh, really? Okay.

McCORMICK: It had all this massive, wooden, Old West, ranch-type furniture--the couches, the tables, the TVs, the cabinets, the desk. It was a huge office, probably a twenty-five-hundred-square-foot office, that also had a bathroom and a shower, and also had a kitchen. And he had his own cook!

WHITE: Oh, goodness, in the office. Okay.

McCORMICK: This long conference-type table in the kitchen would accommodate maybe ten people. And they had a bar in the office. And my understanding is that on many occasions if there was business at the station or he'd been to an event or something and didn't want to drive all the way home he would literally stay there in the office overnight. But we would-- Oh, maybe once a year Gene would have everybody up for lunch or something like that. He only came down to the channel 5 newsroom on a couple of occasions just to say hello. But his heart was really with the baseball. He was at Angels Stadium almost every game, particularly in the years when he was younger, almost every game. He would come up in the beginning of baseball season, spring training, when channel 5 would do some kind of special promotion on one of our big stages at channel 5 with Angels players and everybody. Gene would come up, and he would be involved in the publicity and all that kind of stuff. We'd have batting cages and all that kind of stuff and do what amounted to regular promotions to kick off the season.

WHITE: Okay. You have had an opportunity to share your thoughts about the parallels and the contrasts between working at KABC and KCOP. What was the difference, if any, working at KTLA versus the other two stations? Can you recall? When you first began there?

McCORMICK: Sure. KCOP is not and really has never been what you would call a powerhouse in the market. It was one of the weaker stations in ratings and in programming and in audience. So I was never really talking to nearly as large an audience on KCOP--and I understood that back then and everybody did--as I would be on KABC, which is an affiliate of the ABC [American Broadcasting Company] network. And network affiliates generally, because they have such great programming, or certainly they did back then, always have considerably larger audiences. On the other hand, my role at KABC was really rather minimal, even though they did good promotion and everything. I was just the weekend weather forecaster, so there was not a great deal of exposure. I was doing a lot of stuff on KCOP and hosting the game show [Dialing for Dollars] and all that kind of stuff, but it was rather a minor role at KABC--only on the weekends. And at KTLA, of course, I was talking about being on Monday through Friday for two newscasts each night. And, you know, this boils down to the number of hours per week that you're on the air. And of course, as you just detailed a moment ago, KTLA was a very prestigious station. It was a pioneer. It had a number of firsts. It was just as well established in this market as any of the network affiliates. It was a powerhouse station. And it still is a powerhouse station. So there was that considerable difference at KTLA. I would be talking to a much larger audience many more times per week. So that was a significant difference.

WHITE: Okay. So you were the weatherman at KABC.

McCORMICK: Yeah, I was the weatherman, weekend weatherman. And I occasionally substituted for the weekday weatherman, whose name was Alan Sloan.

WHITE: Okay. And your position initially at KTLA, you were a coanchorman.

McCORMICK: No, initially, I was the weatherman.

WHITE: Initially you were the weatherman? Okay. Can you tell me about these transitions?

McCORMICK: Yes. Starting in about March of 1971, even though I don't think I signed my first real contract until April, I became the weatherman. I was invited over by Bill Fyffe, the same fellow who had hired me at channel 7. He had changed stations and gone on to become the news director at channel 5. And he and the people at KMPC wanted me to be the full-time weatherman Monday through Friday, so that's the way I started there. And then that went on for, oh, four or five months or so. And that's when the opportunity came along to-- I was named coanchor with Barney Morris. Barney Morris was one of the news anchors when I went there along with an Australian fellow named Kevin Saunders. And the sportscasters were the late Tom Harman--who was an all-American at [University of] Michigan and then a movie star for a while--and Jerry Coleman, who is still the broadcaster for the San Diego Padres baseball team.

WHITE: Oh, okay.

McCORMICK: So that was our broadcast team: Barney Morris, Kevin Saunders from Australia, Tom Harman. Oh, as I said, we had two newscasts, one from five [o'clock] to six [o'clock] P.M. and another from ten [o'clock] to ten thirty. And Tom Harman and Jerry Coleman would alternate; one would do the early sportscast and one would do the late sportscast. But I did the weather on both the newscasts. And that went on until-- I think Kevin Saunders's contract was not renewed, and he left the station, and that's when they asked me to coanchor with Barney Morris. We were off and running and thought things were going well. But then George Putnam, who was then working at [television station KTTV] channel 11, which was channel 5's chief competitor, had also been at channel 5, and he had had a pattern of going back and forth kind of playing one against the other for several years. And channel 11, he had learned, was not going to renew his contract. So he came and had an urgent meeting with the cowboy, Gene Autry, and asked if he could please come back to channel 5 and have another chance. And that's what derailed Barney Morris and me, our chances of really getting some sustained momentum as being coanchors. So Putnam came back.

WHITE: Okay. And at that point what position did you hold?

McCORMICK: Then I became the weathercaster and the sportscaster again.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness, okay. Weather and sports. Would this be your first position as sportscaster?

McCORMICK: First time I did the sportscast.

WHITE: Right, okay. Now, originally, when you moved from weatherman to the coanchorman position, the ownership or the management just sought you out? This wasn't something that you had to lobby for? It was considered a promotion?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes, very much a promotion.

WHITE: Okay. Very much a promotion, okay.

McCORMICK: Yes. There was John Reynolds, who was the general manager of channel 5 at the time. John had been one of the head honchos with the NBC [National Broadcasting Company] network, and Gene Autry had hired him to build up channel 5. He was the one who asked me to accept the coanchor position with Barney Morris. And later on the implication was that George Putnam kind of went over John Reynolds's head to Gene Autry, who owned the station, to get the anchor job back then. Mr. Reynolds had preferred Barney Morris, I mean, the anchor team he had chosen and put together, but he really had no choice. Mr. Reynolds left the station not too long after that. But at any rate, that's how I-- That whole thing evolved when I again became the weatherman and then the sportscaster. And George Putnam, when he came back he had allied himself with a college professor who gave him a great deal of credibility, because he was a very bright guy, a sharp guy, particularly where world affairs and political science were concerned. Hal Fishman was a college professor who actually just came in as-- I can't recall the story clearly now even though Hal has told it to me a couple of times before. [He came in] for one or two newscasts during some particular event that was going on, I think in the Cold War then, and kind of sat in, and George asked him a few questions about the situation, and finally invited him to leave his teaching profession, I think at Cal[ifornia] State L.A. [Los Angeles], and become his coanchor. Which Hal did, and that's how they first got together. So as things would go, when George would leave channel 5 and go to channel 11, Hal would go with him. When he would leave to come back, Hal would come back with him.

WHITE: You're kidding. They would travel as a team back and forth? My goodness.

McCORMICK: Yes. They started traveling as a tandem.

WHITE: Can you recall how many times that happened back then?

McCORMICK: I can't really recall, because in the early years, before I got into television news, I was pretty much deeply involved in radio, and I only saw them on TV like everybody else. And I went up and down the dial. I knew who Putnam was because he was reportedly at the time the highest-paid news anchor in the country, even more than network newspeople like Walter Cronkite.

WHITE: Really?

McCORMICK: He had quite a reputation at that time. So I would see them on the air. And I would see people like Jack Latham at channel 4. A guy who later became a member of the L.A. [Los Angeles] County Board of Supervisors was the chief anchor at channel 7, Baxter Ward.

WHITE: The name is familiar.

McCORMICK: So those were the three primary anchors in L.A. at the time. Then later on, of course, the guy who became the youngest TV anchorman in the entire country over at channel 4--Tom Brokaw. I think he was twenty-three or twenty-four years old.

WHITE: Oh, was he really when he began?

McCORMICK: Yes, and a big-time, heavyweight anchor.

WHITE: He has quite the reputation. He's excellent.

McCORMICK: Yeah, he is.

WHITE: Okay. So from that point you went to weather and sports. Tell me a bit about the skills that were required to be a sportscaster.

McCORMICK: Well, of course, I've always been an avid sports fan. I knew a lot about it, very knowledgeable about it. I was knowledgeable about all the teams, all the major players in every sport, with the possible exception of hockey. But then L.A. wasn't a big-time hockey town at that time anyway. We had the [Los Angeles] Lakers, we had the [Los Angeles] Dodgers, we had the Angels, and we had the [then Los Angeles] Rams. And of course, we had USC [University of Southern California] and UCLA, which had major intercollegiate athletic programs. Then there were the other individual sports like track and field and things like that. UCLA had major, tremendous basketball programs those years under John [R.] Wooden. So I was very knowledgeable about it, and I didn't have any trouble making the transition to doing sports. I altered my style a little bit, although not greatly, from doing the weather, because it requires a little bit more upbeat, up-tempo kind of energy, and I didn't have any trouble doing that. You wouldn't have trouble doing that having been a disc jockey, which was all energy.

WHITE: Right, absolutely. Keeping things in sync. Well, in your position as coanchorman for that period of time with Barney Morris, can you describe your daily schedule and routine?

McCORMICK: Our schedule pretty much consisted of coming in two or three hours ahead of the news, being briefed on what the major stories were, assisting some in the writing, correcting, massaging the copy. And back then, before we had all the technological elevations that we have now, it was comparatively primitive. As I recall, the TelePrompTer was pieces of copy Scotch-taped together end to end and slung over a coat hanger.

WHITE: Oh, no! [mutual laughter]

McCORMICK: Either that or nothing at all. Some people just preferred to read from the hand copy, and many did. So there was that preparation before we went on the air. And then you go to makeup, and then you go on the air. And there was the division of stories--who's reading this and who's reading that. And we already knew about camera techniques, about looking for the tally light [light on camera] or at the stage manager, who would direct you to the camera you were going to be on. And that's what we did. As a matter of fact, Barney and I developed a very, very good friendship. Our family went to his house at Woodland Hills a number of times for dinner, and Barney even many more times than that would come by here for dinner or for a meal or to have drinks after the newscast. We became very good friends, very good friends.

WHITE: That's excellent. And what is he doing now? Do you know?

McCORMICK: Barney recently retired. For years he was channel 7's Orange County bureau chief, and did a lot of the reports that you saw him do from Orange County, but just about a year ago he retired.

WHITE: He retired, okay. You said you would decide or it was decided who would read what. Who would make that determination?

McCORMICK: The news producer.

WHITE: The news producer would, okay.

McCORMICK: And that's still the case today.

WHITE: Okay, the news producer. When you returned to your position as a weatherman and then as a sportscaster, what did your daily schedule and routine consist of?

McCORMICK: Well, I was chiefly responsible for knowing what was going on, deciding both the order and selection of stories that were going into sports for that particular broadcast. Of course, if you just have a little common sense there are-- You watch other sportscasters. I knew what was going on in sports. And there are common sense things that dictate the order in which the stories come, the most important story first. If there was a local team that was in contention for a title, then that's obviously your lead story. There are other stories where you use your own knowledgeability about sports to determine-- As you know, one of the chief responsibilities for a news producer, for an anchor, for somebody who's-- In essence I was the producer of the sports segment and the weather segment. One of the chief problems is not what to put in, it's always what to leave out.

WHITE: Oh, there's so much.

McCORMICK: Unlike a newspaper, which can be thirty pages today and a hundred pages tomorrow, your sportscast is going to be three minutes today and three minutes tomorrow and three minutes after that. So your job of condensation and selection of what's going to be excluded becomes very, very much more important. So you really have to be careful about culling out what you consider will be the most interesting stories of that day for your viewers.

WHITE: And as the producer, so to speak, of the sports program, you have the primary responsibility of making that decision.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. And selecting the visuals to go with the story, with writing the story, with condensing it. Because in a three-minute sportscast you want to get in eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve stories. And then I was physically responsible for writing it.

WHITE: Really?

McCORMICK: We didn't have a sports staff, so I would have to sit there on those big old typewriters with the huge keys that we used to have, the clanging-- It sounded like a train coming down the tracks. I'd have to sit there and take the copy and write the story.

WHITE: Oh, literally write the story.

McCORMICK: That was invaluable experience, and it really helped to develop my writing skills. And for the challenge of trying to find-- I think we discussed before, everybody's doing the same story, so you should try to give the viewers some reason for watching you do the same stories as opposed to your competitors. So that gave me some experience, as it would anybody, in trying to say things a little bit differently, a little bit better, a little more dramatically, with a little more cohesion, with a little more perception about the meaning behind it all. Instead of just saying, "The Dodgers won 3 to 2 over St. Louis today," you'd say, "Despite getting only one hit--" or "The Dodgers won their eighteenth straight game today. They became the first team to do this." So you really have to know a lot about what's going on in order to give it that sense of perspective, whereas another sportscaster might just give the result and little more.

WHITE: Exactly, which would come across a little bit bland, actually.

McCORMICK: So producing the segment really gives you a lot of freedom to do what you want to do. But more than that, it was really a wonderful opportunity to develop writing skills and to call on my knowledge of every sport and what was important about what happened that day.

WHITE: I would imagine that that was a bit challenging in addition to the weather report and keeping up with the weather patterns and what have you going on.

McCORMICK: It was, it was. But it was fun. It was fun because it was a real learning experience. And I found out that you don't have to be Phi Beta Kappa. You have to apply yourself and be serious and do a lot of reading. But you learn about frontal systems and how they move across the surface of the earth and more specifically how they move across the surface of the United States, more specifically how they move across the area where we live, where they originate, what happens when frontal systems collide. You know, when a cold front and a warm front collide, what happens? What kind of weather does it produce? Just a number of things that broadened me intellectually, my storehouse of knowledge about things. And of course, now, being more than just a spectator of sports, I have become almost a student of sports. I learned more about the history and about the whys. I learned a lot of things about sports that I somehow appreciated but didn't really understand or know before then but by then I had to know.

WHITE: Absolutely. I'm sure now at this point, it prompts you to ask questions and to query a little bit more, because I'm sure you would have thought that your audience would have those same sorts of questions that they would ponder. So it's the ultimate, of course, to be in a position where you can answer their question before they have an opportunity to pose it.

McCORMICK: You are in essence the surrogate for the viewer. So you have to anticipate what it is--if I'm sitting at home watching--the viewer wants to know. And unless you're able to do that, I don't think you're going to be very successful. But the most successful people are the ones who do anticipate what it is the viewer wants to know about a given game, a given event in sports and things like that.

WHITE: Absolutely. Okay, how long did you actually hold these two positions simultaneously? Do you recall?

McCORMICK: I was the sportscaster long after George left and Hal Fishman came back. I was the sportscaster-- Then I became the weathercaster again after George's contract was not renewed, which was around 1973. They brought in another veteran, veteran anchorman. I don't know why they didn't think I was able to do it, and nobody has ever told me why, but they brought in a veteran anchorman named Clete Roberts, who had been with CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System] for years.

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO
DECEMBER 22, 1998

WHITE: We were just discussing Clete Roberts.

McCORMICK: Clete was a very, very well established news anchor type--I guess you could call him a type because that's what he was. Actually he had started his career here in Los Angeles at channel 5. At one time he was an anchorman there, as were a number of other anchors who went on to be prominent, including Tom Snyder. He was an anchorman at channel 5. Bill Stout, the late Bill Stout, was an anchorman at channel 5. As a matter of fact, at one time they were all there at the same time, and channel 5 was the powerhouse--they called it the Big News--newscast in the city at the time. But they brought Clete back. Clete was now getting toward the end of his career, and he stayed for just a year. And they decided to bring Hal Fishman back in about 1974, and he's been there ever since. He's been kind of the chief anchor ever since then. When he came back in 1974 I was still doing the weather. During the period when Putnam had been there, in addition to doing sports and weather, we had had-- Most of the independent stations had in 1972 eliminated their early newscast, their five [o'clock] to six [o'clock] P.M. newscast, even though the "O and Os" [owned and operated by the networks], the network affiliates, kept theirs. The independents had eliminated it, because they just couldn't compete with primetime programming anymore. So almost all the independents one by one decided to go to a one-hour newscast at ten [o'clock] P.M.

WHITE: Oh, okay. And this was the mid-seventies?

McCORMICK: Yes. No, no, early seventies. Early seventies, yes. So we now had a one-hour newscast from ten to eleven [o'clock], and the ratings were not going very well. And George Putnam, I think, felt and the management felt his power in the market was slipping. So he tried to come up with a device that he hoped would restore the ratings. He convinced management that we should do news, and then at the end of the news hour-- Do news, weather, and sports from ten to ten thirty, and ten thirty to eleven we would have a segment called "Talk Back [to the News"], in which we would have a studio audience of forty or fifty people which had listened to the entire newscast, and then one by one they would come to the microphone and address a question to either George or Hal or me, the three of us standing up at the podium.

WHITE: Exactly. It was called "Talk Back on Back Talk," right?

McCORMICK: No, just "Talk Back to the News."

WHITE: "Talk Back to the News," okay.

McCORMICK: I had entered participation in that program only very reluctantly, because I did not think it was the job or the responsibility or [that it was] responsible of supposedly objective journalists to stand and offer opinions on the news of the day. As nearly as possible I avoided offering opinions, and I did what I like to think of as-- and I think it was--analysis, but I never said how I felt about a given issue. But it was awkward, very awkward. And just in a short matter of time I told management that I didn't feel comfortable taking part in that program, and I didn't want to be a part of it anymore, and that if it meant at the end of that contract term separating myself from the station then that's what I was going to do. And I was told at the time that it was not common knowledge to everybody but that that was going to cease, and please don't leave. And that's the way it turned out. And then, of course, when Putnam left-- His contract was not renewed. And Clete Roberts came aboard, and he stayed for a year, and his contract was not renewed. And then Hal Fishman came over in '74, and he's been the chief anchor of the newscast ever since then.

WHITE: Since '74. My goodness, quite a long time.

McCORMICK: A long time.

WHITE: My goodness. Right. Yeah, I was going to actually ask about that program, the "Talk Back" program. It was described in some of your literature as the first big news innovation since the color jet telecopter.

McCORMICK: I don't know whether I'd give it that much dignity to call it an "innovation." All I knew, it was a headache to me every single night, and not a little nerve-racking. Because in order to attract an audience, George Putnam, who was kind of the chief-- What would you call it? It wasn't an "anchor," but I guess for lack of a better term-- On "Talk Back to the News," he tried to make every program as provocative as possible, which meant having people with competing points of view on the same program to generate sparks. Now, this was at a time when the so-called talk show had begun to evolve on other stations--people like Joe Pine and some others--and were doing very well in the ratings on local stations, because all they did was generate conflict. So George and the producers of the program would have people with as disparate points of view as the ADL [Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith] and the Nazi Party on the same program on the same stage.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness.

McCORMICK: And that resulted a couple of times in riots. We'd get off the air at eleven o'clock, and there would be police cars in the parking lot and helicopters in the air and people out there throwing chairs at each other.

WHITE: Oh, goodness. It's a Jerry Springer kind of audience.

McCORMICK: That's exactly what it was like. But it was quite intentional, and that's why I started to have very much disdain for it. And then after a while Hal and I especially began to think this could actually be dangerous. People not too many years before--John F. Kennedy-- Well, 1963, several years before, when John F. Kennedy was killed. And then '68, Dr. Martin Luther King. Malcolm X. And we thought [that at] any time somebody could stand up in the audience-- Because we didn't have a search of any people coming in; they just were invited to come in and sit in the audience. Somebody could stand up and start shooting.

WHITE: Sure. People feel very serious, you know, committed to their viewpoints.

McCORMICK: That's right. Absolutely.

WHITE: If you debate that issue too heavily you never know what kind of response you may get.

McCORMICK: So it just became intolerable. And it's not one of the periods of my broadcasting history of which I'm fondest. It's one of the ones of which I'm least fond.

WHITE: How long did the show go on approximately?

McCORMICK: Oh, probably six or seven months.

WHITE: Six or seven months, okay. That's quite a long time. And was it once a week?

McCORMICK: Every night.

WHITE: Every night. It was every night, yeah right. After the ten o'clock-- Oh, my goodness, every night for six months. My goodness. And people would just-- They would bring up a topic, and they would field questions to the audience, and they could--

McCORMICK: Well, we had a microphone. At the end of the newscast the stage manager would set a microphone right at the center of the studio audience down front. One by one, as people raised their hands, George would invite them to make their opinion known or to ask a question of one of us. And of course it just became a bully pulpit for everybody espousing a point of view and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes it was so laughable it was ridiculous. Other times it was scary. And as it turned out, it never generated any ratings. It was one of those things that was the last best hope, I think, for George, and it didn't happen, and the station saw the need to get away from that. And I think they were probably getting a lot of negative mail. When you do a highly controversial show like that you open yourself up to a lot of hate mail--also a lot of mail from people who agree with you. You also open yourself up to the possibility of lawsuits. So I think the station saw too many risks, too many risks for very, very little return, meaning no ratings, and they said "That's it." They pulled the plug on that.

WHITE: So that following year, you said, George Putnam's contract was not renewed.

McCORMICK: Was not renewed.

WHITE: Okay. And from that point you continued as the weatherman?

McCORMICK: As the weatherman until 1976, from about 1974 to about 1976, when I became the sportscaster. I was sportscaster for four years, '76 to '80. I had an interesting time then being a full-time sportscaster, and I joined an organization which still exists today called Southern California Sportscasters. They meet once a week at some local restaurant, and they have guests in, either local or international stars, that they come and do Q and A's [questions and answers] with. And you can do interviews before the meeting with sports [stars] for your newscast.

WHITE: During this luncheon, this weekly luncheon? That could take place?

McCORMICK: Yes. And one of the great joys of it is that I got to go to both the [Los Angeles] Dodger and Angel spring training camps every year. At that time the Angels trained in Palm Springs and the Dodgers trained in Vero Beach, Florida, as they still do. So getting to spend two weeks at Vero Beach, Florida at station expense-- And the Dodger operation was just marvelous, both here in L.A.-- As they used to say--this is when the O'Malleys owned the team--"They really knew how to run a store." You didn't want for anything at Vero Beach. They even had cars you could use. At that time-- This was before satellites, remember, and it was before videotape. At least channel 5 had not converted to videotape yet. So when I would film my interviews with the various players, in order to get it back to L.A. I would have to drive like forty miles up the highway to this little airport with the film, and physically put the film on a plane and send it to L.A. And usually they couldn't use it until the next day. So that was a really primitive way of doing things. But that was the nature of the business then.

WHITE: Gee, and that wasn't so long ago, in the eighties.

McCORMICK: No, it wasn't--1977, '78, '79, and '80.

WHITE: And in '80, that's when you stopped being a sportscaster.

McCORMICK: That's when I started anchoring the weekend news and doing the "Health and Fitness [Report]" and the "Consumer Report" three days a week-- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. But it was fun being a sportscaster, because being a sportscaster-- As this Los Angeles market began to become more and more important all across the country as a major, major sports market, along with New York and Chicago, the sportscaster became more and more important. You had big-time players by this time. You're not talking just anybody. You're talking people like Elgin Baylor and Jerry West and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And with the Rams, you were talking people like [David] "Deacon" Jones and Rosie [Roosevelt] Greer and Merlin Olsen. And the Dodgers you're talking Tommy and Willie Davis and Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. So L.A. had become a big, big time sports town with as many sports stars as there were in any other city in the country, including New York City.

WHITE: So did the manner in which you produced the sportscasting change between your earlier stint as a sportscaster and the late seventies?

McCORMICK: It changed. The technology changed.

WHITE: In what way?

McCORMICK: The technology changed in that we had better-- Well, first the teams themselves-- Since we really didn't have video technology capability at that time-- Each of the individual stations was making this transition from film to video. Video is, of course, much more immediate, easier to edit. Film-- I shot a lot of film interviews and things, but the film would have to be taken to a place over on Larchmont [Boulevard]. Every TV station in town used that place to develop the film. So there would be this delay in the time you take it over and they put it in the soup-- you know, two thirty, three [o'clock] in the afternoon.

WHITE: The soup?

McCORMICK: Yeah, in the development liquid.

WHITE: Oh, okay.

McCORMICK: And then you'd have to go back and pick it up. And then you'd bring it back, and the film editors-- You couldn't edit-- You know, there were no computers, so we had basically two reels. One-- They still use [this] expression today even though [now] it has nothing to do with film: we had the main roll which was like-- If I was interviewing you-- Now, if I shot some video of you doing something, that would have to roll on another reel, and we call that "B-roll." So we wouldn't just look at what we call a "talking head" for thirty, forty, fifty seconds, a minute. At some point they would roll the B-film showing the activity you were talking about. But even today we still call it B-roll. And that wasn't originated by television; that was originated by the motion picture industry--A and B rolls.

WHITE: Oh, okay. A and B rolls, absolutely.

McCORMICK: So it was still fairly primitive, and we were gradually trying to make the transition. The transition to video not only had to do with teaching your film editors how to edit video. And by the way, my stepson [Alvin C. Bowens Jr.], I'm glad to say, was one of the ones who trained our film editors on how to edit video.

WHITE: Oh, is that so?

McCORMICK: Anita [Daniels McCormick]'s son by her first marriage, my stepson. But also there were budgetary implications, because making the transition from-- You know, everybody from long ago owned their film cameras. Now you had to buy these expensive video cameras.

WHITE: Exactly. And they were very expensive when they first got on the market.

McCORMICK: Very expensive. And you had to do it kind of one at a time, you know. I was the sportscaster during that period when we were trying to make that transition. But the individual local teams were very helpful in making [images of] players available. Every year, as their season started, they would send these full packs of color slides of each individual player. So you had something visual to put "over your shoulder," as we used to call it. But that meant-- You talk about a lot of recordkeeping! We had these stacks of slides for each baseball team for each season. So you'd have to go through and pick them out. Finally I had a young guy who was a student at Cal[ifornia] State [University] Northridge. I'm trying to think of his name. I should know his name. [Ross Schneiderman] He said he wanted to volunteer to work in the sports department because he wanted to learn sports. I think he's a statistician now with CBS Sports. So he took charge of it. He was my production staff. He and I were the production staff putting all such visuals as we had together. And sometimes black and white pictures would come off the wirephoto services from AP [Associated Press] or UPI [United Press International] and we would utilize those. They would have to be framed and fixed up for-- At that time, since we didn't have chroma key, we had what we called camera cards. So you'd make the picture. [There] was an easel, and that's where the camera would shoot the picture, on an easel, and put that over your shoulder. Very primitive compared to today. Very primitive. And of course, when it came to actually writing the stories, I wrote them myself. And I would have to give the producer the routine of which stories were going to come in which order. I'd give him the slug. I'd say "Koufax--Koufax- Dodgers." And then the next story, the next story-- About ten or eleven items. And I'd keep a copy of that for myself. So the producer and the on-air director would know in which order these were going to come. And on the routine I would say "Sandy Koufax CC," which at that time meant "camera card." So they would know that if one camera was going to be on me they'd have to swing the other camera free to shoot the camera card. And I'd make up all these cards and give them to the producer. And every story--not just sports but every story--at that time had camera cards. Now it's just still stores, electronic still store, with the computer and everything. So we would go out with this stack of camera cards. And the stage manager had a really vital responsibility. He would have to know the show so well, looking at the [list of] the tech routine, that he knew which camera cards went on which easels and were going to be assigned to which cameras. So there was all of that that went into the production of the sportscast. And before that, the weathercast. If I wanted to use a UPI wire photo--and they were all black and white--of a snowstorm in Denver or of kids throwing snowballs, then you have to coordinate all that stuff so it would come up in the right place. Then you would have to sit down and write to all of those visuals and indicate on your copy what it was that you wanted to see on the camera card: a CK camera card--chroma key camera card--or rear screen like it was at channel 13. They were even more primitive; they had a rear screen projector that projected these very dim pictures over your shoulders. But that was the technology of the day, and that's what you had to learn, because that was like the late Flip Wilson-- You know, what his character Geraldine used to say was "What you see is what you get." That was it. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: That was it. My goodness. What a logistical coordination effort you had to put forth.

McCORMICK: It was. It also meant you had to go in-- You had to get in much earlier to begin to do that stuff, because it was just a matter of sheer physical work and time.

WHITE: Right. So tell me about your day as a sportscaster. Would you have to go to the station early in the morning--six o'clock, seven, what have you?

McCORMICK: Not necessarily early in the morning, because there was nobody really to do anything. Because there was no morning newscast at that time. It was only the one newscast a day. But by midday, certainly. And of course, I had been listening to the radio all day long for the latest news, read the L.A. [Los Angeles] Times in its entirety. I'd know what the important stories of the day were. Then I'd be listening to the Dodger game. And sometimes we'd have a camera crew go out to Dodger Stadium and shoot a few innings of the game so I'd have some of that to use. I'd have to go with the editor and edit that, because, you know, it's a ten o'clock newscast, and Dodger games at that time didn't start until eight. So you're using a very narrow time frame. So you worked your butt off, and fast.

WHITE: Absolutely. Approximately how long would it actually take you to write the copy? Because I can see that the ideas were formulating in your head during the day, and you're gathering information and getting ideas and what have you. But to actually sit down and write it.

McCORMICK: To actually sit down and write it probably took-- If I had three minutes on the air I'd probably take half an hour for each minute on the air or longer. But that's just the writing; that's not all the editing and the cut and paste, as it was, of the pictures and everything that went on before that. So to put together a three-minute newscast probably took five hours. A three-minute sportscast took five hours. And then the news production team itself--and this is still true today even with much more sophisticated technology-- The executive producer of the ten o'clock news gets to KTLA at noon. The writers get in at two thirty or three [o'clock] for a newscast. So it's still a lengthy process.

WHITE: And a very, very long day.

McCORMICK: Yeah, of putting all of these elements together.

WHITE: Can you actually tell me about--because you've mentioned the producer and the on-air director and what have you--the flow of information at KTLA, the positions that different people hold?

McCORMICK: Generally speaking, at KTLA and at any news station you have a news director. The news director, generally speaking, is the management figure, the administrator of the news department who handles budgets and assignments and signs contracts with talent and things like that, normally has very little to do with the actual production of the news program itself. He's an administrative figure. He is the manager. He is the top figure, the top department manager in the news department. He runs the news department in that respect.

WHITE: Would someone in that position traditionally have had some prior experience as, say, a producer or broadcaster?

McCORMICK: Not necessarily. It's highly desirable, obviously, that that person have had some experience in news, but not necessarily. It's obviously very important that that person know something about production values, know a good deal about the most recent technology, because that's the only way you can stay competitive. If somebody else has better technology than you have and can present more compelling pictures on the air, then you've got a problem. So to keep up with technology, to keep up with techniques of reporting, to keep up with the philosophy of reporting, to be a spokesperson for the news organization, to make decisions regarding the overall look of the news, including new sets and things like that, all those administrative responsibilities fall under the purview of the news director. He or she is the person who runs the big picture, the larger picture both on and off the air. Vacation schedules-- Even though now more and more assistant news directors are filling that position. And we do have an assistant news director at KTLA. Our news director is Jeff Wald. Ironically, Jeff first started at KTLA when he was still working on his degree at USC in broadcast journalism, and he had a part-time job. And one of his jobs was sometimes when we wouldn't have enough audience for "Talk Back to the News," he would get in the station van and go up on Hollywood Boulevard and pick up people to come in the audience. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: He really did that. He really did it. He later came back as news director. Then he left to form his own consulting business. Then he went to channel 13. Now he's back. And John Fischer is associate news director. And we just added the position, oh, about eighteen months ago, of assistant news director. Because as television news organizations grow, there just become too many responsibilities for one person to handle, so we had long since needed an assistant news director. The assistant news director now handles vacations, now handles the assignment of the technical people, which camera crews are going to be off what days, and negotiates when dinner break for camera crews are going to be taken--because they usually have to take those breaks in the field at some restaurant or something. It takes a lot of responsibility off the news director so the news director can concentrate on the big picture. The news director is the one who's chiefly responsible for putting out fires, for ironing out personality conflicts. And in addition to that, he has the final say-so on vacations, final say-so on hiring, the final say-so on new positions on the air. If there's going to be a new entertainment reporter [or] a new anchor, the news director's vision is the one that determines all of that. That's the administrative part. Then, of course, you have an administrative secretary who works for the news director and the assistant news director. And the director of promotions, who really is the director of promotions for the entire television station, also has responsibilities for promoting the people on the news and the news programs. But then in the news operation itself you have an executive producer. That generally should always be the person who has the most extensive experience producing a television newscast for a market this size. At KTLA that man is Gerald Ruben, who has been there for almost as long as I've been there and used to be a news producer at [then KNXT] channel 2 when Jerry Dunphy was the anchorman over there. He has vast experience. Then you have APs, assistant producers. We have a number of those who also can double as producer when Jerry is off or ill or something like that. Most of them have produced the weekend news or produced the morning news and are familiar with all of the equipment, the technology that we have at our disposal, have demonstrated good news judgment about selection of stories, about placement of stories, and all that kind of thing.

WHITE: So in terms of the decision-making process having to do with which news stories are going to be covered and how they are covered, the executive producer holds that responsibility?

McCORMICK: That's why sometimes we say the executive producer is the one who decides what's news today. In essence that's what he or she is doing.

WHITE: That's quite a responsibility.

McCORMICK: It is. They decide what's going to be the most important story--what's going to be the lead story--they decide how much time is going to be dedicated to each story in addition to deciding which talent is going to read each story. Now, still, the sports producer does his or her own thing. The sportscaster is in essence the producer of the sports segment. At KTLA, as it becomes more complex, the sports producer also has a sports producer, so they coordinate very closely together on putting together the sportscast.

WHITE: Oh, okay. Two separate positions, the caster-- Because at one point there was just one person.

McCORMICK: It was just one person, yeah. And they divide the writing responsibilities. Today, with today's technology, it's become more technical. You have to select the videotape, time it, edit it, and all that kind of stuff for a very narrow time frame. Three minutes is a long time, really, for a sportscast, but it's not that long. They share some of the writing duties and the other visuals that have to be selected, whether it's video or chroma key or all that kind of thing. But the sportscaster and the sports producer also answer to the executive producer. The executive producer can tell the sportscaster and his sports producer, "Well, today it's a light day; you have four minutes." Or "Today we have breaking stories that are taking up time that I hadn't budgeted for, so you've got two and half minutes." So they still have to answer to the executive producer.

WHITE: And who does the executive producer answer to? The news director?

McCORMICK: Yes. But actually the news director seldom impinges on the executive producer's turf. They let the producers-- Whether it's the morning news or the evening, they pretty much delegate them that responsibility, and that's their domain. They very, very seldom come in and overrule-- I've never known them to come in and overrule an executive producer on any story that's on the news. They certainly would feel free-- And this comes from just being close associates and friends. The news director would certainly feel free, if he or she had been watching some story on another station or heard some story that the executive producer wasn't aware of, to come in and say, "Hey, did you see what they're doing on channel 2? There's a chase going on" or a pursuit going on or something. And then the executive producer would say, "Oh, no, I didn't see it. I'll get on it." That's the kind of thing. So they do feel free to give input, but never to supersede the decisions of the executive producer. Because they know this is a person whose instincts have been honed over years and years and years to be sensitive to what's important, what the public wants to hear, or which stories are the top stories. So they would be very loath to overrule them unless-- Well, in L.A. you would never have a very inexperienced news producer who would make terrible mistakes that they had to overrule. That just wouldn't happen. They wouldn't have the job in the first place.

WHITE: They wouldn't last very long if they fall into that sort of realm. Okay, so then the executive producer, assistant producer, sportscaster, sports producer--

McCORMICK: Uh-huh. The weathercaster also has a producer. The weathercaster's producer is more than anything else an expert at computerized weather systems like the current system that we and a number of other stations use. It's called the Kavouras system, which is a character generator primarily. It generates cloud formations, and it generates fronts that move when the weathercaster presses a little button to activate it. You can put all kinds of writing and graphics on there. Now, generally, almost invariably, the weathercaster himself or herself doesn't have that technical ability. So they go into the weather station, the graphics department, where the weather producer does all of that, and sit there with this person, and they between them decide. The weathercaster has all the wire information from the National Weather Service--everybody gets the same information--from the Los Angeles area National Weather Service office about the fronts and the temperatures and all that stuff, and they sit there and they make up the graphics that they're going to use. If they're going to show a satellite picture of the western part of the United States, they'll show you the cold front moving. It will be in motion--cold front moving down. And then they'll show you the eastern part of the country. And they'll show you with various symbols, electronically generated, where there's rain. Sometimes [the symbols] will pulse. They'll electronically build the frontal systems, if a cold front is coming from Alaska down across--which we have right now--Southern California. And then they have a format set up for the five-day forecast. Everybody has a slightly different format for the forecast for the next five days. And they just, electronically on the computer, put in the temps [temperatures] and put in the little symbols there, a myriad of little symbols they can select for sunshine, for rain, for clouds. They'll put those in there. And the weathercaster will sit there with that segment producer and go over each one so he knows what to expect to see on the screen throughout the weather [segment], which can last for two and a half or three minutes.

WHITE: So the weathercaster's producer is called a segment producer?

McCORMICK: Well, yes. On many shows that's what they have-- Particularly morning programs, where they may have-- Like our morning program. They have a book author, somebody who's being interviewed who's written a book. They may have a musical group in another segment. So more than-- We do have segment producers, but they are designated by the executive producer. Our newscast is divided into sections we call blocks. There's the A-block of stories, which leads up to a commercial break and a commercial cluster. Then the B-block and C-block and Dblock and E-block and F-block, and I think G is finally sports. So sometimes the executive producer will have a given writer and a given editor develop each segment.

WHITE: Each block?

McCORMICK: Each block. That doesn't usually happen on News at Ten. The executive producer will try as nearly as possible to have one writer write most of each segment or block because the stories will tend to be related, so we can tie them together with various [segues]--"meantime" and "another facet of this story." But that doesn't always happen because of the helter-skelter nature of the way the newscast is coming together most nights. Somebody who's writing a number of stories for the Cblock may have to write something for the A-block, have to go and edit it. If a piece that a writer [is doing] for the A-block is taking more time and it's more complex than they anticipated, then somebody--anybody, you know--may be required to write. Now, the morning show, where they have specific things they do with specific segments, they have segment producers. So in essence the sports is a separate segment and weather is a separate segment. So you have what are in essence segment producers for those with very specialized areas of knowledge and information for those two segments.

WHITE: Okay, very interesting.

McCORMICK: For the "Health and Fitness [Report]" segment, I'm in essence the segment producer because I write most of it. In fact, I sit in the newsroom the night before and put together the visual elements, or I select them. After I've written them the way I want them written, I'll hand them over to a writer to put in all of the technological symbols and all that kind of stuff, the roll-cues and all of that, and get together with an editor to edit the video. Sometimes I'll do that. So I've become in essence the segment producer for the "Health and Fitness [Report]" segment.

WHITE: Ah, okay. You said "roll-cues." What is a roll-cue?

McCORMICK: If I'm doing an interview with you and talking about your playing tennis, and then at some point during that interview I want to show you in B-roll actually playing tennis, then I have to have a spoken line or something as a cue to the technical director as to when to roll the B-roll. That's what a roll-cue is. And I say the line, "And this is the way Renee plays." That's the roll-cue.

WHITE: Right. Okay. Interesting.

McCORMICK: But everybody has to be on the same page on these things or they'll roll it at the wrong time, or they'll "up-cut" you--that is, they'll start showing you playing tennis at a time when they're not supposed to, and I will come back and start talking maybe over something you're saying. So roll-cues are very important and have to be very specific.

WHITE: I've seen that happen.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. It happens, yes.

WHITE: It happens, yeah. And then usually the anchorperson will say, "Oh, that's not quite the picture I was discussing" and move on. Okay. So generally speaking, then, there is a staff of writers and then a staff of reporters. How do you gather the news?

McCORMICK: How do they all coordinate together?

WHITE: Yeah, how-- You have a beat. The reporters have a beat, yes?

McCORMICK: Well, they don't really have a beat. They're called general assignment reporters, and unless you're a sports reporter you are a general assignment reporter. That means you can be sent out to cover anything. Now, the way the process works is we have a team of people on what is called the assignment desk. These people monitor the scanners all day long--LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department], [California] Highway Patrol, L.A. [Los Angeles] County Sheriff's Department, L.A. [Los Angeles] County Fire Department. They scan the radios. They know the codes, the fire department [and] police department codes. I've forgotten what most of the codes are because I haven't done it in a long time, but they know-- Like a "401" means "officer down." So they hear those, and they're playing loud. That's the loudest thing in the newsroom, these scanners behind this huge assignment desk which is usually manned by four or five people. They're monitoring other stations to see what they're doing. Some are listening to [radio stations] KFWB or KNX. So they're monitoring every possible source for stories, primarily so nobody gets the scoop on us. They have to make the decisions, the assignment desk people, on whether or not to call for one of our helicopters to go up from Van Nuys Airport or where to send the camera crew and a reporter.

WHITE: Okay, the assignment editors.

McCORMICK: Assignment editors do that in conjunction with the assistant news director. These are not responsibilities the news director [has]. The assistant news director-- Well, there's an assignment sheet that tells which reporters are working which days, what time their call times are to come in, and what their shifts are. So whoever is there when a story breaks will be sent with a camera crew. They have the same list for the camera operators who are supposed to be in on that given day. So they can look at those two lists and see who's available. And that begins with the morning news. We're going all day long.

WHITE: My goodness, right.

McCORMICK: There are several people on the assignment desk all day long. We have assignment editors who handle immediate breaking news, stories that are going on, that are starting right now spontaneously. Then we have a planning editor.

WHITE: Okay. Could I just ask you, when you say breaking news, does that mean that the news has been broken by another station? Or does it mean that it's just happening across the scanner? [McCormick nods] Just happening now, okay.

McCORMICK: Happening right now. Fresh. That's what breaking news means, happening right now. Unplanned, spontaneous, drive-by [shooting], robbery, whatever. That's what breaking news story means. Something that's breaking right now, something that's going on right now and we don't know how it's going to conclude. So those are the assignment-- Then also behind the assignment desk we have a planning editor. The assignment desk in essence handles unscheduled events, breaking news. The planning editor handles planned events. Like if the [Oral History Program] at UCLA is going to have a press conference Thursday, then the planning editor, that goes in her book, in her computer. So you have those two editors. And then the assignment desk works very closely with the executive producer, because that's the only way the executive producer knows what stories he or she is going to have to work with for the news that night. That's why he's got to be there at noon, because it takes all of the-- He's there at noon, and it's still a last-minute thing of getting everything together. Usually the lead story is not written, because the executive producer can never be absolutely sure that something is not going to replace it as the lead. The lead story is not written until about twenty minutes to ten.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness. Stressful.

McCORMICK: It is. And the anchors often don't get to see the lead story until almost airtime, because the executive producer has to make sure that's going to stay the lead. So it's a hectic process.

WHITE: It certainly is. So the assignment editors are there listening to the scanners in there or other radio stations or what have you, and they send out a group of reporters to go--?

McCORMICK: Not group, a reporter. They say, "We've got an airplane down at Van Nuys Airport. Ron Olsen, you go. Then Olsen gets his stuff together, gets as many details as he can from the assignment desk, gets where he's supposed to go, gets the map book. Jim Palone loads his camera equipment in the back of the KU [-band satellite uplink] truck. You've seen the KU microwave trucks, where the tower goes-- That's so they can send and get a signal over obstacles. And they jump in the truck and away they go. And that happens over and over again all day long.

WHITE: I see. And they generally take a cameraperson with them, of course, as they're reporting the news, etc., etc.

McCORMICK: Yeah. We have the capability of-- They can film, they can videotape the report on the scene. Almost every station has this capability; they almost have to to be competitive. First, we have the capability of going live. The cameraman can put the reporter out in the middle of the street and describe what's going on. That's for when it's really a breaking story. If it's a story that's going to have a conclusion--a rally was held, say, at the Westwood Federal Building today, and it ended--well, you send your reporter out, you cover the rally, you interview a couple of people. You can get back in the truck and feed that raw videotape right back into the newsroom without ever coming back to the station. Then that truck and reporter can go on and cover something else.

WHITE: I see.

McCORMICK: You feed it back into the newsroom, and they can put it all together there. You feed the raw footage. You feed the reporter's stand-up open and the standup close.

WHITE: The stand-up close?

McCORMICK: Yeah, the close, where you say, "This is Larry McCormick, KTLA, in Westwood" or "Larry McCormick, KTLA news." We have a standard what we call the lock-out. Now, meantime, to describe all the stuff in between you're going to have a voiceover, which is a "voice track." So the reporter will have to get in the truck and feed a voice track. He has to sit there and write it and feed the voice track back to the station so that can be edited right into the piece. It has to be on videotape-- Because it's all videotape, you know. Whether it's just audio or it's audio and video, it all has to be edited on videotape. So it becomes a rather complex job at times to sit there and write. Sometimes, if you have the luxury of doing that, you can come back and get in the microwave truck--and the cameraman is almost always the driver, and he drives you back to the station--and you can come in to sit at your workplace in the newsroom and write your track and then go in with an editor and a writer. Or sometimes the reporter will make extensive notes, give the writer that he or she is working with on that story a line-by-line copy of the track, tell the writer what should be emphasized, what he has copious notes on, what's on the video. Because he's sat there and screened it. He gives it to the writer, then it's the writer and editor's job to put the story together. So this is going to go from the assignment desk to the cameraman and the reporter. The reporter's going to come back, and it's going to go to a writer and editor, all of those people, before it's in the final form that you see it on the news.

WHITE: And the writer and the editor, do they then give it to the executive producer?

McCORMICK: Depending on the gravity or importance of the story, the executive producer will say, "You have a minute [and] forty-five [seconds]." And then the responsibility's on the writer and the editor. And the executive producer-- Unless it's something very critical, like with the Rodney King beating, the executive producer may never see it until it hits the air.

WHITE: I see. And in this situation the anchorperson, if they are going to read what the writer and editor wrote for that particular piece, the executive producer will then assign that to the anchorperson?

McCORMICK: To one or the other anchors to read. And the anchors-- Well, this is why we have to be [there] a good two, two and a half, three hours, even if you don't have anything else to do before the newscast. The anchor will go and sit down at his computer or her computer and advance through and see the entire copy of the story that they're going to read on the air. Now, you also have the ability to sit and to massage the copy, the anchor can--change words, change sentences, sometimes do a whole rewrite.

WHITE: You do have the authority to do that. Okay.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. And our computer setup is such that-- We use a system which many, many television news organizations use called News Star, which is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. And if you're going to contract to set up the News Star system in your newsroom, you have five or six of your key people go back to Madison, and they custom design for the symbols and people and everything that you're going to use in your newsroom, and then they come back and they set it up. They have a setup so I can override a writer who has written something that I think is incorrect or where the phrasing is too difficult to say. But the executive producer always has the last rewrite.

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 13, 1999

WHITE: The last time we spoke was just before the holidays. By then we had had some extensive conversation about [television station] KTLA [channel 5] and the responsibilities there of various individuals. You were describing the flow of information. You had talked about the use of scanners, that's a very prominent tool at the station, and that the story assignment editors generally listen to the scanners continuously throughout the day. Then information is flowed to the reporter and the cameraman and then to the writer and the editor. The executive producer gives it a once-over, and then it moves to the anchor. You had talked a little bit about how once it comes to the anchor or coanchor you do have the opportunity to massage the copy or even in some instances rewrite it--change the words, the sentences, and things like that. And then I assume that the executive producer has the last rewrite. Is that correct?

McCORMICK: The executive producer, usually in conjunction with the anchors-- There are undoubtedly situations around the country--at the networks, at other smaller independent stations--where, depending on the nature of the relationship between the anchors and the executive producer, they collaborate on what the final version of the story is going to be. In most instances the executive producer does. In instances where an anchor has been a strong presence at the station and in the market for a long time, where the anchor has been there a long time and has established such success that he or she may also be the executive editor of the newscast, the authority is distributed fairly evenly. There will be times when there are disagreements on what the composition of a given story should be, about the facts of a given story, and there you get into areas of accountability and to whom the final responsibility is going to be given, who's going to have the last call. The anchor and the executive producer know that they share a responsibility. If somebody's wrong, then whoever's wrong is going to be accountable. So they usually try to arrive at an agreement that's mutually satisfactory and that is going to approach accuracy as nearly as is possible. Now, executive producers usually won't quibble with anchors when anchors change or alter copy for purposes of style. There are some combinations of words and phrases that are more difficult than others for some anchors to read and to say and to pronounce. That's just the nature of human beings. There are combinations of words and sentences that don't flow as well for some people as they do for others. So the anchor usually has pretty much free rein, as long as the facts don't change, to change the composition or flow of the language so that it facilitates their reading of it.

WHITE: Okay. You mentioned a moment ago the position of executive editor. I guess that's another realm. Is there a team of editors and then also a team of writers that work in the station?

McCORMICK: Executive editor can be looked at--and is, I'm sure, by many people-- as more of an honorary title than a title with authority. But in the case of KTLA, where Hal Fishman is the executive editor, there is the authority that goes with it. But the authority also means the responsibility. You must share a part of both the credit and the blame, if anything should go wrong, for the final product that goes out over the air. Actually it works out as a good system of checks and balances. So the executive producer has someone who can check up on him to make sure he or she is getting the facts right, getting the story right, and vice versa. So it does work out to a pretty good system of checks and balances.

WHITE: Okay. You mentioned Hal Fishman. He is currently the--

McCORMICK: --executive editor.

WHITE: Executive editor.

McCORMICK: Of News at Ten.

WHITE: Of News at Ten. Okay, and also--

McCORMICK: But not of the morning news.

WHITE: Okay. Of course. So there is one group of positions for the early morning news and then another set of positions for the News at Ten?

McCORMICK: Except for management.

WHITE: Except for the management.

McCORMICK: The news director and the assistant news director are the top administrators of both, of the entire news operation. But the morning news has its own producer, or producers, because sometimes they have segment producers--their show takes a little bit different format than ours--and their own writers and their own on-air directors and their own staff. They are in essence a separate news unit, but they are part of the whole. So they're all under the aegis of the news director, Jeff Wald, and the associate news director, John Fischer.

WHITE: I see. Is there much interaction between the two staffs?

McCORMICK: Not really very much, primarily because we work at opposite ends of the day. Occasionally we will all collaborate on something. We all collaborated the morning they introduced HDTV [high definition television] and on the John Glenn shot going back into space. On some occasions we will collaborate on something like that. But because of the vastly different hours, we hardly see the people on the morning news, and they hardly ever see us. Usually, because many of them have to be in at three, three thirty, four o' clock in the morning, they're in bed by the time we come on, or at least shortly after we go off. And of course, we're all asleep, usually, until they're off.

WHITE: That's interesting. Very much so. Now, what hours does the news director work?

McCORMICK: That's one of the reasons why we have an assistant news director now. That position has just been added in the last eighteen months or so. They divide those responsibilities. They do attempt to monitor both the morning news and News at Ten, because it's very important to keep a handle on what's going on on both shows. There is an overview of the philosophy of what channel 5 news wants to look like and be like in the market that they try to maintain. So they kind of try to divide those responsibilities. One week it will be one person's responsibility to monitor News at Ten and see what's going on, and the other will monitor the morning news. And then they will switch off, depending on what the rest of their schedules are. But it's a cooperative effort between the two.

WHITE: So I would imagine that there are situations where there is a breaking news story for the morning news, and then it's followed up on the ten o' clock news.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Assuming that it's still an important news story by ten o' clock at night. That's eleven hours later. The morning news is off at nine o' clock, and our evening news comes on at ten. Actually, it's thirteen hours later, so it may or may not still be a story of value and importance and significance at ten o' clock at night. But of course, if it is, we not only will have the video footage and access to the reports that were done on the morning news, but we will have, if it's a continuing, an evolving and developing story, a reporter and a writer assigned to work on it, following up all day long so that by ten o' clock at night we have the very latest elements in that same story. And then we can simply, using the morning show's elements, say, "This is how it started. This is how Eric Spillman reported it this morning on the morning news." Then maybe Ron Olsen will pick up the story at two [o'clock] in the afternoon or so, when he comes in, and [in the ten o'clock broadcast he will] say, "Okay, these are the very latest developments in this story." And he'll have fresh video, the very latest, upto- the-minute. In many cases there are stories that they use on the morning news that are simply not news by the time we come on at night. If there was a traffic accident of some significance that might have been reported on the morning news, and they may have been following it for quite a while, by ten o' clock at night the freeway's been cleared. Everybody's going home. It may merit a mention or it may not. I will say that if there is really spectacular video, something very visual, then the executive producer for News at Ten would probably be very inclined to use it. But if it were just something run-of-the-mill it probably wouldn't make the ten o' clock news.

WHITE: Okay. Now, you mentioned that the executive editor, so to speak, is somewhat of an honorary title. Is there a lead writer?

McCORMICK: Not really a lead writer. Some news operations have what you could call lead writers, although I've never heard that expression before. Because it usually depends on what the assignment is and the assignments change from night to night. Now, at networks there are obviously some writers who are specialists--some writers who have, for example, strong backgrounds in law. So they would be assigned most of the stories having to do with a legal issue. There are some writers who have backgrounds--if not degrees, certainly have strong backgrounds--in medicine. They might have gone two or three years to med[ical] school or done something like that. Writers, and television people generally, come from various different fields. Hal Fishman, for example, was a teacher, college professor, before he became a newscaster. Since he was a history and political science professor, that's kind of his specialty. Some of the networks have had people who are very much involved in engineering and in technology, and they have become, for example, the aerospace editors. Carl Sagan, for example, was the astronomy expert for his network. So a lot of it depends on the background you bring. But there are hardly any such things as lead writers. Now, there are some writers whom executive producers lean on heavily because of their experience, seniority, their knowledgeability, and they are given the more difficult or trickier assignments more often than the less experienced writers. But they're never referred to as lead writers. So there are positions of seniority with regard to amount of time served, experience in the field, but no specific assignments such as lead writer or things like that.

WHITE: That's interesting. Does that same hold true for reporters? [That it is] sort of based on longevity, experience, that sort of thing?

McCORMICK: On experience and what kind of background you bring to the news department. There are, as you know, several reporters on TV stations here in Los Angeles who have backgrounds in law, so they will get assignments, generally speaking, to cover court trials and things like that. But generally it has to do with experience and, to use the title that is used for reporters at stations, there are general assignment reporters. The stories that you are assigned to cover just vary from day to day to day to day. So, as I've said before, I think it is very important if you plan to make a career in broadcast journalism--journalism period, actually, but especially broadcast journalism--to know as much as you can about almost everything. It's like being in school all the time. You never stop learning, and you never stop reading, and you never stop acquiring information about everything.

WHITE: That's certainly an exciting component of the industry.

McCORMICK: It is. It certainly keeps you informed about what's going on.

WHITE: Very plugged in.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. You have to be.

WHITE: I'd like to talk a little bit about what happens to the news. I suppose it's no longer news after it has been read on the ten o' clock show. Is it stored?

McCORMICK: Yes, it is. We still keep the hard copies, the paper copies that each anchor, that everybody from the whole newscast-- As a matter of fact, a separate set of the copy is printed just for the archive. But now, given modern technology and everything, we're also able to archive it by computer. So as soon as the broadcast ends, the executive producer archives it. So we can go back and draw it from the computer archive if there is a legal dispute of some kind or if somebody questions something that was read on the air. We can go back and get the actual [printed] copy. Of course, having the actual copy would not always be satisfactory, because suppose the anchor changed something. So you have to go back and look at the tape and see what was actually said. There is a tape rolling twenty-four hours a day at KTLA and every broadcast station, I think by FCC regulation, so that if there is a question about what was actually said on the air, you could check more than just paper or the computer. Because the copy that would be archived in the computer is the same copy that was read on the air or that was supposed to be read on the air. But you can go back and look at the tape and see what was actually said or done. But it is archived in all those ways.

WHITE: That's interesting. So if a layperson, for example--say if I listen to the news on Saturday and I recall just a couple of tidbits about a story that you covered or someone else covered--could a layperson actually call the station and get information about a particular story that was covered? Or does it have to be a professional that's requesting that?

McCORMICK: No, anybody can request it. Whether or not you would have the satisfaction of having somebody-- Because this requires a physical effort and some time to go back and check to see what the information was. That could probably be done. They don't like to do it as a normal practice because it is so time-consuming. It requires a person to physically go to this huge, long bank of cabinets and go to the date of the broadcast and dig the copy out and then give the person the information. It's very labor intensive to do that, and that person has to be taken away from doing whatever else he or she was doing as a writer or a production assistant. They have to stop doing what they're doing and go and do that. We do often go back and get information, particularly where people want information concerning lawsuits or that might affect lawsuits, or for information concerning, in my case, health stories that I've done where a person didn't get the information. That responsibility usually falls to me. So it will be on my voice mail. This has happened a whole lot. It will say, "I didn't get the name of the product you talked about because it went by too fast before I could get a pencil." And I keep my own file of my "Health and Fitness Reports" for up to a year in my office.

WHITE: So it's accessible.

McCORMICK: So I can answer those questions. If it's something that could be of an inflammatory nature, it would get immediate attention. For example, suppose a member of the Hispanic community said, "Your anchorperson on Thursday, December whatever-it-was, said something very derogatory about the Mexican American community." Well, that would get immediate attention. The same thing would be true of the African American community or the gay community. That has happened with each of those groups, as a matter of fact--I'm sure at every station in town. Very often people think they hear things that they didn't really hear, or sometimes people's attention is divided. There are many people who can have the radio going and the news is on too, and they will just hear an anchor out of one ear as they say-- Or they'll think they heard something that they didn't hear. And they will call and challenge it, in which case we do feel we have the responsibility for correcting it. No station, no responsible station, wants to be inflammatory. We differ considerably from talk show hosts, most of whom want to be inflammatory because they want to build an audience. But their employers, the stations that they work for, have insurance that covers the possibility of lawsuits, and they consider being sued a cost of doing business. So it's a trade-off for them. It's the benefit of the ratings versus the possibility of a lawsuit.

WHITE: Exactly. I'm sure they have it folded into their budget.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. But TV newscasts don't operate like that.

WHITE: Of course not. Much more professional. Okay, very interesting. Now, do you have a support staff?

McCORMICK: Yes, we do. We have a sports department that consists of seven or eight people, including our sports anchors. They include producers--a regular weekday sports producer and then a weekend sports producer, who also works several days during the week and has a couple of days off. There is no sports production of any kind on the morning news. The only thing that they usually have on the morning news is a videotaped version of last night's sportscast that our sportscaster, Tony Hernandez, does as soon as we finish broadcasting News at Ten. He sits there and tapes about a two and a half or three minute recap of the important stories which they use on the early [part] of the morning news, between five thirty and six [o'clock] or six and six thirty the next morning. Because overnight, obviously, the stories couldn't change that much. Sometimes it will change if one of the prominent things that was featured in the sports caption last night-- If the person that they were talking about unfortunately dies or something like that. Then they just kill that segment or just use it as an update. But yes, we do have-- And most TV stations have sports departments, some larger than others. But we have a pretty good one.

WHITE: That's excellent information to have. What I had said, though, was do you have a support staff?

McCORMICK: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you said sports. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: That's quite all right. That was my next question. So you answered it in advance.

McCORMICK: Now, when you say "support staff," in what respects?

WHITE: Secretaries, that sort of thing, who will assist you in doing things.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Yes. We have a receptionist, kind of a receptionistsecretary, a terrific young African American woman who-- Receptionists in news departments don't just sit and answer the phone anymore. There are so many things to do that they really share almost an administrative responsibility. Then there is the news director's secretary, who also doubles as the assistant news director's secretary. There is the news business manager. There is the news publicity manager. There are probably 8, 9, 10 people anytime during the weekday or night--oh, more than that, maybe 12--who work on the assignment desk. There are 3 or 4 people on the assignment desk at almost any given moment, some monitoring the scanners, others watching the other stations, others watching feeds coming in from around the country. So we have a considerable support staff. And channel 5 news-- In our total news department we probably have maybe 105 people.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: Yeah. It's a big news department.

WHITE: It is quite large.

McCORMICK: It's quite large. Although, when you consider that the network affiliates probably have 150 to 175-- But news departments in big cities like Los Angeles generally speaking are large.

WHITE: Very large. And how many, would you say, of those people work in the newsroom at the same time?

McCORMICK: Because we're divided-- We don't have a midday news. We used to have a noon news, very short lived, because there was just no audience there for it. Probably-- Oh, let's see. How many at the same time? Well, we have about 7 writers, 4 or 5 people on the assignment desk. That's 11. The executive producer would be 12. Probably have 3 or 4 nighttime reporters--that would be 16. We have a weather technician who puts all the stuff together for weather; that's 17. We have 5 or 6 people who operate in the videotape department. Maybe about 23, 22 or 23. We have 5 video editors. That's about 27, 28. I'd say probably for News at Ten-- Oh, and then we have the whole sports department. Probably 40, 45.

WHITE: That are on staff simultaneously. Okay. That's quite busy.

McCORMICK: Well, that doesn't include the anchors.

WHITE: Oh, right. Okay. Forty-five or so.

McCORMICK: There are a lot of people around there. It's a full parking lot when I come in at night. The whole parking lot is filled with people. Let me see. Who else? Am I forgetting--? And that's just in the newsroom. That doesn't include all the people that we become involved with when we go over to the studio and get on the air. Actually, over in the newsroom you also have the technical director who's going over the scripts and everything and who's calling the shots. The assistant director, the onair director, who's also helping to look at the scripts and everything-- Then when you get over to the [studio], then you have the stage manager, you have the TelePrompTer operator, you have the lighting manager, you have 3 camera operators, you have the video man or woman in master control who sets the tone, the hues and everything that actually go out over the air. So you have another 20 or so people, actually, who all have to be on the same page during the newscast. One group has already put it together, then this other group who's responsible for the broadcast itself, all of whom have to be on the same-- Oh, we have the audio [operator] guy, who not only has to operate everybody's microphone who's on the air but has to operate the sound on all the stories, on all the videotape, the audio on the commercials. So all of these people, they're all looking at scripts, and obviously you see mistakes where somebody missed a cue. You have the on-air director who's calling all the shots, who's calling the time cues. And now it's become so complex that sometimes the assistant director is counting down the time. If you have a story-- Say if I interviewed you and I show you working at your desk at the [UCLA Oral History Program], and then at a certain point the interview starts, well, what we've seen before of just us walking around or looking at your offices is what we call "B-roll"; probably the anchor's reading over that. And then suddenly you start to talk. Well, the anchor has to know and the stage manager has to know and the audio operator has to know exactly how many seconds into the videotape you begin talking. So the assistant director is on a microphone talking in the headset of the stage manager, talking in the what we call IFBs [interruptible frequency broadcast earpieces] that go in the ear of the anchors. The stage manager and everybody's giving a countdown of the number of seconds until you start to talk so I don't step on what you're going to say. Everybody throughout the whole control room-- In your headsets the stage manager, everybody, is saying, "Five, four, three, two, one." And then they raise the sound up, and then you start to talk on TV. Every time you see that happen on a television newscast, that's the process that has gone on before that person starts talking.

WHITE: It is quite a production.

McCORMICK: It is. Now, if somebody misses the count, I might keep reading halfway into what you're saying, and the viewer at home gets frustrated, because they don't know what you said.

WHITE: Right, because of the overlap.

McCORMICK: The overlap, or we call it "stepping on" someone. So you see that happen sometimes, and as a viewer I'm sure you know how frustrating that can be.

WHITE: Especially if you were waiting for the punchline.

McCORMICK: Yeah, yeah. If you're waiting to hear-- The anchor has read up to something significant, up to what you are about to say. So the viewer wants to know "Okay, I want to hear what she's going to say." So if somebody misses the count--and this can happen-- Sometimes we have what we call a roll-cue. There's a certain point while the anchor's reading during which the assistant director gives the cue to-- This is another set of people in what we call the fourpack, which is four videotape playback machines. If they're not loaded properly, anything can happen. On the assistant director or the director's cue, the videotape operator is supposed to push the start button on the tape at a given number. That's what starts everything. That's where the count starts down into when Renee White is going to start talking or when we're going to hear the explosion or when we're going to see the building implode or hear it or whatever. That's when the count starts, when the video operator pushes the button that starts the videotape. Now, if he or she does that late or doesn't hear it--and this happens sometimes--misses a cue, we say [of the person] that's rolling the videotape, "They missed the roll-cue." If the roll-cue is late, if the video operator is late pushing the button, then the anchor will talk and will stop talking, and you hear all this silence before Renee suddenly starts talking. You've seen that happen a whole lot.

WHITE: I've seen that happen, absolutely. So that's what's going on.

McCORMICK: They missed the roll-cue. So everybody-- It seldom happens that you have a completely--what we call a--clean newscast, where no anchor makes a mistake, no technician makes a mistake, no ill cameraman makes a mistake, where no audio guy makes a mistake. With all of these people having to do everything right on the same count, it's a miracle that every night you see story after story after story that goes perfectly. But inevitably-- You might have seen the program that I did, my "Health and Fitness Report" on Monday night. I was doing a story that was on some research that had come out of Japan, about a new study that was supposed to demonstrate the health benefits of beer and ale. So I'd had the executive producer have a camera crew go out and shoot people drinking ale and stout and beer in bars and things like that for the B-roll. Now, the next story was a story that said American kids were not getting enough calcium in their diets and suggested that in order to fight cholesterol more kids, more young Americans, needed to drink low-fat milk to get calcium, and we had B-roll of a woman pouring milk into glasses for her kids. Well, I start the beer story, and I get into where the videotape should roll, and they roll milk. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: Oh, no! How did you recover from that?

McCORMICK: Everybody said I did it with a great deal of aplomb. "I think I must tell you--and I don't think it takes an extraordinary amount of sense to see--that what we're seeing here is not beer; this is milk." Then I just kept reading the copy. And everybody just kind of chuckled. It was obvious to the world that a mistake had been made. So then I went to the milk story next, and they rolled the same--

WHITE: I was going to say, "Did they roll beer?"

McCORMICK: No, they didn't roll beer, fortunately. I almost said-- But also you have to be diplomatic, too. We all--Hal [Fishman] and Terry [Anzur]--made a joke about it afterwards and everything, and Hal said something about, "Well, if you're going to drink a glass of milk, make sure it has a good head on it" or something like that. You want to be diplomatic, because it's not the best policy in the world to make it sound like you're putting down your technicians for making a mistake, because everybody makes mistakes. So you just laugh at it and keep going. But what happened was we had an AD--an assistant director--in training, and the AD called for the wrong tape. It happened to be a woman in this case, and she called for the wrong tape. She called for the milk tape in the beer story. I'm sure she felt badly about it. She felt badly about it. But you can't be thin-skinned in this business. You make your mistakes and you keep going, because you know everybody who ever worked in the business has done the same thing at one time or another. You can't do it all the time. If you do it all the time you'd better look for another profession or at least another responsibility within the news. But that's what can happen if somebody blows a roll-cue or somebody rolls the wrong tape. Or sometimes there will be miscommunication between the executive producer and the video person who operates the fourpack, and the tapes will be loaded in the wrong order, or somebody might have given them to the video operator in the wrong sequence. But the video operator-- There is a set policy, a set practice. You load them one, two, three, four. And everybody knows that that's the way the tape's supposed to go. So when you've done the first four stories that involve videotape, you know that story number five should be back in machine number one. We do that day after day after day. But sometimes a writer or a production assistant may have mislabeled a tape. This happens sometimes. Sometimes the titles of stories--and executive producers try to be very careful about doing this--will sound very much alike. Sometimes, for example, it will say "101 Accident," and then another one may say "10 Accident." Well, somebody in haste looks at them and thinks they see "101." Now, suppose there were accidents on the [Interstate] 10 [freeway] and the [U.S. Highway] 101 the same day. So you can see how a mistake could be made.

WHITE: There is a tendency for small errors like that to happen because everything needs to work in such synchronicity. Do you find that most people will own up to their errors?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. Well, let me put a condition on that. Most people-- I shouldn't say "won't own up to it." There will frequently be a discussion as to accountability, as to who was accountable for the error. Most of the time, much of the time, there is no doubt as to who made the mistake. The woman who called for the wrong tape, that was her mistake. If an anchor says "Ten thousand people were killed" instead of "a thousand" people, it's clear who made the mistake--unless the copy said "ten thousand," and then the writer made the mistake. And frequently people will own up to it. But sometimes, as is the case in any workplace, there is blame-placing and there is disagreement as to who's responsible for a mistake. Of course that happens.

WHITE: Sure. Okay. That's interesting. So crucial to the overall success of the operation that everybody is working in unison. The hiccups that could occur--

McCORMICK: This is where a news director, a good, strong news director, plays a very, very important role in a news operation. The news director tries to organize the way the department operates so that it's fairly easy to establish accountability. You want to leave no gray areas where you don't know who's responsible. Because when you don't know who's responsible you can't correct problems. Then they become systemic. So usually the news director, whenever a really bad mistake is made-- There will be a big meeting, and they will try to further refine areas of responsibility. "Who is responsible for doing that?" "You are always responsible for doing that. Your responsibility will never change. That is what you do." So if a mistake occurs there, however it comes to you, it's your responsibility. If somebody mislabeled a tape, you have to ask them, "Is this the correct label?" So those areas of accountability become very important, not just to KTLA but in every news department, and probably should be the case all through the workforce.

WHITE: Absolutely. I was just about to say that that's kind of a-- That's a very unique arrangement, where the level of responsibility is spelled out so clearly for you. I think that there would probably be fewer mistakes and a lot more professionalism in a host of different industries if a person's responsibilities are laid out for them very clearly and succinctly.

McCORMICK: I think so. Oh, yeah. I think possibly the organizations which do experience inefficiency in operation experience it because many employees who are otherwise good people are not really sure what their areas of responsibility are. It hasn't been defined for them.

WHITE: Exactly. I think that's more the case than not.

McCORMICK: Probably so. You're probably right.

WHITE: Well, thank you so much for mapping out the flow of information in a news station.

McCORMICK: I think it's kind of interesting.

WHITE: It's fascinating.

McCORMICK: It is.

WHITE: It really, really is. You know, we just sort of randomly watch the news and sit in anticipation of it and never really realizing what's going on behind the scene.

McCORMICK: There's a lot. There's a lot going on. And the news that you watch at ten o' clock on channel 5 or the other ten o' clock newscasts-- And I mention the ten o' clock newscasts because they are one hour long, as opposed to the eleven o' clock newscasts, which are only half an hour. Two minutes of that is weather, three minutes are sports. So you really get very little news in the eleven o' clock newscasts, because they're just too short. But there's so much time to fill in the ten o' clock newscast. We have so many more stories that a lot of people probably really don't appreciate the fact that we start building that newscast at noon. The executive producer, who has a difficult job, works an eleven-hour day. He comes in no later than one o' clock every day, and he doesn't finish until eleven.

WHITE: How many days a week, generally?

McCORMICK: Five.

WHITE: Five days. Okay.

McCORMICK: Because we have separate producers for the weekend. But the young woman who is exec[utive] producer for the weekend news, the newscast that I anchor, gets there at noon. She's a writer--one of our top writers, by the way--three days a week. And she gets there on Saturdays and Sundays at twelve noon, and still she says, "I don't have enough time." You're under the gun, because the executive producer, with competition in mind and all that, wants-- He lays out the newscast, but he doesn't really complete the lead story almost until nine thirty, a quarter to ten, until the very last-- Because he or she wants to make sure that remains the lead story. If something else big breaks, you don't want to be so committed to that that you can't change. So they wait and wait and wait until they can't wait any longer, and then they're committed to the lead story, and it goes in and it gets written. And also, if it's your lead, you want your lead story to have the very, very latest information. You don't want information that's two hours old unless absolutely nothing has changed. And that's not ever the case. For example, if at eight o' clock, let's say, Frank Sinatra passes away, you know that's going to be your lead story. But at nine forty-five, suppose, a doctor gives a statement saying that he didn't pass away of natural causes but was shot. So things are in a fluid state all the time. So the executive producer, usually before he or she-- You have to have an outline of something. So you have to make a partial commitment to what the lead is going to be and what the order of the stories of importance is going to be for each block, especially the A-block. But usually that lead story doesn't get completed until maybe fifteen or twenty minutes before airtime, and the executive producer then sits there and holds his or her breath. "Please don't let anything else break. I've got this nice, neatly arranged newscast." We go on the air at ten o' clock. At nine fifty you've got these four or five people in the assignment desk area. It's a huge area. It's maybe a third again as large as this room with this big desk that goes all around and these monitors all across in front of the people and the scanners all around and then monitors of every TV station in L.A. behind them and of CNN [Cable News Network] behind them. It's a maze of information coming in. So then you've got this story all laid out. It's going to be the presidential impeachment story, the latest developments at ten o' clock. That's what you're going to lead with. You already have reports from CNN and from other sources. They're all packaged. They've been written. They're ready to go. And at nine fifty, nine fifty-five, one of the assignment editors is monitoring CHP [California Highway Patrol] or the LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department] or the [Los Angeles County] Sheriff's Department, and there's a high-speed pursuit going on. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: Oh, boy--

McCORMICK: Forgive the expression, but that's-- I've heard more executive producers say "Oh, sh--" I don't want to say it on the tape, but you know what I'm going to say. There goes your whole show. How long are you going to stick with the chase? How long is the pursuit going to go? Is it going to end dramatically? Are you going to have to make a decision? Are you going to be faced with a decision? Like in the case of the young man who drove onto the freeway, set his truck afire, and blew his brains out on TV. Are you going to be faced with that kind of decision? How long do you stick with it? You're watching the composition because you can see every other station's newscast. You can see exactly what they're doing. Are they sticking with it? Or are they breaking away? Then ten o' clock comes. You go on the air. You preface your lead. You say, "Today the final arrangements were made for the beginning of the impeachment hearing of President [William J.] Clinton tomorrow, but first we have this breaking story. There is a high-speed pursuit going on in the Antelope Valley. The KTLA helicopter is overhead, and we go now to Ron Olsen in the helicopter." So the pursuit, as you know, can go on and on and on. This is where executive producers really earn their money. So the executive producer's sitting there. He's watching the chase. He and the anchor-- And sometimes the news director, if it's a really dramatic chase, comes in, although he never abrogates the executive producer's decision. So you're watching the chase. You're trying to decide how long to stay with it because you know viewer interest is there. You know if you leave the chase viewers are going to leave you and find it somewhere else. So there's that element of competition again. Also, now the television newscast that the executive producer has put together is slowly self-destructing. He's killing stories: "All right, A6 and -7 and -8--"

WHITE: My goodness. All the hard work.

McCORMICK: Yeah. All this work that all these writers and editors and everybody have done all day long. "All right, kill -6, -7, and -8"--A6, A7, and A8. Three maybe important stories are gone. The pursuit goes on, and you're now talking to the news director who's talking to the sales department saying, "We've got a high-speed pursuit on. We don't want to lose any audience to the competition." So they have to get permission from the sales department to kill commercials. You can't go to a commercial. During the commercial there could be a shoot-out.

WHITE: Oh. So you get permission from the sales department?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. You don't just make that decision arbitrarily.

WHITE: Of course. And you know, we haven't even spoken about the sales department.

McCORMICK: That's right. That's a whole other element.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: So usually the general manager or the assistant general manager of the station, the number-one man at the station, is the one who must take responsibility for making that-- So you call John Reardon and say, "Should we stay with it?" And usually he will tune in and look and say, "Yeah." He will check and see what the competitors are doing. He'll say, "Yeah, stick with it. Kill the commercials." But then we have to make arrangements to try to make up as many commercials as we can. And the pursuit may take up the whole hour. So there have been instances when the weather was killed, my "Health and Fitness Report" was killed, sports was killed. The whole hour consisted of nothing but the pursuit. Then you've got to ask the general manager, "Do we have permission to go past eleven o' clock?" Now, that gets very tricky. That gets enormously tricky, because KTLA is an affiliate, as you know, of this rather new WB [Warner Bros. television] network. We're trying to be a part of a network. And they've committed huge sums of money and made contractual arrangements that these WB network shows will air at a certain time.

WHITE: Absolutely.

1.18. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 13, 1999

WHITE: We were just talking about KTLA's commitment to the WB network.

McCORMICK: Yeah. If there is, for example, a pursuit story-- And this is a problem that really has only blossomed fully in the last several years. We really only had one pursuit-- Many, many years ago, certainly when I first got into the news business, oh, my goodness, there wouldn't even be one pursuit a year. When I first got into the business it was so rare for-- There weren't even Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, teams, because barricade situations were so infrequent. But then as they began to occur more and more frequently, law enforcement agencies, particularly bigcity law enforcement departments, started to organize SWAT teams. And now there's a barricade situation at least once a week when SWAT has to be called out, maybe several times. And now there is at least one pursuit a week.

WHITE: It seems like a fad.

McCORMICK: It's a fad. I've even heard that among--I don't have anything to substantiate this--some elements, particularly some gang members, some gangs, there are now competitions to see who can keep a pursuit going the longest without getting caught and not getting hurt. That's what I've heard, particularly in the last month or so.

WHITE: I wonder if that's some sort of an initiation now.

McCORMICK: Yeah, that you can keep a pursuit going. They know they're going to surrender sooner or later. More recently you've probably seen these pursuits where they don't necessarily speed. They don't put people at great risk by plunging through intersections against lights and everything like that. Many of them don't get on the freeway; they drive on surface streets. And one of the indications is that it's easier to elude police if they don't do anything aggressive to stop you on surface streets, particularly in neighborhoods that you know, for a longer period of time. So as I said, that's unsubstantiated. There may be no truth to it at all. But I've heard, for example, from some of our news camera operators who are out in the city, out amongst them all the time-- And they hear stuff that never makes the air. When they're unloading their equipment or reloading their equipment people come up and start saying things to them and talking to them. But anyway, back to your question. If there is a pursuit going on, and with the competition of the other stations in mind, permission must be secured from the general manager to preempt regular programming and continue to follow the pursuit or some other major breaking story which you know has tremendous viewer interest. But those are some of the rules that have to be established, particularly if you're part of the networks. And the other networks have to do the same thing. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox have to go through the same kinds of policies of getting permission from, as we said before, a very accountable source. Somebody's got to make the decision "Go with the story," or somebody's got to say "Bail out of the story. Go to the program. Our advertisers are paying $5,000 per thirty-second commercial for Friends, which follows the news. Go to Friends. If this story turns out to be something explosive we'll go back to it." So that's how they kind of make those decisions. It's always a matter of prioritizing. But it is also always a matter of competition. What are the competitors going to do? Who's going to get the edge? When the overnight ratings come out, whose decision is going to turn out to have been the right one?

WHITE: And that's, would you say, the most important factor in making decisions?

McCORMICK: Ratings?

WHITE: And competitiveness?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

WHITE: That is the most important factor.

McCORMICK: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

WHITE: Now, many of those positions that you've described sound as though they're quite stressful, particularly as you were describing the executive producer's position. Which position would you say is probably the most stressful, the position where one has the greatest amount of pressure? Would it be the executive producer or the anchor or the news director?

McCORMICK: On the day-to-day basis?

WHITE: Yeah. Just generally speaking.

McCORMICK: The executive producer. No doubt about it. It's a job that I don't think I would want to have. To sit there and be responsible for constructing a onehour news program five nights a week is a very-- And having all of the right stories, making the right decisions-- You have a lot of choices of different stories you could cover. You have to try to figure out, using your own wits and experience, "What are my competitors going to cover? In what segment? In what order? How can I play one-upsmanship with them by getting an important story in a better position in the newscast than they did? Maybe their executive news producer will overestimate or underestimate the importance of a story and where to play it in the newscast. How do I also not create the impression for the viewer at home that all of the important stories have been done and they can now bail out and use one of their other choices, watch something else?" So you have to try to save some important stories. And you can tease in your promos and say, "This is still coming up a little bit later on." You can't lend the impression-- And this was done for many, many years. People got the impression that all the real important stories were over at ten thirty or ten thirty-five. They would go watch something else. So there are all these little games that are being played--not really games, they're strategies, and they're important strategies. So on a day-to-day basis that's a tremendous responsibility for the executive news producer. Now, where the anchor or anchors really come under stress is when you go unstructured. Now, as we've been discussing, generally speaking, unless there is suddenly a pursuit or something like that, these newscasts are structured. They're structured. They're put together. They're compact. They usually stay intact all the way through the newscast. If there is a breaking story, something that's happening right now--a huge fire, an earthquake, some huge natural catastrophe in which we know there is overriding public interest--we go unstructured, that is playing it by ear, ad-libbing, getting the pictures and stories as we can, going to reporters as we can, really going totally unstructured. The stress is on the anchor, because then you have got to call on your wits for as much as you know about that given situation. You have to call on your wits, and you have your IFB [interruptible frequency broadcast] on, your earpiece, listening to the executive producer and the director. You can hear them all. They can talk to you at different times because they have different buttons. This is where you earn your money. Now you show your skill at being fluid, at being thoughtful, and asking intelligent questions and making intelligent assumptions about anticipating where this story may go next, about keeping the viewer-- People are tuning in and out all the time. Every five or six minutes [we must be] repeating for viewers who are just tuning in what the situation is, what's happening, how long this has been going on, where they are right now, who we believe may be driving the truck, whether this is in the jurisdiction of the [California] Highway Patrol or the LAPD. Do we have an identity on the driver? Do we know what the motivation is? That's in case of a pursuit. In case of a fire, where is this fire? Who's endangered? Are there evacuations? Are there places for people who have to be evacuated to stay? Are there telephone numbers for you to call if you have relatives in that area? All these are things that the anchor-- And after a few years these things start to kick in. You start to think of all these things because you've done it before. You're aware of people, of what happens to people in urgent situations like this, and what they need to know. Then you really start thinking of trying to be of service, to describe what's going on, to try to do it accurately, not to make any assumptions, to only say and deliver to the public what we know for sure, to stay away from speculation. And that's where the anchors are under the greatest stress. Now, the executive producer's also under stress, because the executive producer-- And this is where the executive producer's staff, the assignment desk and all these people, become very important, because they start digging for sources. It's still competitive. You're trying to get a telephone number for somebody who lives next door to where the shoot-out is occurring or lives down the street. They now have telephone directories that news departments use which give approximations--I forgot what they call it now-- For almost any part of the city where something is happening they can give you telephone numbers for that general area that they call.

WHITE: Really? Just at random?

McCORMICK: Yeah, at random, and see if they can get any information. When you go unstructured on a big breaking story-- It's an exciting place to be, in a newsroom when there's a breaking story, because everybody is involved in some kind of way in trying to get it done and then trying to, frankly, get an edge on the competition, but more than that trying to get the latest information and trying to do a professional job. Most news departments pride themselves and the overall abilities of their departments on how well they handle breaking stories. In a city like Los Angeles where there are so many experienced professionals, it's difficult and exacting, but it's not an overwhelming challenge to put together a good one-hour or half-hour newscast every day, because you have all these talented people who can do that. Still, it requires a lot of ability. But you can do that. So a lot of people can do that on a dayin, day-out basis fairly well. But it's the unstructured story, the breaking story, that's where you see the skills of the anchors. That's where you see the skills of the assignment desk people digging for sources. They use all their contacts. Maybe you develop personal friendships with people in the public information department or the fire department or the sheriff's department. They really develop relationships with the PIOs.

WHITE: PIOs?

McCORMICK: Public information officers.

WHITE: Okay.

McCORMICK: Every city department has a PIO. Every law enforcement agency-- the Beverly Hills Police Department, every police department--has a PIO, a spokesperson for the department. So if you develop a real good-- See, this is one of the things that a veteran like Stan Chambers has done. He can call anybody and get information. When you've been doing it fifty years-- They know him, they trust him. He's never violated their trust. If an LAPD officer says, "Now, Stan, this is what we believe, but we can't say it on the air yet," he's never violated that trust. So a PIO for the LAPD may be giving the latest details on a story and answering reporters one at a time, never using a name, and Stan Chambers will say, "Well, what do you know about--?" And he'll say, "Well, Stan, I'll tell you," makes a very personal reference. So the assignment desk people try to develop relationships with PIOs. They try to develop relationships with assignment desk people on stations in other markets, particularly adjacent markets. Our best assignment editors have developed good strong working relationships with stations in San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, and Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City, Denver--particularly the stations in the West. And then other places, of course, we-- Tribune Broadcasting [Company], which we're a part of, has stations. So if something happens in New York we call WPIX, and we can get a story. But in those markets where we don't have stations, it's very important to have developed good relationships so that you can dig for the details. You try to establish good relationships with the PIOs, because maybe you can find out before your competitors do whether the spokesperson for the LAPD is going to hold a press conference at 9:45. So that's a little step up, a little jump up. So you develop all those. So everybody's doing everything they know, every bit of experience they've accumulated over the years, during a breaking story to get those stories out, to try to get a little advantage, to do two things: get a little advantage on the competition-- Because when the public recognizes that you have this little advantage over a period of time they become more and more loyal. That is what's happened at channel 5. People look for us now when there is news because we have established this reputation over all these years. So the pressure is on the anchors, then, and the assignment desk. Sometimes the pressure can be on news crews and reporters. There can be enormous, even dangerous, pressure. If there's a breaking story, one of the assignment desk people hears about it on a scanner. Then you've got to get your reporter and your cameraman or camerawoman, your camera operator, into the mobile unit and try to get there before everybody else. Now, that can get dangerous.

WHITE: That's very dangerous, I'm sure.

McCORMICK: There have been people who have been injured trying to get there first. Maybe you try to get your helicopter there first. It's always getting there first. Because it's part of the competition. But it's a dangerous part. So everybody comes under pressure during the breaking story. But the person who's got to keep it going for the viewer who's sitting at home is the anchor. Because the only person they can keep coming back to is the anchor. Maybe the anchor may throw it back to the helicopter. Maybe the helicopter doesn't have a shot. Maybe the helicopter's out of range. Maybe the helicopter's behind a mountain and the cameraman in the helicopter can't get a direct signal. All those things could happen, in which case the anchor's face is hanging out. You've got to sit there, and you have to be compelling enough so people won't tune away to somebody else.

WHITE: Each and every person at different points in time has to really call upon a high level of creativity.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah, and knowledgeability.

WHITE: Spontaneity, exactly. All three things.

McCORMICK: And at the same time you have to try to be fluid. You can't sit there and stumble and bumble your way for fifteen or twenty minutes, because that just confuses people more. So you have to try to describe what's going on or what you're asking or what you're seeing in very fluid terms, very informative terms. And you have copious notes in front of you. Particularly you have made notes for the purpose of going back to reconstruct every six or seven minutes for viewers who are just tuning in or for viewers who may have been watching all the time and have forgotten how it started. And you say, "To bring you up-to-date, this story began about twenty-five minutes ago in the city of Lancaster, where a high-speed pursuit began, police cars chasing a 1994 Chevy Nova," or whatever, "and the pursuit has now reached the Ventura county line." You make the sequence. You write your sequence if you're really on the ball. If you're not on the ball, maybe you have an assistant producer who does it for you, who keeps a sequence sheet so you can keep going back and bringing people up-to-date. But that is when you earn your money and call on all the resources--the mental resources, the memories. That's one of the reasons why you want to be as much as possible well rested when you go on the air. If something does break, you don't want to be tired or sleepy or not alert and not be at your very, very best. In a city like Los Angeles--and I'm sure the same thing's true of New York--things like that can happen, breaking stories can happen, literally anytime.

WHITE: You should expect the unexpected.

McCORMICK: That's right.

WHITE: And always be prepared for that.

McCORMICK: Yeah.

WHITE: That's very interesting. Okay. Well, let's see now. After having spoken about KTLA through the flow of information at the news station more generally, I'd like to talk a bit more specifically about your positions. The last time we spoke we talked at length about your positions as the weatherman and as a sportscaster. And there was a certain point when you held both of those positions simultaneously, which I'm sure was quite challenging. And then as of 1980--I believe on September 20, if I'm not mistaken, I read in some of your literature that it was on September 20, 1980--you began coanchoring the weekend news.

McCORMICK: Uh-huh.

WHITE: Can you tell me about that transition, moving from the position of sportscaster to the weekend news anchor? How did that come about?

McCORMICK: That came about because I was asked by the then general manager of channel 5, a fellow named Tony Cassara, who wanted to-- Channel 5 had not had a weekend news up until that time. I don't think any of the independent stations--and at that time Fox was one of the independents-- [Channels] 5, [KCAL] 9, [KTTV] 11, [KCOP] 13, none of them had weekend newscasts.

WHITE: Okay. As of 1980--?

McCORMICK: As of 1980. They had other programming: sometimes UCLA basketball games, other stuff, movies. And then I guess it started to become obvious that-- It had become obvious that news was a moneymaker. News, which used to be a loss leader, something that networks and stations did because the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] insisted on it for license renewal as a public service, now it was discovered that you can make money doing news. So they started adding weekend news. And now there's news all the time.

WHITE: Was KTLA the first station that offered it?

McCORMICK: You know, I can't recall whether KTLA was the first independent station to do weekend news or not. I think we might have been. I don't think anybody else was doing a weekend newscast then. But at any rate, the general manager, Tony Cassara-- This really happened in the aftermath of the Iranian hostage crisis. The revolutionary guards of the Islamic movement in Iran had taken a number of Americans and held them hostage in the American embassy in Tehran, and this had been going on for some time. And KTLA had employed the services of a young man named Alex Paen, who wanted to be a reporter. Alex Paen looked like he could have been a member of the Iranian youth brigade. He looked so Middle Eastern that he somehow got access to getting into Tehran and talking to people and all that kind of stuff. He was sending back reports and Tony Cassara was impressed. So Alex Paen came back. The Iranian hostage crisis was still going on. When Alex came back-- Tony asked Alex Paen first, actually, to anchor a weekend news. And he brought in a young woman who was the very first host of Entertainment Tonight, a young woman named Dixie Watley. They were coanchoring the news. That was fine with me. I was still doing the weather and sports five days a week, Monday through Friday. Alex, as it turned out, was not an anchorman. He didn't do well at all. The show didn't do well at all.

WHITE: That wasn't his forte.

McCORMICK: It wasn't his forte. Everybody tries to capitalize on something fortuitous that comes their way. He happened to, through all of these means, be able to gain access and bring some very interesting and sometimes valuable reports from Tehran, from Iran, but he was not an anchorman, and it was not working. And that's when Mr. Cassara called me personally into his office and asked me if I would coanchor the weekend news. And that's when it started. Then they tried to define a role for me Monday through-- Three days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they wanted me-- What they really wanted at that time was to use, I guess you could call it, my popularity at the station and my visibility in a kind of triple anchor concept. A lead anchor and two subanchors was what they had. Hal Fishman was the lead anchor, and then we had a young woman who was one subanchor, and I was the other subanchor. I was doing mostly the "Consumer Trends Report" and the "Health and Fitness Report." That's when this actually started. Marilyn Devin was the first coanchor. We worked together, actually, for about five or six years. The three of us were kind of the three anchor types. They even had the set built so that Hal was in the middle and we sat on each side. So that's how that started in 1980. I started anchoring the weekend news with Dixie Watley. We didn't really have a sportscaster at the time, so I think I was doing sports too on the weekends. And then that's the way it's been since 1980, anchoring the weekend news and then of course being the chief substitute for any other weekday anchor who was off.

WHITE: At what point did you stop doing the sportscasting?

McCORMICK: I think we finally hired a weekend sportscaster named Ron Fairley, who used to play baseball for the [Los Angeles] Dodgers and for USC [University of Southern California], who is now a broadcaster in the Bay Area, I think. Then we added a fellow named Joe Buttitta. We had a fellow named Steve Roah. We finally added a weekend sportscaster, but I can't recall-- Maybe a year, a year and an half, two years. It wasn't very long until we added a sportscaster, because at that time it became very obvious that there is more sports going on on the weekend in America than there is any other time. So it's invaluable. Now on the weekends sportscasters have a whole half-hour show to themselves. Now we have entire regional sports networks like ESPN--well, ESPN [Entertainment and Sports Programming Network] is national--but like Fox Sports West and Fox Sports West 2, in every major metropolitan area.

WHITE: Oh, that's amazing how it's evolved.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. There's a regional sports network like Fox Sports West in every major city in the country. ESPN started out that way, but now of course they are a national sports network, the national sports network.

WHITE: Exactly. So tell me, now-- When did you actually begin the "Consumer [Trends Report" and] "Health and Fitness Report"?

McCORMICK: In 1980.

WHITE: In 1980? At the same time-- That was on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays?

McCORMICK: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays.

WHITE: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. And then you were doing the sports and the coanchoring on the weekend?

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: That's quite taxing, I would have imagined.

McCORMICK: It was challenging, yeah. It was challenging. The sportscast that I did on the weekends when we first started was not, obviously--for various reasons, first, we didn't have the technology--terribly complex. It was really just more a matter of giving scores and other major sports stories and things like that. It wasn't really until we hired a sportscaster who also did most of the writing and all that kind of stuff that it really became a full-fledged sportscast. So it was challenging in a way because I had to keep up with what was going on, but it was not challenging in a way because I was also a big sports fan, so I knew everything that was going on anyway.

WHITE: All right. So it just fit right in. Okay, good. We were talking about earlier how the coanchors often have an opportunity to massage the information that they're going to speak about. And I wanted to know, as a coanchor, to what extent did you have to change some of the stories that were given to you? Would it happen quite often? Or was it just kind of an irregular process that occurred?

McCORMICK: At the outset it happened quite often, because our writers really didn't have the skill level that they have now. It happens less frequently now because our writers have become skilled, because we've been paying more money and getting better writers is what it boils down to. That's the same thing at every station. The more money you pay the better writers you get and the less you have to massage. In fact, the writers, really good writers, begin to say things better than you can. That's what happens at the networks, at the network levels. But yes, I would have to do rewrites, make-- In many cases young writers who didn't have very strong historical backgrounds used to make a lot of historical mistakes. I had one writer actually write that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1942. Well, I assumed that everybody knew it was 1941, but actually that's what the writer wrote. So that's an example of graphic and gross errors that you have to change, factual errors that you have to correct. As far as the "Consumer Trends Report," I had a good deal of help with that as far as booking stories was concerned. The assignment desk would set up a lot of the stories for me, because there just isn't time to get on the phone and go through all the stuff, all the legwork, that you have to do to set up stories. And that's not what you should do anyway; the assignment desk should do that. I wrote and researched all of the health and fitness news and still do much of that myself. And I've learned a great deal over the years. In fact, I've gotten so many letters written to "Dr. McCormick" that occasionally I do have to tell people, "I am not a medical professional. I am a journalist."

WHITE: Interesting. Well, tell me a bit about the "Health and Fitness Report." Now, was this in place in 1980? Or is that an area of interest that you began to hone?

McCORMICK: It evolved. I began to do a few stories, and then it kind of just evolved into the "Health and Fitness Report." At first I'm not sure whether we called it the medical report or medical update or something like that. I can't remember what the title was, whether it even had a title or whether they just said, "Here's Larry with the latest health news." And then that evolved into the "Health and Fitness Report." The "Consumer Trends Report," there's been some discussion about-- We had a news director three or four years ago who decided that that was no longer an important element of the show and killed it, and there's been some discussion about whether that was a mistake or not, because we used to get a lot of response to that. Since then-- You know, I told them, "Look, they're not going to pay me any less money for just doing the health reports." But I thought it was an important adjunct to the show. There has been some discussion about bringing it back. The "Health and Fitness Report" from the very outset I have written myself. As with most things, it began rather primitively, because I had very few sources and material. I used to really, really have to dig for material. And at first I had to use a lot of what we call handouts. Handouts are videotaped reports that you get from commercial corporations which are selling a product, [videotapes] which create what they hope will look like a news story but which, very frankly, tout the product. So I would have to fish and edit around. I'd try to keep it from looking like a direct commercial, but I'm sure in many cases early on it really did. Now, I haven't used handouts in quite a while. I use handouts from medical institutions. If I get a handout from UCLA School of Medicine, that's a different-- Even though in essence it does promote the university and its medical services or USC School of Medicine or some other school of medicine [or the] Mayo Clinic [and Foundation for Medical Education and Research], it is a handout. We call them handouts because they are given to you free of charge to use as you will. And it still promotes a product or a service. But if it's the "Health and Fitness Report" and it's directly related, then you don't feel as much like you're doing a straight commercial for an institution as you do when you get something that's touting the benefits of milk and it's produced by the American Dairy Association. And that happens a lot. Of course, there are so many sources of information now, but a lot of stations which don't have the resources use the handouts a lot, because they're usually well done. They're well shot, good video, and they're produced so that you can either use the reporter whose voice is on the videotape or you can break it down into what we call a VO [voiceover]. You have the writer write everything that that reporter says for your anchor, and you do it. I did that a lot with handouts in the early days.

WHITE: Were those considered sort of infomercials? Not what you were doing but what you were given. They were produced by companies, so--

McCORMICK: They were infomercials, but they were a minute and thirty seconds long. They made sure that they made them so that they fit the news format. They did everything they could to make sure that they got on the air, because that's what they're supposed to do. Actually, we call them handouts because they're given to you. Technically, in the business they're called VNRs, video news releases.

WHITE: Okay. Of course. I'm familiar with that term.

McCORMICK: As a matter of fact, my stepson [Alvin C. Bowens Jr.]-- The postproduction company he works for in New York City, in Manhattan, one of the things they do is produce VNRs.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: Yeah, in addition to commercials and music videos and other stuff. But they produce a lot of VNRs.

WHITE: So what are some of your resources now?

McCORMICK: Everything. Over the years-- Well, I started to get a lot of response. This is a big, big, big city which is headquarters for a lot of public relations firms and publicity firms. People started paying attention, and they started noticing that I would get a lot of response if I would do a story on some new medical service that Loma Linda University was offering or the Scripps [Memorial Hospital] in La Jolla was offering, and they'd get hundreds of calls.

WHITE: Oh, really? More so calls than letters?

McCORMICK: Calls, letters, all kinds of responses. They noticed.

WHITE: When you say "they"--?

McCORMICK: I mean the public relations people, the institutions. Because they're all watching the news, and they say-- The USC School of Medicine says, "UCLA keeps getting mentioned. We're not being competitive. We've got to start producing stuff. We've got to start faxing information about what's going on." Which they still do today.

WHITE: Ah. "Get it to Mr. McCormick." Okay.

McCORMICK: My voice mail-- Every week there must be fifty calls, not only from all around L.A. but from New York, Chicago, people calling about story ideas. And I still get VNRs all the time. What's supposed to be my book rack is loaded with VNRs and the scripts that go with them. So I started to get on people's mailing lists. And then various people would send me invitations to-- As public interest in health issues grew more and more and more, a lot of health institutions and medical institutions started putting out their own medical [news]letters on a weekly basis--the Mayo Clinic health letter, UC [University of California] Berkeley health letter. Then there are lots of other public-- Science News, the Journal of the American Medical Association puts out one every week, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Los Angeles County Medical Association, the American Dental Association, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society. There are so many health institutions and organizations, and I was on everybody's mailing list. So I started subscribing-- I probably subscribe now to maybe fifty publications. Of course, it's all deductible, because it's directly related to what I do. I also get a lot of information off the computer from Prodigy and AOL [America Online]. They have a lot of health sources. I must have-- Between the computer and printed publications-- That doesn't include all of the faxes I get from PR [public relations] firms that just work directly for doctors, for medical institutions, for medical groups, for cosmetic surgeons. I think every doctor in L.A. must have his own PR firm. There are so many sources of information now. It's a matter of deciding what to throw away, what I can't use.

WHITE: Exactly. How do you make that determination? You get so much literature, how do you find time to actually go through some of the literature? And then how do you make the decision about what to cover?

McCORMICK: There are really no shortcuts. There are no shortcuts. A lot of the medical publications have gotten--everybody grows with experience and gets better at writing. Instead of writing stories-- The Journal of the American Medical Association used to be--still is--basically for medical professionals, for doctors. But with the increasing public interest in health issues, they now write accompanying articles. And I used to have to do this myself. I mean, just in the last couple of years they've started writing accompanying articles in lay language, or as near lay language as you can get, which makes my job easier. Because it used to be really hard. Not being a medical professional, I didn't want to make a mistake and have a doctor call and say, "You screwed up. What you said is not true. You're misinforming people." So I had to be very, very careful. And I also always attributed my information to a medical source, just as I will do tonight. I will say, "That report from the Journal of the American Medical Association--" so a doctor who's listening and who may agree or disagree with what the report says won't challenge me, he'll challenge his colleagues. And that was the general purpose. So I cull through those sources. And I have to use a combination of my own curiosity and my own instincts as to what piques my attention and my interest, my own instincts about what the public would like to know about. It might not be something critical; it might be something just interesting. It might be something that's very useful. We had a story the other day about radon gas. Now, a few years ago there was a big scare in many parts of the country--not so much here in L.A. proper but in some parts of Southern California--about radon gas that naturally occurs under the house, and they said it was a carcinogen, it could cause cancer in humans, and about all the things you should do to try to get rid of radon gas. Well, since then the scare has gone down. They said, "Just simply leave your windows open at night." You don't have to worry about radon gas. I would sense the importance of a story and that people might be interested in knowing about it: safety features that you can use around the home, a lot of information about food preparation safety. Because a lot of people get all kinds of illnesses.

WHITE: Food poisoning?

McCORMICK: Yes. I do that almost every holiday. Every Fourth of July, before Christmas, and New Year's holidays we reprise that, because we think it's important. Because every year there are people who become mothers and fathers who weren't last year.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: Or who weren't involved in food preparation and didn't have to worry about it last year. So they have to learn it. As time goes along you have to reprise those things.

WHITE: Do you update? Say, if you were covering a particular topic from last year, do you update that every year? Or sort of a repeating of your stories from time to time?

McCORMICK: Well, because I'm really dependent on the medical community or medical research for the updates, I can call and find out. But there are simply too many stories to find out about, and research is going on. And believe me, there is so much competition--for example, [among] the pharmaceutical producers who have competing drugs for the same illness--that they will keep you up-to-date. If there's a new development you don't have to worry about it, you'll find out about it. You'll find out about it even before it's on the market. I'm doing a story tonight about a medication. There are apparently a large number of boys born in this country who have a genetically inherited tendency towards very high cholesterol, which makes them predisposed to death of heart disease by age fifty.

WHITE: This is boys of all ethnicities?

McCORMICK: All ethnicities. Boys have this inherited high cholesterol. [The report] is about a medicine that has been given to adults for several years to combat high cholesterol and its implications for heart disease. So now they just completed a large study of this same medicine on boys. I also pay attention to the numbers. I read the story-- I got it off America Online last night, AOL, which I do every night when I come home. When I have a report to do the next night I start searching through my archives. I go through AOL. I have a folder in my desk upstairs about that thick filled with all the latest publications from the Mayo Clinic and St. Jude [Children's Research] Hospital and from Johns Hopkins [University and Hospital] and UCLA and UCI [University of California, Irvine] and USC and UC [University of California] San Francisco and all the major medical institutions around the country. So I go through. I see what's timely. For example, if we're in the midst of a heat wave which could be dangerous for senior citizens--

WHITE: Sure. It has been proven.

McCORMICK: Things like that, I try to do something related to do that. If it's flu season I try to do something related to that. Holiday, do something related to either fire safety with Christmas trees or the safety of food preparation. Health and fitness covers such a wide umbrella, with stories all the way from how to adjust the headrest on the seat back on your car so you won't experience whiplash to the importance of using the correct baby seats to prevent accidents in the car. It covers everything.

WHITE: It runs the spectrum.

McCORMICK: So they pretty much leave it to me as to what I want to do.

WHITE: So you just get all the resource material, conduct the research, do the reading, and then write. And then make the decision and--?

McCORMICK: Over the period of years they've pretty much left it to my own instincts, and over the period of years there have been times when I will go through all the information. I sit up there. I come home and take a shower, talk to Anita [Daniels McCormick] for a few minutes, and then maybe I'll watch a little of Nightline, maybe a few minutes of Politically Incorrect, or there are a few cable shows that I love. I love Law and Order.

WHITE: That's a good show.

McCORMICK: It's a good show. Well done. I watch for a few minutes, just to kick back for a few minutes. But then I know-- I sense that really is the most alert time of my day. I've just gotten off work at eleven o' clock. The wheels are spinning. I'm intellectually stimulated and everything. So that's when I dig in and start to look for material--after I've relaxed a few minutes--start to look for what I want to write about the next day: what's current, what's timely, what's seasonal, maybe some unusual little story that just piques my interest about some new service or medicine that's available. I'm doing a story tonight about a new option that's available for people who are nearsighted. There's a new implant that replaces corrective surgery, and the thing about the implant is that it is reversible. Corrective surgery--as one of the doctors said, "There's no eraser at the end of a laser." Once it's done, since it destroys tissue, it's done. But with these implants--I think they're called "Intacts"--if you put them in and they don't work, you can take them out. So that's something I'm sure there will be a lot of calls about and reaction, people calling and saying-- I mean, the assignment desk tells me-- And Saretta [Townsend], our receptionist and all-around administrative assistant, she tells me, "Larry, I get more reaction every day to your reports, more inquiries about your reports, than everything else on the news combined."

WHITE: Oh, my goodness. That's really excellent. That's quite an influence that you have on such important issues.

McCORMICK: It is. But is also gives me an indication of whether I'm still thinking in the right direction, whether I'm still focused enough. Because you can lose focus sometimes if you get off on a tangent. Sometimes your instincts start to fail you. I hope they haven't yet. So it lets you know you're still on track.

WHITE: Sure. Connecting with your audience.

McCORMICK: Yeah. I'm still connecting.

WHITE: Speaking to the issues that people are interested in hearing about. And because health is such a prominent issue these days, health care reform, any little tidbits that people can learn through a vehicle such as this I'm sure are very much appreciated. People are looking for alternative ways to stay healthy, to be proactive about their health.

McCORMICK: I'm doing more and more information on alternative medicines and more and more information on supplements. Supplements have become so powerful. Even though people's enthusiasm has started to wane a little bit because they're-- We're starting to learn that a lot of it was hype, and I've had to walk the thin line in resisting the disapproval of the formal medical community of the supplemental community. Because the supplements are unregulated, and the medical community, they don't like that. So I have to try to be impartial and not take the side of either the medical community or the supplement community. And when supplements have proven value you say so. When they haven't you don't. The other thing I was going to tell you about instincts--and this, again-- A lot of it revolves around your own appreciation of the importance of a story. One element of this story about this inherited high cholesterol that caught my attention is that it affects five hundred thousand Americans.

WHITE: Oh, really? High cholesterol in boys, is that what you were referring to?

McCORMICK: Just boys. Now, if you've come across a story that may be interesting but that only affects one in every twenty-five million people, you might not want to give it that much emphasis. If it's a very dramatic story you might. There's this little baby that has this rash-- You might have seen that story on the news last night. We didn't have it. [KABC] channel 7 had it. It has some kind of really, really rare condition where even the slightest touch causes a bruise. This baby's little body is filled with blisters. They're growing skin tissue cultures in culture dishes to transplant the skin so this baby can survive.

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 20, 1999

WHITE: In our last interview we had a very wonderful and thorough and in-depth discussion about one of the assignments that you have at [television station] KTLA [News at Ten], that is your position doing the "Health and Fitness Report." We had an opportunity to talk extensively about some of your resource material and how you go about selecting the kinds of information and the kinds of stories that you're going to present on your show and some of the topics that are covered and some of the organizations that actually feed you information. And I wanted to see if you had any other thoughts about the reports or, for example, your competitors. Are there any other stations that actually offer segments such as yours or--? Who would you consider your competitors?

McCORMICK: Well, almost every other station here in the Los Angeles market has a health or a health and fitness feature somewhere in their newscast, and almost every newscast in the cases of those stations which do multiple newscasts during the day. And in most other instances they are trained, certified physicians. You may remember Dr. Art Ulene, who was probably one of the earliest medical doctors to become a regular health and fitness reporter, I think for KNBC channel 4. Other doctors on both television newscast and radio newscasts--on [radio stations] KNX and KFWB-- They have people like Dr. Bruce Hensel who do small, brief--and by brief I mean one minute to one minute and a half--feature stories on medical topics. With the tremendous burgeoning awareness of the importance of health and health and fitness and all that sort of thing on the part of the American people, the interest in physical conditioning and health has become a very important topic for the American people generally. So recognizing this, broadcast journalists have begun to incorporate it. They've not just begun; they've been incorporating it into their newscasts for a long, long time now. For that matter, so have print publications, including the major metropolitan newspapers. Everybody has a health section now. The number of publications both popular and professional has just burgeoned, has just exploded. You can find a whole news rack now full of magazines like Health, Men's Health, Women's Health, Fitness, all that kind of stuff. It is a virtual explosion. And you know, of course, Renee, about the explosion in the number of exercise and fitness clubs all around the country. So it's become something that is such a part and parcel of everyday life in America that I don't see how any broadcast journalist or any broadcast journalism organization or broadcast news organization could ignore it. I'd like to think we were kind of out front starting it eighteen years ago.

WHITE: Once again being the pioneers.

McCORMICK: Yeah.

WHITE: Absolutely. That comes as no surprise at this point. I wanted to speak a little bit more today about your role, your position, at the station in some more general terms, and then I have some more specific areas of interest that I'd like to cover.

McCORMICK: Okay.

WHITE: I had a question about the programming decisions. I know that TV executives sort of see and understand TV as a profit-seeking enterprise. It was and is a capitalist business committed to making money and is often characterized by intense competition for audience ratings. To what extent does this issue drive the programming decisions at KTLA?

McCORMICK: To a great extent, as it does at every other station. Lurking somewhere, either close to the forefront or receding farther from the forefront, are always the economic decisions and the decisions as they affect competition, because broadcast journalism-- The commercial stations are in the business to make money, to make a profit. They're in the business to provide an audience to advertisers. Basically that's what we do, provide an audience to advertisers. That's one of the essences of what we call free TV. You don't have to pay anything for it because the sponsors pay for it. So you get all that programming, all that news, all that broadcasting all day long without paying anything for it, because it's paid for by the sponsors. So that's what we do, provide an audience for advertisers. I think there's a point at which you can explicitly see where the change occurred, but I'll get to that in a minute. For many many years, during the early days of the terrific Edward R. Murrow, whom many people consider the godfather of broadcast journalism as we know it today-- He began with his reports from London during the Blitz, during World War II, and then was a pioneer in early television journalism here in the United States with CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System]. All that time the general public really loved the medium for entertainment. They had little interest in [television] news. So news departments at the networks and almost everyplace else were stepchildren. They were strictly second thoughts. They were what they call loss leaders. Since news does cost money to produce and at that time did not produce any revenue because it couldn't build any audiences, it was called a loss leader. So station management tolerated it, because the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] said you had to do that as a public service to keep your license. So it was kind of tolerated as a stepchild. Then, during the Cuban missile crisis-- And much of the burgeoning of television news as we know it today-- Its importance--and certainly the airwaves are saturated with it today--began during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, and particularly during the Cuban missile crisis. Because for the first time ever since World War II, since Pearl Harbor, everybody was stuck to their radio and now to TV. There was no TV back in the days of Pearl Harbor when World War II was going on. Now they were stuck to TV waiting to see if the United States and the Soviet Union were going to go to war. Everybody was afraid of nuclear destruction. I remember a lot of Americans had built fallout shelters in the ground. So it was very serious. And those days of tension as the Soviet ships bringing the missiles approached closer and closer to Cuba-- And John F. Kennedy kind of drew a line in the water, so to speak, and said, "If you come across this line--" And a lot of people don't know that thousands and thousands of American troops were redeployed to the southeastern part of the United States. Some people noticed: "Why are all those soldiers on those trains? Why are all these convoys of trucks going through here?" We were ready to get serious. It was going to be serious. Thousands of American aircraft had suddenly been deployed to southern bases to be closer to Cuba. That was really the possibility: that we could have been in the worst war in the history of mankind, where as many people could have been killed in a week as were killed during four years of World War II. So it was very serious, and Americans were sitting on the edges of their seats watching their televisions to see how this was going to come out. And then, of course, the president was involved in the next episode which glued Americans to their seats, and that unfortunately was his assassination. I can't tell you how many millions of Americans watched not so much the parade, because presidential parades in various cities are not that exciting and not that big a deal, but thousands of Americans, millions of Americans, saw Lee Harvey Oswald get killed by Jack Ruby on television. That's probably the first time we actually saw somebody get killed on TV. And of course, the ratings jumped. And of course, that did not get by station management's attention. That's when news began to make money. And of course, when news begins to make money, then a whole series of different programming decisions start to come into effect. You start to have the entertainment section interested in getting a piece of news time, because it's really hard to keep the line separate between news--journalistic objectivity and seriousness--and letting entertainment seep into it in an effort to build an audience. Unfortunately, in many areas across the country, at many stations and many broadcast entities, from networks to local stations, that line is being blurred in the drive for ratings. You see more and more--far more--entertainment creeping into television news than ever before, including our station. It's just a matter of "If you don't do it you don't compete." So as television news, instead of a loss leader, started to become a revenue producer, things changed dramatically. Then during a couple of the conventions we had these tremendous ratings battles between Walter Cronkite with CBS and [Chet] Huntley and [David] Brinkley with NBC [National Broadcasting Company]--who were the first coanchors, by the way. By the way, a lot of people don't know why-- The coanchor concept didn't start because they wanted more than one person, it started because David Brinkley was covering matters in Washington [D.C.] and Chet Huntley was covering matters from the network's perspective--world matters--in New York. So they had to throw back and forth, because that's the only signal they had of when one had finished talking and the other was supposed to start.

WHITE: I see. That created this sort of coanchor phenomenon.

McCORMICK: Yes. And they got big ratings covering, I think, the 1960 [Democratic National] Convention--which was held here in L.A., Cronkite on CBS and Huntley and Brinkley on NBC. There was a battle month after month, year after year, between those two for ratings supremacy. But television news started to make a lot of money, a lot of money, because it generated big ratings. And as technology improved, television news-- Because there wasn't always something compelling going on, not always something like the Kennedy assassination or something like it, or always a big political convention. But as technology improved and television news-- Well, let me back up and take it first. When management in broadcasting began to see that there was potential revenue in news, big money, they started to devote more money to the budgets of television news departments. As television news departments' budgets grew they were able to purchase better and better technology, which meant they were better able to cover more and more stories and bring you more immediate results. Back then you didn't get results as immediately as you do today. You get it right now with satellite dishes and all that. But then the film had to be flown. Eventually you would see something you hadn't seen before, the vast public. So as the budgets grew, the ability to cover more stories on a more widespread basis developed. And the audience for television news just blossomed, just grew and grew and grew, and that meant that its revenue grew and grew and grew until at one time the three major networks at that time, ABC [American Broadcasting Company], CBS, and NBC, had huge news departments and had foreign correspondents all over the world. And then, of course, the better you're able to cover more things in wider-ranging places, the more interesting your newscasts become, because there's more to see. So one feeds on the other and keeps feeding on the other. The better you're able to bring the news, the bigger your audience is going to get, and the bigger your budget's going to get. Of course, that doesn't go on into infinity; there is a limit somewhere. And many stations have probably maxed out that limit, although we still get huge audiences now when there's any kind of major news story--huge audiences. So that's the way that kind of went. It was one step in the evolutionary process following another until television news became a big moneymaker, which brought about the need to decide how to keep it under control, how to keep it from becoming entertainment.

WHITE: That's interesting. A moment ago you mentioned a convention. Which convention are you referring to?

McCORMICK: The 1960 Democratic convention here in Los Angeles.

WHITE: Oh, that convention.

McCORMICK: In which John F. Kennedy won the nomination for the Democratic Party.

WHITE: Right. Okay. The Democratic convention. I didn't know if you were referring to a convention associated with the industry, the broadcast industry.

McCORMICK: No, no. No. It was the Democratic National Convention.

WHITE: Okay. Do you have a feeling that something significant is going to change in terms of the amount of so-called entertainment news that we are exposed to these days? Do you see a shift in that occurring?

McCORMICK: Yeah. And in some ways it's a disturbing shift. Now, people may say this is generational, that I'm speaking the old, idealistic school where there was journalistic objectivity, where you only put entertainment stories in your newscast if it was something newsworthy--if a movie star was killed or indicted or something like that--but as competition has increased among television broadcast news, among the competitors themselves, and the newer elements like the tabloid shows-- The tabloid shows have really come in and become such a competitive factor to us, because instead of just being strictly wild, off-the-wall stories, they now have started to incorporate little bits of real news. So the line is further blurred between us and them. They freely admit that they are entertainment programs with some news. We try to sustain the notion that we are news programs with some entertainment. But as we contain more and more entertainment and they contain more and more news, it almost becomes indistinguishable to the public. So the public may look at Access Hollywood or some of the other tabloid shows as news programs. I'm sure they do. They lump us all in that one thing and say, "You people in the 'media'--" It's so frustrating trying to explain, "Don't lump us with all those other things. We're serious." But they think of everybody [as being] in the "media." So it's become of concern not just to me but a lot of people, particularly those who have been in the business a long time. But generally speaking, anybody who thinks about what television journalism should be has to be concerned about the blurring of those lines and has to wonder how much longer broadcast journalism as we know it can succeed and can survive.

WHITE: That's an interesting question, something to certainly keep our eyes on in the future, see the direction that it takes. This is sort of the flow of information once again at KTLA. I'm interested if in fact you're ever involved in the decision-making process at the station in terms of what stories should be covered.

McCORMICK: I've been involved not in an official capacity but more or less, you might say, in an advisory capacity. I've been asked by any number of our news directors--and I've been there through a few of them!--to please offer my advice and counsel, particularly as regards stories of importance to--related to, about--the African American community, its leaders, its customs, its holidays, things that are of importance to the African American community, because they know I know that community very well. But then not exclusively the African American community. My years of experience in the industry have caused them to seek my advice on a number of occasions about general broadcast policy of the station, of the news department, and things of that nature. But never in an official capacity. I've never held an official office at KTLA. [laughs] That probably is as much to my liking as not. I have been in broadcast journalism [management] before, as you know from previous interviews. I did not like it, because it inevitably becomes somewhat bureaucratic. You've got a staff and you've got meetings and you've got goals, whether they're important or not. So you have all of this claptrap heaped into your life.

WHITE: Claptrap!

McCORMICK: I didn't need that, and I have not sought that in broadcast journalism-- I mean in television I have not sought that.

WHITE: Okay. Speaking of something that you just said, I know that there is oftentimes a tendency to assume that one knows more about one particular community than the other. And of course your experience and expertise runs the gamut. But I would imagine that there is a certain expectation within your industry and then at KTLA that you would probably be more abreast of issues that are happening, say, in the African American community. So I'm curious as to what extent or-- What is your sense of the importance of race as it relates to the decision-making process at the station?

McCORMICK: I think there is an attitude not just at KTLA but in broadcast journalism generally, particularly, one might say, in Southern California, which has such a diverse ethnic makeup, there is a great awareness of the importance of not ignoring or trying not to ignore and certainly not belittle any segment of the population, whatever the ethnic group is. I noticed more recently, particularly this year, more stations-- Now, traditionally we have a lot of stories, obviously, about the Hispanic community in Los Angeles, about the African American community, about the general population in Southern California, about the Jewish population. But you might have noticed recently that, I think, more stations did more stories than ever before on Ramadan. Now, a good deal of that may have had to do with the conflicts between the United States and Iraq, but I saw a much more general awareness. More stations voluntarily, through their own enterprise, went out and did stories about Ramadan as though they suddenly discovered this is something important that out of fairness we should do. I see that more and more, and that sensitivity can become very important when you have such a diverse population. I think you're almost compelled to pay attention to all those ethnic groups.

WHITE: Excellent. I hope to see that continuing.

McCORMICK: I think that every station feels that--the ones that have wise leadership--you can't be a player in this market unless you do that.

WHITE: That's for sure, not in this city, particularly. I remember reading in your literature, in an article in the Southwest newspaper--it was in October of 1971; so it's quite old at this point--where you stated that "Color was more important originally when everybody wanted blacks on the air after the success of Bill Cosby in the hit show I Spy," and that you believe "A man's color is overshadowed by his ability to produce. This is especially true in electronic media, where even the greatest personalities and the nicest people are replaced because they fail to receive high audience ratings." To what extent do you feel this issue has affected your mobility at KTLA?

McCORMICK: I think it's been affected. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I've always felt that I had the ability, have the ability, to be--well, I guess I am one of the chief news anchors--one of the top anchors in the morning or somewhere along the line. I think I only received a brief opportunity to do that, as I explained before, back in 1971, when I was made coanchor with Barney Morris. But that's really the only opportunity I've had to be the major anchor at KTLA in the entire time I've been there. But I think that still holds true, yes.

WHITE: In the broadcast industry it has been often compared to professional sports in that blacks often suffer from what is considered a split image. In this case some people [are] perceived as good enough to be seen in front and on camera but not necessarily trusted to do the thinking and hold the reins of power. What's your opinion on this situation? Do you feel that there are any truths to that?

McCORMICK: I think that's still in many cases pretty much true. There still are not that many-- I think this applies not only to broadcasting but to the print media too. In major newspapers you see stories all the time about how few African Americans or minorities there are on editorial staffs or in making editorial decisions. I think there are not that many African Americans in positions of power at any of the broadcast entities, certainly not nearly anywhere close to their percentage of the population, which is about 12 percent now. That's about where it's been for a long time. Probably 1 to 2 percent in newspapers and maybe not more than that in television in decisionmaking, power positions--general manager, station manager, news director. Not very many at all. I don't think that's changed significantly yet. There are still not powers behind there. There are lots of other things that have changed behind the scenes. You see more black writers, more black cameramen and women, more black technicians, but when you go to the executive offices, you still don't see many African Americans.

WHITE: It's interesting. I was doing some research and just noticed in an article, it talked a bit about this issue and that something that happened quite some time ago, after the [1963] march on Washington [D.C.], was that newspapers, radio, and TV were encouraged to hire more African American journalists, for example, at the request of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which was, of course, a federal investigative panel appointed by President Lyndon [B.] Johnson, which later became known as the Kerner Commission. In the report, the media was criticized for failing to analyze and report adequately on racial problems in the U.S. and for failing to meet blacks' legitimate expectations of journalism and for failing to bring more African Americans into the profession. The media treated African Americans, they felt, as invisible people, and the panel issued a call for change. They indicated that African Americans were central to the policy-making process. And then, also looking in the early 1990s, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Association of Broadcasters conducted systematic research on the employment and promotion of ethnic minorities in the media, and it was found that even though ethnic minorities constitute, as you indicated, approximately one quarter of the total American civilian labor force, they only constitute 11 percent of all broadcast employees as late as 1989. I know that the industry is fast changing, and it is really severely underresearched, but what is your sense of the opportunities for promotional advancements made by ethnic minorities in the past decade or so? And what do you consider to be the most important factors that contribute to the increase or the decline in the opportunities that have been made, say, from the time that this report was called for in the Kerner Commission to this report in the 1990s and then now, moving into the new millennium?

McCORMICK: I think, certainly, things have improved--if not dramatically, certainly incrementally. There are many, many more African Americans, just to name one minority group, particularly on screen, as you can see from the tremendous number of television programs featuring [more] African Americans than there used to be before. I don't think it's changed dramatically behind the scenes or in positions of decision making. There have been some African Americans who have developed such strong programs with such large audiences that they have by dint of their own popularity, by dint of their own value to the broadcast entity--whether it was a network or whatever-- been able to strongly influence who got hired behind the scenes and who didn't. Certainly that's true of Bill Cosby. When he had The Cosby Show and when he was Dr. Huxtable he made a lot of, or strongly influenced a lot of, the executive decisions there, because the producers, Marcy Carsey and those people, were friends. And if he said, "This is the way I want it done," that's the way it would be done. Obviously it's true with Oprah [Winfrey]. Whatever she says is going to be done, it's going to be done on her show [The Oprah Winfrey Show]. And she has made changes. She was criticized initially because somebody said that so few of her staff members were African Americans. And she explained--and I think rightly so-- that you can't do anything, you can't help anybody, if you don't have a successful show. So the first thing you have to do is get the best people to ensure the success of the show. Once it's a success, then you can begin to make changes. And she has. African American members of her staff have grown, as you know, enormously. There have been others who were in powerful positions but not as executives. Just because of the tremendous power they held as stars on the screen [they] were able to command changes or cause their perspective to become implemented in the staffing of the show. There have not been very many African Americans in those executive suites at television networks or in the movies. I don't think even to this day that's changed dramatically. And until that changes you're not going to see those numbers increase appreciably, because there have to be people in the decision-making positions. Company policy-- This has gone through so many terms now. [mutual laughter] It was "affirmative action." Now everybody's got a "diversity program." Progress will come to the same degree that people at the top in decision-making positions see diversity as being important. It has to come from the top. Somebody has to say, "This is the way it's going to be." Because there's always going to be resistance, and there are always going to be people who say that they were denied opportunities because they were trying to promote minorities. But whoever is at the top is going to have to have the conviction, is going to have to have the commitment to diversity and follow through on it and see that it's followed right on down through the ranks vertically. Not many people have been willing to do that. We've not had that very many highly placed executives--Dennis Hightower with [the Walt] Disney [Company], with a short tenure there as one of the top executives, and a few others. One with CBS, who was here in Los Angeles for a while. I'm trying to think of his name-- Jonathan--I'll think of it and I'll get back to you--who is now one of the top people. Then he became one of the top people with the CBS network in Chicago. Now I think he's the station manager of WBBM, their station in Chicago.

WHITE: That's interesting to hear your perspective about some of the reasons why some of these changes may possibly take place in the future, because I was actually thinking of asking you if you feel that profits can be better maximized by employing more ethnic minorities, primarily because industry leaders and advertisers now recognize ethnic [minority] groups--Hispanics and African Americans--as a formidable consumer force with size, money, and definite likes and dislikes. They are now a desirable demographic block, and they are now courted by a number of networks and stations. So I'm hoping that in the future that plays some part in the decision making and the roles that different ethnic groups actually play in this industry.

McCORMICK: That's a strange animal, because we are looking at two different things here. Of course, advertisers recognize that members of minority groups make up large, very large, and very potent economic blocks, consumer blocks, that they cannot ignore. So they don't. Well, the way you influence those numbers is by what you put on the screen, but those numbers don't have to be influenced in any way by who's behind the scenes, by who's in the executive suites, by who are the technicians. When broadcast entities recognize and try to appeal to those large consumer groups in the ethnic blocks, somebody has to point it out, has to say it: "Yeah, all right. You've got all these shows featuring--" Well, in L.A. there are Spanish language stations which have huge audiences, but you've got all these people that you're showing on TV in order to make them feel included as viewers so they will also be included as consumers. Somebody has to point out that the job is not being done behind the scenes so that through a ripple effect it gets behind the scenes. That's the only way it happens. Because what's happening behind the scenes can be hidden. How many times do you see a cameraman? You never see a cameraman. At channel 5, though, on some nights-- We have three camera operators on our news. On some nights all three cameramen-- Many, many nights all three cameramen have been African American. Many, many nights on my broadcast--people may not believe this--all three camera operators have been women.

WHITE: That's interesting.

McCORMICK: I think this probably happens with equal frequency at other TV stations. But those are the people you don't see. So that has to be called to the public's attention. Management can fudge on the numbers of people in the executive suites, because who's going to come in with a camera and go down counting heads? So you can hide that, and management in the past has often tried to hide that. I don't know many stations--maybe not many organizations--for which this piece of information is not directly related to their reason for existence. But many organizations on applications for employment, on employment lists, don't list the race of people behind the scenes.

WHITE: That's true.

McCORMICK: And they used to do that. So you can't keep a count anymore. Somebody within the organization has to contact somebody outside the organization and say, "Hey, we don't have any black writers" or "We don't have any Latino camera operators." Or somebody has to contact the Radio-Television News Directors Association and say, "Hey, there are no black news directors in the whole city, in the whole market of Los Angeles," or the whole market of Chicago, the whole market of New York.

WHITE: Someone has to instigate this.

McCORMICK: You have to make it an issue, still have to make it an issue. And when you make it an issue and put it out there-- Sooner or later, if the issue is pressed people have to address it. The days when they could claim, as they did for many years, "Well, there's nobody out there who can do it," [mutual laughter] those are long gone.

WHITE: Long gone.

McCORMICK: That's the lamest excuse in the world now. They used to say there were no blacks who could anchor, no blacks who could do sports, no blacks who could do weather.

WHITE: Practice law.

McCORMICK: Practice law, be doctors, be people like Keith [L.] Black, who used to be at UCLA. He's at Cedars[-Sinai Medical Center] now, one of the most brilliant neurosurgeons in the world, brain surgeon. [African Americans] couldn't do that, couldn't fly planes. [mutual laughter] But the fact that they all think of-- "We can't find any who can do that" is gone.

WHITE: Those days are long gone. It's just a matter of looking, and not very far, actually. So in terms of the recognition and mobility of the ethnic minority groups at KTLA or just in general, how are promotions generally handled at the station? Is there a connection with the Nielsen [Media Research] ratings? Or does that just apply to the anchor person or--?

McCORMICK: It plays out in different ways at different stations, and in a broad manner of speaking it plays out the same way at every station. Promotions are one of those nebulous things. And first we would have to define what you mean by promotion, or what the terms of definition are. If you mean by promotion going from a part-time general assignment reporter to an anchorperson, that kind of promotion probably does not happen very often. General assignment reporters in many, many cases remain general assignment reporters for the entirety of their careers. They may get to host some kind of offshoot of the broadcast news department--a public affairs program or something like that-- But for better or for worse, there are established now--I'm not sure "ranking"; I guess "pecking order" could be considered-- The anchor position is kind of considered the top position among the on-air news people. And it probably is the aspiration of many general assignment reporters to one day be anchors, looking at that as a step up, as a promotion. But a lot of general assignment reporters don't want to be anchors. They don't see that as a promotion. They would rather do what they do and be out there among them in the streets. And being out there as a general assignment, or "field reporter" as some people call it, is really one of the best ways to garner awards, one of the best ways to gather materials for a book, because you're out there living the story, and we anchors are just kind of doing it subliminally. We're just the messenger that's delivering [the field reporter's] story to the viewer. So being an anchor, you really do miss out on the nuts-and-bolts coverage of the news, being out there with your fingers in the dirt. And I think many news anchors kind of miss that. And that's why you see some of the network anchors, particularly when there are huge stories, whether it's in London or Rome or Warsaw or Havana, the Dan Rathers and the Peter Jennings and the Tom Brokaws, they want to be there. They want to be out there. They want to be in it. They don't want to just read it.

WHITE: Right. On the cutting edge there.

McCORMICK: So I don't know, Renee, whether there is any such thing as ranking in a news department. For example, where general assignment reporters are concerned, you have some with infinitely more experience than others. At our station, for example, Stan Chambers, fifty years' experience. Fifty years! Whereas some of our newer reporters, a year or two years. Well, no, I take that back. By the time you get to L.A. you've got to have more than two years' experience. This is a tough market, and you're up against a lot of veterans. So you have to have had five, six, seven years experience in some markets, some major markets, before you get to L.A. and you get to do your stuff here. So you have that separation that's brought about by seniority and experience. But all that means is that some reporters will be assigned to cover more important or more difficult stories than others will be. It also depends, when you're a field reporter, a general assignment reporter-- Why don't I just use "field reporter," because that's simple. We'll just deal with one term. Field reporters also have to be pretty good writers, pretty good journalists, because you're composing a story, and you have to be creative in the use of the language with which you cover that story and you tell that story. One of the best to come along at KTLA in quite a while, for being able to get out and assemble the facts and gather the facts and then telling the story effectively, using good language and descriptive language, is Walter Richards, one of our African American reporters. He's very, very good at that. He's a good wordsmith. Ron Olsen does a good job at that. Eric Spillman is excellent at that. He's one of the morning field reporters. Not all field reporters have that. A lot have the ability just to get out and tell you, "This is what happened. There was a shooting here tonight. The police have no suspects in custody. They believe it may be gang related. The investigation will be ongoing. This is Joe Smith reporting from Gardena. Now back to you." I won't say anybody can do that, because it's not easy organizing those facts in your mind and spilling them out in a smooth, flowing manner. But using more and more colorful words and almost parables to explain what happened, a few reporters do that very, very well, and Walter is one of them.

WHITE: And those are the kinds of characteristics that would propel one to be promoted?

McCORMICK: That's right. Those are the characteristics that get noticed by news executives who may be in a position to offer you better and better and better opportunities. Frequently those are the people whom you see ending up with the plum network jobs, whether they are general assignment reporters for the networks or whether they are special reporters--specialists in law or agriculture or history, government, political science, the people who can be more compelling and make a story more interesting than his or her competitors.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: It gets back to that.

WHITE: Exactly. Always back to that.

McCORMICK: You've got to beat the competition.

WHITE: Have to beat out the competition. That's for sure. Okay. We've talked a little bit about the changes in the ethnic minorities in the industries. I'm interested in another minority, women. To what extent do you feel the field has opened up in terms of executive positions for women?

McCORMICK: I would say it's opened up. I would say the field has opened up to executive positions for women to a far greater extent than it has for minorities-- Hispanics or African Americans. We have had women in the one or two position at KTLA for a number of years now. The number-two person at the station currently is Pam Pierson, who is the station manager. We have had here in Los Angeles female news directors, particularly at [KCAL] channel 9, for many, many years. We've had female anchors, obviously, for a long, long time. We at channel 5 have a number of female on-air directors, on-air technical directors, on-air graphics illustrators, on-air video editors. Generally in the business I would say females have done far better than minorities in cracking through that glass ceiling.

WHITE: Well, tell me, you and your colleagues, are you part of a union?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: And what union is that?

McCORMICK: It's AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. I belong, actually, to two, because for a number of years, as you know, I was doing a lot of acting. So I also belong to SAG, the Screen Actors Guild. AFTRA is my parent union.

WHITE: What role has the union played in your career? Or has there been any interference between the union and the way in which news is covered?

McCORMICK: No, I'd say AFTRA has been pretty much what you would expect a labor union to be. It has tried to see, first of all, to the economic well-being of its members, to see that we were paid fair wages, competitive wages, wages that were commensurate with the size and wealth of this market, wages that are commensurate with the size and income of the station that you work for. Every television station in the Los Angeles market has a different agreement with AFTRA, because some generate more revenue than others, some have stronger signals than others. So it's not as though every field reporter in L.A. gets paid the same thing. The top anchors for every station don't get paid the same thing. So it depends on those factors, the revenue that's generated by the individual station you work for. Also AFTRA, like any labor union, has tried to see that its membership got the best fringe benefits--health plans, vacation, sick leave, maternity leave, all of the things that you would normally expect a union to do, except this time it's representing people who are on the air. By the way, that includes both radio and television.

WHITE: All right. Excellent. I was just noticing in some of my research that by the end of the 1980s black radio, for example, in the U.S. had reached a new plateau, and for the first time in its history there were both network and chain operators controlled by African American broadcasters. And there now exists sort of a national advocacy organization, the National Black Media Coalition, which coordinates an ongoing struggle against discrimination in radio employment and in ownership. Does an organization exist such as that for broadcasters? Or would that in fact be AFTRA?

McCORMICK: No. I think you probably would be talking with regard to issues that particularly affect African Americans. That would be NABJ, the National Association of Black Journalists, which is headquartered in [Washington] D.C. There is a strong Los Angeles chapter [Black Journalists Association of Southern California], which is an affiliate of NABJ. But NABJ is the organization we look to now to deal with those issues. And NABJ deals with issues having to do not only with black broadcast journalism but print journalism too. They are the ones who are very active in trying to keep tabs on the number of blacks who are in editorial positions with the nation's major newspapers, or writing positions, who go to bat for African American writers or columnists or reporters--not for TV stations so much but for newspapers, for print publications, for the major magazines--who are treated unfairly, whom they feel are treated unfairly or whose cases have been brought to them. But they more than AFTRA, particularly where matters of ethnicity are concerned. Although AFTRA, I should say very clearly and give them credit for it, has had improvement of opportunities for minorities very close to the top of its agenda for twenty-five years now. They have committees on ethnicity and committees on minorities in broadcasting who do ongoing research and make ongoing efforts. The thing about the AFTRA committees on minorities in broadcasting and minorities in news is that a lot of their members, being active AFTRA members, have the inside scoop. I know how many African Americans I see in the newsroom as writers or whatever. So these are people who have inside information. They can go back and tell the AFTRA committee, "This station is doing a lousy job" or "This station has got no minorities in decision-making positions," and AFTRA can take that information and pursue some discussion with station management. A lot of progress has been made by AFTRA over the years because of that. But NABJ's agenda, obviously, is much more specific and much narrower.

WHITE: Of course. They deal more specifically with those kinds of issues. Okay. I wanted to go back and revisit an area of interest. I had noticed in your appointment book, in doing the research, that you had a meeting at a certain point in time. It was in 1976, the latter part of the seventies, with, I believe it was-- The spelling was a little bit difficult to ascertain, but it was regarding, it said, ABC, CBS, NBC appointments. I'm wondering if these meetings were concerning possible employment opportunities at the other stations.

McCORMICK: In 1976?

WHITE: In the late seventies.

McCORMICK: I'm trying to think what that was.

WHITE: Was that ever an issue for you?

McCORMICK: No, I--

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 20, 1999

WHITE: We were just talking about a notation in your appointment book of a possible meeting with a Mr. or Mrs. A. Brewer.

McCORMICK: The name A. Brewer doesn't ring a bell. It might have been somebody who was an executive at that time, but I'm fairly sure--because I never made appointments to go around to stations seeking employment at that time--that that has to do with what we proposed to be a black soap opera that my stepson [Alvin C. Bowens Jr.] and I coauthored. We called it In Our Time. We formed what we called our little production company. He's Anita [Daniels McCormick]'s son by her first marriage, my stepson, but we were very, very--still are--extremely close. So we formed a production company using portions of both our names. His name is Alvin Bowens and mine Larry McCormick, of course, so we formed a production company called Bowmac. We were trying to sell a notion that was, we thought, a very well conceived soap opera which-- I won't call it a black soap opera, but the principals of the soap opera were African American. Of course, there were many other ethnic groups in their lives. We thought it was a very good idea and timely. We thought we had some information about the size and the importance of the black television viewers as consumers of the products that they push on soaps. We had information, as a matter of fact, that African American consumers bought most of those products in numbers disproportionate to their percentage of the population--the soaps and the margarines and the creams and lotions and all that stuff they sold. We had figures from a fellow named Leroy Jeffries, who's deceased now, but who used to put out a publication every year called Facts about Blacks. And he, in his research from the [U.S.] Census Bureau and other sources, used to just list all of the products that blacks bought in disproportionate numbers to their percentage of the population--I mean vastly disproportionate. Wheaties, cold cereals, they bought 25 percent more than other consumers.

WHITE: How long did this publication last? Do you have an idea?

McCORMICK: Leroy I think died in about 1987 or '88. He was in advertising, had an office over on Wilshire [Boulevard]. He did that for years. Before that he was in advertising for the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago. He was their L.A. guy. And he was a good friend. I knew Leroy very well. He used to send me this every year. So armed with these facts and figures we were going to take this proposal-- And we probably were not that sophisticated at making programming pitches. I was on camera; he was a video editor. That's a whole other specialty, pushing program ideas to network executives. We took it to representatives of each network, the ones that we could gain access to, without any success. In fact, we were told by a spokesperson for one network--I won't say which one, and obviously I'm not going to say who the person was--that "We really don't need to do this, you know. If we want to attract more black viewers we'll just blacken up our shows." In other words, just add more black characters. Obviously they've done that, if you watch soap operas. That's exactly what they did. But we knew they couldn't keep ignoring those demographic figures on what consumers were doing for very long. They couldn't ignore it.

WHITE: That's interesting, though. So basically you guys did what you were suggesting earlier in our interviews. Basically you made an issue of it, and the issue was addressed in some respects.

McCORMICK: In some respects. We were pioneers. We would talk about that. We still talk about it. In fact, I still have five or six of the scripts closeted away upstairs somewhere.

WHITE: It was certainly an excellent idea.

McCORMICK: I think it was. I think we hit on something that was timely, and given different circumstances we might have had a go at something that could have been huge. We were, I guess, just a little ahead of our time. Although I wouldn't be at all surprised if there weren't African Americans or others in some other cities or maybe small towns across the country who also thought at the same time that it was a good idea. We were satisfied with the fact we followed through on it. We did the best we could with what we knew, and we bumped up against a stone wall, but we gave it a shot. I'm fairly sure that's what those dates are.

WHITE: That's interesting, very interesting. What I was going to say is that you guys did instigate some change, though. I imagine it was food for thought for the production companies, for the producers, the people who can green-light those sorts of projects. So you gave them something to think about. Who knows if that wasn't the momentum that was needed to incorporate or help to diversify some of the soap operas, a lot of the soap operas.

McCORMICK: It might have at least gotten people thinking about it. Especially Leroy's Facts about Blacks. You can't look at those facts without at least doing some research first to see if they're true. And if you see that they're true, how can you possibly ignore that audience? Because if you ignore it and you're on one network, the other network is going to say, "I'm going after that audience, because their money is green."

WHITE: Exactly. Just what we were saying earlier: to be effective--

McCORMICK: It's competition.

WHITE: Uh-huh. Certain ethnic groups or what have you being attractive to advertisers because of their influence.

McCORMICK: Well, I will say this to you, too, Renee: by now the African American consumer--and in many quarters, especially in this part of the country, the Hispanic consumer--we have been researched to death by this time. It used to be people really didn't know much about us. We were like [Ralph] Ellison says with Invisible Man. But now we are researched to pieces. They probably know more about us than even we care to know. [mutual laughter] But it's basically because of consumerism. They cannot look at the incredible amounts of money that-- Particularly what African Americans and Hispanic Americans together spend is an enormous amount of money every year, billions and billions of dollars. And considering that those two minority groups, just those two, make up one quarter of the population--they make up 13 percent, we make up 12 percent--nobody in the world can overlook that.

WHITE: Yeah. It would be a huge mistake.

McCORMICK: An enormous mistake.

WHITE: Okay. That's very interesting. Thank you for clarifying that. I found that very interesting. I thought perhaps that they were pursuing you, not that you were out looking for employment. Because I know that you were having a great deal of success and continued to have it at KTLA. So I thought perhaps you were being pursued by some of those stations.

McCORMICK: No. I was at one time by a couple of the other stations, actually by three of the other stations. A couple I turned down, to my regret, because the people they ultimately selected went on to have some really, really fine experiences. I'll have to tell you about that sometime off microphone. [laughs]

WHITE: Okay. Well, your success, again, continued at KTLA. We're kind of moving into the late eighties, moving into the nineties. And in March, I think, of 1989, KTLA launched a news series, Making It! Minority Success Stories, which I understand examines the issues that impacted the development of small minorityowned businesses in the greater Los Angeles area, and it profiled success stories of minority entrepreneurs and the private sector's support of minority businesses. Can you tell me how the original idea for this particular program was conceived?

McCORMICK: Yes. One guy is responsible for conception, production, everything, of this television show, and he's a good friend for whom I have tremendous admiration. He's a brother named Nelson Davis. Nelson was born in the southern United States but was raised mostly in the Toronto, Canada, area, so he has an interesting perspective on everything about America. He was a disc jockey in Canada, a very popular disc jockey in that part of Canada [and] the United States. In 1989 Nelson--his company Nelson Davis Productions produces Making It! Minority Success Stories--asked me if I'd have lunch with him, and we did at Marie Callender's [Restaurant and Bakery] up on Wilshire. He told me about this idea he had, and I thought, "That is terrific. Not only is it terrific, but KTLA and Los Angeles need something positive about African Americans and about Latinos and women." Because so much of the news at that time--and I was involved in the news--was all about negative things about African Americans. News at that time--not just KTLA but news generally--only covered African Americans as a problem people. The only time you saw us on TV was when there was a problem--a riot, a confrontation, or something like that. And [they] didn't even think about covering the positive aspects of the community. So I saw this as a wonderful program to counteract all of the negatives that were in television news and in television generally, and I thought I wanted to be a part of that. I commended Nelson for coming up with the idea. I thought the concept was a good one, and I was glad to-- I started to be a part of it. It's hard to imagine now: This coming June 1999 we're going to celebrate our ten-year anniversary. It's impossible for me to believe that ten years have gone by--almost four hundred shows.

WHITE: Wow. That's excellent.

McCORMICK: It is. So it's Nelson Davis who's to be commended for the entirety of that. And I'm glad I've been along for the ride--and for more than the ride, for some involvement. Because in the early years, the first four or five years of making it, I not only co-hosted the show itself but I went out and did many of the field reports.

WHITE: Oh, did you really?

McCORMICK: That just got to be a little too much, because it involved getting up at six thirty or seven o' clock in the morning, spending all day in the field, and then doing the news at night. If I had been twenty-five years old I probably could have done it, but I was getting to the age where that was taking a toll on me. But really, really, it's one of the happiest things that I've really enjoyed being involved in at KTLA, because I think it has great value. It's also one of the few so-called public affairs programs I know that is fully sponsored by big-time sponsors. We're talking ARCO [Atlantic Richfield Company] and [Walt] Disney [Company].

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: Yes. Most public affairs programs don't have those kinds of heavyweight sponsors. So Nelson has done a tremendous job and a remarkable job in getting sponsorship for a show like that. A good deal of it has had to do with presenting these companies, these big corporations, with the opportunity to pat themselves on the back for their diversity programs. But a lot of it has to do with minority- and women-owned businesses which have subcontracted with these huge corporations.

WHITE: That's so true.

McCORMICK: It's true. It also does foster the notion--and it's good PR [public relations] for these big corporations--that they are interested in working for diversity, that they are interested in giving something back to the consumers who generate such profit for them. And it provides for people in the community the inspiration, I think, to know that anybody who really gives it a good shot can make it in business, because we don't always--in fact, not nearly always do we--just have stories that pat the big corporations on the back for continuing to believe in diversity and being committed to it. But we also have many, many stories which have nothing to do with them. They're just remarkable stories of how one man or woman decided they wanted to go into business after many failures, after working years as somebody else's employee. They went into business. They borrowed $5,000 from their brother or their uncle, and now they've got 350, you know, and they're generating $30 million a year. We have an abundance of those kinds of stories. So it's uplifting. It's inspiring. I'm sure Nelson-- I get many, many letters and am constantly told when I'm out in the public how important that program is, how inspirational it is to a lot of people. It's also been a learning experience for me. Had it not been for my involvement in this program I would not have known that the greater Los Angeles area is a hotbed of entrepreneurship. It is the most important area for entrepreneurship in the entire United States of America. There are more minority and women and Caucasian entrepreneurs in greater Los Angeles than in anyplace else in the United States. This is the center of entrepreneurship. I learned about that. I also learned--and I've been fairly active in the community; I think I know a lot about it--about African Americans in the community who have built successful businesses, people I'd never heard of, I'd never met. Nelson, through his and his staff's research-- At first he depended on me considerably, because Nelson had only lived here about three or four years when the show first started. Nelson had been one of the producers on the Tonight Show at NBC with Johnny Carson. He's had a lot of good experience. He's a good producer. He knows what he's doing. So he depended on me at the outset to point out examples that I knew of successful black businesspeople. But then, as time went along and his staff got more and more into the research-- And if you have a good product on television, as time goes along you get information from all kinds of sources. People feed you ideas. "Why don't you have this person on?" He probably has enough suggestions to last for five more years.

WHITE: Is that so? Of course, now that people know about the program. It has become sort of a staple after being on the air for ten years. People are anxious-- Sort of like the resources that are presented to you for your "Health and Fitness Report."

McCORMICK: Information comes to you from everywhere. So now Nelson and Sonya Alvarado, one of his chief producers-- Now all the staff has to do is weed out which stories are really good and which ones are not. That's not easy, and it's timeconsuming. It takes some time. You take some chances. We've had some glowing stories of people who have ultimately--like in the first one or two years--either failed or the business went under or their business was strongly dependent, say, on a defense contractor and that got cut. We had one guy who was an Asian businessman who had really a tremendous success story who turned out to be one of the guys some politicians accused of funneling money to the Democratic Party. He was big in the news. [mutual laughter] We said, "Well, one of our alumni, they're talking about him all over [Washington] D.C." But he's still successful. I don't think he's going to-- No permanent damage is going to be done. He was just playing the political game that he thought you played in this country. So we had a wide range of stories, and it's been uplifting to do those good, happy, inspiring stories as a kind of adjunct, a kind of escape, from all the stuff we do on the news.

WHITE: So Mr. Nelson and basically his staff or his producers, they have always decided which stories would be covered? Or did that responsibility shift over time?

McCORMICK: No, Nelson Davis always makes the final decision. He's aware of how compelling the stories might be. He's aware of the value they may have for the viewer--all the considerations that are to be gone over before making a decision. It's his final shot, but Nelson has always been very open to input from anybody else. I could go up to him, or somebody else at KTLA could go up to him--because the offices of his production company are on the lot there at KTLA--and say, "Hey, I've got a good story for you." He's always receptive, always. But he's a heck of a guy and a tremendous producer. And being a television producer he has a good sense of production values on the show--what looks good, what works well, how the lighting works, how everything works. He is a TV producer, but he is also a champion of entrepreneurs and has put together one hell of a concept.

WHITE: Absolutely. It's very unusual. Does his production company--? They produce other shows, I would imagine.

McCORMICK: A few.

WHITE: A few shows.

McCORMICK: Not many. He's been kind of slowly adding more and more. He did produce, and I'm not sure whether he still produces, what they call the College Bowl, which I think was sponsored by General Electric--I'm not sure--which takes place back in Washington, D.C. He exec[utive] produced that show for a number of years. It was something like Jeopardy or a super quiz that featured only the top students from traditionally black colleges. They would have four contestants on. Say they would have one from Morehouse [College] and Spelman [College] and Fisk [University] and Langston [University]. And they had an African American host--I can't remember what his name was--who was doing the questions. I know this because I've seen one of the tapes that Nelson exec produced. He would just fly back for two weeks just to exec produce the show. He wasn't involved in the nuts and bolts of putting it together, but Nelson Davis Productions did exec produce it and brought it all together in the concept for the broadcast. He's done a couple of other things too, some here in L.A. and some in other cities, but I think Making It! has been by far the most extensive and longest-running of his productions.

WHITE: That's wonderful. Do you anticipate there being some sort of celebration to honor the ten-year anniversary?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. We've already planned the ten-year show.

WHITE: Oh, is that right?

McCORMICK: I don't know what it's going to exactly consist of. But Sharon Tay, my cohost, and I--Sharon's our early, early morning anchor--have already been given notice that there will be a special ten-year celebration program.

WHITE: Okay. Excellent. Well, I look forward to seeing that. Speaking of which, you mentioned the early morning time slot. I'm wondering how that time slot was actually determined for the program. It's very early in the morning. I believe it's six o' clock on Monday morning, and one [o'clock] A.M. on--

McCORMICK: Actually at five thirty.

WHITE: Five thirty on Sunday and one o' clock on Monday?

McCORMICK: Oh, you mean for Making It!?

WHITE: For Making It!

McCORMICK: Oh, I thought you meant for the news.

WHITE: Oh, no, no, no.

McCORMICK: Public affairs programs like that always present a difficulty. Many times, as you know, they get buried at two thirty in the morning on commercial broadcast stations when hardly anybody's watching. Originally, placement of public affairs programs got pushed to the worst hours of the broadcast day and were only on because the FCC said in what it called its ascertainment reports--reports that you had to fill out when you reapplied for your license every five years or so--they had to put them on the air somewhere to make sure that they covered that base, they covered their you-know-what for license renewal. So they threw them on at two thirty in the morning or whatever. But now, in the case of Making It!, we used to come on at one o' clock on Saturday night and again at six thirty on Sunday morning. Now, there are a number of people who have said, "Well, why can't you move the program back to, say, eight o' clock or nine o' clock Sunday morning when people are getting ready to go to church and they can watch it." Well, Nelson has a consideration that unsponsored public affairs programs don't have: the better time slot you move your program into the more your sponsors have to pay for each commercial. So you don't want to get a better time slot and have it become too expensive for your sponsors to consider it in their best interest to buy into. You have to get the best time slot you can get for the rates they will pay, because they won't pay the same rates that they pay for a commercial program. If it goes to nine o' clock in the morning it probably costs $1,500 more per thirty seconds than it does at six thirty in the morning. If it's at noon on Sunday it costs you a whole lot more. If it's between six in the evening and ten [o'clock] in the evening, what is known as prime time, there is no public affairs program that will ever be in that time slot. [mutual laughter] Nobody will pay $2,000 for a thirty-second commercial. So you have to compromise and settle for the best time slot you can get for what your sponsors will, from what you know because [you've] talked to them about it, pay to be on the show.

WHITE: I see. Of course. There would have to be a great deal of negotiation taking place with the sponsors before that time slot was changed. That's interesting.

McCORMICK: And then you bump heads with another thing. Let's look at what's on at nine o' clock on Sunday morning on channel 5, and you have to ask yourself: Will the sponsors of Making It! be willing to pay the station more than whatever other program is on at nine o' clock? It's that competitive thing again. So he would have to then engage Making It! in a battle with another station to bring in more revenue, and I just don't think a public affairs program is in a position to do that. We've probably got the best slot we can get right now. At least we're not on at three o' clock in the morning.

WHITE: That's true, when people are not awake at all for the most part. And it's come on at the same time consistently for the last nine and a half or so years?

McCORMICK: Yeah.

WHITE: Okay. Now, does this program actually fulfill the FCC requirements for public service broadcasting?

McCORMICK: Partially.

WHITE: Partially. Okay.

McCORMICK: For most television stations they have to have more than one program. You are committed to have a certain number of hours of your broadcast week committed to public affairs programs. So Making It! would qualify partially toward that ascertainment, that license renewal. But we also have Pacesetters.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: Of which I was the host for the first ten years. And we have a couple of other public affairs programs that are rather more obscure and are done infrequently. You know, in a given week we might do a special program on earthquake safety or something else. So we make up that total for the whole year that the FCC requires you to have.

WHITE: In your opinion, or based on your recollection, was the program originally designed to cover stories about specifically ethnic groups? Or were women considered a minority at that time?

McCORMICK: Well, women were considered a part of-- The government had a wide range of-- Well, first there were affirmative action programs, and then affirmative action in the minds of a lot of people got to be a dirty word. Some people started to call it reverse discrimination. A lot of companies and a lot of government entities saw a great deal of resistance and probably a number of lawsuits down through the years emanating from affirmative action. And then of course we had the passage of propositions in this and other states in effect outlawing affirmative action. But if the major corporations did not want to have tremendous backlashes of their consumers against them and for competitors they had to find some means of reminding consumers that they still considered diversity in the workforce important, which is why we now have come to the term "diversity." In affirmative action days there were various government programs and propositions--I'm trying to think what was the name of it. [WMBP, women and minority-based projects] It was an acronym that they had, [a system] for measuring the number of women and minorities and the positions they had at each major corporation. And at the origin of Making It!, Nelson's ideas kind of grew out of that government concept of how each major corporation should treat its programs and affirmative action or diversity, how they should report them, how corporations should take the initiative in promoting those programs. So at the outset it did include women, and we had a number of programs in which women had been the entrepreneur. Caucasian women had been the entrepreneurs who had pioneered some one business in doing business with big corporations or pioneered some business on their own that had become enormously successful. As the years went along and we began to run into more and more problems with affirmative action-- Somehow, even though we still do refer to that particular government act, women and minority-- Nelson knows all those acronyms. We still refer to that occasionally. Some corporations still actively use that acronym in their hiring and promotion, but lately, in the last five or six years, it has been mostly minorities. Now, it's been a wide range of minorities, I'll tell you, in Southern California. It's been African Americans, and not just Mexican Americans but Columbian Americans, Brazilian Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, and then the whole gamut of [Romance]-speaking, Spanish-speaking countries. And not just Chinese Americans or Japanese Americans but Vietnamese Americans and Taiwanese Americans and Korean Americans and the whole cross section of Asian minorities. So it's been very diverse in that respect, but for some reason it's never occurred to me to ask Nelson why. I don't know why we kind of slacked off on having Caucasian women. I don't know whether that became de-emphasized because of some change he perceived in government or corporate policy or what.

WHITE: Interesting.

McCORMICK: It is interesting. I hadn't thought about that. I'll have to ask him about that.

WHITE: Okay, great. We've spoken a number of times or you've mentioned a number of times during the interviews the Hispanic population and some of the Hispanic radio stations as well as television stations, how they're gaining in influence. I'm wondering, with the increasing competition from the Latino broadcast stations, is there an increasing influence or increasing incentive for including more stories about Latinos on this program, on the Making It! Success Stories for Minorities?

McCORMICK: No, not necessarily. Nelson has a pretty evenhanded approach. He just tries to find the most compelling story. He does try to keep something of a balance. For example, I don't know whether we've ever had a single program in which all of the entrepreneurs on the program were Latino or all the entrepreneurs were African American or all the entrepreneurs were Asian American. He has been very diligent in trying to keep a balance, a representative balance of all groups and both sexes--in L.A. I should say all sexes--on the program. I think you will find on most programs a variety of people. I think the program called Making It!, a program emphasizing diversity, tries itself to be exemplary of diversity. [laughs]

WHITE: Excellent. Now, are there specific ways that you receive feedback from the community about this program? Is it via letters or phone calls or what have you?

McCORMICK: Every kind of thing you can imagine--voice mail, letters. And I'm sure Nelson-- Well, I know Nelson gets many more calls and responses than either Sharon or I do, because when somebody calls the station and asks about, "I'd like to ask Larry McCormick about that story on Making It!," well, everybody on the switchboard or on the assignment desk or the receptionist, whoever answers the phone, says, "Well, the person you want to talk to is Nelson Davis." So they know that now, but still some come through. Oh, yeah, a lot come to me. I don't know how much mail Sharon gets, but by dint of my having been there a long, long time, people know who I am. I do get a lot of response, much more of the response-- Because there isn't often, unless somebody owns a business or is interested in becoming an entrepreneur-- There really isn't much to write about. So I get much more response when I'm out in the public, when people tell me, "I really like that show"--and they say it for the same reasons that I'm glad to be a part of it--"because it buoys up my spirits. It makes me feel good. After all the negative news it makes me feel good to hear about somebody who struggled for a long time and finally made it, a big success." Or they'll say, "You know, I've been going to that store for years. I never knew it was owned by black people." There were guys that when we first did the story it stunned me, too. I would never have had any idea-- Nelson told us we were going go do this story with a guy who has the same name, by the way, as one of our field reporters, Warren Wilson, and we went to do the story-- I find out it was a black guy who owns Thomas Bros. Maps.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: At that time. I think he has sold it since then. He was the brother of the mayor of Oakland [California]. I'm sure nobody in L.A. realized that the owner of Thomas Bros. Maps was an African American. [laughs]

WHITE: Not at all.

McCORMICK: Not at all.

WHITE: I never thought or associated--

McCORMICK: I would never have thought it. See, that's one of those little things that I would never have learned without being a part of Making It!

WHITE: Sure. That really, really puts you-- You're already so very, very involved in the community, but it really puts you in touch on another level with the African American community, or the ethnic community in Los Angeles in general, and the kinds of things that are happening within that community on a very, very positive scale.

McCORMICK: It does. And one of the ways in which it really helps, Renee, is that when the African American community in Los Angeles was smaller and more concentrated in certain geographical communities it was not terribly, terribly difficult to really keep up with what was going on--what everybody was doing, who the most successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople were, and all that kind of stuff. But it's grown. Even the African American community itself now has grown so diverse, and the city is so big, and African Americans are so dispersed now that a lot of people are doing things, terrific things, that you never hear of.

WHITE: Just never have any idea.

McCORMICK: Never have any idea. But fortunately Nelson Davis and his people do such good research and such good information comes to them now from the various sources that it does afford me an opportunity to keep up with what's going on.

WHITE: Absolutely.

McCORMICK: To say, "Wow, I'm glad to know that. I never was aware that this guy had his own recording studio and that all these records were produced in his studio. I never knew that before."

WHITE: It's interesting, because one probably would not know very much about Nelson Davis, about his production company. I know it's probably a conflict of interest, but it would be nice to cover his production company on the show.

McCORMICK: Probably so. I never thought about that. That's a good idea. A lot of people are surprised when they ask me-- When they're talking about Making It! they say, "Now, should I contact the news director?" I say, "No, no, no. My boss is a brother named Nelson Davis. You call him. He's the boss."

WHITE: Yeah. That's quite unusual, actually.

McCORMICK: It is.

WHITE: Yes, it is. That would be quite an interesting story to hear about how he got started.

McCORMICK: He has an interesting background, very interesting.

WHITE: Are there other stations that you're aware of--I always want to know about the competition--that are documenting or are doing any programs that are similar to this one?

McCORMICK: I haven't seen any. There are certainly programs on other stations which emphasize events in one community or another, particularly the Latino community. I know that on channel 7 Laura Diaz and Henry Alfaro, both of whom I've known for a long time, cohost a program about the Latino community that's on, I think, every Sunday or something like that. But I don't--and I don't see everything on all the stations all the time--personally know of any other public-affairs-type programs that stations have that I could give you the name of and tell you who the host is. I'm sure they have them, but they may be on at times of the day when I'm asleep, or times of the night, and I may just not have seen them, or they may not be that compelling. They may not get promoted that much. Most public affairs programs don't get much promotion because they have to use the promotion time up for programs that generate revenue. So every station probably has something. I'm sure they do.

WHITE: But not to this extent.

McCORMICK: Not to this extent, and certainly not sponsored. Some are. I think the program that Laura and Henry Alfaro cohost may be sponsored, because they seem to- - KABC seems to spend a good deal of their resources making sure it's a good program, and they have produced promos. Most public affairs programs don't get produced promos that you see in prime time.

WHITE: That's true.

McCORMICK: Even if it's only a thirteen-, fifteen-, thirty-second promo, and these are usually ten-, fifteen-second promos, but they're well done. They look good, and they reach a large audience.

WHITE: Sure, very professional and polished. That's excellent. It's good to know that these kinds of programs are taking place, even if it is not a program that has been developed to the extent that Making It! Minority Success Stories has been, but that it is being addressed, the number of different venues. Great. Well, can you share just a few of some of the most successful stories? There is always a level of success, I'm sure, in all the stories that you've covered, but those that inspired you in a profound or perhaps personal way? Anything in particular?

McCORMICK: Particularly the earlier ones. A lot of these programs, the successful entrepreneurships, came about through government affirmative action programs or through corporate affirmative action programs, and they have been in many cases tremendous successes. But the ones--and this again may be generational--that I've always looked up to so strongly have been the ones that were started with nit and grit and no government help, and just rose to the top through sheer personal effort. I think of Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company and the three black men who founded that company and my good friend Ivan [J.] Houston, who is a son of one of the founders [Norman O. Houston]. That was a company that was born and grew from nothing. I think of Broadway Federal Savings and Loan [Association], the Hudson family, one of the most distinguished families in all of Southern California, involved with-- The old man, old "Doc"[H. Claude] Hudson, who died at 102 [years old], his son Elbert [Hudson], Elbert's son Paul [Hudson], all three--three generations who were all presidents of the L.A. NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]. Old Doc Hudson was a dentist who went back and got his law degree and became known as "Mr. Civil Rights." But they started Broadway Federal Savings and Loan and caused it to remain a community institution for all of these years with no government help, no corporate funds, just an institution that would lend money to people in the African American community who wanted to buy homes, who wanted to buy cars. Churches got loans from them to build their churches. Broadway Federal, it's one of my heros. Another one of my heros is a good friend, and you often hear stories about-- You don't often enough hear [such] stories, particularly among African Americans. A guy who started as a salesman for [radio station] KGFJ and later came back and bought the station. He was a salesman there when I was program director and one of the disc jockeys. Bill [William] Shearer came back and bought KGFJ. We did his story on Making It!, even though he has since sold the station. And other stories about guys like that. About Bill Stennis and Golden Bird [Fried] Chicken. Bill and Zelma Stennis just started from scratch in Detroit, came out here, had one little store down on Adams [Boulevard] and Normandie [Boulevard]. And even though they got hurt in the riots-- But they soon expanded to six or seven stores, and here this African American couple was competing with Colonel Sanders [Kentucky Fried Chicken] and in many parts of the city beating him with a very good product.

WHITE: That's quite an accomplishment.

McCORMICK: That is an accomplishment. So it's stories like that that I know of personally that are inspiring to me. And so many of the newer stories, a lot of them involve people who are a lot younger, with recording companies and lines of rap clothes and stuff like that whom I don't know that well. I remember the elements of the story. But it's the ones that went on to become community institutions that I find my attention riveted by. In my opinion, the test is lasting through the years, through a lot of years. There have been any number of people with whom I am familiar who have done that and who have now passed it on to a second generation. And that's really how I think ultimately wealth, whatever there will be, will evolve for our people, when successful businesses are passed from one generation to another to another to another.

WHITE: Wouldn't it be quite interesting and exciting if at some point there was a program--I don't know if it would be a good idea to be incorporated into the anniversary [show] or something like that--where there are just clips of some of these stories that you guys have covered. Because I'm sure there have just been so many, and I think, given the time that it is presented, that there are a lot of people that haven't seen them and would really and truly benefit from just seeing it, even just a recap. It would be so incredibly inspirational. It's interesting too, because the anniversary will follow Black History Month, and just looking at some of the accomplishments of African Americans, or just ethnic minorities in general, would just be so extremely, incredibly fascinating.

McCORMICK: You mean for the tenth anniversary show?

WHITE: Sure.

McCORMICK: I think that's kind of what he plans. Compared to our weekly program, which is half an hour, this, I understand, in the preliminary plans, is going to be an hour.

WHITE: Oh, good.

McCORMICK: I think part of what Nelson wants to do--it's going to mean a lot of time in the edit bay--is do a lot of these little clips. The problem becomes that each clip has to be done with at least enough time to give the viewer time to appreciate who it is and what he or she did. You can't do that with [snaps his fingers] two-second cuts. There's no time. They'll just say, "Who is that?" You can do that with a bunch of movie stars--Robert De Niro, Denzel Washington--because people see them and know their faces right away. You don't even have to have a super[imposition] saying what their name is. So you can do that kind of montage on TV with very, very famous faces, but these are not famous faces. So you have to spend a little time in some kind of very creative way describing very quickly what they did. Or just maybe put the date.

WHITE: Or just a narration.

McCORMICK: A narration.

WHITE: A narration by, maybe, yourself, describing and having--what do you call?-- the B-rolls.

McCORMICK: That might very well be one way that he will do it. That's just voice over B-rolls. There are a number of production options, and Nelson is a creative producer, so I'm sure he'll come up with something that's very interesting. Or you could have a combination of all of those. Or you could pick the twenty-five most compelling. But I think he would want to do more than that in an hour. One of the things he wants to emphasize is that in almost four hundred shows, with an average of three subjects, three businesses, per show-- What is that? Twelve hundred. So we've had twelve hundred businesses. And he says we haven't scratched the surface. So this program will go on another twenty years and still not cover one-third.

WHITE: Gee. That is just tremendous. That's really, truly a brilliant idea.

McCORMICK: It is. He's a very, very bright, sharp guy, and his concept of how to make it work-- He knows what makes people tick. He knew, for example--or he would never have even attempted this--that corporations, as intense as the competition is between them, would jump at the chance to show what they were doing in affirmative action. He knew that was the hook for them coming aboard as sponsors. And he was right. He knew that they would jump at the chance to tout the businesses that were examples of what they were doing. So a lot of those businesses became early on the guests that we had. But then a lot weren't. One of the things that was a big surprise to me when I was still doing interviews in the field was we went to interview this African American guy who designs a lot of the [Tournament of Roses Parade] floats.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: A lot of people don't know that. We went out there, and he showed us how he does it. He had a plant out in one of the suburban, industrial-type cities. It's eternally fascinating when you run into these things, just like with the guy with Thomas Bros. Maps, and you think, "I never would have thunk it." But this guy, he was showing us all the floats that he had designed that he had had in previous parades.

WHITE: My goodness. Who would have ever known, unless, of course, you have your story told on Making It!? Okay, and on that note we're going to go ahead and end our interview. We'll pick up on this dialogue during our next visit. Thank you very much.

McCORMICK: Okay.

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 27, 1999

WHITE: The last time we spoke we were talking about the very successful Making It! Minority Success Stories, a program that you do coanchor. You had shared some of the very famous success stories, or those that you felt had some particular importance, and you were just sharing some of those that brought us some insight, like the man who actually created the [Tournament of Roses Parade] floats and things that we weren't quite aware of--an African American gentleman who owned Thomas Bros. Maps and just some other stories that have been quite provocative and that have been covered on your show. I just wanted to follow up on that dialogue and ask if there was any more that you wanted to add regarding your experience with Making It! Minority Success Stories. Any additional words of wisdom?

McCORMICK: No, except, as I think I might have said before--I hope I'm not being redundant--my association with that program has afforded me the opportunity to have an altered picture (and I hope it's had this effect on our viewing audience too) of just how much minority entrepreneurship there is in Southern California. We have come to understand during the course of the program's airing and production that the greater Los Angeles area, SoCal, Southern California, is the hotbed of entrepreneurship in the entire country. There are far, far more minority entrepreneurs generally, African American entrepreneurs, that I never heard of. As the community disperses-- In greater Los Angeles, African Americans now live in so many different areas that we almost have a little local diaspora of ourselves. So a lot of these things-- When the community was more compact geographically, it was a lot easier to keep your finger on what was happening, on every segment of the community, in business and everything else, and to know who was who and what was going on. First, there are so many more success stories now--thank goodness. But they are also so spread out, it's more difficult to do- - So a program like Making It! does serve the purpose of giving you a bigger picture of just what's going on. The association with Making It! has been invaluable in any number of ways. From the personal perspective, the positive quality of the show-- You're talking about people who in many instances had to rise above trial and discomfort and disadvantage, who had to overcome failure, who kept trying and trying and trying until they became successes, either small or considerable successes and sometimes huge successes, and have gone on to do very well, who don't live lives in the public eye. You don't hear about them. You don't read about them in Jet or Ebony. You don't read about them in the Los Angeles Times, maybe not even in the Los Angeles Sentinel. But when you get to their businesses and see how well they're doing--and in some cases, when the interviews are shot at their homes and you see how well they live--you think, "There's been an enormous amount of progress made!" A good deal of that progress came about through some of the early affirmative action programs, when African Americans and other minorities finally got the opportunity to compete in the American economy in a more equitable way. That led to their success. And then, after corporations learned that they can produce just as well as anybody else--in many cases better than other people because they're hungrier- - They know they have to be good, so they deliver a better service. And corporations have become very, very comfortable in opening the doors and embracing "diversity," as they call it now. That has made for greater opportunity, despite whatever legislative actions and propositions and things have passed trying to limit those opportunities. Corporations have found it in their best interest to keep diversity alive, and that has continued to provide a lot of wonderful opportunities for those people who have the ability and the wherewithal to step forth and take advantage of them.

WHITE: That's excellent. Obviously there have been a number of people who have appreciated the success of this show. I understand that Making It! Minority Success Stories won the Emmy [Award, bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences] for best studio-based information public affair series of 1994.

McCORMICK: It's been nominated for an Emmy a number of times. We have not won as often as I personally feel Making It! should have won, and I think the primary reason was because we were lumped in categories--sometimes there are different categories--with programs against which we didn't have a chance, programs which really were based more on their entertainment value than for their public affairs value. We felt we were unfairly placed in categories where we didn't have a chance.

WHITE: What type of category would that be?

McCORMICK: Something innocuous like "special programs" or "documentaries." We were placed in categories where other stations could submit some really eyecatching things. This is not what you call an exciting, dramatic program. It's a good program, an interesting program, an uplifting program, but it does not have the entertainment qualities of some of the other programs we found ourselves categorized with. So I think that has hurt us. Nonetheless, I think the program has earned a lot of honors from those who know it and watch it and certainly those who sponsor it, and for KTLA [channel 5] too. We sense an enduring value because of the quality of the program. So it doesn't win all the awards. It wins the awards that count, and those are the viewership and the opinions of the viewership that the program generates.

WHITE: Well, it's certainly positive that it has been nominated on a number of occasions, so it is recognized as an excellent show.

McCORMICK: It's nice to have the plaudits of your peers. It's always nice. But absent that, I think the fact that we are into our tenth season now speaks to the quality of the program itself. In any city in this country, if you're on the air for ten years you're doing something right.

WHITE: That's for sure. It's a rarity. There are very few shows that one can cite that have been on for a decade.

McCORMICK: That's right. Even the big hit shows like Seinfeld and the others have seven- [or] eight-year runs and they consider that great. Seinfeld, of course he [Jerry Seinfeld] just bailed out. But the Cosby Show, seven, eight years. The only shows that have had successful runs, which are phenomenal, other than the shows that we've just mentioned and some of the hits that are on today-- Like The Jeffersons, which ran for eleven years, which was a great run. And then after that you can only talk about Gunsmoke, which was on for twenty-one years, and I Love Lucy. Those are the only other ones. Those are the two longest-running shows-- It was first Gunsmoke, and then they changed the name to the character Matt Dillon--I think it was Matt Dillon-- and then back to Gunsmoke, but altogether that show ran about twenty years on the air, which is just incredible.

WHITE: That's incredible. Extremely terrific. So you guys have certainly made--

McCORMICK: A ten-year run. That's wonderful.

WHITE: Terrific.

McCORMICK: For a local public affairs program, sponsored. That's terrific.

WHITE: Certainly something to be proud of, and something to be admired. That's great. Well, let's see now. You have covered the spectrum of positions at KTLA-- weatherperson and sports man and coanchoring, and coanchoring a public affairs show. What's next for you at the station? What would you enjoy doing there at the station? Any changes in the future?

McCORMICK: I'm not really sure about that, Renee. I haven't focused a great deal on what I want to do professionally at KTLA or wherever life may take me over the next several years. I do know for the next couple of years, at least-- This being January of 1999, for the next couple of years I'm under contract to do what I do right now. It's a three-year contract at KTLA. Towards the end of this contract, maybe in the last year, I might begin to lend more thought to what I want to do, to whether or not I want to [continue to] fill the same role at KTLA or seek another, different kind of role. I have pretty much dismissed any thought in the future of any part in the administration [of the station]. I've been in administration. I don't want a title and all that kind of stuff, and staff meetings and committee meetings-- I do that enough in my work for community organizations. But I really am not sure. I've thought from time to time that it might be interesting, given the proliferation of cable television and the number of opportunities that that presents to performers, or to "talent," as people are inclined to call those of us who appear on camera, it would be interesting to be the host of some kind of documentary like with PBS [Public Broadcasting System] or something like that. Now, the opportunity may or may not present itself; that's something over which I have no control. But if the opportunity did present itself or I did hear of some plans to produce some kind of documentary series that would be semi-long running on cable television, I would certainly be open to that and I would be interested in that. There are no such programs-- We see them all on the Discovery channel, the History channel, A&E [Arts & Entertainment Network], but there are really no such programs that really document African American life or history. Certainly some of those like Biography that do feature major African American personalities and historical figures, but none that does it on a consistent basis that's dedicated primarily to the coverage of African American heroes past and present and maybe future, African American young people who are achieving tremendous things in scholastics, in school, in academics, in business. I mean really young people, teens and twenties, showing great promise on college campuses and college leadership on college campuses. I think an everyday--I don't even know whether you'd call it a "documentary"--just a series on something like that I would be very, very much interested in hosting. The reason why I don't bank on that too much is because generally speaking, when you're going to have a program like that on nationwide cable, they usually try to get a nationally known personality, a major star. If a program like that came along, instead of a Larry McCormick--certainly I have the experience to do it--they would get a Danny Glover, because he's a known entity all around the country. So unless you're a personality who's known all around the country, your likelihood of landing something like that is not very good. Now, of course, if for whatever reason you are lucky enough to land something like that, then you become a nationally known personality. [mutual laughter] It's one of those chicken-and-egg things.

WHITE: Right. I think it's a fabulous idea, because, of course, we're moving into Black History Month, and we know that there are going to be a number of specials having to do with the African American community.

McCORMICK: And they're going to be hosted by people like Danny Glover and Alfre Woodard and people who are already nationally known. [mutual laughter] You won't see many local-- In Chicago, New York, San Francisco, there are very able local news anchors and personalities who don't get those opportunities because they're not nationally known. When people are producing programs in order to attract an audience they like to have the programs "fronted," as we call it, by somebody the whole American audience knows. So if they can get a Morgan Freeman, that's what they're going to do. And I am not one to blame them at all, because if I were producing that's the same thing I would do. But it would be nice if some opportunity like that presented itself. It might begin locally and spread nationally. But again, those are things over which you have no control. If I had the money I'd produce it myself and then hire me as the narrator or the host.

WHITE: No kidding. That's an excellent idea as well.

McCORMICK: So in brief, the answer right now is that beyond the next two years I really don't know what's going to go on in the future. There's always the possibility-- although I would not say it's a distinct possibility right now--of just retiring and saying, "Well, that's it. It was a good ride. I think I'll bail now and turn it over to somebody younger, let some younger African American come along and start to make a name for himself or herself."

WHITE: Okay. That's interesting. We'll see what the future will hold. I'm sure you'll have an array of prospects and opportunities and it will just be yours for the choosing.

McCORMICK: Yeah, well, we'll see. Hopefully. That's the best scenario, but it's one of those things where you'll just have to wait and see.

WHITE: Sure. Well, since you have had so much experience at KTLA and in the broadcast industry, I'm interested in knowing your perspective on how you feel. Overall, how has technology changed the nature of broadcasting?

McCORMICK: Technology is everything! Almost all of life today, including entertainment generally and television particularly, is driven by technology. Technology has made all the difference in the world, going back to the early days of broadcasting, when you only had a local station that could just broadcast locally until the time when they could broadcast all across the country. That was technology driven. The first networks, the ability to broadcast simultaneously to every corner of the United States, technology driven. The ability to broadcast on radio from Europe to the United States, technology. It's all been driven by technology. And of course, television, that's technology itself. Television brought about profound changes in the entire American lifestyle. When I was a very young boy growing up in Kansas City [Missouri], our family used to--my kids can't believe this-- sit around on the floor and listen to the radio and listen to those radio programs. I remember thinking there were some very warm, wonderful days, with the fireplace going on winter nights, my brother [Thomas F. McCormick] and one of my sisters and I just lying on the rug and listening to this big Philco console radio that was as big as some of the TV sets are today. A lot of it at the bottom was just to hold records. Technology, television, changed all that. And I'm not sure all of it was for the better. During those days, when we were listening to the radio programs we also talked to each other a lot more. Family members talked a lot more. Television is so demanding of your attention that-- Unless it's a football game or a boxing match or something else like that, it demands your attention so much that you don't really talk to other family members. Everybody's sitting watching and absorbed in what's going on. So that's technology. I have always said that technology was the cause of the downfall of Soviet communism, and that's because of satellites--again, technology. As long as transmission had to be by hard line, cable, or by broadcast, where it could be jammed, the Soviet leadership--same thing true of the Chinese leadership--could act as a gatekeeper and filter or determine what its citizens could or could not see. But when all you have to do is turn a satellite up to the sky, there ain't no gatekeeper, and you can no longer keep out how the rest of the world is living and how well a lot of the rest of the world is living. That is what finally, I am convinced-- When the Soviet people started to see how far behind they were and how poor their standard of living was compared to the rest of the West, I think that was the beginning of the end. I was in Moscow in 1988 when President [Ronald W.] Reagan was over visiting with [Mikhail S.] Gorbachev, and you could see the effects of cable. At that time--I don't know how they managed to do it, but they didn't manage to do it long-- foreigners in their hotel rooms could get-- And Soviet citizens were not allowed to go into tourist hotels. You couldn't bring a Russian guest into your hotel room at all. In tourist hotels everybody got CNN [Cable News Network], but Soviet citizens couldn't get CNN. Well, that changed, because they started smuggling satellite TV dishes. You couldn't keep the truth out anymore, and so came the rebellion and the downfall of the Soviet Union. Not a violent, open rebellion, but it was just that Soviet leadership themselves could no longer fool the people about how far behind they were. So Soviet leadership in the various republics as well as the people said, "Well, enough of that" and just one by one started to secede from the old Soviet Union. It really had more to do with technology than anything else. Technology will be the thing that will dictate changes right on into the future, because now you have a merging of technologies, a merging of satellite TV and computers, a merging of television and computers and of computers and television. The time will very shortly come when technology will dictate something else that we'll be spending a lot of time on. There's something that was kind of a fantasy of motion pictures not too long ago, phone vision. Now on the computer you can almost talk to somebody else in another city and see an image of them on the screen. It's not TV quality, but you can do it. And it won't take very long before the technology will have that working just as smoothly as television.

WHITE: I'm sure it's probably available, just not to the everyday consumer.

McCORMICK: To the general public, yeah, yeah. So you can have a teleconference and see everybody on computer. You can do it now on TV. Technology is always pushing the envelope, and it always dictates the changes that will come about in our lives. It dictates changes in society. In many ways technology has created the ultimate form of democracy, because there is no gatekeeper. For years with radio stations, for example, the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] was the gatekeeper, the ultimate arbiter of what could or could not be said on television. The same thing was true in the early days of television. Well, we've come to an age now with the Internet where there is no gatekeeper because it's so anonymous. It's almost impossible to regulate. And that's all that gatekeepers are are regulators--who can say what, who can't, who gets to say what, and all that kind of thing. With the Internet there is absolutely no gatekeeper. Now, this brings us to the argument of how much freedom is too much freedom? How much democracy is too much? Can human beings operate civilly in a totally unregulated environment? I have some misgivings about whether that's true or not. I don't think we'd have prisons and law enforcement agencies if human beings could handle complete freedom. I think it's endemic to human nature that they cannot handle it. Most probably could in a fairly civilized way, but there are those large elements in every country, in every ethnic group, who will exploit complete freedom. So this absence of restraints as regards, for example, the Internet-- We've already seen some abuses where people can use it for pornographic reasons, they can use it for poison-pen reasons, to put in doubt the reputations of other people. Since it's so anonymous you really can do almost anything you want.

WHITE: That's for sure.

McCORMICK: And there's very little way of checking to see who did it, what the source was, or prosecuting somebody who did it. You can do it, but it would cost you a lot of money and a lot of time, a lot of effort. So now we're poised at the point where I wonder-- Though technology will obviously provide greater freedom, because you and I as African Americans have just as great an access to the Internet as anybody else. So it is a great and democratic thing in that respect. It's a great leveller. Nobody's in control, so nobody can favor anybody else. Technology is going to make it more and more like that. The question is, what is that going to result in?

WHITE: Exactly. It has its very strong points and very weak points. Definitely. It will be interesting to see what the future holds and if in fact the Internet will be more regulated.

McCORMICK: It sure will be.

WHITE: I would anticipate that. It has to be.

McCORMICK: It will be more regulated. Then there always follows the next question: Who gets to regulate it? That is the most profound question with regulation. Who gets to do the regulating?

WHITE: Exactly. Then censorship and what have you, freedom of speech and all of those things, will definitely come to the fore and have to be debated once again.

McCORMICK: Absolutely. But again, all those changes will be technology driven.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: We had a big thing at channel 5 just a few months ago about another major change in television technology. Now, I don't know how this will compete with the computer--it may not--that is HDTV, high definition television. They're claiming this is a revolutionary step in television transmission, fully the equivalent of the change from black and white to color. I had a chance to see an HDTV picture, and the difference in even a great-quality current set with analogue pictures as compared to HDTV with digital pictures is just astonishing.

WHITE: Oh really? Phenomenal.

McCORMICK: It's like sitting across the room looking at somebody, without a camera.

WHITE: Is that so?

McCORMICK: I mean, it's astonishing. So that's another piece of technology that's going to change things. Obviously satellites have changed a great many things. Twenty years ago, certainly thirty years ago, when we could get channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13, that was great. You could also get what we called UHF [ultrahigh frequency] then, a couple of other stations. Now it's not uncommon for people here in Los Angeles to be able to get 350 TV stations.

WHITE: It's so true, and then most people look at 20 or 30 of them simultaneously by just flipping the remote control. It's all-consuming.

McCORMICK: That gives rise to the next question. The technology obviously has already brought and will continue to bring infinite choice. That gives rise to a very human question of how much choice is too much choice? Three hundred fifty stations to me is too much choice. In order to justify spending the amount of money--and it's not an exorbitant amount of money--to justify paying for 300 programming sources, I would have to be a couch potato and watch TV virtually twenty-four hours a day.

WHITE: Absolutely.

McCORMICK: If not, then you're paying for a whole bunch of channels you're never going to watch.

WHITE: And that's what it's creating.

McCORMICK: It is. Couch potatoes. You figure "I'm paying for this, I'm going to watch it. If I'm not watching it, then I'm wasting it." So I wonder-- Of course, that 350 are available doesn't mean you have to buy 350, but I know a lot of people who do because of the way it's packaged. It comes in a package where if you want 300 stations it will only cost you twenty dollars more a month.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: So you get it. The advantage, of course, is that you can watch almost anything you want to watch--almost any basketball game you want to watch anywhere in the country on any given night. But I think the fare that's available now for me, at this stage in my life, is more than enough. There are TV programs on broadcast television, on the networks and the local stations-- I discover this every time there's another awards show. I say, "I've never seen that program that they're showing!" ABC [American Broadcasting Company], NBC [National Broadcasting Company], and CBS [Columbia Broadcasting Company], or Fox-- Well, I see them on the WB [Warner Bros. television network] because I'm watching our station a lot, but I'm seeing stars that I've never heard of before who are already apparently fairly well established.

WHITE: The Golden Globe awards the other night.

McCORMICK: Yeah. I said, "Who is she? What did she do? What show is--? I've never seen that show." So there's already too much choice for me.

WHITE: It's true. Given what we have already, and based on what the future brings, boy, it could get disastrous.

McCORMICK: It could. It could also make it very-- Obviously it's going to be intensely competitive. But it could also-- In the twilight of my career right now, and for my peers who are of my age and of my generation, it might be a good time. When there are so many choices it may be very, very difficult to get into and sustain careers like we have had, because there will be so many fewer people who will see you.

WHITE: Right. It's true.

McCORMICK: When the choices were so limited and you could only watch 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13, you were part of a small group, just a tiny club.

WHITE: Right, exactly. Going around the Nielsen [Media Research] ratings trying to get the highest ratings, you become much more of a commodity. But, jeez, with so many choices, as you say--

McCORMICK: You're lost in a virtual mill of actors in small, in what you might call "niche" programming, niche shows that-- Because the population of the country is so big, and the signals can be transmitted via satellite outside the borders of the United States, you're still likely to be talking to a fairly large audience, but it's going to be so hard for young people today--actors, performers, and others coming up-- There will be a lot more work because there's so much more product. There will be a lot more work for technicians too, because there's so much more product and so many more stations producing programming. But it's just hard to see how out of 500 more programs than exist now anybody is going to be able to generate a big following amongst so much competition.

WHITE: Exactly. Just like we were talking about earlier, the differences between broadcasting and narrowcasting that many of the stations have to move toward. How do you attract an audience in this day and age and maintain their attention?

McCORMICK: I think it will be increasingly difficult for any one entity to attract vast audiences. Remarkably successful programs like the Cosby Show and Seinfeld and some others that have just been huge ratings winners for years and years and years--I won't include 60 Minutes because that's a totally different kind of program-- are probably going to be fewer and fewer. The audiences will get progressively smaller for those programs, but the ones that are able to generate old-time-sized audiences will just be monsters. They'll be such unanimous successes compared with all the competition that they will have to do less well as far as audience is concerned to be a huge hit.

WHITE: Exactly. Very interesting. Speaking of broadcasting and narrowcasting-- what do you feel the impact has been of the twenty-four-hour news stations such as CNN or MSNBC [Microsoft-National Broadcasting Company] on the independent stations?

McCORMICK: A profound impact, a profound impact. First, outfits like CNN really helped independent stations in markets all across the country in their battle against the O and Os [stations owned and operated by a network] or the network-affiliated stations. Up until CNN came along, the network-affiliated stations--ABC, CBS, and NBC--always had a large advantage over the independent stations in that they had the capability of getting stories from around the world. Worldwide coverage: that was the chief advantage. That was what they could afford, the local network affiliates like the ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates in Los Angeles. They had the advantage over channels 5, 9, 11, and 13, and they had all of these network stories coming in from all around the world. CNN became our network and our source for all these worldwide stories, so [the networks] no longer had that advantage over us. Then that enabled local independent news operations to compete more effectively, because we now had the same source--and in some cases better sources--for stories outside our own local broadcast market, around the country and then around the world, as the major networks had. As a matter of fact, the major networks started cutting back their foreign bureaus because they were getting too expensive. And it didn't pay off anymore after CNN came along. So it's been a remarkable advantage. MSNBC has been an asset to the NBC-owned stations but not to the rest of us, because the rest of us don't have access to their programming unless you decide to become a signatory. And why should you? You'd have to carry NBC's logo and all that kind of stuff. Let them have it. But it's a good source for them. That's primarily been important for the NBC television network, because that effectively got them into the cable program business to compete with CNN.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: They saw that big niche there that CNN was carving out for itself get bigger every year, and they said, "We want a piece of that." So that's what it really did for them; it got them into cable news.

WHITE: Okay. Well, let's see now. In the past the typical makeup of a news team has been sort of, number one, a mature-looking, dark-haired male, and sort of a blueeyed blonde, with perhaps an African American sportscaster and perhaps a Latino weatherman. I've noticed that on a number of different stations. Do you feel as though that is sort of the consistent requirement within the stations to depict diversity? Or have times changed, in your opinion, in terms of the representations of the anchorpeople or the sportscaster or weather people there are on stations?

McCORMICK: I think you put your finger right on it. [laughs]

WHITE: Oh, really? Okay.

McCORMICK: And that's been-- As we say, to have Ken and Barbie as the coanchors. The black guy's the sportscaster because we're supposed to be good athletes, and the Latino guy's the weatherman. That, I might add, is typical of Southern California and of all the Southwest, and of Florida too, where there is a large number of Hispanics and African Americans. Well, that's been kind of the pattern. You go to other markets, like in the Midwest and in other parts of the country, and you see two guys anchoring, and maybe you'll still see a female weathercaster. In some rare cases you'll see a female sportscaster, and many of them are very good. But for Southern California that's generally the pattern. I can recall once when almost every station in Los Angeles had a black sportscaster. It was Jim Hill at [KCBS] channel 2, it was Bryant Gumbel at [KNBC] channel 4, it was me at channel 5, there was a fellow named Eddie Alexander at [KABC] channel 7, and on and on it went. It was almost-- [laughs] It became a ghettoized kind of position within the anchor team. Every sportscaster was African American. And I think all of us kind of felt that it created in the minds of the viewers the notion that sports is all we can talk about and all we can be knowledgeable about and all the public can view us as credible about, because that's what we're supposed to know. So I think a number of us--I'm fairly sure it was the case with Bryant Gumbel and myself--felt the need to get away from that, because we didn't like the impression it was creating, that sports is all we know and sports is the only area in which we have credibility. I know about world events, and I know about political science and government and a whole lot of different things in medicine. I know the whole gamut of things that any other reporter does. So I don't want to give people the impression that sports is all I know about or care about.

WHITE: Absolutely. Good for you. Break that mold.

McCORMICK: Yeah. But you really put your finger-- You're very perceptive. That definitely, generally speaking, has been the pattern here in Southern California, broken somewhat over the past several years--and this goes for the networks too-- where suddenly somebody thought, "They can be weathermen, too." I've noticed that some of the morning network programs have black weathermen, and several of the local stations now have black weathermen. But a lot of the stations still seem to have a problem finding a niche for a lead black anchor in Southern California. You've been to Washington, D.C. and Atlanta and New Orleans and Philadelphia and Detroit-- Everyplace else they're all over the place. People come here from those cities and they wonder, "Where are all the black anchors?" The only one I see is Pat Harvey. And now Marc Brown. And that's one of those things, I guess, which can only be answered by station managers in Southern California. I don't mean just in Los Angeles, but from Ventura to San Diego into Texas. It's one of those demographic things that they do seem compelled to comply with, the need for diversity. How can you not? Los Angeles is such an ethnically diverse city. In Los Angeles, if you don't embrace diversity you're swimming against the tide. You're going the wrong way. But they do seem to have these little niches that they put people in. [laughs] I don't know whether it's because they think this is where the viewing audience will find this person credible and believable and comfortable--let us not forget the comfort factor--or not. It will be interesting and be worth some kind of a study to try to determine, if you could get honest answers from management, why they put people in these niches, various ethnic groups in various niches. Since I've never operated from that position in television, I don't know what their rationale is.

WHITE: Yeah. It will be interesting to see if in the future--or no, I won't say "if," but when--that changes which stations will be the mavericks, the pioneers who will actually make some changes and shift from those sorts of established patterns.

McCORMICK: Somebody's going to do it, because the people who are now moving into the top management positions in broadcasting are children of the sixties. They're the generation-- I'm blocking on that.

WHITE: Not the baby boomers?

McCORMICK: Yeah, the baby boomers--forty, forty-five, fifty [years old]. They're moving into the power positions, into the prime positions of their leadership lives and will be for the next fifteen years or so, until they're sixty-five or so. The baby boomers were raised in a very egalitarian era, on college campuses where they helped fight for the rights of minorities. They were a totally different breed, the baby boomers. They're starting to move into those power positions now. Just as you have seen President [William J.] Clinton be very inclusive in many of his appointments, more so, far more so, than any previous president-- I think he's kind of a representative of what the baby boomers are going to do when they hit the top. There will be no small number of them who will make those changes. You can already see some taboos being broken by those baby boomers who've moved into the very top of the creative and administrative positions, the people who can say "yeah" or "nay." I see instances of interracial relationships in all kinds in current TV programming that ten years ago nobody would have risked, because the bosses then were of a more cautious generation. But you watch shows like Ally McBeal and others now, it's like a different world from ten years ago, and that's because the people who are calling the shots have a different mental orientation, the orientation of the baby boomers. And as they become more powerful over the next ten years or so, I think you can expect to see more and more of them who will have no qualms whatsoever about taking that leap.

WHITE: That will be fascinating and exciting to see.

McCORMICK: It will be.

WHITE: That's a very good point, a very valid point. Looking at TV programming I'm shocked, continually shocked, with the soap operas. In fact, we had talked about some of your ideas for creating a soap opera a few years ago, you and your stepson [Alvin C. Bowens Jr.], and basically that is happening today.

McCORMICK: Yeah, absolutely.

WHITE: They've really diversified the soap operas, and so the programming directors of those shows have come around.

McCORMICK: They're coming into their own with their own ideas, their own frames of references. And their frames of references-- A lot of these tremendously talented, creative people came out of UCLA and [University of] Cal[ifornia] Berkeley and the Ivy League schools, and their backgrounds-- All their lives since then have been inclusive, have included all kinds of cultures. It's just a different group of people, the first group which has been that inclusive and has experienced other ethnic groups to that extent in the history of this country, unless you include the abolitionists, who were considered freaks of some kind.

WHITE: Right, at that point, yeah. Well, tell me now, once some of these positions are filled with those that are sort of a status quo phenomenon that we were talking about-- Do you feel that success has more to do with beauty and chemistry or with ability and intelligence?

McCORMICK: I think success will always be a combination of all of those. I think it depends on what kind of-- If you're talking about TV programs, I think it depends on what kind of TV programming you're talking about.

WHITE: News. The news programs. The anchors.

McCORMICK: The news, okay. I think it will continue--I think it always has to a great extent and will continue--to depend on talent. If you can't do it, you simply won't get that chance. I think it will depend-- I'm not sure beauty is the right word. Certainly grooming and the presentation of how you look is going to be important, not because news will try to get the most beautiful people they can get--those people can go in the movies--but it will certainly try to get people whose appearance is not a distraction. Now, somebody who is just too good-looking--male or female of any color--could be a distraction. If you're sitting there looking at the person you're not listening to the news.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: So you try to get somebody who is essentially well presented, well groomed, but not extraordinary. You can't have big hair or anything that's distracting. Certainly you wouldn't put an anchorman on the air, no matter how talented, who had a big bulb growing out of his forehead, because everybody would look at that, "What the hell is that?" Everybody would be looking-- They would be distracted from the news itself. So you don't want the features, the physical features of the anchor, to be distracting in any kind of way. You just want them to look nice. I know that's a trite phrase, but you want them to look nice and neat so that people will become comfortable with them and listen to what they're saying and feel comfortable with the personality, and hopefully, eventually, like the person. We've had anchormen-- You know Charles Kurault was no beauty. He was an aging, balding, white man, fat, but with a wonderful, engaging warmth and personality. And that's what they look for more than beauty. I guess you could say they look for attractive personalities. That may include a little physical attractiveness, but more it's the attractiveness of your personality and how you relate to the viewer. So yes, those will be invaluable assets well into the future. It finally will all come down to an individual on-camera that the viewers at home relate to and feel comfortable with. That will always be important until we reach the day when human beings are no longer on television. And I can't imagine that, because that's why people watch TV, to interact with other human beings.

WHITE: Exactly, for human contact. They certainly don't get it in the home anymore.

McCORMICK: No, no. But that's what they-- Contact with other human beings. And people who have that, whether they-- I don't think you can develop it. I think it's something that may evolve-- You may sharpen and hone it, but it has to be there. Like this woman Martha Stewart. She's not gorgeous; she's just well groomed, rather ordinary looking. She's not unattractive, but she has something about her personality that causes people to believe her and to feel comfortable with her. Another person trying to do the same thing people would get so tired of they would have to take her off the-- Can you imagine seeing Joan Rivers pop up as much as Martha Stewart? Oh! [mutual laughter] It's not because Joan isn't a funny woman and a very entertaining person and a good person, but she doesn't wear well.

WHITE: Right, over time.

McCORMICK: You can only watch her for so long. And that's typical of many, many people who are on television; you can only take them for so long. You can really welcome them in short doses but not in long doses.

WHITE: That's the truth.

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 27, 1999

WHITE: We were just speaking a little bit about journalists and their notoriety and their stability and what have you at the station and what a good indicator is for success. As you indicated, there is a combination of things that will dictate one's success. Can you give aspiring broadcasters a sense of the salary range? What can aspiring anchors who are starting their careers now or some of the people in the prominent positions at the news station--? Do you have a sense of the kind of compensation that they could anticipate when they're starting?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. It really depends to a considerable extent on the size of the market that you're working in. The smaller markets, meaning smaller cities with fewer people, don't have as many people to sell the products to as they do in the larger markets. As I said earlier in this series of interviews, broadcast television is in the business of providing viewers for advertisers. That's what we do, deliver audiences to advertisers. The smaller the audience is, the less you can charge per person. The larger the audience potentially is in a huge city like Los Angeles or New York, the more you can charge. To make it short, television stations in huge markets like Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, and big markets like San Francisco, Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Boston, can pay--since they generate considerably more income than stations in smaller markets--higher salaries. Which is one of the reasons why everybody in TV and news and things like that wants to work in New York or L.A.

WHITE: Oh, right. Of course.

McCORMICK: So in New York or L.A. you get the most talented, most experienced people, because it's very difficult for people who are new in the profession to compete with these people, many of whom come into the New York or L.A. market with eight, ten, twelve years of experience in broadcasting, whether it's news-- Well, let's say news. It's hard for somebody just out of UCLA or USC [University of Southern California] or San Francisco State [University] to come right into a market and compete. So in the high-end markets like in Los Angeles and New York, I would say the lowest-paid anchor--regular weekday anchor--would probably make in excess of $100,000 a year. The lowest regular weekday anchor would make that amount of money in this market. You would have to pay that amount of money in this market to attract somebody who could compete in this market, who's even acceptable in this market. The same thing would be true of New York, maybe 6 to 7 percent higher in New York, because New York does have a slightly larger population, so their stations can charge slightly more. So they can pay slightly more. And the cost of living in New York is slightly higher. So when it all boils down, those two markets, considering the cost of living and everything, are about even. In a market like Los Angeles you can make all the way from that $100,000--I think it's about $105,000, the minimum for the station that generates the least income in the market; I won't say what that is--on up to the highest paid anchorperson in the city of Los Angeles, who happens to be a woman, $1.7 million a year. And there are similar figures for New York and for Chicago. Slightly less, maybe 10 to 12 percent less, for San Francisco, Dallas-Fort Worth, the other top ten markets, ten to twelve or fifteen markets. But you can do very, very well if you are a regular anchor, if you're on five days a week, in any of the top twenty markets in the United States. You can make a very comfortable living. You can make at least $125,000, $150,000 a year. If you are very prominent, very, very prominent, very successful, generate good ratings, and have a good agent, in the bigger markets you can generate $1 million a year.

WHITE: That's exceptional.

McCORMICK: The only thing about doing that as compared to some other professions that you might think--sportscaster or something-- And there are sportscasters who do very well, too. Because you are a newscaster--and this is where I've been a little lucky--you are pretty much limited from doing anything else. You can't do commercials, obviously, because there's a built-in conflict of interest. If you do a commercial for Libby foods, then how can you turn around and do a story about Libby's being involved in a lawsuit? And that would cover so many things that you just cannot do commercials.

WHITE: Okay.

McCORMICK: And then if you do commercials your employer loses the exclusive right to your services. You're now literally working for everybody. You're all over the place. And the employer pays you a certain amount of money because the employer does not want your visage to appear on anything but his or her station.

WHITE: So you can be associated-- Name recognition.

McCORMICK: Right. Now, over the years I have been allowed, [along with] some other newscasters in Los Angeles--particularly because it is L.A., and this is where they produce most of the movies in the world--to play newscasters, but only because they felt it promoted my appearance on KTLA. It enhanced it rather than competed against it. And it was a motion picture. It's going to be seen by everybody. It's not going to be played on one of the local channels until way after its first run. So it's not going to be competitive. But that's how well a person can do in Los Angeles and New York. And if you're in a small market--say if you're in Oklahoma City and you're a news anchor-- you're probably going to make $65,000 or $70,000 a year. But for $65,000 or $70,000 a year, you could live very well in Oklahoma City or Little Rock [Arkansas].

WHITE: Absolutely. The cost of living is so low.

McCORMICK: So wherever you work, if you're an anchor you still-- You may not be getting rich, but compared to the other people who live in your community you're going to be fairly well off.

WHITE: Quite comfortable.

McCORMICK: You're going to be quite comfortable.

WHITE: It's very interesting. A very interesting profession.

McCORMICK: It is.

WHITE: In terms of the hours that one works, between the anchors and the salary or the compensation for that type of work, it's quite fascinating.

McCORMICK: It is.

WHITE: Okay. Well, I do want to talk a bit more about KTLA and get some words of wisdom and advice from you having to do with the industry, but at this point I'd like to shift gears a bit. We haven't had an opportunity to speak about some of your community activity and some of your other professional affiliations, so I'd like to shift gears and move into that arena, if that's okay.

McCORMICK: Okay.

WHITE: Now, I understand that one of the most prominent professional organizations that you have been affiliated with is the Los Angeles Urban League. The National Urban League was founded, I understand, in 1910. The Los Angeles Urban League is a subset of that founded in 1921. It's a charitable and educational organization that operates as a community service agency to secure equal opportunities for African Americans and other disadvantaged groups, and its ultimate goal is to help to eliminate racial segregation and discrimination in American life. And I understand that you have been affiliated with that organization for quite some time. I wonder if you could tell me a bit about your interaction with them, when that started and how that came about.

McCORMICK: That came about first because of a neighbor who used to live here in Lafayette Square, a pediatrician named Dr. Clarence Littlejohn. One of Dr. Littlejohn's clients-- This goes back to 1959, in my very earliest days at [radio station] KGFJ. Dr. Littlejohn was the pediatrician to the fellow--and I hope I don't make this sound too convoluted--who hired me, Jim Randolph, who was the program director at KGFJ and the one who said, "I thought I saw your picture--" He saw my picture in Ebony [magazine], and he gave me the audition. Well, Littlejohn was his pediatrician. Jim and his wife had just had a baby, and Littlejohn was the chairman of the board of the L.A. Urban League at that time. So in talking to Jim I happened to meet Littlejohn, and he interested me in the L.A. Urban League--how he was a big Urban League believer and the importance of the organization and what they were trying to do and all that kind of stuff. Also, concurrently, at that time they were having problems, because the current executive director was a little bit suspect, and his credentials had come into question. The board had found out that he wasn't quite as honest--I won't use any names here--as he had presented himself to be, didn't quite have the credentials. They did some checking, and he was not in leadership positions where he had told them he had been--"We've never heard of him." He was a fraud, in other words. Dr. Littlejohn felt that the entire credibility of the L.A. Urban League, which had been in existence since 1921, was on the line and was in danger of maybe even going out of existence. So he told me, "You, as a progressive young guy, ought to be involved with the L.A. Urban League. Why don't you just come to a board meeting or just meet some of the people? We're in the process now of looking for a new leader." This fellow who was-- They had decided to revoke his contract. He was leaving, getting out of the picture. So I kind of got interested. Littlejohn started keeping me informed of what they were doing and said, "We're bringing in this new young fellow, John [W.] Mack." He said, "I want you to meet Mack, and I think you'll be impressed and get involved with the Urban League, because it's a very, very, very vital organization that's doing some tremendous things. Maybe they don't make the noise some other organizations do, but behind the scenes and in a low-level, quiet kind of way they're doing stuff for people--training, jobs, job placement, all that kind of stuff." So I did meet Mr. Mack. Mr. Mack and his wife came to Ebony Showcase [Theatre and Cultural Arts Center] one night when I was appearing in one of the plays, either The Odd Couple or A Thousand Clowns, I can't remember which one. He was just down here taking a look-see. He had been doing some Urban League work in Oxnard [California], and he was down taking a look-see and getting introduced and being interviewed by the board and just kind of learning his way around in Los Angeles. And we met. I can't remember whether it was he or Dr. Littlejohn-- I think it was Dr. Littlejohn who asked me if I would allow my name to be submitted for election to the board of directors. So I said, "Well, yeah, okay." And I got elected. I've been on the board almost-- Well, every three years the board members are supposed to rotate off for at least one year, even though you might be reelected after that. That's due to National Urban League rules, and all 113 affiliates are committed to abide by those rules. So including years rotating off, I've been on the Los Angeles Urban League board of directors for twenty-six years. It started a relationship with an organization that I firmly believe in. I know it is doing a terrific job for African Americans and other minorities--but especially African Americans--in Los Angeles. It has had a terrific and dynamic and I think a spectacularly able leader in John W. Mack, who also, by chance, has become one of my best friends. And to see all of it in nine or ten or twelve different important programs that the L.A. Urban League is involved in, to see the support that the L.A. Urban League through all of its efforts has generated in the corporate community in Los Angeles, to see that the L.A. Urban League has generated support across ideological and party and racial lines-- Our forty-four-member board of directors probably has as many conservative Republicans as it does liberal Democrats and moderates. The Urban League from its very outset, when Dr. George [Edmund] Haynes, who was a social worker, combined forces with a wealthy white woman [Ruth Standish Baldwin], who was a philanthropist-- Ever since then the Urban League has by tradition been biracial or multiracial. It was never intended to be at its leadership positions all across the country an all-black organization. So it has always been interracial. It's rare, you know, in these days of acrimony in this country, when you see in an organization--and this is true of the boards of directors all across the country, I'm told--white conservatives come in and say, "What can I do?" And not just blend in. Members of the L.A. Urban League board of directors work. They get things done. So whether it's an executive from ARCO [Atlantic Richfield Company], which is generally considered one of the staid old kind of conservative corporations--and they come in and just get things done for the L.A. Urban League--or whether it's somebody from LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District]-- We don't have elected political officials on the Urban League board of directors anymore. We used to a long time ago, but we decided that that presented any number of opportunities for a conflict of interest.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: I think the last elected political official that we had on the Urban League board of directors was years ago, the [Los Angeles City] councilman that represented the tenth district here, David Cunningham. We also felt that affiliation with the L.A. Urban League board of directors gave elected political officials who had to run for reelection too much of a bully platform. We didn't want to be used as reelection fodder, and that includes Caucasian or Jewish or any other ethnic group. We just said "No more elected officials, because we are nonpolitical, nonideological, and we don't want the Urban League to get drowned in a sea of politics."

WHITE: At what point was that decision made?

McCORMICK: I can't remember the exact year. It had to be around 1972 or '73.

WHITE: Quite some time, then.

McCORMICK: Quite some time ago. But I think in making that decision, I really frankly believe we unburdened ourselves of what could have been a serious problem and could have been in many cases embarrassing and could have been filled with conflict. Suppose the Urban League, in the interests of the constituents in the African American community which it serves, had to take a public position against something one of its board members was standing for. Suppose we had a member of the [Los Angeles] City Council who was fighting for [Los Angeles] Metro Rail, just as an example, and Metro Rail had made no effort to be inclusive in awarding contracts to minorities, so the Urban League was taking a position against it. So then you'd have all this division. So we thought, "It will bring nothing but division."

WHITE: Lots of controversy.

McCORMICK: Lots of controversy, and would lead the Urban League-- We'd have a certain liability there, because it would open us up to lawsuits. It would in many cases prevent us from competing for various services that government at various levels or corporations or foundations want to do for the African American community. We might be the enabler. We might be the agency they would come to to handle this program, like the Milken [Family] Foundation, things like that. Well, if we were staunchly ideological and it wasn't Mr. [Michael] Milken's ideology, he'd say, "To heck with them. I'll go to somebody else." That is the kind of thing we would face everywhere if we allowed ourselves to be mired down in ideology--Republican, Democratic, Peace and Freedom, whatever. So we decided it was in the best interest of the Urban League, and more importantly of its constituents, the constituents that we serve, not to have elected officials on the board of directors. I think it was a wise decision.

WHITE: A good decision. Okay. Now, John Mack has been the president of the organization for a long time.

McCORMICK: It will be thirty years in August.

WHITE: Oh, okay. So he'll have his thirty-year anniversary. And then I understand that you also worked with Ivan [J.] Houston from the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company?

McCORMICK: The National Urban League did a little reorganization about four or five years after Mr. Mack joined us, which I think was a good idea. Most of this came from either the late Whitney [M.] Young [Jr.] or, following Whitney Young's untimely death, Vernon [E.] Jordan [Jr.], who became president of the National Urban League. There was some confusion. When I first joined the Urban League the position which Mr. Mack now holds was called the executive director, and the chairman of the board was called the president. It was very confusing. So finally we clarified it all around the country, saying, "The guy who is the head of the Urban League, the head staff member, should be the president, and the person who heads the board of directors should be the chairman of the board." So that's the way it stands now at the national level, too.

WHITE: Okay. So Ivan Houston is the chairman of the board?

McCORMICK: He was the chairman of the board at one time. He is a former chairman of the board that I worked under. Willie Davis, the former great Green Bay Packer player and owner of radio stations--including KACE--and beer distributorships, was a former chairman of the board, and there have been many, many heads of corporations. The former president of United Airlines, when he was located in L.A., had to move back to Chicago now, because that's United's hub. But when he was located here-- Ernie Lamar was his name. He is a former chairman of the board. One of the best known attorneys in California, Brian Manion--who just passed away not too long ago, had a big Westside law firm--was chairman. So we had diverse board chairmen. George Golloher, who was the number-two man in the Food 4 Less- Ralphs Grocery [Company] chain, which is one of the biggest in the country, is just leaving as chairman of the board.

WHITE: How long does one hold that position?

McCORMICK: It depends on how long they're effective and how long we can persuade them-- Usually it's about three years. It's hard to ask for more than two or three years out of a corporate chief's life. Chuck Smith of Pac[ific] Bell, who is African American, is our new chairman of the board. So we've had all kinds of people to be chairman, vice-chairman-- The law firm that our former member of the administration, Mickey Cantor-- His law firm is on the Westside of L.A. One of his law partners, George Kieffer, is a former vice-chairman of the board. George Kieffer is the man who chaired the recent [Los Angeles City] Charter Commission, still chairs the L.A. Charter Commission. Last night, when I was at the L.A. [Urban League] board meeting, George was making a presentation.

WHITE: My goodness. Okay.

McCORMICK: George Kieffer was one of the top partners, along with Mickey Cantor, in this huge, huge Westside law firm called Manatt, Phelps, [and Phillips]. You've heard of it, I'm sure. It's one of the big, big law firms in the city of Los Angeles--some say the firm that the series L.A. Law was based on. But that could have been O'Melveny and Myers, which is one of the old, powerful, old money, longterm, big downtown law firms. This is L.A. There are thirty-five or forty major law firms in L.A. And New York or D.C. But since it was called L.A. Law-- There are maybe a hundred law firms in L.A. that are so big that they have a hundred lawyers on the staff, a hundred and fifty, that L.A. Law could be based on. These are huge, huge firms.

WHITE: Interesting.

McCORMICK: So that's the variety of our leadership. The composition of our board membership is always very, very extremely diverse. For many years--and this again goes to Mr. Mack's leadership abilities and his tremendous integrity-- He started to notice for years and it started to bother him-- We talked about it. We'd like to get CEO types or just next to the CEO types, because they can get things done. They don't have to go to a stockholders meeting to say, "I want to do this for the Urban League, I want to do that." They can make a decision. So we tried to elevate-- Years and years ago we would have a 35th Street PTA [Parent-Teacher Association] president, which is nice and representative, but they couldn't do anything. The Urban League could never have grown to the stature and the service that it is now and serve as many people as it does now unless we started to get really powerful decision makers on the board. But we noticed-- We'd sit at the board meeting and look around, and there were so few women.

WHITE: I was just about to ask.

McCORMICK: Out of the forty-four members there would be four women, five women. We said, "What's going on here? Maybe we're doing something wrong. Maybe we're not reaching out enough to find women." So through Mr. Mack's leadership we made a concerted effort to find women, and I think in the process we might have nudged some corporations to promote some women, to say, "Hey, these community-based organizations are looking for female executives." You know the old story, that they can't find any, and we know that's a crock, you know. They're out there. They're there in droves if they just get the opportunity. So that was the next effort. So now you look around and about a third of the board members are women.

WHITE: Oh, excellent.

McCORMICK: We have yet to have-- We haven't had a woman chairman of the board yet, but that could come at almost any time. It's not because there haven't been women there who could do it. Being chairman of the board, with the size that the Urban League has grown to now, means you really do-- That person really does have to have a support staff at the job to whom he or she can delegate responsibility. There's just too much to do. There are too many phone calls. There are too many committee meetings. There are too many things to oversee. There are too many trips out of town that you have to go on--to regional Urban League meetings and things like that. I was asked once. Mr. Mack wanted me to be-- For three years I was vice president of the board of directors, which primarily for me meant chairing a lot of meetings when the chairman couldn't be there. But I told him, "I don't have the wherewithal to be the chairman of the board. I don't have that kind of support system. I can't go to my news secretary; she ain't gonna do it. 'That ain't in my job description to be your secretary.'" I had to make all the phone calls myself. I had to make all the meetings myself. I am not a corporate head who can delegate responsibility. So I told Mr. Mack I was extremely grateful that he had the faith and confidence in me to ask me to run for chairman of the board--not to "run." He said, "If you want to do it they will elect you chairman of the board." I told him how grateful I was and how honored I was, but I just can't do that. I don't have the wherewithal.

WHITE: Quite a level of responsibility.

McCORMICK: Oh, it is, it is. I don't have the resources. I would not want to attempt to do all of that. I couldn't do all of that myself and keep a career going.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: You have to have so much vitality when you go on the air. If you go on the air tired your career pretty soon is going to be ended. And that was where my income stream was coming from. So I told him, all those things considered, I couldn't do it. But I've had the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with a lot of people from very diverse backgrounds. We've had black Baptist ministers on the board of directors. We've had rabbis on the board of directors. We've had [Roman] Catholic clergymen on the board of directors. We've had female rabbis on the board of directors. I can't imagine any organization in L.A. being more or trying to be more inclusive than the L.A. Urban League has been, has tried to be. And then not too long after we started noticing the paucity of female board members it started to occur to Mr. Mack, myself, and some others who have been affiliated with the board or around the League for a while that we were drifting too much away from young people. So we made a concerted effort-- And it's paid off to a pretty good degree. This is about ten, twelve years ago. We made a concerted effort to have a certain number, a certain percentage-- I think at first maybe we said five or six members of the board of directors would be under thirty.

WHITE: Under thirty?

McCORMICK: Under thirty. Now, we recognized it would be rare to get enormously successful people under thirty from the corporate world, the business world, or anyplace else who had the kind of clout that we needed, the kind of vision we needed, the kind of pro-activism that we needed. Because people usually have not really made their mark and risen to that position of power until they're thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two. We've not been able to keep it under thirty. They aren't there. They really aren't there in this case. If you're talking about a medical doctor, he's just opening his office when he's thirty or thirty-one, thirty-two. So we tried to make it, well, under thirty-five. But we've got to keep the organization, as much as we can, young, and we need that infusion of ideas from young people. We need in the eyes of our constituents not to be seen as an organization of old people with old ideas. So that, after women, was the next thing; our next emphasis in the composition of the board of directors was to try to keep it young. And also, recognizing that we're not going to be here forever, to try to plant the seeds of the Urban League board of directors that's going to carry it into the next ten, next fifteen, next twenty years, so that somebody else--maybe a Larry McCormick--will be on the board off and on, depending on rotation, for twenty years or so.

WHITE: That's excellent. Have you been successful in recruiting the under-thirtyfive?

McCORMICK: Yes, we have. We have. We've attracted some dynamite young people under thirty-five, mostly entrepreneurs, one young man who's the head of his family business now. His family is originally, I think, from North Carolina or West Virginia. He's the third-generation head of the family business, and they're in the agriculture business. They sell food products. He's thirty-two, very handsome. I wanted to introduce him to my daughter [Kitrina M. McCormick], but he's already married. But he's one example. If there's anything we've learned it's that if you want to find those kinds of people--and I think this applies to businesses and any other entity in the society that wants to be inclusive--you've got to reach out. They're there, but you have to reach out and find them.

WHITE: Well, that's wonderful that Mr. Mack has the fortitude and the foresight to see that these sorts of changes need to be put into place over time, just making sure that as things shift he's being very progressive with the organization and the makeup of the organization, basically including women and including younger people with fresh ideas. I think that that's outstanding.

McCORMICK: I think it shows that he's an enlightened leader.

WHITE: Absolutely. That's exactly what that shows. Now, you had mentioned earlier that given the size of the organization-- How large is the Los Angeles Urban League?

McCORMICK: The Los Angeles Urban League has nine or ten programs that cover everything from computer training to automobile assembly--you might have seen our automotive training plant, co-sponsored by Toyota, down on Crenshaw [Boulevard]-- to business entrepreneurship. Our entrepreneurship office is named the Ron Brown [Information Technology and] Business Center after the late Ron Brown, who was nurtured in the Urban League movement in Washington, D.C. and was a good friend of Mr. Mack's. It's located in Inglewood. We also have programs in Pomona, because elements of the government in Pomona wanted the Urban League to provide automotive training and other programs for training and preparing people for the world of work, for jobs. We're involved in family literacy, in preschool. The Urban League has fifteen state preschools around the city of Los Angeles. We also are involved in family literacy, in trying to help more adults become literate, teaching them to read--adults who for the first time are learning how to read. [This is] one of the great values of our Milken Family Literacy Center, for which we received a huge donation from Michael Milken and his foundation. So altogether, including day care centers and everything, the Urban League probably-- I would say with all of its programs and services-- And of course, it expands a little bit each year. It depends on whether programs that we're running through government agencies--whether it's city, state, county, or federal government-- whether those programs come to a conclusion or not or new programs replace them. But I'd say [the Los Angeles Urban League] probably serves around a hundred and twenty-five thousand people.

WHITE: That's how many people are served.

McCORMICK: Served every year in one capacity or another.

WHITE: And how large is the staff? You indicated a certain number on the board. How many on the actual staff, would you say?

McCORMICK: On the Urban League headquarters staff there are probably about twenty, on Mount Vernon Drive just off Crenshaw [Boulevard]. I'm proud to say that a board of directors that I was a part of purchased the headquarters building, which has become kind of a focal point in the African American community. [There are] about twenty to twenty-two in that facility, but of course there are Urban League managers at all of those nine or ten different facilities. There are managers at all those fourteen state preschools. We used to have an annual Christmas party, the L.A. Urban League did. We decided that for a variety of reasons it was probably not good to hold it anymore, because it seemed as though we were spending money frivolously. It was good for morale, but when you come-- We would have it at various of the larger clubs around the greater Crenshaw area. I remember there was one place on Slauson [Avenue] that we used to have it at, a big club, and there would be five hundred people there, because-- Whenever the Urban League has a graduation from one of its schools or when we have our annual meeting, whenever we have any event where almost everybody who's affiliated with the Urban League gathers, there are four or five hundred people. And one of the surprising things to a lot of people is you'll find from a third to two-fifths are Latino, because a lot of the kids in the day care are Latino. A lot of the teachers in the day care are Latino. We now have Latinos in the Urban League staff over on Mount Vernon. Again, it's an attempt by Mr. Mack and others to be inclusive.

WHITE: Sure.

McCORMICK: So it's a rather large staff when you include not just the people-- If you go into just the people in the headquarters, they're all very well trained. We try to compensate them competitively. We cannot, obviously, attract the same level of talent that a major corporation can that can pay twice as much and will give you twice as much in their package. They have fringe benefits. But over the years we've managed to remain competitive enough to attract very good people. We get people who obviously have to make a living and with their training and background expect to make a living at a certain level, have fringe benefits at a certain level, but who also are dedicated to the goals of the League. So we've been able to attract people who have all of those qualities, and that's a best-of-all-worlds kind of [situation].

WHITE: That's fascinating. Now, given all of the various positions and all of the programs that have been established, how is the Urban League funded?

McCORMICK: The Urban League is funded from a variety of sources. For years, painful years-- When I first came on the board our primary source of funding was United Way [of Los Angeles] and our budget was probably $195,000 to $200,000 a year. But now the L.A. Urban League's budget is about $12 million a year. Our funding sources-- United Way, which used to be, I think-- You go to these meetings once a year where you sit down with the United Way board of directors, certain selected members of the board, and the president, Mr. Mack, and maybe one or two other members of the staff, and you sit down and you plead your case for more funds from the United Way. We did that year after year after year--a meeting at seven o' clock in the morning, and I didn't get off until eleven o' clock at night. I was so sleepy at so many of those meetings. But I made our plea in a number of cases, and at one time the United Way's allocation to the L.A. Urban League was-- Sixty percent of our budget was the United Way allocation. Now the United Way allocation is about 4 percent of our budget. So our sources come from all four levels of government--the federal, the state, the county, the city--who have different training and education programs they want us to run for them, OJT [on-job training] programs and things like that. The OJT is about just job training, computer training, business training, systems training, automotive training, entrepreneurship training, all those things. And with each contract that we sign with a program proposer there is a management fee. It takes people to run the program. So in addition to the allotted money and the promise that you may get, we will train 110 people over a ten-month or twelve-month period to be able to do this at an effective professional level for x amount of money--$3 million, say. In addition to the $3 million there will be a $250,000 management fee to pay to trainers and other things. And the League has to use its phones and all of this stuff. So over the years the budget has built up that much because of all of these various programs that we've engaged in, and we've been able to engage in so many of those programs and deliver the services because we got the reputation that we deliver. Employers all around the city, all around the state-- Urban League-trained people all over the place, all over the place. They work for Lexus, they work for the city, they work for the county, they work for the [Southern California] Gas Company. They're all over the place.

WHITE: Really? So you're saying people that were actually trained in some of your programs have been placed in some of these companies that you're citing right now.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: Is there job placement as well?

McCORMICK: Sometimes our agreements do include job placement promises. For years and years and years we fought that battle. Even with people who had contributed to Urban League programs we fought the battle of-- And again, Mr. Mack's courage, integrity, daring, and don't-take-no-stuff kind of attitude-- Mr. Mack is one of those people like Whitney Young. He can be a wonderful, gifted, beautiful orator in a corporate setting but can talk street when he has to. He had not forgotten how to talk street. "This a dead-end job. Let's not bull--BS here. When we finish training these people, where they gonna work?" So finally we started saying, "Well, you've got to put that in the contract." So they started doing that. That generates some of our fees. We have various fund-raisers during the course of the year. Various of our auxiliaries also have fund-raisers. There's also the ongoing Urban League general membership. Anybody in the public can join the Urban League for five dollars or ten dollars, increments of five.

WHITE: And what are the benefits of one becoming a member?

McCORMICK: Well, you get the Urban League newsletter, but the primary benefit is knowing that you're helping the people in your community to find jobs, keeping the unemployment rate down, working on problems of crime, education, teenage pregnancy. Some people say that maybe we have reached the point now where we try to address too many problems. We have had to reject some opportunities to serve that probably would have pushed us over that line of trying to do too much. So that's part of our fund-raiser. Our major fund-raiser is the annual Whitney M. Young [Jr. Award] Dinner, which of course-- This will be our thirtieth this year.

WHITE: When will that take place?

McCORMICK: It will take place April 16 at the Century Plaza Hotel. This year we're honoring Natalie Cole, and our entertainment will be Ray Charles and his orchestra. We've had marvelous entertainers always, from Gladys Knight to Stevie Wonder to the Count Basie Orchestra. Over the years Nancy Wilson, Phyllis Hyman-- Our emcees over the years have been, from the early years of Bill Cosby, Bob Hope-- [Earvin] "Magic" Johnson [Jr.] was the emcee one year. We've had Rita Moreno. One year Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., her husband, they were the co-emcees. We try to be a little offbeat many years. Then, a few years ago, Rene Etienne, who was our vice-chair for fund-raising--

WHITE: Rene Etienne?

McCORMICK: Yeah, for years. He's now gone out on his own as a fund-raiser and hires himself out to various organizations because he has developed so much expertise and was so invaluable to us over the years. But Rene said, "Look, I really don't think these celebrity emcees are adding anything to the attractiveness of the bill, and you do it better than anybody else anyway, so why don't you just be the emcee?" So he and Mr. Mack agreed that I would be the emcee. And much as are the telethons now-- Some research has indicated that all those hours they spend on the air-- That might have been a novelty once and different, but all those hours from eleven o' clock at night to six o' clock in the morning they were losing money. It was costing them money.

WHITE: Oh, to be on the air versus the amount of contributions.

McCORMICK: Well, they weren't contributions, they were pledges.

WHITE: Pledges. Oh, exactly. That's significantly different.

McCORMICK: And they found the percentage of the pledges they were actually collecting on was declining every year. So there evolved a different philosophy of fund-raising for nonprofits, and that was to just use the telethons to tell who has given what and maybe to spur-- But don't use it to get pledges.

WHITE: I see. Okay.

McCORMICK: So in a similar manner, at the Urban League dinner now-- For years we felt we were doing great. We were doing great. When we would net for the dinner for that night $260,000 we thought that was terrific. And it was.

WHITE: In terms of pledges?

McCORMICK: No, in terms of money. Tickets for tables paid for at the dinner. We've gone from $100 now per ticket up to $450 per ticket. So our prices for tickets are among the elite prices, and it's one of the elite events of any group in the city every year. It fills the Century Plaza's biggest ballroom, the Los Angeles Ballroom, with seventeen hundred people, the biggest ballroom in L.A. You can't get any more in there; the fire marshall will get after you. So for the last three years-- Three years ago we had our first dinner where we netted $1 million. We were the first nonprofit organization in the city of Los Angeles from any community to net $1 million at a single event.

WHITE: My gosh.

McCORMICK: And we did it again last year.

WHITE: Really?

McCORMICK: And we hope to do it again this year, and I think we will. So that's part of the budget. And that's because of the belief that a lot of corporate people have in the Urban League. And frankly, by this time, because the Urban League has been so successful under Mr. Mack and our strong boards of directors and has done so many good things, now corporate entities and government at various levels want to be a part of it.

WHITE: They want to be affiliated.

McCORMICK: They want to be affiliated with it. They want to be attached to it. So now all of our costs for the dinner are underwritten.

WHITE: Really?

McCORMICK: All of them--for the programs, for the souvenirs, for the orchestra, for the technicians, the sound and light system, for everything. For the bars, for the reception before the dinner--the VIP reception--all are-- It took us years to get around to that, but now everybody who participates understands, whether it's the honoree, the dinner chairman-- Everybody who's affiliated understands that their corporation, their entity, has certain responsibilities. That is what enables us to net $1 million. And then last year we started a souvenir book too, and everybody wants-- Naturally you want to be on record as having been there and taken part, and that's another fund generator.

WHITE: A souvenir book?

McCORMICK: A souvenir, yeah. Not a real book. It's more a pamphlet, like a magazine, a souvenir magazine. So that's a part of the funding. And from those sources, from gifts from foundations-- We've just gotten into something that other nonprofit organizations have done for years but that we've kind of stayed away from because we weren't sure whether it would work to our benefit or whether there were cultural reasons why our people might not respond. But as you know, other nonprofits almost always--and I'm sure this includes UCLA and many components of UCLA--suggest to well-to-do families that they bequeath certain monies when one of the wealthy members of the family dies, and we've just started to investigate that as a source of income.

WHITE: Okay, so on that note, we're going to follow up on this very interesting conversation during our next interview.

McCORMICK: Okay.

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 5, 1999

WHITE: Well, let's see now, the last time we spoke, we had an opportunity to speak a bit about the Los Angeles Urban League and some of the wonderful programs that had been established by that organization--the training program, particularly. And we were talking about some of the funding sources. The last thing that we talked about was one of the events that's coming up [the annual Whitney M. Young Jr. Award Dinner] and historically some of the success that you guys have had with your events in the past--i.e., that you guys netted $1 million in a single event, which is of course phenomenal and terrific. And that all costs for the dinner at this point are now being underwritten, which is an excellent, excellent thing. We had talked about the structure of L.A. Urban League, etc. And I wanted to continue with that dialogue for a bit of time and talk a little bit about-- Correct me if I'm wrong, but is Ivan [J.] Houston now the chairman of the board?

McCORMICK: No, he is a former chairman of the board.

WHITE: A former chairman, okay.

McCORMICK: That was a number of years ago. Ivan, of course, was the CEO [chief executive officer] of Golden State [Mutual Life] Insurance Company. He is pretty much in retirement now, and his son, Ivan [A.] Houston, has pretty much taken over those responsibilities. Ivan and his wife Philippa [Jones Houston] are still very good friends, and we see them very often at community events and on social occasions and things like that. Terrific, terrific people.

WHITE: I understand that you have been secretary for the Urban League at certain times. Do you still hold a title?

McCORMICK: I have been. No, I don't hold a title. I'm not one of the officers of the board anymore. It requires someone who has the logistic capabilities of doing a great deal of work. You've got to have a secretary, you've got to have a support staff. There are many, many phone calls to make and records to keep and meetings to attend. I am on three different committees, and I chair one of those committees, the personnel and administration committee, which I've chaired for a number of years. I chaired the special events committee, whose primary responsibility is putting on fundraising events like the Whitney Young dinner, for a number of years. That's chaired now by famed casting director Reuben Cannon, who's also a good friend. For the last couple of years Reuben has chaired that committee. My value in that respect--early on--with the Whitney Young dinner was that when I was still on the radio I had immediate and easy access to a lot of big-name entertainers, and I was able to use that influence to get them to donate their services for the Urban League dinner. As a newscaster you don't have access to those kinds of people, and there is not the same kind of interdependence as there was then when I was on the radio, where I could be of direct benefit to them by publicity, by playing their records, or by talking about their appearances when I played their records. You don't have that when you're a newscaster, but you do when you're a casting director; you have a lot of clout with a whole other group of celebrities. [laughs] It demands your being very well wired to the entertainment "theatrical" business, as Reuben is, very much so.

WHITE: And what did you say the name of this committee is?

McCORMICK: The special events committee.

WHITE: Special events, I see.

McCORMICK: It's one of the standing committees of the Urban League. And for a very long, long time I've also been a member of the personnel and administration committee, which has responsibilities for drafting job descriptions, for doing evaluations of everybody from the president on down, for consulting with the president and other members of staff about adding new positions. We recently created a COO position--a chief operating officer--to unburden Mr. [John W.] Mack of some of the incredible responsibilities that were really weighing him down. And he was really making a noble effort to do all of it, but we recognized the need to have somebody else to take a lot of that burden off of him [so that] no major everyday decision-making was required, just to have somebody, a good, strong administrative figure, to fill that position. We recently filled that; for the first time ever we created the position--the L.A. Urban League had never had a COO-- a former executive with Jerry Buss of the [Los Angeles] Lakers, Patrick Harris, who has just done everything we could have expected and has worked out very, very well. Obviously it had to be somebody who had a good rapport with Mr. Mack, and in whom Mr. Mack invested a lot of faith and trust, and Patrick, who had known Mr. Mack-- They had known each other for quite a while. So that's part of what the personnel and administration committee does--annual evaluations and personnel matters--and we make recommendations regarding benefit packages for members of staff and just, well, what it sounds like: personnel and administration. But it's a critical committee, particularly for the everyday working staff of the Urban League.

WHITE: So this committee actually performs the evaluations for the staff?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes, every year.

WHITE: Is that so?

McCORMICK: In a secondary kind of way. Our primary responsibility is to do a performance evaluation of the president, and possibly the COO, the new COO.

WHITE: That's quite a responsibility.

McCORMICK: Oh, it is. The president will then do his own review of the performances of other people on the staff and run it by us for approval.

WHITE: I see. And you are the chair of this committee?

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: That's quite a responsibility. You indicated that you were involved with three committees. Is there another one?

McCORMICK: It depends on where a niche needs to be filled with various other committees, but the third right now would be the executive committee. Anyone who is a committee chair is automatically a member of the executive committee.

WHITE: Committee of the chairs.

McCORMICK: That's exactly what it amounts to. And the other officers of the organization--the vice-chair; the secretary; the treasurer; certain staff members; the CEO, which is Mr. Mack, the president; and the COO make up the executive committee. But other than that it is a committee of chairs.

WHITE: That's interesting, very interesting. Can you tell me some of the other committees within the League?

McCORMICK: Well, there is the program committee. There is the fund-raising committee, which is in charge of generating funds from various government programs and things like that. You have the rules committee and the requisite number of committees that most other organizations have that have various functions.

WHITE: Quite an active league.

McCORMICK: It is, yes. We have about nine standing committees. I can't remember the names of all of them, but about nine standing committees. We hardly ever have ad hoc committees, which usually only arise to deal on a short-term basis with some specific problem. Then, as soon as the problem is dealt with, the ad hoc committee is immediately dissolved and goes out of business. But the standing committees of course are permanent.

WHITE: I see. Of course, the Urban League has been involved with a host of community issues. How do you actually determine which community issues you are going to get involved with?

McCORMICK: That determination first is made based on whether or not a given problem that we perceive in the community or that is brought to our attention falls within the purview of the Urban League mission, which is to seek equality of opportunity for African Americans and other minorities in the greater Los Angeles area through jobs, job training, job preparation, and through advocacy. That leaves a big umbrella, because the needs of minorities in Southern California are numerous and sometimes very, very large and significant. So I don't see any time in the foreseeable future when the Los Angeles Urban League will run out of things to do, given its mission. [mutual laughter] But if it generally falls under those categories, then it's something that we want to do. Primarily, the Los Angeles Urban League wants to serve its constituency by fulfilling that mission. Unlike other organizations--although I don't want to be comparative here--one of the things I like about the approach of the Los Angeles Urban League generally and Mr. Mack specifically is that we try to serve the whole person among our constituents in the African American and other minority communities. We believe a person can't compete for a job if the rules or practices of a company or rules and practices of the society exclude that person. If that person isn't trained for the job, it's still exclusion. So that's why we not only place a great deal of emphasis on advocacy, on the need for diversity and the importance of diversity, especially in this community, but on on-the601 job training, all directed on preparation. We do everything: counseling people on how to conduct job interviews, how to prepare for job interviews, how to present themselves, all with an eye towards as nearly as we can leveling the playing field for African Americans and other minorities. We think it doesn't do you any good, if you're running a hundred-yard dash, if you are required to start off ten yards behind the other person.

WHITE: That's a good analogy.

McCORMICK: Well, that's the way we look at it. There has to be a level playing field. That would be at the heart of the goals of the L.A. Urban League, to try as nearly as we can to make for a level playing field for as many people as we can. Of course, given the magnitude of the problems, there need to be thirty-five L.A. Urban Leagues or similar organizations operating in the city. And there are a lot, each doing things in different areas that they feel they have special qualities and special abilities to do--the Brotherhood Crusade [of Los Angeles], NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], CORE [Congress of Racial Equality], and other organizations, and a similar number and type of organizations in the Latino community doing the same thing. It's all an effort to try to level the playing field, to raise the consciousness of nonminority people throughout the community about the importance of having a level playing field, having equality of opportunity. That's an important distinction. The Los Angeles Urban League has never demanded equality, because we recognize that you cannot foist equality upon every human being. Everybody is not equal. But we think that the principle of equality of opportunity is very important. Our programs and our advocacy are aimed in that direction.

WHITE: You mentioned a number of other organizations--the Brotherhood Crusade, NAACP--and I have wondered as I was reading your literature-- You've been affiliated with the Los Angeles Urban League for many years. I wondered why the particular allegiance to the Urban League as opposed to some of the other organizations that, while they have a different charge, are slanted a different angle-- Over time have you felt any sort of interest in getting involved with any of the other organizations such as those that you mentioned?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. I'm a constant contributor to all those organizations, my wife [Anita Daniels McCormick] and I are. My allegiance to the Urban League and my decision to emphasize my community activity with the Urban League came from an early realization that you cannot be all things to all people. You simply can't do it. So most people, African Americans and others, tend to find an organization which they can kind of adopt as their own and say, "This is the organization I'm going to work with. I'm still going to support all the others, but where the majority and emphasis of my efforts are concerned, this is going to be my organization." People, not only African Americans but others, do that. They adopt an organization. Big, huge stars. Some will adopt UNCF [United Negro College Fund] like Low Rawls did. Others will adopt other organizations, even though they continue to support-- Lou has entertained for us at the Urban League a couple of times. But we know his primary allegiance is to UNCF, and we don't have any problem with that. We know that there are other people whose primary allegiance is to the NAACP. We know there are people who have been lifelong members of the Los Angeles NAACP and we have steadfastly steered clear from trying to even appear to be going for their support for the Urban League at the sacrifice of the organizations they've always been in. Like the Hudson family, affiliated with the NAA[CP]. We have firmly believed in staying away from even appearing to raid other organizations of their leadership. And by the way, the same thing is true between the Los Angeles Urban League and the Latino political and cultural organizations. We have conscientiously made an effort to stay away from, for example, honoring one of the major heroes of their community at our Whitney Young dinner because we feel like we're taking away one of their fund-raisers. We've been very good at coexisting and understanding with other minority communities like them. But I've been a supporter of all the other organizations. A lot of people may not know--because it's been so long ago--that I emceed the first three Image Awards for the NAACP. I was asked to emcee the first three.

WHITE: And what year was that? Can you recall?

McCORMICK: Oh, my goodness. Let's see. Probably 1964, '65. And I was requested to do that by the fellow who was then president of the Hollywood-Beverly Hills chapter of the NAACP, an attorney named Jim [James A.] Tolbert. So I emceed the first one, which was in a little nightclub on Sunset Boulevard called Soul'd Out. It's a different name I think now. It's at Sunset and Wilcox [Avenue], I think.

WHITE: Not far from the station [KTLA channel 5].

McCORMICK: No. And then the next one I emceed, we moved up to the Beverly Hilton [Hotel]. Didn't have a sellout crowd. And then the third one-- I can't remember who emceed it, but I wasn't asked. Maybe I did do the third one, but then after that they started having nationally known celebrities. Then they started getting involved with televising it, and it became really more of a TV show than an awards program, something which we in the Urban League, despite all kinds of temptations, have steadfastly resisted. I've conferred with Mr. Mack a number of times, and with other people too, about the offers we had, which included considerable amounts of money, because we've had such powerhouse entertainers. And our honoree has always been some really well-known community figure, whether it was somebody from the corporate world downtown or the entertainment industry or the music industry or sports. It's always been a very high-profile person. And of course, television recognizes early on when they see a good target, something that could provide good television programming. So over the years they've made all kinds of pitches. And I always remind Mr. Mack--and he appreciates this, I'm sure--that once you turn it over to television people you lose control. It no longer is an awards dinner; it becomes a television program. And a television program operates under different sets of conditions and laws and rules than an awards program. Your program has to become bisected by time for station breaks and commercials. And cameras and cables all through your audience. And you no longer get to dictate how your room will be decorated or when you will take certain breaks or when you will do certain things that you've always done. You lose control. The producer and director of the TV show now run your program in exchange for the money. Sure, it's a trade-off, but in exchange for the money you have to accept that loss of control.

WHITE: Has he felt tempted from time to time?

McCORMICK: I think sometimes he's thought about the money. Because we're talking about large-- Now that we've arrived at the point that we can net a million dollars per program without television, I think he thinks less about it. I think he thinks less about the television money because we don't have to.

WHITE: Because the television money would be generated from sponsors.

McCORMICK: From sponsors or underwriting--for a public affairs program, any number of forms television money could take. It could be generated by-- Much as is the case with programs, say, on [Public Broadcasting System television station] KCET [channel 28] or NPR [National Public Radio], large sums of money are given to support the program. Instead of a straight, produced commercial, a mention is made of somebody who has contributed--"This portion of the program was brought to you by the Rockefeller Foundation"--and you don't do a full commercial but you acknowledge them. Without which you don't get any money. It could be that, or it could take the form of running regular commercials. Then, you know, Mr. Mack was utilizing my experience in this business when talking to me and a couple of other people about it-- The other really, I guess you could call it, dangerous area in which you lose control, once you make a commitment to a production company, whether it's a local station, a network affiliate, a network to televise your event, then you get into the very controversial area--and again this has to do with loss of control--of having some advertisers that don't particularly reflect the image of your organization. But you've lost control of that.

WHITE: Oh, yes, that's always a concern.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. And if they want to run commercials-- This is an exaggeration, but suppose you have an hour and a half Urban League Whitney M. Young Jr. program and one of the sponsors who comes in with a big bunch of money and wants to advertise is Victoria's Secret. You've got a problem. That's an exaggeration. But suppose it is a company that has had a controversial relationship with African American civil rights groups? Say, a company which has been sued--I won't name anybody--for racial discrimination. You certainly don't want their commercials running in the middle of your program. It creates all kinds of conflict.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness, lots of controversy.

McCORMICK: Lots of controversy. That opens up all kinds of controversies. And what about those who feel that because they've been supporters for a long time they should be able to advertise and don't have the budget? So they have to be excluded, not because you want to but because the rules have changed once it becomes a TV program. So for all those reasons we have decided not to televise the Whitney Young dinner so that we retain complete control. We did manage to get some considerable television exposure last year, the week before the Whitney Young dinner, when channel 7, KABC TV, just decided on its own to produce a separate program extolling-- I think it was for our twenty-fifth anniversary of the Whitney Young dinner. [The program] aired on channel 7. We didn't mind it being-- It was a TV program from the very outset. We had two entertainers who had been very, very close to the Urban League for years, Dionne Warwick and Nancy Wilson. And then they had excerpts of all the various Urban League programs, and they produced a very, very nice program. But it did not supplant the Whitney Young dinner, so we were able to retain our primary vehicle and keep it under our own control.

WHITE: Aha. Which is the ultimate goal.

McCORMICK: It is.

WHITE: That could certainly be a political land mine.

McCORMICK: It is loaded with land mines. And when I started to explain to Mr. Mack about all the things-- When I talk about this, I'm talking about ten, twelve, fourteen years ago. He is obviously far more sophisticated about what happens vis-àvis television now than he was then, because he's a very bright, perceptive man. But early on it took somebody who had experience in the field to pull his coat, to tell him, "You want to think about this twice. You want to think about this three or four times."

WHITE: Exactly. Now, tell me, what sort of interaction does the Los Angeles League have with the National League?

McCORMICK: Very, very close. There are, I think, 113 affiliates, Los Angeles Urban League being one of the 113. And from all we hear from the national office, the Los Angeles Urban League, particularly the last eighteen to twenty years or so under Mr. Mack's leadership, has become the model affiliate that the national holds up to all the other Urban Leagues around the country, including the New York Urban League, as the model Urban League. We have more programs, we generate more financial support, we serve a larger number of people than any other affiliate of the other 112. But we are all direct affiliates of the National Urban League, and we're committed to a certain set of by-laws and a constitution and the same mission as the National Urban League. We generally try to conform for uniformity's sake, so that when Hugh Price, the president of the National Urban League, makes a public statement about what the Urban League does it will apply to everybody. It's not just a matter of conforming but so that there's just one spokesperson for the entire movement, because it gives it added impetus and all that kind of thing. Now, within each affiliate we are allowed some leeway to try to achieve the mission in whatever ways our localized situation requires. Certainly if you're the president of the Birmingham, Alabama, Urban League, which is a much, much, smaller community than Los Angeles, your problems and your challenges won't be the same as they will in Los Angeles. We have some advantages here. The Kansas City Urban League--or the Omaha or the Birmingham or the Baltimore Urban League-- doesn't have hosts of movie stars and TV stars and music stars and sports stars. It's one of the advantages of being in L.A. It's not an advantage if you don't know how to use it and if you don't utilize it. Each affiliate is given some leeway to fulfill its efforts at approaching the mission. And the mission for all of the affiliates is the same. You're given your regional leeway to do the things that you have to do in your community. For example, in some cities there are some Urban League affiliates whose primary fund-raiser is the Ebony Fashion Fair. They aren't able to mount a-- When they hear about our having our major fund-raising dinner--the tickets are $450 a person--they think, "My God! Our tickets are $50 a person!" Or $40 a person. So New York may be able to do $450 a person, although they might have trouble doing that, or Chicago. Detroit for many, many years, because they had the support of the automotive industry, was able to generate large sums of money and was able to generate a lot of jobs in the automobile industry. But it has become, as you know, somewhat dispersed now, with plants all over the place.

WHITE: So that has changed, of course, for the Urban League, as well.

McCORMICK: That has changed, it has. But in your region, in your city, you are left to generate funds and to run programs and provide services as best you can under the aegis of the mission.

WHITE: Well, tell me now, what would you say are some of the most significant challenges that you, the leaders of the National Urban League, have faced? As African American leaders and as the leaders of one of the most powerful and important organizations for the African American community, what have been some of the most significant challenges you have faced?

McCORMICK: The challenges that have always been there: the challenges of trying to improve the quality of life for as many of our fellow African Americans as we possibly can in every way that we can, recognizing specifically in the Los Angeles Urban League that a great deal of emphasis from our perspective has to be placed on education and job training, preparation for job or career or profession. That's where we've placed a great deal of emphasis. We've been strong supporters from the very outset of [the] Head Start [Program], because that's where it all begins. We think that was one of the areas where young black children lost an advantage so early in life, because they didn't get off to a good beginning. Fortunately, over the years, the leadership of this state and this country have also come to realize the importance of the Head Start Program, one of the programs, I believe, that came out of the Great Society of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. It's become one of those things that, despite the fact that there is still opposition to it in some places, it's a part of the common knowledge now that this is an important program. So that's one. Education, training, and advocacy--training of people for jobs, and going out and advocating. We tend not to be a militant organization, because we feel--and I don't think I'm misspeaking on behalf of the League here--that militancy can certainly get attention but it can be counterproductive, too. Instead of building up goodwill for something you're trying to accomplish, you build up resistance against it. Cooperation or help may come, but it will be slow, and it will be grudging, and it won't be wholehearted. Although we in the Urban League certainly realize that sometimes there are important reasons for forceful advocacy, and Mr. Mack has never shrunk from that, as you know. You've heard him make speeches. He has this unique ability to chastise corporate giants and corporate spokespersons sitting in a committee meeting and still keep their cooperation, because-- That's a skill that not very many people have. The late, great Whitney Young had it, Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] had it, and a few others. Julian Bond, William [H.] Gray [III], a few others have the ability to chastise and get the cooperation and keep the goodwill at the same time. But it's a thin line.

WHITE: It's quite a skill.

McCORMICK: It has to be walked very carefully.

WHITE: Master of diplomacy.

McCORMICK: We have never been reluctant to be strong in the area of advocacy when we thought it was necessary to be so. And that has sometimes caused a little friction on our board, because our board has always, ever since I've been affiliated, been made up of liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, all kinds of people who just believed in the mission of the League and wanted to serve it. But when very, very sensitive issues--some ballot measures, things like that--have come along, the discussions on our board of directors meetings have sometimes been less than gentle. But we have never prohibited anybody from expressing an opinion. And it has never caused anybody to get off the wagon of the Urban League and say, "Well, I'm getting off the board because I can't go along with this." Because there is still the mission. And whether you agree or disagree with the contentious point of right now, a proposition that you may favor that the Urban League takes a position against, there is still the mission. And we assume that you came on to begin with because you believed in the efficacy of the mission.

WHITE: That's excellent to hear, that sort of camaraderie and sense of community that's occurring.

McCORMICK: It's unusual.

WHITE: So many diverse backgrounds and ideologies, political or otherwise.

McCORMICK: Absolutely. In the same room, in the same organization, and ostensibly working for the same cause. But we've done that, and I think maybe have been better for it.

WHITE: Yes. Speaking of which, you certainly have some longevity there. I understand that Vernon [E.] Jordan [Jr.], a very famous attorney at the present, when he was president of the National Urban League he started the Quarter Century Club, and you just recently received your twenty-five-year pin.

McCORMICK: Yes, that's right. I had forgotten about that. I sure did. That's one of the very good things that Vernon did. Vernon was a very, very dynamic leader for the National Urban League. Vernon took all of those wonderful things that the late great Whitney Young had done and built on them. And really Vernon probably-- Whitney had just started, before his untimely death, to recognize the need for bringing corporate America on board in trying to make for a level playing field, in trying to improve equality of opportunity, and was extremely, enormously persuasive. I had the privilege of hearing him speak on a number of occasions here in Los Angeles in rooms that were virtually filled with white CEOs and corporate executives, and he had an enchanting and persuasive way of showing them that, "Look, we're not asking you to do things for African Americans or people of other cultural or racial groups out of some deep wellspring of love from your heart. We're suggesting that it's in your enlightened, best interest to do this, because you're going to ultimately have to pay for it anyway. You're going to have to pay for people in prison, you're going to have to put security at your home, put bars on your doors. And it's absolutely true that we can all rise together and live together or we can all fall together. We can have a crumbled, broken, dangerous, contentious society in which nobody is happy. So it's in your enlightened self-interest to help all of us of those-- Now, we're not talking about Black Panthers with rifles or anything that's frightening or intimidating or even dangerous to you or to us. We're talking about things that demand only a civil understanding of what enlightened self-interest is. And it's in the best interest of every American of whatever color to try to live peacefully and in cooperation with every other American. Otherwise some terrible things are going to happen in this country." And that same tone Vernon built on and got more huge CEOs--I mean top people, like from ITT [International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation], IBM [International Business Machines Corporation]--on the board of directors of the National Urban League. And these were people, as we've discussed before, who, when you have them on your board of directors, no matter what your organization is, can make yea-or-nay decisions on the spot. "Yes, we will do that!" "That much money, yeah, you've got it!" So you can have a great deal more impetus when you have those kinds of people, and that's what Vernon did. And he organized many, many other programs from the National Urban League position, from his position as president, that filtered down through the other affiliates. He visited the other affiliates a great deal. He was one of the first ones to start spreading the conventions around to various affiliate cities around the country, always having the annual national convention in Washington, D.C. the year of an election.

WHITE: Of course. [laughs]

McCORMICK: We still do that for any number of obvious reasons. Vernon encouraged leadership at every affiliate level to follow the national example and get corporate CEOs involved. And he and a very talented staff at National Urban League headquarters in New York City devised any number of programs which they felt would work in any of the 113 affiliates, no matter the size or affluence--data processing training programs early on, computer training programs-- Vernon was responsible for helping put together a research wing of the National Urban League and creating relationships with other already existing research wings. Because you're handicapped, almost, if you don't have the information and projections about where things are going. You can spend ten years training people for jobs that are not going to be there at the end of the ten years. He got very deeply involved in research, and that caused all the affiliates, with the leadership of the National Urban League office, to have some good, strong materials to work with, to know what to do with--to know what worked in other affiliate cities, to try it here. Somebody in Kansas City could know what worked in the L.A. Urban League and try it there. But Vernon was responsible for a lot of those innovations. He was responsible for cementing the National Urban League as an organization through which altruistic people of every color in this country could work without feeling threatened or competed with or that-- Early on, anybody who demanded equality of opportunity was considered a radical, you know.

WHITE: Right, at a certain point in time.

McCORMICK: At a certain point in time, yeah. Or a "militant," to use the expression they used to use, with all the connotations that that carried. But he began this general kind of enlightenment of all these sources of power and money in the country which could help the Urban League pursue its mission. He was president of the Urban League for ten years. Very bright man, who had both his M.B.A. and his law degree, so he was fully acquainted with all the basic tenets of business. So he could speak to these CEOs on their own terms. He'd been through the same educational background as they had. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: And all the legalities to boot.

McCORMICK: And the legalities to boot. So it wasn't as though he was approaching these people from an inferior position. He was approaching most of them from the superior position. [mutual laughter] In addition, Vernon, during those years-- And I haven't seen him in a few years now since he's been primarily a Washington [D.C.] attorney and lobbyist with a major legal firm there-- But during the Urban League years Vernon was noted for, among other things, a very influential and forceful and--I don't want to say dominating--but a commanding presence. He's a big guy; he's about six [feet]-four [inches tall], an imposing figure. And Vernon, being the bright man he is, understood that and how to use that. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: To his advantage, sure.

McCORMICK: To his advantage. I thought Vernon-- I still think he's a very handsome, distinguished-looking man. So he used all that. He was an imposing figure, and he built legions of followers because of his example as president of the National Urban League. I still have infinite respect for Vernon Jordan and what he did for the National Urban League, and for the Urban League movement generally.

WHITE: That's excellent. Congratulations on a quarter of a century of service.

McCORMICK: I didn't realize that until the pin was presented, and I thought, "God! It can't have been that long!" But I guess it has. But also, one of the things I think the origination of that pin and that kind of recognition did was exemplified by something that John Mack very often says in speeches. I've heard him say this at graduations of our various classes and the various training programs: that service in the Los Angeles Urban League, the National Urban League, service on behalf of African American people, is not a sprint, it's a marathon, and you have to be in it for the long run if you're going to make a difference. And I think that's one of the things that Vernon and the National Urban League had in mind when they started the Quarter Century Club. They wanted to see African American men and women involved in the movement not just for two, three years, rotate off the board and go on about your life or your career, but be in it for the long run, to be a marathon runner.

WHITE: Absolutely, to make a real life's commitment.

McCORMICK: To make a life's commitment.

WHITE: A good, significant portion of your life. That's certainly an accomplishment.

McCORMICK: I think it is, and I think that particular tenet goes toward what has been the long-term stability of the Urban League movement as compared to some other civil rights organizations which have had tumultuous times and sometimes difficult times. That's one of the reasons why I decided to kind of adopt the Urban League as my movement of choice, because I recognized the sense of stability and the upward surge and that it was laid out on a track, that it was going to keep getting better and better and better and more effective and more effective and more effective because of the way it was organized.

WHITE: Exactly, from the onset.

McCORMICK: From the onset.

WHITE: And it has proven to do just that.

McCORMICK: It's proven to do just that. And then, of course, as I can't say often enough, that we have really been blessed to have an extraordinary leader in John W. Mack here in Los Angeles. The leadership, that's where it all starts. That's where that road to more and greater and greater effectiveness starts, with effective leadership. And a component of effective leadership is of course being able to attract the service of very talented and committed people to the board of directors and to the various volunteer boards and to the various advisory groups that we have. We have advisory groups for the day care center, we have advisory groups for the training programs, to keep the community involved, not just something that comes from the top down, from us to them. Everybody's involved, and thousands of people have served on these advisory groups.

WHITE: The history of the organization is fascinating. Now, I think that we may have discussed this before, but John Mack has been the president for about thirty years, is that correct?

McCORMICK: It will be thirty years, I think, in August.

WHITE: Thirty years in August, okay.

McCORMICK: August of 1969 I think was when-- I know it was the summer of 1969 that he was first elected president.

WHITE: Now, are there other members that have been on board for twenty-five years, as far as you know?

McCORMICK: I don't think there have been any other board members who have been on the board of directors as many years as I have. There have been some who have been ten, twelve, thirteen years, but I don't think there's been anybody else who's been on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Urban League as many as years as I have. I think I've been on the board of directors longer than most members of the staff. Except for Mr. Mack.

WHITE: That certainly speaks to your commitment, though. When you believe in something, you believe in it wholeheartedly--

McCORMICK: I do.

WHITE: --and put your heart into it and stick it out. And like you said, it's a marathon, not a sprint, and you stuck it out for the long haul and helped it make some significant changes and offered guidance and leadership.

McCORMICK: Well, I tried. I sure tried.

WHITE: Okay. Well, let's see now. I know that you have been involved in a number of other organizations over time, and I know that there are some, perhaps, that you would like to bring up. But one which I was interested in is that I believe that you have been on the board of directors for the [National] Association of Black Journalists.

McCORMICK: Well, I haven't been on the board of directors, never been elected to the board of directors, but I've been a member of NABJ almost since it's inception and a member of the Black Journalists Association of Southern California ever since its inception. I have not been as active as I would have liked to have been, and I'm sure that's probably true of very many African American journalists in Southern California. One of the problems is schedules. It's always a problem trying to find a meeting time and date when everybody's not working. And that's particularly a problem for people in television. There have been years when I have been more active than other years, but it's something I hope to become more active in as time goes along. I think I've reached an age now where of necessity I've tried to kind of pare down the schedule, to keep it something manageable. Because I've always believed that if you try to do too much you end up not really being able to do very much for any of the things that you're involved in. So I'd rather be involved in three or four things and give a great deal of effort than be involved in ten things and never be at a meeting or just be a member of a board in name only. I've always hated that. I've always tried to avoid that. There have been a lot of people who have asked me--I can't tell you how many--"It would be a value to us to let us just put your name on the board." And I thought, "No, no, no, no. Put somebody on there who's going to work!" And I've always turned that down.

WHITE: Okay. Is that the only board that you're presently sitting on, the Urban League?

McCORMICK: Right now. The Los Angeles Urban League is the only board of directors I'm on right now. I'm affiliated with many organizations and have been active with many organizations, but I found that having thirty-five, forty, fifty board meetings a year, or combination board and committee meetings a year, was just getting to be too much and was really wearing on me physically. I finally decided it's just not possible to be all things to all people unless you are somebody like a CEO who has a support staff, where you can delegate a lot of work and a lot of phone calls and a lot of footwork and a lot of paperwork and all that kind of stuff. Whereas with me it was always just me. And I found myself with books-- One time I was on the board of directors of the Urban League, board of directors of the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California. I was a vice president of the Radio and Television News Association, I was president of the Radio and Television News Association. This is simultaneously with the Urban League. I was on the special committee of the United Way [of Los Angeles]. I was on the board of directors of Performing Tree[-Arts in Education], a philanthropic outfit that put on musical performances in inner city schools all around the city. I was on the board of directors of Challengers Boys and Girls Club. I was on the board of directors of Ebony Showcase Theatre [and Cultural Arts Center]. This is all at the same time.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness!

1.24. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 5, 1999

WHITE: We're continuing with the discussion about your activities on various boards.

McCORMICK: They were numerous. And in fact, as I look back now, in retrospect they were too numerous. I was trying to be too many things to too many people. Somebody once said that if you want to get something done, take it to somebody who is busy, because they're already in the mode to get things done. So I was on the board of the directors of the Los Angeles Urban League, the board of directors of Challengers Boys and Girls Club, the board of directors at Performing Tree, the board of directors of the Radio and Television News Association [of Southern California]-- RTNA--and later board of directors of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club.

WHITE: This was simultaneously?

McCORMICK: This was all during the same period, basically, except for the L.A. Press Club. [I was on the] board of directors of Ebony Showcase Theatre. I was president of RTNA, vice president of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club, and one time vice president of the L.A. Urban League board of directors. Committee responsibilities on all of those. [mutual laughter] And on the board of special committees of the United Way of Los Angeles. And it almost overwhelmed me. That was along with my professional responsibilities. Work goes on. So little by little, particularly after my mother [Laura Lee Lankford McCormick] and father [Lawrence W. McCormick] both passed away and I was feeling a little depressed, a little debilitated, and recognizing that I couldn't keep doing that, I started one by one to absent myself from those boards of directors. Invariably something would come along that would replace one of them, at least for the short term, but I was extremely, extremely active at that time. It's a funny thing. One of the ways in which Mr. Mack and I became such good friends was because he was very active too, and we would run into each other five or six times a week at different programs in the community. We were almost like twins, you know: "I'm going to be there, you're going to be there, I'll see you there." All the time, literally four or five times a week. At charity lunches and board-- Of course, he served on a lot of boards of directors, too. Many of the times we were serving on the same board of directors. It would be the same committee meetings and board meetings and events. But it came time to scale back, because I was looking at sixty and seventy board or committee meetings a year. And that's not to mention their major fundraising events and things like that. Lunches at the Biltmore [Hotel] and the Century Plaza [Hotel] and the [Westin] Bonaventure Hotel and every hotel in town. There came a time when I just had to start scaling back. So now it's principally the Los Angeles Urban League, although I'm still a very strong supporter of the Radio and Television News Association, the Black Journalists Association, United Way, and I'm still a strong supporter of Challengers Boys and Girls Club, which has had a marvelous record and which has had a terrific leader in Lou Dantzler for all these years. I think I was on his original board of directors right after a major supermarket gave him the building there at Fifty-fourth [Street] and Vermont [Avenue]. It's grown into a marvelous thing now.

WHITE: Where are they located, their main office here?

McCORMICK: Fifty-fourth and Vermont.

WHITE: Oh, it's still there, okay. But they've grown by leaps and bounds.

McCORMICK: But they've built a huge new edifice now. I think over the years, just through word of mouth and through influence, I was able to get more and more and more people, particularly more and more of the successful athletes, professional and college athletes around Southern California, to tell them, "This is something you ought to be doing." Going back to [Earvin] "Magic" [Johnson Jr.] and people like that. A lot of actors. Richard Roundtree was very active with Challengers, as was Louis Gossett Jr., among many others. I mean really, really active.

WHITE: And they were--

McCORMICK: Members of the board.

WHITE: Members of the board. And they also served as mentors of sorts to the children? Or they recruit others to--?

McCORMICK: They did whatever they were asked to do to support the organization. They were all fulfilling, because they were all serving good purposes. It's just that there was only one Larry and too many things to do. So now it's principally the Los Angeles Urban League and the professional organizations that I belong to: Black Journalist Association, RTNA--Radio and Television News Association--and I'm back on a committee now of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club.

WHITE: You are? They recruited you again.

McCORMICK: They recruited me back on an organization that is affiliated with them called the 8-Ball [Foundation]. The 8-Ball Foundation has fund-raisers for journalists who are retired and who are in financial straits, and we raise money to help support them and things like that. The 8-Ball Foundation.

WHITE: I see. Overall, what is the greatest charge or goal for the Press Club? Their mission?

McCORMICK: Well, one of the things that the Press Club does that I think is very constructive is that they present scholarships for journalism students or those that aspire to careers in journalism. The Press Club presents the Greater Los Angeles Press Club Awards, journalism awards, every year. So probably their most important function is to promote the pursuit of excellence in journalism, including all the things that are supposed to be characteristic of good journalism--objectivity, conscientiousness, truth, integrity, all those things--to try to continue to promote those goals and those qualities in journalists and in journalism generally.

WHITE: Okay, so they recruited you once again, and--

McCORMICK: Except this time it's not as involving a function as it was before. And when they approached me about it they said, "We know you're busy, and we're not going to ask you to make eight or ten committee meetings and three or four board meetings a year." But the 8-Ball committee only meets two or three times a year, and we'll make decisions on allocations and things like that. I thought, "Well, hey, I may need their services one day, so I'd better get on board!" [mutual laughter] I wanted to kind of become active again, but trying to carve out a niche where you can contribute without it just weighing you down with responsibility is not an easy thing to do if you're one of those persons who really wants to make a contribution and is not just a dilettante. And I've always had a very low place of esteem for dilettantes, for people who just like to collect board directorships and stuff like that.

WHITE: It's a constant negotiation, though, wanting to give more time--

McCORMICK: It's a balancing act.

WHITE: --and the number of hours in a day, that's for sure.

McCORMICK: Yeah. Yeah, there are only a finite number of hours, you know.

WHITE: Well, wonderful. Well, thank you for that information that you have shared about your professional affiliations.

McCORMICK: Well, my pleasure.

WHITE: And you've made some significant contributions on all of these committees, and I'm sure they feel very fortunate to have had you as a part of their group and part of their mission.

McCORMICK: Well, I hope I've been able to contribute something to their success and efficiency and to their achieving whatever their individual mission happened to be.

WHITE: Excellent. Okay, I wanted to shift gears a bit in just talking about a balancing act and so many interests and talents that you have and that you've been able to exercise through one vehicle or another. I was looking at your literature and through your personal archives, and noticed that at one time you learned to fly a single-engine airplane.

McCORMICK: Yeah, I did. That was a terrific experience. It was one I approached with some trepidation at first, because I knew that there are risks involved in it, particularly in a very, very busy metropolis like Los Angeles. There are so many airports and so many private pilots who fly so much of the time, because the weather is usually pretty good, as opposed to other parts of the country, where it's mostly summertime flying. In the winter your plane just stays in storage because you're snowed in. You can't take off; you can't fly. Yeah, that was around 1973, '74, with the encouragement of a colleague of mine, Hal Fishman, who is a noted pilot and has been for a long, long time, a very experienced pilot. He got me fascinated with the thought of taking flying lessons myself, and so I finally took the plunge. It was beneficial in a number of ways, because at the time I was the weatherman at the station.

WHITE: Oh, how appropriate.

McCORMICK: And one of the things that you have to do-- First, as you may or may not know, when you become a flight student, the first thing you take is about a month of what they call "ground school," just studying in a classroom. And a great deal of what you're studying in ground school is meteorology, is weather. So it came in so handy. I learned a great deal about meteorology. I think it made me probably one of the most knowledgeable TV weathermen in the city at the time, because I actually knew what I was talking about--about frontal systems and what they do and how they act and all that kind of thing. It's important for you to learn, if you're going to fly, what weather conditions can be hazardous to your health, can be very serious and very dangerous. You have to watch out for things like icing-- When I say icing I don't mean-- Well, there are two kinds, wing icing and engine icing. As you know, gasoline-- And you've seen this yourself if you've ever spilled gasoline in your hand, what looks like a little frost comes off on your hand. Well, that can cause engine icing if there's a leak or something like that, and that can cause the engine to malfunction because the power's back, so fuel evaporation takes place. So you have to know under what conditions engine icing might occur. You check the weather reports all along your destination before you fly to see what the weather is like, to see if there is any possibility of engine icing. There is a device within the cockpit that you can use that will provide heat to prevent engine icing, but you want to know what the conditions are so you can watch it, so that you don't get into a situation where engine icing has occurred and you use the device, the de-icer, too late, and the engine stalls and you become raw rock. And the other is wingtip icing on the external surfaces. Unless you're flying a commercial jet-- You probably wouldn't be flying a private plane under those conditions. That's when there is a certain amount of moisture in the air at altitude fifteen, twenty thousand feet, a certain amount of moisture, and the air drops to a certain temperature. Ice forms on the wings, and your control surfaces which are used to go up and down and side to side will no longer function. Then you're in deep-- You know what I mean! [mutual laughter] But learning about all those things which you have to know if you're going to fly--recognizing an approaching frontal system-- What kind of frontal system is it? What kind of winds is it going to have? Is it something you should fly away from, fly around, or do a one-eighty [180-degree-turn] and fly back? Recognizing the characteristics of the leading edge of a frontal system: there's going to be wind, there's going to be hail, knowing that the winds and hail, if it's a storm system-- That you may be five miles away from the system but you're still in danger. What you can't see from the ground is that this storm system is kicking wind and hail out five miles ahead of the storm. So you have to know those things.

WHITE: Of course.

McCORMICK: You have to know which way a frontal system is moving, what size it is. Suppose you have enough fuel to fly for three hours and you're looking at a frontal system that is six hundred miles long--which is not unusual. Do you have enough fuel to fly all the way around that system? Or do you have to look for some place to put it down? So I was learning all these things about meteorology and using them in my weather forecast. Suddenly the stuff which I had a kind of understanding of before I started taking flying lessons, because I read all the wire services and everything-- And I guess I exhibited as much knowledgeability about doing TV weather as any other TV weatherman in town. But after taking flying lessons I understood it so much more clearly and could be more specific in talking to my TV audience. I could tell them in nontechnical terms what this meant. And I got to the point-- I can still do it sometimes. I can tell whether a system that I see in the sky has enough moisture for it to rain or whether it probably doesn't. I can tell whether there's going to be a great deal of rain by the speed of a weather system. If a weather system which is moisture rich is going to come across the Los Angeles basin and I see that it moved from Santa Barbara to Ventura in ten minutes, I know it's moving fast. It's not going to linger long enough to drop a lot of rain. If you see a weather system that they say is off the coast of Southern California and it's been sitting off the coast moving slowly inland at one or two miles an hour, you know it's going to sit over Los Angeles for hours and it's going to rain for hours. So the speed with which most weather systems move from west to east-- Where we live here in the United States, here in Southern California, summer systems are generated in the Pacific [Ocean and] winter systems are generated in the Gulf of Alaska. They always sweep west to east, from the West Coast across to the East Coast. And most of them travel across the surface of the earth about four hundred miles a day. So if a system is eight hundred miles off the coast of California, you know it's not going to leave for two days. Some are slower, some are faster, but most of them travel across the surface of the earth about four hundred miles a day. But I learned all those things. And then after ground school it was a nervous time, because-- If I had been, say, nineteen or twenty [years old] I probably would have had no fear. You know how young people are. But I've got a wife, I've got kids, and I've got all these responsibilities. So taking off and going up in the air by yourself with nobody to save you but yourself was more than a notion-- But I finished ground school, went through the flight training with my flight instructor. We were flying out of Santa Monica [Municipal] Airport, and our practice area was Santa Monica Bay, just off the coast there. And, oh, after about a year of-- I guess I soloed in about six months.

WHITE: Right. I had noticed in your records, in your logbook, the pilot qualifications and the pre-flight planning checked and found adequate for solo crosscountry flight as of August of 1974. And I believe that you started in January.

McCORMICK: So it would have been about six months. I thought it would have wound up being that. Then one day, you know-- You've been flying what you call touch-and-goes, they're practice landings. Except instead of landing and taxiing all the way around the airport and going all around again, you--with the instructor in the right seat-- The pilot in command is always in the left seat. So you're in the left seat, and you're making your approach. He's critiquing you all the time. You have to keep playing the nose at a certain angle and keep the wings straight and level. There are lights on each side of the runway that tell you whether you're too high or too low: you'll see red lights if you're too low, you'll see blue if you're too high, and if you're coming in right at the proper angle. So you're looking at that, you're looking at your airspeed--you're supposed to land at eighty-eight miles an hour--your nose is supposed to have a certain attitude, pointed downward. You're doing all those things. When you recognize that you're just about to touch down on the runway, so you won't hit too hard on the main gear--the two landing gear in front; this is a threewheeler-- you flare, you pull the nose up, so you actually land like a bird lands. [gestures] Then you drop down on the main gear. Then, in order to kill your airspeed, you immediately let the flaps down, so the wing is level again, because that's what you're going to do when you land. Then you stand on the brakes to stop it.

WHITE: Quite a combination of skills.

McCORMICK: Oh, it is! If anybody ever tells you it's just like driving a car, you tell them no, no, it's not--

WHITE: No, that's a farce.

McCORMICK: That's a farce. So when you're doing practice landings or shooting touch-and-goes, you do all that. Then immediately your instructor says, "Flaps up! Full throttle!" And you take right back off again before you ever stop on the runway. You just keep doing that, landing and taking right back off. They're called touch-andgoes. They're practice landings. And we'd shoot nine or ten of those in a day.

WHITE: And you were flying, at the peak part of your training, two or three times a week?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. It got very expensive. [laughs] And it's so expensive now that, unfortunately, interest in what's called general aviation--as opposed to commercial or delivery aviation-- General aviation is suffering now because it has become so expensive. The airplanes have become so expensive. Years and years ago it became so expensive that guys started buying them in groups: five or six guys would pool their money and buy a plane and then try to make some of the money back by leasing it to a flying school. I think that many of them still do that. But you could buy an airplane then, like the one I flew, a Piper Cherokee 140--

WHITE: Two-seater?

McCORMICK: --no, it was a four-seater--for $35,000-$40,000.

WHITE: Oh, like a car.

McCORMICK: Now with all the new avionics in there--with the Global Positioning [Systems] satellites, with new, sophisticated communications equipment and all that stuff, now you're talking about $175,000.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness.

McCORMICK: So it's driven a lot of general aviation pilots almost out of the business.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness. It's five times as much.

McCORMICK: Unless a guy or three guys can-- And there are publications where you can find airplanes for sale. The way you tell how used an airplane is, so you know what you're getting, is by the number of miles on the engine and airframe.

WHITE: There's no such thing as changing the odometer like people do on their cars, right?

McCORMICK: No, because that can get somebody killed, and you can't do that. But you don't trust that anyway, you look at the records. They have to keep maintenance records, that the engine and the airframe were checked every so many miles. And the signature of the person who did it--the mechanic at whatever the airport was that did it--is right on there. So you know that if an airplane has a hundred thousand miles-- Well, a hundred thousand miles wouldn't be that much. Actually, they don't do it by miles, they do it by hours. That's really the way wear is measured in an airplane, by the number of hours of service. Now, an airplane can be ten years old, but if it had only been flown for an hour it's a new airplane. So the number of hours that have been logged onto the engine and the airframe and the control services-- What you would do if you had the expertise is get together-- You can buy an old airplane, twenty years old, and put in a new engine, completely cover it with a new airframe and new controls and everything for another $10,000 to $15,000, and have yourself a fairly reliable aircraft. And "reliable" is always the keyword, very key. Airworthy. So one day after shooting touch-and-goes, my instructor--his name was Bill Lewis--pulled off to the side of the runway over by where the tower is at Santa Monica Airport. I thought he was going to get out and run up to the tower and do something. Maybe we were going to wait until everything was clear and taxi across the airport and go back to the office. He got out and said, "Okay, you've got it. Take off." I said, "You're kidding." He said, "No, if you're not ready to solo now, you never will be. Go ahead. Taxi back up. You know how to talk to the tower. Tell them who you are." There's a certain frequency-- You turn on the radio, you take a little microphone, you tell them, "This is Piper Cherokee 140, 266XYZ--" whatever the number is "--preparing for takeoff for local area." And the tower calls you back and says you're number two behind-- And you can see the other airplane that's going, that's got there ahead of you. So you sit there and you wait. And that other airplane takes off, and the tower tells you--calls your number again--"Taxi into position, please." You taxi to the head of the runway. [laughs] I remember, at one and the same time-- It was exhilarating. I was fairly sure I could do it. Bill had told me to fly around twice. You take off-- I knew everything about accelerating down the runway. You steer an airplane with your feet, with the pedals. If you push this way it goes that way, so you don't want it careening all over--

WHITE: A coordination effort, my goodness.

McCORMICK: It is, to keep it balanced, to keep it straight. And you're watching your airspeed, and you're watching the throttle, and you don't try to take off until you reach a certain airspeed. Now, airspeed is not the same as the speed with which you're going over the ground like a car. Airspeed is the speed at which air is flowing over the wings, because you're always taking off into the wind. You want to wait until the airplane reaches a certain-- You know what the weight of an aircraft is, including you--the passenger, the pilot. We call it being "inside the envelope," being well inside the safety envelope. You've heard people saying "outside the envelope." "Outside safety boundaries"; that's what they mean. Too much weight, not enough headwind--all those things mean you're outside the envelope. You're pretty sure everything is inside the envelope. It's a fine day, a clear day, not too much weight. So you get to a certain airspeed. Speed to takeoff is 110 miles an hour. There's what they call a pitot tube. It's a little tube that sticks out from the front of the airplane that measures the gust force of the wind coming straight toward the plane. On your little gauge, that tells you what the airspeed is. So when you've got 110 miles an hour's worth of air flowing over the wings, it is now safe to take off. And maybe five, six, eight seconds down the runway you slowly pull back on the yoke--which is what in a car is the steering wheel. So you pull back on the yoke, and you've already rammed the throttle up to full power. And that's a little switch--not like an accelerator in a car--on the dashboard that you push all the way in for full power. That gives it all the fuel that you've got. And it just makes a roaring sound, and you feel yourself just lift off. And then they tell you to take a quick look back and see if you took off straight, if you line up with the runway. Then you look down, and you're over the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

WHITE: Do you recall the feelings that you experienced the first time?

McCORMICK: Nervousness. I was sweating. I was sweating. To be up there-- It's a different sensation to be looking down at Santa Monica, the city of Santa Monica, Santa Monica Bay, looking down there. Every airport has a traffic pattern. That is, to avoid or try to prevent collisions, everybody flies at a certain altitude and keeps a certain distance between themselves and the airplane ahead of them. So the traffic pattern depends, at various airports, on a number of things. It depends on the number and type of impediments that you might fly into--mountains, tall buildings, things like that. As I recall, the traffic pattern around Santa Monica Airport is 2,500 feet. Also because there are homes around there--residents and the noise. So you get to 2,500 feet. You're looking at your altimeter. You don't turn until you get out past where the ocean meets the beach, and then you bank left and go for your initial crosswind. You're going to fly in a rectangular pattern. You're going to take off, you're going to bank left, and then you're going to do your downwind on your approach to come back to the airport. So you're flying parallel to the airport. You're watching the airplane ahead of you, one behind you, maintaining a certain altitude. You stay around 2,500 feet--2,400, 2,600, but in that general vicinity. You should stay at 2,500 feet, if that's the traffic pattern altitude. And then you get to a certain distance-- Well, at Santa Monica Airport, the place where you turn to do your crosswind before final approach is at the Century City [Century Plaza Towers] twin towers. You see the twin towers, you know that's where you're going to do your crosswind. You do your crosswind, and then you begin bleeding off altitude. You can't land at 2,500 feet. And then you turn from your crosswind into final approach. And final approach-- You're probably two, three miles out, over the towers at Century City. And it's clear, you can see the Santa Monica runway. It's three, four miles from Century City--you're looking right at the runway. That's one of the things about flying: you can see the runway, you can see everything. Immediately you begin to line up for your final approach to landing. You start to look for those lights--first the red-- You sure don't want to be too low, because there's a little bluff right at the end of Santa Monica Airport. With the approach in you'll crash right into the bluff and you're history. So the red is the warning that you want to see first. You want to get it to blue and then finally you ease it into the white. You know you're supposed to land at ninety-eight miles an hour or whatever. So you point the plane, and there's a little trim devise--you trim it to fly at ninety-eight miles an hour nose down. Keep the plane in the white. Keep aiming for that line that goes down the center of the runway. That's what you're aiming for. And then at a certain moment, which you have to feel when you're about to touch down, you flare out. You pull the nose in and then you kind of roll out into a landing. So I did it! And then you have to remember-- One of the key things about flying an airplane, one of the key differences--and there are many between flying an airplane and driving a car--is that you have to stay ahead of the airplane. By that I mean you have to have already thought of what you're going to do next way before you would in a car. In a car it would be like-- If you were driving a car and you'd say, "I have a car that will go two hundred miles an hour, so it is going to take me eight blocks to stop, so I have to start stopping right now." In an airplane I'm thinking all the time I'm landing the sequence of things I've got to do. I've got to pull up the flap thirty degrees at flaps, I've got to throttle down, I've got to touch down, I've got to flare, I've got to roll for a minute, and then I've got to push full throttle in and take off right again. So all that sequence has to be in your mind. Military jet pilots are amazing. Commercial jet pilots, the computer flies it for them. A good friend of Hal Fishman [Barry Schiff], who's just retired from TWA [TransWorld Airlines], he flew for them for forty years-- [Lockheed] L-1011s, [Boeing] 747s. He said unless things get really dicey you don't so much fly as you monitor them. You punch in the flight path in the computer. The destination, the altitude at which you want to fly, the points at which you want to change direction, you program that into the computer. You take off-- The plane can actually land itself. There are radio signals at the airport that will bring it right down onto the runway. But then you have to put the brakes on and keep it going straight. But you take off, you reach a certain altitude, the altitude at which they usually turn off the seat belt signs and everything, and you can move around the cabin. When they get to their cruising altitude, which may be 30,000 feet, 28,000 thousand feet, they engage the computer. Now, they still have to monitor and make sure everything goes right, but-- They have their three guys up there, the pilot, the co-pilot, and the flight engineer. Sometimes if it's a long flight one guy will sleep while the other guys monitor. I shouldn't be telling you. You won't wake them up unless something-- "Wake me up in an hour." And they wake them up in an hour, and everybody will have a cup of coffee or check and make sure everything is right on key. They can look at the computer and tell where they are. If they are going from here to New York City they can tell whether they're approaching Chicago or if they're approaching Pittsburgh or wherever. Even though it's like a five-and-a-half-hour flight across the country, for the amount of ground they're covering that's short. It seems like a grueling, long flight for them. It is if you're going to fly from L.A. to Australia-- thirteen, fourteen hours--that's a long flight. Or L.A. to Tokyo. L.A. to Moscow is about fifteen hours. That's a long flight. Then you know the guys have got to take a nap. Sometimes they'll even change crews, stop in Chicago and change crews. The computer does so much. But in these little airplanes you're doing everything. So the best feeling of that first day that I soloed--I think I still have that certificate of solo flight upstairs or somewhere--the best time was when we had finished for the day. I'd taxied back around to--what was it?--Gannell Aviation, I think, their offices, shut the plane down. Since airplanes, as you know, don't have transmissions, you can't back up. You have to push it back. I pushed it back onto the line, tied it down. We put the blocks under the wheels so the wind didn't blow it around. I walked back into the office, and my flight instructor shook my hand, congratulated me, "Very well done. Next time, the next lesson you come down"-- whether it's two days from then; that was a Wednesday, so it would be a Friday--" all you're going to do is shoot touch-and-goes by yourself and maybe go out and practice over Santa Monica Bay." A lot of things you have to practice. I got in the car and I was coming out--the airport comes up to Bundy [Drive] and it was Bundy over to the Santa Monica Freeway. That was such a feeling of achievement, of elation, of absolute elation. I just flew an airplane over Santa Monica--twice!--and landed by myself.

WHITE: That's quite an accomplishment.

McCORMICK: It is. And even more so when I finished my solo cross-country. I had to fly from Santa Monica to Salinas, three hundred miles--up to the Salinas valley, almost to San Francisco, and then back the next day, down the coast of California. I felt comfortable coming back. It was going up--! When I left Santa Monica Airport and got over Santa Barbara, and then I was supposed to hop over the mountains to the Salinas valley and fly up the Salinas valley-- And I'm looking down at those mountains and thinking, "There is no-- Lord, please do not let this engine quit or anything happen! Because there is no place to set it down down there." I thought I would never get across those mountains to where I could see a highway, a golf course, a farm field, or someplace where I could put it down.

WHITE: Do you recall approximately how long that flight took?

McCORMICK: Oh, it took three hours. Yeah, three hours up and three hours back. But-- Well, I look back on the achievements now. I did everything but the graduation ride. I took the written exam and passed it. I did my solo cross-country. Those are the three things you have to do. But I never took the graduation ride because I started to have some serious misgivings about whether I wanted to be captive to this airplane three or four days a week.

WHITE: Oh, that's what it would have required?

McCORMICK: You have to stay current or you'll kill yourself. You have to keep your skills and the feeling of an airplane. You have to keep those very, very current. And it was getting very expensive, and the kids were getting all up in school--it's time to start saving for college--so I had to make a decision. And if I had taken the graduation ride and got my pilot's license, I would probably have compelled myself to go ahead and fly.

WHITE: Now, what is the graduation ride?

McCORMICK: That's where you get in the airplane with a representative of the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], and that person rides with you and has you do a certain number of basic maneuvers, like turning when you're banking-- Unless you're diving intentionally to lose altitude in what they call a straight and level turn, you're supposed to keep the nose of the airplane right on the horizon all the way around. Not easy. Sounds easy, but it's not easy, because the plane wants to dip, and the engine wants to pull it up. You have to have the right balance of control to keep the nose right on the horizon. Practicing stalls are the worst. At first, at least, they're the worst. As time goes along you get used to it. A stall-- As I explained to you before, airspeed is not the speed at which you're making progress over the ground, it's the speed at which air is flowing over the wings. And you practice this with your instructor. You practice a stall so that you can intentionally learn how to prevent a stall from becoming a spiral, a spin, which is very hard to come out of, and you're just-- You're gonna die. So you practice a stall. You put the nose of the airplane straight up, pull it up, keep it up. The stall warning goes off, which means there's no longer enough air coming over the wings to support the plane, and what will happen is-- You pull the nose up so far, and it just drops like that [gestures to indicate a steep descent] and starts to twist to the left. So you have to learn how to pull it out of that spin before it develops fully into a spin. I hear some of my fellow newscasters, when they say the engine stalled or when they say the plane stalled-- It has nothing to do with the engine. It stalled because it lost enough airspeed over the wings and it just fell. Some older pilots especially, when an airplane stalls-- In the last twenty-five years they put in stall-alert sirens that say "ERP! ERP!" and make a loud-- And for some guys that's alarming, and they just lose it.

WHITE: Of course, panic sets in.

McCORMICK: The panic sets in, and they forget all the training about how to pull out of a stall, and they just go into the ground like a bomb. Or they get vertigo, some guys who really shouldn't be flying, because they have conditions in the inner ear in which they get vertigo, and they really can't tell whether they're upside down or right side up. That happened to a guy who owned a Chevy dealership; I think his name was Yeakel. This is probably before you were born. He was a well-known private pilot, and he got into a storm-- If you don't have experience IFR-- It means instrument flight rules, where you rely on nothing but the instruments to tell you whether you're straight and level, whether you're going up or down, whether you're banking. You can't depend on the seat of your pants, because gravity doesn't mean anything. We practice that under the hood. They put you in hoods where you can't see anything but instruments, you can't see outside. My instructor would say, "Are we straight and level?" And I'd say, "Yeah!," just going by the seat of my pants. And he'd say, "Look at the instruments." And we'd be like that. [gestures to indicate a sharp vertical angle] You can't tell. So this guy flew through into the clouds with no instrument flight rule training. He didn't know whether he was upside down or right side up. He rammed the throttle to the threshold thinking he was climbing. The first thing you always think is, "Climb to get out of danger until you can see where you are." Instead of climbing, he was in a power dive.

WHITE: Oh, my goodness, and rammed the throttle so he--

McCORMICK: He left nothing but a huge hole in the ground. There was nothing left of him. So it can be very dangerous. You have to keep your composure. You have to be able to think of a whole lot of different things at the same time and do several different things at the same time. So that's what the check ride does. You can't do it with your instructor; it has to be a certified member of the FAA. And there's an FAA office right there at Santa Monica Airport. They go up with you, they have you do the stalls, they have you do zero-Gs [zero gravity]--that is, you fly straight up as fast as you can and top the plane off, and for a second you feel like you're weightless, and then you recover. Then you do the turns and you recover. There are seven or eight basic maneuvers that you do, and he's checking the whole time. But I never did the graduation ride. There are times when I regret that I didn't, because I think, "You would have figured out a way to live with it." But then I also think, "You might have gotten tired. And suppose you'd taken Anita and the kids up one day and something had happened?" You know, all those things came to my mind. Well, to hell with it. I had the experience. I flew six hundred miles by myself with nobody to get me back home or to find my way there. You have your map strapped to your knee in the airplane. You've already made your flight plan, so you follow it and you're looking for little cities on the map. "There's that little city; there it is. There's the city by the lake; there that is. Oh, that must be Salinas right up there; and there it is." So you call Salinas, and they say, "Yeah, we see you. Make a straight and approach."

WHITE: Quite an experience and accomplishment. And it's quite an adventurous hobby. It's probably one of the most dangerous, of course.

McCORMICK: It is a risk-taking hobby. And I don't know many young people-- At least I don't talk to that many young people who are getting into it afresh today.

WHITE: I'm sure some of it has to do with the expense of it, as well.

McCORMICK: The expense. Now, Hal Fishman, my friend and colleague, probably knows more. He's around the airplanes, he's down at the airport. He ties down at Santa Monica, too. He's down around there a whole lot, so he may see many more young people. I don't know whether the aviation schools are enrolling as many young people anymore or not. I don't know, but I do know that general aviation has gotten so expensive-- It might have cost us $40 an hour including fuel and the fee of the instructor back when I was taking flying lessons. It's probably $100 an hour now.

WHITE: I'm sure, at least that.

McCORMICK: That's not cheap, considering that you've got to fly at least two hours a week to keep your skills abreast. That's $200 a week.

WHITE: That's quite an expensive hobby.

McCORMICK: Very expensive.

WHITE: And then above and beyond just keeping your skills up, just leisure trips that you may want to take on a weekend with your family, add that into the fee.

McCORMICK: There's the cost of the airplane-- Of course, you can go and lease them now. That's another reason why I had some misgivings, because when you lease an airplane on the same arrangement I was telling you about before-- Five or six guys who couldn't individually afford a plane may pool their money and buy one and then lease it back to a flight school. You don't know what kind of damage it's got. You don't know when the engine and airframe were checked. You can only go by somebody's word. You may get an airplane up there that has a broken fuel line. One of the ailerons may be broken. You do a walk around and check all the obvious things--check to make sure the propeller doesn't have any hairline cracks in it, the airframe, the primary control services--but still something could be wrong that you wouldn't know anything about. Make that mistake in a car, you just put the brakes on and you pull over to the side.

WHITE: Everything is a life-or-death situation when you're there in the air.

McCORMICK: That's right.

WHITE: And you have to really-- I was going to say think on your feet--

McCORMICK: As I said before, if anybody tells you it's as easy as driving a car-- Because you're operating in a car only on a horizontal axis, only backwards and forwards. In the air, because you're free of the ground, you're operating in the horizontal axis, in the vertical axis, and in the lateral axis, side to side, too. So you have to keep all those axes balanced, and that makes it a lot different from driving. Then you have those external things which usually don't bother you in a car unless you're driving up the Antelope Valley Freeway and it's very windy. But the wind, which you cannot see when you're flying, you can only use certain gauges and certain measurements to see what effect the wind is having on you, whether it's coming from your flank, whether it's a headwind or a tailwind.

WHITE: Interesting, interesting. Well, that's certainly another thing to add to your repertoire of wonderful experiences that you've had and opportunities that you've experienced that have been extremely gratifying and worthwhile.

McCORMICK: It was. Learning what I had the courage to do. [mutual laughter] Learning that I could do a number of rather demanding things simultaneously.

1.25. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 10, 1999

WHITE: Last time we got together we had some wonderful dialogue regarding your interaction with the Los Angeles Urban League. We had some extensive conversations about that, and then also some very enlightening discussions about your experience flying a single-engine airplane. Before we move forward--we're going to talk about a number of different things today--I wanted to just go back for a moment. In listening to the tape, there was something that I wanted you to elaborate on just a bit. When you were talking about the fund-raising for the Urban League at the end of our conversation on January 27, you had mentioned something to the effect that you guys were exploring the possibility of bequests from affluent African Americans. You said that the League was looking into this, and you didn't get a chance to really elaborate on that. I wondered if you might want to do that now.

McCORMICK: We haven't yet fully developed those thoughts and those plans. It's something I think the League will still pursue and should pursue. We recognize that there aren't as many African Americans who have developed the affluence over the long period of their lives as there are in some other communities in the United States. But there are very affluent African Americans, well-to-do, who leave nice sums of money that either go to probate or to the state when they pass away if they don't have children, successors, to pass it on to. Many of them bequeath it to their alma mater, particularly if it was a historically black college. They'll will it to a Morehouse [College] or a Spelman [College]. But the Urban League--this is something UNCF [United Negro College Fund] also now does--felt that there could possibly be some funds that people might want to leave to the Urban League. It's always important to increase the size and the cash flow of your general fund, because those are unrestricted funds that the Urban League--or whatever the nonprofit organization might be--can use to pursue its own vision. Everything the League does is technically in pursuit of its own vision, but if a specific foundation or corporation wants to give the Urban League some money, they usually target the money and tell us exactly what they want done with it. So they become what are called restricted funds. You can't use them for any other purpose but that. Whereas the general fund you can use to broaden your programs, to pursue other programs, to do with pretty much as the mission leads you. So any monies that came in from bequests, from people who were leaving this old life, would go to the Urban League's general fund. There are any number of ways this can be set up. It can go to the general fund. It can go into an Urban League trust fund that can become a savings account that would draw interest, which would be another source of income over the long term for the League, and it would just sustain its cash flow for years into the future. So that's one of the things. We had a lot of experts whose specialty that is, from foundations and other organizations, giving us advice. But we really haven't fully developed that as of yet. One of the reasons why is every new responsibility we take on, whether it's fund-raising or whether it's a program of service to our constituents, requires somebody's efforts.

WHITE: Of course. [laughs]

McCORMICK: Some kind of an expenditure of effort and probably of money, maybe adding another person to the staff or more than one person to the staff. So all those things have to be weighed and balanced before you just go ahead and do something like that. You probably would almost have to have at least two additional people on the staff, because one of the things that you have to do--gently and diplomatically, of course--is discover who these potential donors are. You can't just go to somebody's door and knock on the door and say, "Hey, when you die, would you leave your money to us?" [mutual laughter] And there are various subtle and sensitive ways that you find out, that you target, those people that you want to get to. That requires somebody with that expertise. And the people who do that best do not come cheaply. They know the value of their services, so you can't pay them minimum wage. [mutual laughter] So you have to weigh all those things, and you have to ask yourself, "If we pay this particular person who does this well and has proven to do this well for other organizations $100,000 a year, how much does it benefit us if they only generate $105,000 a year?"

WHITE: Sure--you have to weigh the investment--

McCORMICK: --against the return.

WHITE: Exactly. I just wanted to clarify that. You had mentioned it briefly at the end of our interview that day, so I wanted to just chat a little bit about that with you. Thank you for clarifying it. Well, now, today I wanted to move on to another category. In looking at some of the materials in your personal archives and what have you, I noticed an article from the Greater Los Angeles Press Club newsletter called The 8-Ball. It was published in January 1991, and it states that you had the astonishing record of having been the principal speaker or emcee at about a thousand charitable events. Then I noticed that in your appointment book, just in 1986, you had documented that you emceed twentyone programs and you had 107 personal appearances for 1986, which I think is substantial and extremely commendable.

McCORMICK: [laughs] It was difficult.

WHITE: And difficult, I'm sure.

McCORMICK: I look back-- It may seem just from the division of the numbers as though I was emceeing a program of some kind every third day or something. What that was really the result of is that many, many times--I can recall so clearly--I made multiple appearances in one day. I would appear at a breakfast to emcee it or to help organize it or a meeting to be the speaker or something, and then something at noon and then something in the evening. And there were many, many of those multipleappearance days. I used to run into people like John [W.] Mack-- You know, we had the same interests. There were many weeks where we would just run into each other two or three times a day at various events going on in our community. So that's really how that comes about. But it does average, I guess, an appearance on every third day.

WHITE: And looking through your literature, I noted just a wide variety of events and organizations that you served as the emcee for, but there are a few of them that I notated and would like to discuss with you today--actually several. I wondered if I could jog your memory and just maybe remind you of the dates and the honoree and see if you can just talk a little bit about the interaction--

McCORMICK: I hope I can remember. [laughs]

WHITE: --or if it had any particularly meaningful impact on you because of the events or the individuals that they were honoring. The first one that I was touched by was in July 1976, so it has been some time. You were toastmaster for Arthur Ashe's roast at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. I wonder if you recall that evening.

McCORMICK: I do recall it. It was a fun evening, the first time I had ever met Arthur. And I'm not really what I would call a comedian, and I can't remember what particular charity his appearance there was to benefit. I think it was related to UCLA, though. I would have to go back through all the programs. But I do remember the event, and I remember there were any number of people who had some humorous remembrances of Arthur when he was a student at UCLA and played on UCLA's tennis team--very successful tennis team. But that's really about all I can recall about it. That's one of those incidents that wasn't as riveting in my memory perhaps as some of the others.

WHITE: As I look through your work, I notice that you've hosted a number of activities with various schools, with the Los Angeles Unified School District [LAUSD]. And I know that you hosted several of the activities with Ivan J. Houston, the then president of Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company. A number of local school events: the Menlo Avenue [Elementary] School career day, St. John Bosco High School graduation exercises, Rosecrans [Elementary School]--

McCORMICK: I was the commencement speaker at St. John Bosco.

WHITE: Exactly. A Rosecrans Elementary School program. There was a communications workshop for students at Locke High School. The Episcopal Choral Society Annual Scholarship Luncheon and Musicale at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for scholarships for students engaged in the arts. And I know that you have been involved with the Academic Decathalon. I just wanted to get a sense of your interaction with the schools and helping young students and sort of being a role model for them, and I wanted to get a sense of how you determine what schools you go to. Is there a particular group of individuals that will generally come to you and request your services?

McCORMICK: Well, I had made a number of appearances--oh, I can't tell you how many appearances--at career days at various schools around the LAUSD--not just in the African American community, either. As you know, my wife [Anita Daniels McCORMICK] was a schoolteacher at the time--she's a retired schoolteacher--and education has always been a high priority with me. I believe that education can be very, very empowering for those who acquire it. I've always tried to interest young people, especially young African Americans, in staying in school and getting their education, raising their aspirations beyond the more mundane professions--although any work is good work and valuable work. But to raise their expectations higher, to aspire to be not just an employee of a company; aspire to be the owner or one of the executives. Aspire not just to be an airline passenger but an airline pilot. And to expand their horizons. And I tried to do that every time I made an appearance at one of those career days or whatever the event happened to be. I'm a friend of education. I value education. My mom [Laura Lee Lankford McCormick] and dad [Lawrence W. McCormick II] did, too. Everybody in my immediate family, my wife and my children, all value education, and I've always tried to pass that on--the value of education, the value of knowledge. It is a personal possession that nobody can ever take away from you. It is a personal possession that will be of tremendous value to you, whatever endeavor you decide to pursue in life. Whether you decide to be a preacher or a teacher or a doctor or an attorney or an accountant or a motivational speaker or a professional communicator like I am. Whatever you decide to do, an education is going to make you better at it. If you're going to be a housewife, which is an honorable profession, being a well-educated housewife is an advantage in any number of ways. It makes you a better shopper, a smarter consumer. It makes you more of an asset to your family. Everything.

WHITE: Absolutely. A more well-rounded individual.

McCORMICK: So education, education, education. I just harp continually on that. And I hope that over the years I have inspired some kids who might otherwise not have been inspired to do that.

WHITE: Certainly. I did come across a number of articles in your literature indicating that there was a deep appreciation for your coming out to the schools, and you seem to have made a really profound impact on a number of students.

McCORMICK: Addressing the other thing--and I didn't quite--that you asked me about how I became involved in those appearances, it was just through requests from the various schools. In this community--I guess in any community--when you are active it comes to the attention of a lot of people. So I guess I got on a lot of people's lists. They said, "You want somebody to come to career day? Call Larry McCormick, because he's usually pretty good about showing up." A lot of people will make the commitment and then unfortunately don't show up. They forget about it, or they get too busy or something. But I guess they felt I was a person who was fairly dependable and would be there.

WHITE: And it's particularly important when you're dealing with students to demonstrate responsibility and commitment to an endeavor.

McCORMICK: And I also think that for many of the educators--principals, usually, maybe one of the teachers-- But usually either the principal or the career day coordinator would send me a letter asking if I would make an appearance at a certain date, and they would emphasize the importance-- When I first started doing this-- I did it before I was ever on television. When I was on radio I made a lot of appearances, because the kids used to listen to me on the radio a whole lot. But after I started my television career, it seems as though many educators--principals, school district officials, teachers--began to understand that it was important for our young people to see the connection between education and getting to where I was--although I didn't consider that any great shakes--but to demystify the television figure whom they only see on the screen and say, "This is a real person who sat in a seat in a classroom just like you're doing right now, and you can do that, too!" I think that did inspire some, because I've had some young people come and tell me, "I used to listen to you" [or] "I've been watching you a long time." Young people who are now starting careers in broadcast journalism-- That is a particularly good feeling, to know that it really did have that effect, that it wasn't squandered or wasted.

WHITE: Sure. To know that you are making a difference, that's a very gratifying feeling indeed.

McCORMICK: More for them to see that you're a real person, that you're nice, that you have an interest in them. I think that helps a lot. I think that by my doing that over the years a lot of my younger African American colleagues in television news around Los Angeles have started to carry that same torch, have started to become involved in the community. For the longest while-- It wasn't till well after the Watts riots that major black personalities--and there weren't many of us, hardly any of us on TV in Los Angeles-- I don't think there were any blacks on news programs in Los Angeles. So there were movie stars, entertainers, athletes. It wasn't till after the 1965 Watts riots that the notion started to grow among many very, very successful African Americans that you have to give something back, that you have to come back into the community and do something and do it conspicuously. So people started to do it after that. Even though many had before, but it was a while--when there finally were some African Americans on television with their own programs--before they really started to see the importance of going back and showing young people that the path to success was not beyond them.

WHITE: It's wonderful to have a role model, someone who is accessible.

McCORMICK: I guess a lot of us became concerned-- And this includes a number of major, major entertainers, like Bill Cosby when he was based here in Los Angeles shooting his first two TV series before he moved to Connecticut. He used to make a lot of appearances at schools. We used to be a dog-and-pony show--I would be the emcee and I would introduce him. We did that at three or four different high schools around Los Angeles, especially after the problems of desegregation. I remember particularly at Fairfax High [School], where African American youngsters in the student body felt they were getting short shrift, and they were prepared to cause some conflict on the campus. And "Cos" and I were asking-- He had a show then called Coach, I think. [The Bill Cosby Show] This was after I Spy. As a matter of fact, I played a part on one of his shows. But he came out, and he sat down-- He came out straight from the set in the limo--it brought him over to Fairfax High--and I introduced him. And he sat on the edge of the stage and just talked to these two or three hundred black kids for hours about the sensible thing to do and all that, just sat there and talked to them! And he would do that. And I understand, time permitting, he still does those kinds of things. And he has such a rapport with them. They listen to him. When they ask questions they listen to the answers that he gives. But this consciousness of coming back and doing something in the community, of coming back and sharing yourself with the community, really started to burgeon, and I think that was really one of the healthiest things to come out of those conflicting times of the sixties and seventies. It made people realize the importance of giving something back.

WHITE: That's right, and raising other people's consciousness.

McCORMICK: Yes, absolutely.

WHITE: Heightening their awareness. Helping young people to try to maximize their potential by seeing others that have accomplished things and contributed great things in their own right.

McCORMICK: Very important.

WHITE: Now, I understand that you have been involved with the Academic Decathalon for the last fifteen years, and just recently you had an opportunity to do the national decathalon.

McCORMICK: And that opportunity is going to present itself again this year, in 1999, because this year it's going to be here in our greater Los Angeles community. The U.S. Academic Decathalon is going to be in Cypress [California]. Through the suggestion of local LAUSD officials, I am going to be the quizmaster, the question reader, for the national Academic Decathalon.

WHITE: Oh, that's exciting.

McCORMICK: I'm looking forward to it. Seeing kids from fifty-nine different high schools and hearing how they cheer for their teams and all that kind of thing is actually a riveting experience and is so much fun to be a part of. So it's going to be that much more fun to be there with kids from forty-eight or forty-nine different states, and Puerto Rico, from all over the United States in the U.S. Academic Decathalon. So I'm looking forward to that.

WHITE: Well, good luck with that.

McCORMICK: Thank you.

WHITE: Let's see. Another particularly interesting event that you emceed was in 1977 also, so it's still some time ago. It was a tribute dinner for Alex Haley to benefit the West Adams Community Hospital.

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: I understand that a group of African American physicians and administrators and accountants, attorneys, and what have you came together to bring the hospital out of receivership and helped to lift it back to solvency and autonomy. I wonder if you can recall any thoughts about that particular event or about being a part of a group that worked together for a community hospital and the honoring of Alex Haley associated with that.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes, I do. Unfortunately, over the long term that didn't work out. West Adams Hospital worked out for a while, and we did generate some funds through the program honoring Alex Haley and other programs that we had during that time. And we thought it was going to make it. They were on the road for a while. But a good deal of the success of any modern medical facility, as you know, Renee, depends on the support, massive support--indirectly, of course--of insurance companies. People who are ill, who come to the hospital-- Bills have to be paid, and unless insurance companies pay the bills-- Many people in the African American community are indigents and can't pay for their medical costs out of their own pockets. So it was hoped that it would work, because there needed to be a hospital to serve that community, located in that community. There's really no other hospital for miles around. And it didn't quite work. Alex: very, very interesting and knowledgeable and gracious and fascinating man. He had been a guest on the program on [television station KTLA] channel 5 called Pacesetters that I was the host of. In fact, it's still on. And this was a good six months before Roots hit the airwaves on ABC and became the most watched TV series of all time. He was my guest on Pacesetters, and we had discussed-- He didn't even have the galleys of his book at that time; he just had a cover, a cover over another book, just to hold up. They had done the cover that came to be famous. So I knew Alex and knew what a great man he was, and I emceed a couple of programs that honored Alex, one for the Black Business Association [BBA] downtown at the Hyatt [Regency Hotel] and this program for the West Adams Hospital. I don't mean to sound like somebody who's trying--who tried then, or tries now--to be a be-all and end-all for everybody and everything. I think I've really overextended myself a lot of times over the years, and I've started to scale that back down as the years roll along. But I recognized the need for that hospital, and I recognized the need for the Los Angeles BBA, which has really grown to be a dynamic organization by this time. They were kind of a fledgling organization then, trying to get rolling. But those are the two occasions, actually those three occasions on which I interacted with Alex Haley. We became friends. We didn't see each other a whole lot, but he would call every now and then from somewhere in the country and say, "I was just talking about you" or "--thinking about you" or "--ran into somebody who knows you." He was really an unusual and a gifted man.

WHITE: Very special. Absolutely. Well, in response to your comment, there isn't a perception at all-- I'm sure most would agree that you're not perceived as spreading yourself in too many different directions and being the master of too many different things. But you do have a variety of interests, you have extended yourself in many, many positive ways, and you have made significant differences. So that is what is recognized as opposed to the other.

McCORMICK: Well, if that's true, I'm glad. And I hope people haven't gotten the impression that my whole goal has been "let Larry do it." Because I haven't gone out seeking to do things. I have sometimes-- When I've seen a need I have gone out seeking to be a part of something, let me correct that. But in many, many instances it's people who have sought my involvement with something that was going on. Because I recognize that you can stretch yourself too thin.

WHITE: But I'm sure that your name is on a very short list of people that-- When they need someone who is very competent, who is responsible, who is committed to whatever he says he's going to do, that he'll be there and do a fine job as well, I know that your name comes up on a very short list.

McCORMICK: It's on somebody's list! [laughs]

WHITE: A very short list. So these many thousands, I'm sure, of programs that you've emceed is because people have sought you out as an individual that will get the job done.

McCORMICK: Yeah. There's an old saying--I might have mentioned this before-- that when you want to get something done take it to somebody who's busy.

WHITE: [laughs] That's right.

McCORMICK: Because they're already in the working mode, rather than trying to get somebody geared up to do something. And that's really why in our community and in most communities you find so often the same people spearheading various kinds of efforts. They're the people who know how to get things done, and they're the ones whom these achievements or these activities eventually fall back on. You see the same activists all over the place.

WHITE: I noticed that you have been affiliated with the United Negro College Fund [UNCF], specifically their telethon; you've emceed a number of shows. Can you just tell me a little bit about your thoughts about the organization and your affiliation with them?

McCORMICK: Well, I was asked years and years ago--fifteen, twenty years ago--by the late Bob Hadley, who was then the coordinator for the UNCF telethon here in the Los Angeles area. Southern California, actually. He had been a fan of mine--listened to me on the radio, followed my career in news--and asked me if I'd be one of the local cohosts on the UNCF telethon. As you know, most major telethons--I guess there are now fewer and fewer major fund-raising telethons--have local components. They have national hosts for the national program, and then for local involvement they have local cut-ins, where local personalities in each individual community that's taking part all across the country make a pitch for support and for funds and interview guests and all that kind of thing. He asked me if I would do that, and I said absolutely, sure. I knew even then, before I ever started, that the vast majority of African American college graduates in this country graduate from historically black colleges.

WHITE: That's correct.

McCORMICK: I know that historically black colleges are nurturing places for African American students. Not that African American students who have the will to work and the brightness can't do well in any setting. But there are large numbers-- large numbers, I'm convinced, today--of African American students who do better under that nourishing system that historically black colleges provide than they would in major universities. The adjustment would just overwhelm them, or the attempt to adjust would overwhelm them. So I recognize for various reasons-- In addition to the fact that I had a lot of friends, good friends, successful people, who were graduates of these predominantly black colleges, historically black colleges. So I recognized the importance of it right away. So I started to participate, and then I think I-- Because of schedule conflicts or something like that I'd miss a year or two, but then I'd be invited back by Bob. Then it started to be a yearly thing. And then a friend of mine whose records I used to play on the radio for years and years, Lou Rawls, became kind of a spokesperson and the host every year for years and years and years. So I really got involved a lot with it then, and then almost every year after that. I think maybe I missed one year because I was ill or because we had already planned to be out of town and I hadn't been contacted about the date and had made a commitment. So over the last twenty years I've missed maybe three or four.

WHITE: Well, that's quite the commitment.

McCORMICK: Again, this year, this past January, I was one of the local hosts for the telethon.

WHITE: Excellent. Wonderful. Moving along, in 1980 I noticed that you were on a panel at the Beverly Hills-Hollywood Chapter of the National Association of Media Women. They had a luncheon seminar, and you spoke on a panel. The topic was "Media: Making Our Space in the Eighties." And some of the literature indicates that you spoke on the importance of professionalism in the media and that you emphasized the importance of communicating reactions and opinions, that the public should communicate reactions and opinions to the networks. And you stressed that you--i.e., those in the industry--must recognize the impact of both negative and positive reactions from individuals as well as organizations, in the way in which news is gathered, I'm assuming, and also the way in which it's disseminated. So I'm wondering, if in fact that was for the 1980s, do you feel in the 1990s that that still carries a level of importance at the networks?

McCORMICK: I think it should. Whether it actually does or not is open to conjecture, but I think those principles are still important and are still the same. Unfortunately I see some subtle and some other, not so subtle changes coming about in television, particularly vis-à-vis television news. The lines between straight television news, to use an expression, and tabloid television are blurring. And I think670 -and this is driven by competition, of course--the time may come, unfortunately, a few years down the road when they'll be almost indistinguishable. You see television news programs incorporating more and more entertainment stories into the news, and you see tabloid programs, or what we used to call tabloid programs, incorporating more and more stories about real news. So at some point the lines are going to be blurred, and you won't really be able to tell what purports to be a genuine news organization from a tabloid magazine show. Some people have difficulty distinguishing between the two now so they have lumped us all together and just call us "the media."

WHITE: Which is very vague.

McCORMICK: Yeah. Which in theory is those of us who pride ourselves, like at channel 5, on being legitimate news programs. But I think all those things I said at that meeting-- And I can recall one of the other panelists was the late Jessie Mae Beavers, a friend and a neighbor and one of the fine columnists for the Los Angeles Sentinel, who was the unfortunate victim of a mugging here in the community and who died, possibly from complications of the injury. But she was very bright, and she was one of the other panelists. It was a very constructive panel. It was one of the earliest times that a number of African American journalists, both print and broadcast, had come together on a panel. I think it achieved some things.

WHITE: Absolutely. It's a great idea. If there are questions about what media represents, you can have a response from individuals that work in those various industries and sort of get some clarity about their positioning, about the duties that they have at hand. Now, I also noticed, of course, that you worked on a number of community activities done in conjunction with the late Tom [Thomas] Bradley, such as the auxiliary to the Angel City Dental Society, just as one example. But I know that you did have a very close relationship with Mr. Tom Bradley, and I wonder if you could talk about that for just a moment. Any thoughts about the relationship? Any thoughts about him that you'd like to share?

McCORMICK: He was one of my heroes, let's be very honest and up front about that. A tremendous, tremendous human being, a tremendous leader, and one of my heroes. I must have introduced Mayor Bradley forty or fifty different times over the course of his political career, at dinners or when he was the guest speaker, at all kinds of events, huge and small. I guess for one period I was introducing him so much I was like his unofficial emcee. [mutual laughter] But we were around each other-- And not only on official occasions. My wife and I happened, on a social basis, to find ourselves often in the same circles as Mayor and Mrs. [Ethel Mae Arnold] Bradley. For years and years and years we used to all go to the same New Year's Eve party in Baldwin Hills at the home of Ralph and Peggy Wright, and that was Mayor Bradley's New Year's party. He was going to always be there. And just a regular old guy with everybody else, and then go downstairs and sit down in the living room with everybody else with a plate of chitlins on your lap and all that kind of stuff. Just a down-to-earth, regular guy, but a great, great man, a great leader. And a leader who had to struggle more than people may realize against a lot of bias and against a lot of other obstacles to reach the pinnacle that he reached, to reach all the pinnacles that he reached. Because I think he was the first African American lieutenant on the LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department].

WHITE: That's right, he sure was.

McCORMICK: I remember Mayor Bradley telling this story once about when he wanted to come on the LAPD. He applied and everything, and one of the standard excuses that they used to make for rejecting African Americans who applied to the LAPD was they weren't in physical condition.

WHITE: Okay, I remember that.

McCORMICK: So Mayor Bradley told them, "Look, I just finished being a track star at UCLA. I was a distance runner, the 440[-yard] and the 880[-yard races]. I'm in better shape than anybody on your police force." So that didn't work. And he did pass the physical, and he did get on the force, and then of course went on to become the first African American lieutenant on the force and went on to become one of the first African Americans on the L.A. City Council and of course the first African American mayor of Los Angeles. And before he became the mayor of Los Angeles, while he was still a city councilman, he became the first African American--I think the first person who was not a mayor--to be elected chief executive officer of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: So that's the kind of esteem--

WHITE: Before he became mayor?

McCORMICK: Before he actually became mayor. That's the esteem that he was held in. But he was a tremendous leader who was in many ways, I think, a unifying force, even though some things over which he had little control that represented disunity occurred during his twenty-year tenure. But he was a unifying force that brought the city together. Enormously significant to understand, as compared to some of the African Americans who were elected mayors of cities like New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, and Philadelphia, where blacks are either in the 40 or 50 percent range or more than half within the city are African Americans, when Tom Bradley was elected mayor of Los Angeles only 17 percent of this city was African American. Which meant that a lot of people, a whole lot of people, voted for him who were not black.

WHITE: That's right, real crossover appeal.

McCORMICK: Crossover, and putting these coalitions of people together. And doing that for twenty years, for five terms, I think speaks volumes for the greatness of the man. For years, and even today, even though he's gone now, I think you can't think of L.A. and its history, particularly its recent history, without thinking of Tom Bradley.

WHITE: That's for sure. Twenty years in office. I don't know--off the top of my head, anyway--of any other mayors for any large metropolitan cities who were elected to the position five times.

McCORMICK: Who were elected to the position five terms? I can't think of anybody else. Maybe much, much earlier in this century, around the 1900s and from there, maybe somebody in New York. Or there could be in some small town. But not a major metropolitan area, where the campaigns are far more sophisticated and where you're likely to have much stiffer competition than in small communities, where you could be mayor forty years and nobody would even know it! [mutual laughter] It's just Old Joe. But he had an enviable record, and he did more than anybody else has done ever to make Los Angeles one of the principal cities of the world, the queen city of the Pacific Rim and one of the great cities in the entire world. When I first came out here, even though Hollywood was located here and everything and its product was seen all around the world, the city of Los Angeles-- First, it was the fourth largest city in the country behind New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. It was not really a big player among big cities back then. It was a little unsophisticated. It was thought of as that city of kooks out there on the West Coast that just had this gorgeous weather all the time. People came out to visit, and then they said they wanted to go back East and go back to the city. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: Go back to the real city.

McCORMICK: Yeah, the real city. And then shortly before Tom Bradley, but then certainly with Tom Bradley, the city became elevated more and more in importance. He brought more importance to the city with the airport and the skyline and the harbor and its vitality and its notoriety in a positive sense. Then, of course, Los Angeles became a greater and greater tourist destination. It became more and more a city with more things to do, with new music halls like the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and new theaters and everything, until we began to develop a culture like the big eastern cities have. And then, of course, people started coming in droves, and we passed Philadelphia. For years we were the third city behind Chicago, and then we passed Chicago, until we've become-- Probably greater Los Angeles is as important an economic force in many ways and a more important economic force in some ways than greater New York. Greater New York will probably always be the financial capital of the world, but the time will come-- To give you an example, San Francisco used to be thought of as the financial capital of the West, and not too long after Tom Bradley became mayor that changed; L.A. became the financial capital of the West. And this is where the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange is located now. Our harbor became the number-one harbor in the country. A lot of things happened under Tom Bradley. More freight is flown into LAX [Los Angeles International Airport] today than any other airport in the United States. We are second or third, I think third, in passengers behind only O'Hare [International Airport] in Chicago, the busiest airport in the country, and [William B.] Hartsfield-Atlanta [International Airport]. LAX is right behind Hartsfield-Atlanta and catching up with Hartsfield-Atlanta all the time. That's why they're talking about expanding the airport. Tom Bradley made L.A. one of the power cities of the world. Now people compare L.A. with New York or Paris or London or Tokyo. It's one of the big cities of the world.

WHITE: Absolutely. Many thanks to Mr. Tom Bradley. Yeah, he certainly made an impact, and he will be missed.

McCORMICK: Yeah, he will be. And I also think the personal impact-- Not just me but many of us looked at him as a role model of what you can do if you persevere and if you're willing to work hard. He was my guest on Pacesetters, when I was hosting that program, several times. And once when we were in [the] makeup [room], he was in the chair, and I had a chance to glance at his schedule, which his assistant--he was always being accompanied by personnel from his staff--had just set down on a table for a minute to get a glass of water. I just glanced at it--and this was a weekday--and there were things on his schedule from seven thirty in the morning till eleven o'clock at night. So I asked the fellow who was with him--I can't remember his name--"Is this a typical example of his schedule?" He said, "Most days. There are one or two days a week that he won't schedule anything." Because at that time he had the mayor's open house. Anybody who wanted to could come down and talk about a problem. They could just come down to city hall and talk to the mayor about the problem. [laughs] It's a wonder-- It's amazing that he lived to be eighty, because he just kept a very demanding schedule.

WHITE: That's grueling.

McCORMICK: Just absolutely grueling. Considering that you don't just show up. You've got to say something of substance or do something of substance.

WHITE: It requires energy.

McCORMICK: Yes, a lot of energy and vitality. And he kept that schedule up for all those years, so that-- If he hadn't been in such good condition maybe he would never have made it to eighty. I remember during some of those tough, particularly those tough races when he ran for governor, and during the periods when he would be particularly rankled by some adversary or some knotty problem, he said he would ride his exercise bike that much harder while he was watching the morning news. He told me that on a number of occasions.

WHITE: That's a good way to vent any frustrations.

McCORMICK: He did survive the stroke. It took his speech away, but he made a lot of public appearances after that. We were all kind of stunned, as a matter of fact, when his death was announced, because it had seemed that he was in pretty good condition. Amazing man.

WHITE: Very, very much so. I'm sure that you feel fortunate to have had an opportunity to spend as much time as you did with him in his company both on a professional and a personal level.

McCORMICK: As I've said sometimes, I'm so glad that our time in this city coincided. He could have lived a hundred years ago; I could have lived a hundred years from now. But I feel very lucky in that we both shared this time on earth together in this city. It was a really, really important relationship in my life, with Tom Bradley.

WHITE: I thought that you would probably feel that way, so I wanted to certainly bring him up during our interviews, to share some thoughts about him, your very good friend.

1.26. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 10, 1999

WHITE: We were just talking a bit about your relationship with the late mayor Tom Bradley. So to move on from there and talk a bit about some experiences that you've had emceeing a number of other programs and talk about a few of those organizations-- For example, in July 1985 you were emcee for the 100 Black Men [of Los Angeles] scholarship luncheon. I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about that organization or any affiliation that you may have with them.

McCORMICK: I've been a member of the 100 Black Men of Los Angeles almost since its inception, since I think about the second year of its inception. It was founded by a doctor named William [H.] Hayling, who was originally from New Jersey. Back in New Jersey--I think Trenton, New Jersey--he had founded a 100 Black Men's organization in Trenton, the central premise being that if you got the one hundred most powerful, most influential, most successful, independently affluent African American men in the community into one organization, that they could do a lot of good things. And I think he was president of the original chapter in Trenton for about a year or two and then, as fate would have it, life brought him to Los Angeles. So he hadn't been here very long when he organized the 100 Black Men of Los Angeles. He and a fellow who was a psychiatrist, the late Dr. Earl Woods, who was a member of our church, the Episcopal Church of the Advent-- And they invited me among many others--John [W.] Mack and a lot of others, elected officials and other influential men, many of them attorneys, physicians, political leaders, people of that nature, successful businessmen--to form the original 100 Black Men of Los Angeles. I was deeply, deeply honored to be invited into that august body of men, esteemed body of men. Actually, today it's probably about 275--

WHITE: Is that right?

McCORMICK: --but they still call it the 100 Black Men because it has kind of a euphonious ring to it. [laughs]

WHITE: Oh, of course. I was going to ask about that number. Is it just in theory or in practice?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah, there's far more than one hundred now. We passed that mark a long time ago. But as an organization, to involve not just African American males but successful, role-model type African American males with enough affluence to do some things as a group that we couldn't have done individually or in much, much smaller groups-- But to pool our money, our resources, to have events. We have since become involved in any number of events in the community. At first it was a kind of scattergun approach, because we tried to be, I think, too many things to too many people, to too many different organizations. Finally, through the leadership of Dr. Warren [W.] Valdry, as he became president, and then after him Dr. James [T.] Black, who was also president, we started to narrow our focus. We came across some research which indicated that fewer and fewer, a diminishing number, of African American high school graduates were qualifying for entry into the UC [University of California] system. So we decided to make that the focus of all of our efforts, or almost all of our efforts, even though we do make donations to other African American nonprofits [not-for-profit organizations]. We give money to Angel City Links scholarship organization and things like that. But our focus would be to try to increase the percentage of young African American high school graduates who would qualify for admission to UC Berkeley. As opposition to affirmative action started to grow, this became even more important. Now you really make them have the grades to get in. That's where most of our efforts have been focused now, in a program called Young Black Scholars. But it's been-- I think its best days are ahead if it can retain good, strong leadership, leadership with a vision, and with the energy to keep the organization rolling. And if it can get-- Oh, it's been almost twenty years now that 100 Black Men has been in existence, so the original membership is getting older. We really need an infusion of younger men with the energy--and energy has always put drives in organizations--to do things into the next century.

WHITE: Sure. Is there now sort of a recruitment effort, opening up the membership--?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: I certainly have recognized the Young Black Scholars, just that notation on applications and literature, on résumés and things like that, from individuals applying to the universities. So there is a real level of excitement with young people to become involved and to be affiliated and recognized as a part of that group.

McCORMICK: I think so. And beyond the goals aspect of the organization, there was also this almost fraternal kind of side to it, this coming together of all these men from diverse backgrounds--many from the same backgrounds--but the fraternal aspects: the friendship, the brotherhood of being together in this organization with all these other African American men across all-- Not really like a fraternity, which is-- Fraternities are more exclusive than they are inclusive, but this was like a large, inclusive fraternity, including everybody from television anchormen to doctors to attorneys to osteopaths to orthopedic surgeons to airline pilots--we do have airline pilots--psychiatrists, MBAs, all kinds of men whose focus is that they want to do something to elevate the quality of life for all African Americans, and they want to do it in this cohesive, fraternal effort. There's that aspect of it that's very fulfilling, being with the brothers.

WHITE: Absolutely, that fraternal sense, like you said, that sense of camaraderie. That's wonderful. In the later part of the eighties, in November of 1988, I know that you were the emcee for the official opening of Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, which was the city's newest regional shopping mall, and it was indicated that it marked the "community renaissance" of the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw area. And it was L.A.'s first retail shopping complex. I'm wondering, was that event particularly meaningful for you?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes.

WHITE: Right here in pretty much your community, where you live?

McCORMICK: Absolutely. I was really, really, very, very much honored to have been asked by the mayor's office and by the office of then [Los Angeles] County Supervisor Kenneth [P.] Hahn to be the master of ceremonies for such an auspicious occasion as that. There were a number [of occasions] that I hold very dear because they were firsts, they were new beginnings. The official grand opening of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw shopping plaza was one. I was asked to emcee the official opening of Kenneth Hahn State [Recreation Area]. I was asked to be the emcee for the official opening of the California Afro-American Museum [now the Museum of Afro-American History and Culture, of the California State Museum of Science and Industry]; that was very important to me. And there were several other firsts that were breakthroughs that I was asked to be a part of that I thought had some historical importance. The beginnings of very important, significant things. So those firsts have been really important, that people thought enough of me to think that I should be the one to "cut the ribbon," as it were, or to be the officiant, the master of ceremonies, at such singularly important events in our community as those.

WHITE: Exceptional. It's a wonderful opportunity. Moving in towards the nineties, there were a couple of events that seemed to be rather interesting and reflected changes to the city, one of which was the retirement of the assistant chief of police then for the LAPD, Jesse A. Brewer, who was the only African American to have held that position. I wondered if you recall that affair, that occasion. Did it have any particularly fond meanings or memories for you, the retirement of an African American from our Los Angeles police force?

McCORMICK: Some special and important things. First, because I had great respect and admiration for Jess Brewer. Jess Brewer filled that position at a very, very difficult time in the history of the LAPD. Recall this was in the wake, first, of the Rodney King beating, and then certainly in the wake of the riots which followed the not guilty verdict in the Simi Valley trial of the police officers who were involved in the Rodney King beating. People forget it was not the beating of Rodney King but the verdict in that trial that made African Americans very angry and that set off the riots. And then, of course, enormous problems developed about the conflicts between then chief of police Daryl [F.] Gates and Mayor Bradley about the divisions within the police department, the divisions within government. Jess Brewer was asked to step in and fill the void during that tumultuous period and use the tremendous respect that he had from all sides in the conflict, to use his tremendous experience, the loyalty that almost everybody in the police department had for him because he had been through the ranks. He probably should have had an opportunity to be chief of police long before then, but he filled it on that interim basis. Jess was the first one-- No, I take it back. He wasn't the first one. Daryl Gates had invited me once to a police academy graduation, which I had attended, but Jess invited me to another one. Ultimately Willie [F.] Williams invited me to another one after he was chief. But Jess invited me-- And he invited me to a breakfast at the L.A. police academy. And he specifically, I understand, was the one who requested that I emcee his retirement dinner.

WHITE: Oh, is that so?

McCORMICK: Yes. And he was a man of such tremendous dignity and such an almost regal bearing--partially graying hair, very handsome, imposing figure-- although he wasn't terribly tall, but he was a figure who commanded respect. He was a voice of moderation. He recognized that what was needed at the time was a voice of moderation. There was still a lot of political nitpicking going on about who was responsible for what following the riots and the beating of Rodney King. There were some racial tensions in the city, there were accusations flying among various factions in city government, in city hall, the police department. And I can recall--and I thought at the-- Well, later on my wife told me, "That was a pretty bold step!" But I can remember getting up at this hotel downtown--it used to be the Sheraton Grande [Hotel]; these hotels change hands so often, it's something else now [Los Angeles Marriott Downtown]--anyway, this ballroom upstairs, and I said, "Tonight there's going to be no politicking, no backbiting, no mention of this, that, or the other." I can't remember everything I said, but I remember feeling so firmly in my mind that "I don't want to do anything to mess this up, this retirement dinner for Jess Brewer. Tonight we're just here for Jess Brewer." And then, as fate would have it, somebody did say something. I remember-- who was it?--the city attorney or somebody made a little remark about all the current events. And I chastised him. I said, "You weren't supposed to say that!" And then I thought, "What am I doing?" [mutual laughter] But I felt very strongly about it. Then, later on, as each speaker came up, they just kind of repeated the words that I had said in my little tone-setter at the very beginning of the program: this is for Jess, it's not for any other thing. I know psychologically that if you start that ball rolling people will follow. So I got their cooperation with that. That's one of the things I remember about that. That was maybe one of the few times ever, in a setting like that, I felt I had to put people in line. You know, you kind of surprise yourself sometimes. Later on you say, "Wow! Did I do that? Yeah, you did. And it worked!"

WHITE: Exactly. That's probably one of the reasons why he requested you, because he knew how diplomatic you would be. To keep things in order required a very special person in that kind of politically charged environment.

McCORMICK: I kind of surprised myself. And it was politically charged. You could feel the tension in the room. It was a politically charged environment. But I was glad to do that. Then, unfortunately, I guess maybe two years later, at the most three years later, Jess passed away from us.

WHITE: That's great that you had that opportunity.

McCORMICK: I am really glad, because the next time-- I think I spoke to him maybe-- I did receive a very nice letter from Chief and Mrs. Brewer thanking me for that. We spoke maybe one more time after that; he was calling to get some information about something that happened on the news. This was after he had retired and left the force. And then the next time I saw him was at the church in Baldwin Hills, at his funeral.

WHITE: Sad. Okay--

McCORMICK: Great guy.

WHITE: Very much so. I totally agree. Well, let's see, in terms of interacting with someone who has had a rather profound impact in a number of different areas, this individual is on more of an international level. You emceed a program at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, a program to honor Winnie Mandela. Do you recall that?

McCORMICK: Actually, as I recall, that was at [Los Angeles County Martin Luther] King [Jr./Charles R.] Drew Medical Center.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: Yes. [laughs] That was a particularly interesting program. I did emcee the program for Mrs. Mandela. She was sitting right behind me. And at first we waited a long time, and I had to keep, as we say, "vamping"--that is, padding, adlibbing-- because things were moving so slowly as the singer, who was supposed to "Lift Every Voice and Sing," hadn't arrived.

WHITE: Oh! Oh, no!

McCORMICK: I was thinking, "Oh, what am I going to do?" So finally she got there, she arrived. It was at this auditorium on the campus at Drew medical school which probably seated about 250 people, and it was just jammed to the rafters. It was hot in there. So I had the printed program in front of me, and there was a young lady--I can't remember her name--who was supposed to lead the audience in singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing." So we were kind waiting-- I was kind of vamping, waiting. Somebody had gone to try to find her, and they couldn't locate her. And the time is going by. It was getting later, and Mrs. Mandela had either a flight to catch or she had another commitment. It was important that we expedite and get the program started. So I looked around. I didn't see anybody who could sing, who could start "Lift Every Voice," and I thought, "God, I'm going to have start singing--!" [mutual laughter] So I said, "Would you join me in singing--" And I started singing. Fortunately, when I was in school you learned the lyrics to that song. Every black kid learned the lyrics to that song. When I got to L.A. I was astonished to meet people who didn't know the lyrics to "Lift Every Voice and Sing." So that was what was really funny about that program. So I actually led-- And the others, they kind of jokingly said, "I didn't know you could sing!" I said, "I can't sing! I didn't have anything else to do. I had to do it. I had to start the program!" But that was funny about that-- It was an honor to meet Mrs. Mandela, though.

WHITE: Have you found as an emcee that you've really had to call on those particular skills of ad-libbing quite often?

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. Oh, oh, yes.

WHITE: More often than not?

McCORMICK: A great deal. That is one of the things a good emcee is supposed to be able to do, get the audience and the program from point A to point B however you can do it. And if the people who are supposed to do a given thing are not there, then you have to figure out how to keep the program moving and interesting while juggling that thing, maybe moving that event to another time. People in the audience are sitting and looking at the same program you're looking at. They see what's supposed to come next. So you have to offer a plausible reason why things are happening out of order and make it smooth and, if possible, make it charming and keep going. You have to call on everything you know to emcee a program, primarily because every program that you emcee is going to have something unexpected occur.

WHITE: Inevitably.

McCORMICK: And you have to be able to make that adjustment. And it has to be smooth and clean and one, hopefully, that you can cause the audience to enjoy. What would be a bad, lost moment can become a very nice moment if you're thinking and you're alert and you're prepared and if you're experienced. It takes experience. And confidence, too.

WHITE: Absolutely. You really have to be--

McCORMICK: You can't do it if you're up there scared.

WHITE: That's right. You really have to think on your feet, that's for sure. Well, you certainly had a number of wonderful experiences. There's just a couple of others that I wanted to just chat with you about. One was honoring a very special individual. It was also in 1992. There was the San Fernando Valley Links, Incorporated. It was the fifth annual Top Hat Award--

McCORMICK: Colin Powell.

WHITE: --honoring General Colin L. Powell.

McCORMICK: That was a fine moment, another great, tremendous guy. The first time I had ever met him, and it was, before the evening was over, as though we had known each other for a long, long time. He was so ingratiating and so easy to know. Again, a commanding presence. He's tall, as you know, regal, rod-straight, and tremendously articulate. So friendly and genuinely warm that you take a liking to him right away. You feel comfortable in his presence right away, but still you feel that strength and that sense of command. It really came through. Somewhere I have a picture, a treasured picture--it's a small one--taken with General Powell that night. I'm going to have it--all those things you're going to do one of these days--enlarged and framed, because that was one of the proud moments-- And he was kind enough and gracious enough--I didn't want to let that opportunity pass--to let me do a very brief interview with him for channel 5 news, for that night. I was off that night or I wouldn't have been emceeing the program. I think it was at the Universal [City] Hilton [and Towers]. Our crew was there. I did a little interview with him briefly, and they took it back and used it on the news that night. You know, when you have a Colin Powell-- And at that time, as the saying goes, he was hot.

WHITE: Exactly, in the early nineties, for sure.

McCORMICK: He could have been elected president for sure. He was really, really a hot topic then. To be with somebody of that greatness and that magnitude at the apex of their glory and their popularity-- It's always a warm memory and something that you'll remember for a long time and you're very fortunate to be a part of. So I've emceed several programs for not just the San Fernando Valley Links but many chapters of the Links organization around Los Angeles, including many, many times, of course, for my wife Anita's organization, the Angel City Links, but also for the L.A. Links and their anti-drug program. A couple of times for the San Fernando Valley Links, one of them being when they honored Colin Powell.

WHITE: Now, in terms of the Links organization, what is their primary objective?

McCORMICK: The Links is a national organization of African American women whose primary thrust is education. Their thrusts are in education and the arts and the health of the African American community. Affiliate Links organizations can choose any one of those national goals. Anita would have to explain to you in greater detail what they are, but they can choose to emphasize their efforts in any one of those areas. And then they make reports to the regional Links organization, and then they have a national convention every year at which various chapters report on successful programs that they have been involved in. And it's a national opportunity for this sisterhood to get together. Again, the Links, unlike the African American sororities, are not exclusive. Sororities and fraternities tend to exclude people. They include certain people; they exclude others. Well, like the 100 Black Men, the Links movement is inclusive of people from all kinds of-- There are all kind of sororities included, all kind of organizations embraced, within the Links membership. But they're all Links. Their symbol is a chain that is linked. It is called the Links, Inc., and there are some eight or nine chapters in Los Angeles, because Los Angeles-- New York City is obviously the most populous, but the African American population in Los Angeles is so spread out geographically that they have to have many organizations regionally where people can get together and have meetings.

WHITE: Exactly, to accommodate them.

McCORMICK: Yeah. It would be very, very difficult for the Long Beach Links to be in the same organization with the San Fernando Valley Links. I mean, you would have to be traveling sixty miles or seventy miles! So there are the Long Beach Links and the Pasadena-Altadena Links and the Beverly Hills Links and the San Fernando Valley Links and the L.A. Links, which were the original Links chapter here going back some seventy years. And then the Angel City Links, which I think were the second chapter. I think there are the Compton Links, the Inglewood Links. There are about eight or nine or eleven Links chapters in greater Los Angeles.

WHITE: That's interesting. There are so many organizations that have such noble causes, and if you're not positioned so that you are aware of some of these organizations you just never know that they exist. There are so many phenomenal things going on in Los Angeles County.

McCORMICK: That's true. I remember vaguely, when I was growing up in Kansas City [Missouri] and after I had become a young man and even started work there, reading about the Links in our local African American paper in Kansas City, the Kansas City Call, which was Kansas City's equivalent to the Los Angeles Sentinel. I would hear about the Links. And all I would know was that the biggest dinner dance of the year or the biggest event of the year was always sponsored by the Links. They were these highfalutin, apparently very powerful, affluent, influential women who belonged to this organization. But I never went to any of their affairs in Kansas City. I used to hear about them. And then, when I came here-- Almost any city in the nation where there are any African Americans has a Links affiliate. When I came here and I started hearing about the Links, I thought, "Jeez, I've got to meet some of these people," little knowing that I would marry somebody who would later become-- She wasn't a member of the Links when we first got married, but she was inducted not too long thereafter. She's been with the group for a long time. So I started to learn-- And when you learn about what the organization does and the way it operates-- It's very unique. Every husband is called a connecting link, and the daughters and sons are called heir-o-links. But husbands are called connecting links.

WHITE: Apropos.

McCORMICK: Yeah. And we are involved with many of the activities that our wives are involved in with the Links organization. In the Angel City Links it's the Achievers Program, where young African American high school seniors who are high achievers are honored with participation in this program, this big event, called the Affair of Honor, when they put on their tuxes and all that stuff and do their number. So it's become quite an important thing.

WHITE: Just thinking about the Links, the way in which they are linked to many groups, such as the high school students--

McCORMICK: This Achievers Program has been a program that has in essence become a pilot for a lot of other efforts across the country. The idea originally sprang from a Link by the name of Harriet Rose, whose husband is a dentist. They live in Saugus [Massachusetts], I think. Her husband Bob [Robert] Rose is one of the original Tuskegee airmen, and he wrote the book Lonely Eagles, about the Tuskegee airmen. So his wife Harriet and Dr. Rubye Mills, who was the wife of former Judge Billy Mills, they came up with this idea that-- This is years ago. This is the sixteenth or seventeenth year they've done the Achievers Program. Everybody has cotillions for the girls and coming-out [events] for the girls. And this is when much research started to reveal what many of us already knew, that African American males were one of the most underserved of the entire American population. Really no efforts were extended toward them. This thing in African American culture goes way back, of African American males being neglected, being at the bottom rung, the bottom of the totem pole. Years and years ago, when they had a choice of sending the son to college or the daughter to college, they sent the daughter, because they figured she stood a better chance of getting a job, and the son would just be trained for an occupation.

WHITE: Right, at a vocational school or something.

McCORMICK: When I was growing up, 80 percent of the teachers were women. Many African American men were not encouraged to pursue higher education. So Harriet Rose and Rubye Mills went, "Doggone it, it's time we paid some attention" and gave some accolades to African American males other than basketball players and football players, for academic achievement. And that's when they started the Achievers Program, culminating in the Affair of Honor. These young men spend six months in this program in their senior year doing community service, interacting with each other. They make lifelong friends as part of that group, because the Angel City Links make them feel that they are something very, very special. They have an adviser who is also group counselor named John Alston, who is also an excellent motivational speaker. That's what he does a lot, travels around. He communicates so well with young African American men. I've seen him in action. They never forget the experience with John Alston. He just has them for about five or six lectures and activities over the six months, maybe more than that. Very impressive man. Talks to them on their terms, tells them the truth, and forges a bond between them. And then John on the side is also a video producer, because for the-- In the culminating affair, the Affair of Honor, which is held at the Century Plaza [Hotel], this jam-packed ballroom, each of these young men, thirty-five or forty of them, in their tuxedos-- And I've emceed the program I think all but the first year. They come out on the runway where models usually do, and I recite all their achievements in front of this cheering crowd. They all have their families and friends there. It's just wild applause. It's a glittering affair, and you know it's going to be special to these guys for the rest of their lives. And before it even starts John has produced a video which is shown during lunch up on these huge screens on the walls at Century Plaza of each guy, a really nice photograph of each guy, and then a video of whatever activities they were involved in--well produced, with good music and everything. So it's a shining moment for them. And I do not know one-- So successful has it been-- I tell them all the time, "You really need to do some research and track these guys to see who's graduating and who's doing what." But all we know is that in the last six or seven years any number of alumni-- We have a component of the program that we used to call "confreres." In fact, the culminating affair used to be called the Affaire d'Honneur. I don't know why they went with the French.

WHITE: Oh, really. A confrere?

McCORMICK: But the confrere is just an adult role model. So we would pair a successful African American adult male with one of the boys. If somebody wanted to go into broadcast journalism, I would become his confrere, his adviser.

WHITE: I see, a mentor of sorts.

McCORMICK: His mentor. That's what it really is now, the mentor. I would take him to the station with me, we'd have lunch, we'd spend a lot of time together. And now we have young men who were Achievers, who are alumni Achievers, who have come back to become mentors, who have come back to give something back to the program. Many of them are attorneys or doctors or educators, involved in other professions. But [the organization] still needs to do some research to really track them. Because I think they could attract some outstanding foundation money.

WHITE: That's an alumni association of the Achievers. That's important, to really find out how significant that impact was on individuals. Just to be recognized in a situation like that where you're given accolades for your achievement, with your family and friends there, that really makes one feel like they could conquer the world. It's just one stepping stone.

McCORMICK: Each year one of the Achievers is chosen to speak for the group. And you can hear in the way-- And they're all extremely articulate. Talk about the top 15 percent! All these kids were in the top 15 percent of their class, or 10 percent.

WHITE: Of course. Very accomplished.

McCORMICK: Very accomplished. But you can always hear in the speech that the Achiever-- They select one to speak for them before this big audience, and what always comes through loud and clear is the bonding that's taken place among these young men, that this bond among these young men will always exist because of this experience that they've had together. But I think tracking them would be extremely important. That's one of the things that a lot of people-- Well, I think a lot of people now do know about the Achievers program and about the Angel City Links through that. But the Links in general have been an important part of my life.

WHITE: Okay. There's one other area that we haven't had an opportunity to really chat about, and I know that you were the emcee for the retirement of a very special person in your life, the Reverend Canon Lewis P. Bohler Jr., the reverend of the Church of the Advent. And in your literature I just read a very heartfelt speech that you wrote, and it states that, "I have had only two ministers in my entire life," one being your father and one being the Reverend Bohler. And I also understand that in 1976, actually, there was an event called "An Evening with Larry" sponsored by the Church of the Advent Episcopal, and it paid homage and tribute to you as an outstanding personality in the community. The parish hall at the church is dedicated in your name, I understand, and it was presented at the first annual Christian Image Award. And Mayor Tom [Thomas] Bradley was also there, and he paid tribute. So I wanted to get a sense of your interaction with the church, how long you have been a member, and your affiliation with or relationship with the reverend before he passed.

McCORMICK: Oh, he didn't pass! He's just retired.

WHITE: Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I beg your pardon.

McCORMICK: He retired from the ministry-- Actually, I don't think Father Bohler will ever completely retire. I had been a member of the Episcopal Church of the Advent almost since-- Maybe a year after I met and married Anita, which would be about 1961. More than thirty-five years I had been a member there. I had been Baptist before that, but I liked the church service, I liked the faith, and I liked the music--the peacefulness, the beauty of the Episcopal hymnbook and its music. And it is a religion which fit that time of my life and still does, and that's one of the reasons why I took to it. And then I like Father Lewis Bohler, who was as impressive a man to me as Mayor Tom Bradley was. In his own way Father Bohler took very strong positions not just on religious issues, on all kinds of issues, and was constantly writing to the op-ed [opposite editorial] section of the Los Angeles Times. His letters were constantly appearing in the op-ed sections taking strong positions. Maybe one of the reasons I have such admiration for him is because my opinions usually coincided with his! [mutual laughter] Which always helps! But they were always very articulately written and very well thought out. [The event] was his suggestion among a small committee of people at the church as a fund-raiser for Church of the Advent. Which is not a big church--a small church on Adams [Boulevard] near La Brea [Avenue]--but one of those small churches that I've been told are part and parcel almost carbon copies of the small [Anglican] churches that you see dotted all over England. And I think the people who originally built Church of the Advent had precisely that in mind. Inside and out it looks like something that was lifted right out of the countryside of England and set right down on Adams near La Brea. But when Church of the Advent originated--Anita had belonged to it for the whole time she had been out here; she was an Episcopalian in her hometown of Columbus [Ohio]--the congregation was predominantly white and very affluent. As a matter of fact, one of the former members of Church of the Advent was the great Nat King Cole. But, as has happened with many other things in the city, there is a migratory pattern, and it changed until it gradually-- When I first started there it was maybe 80 percent African American and still 20 percent Caucasian. Now it's still predominantly African American except that now you find so many people from former British colonies like Belize who are members of Church of the Advent. Although they are of African descent you hear these various different languages and accents. So it's changed again. But when Father Bohler and this small community said, "We want to honor you," I said, "Whoa. I don't know if I want--" And I said, "Okay." And I was really far more active at Church of the Advent in a number of ways then, because my work schedule was so different. I could be there every weekend. I didn't have to work Saturday nights and Sunday nights as I do now, which means I don't get to bed till late. For about the last seventeen or eighteen years-- Although I still get over there and participate in every way that I can, both Anita and I. But we were there with the kids practically every Sunday. And I was involved on the rectory board and a lot of other organizations within the church. I was often the lay reader at Sunday service. As a matter of fact, one of the most interesting-- I'm straying away from the story. Finally he said, "It's going to be at the Hollywood Palladium." [mutual laughter] And I said, "What?" The pictures are somewhere around; I don't know whether I showed them to you or not.

WHITE: I did see them.

McCORMICK: The marquee at the Hollywood Palladium [said] "Church of the Advent Salutes Larry McCormick." I flew my sisters and brother out from Kansas City, because it was a signal honor for me to have my name in lights at the Palladium. And several of my colleagues, including Hal Fishman, came by and were on the dais and had nice things to say, and it was all in all a really, really nice program. I think it was held during my father's anniversary at the church, and he and Mom couldn't come. But all my sisters-- I flew them all out, and my brother. It was quite an event. Father Bohler and I both have an avid interest in music, particularly jazz and classical music. We're both big jazz fans, though. We used to always be exchanging albums and records and tapes. Somewhere he ordered a high-speed tape duplicator, where you could duplicate an entire album off an audiotape in like two minutes.

WHITE: Oh, what a great piece of equipment.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. He used to do that for a lot of friends. I've got so many tape cassettes in there that he made for me over the years. He was just a remarkable man. He served on the [Los Angeles Unified School District] Board of Education on an interim basis, when somebody either ran for another public office or passed away. And he served on the [Los Angeles] County Board of Education, served on the [California] State Board of Education--had to fly to Sacramento for meetings.

WHITE: Very involved and active.

McCORMICK: Very involved, very dynamic man. And then, probably the most-- The strangest experience-- Of course, he lived right around the corner on Buckingham [Road] in the house that a very, very wealthy philanthropist gave Church of the Advent as its rectory years and years and years ago. But Father Bohler was scheduled to perform a wedding ceremony on a Saturday once at Church of the Advent. And this couple had to have the ceremony that day--it had been planned for a long time-- because they had already made some other plans for a honeymoon, for a vacation, for visiting relatives back East and everything. And they had to do it at that time. Mrs. Gloria Bohler, Father Bohler's wife, called me the day of the wedding and said, "Listen, Lewis has laryngitis so bad he cannot talk at all, and he wants you to perform the wedding ceremony. He will do all the rituals; he just wants you to read the words." [mutual laughter] So I did it. I went over to the church, and I-- And he said-- There are any number of-- The Episcopal faith, like most other religions, has formal ceremonies that you go through. Fortunately, Episcopal weddings are not long; they are rather short. And there were maybe thirty people in the audience--friends of both the bride and groom and family members. Father Bohler would signal me when to read the next-- And I would say, "And do you take this--?" "And do you--?" "I do." So I did the whole wedding and he did all the ceremony, everything that they do in the ritual. I ran into that couple at a supermarket about ten years later, and they said, "You're Larry McCormick!" Well, you know, [I thought] they [had seen] me on the news. "I bet you don't remember us." And I said, "No, I don't--" "You married us!" And then as soon as he said that-- Ah! [mutual laughter] That was one of the most unusual experiences of my life, to actually do a wedding ceremony.

WHITE: That's a memorable occasion, for sure.

McCORMICK: Something Father Bohler and I shared. Father Bohler finally, after thirty-five years at Church of the Advent-- He had reached seventy-one [years old], although he looked like he was still a man of robust health--still is. Father Bohler marched with [Dr.] Martin [Luther] King [Jr.] when he was a very young man and was a good friend of King's and Andy [Andrew] Young's and all of them. So he decided he wanted to spend his last years back in his hometown of Augusta, Georgia. So he moved back there, supposedly in retirement. We get letters from him. He's now the rector of an Episcopal church in Augusta, Georgia. [mutual laughter] He's writing letters to all the newspapers all around Georgia, Atlanta and everywhere. He keeps copies of the op-ed pages and sends them to me. The same Lew Bohler.

WHITE: The second phase of his life.

McCORMICK: Yeah. He can never just sit back and retire. Unusual man.

WHITE: Are you still affiliated with the church?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. I still help out whenever I can do anything. I hope to become-- Well, actually, if my schedule changed I would be more active. But I hope to become active again in Church of the Advent. I just ran into one of the members at some function the other day, and they said, "You really need to get back, because the vitality's coming back--" They lost a little vitality after Lew Bohler retired, but he said it's beginning to get-- We have a very good minister now, Father [Giles L.] Asbury. The church is regaining its energy and everything. Speaking of that, I've had a couple of other signal honors, too. I was asked to emcee when the Union of Black Episcopalians had the only convention they've ever had here in Los Angeles. I was asked to emcee the final banquet, and I had a chance to meet Barbara [C.] Harris, the first African American woman ever to become a priest in the Episcopal Church. And it was quite-- She was so down-to-earth, such a wonderful woman. I had read about her, heard about her--she had been featured on 60 Minutes and other places--and to finally meet her was really quite a thrill.

WHITE: Quite an honor.

McCORMICK: And to be able to introduce her was really an honor.

WHITE: A significant point in time.

McCORMICK: Yes.

1.27. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 22, 1999

WHITE: Last time we spoke we had a very engaging conversation regarding a number of your community activities and all the wonderful programs that you had the opportunity to emcee, and I wanted to go back to that just for a moment. There was one other occasion that I just wanted to chat with you a little bit about. That is, in 1984 you were the emcee for the National Conference of Christians and Jews Brotherhood Ball. I understand that organization is a nonprofit organization engaged in a nationwide program of education to eliminate prejudice and discrimination. I wonder if you recall that event or if you could offer some tidbits about that particular organization, your connection with it.

McCORMICK: Yes. That organization, since its very inception, has been one of an ecumenical nature, obviously, that's designed to bring people of various religions and cultures together to foster understanding between various religions and cultures and generally speaking to promote tolerance and, better than tolerance, to promote acceptance and cooperation between people of various religions and cultures. I think it is representative in its mission of some of the most laudable things in the American idea, in the American experiment, which is really basically about seeing whether after all these thousands of years people from many, many different backgrounds can coexist peacefully, profitably, happily, in one country. That has not succeeded very often in history, because it's always resulted in conflict.

WHITE: Absolutely.

McCORMICK: So it's a noble experiment, and it's still a work in progress. We haven't proven it yet.

WHITE: Sure. An endeavor of that magnitude would probably always be a work in progress.

McCORMICK: Yes, I think so.

WHITE: Okay, wonderful. I wonder if there were any other programs that you had an opportunity to emcee in the past or in the future that you might like to chat about or offer some insight on?

McCORMICK: I found that every program, particularly if it involved an organization or an entity with which I had had no involvement before, was a new and a learning experience and a broadening experience and an opportunity for personal growth, in addition to being an opportunity to serve-- I have tried as much as possible--and I think I've been fairly successful in this--to limit my involvement with various organizations and programs and efforts to those that I thought were worthy and served the larger cause of promoting the improvement of the quality of life for African Americans or other people and the enhancement of relations between groups of people, and I hope my involvements have really been about that. I like to think they have. If they haven't, then something's been fooling me. [mutual laughter] And I was thinking about this a couple of days ago, after our last meeting. When I was talking about interviewing Alex Haley on the program that I used to host at [television station KTLA] channel 5 called Pacesetters--which I hosted, I think, for about twelve years--it occurred to me there were some other people whom we hadn't discussed whom I've had the pleasure of interviewing on Pacesetters and when I was the anchor of our first experiment in a midday news at KTLA. And one of my favorites-- I guess I was reading something, or maybe I was watching television, that had something about Jackie Robinson. And I remember that one of my most enjoyable experiences was an interview that I pretty much set up, because it was a little bit like the fulfillment of a boyhood dream. And that was an interview in which my guests were Don Newcombe, former great [Brooklyn] Dodger pitcher, and his battery mate, Roy Campanella. I got to have them on the same show. As I said before, when I was growing up I was a pitcher and my brother [Thomas F. McCormick] was a catcher, and Newcombe and Campanella were our idols, along with Jackie, of course. But being pitcher and catcher--

WHITE: I recall your making that comment earlier on.

McCORMICK: Having both of them together and talking about what the days were like when they were really the pioneers in baseball, the moments of glory that they had back in Brooklyn, in addition to all the moments of agony and the moments of stress that they played under, being early parts of that experiment. And also talking about the incredible-- And this [interview was in] about 1980 or '81, obviously before Mr. Campanella's death. Mr. Newcombe is still with the team in community relations. [We were] talking about the incredible difference even then between the salaries they had made when they had played for the Dodgers--and they were considered fairly well paid--and the salaries that players were making then. Of course, now it's escalated completely out of sight, when the Dodgers just signed Kevin Brown for $105 million for seven years. They told me the most Jackie Robinson ever made-- I think it was $62,000 a year. For a superstar. Even accounting for inflation and all that, quite a difference. Pacesetters afforded me the opportunity to have those interviews with people like Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella. Also the early afternoon news. Unfortunately, this was in the years before we went to videotape, where storing things is concerned, so I think they've all been lost to history. But I interviewed Mickey Cohen on the afternoon news. I interviewed the original Evelyn [Nielsen] Wood, from the Evelyn Wood [Reading Dynamics program].

WHITE: Oh, my goodness!

McCORMICK: She was a little old lady at the time. I interviewed Bob Woodward of Woodward and [Carl] Bernstein, of Watergate fame. I interviewed a fellow whose English was still so poor you could barely understand him, but he had just been named Mr. Universe, just barely could speak English. His name was Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was touring around the United States. And I remember how hard it was to understand what he was saying. So those are some experiences that I didn't know whether I had mentioned or not, hosting those programs, that really gave my perspective on what I was doing and what I was about and the profession I was in a whole new level of meaning. I emceed the retirement dinner for the great Elgin Baylor, the [Los Angeles] Lakers superstar.

WHITE: Right, you certainly did. I did see some notes to that effect in your archive.

McCORMICK: So those are some of the things that I've been thinking and wondering about in our discussions--"Have I left anything out that might be important?"--that were really important to me at the time and that I really felt good about. I remember asking Mickey Cohen, the late Mickey Cohen, who was one of the most notorious local mobsters, about the disappearance of Jimmy [James R.] Hoffa. This was on the air!

WHITE: On the air?

McCORMICK: On this program-- I think we started about one thirty or two [o'clock], and it would be a half hour of news and then an interview. And he said, "I can tell you this, and this is all I will say about it: they will never ever find him."

WHITE: Oh, my goodness! On the air?

McCORMICK: On the air.

WHITE: That must have been incredibly memorable.

McCORMICK: Yeah, it was.

WHITE: Boy, the diversity of talent and just the level of sophistication of the individuals that you have interviewed has probably, I'm sure, broadened your range of knowledge and your perspective and just a wide variety of--

McCORMICK: I think it has. Although-- You know, Renee, at that time, when my producer for Pacesetters, Ray Gonzales--who now hosts the program and has for quite a while now--would say, "Well, now we're going to have a special guest on today. We're going to have Alex Haley--" And my immediate thought would be to prepare for the interview. And it wasn't till two years later when Roots was the most watched TV series in history, I thought, "I had that guy on eight months before it ever hit the air, before all the hubbub started!" So those experiences sometimes take on added meaning in retrospect. Because at the moment you're so busy getting ready for the interview that you don't realize the momentousness of what you're about to do. So KTLA has provided some interesting experiences in that respect. My only regret is that we don't have videotape records of all those interviews, because we had some very, very good ones, some that I think put us a little bit ahead of our time. I see interviews on CNN [Cable News Network] and other places today and I think, "I did that a long time ago!"

WHITE: It's old news.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. On Pacesetters years and years ago I interviewed the late Bobby [Robert G.] Seale--

WHITE: Did you really?

McCORMICK: --of the Black Panther [Party], several interviews with Jesse [L.] Jackson, stretching over the years. The first interview was as the host of Pacesetters. Of course, many, many interviews with Mayor [Thomas] Bradley and other local elected officials.

WHITE: You do keep the audio tapes, is that correct?

McCORMICK: No, the only records we have of the interviews that we did are in Ray Gonzales's files. Usually, we didn't take still photographs because there was no budget or anything. And they didn't save the videotapes. I've often been tempted to go and look downstairs in our archives to see what's there. Back when I was the sportscaster at channel 5, '77 to '80, a couple of times I went down into the archives in the basement-- Storage of videotapes, particularly the old big one-inch videotapes, is a major problem for contemporary television stations. It takes up so much space.

WHITE: Exactly. A logistical nightmare.

McCORMICK: It is. They have to rent space if they want to keep them. And I was surprised to go downstairs--I'm not even sure whether they're still there--and find row after row after row of tapes of entire games of UCLA when Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar, then Lew Alcindor] played for UCLA. I was really tempted to get together with maybe a few other people and offer some money and just buy those archives. But there's more to such an enterprise than that, just simply acquiring them. Videotapes have to be stored under certain climatic conditions--a certain temperature, a certain humidity it can't go above or below--or the videotape deteriorates, even though videotape is probably more durable than film, because film just cracks and withers to dust, the old film. There are organizations now that are trying to preserve the old films on newer, better material. But one of these days I'm going to go down into the basement and see what's there and see if, just perchance, any of those tapes are still there. Because in those days they didn't place a great deal of importance on public affairs programs, so the tapes I think got recycled, got reused, so something's been taped over-- But I'm going to go down there and see, because that would make a wonderful archive, even if I just used them to draw still pictures from the videotapes. And with modern technology you can do that with what they call a Still-Store. They can take videotape and draw a still picture from it, a color picture that is just like a photograph.

WHITE: Boy, technology these days is just so extremely advanced.

McCORMICK: Yeah. It's done electronically. As a matter of fact, whenever you see a picture on television news now over the shoulder of the anchor or somebody like that-- If you're in the studio, the only thing you see over the anchor's shoulder is a blank green screen.

WHITE: Right.

McCORMICK: And the picture of the person the anchor's talking about is projected electronically onto the screen. But in the studio you don't see anything; you see it at home. But that's a Still-Store.

WHITE: Interesting. That's a Still-Store, okay. I think that would certainly be a worthwhile visit, to go down to your archives. There's some historical records there.

McCORMICK: Yeah, to see what's there. Fortunately, a lot of the people I-- People like Mayor Bradley and Jesse Jackson and Colin Powell and some others I do have photographs of, stacks and stacks of photographs, too many to display. I'd have to have a room to display them all.

WHITE: Were there transcripts of the interviews?

McCORMICK: I'm not really sure. I'd have to talk to Ray Gonzales. Because we're talking about the years I hosted Pacesetters, roughly 1972 to 1982, so I'm not sure whether Ray has retained those records or not.

WHITE: There have probably been some interesting bits of information from the interviews, historical information, just perspectives that they had at that point in time, particularly with those sort of prominent leaders that you just named. Great information.

McCORMICK: I mean, when Ntozake Shange first came out with [For] Colored Girls [Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf], we were one of the first to interview her on Pacesetters. We had some members of the cast there who did some scenes. And I would love to have the video of that, because that was kind of a milestone.

WHITE: Sure. It was a very progressive program. It covered the spectrum, just anyone just setting the pace, the pacesetters in all industries.

McCORMICK: It was a wide umbrella that allowed us to cover a lot of things, from local politics to-- Local things of real community concern: housing developments, unemployment. It was sometimes issue oriented. But I have to admit that I used my persuasiveness, if you can call it that, or my clout, if you want to call it that, since I was the host of the program, to bend it. Not away from issues, because issues are always important, but to make it a little more than just issues. Because I thought having pacesetters on, people who are really doing things, would sustain a higher level of viewer interest. Because I don't think most people when they turn on their television sets want to sit down all the time and hear about problems and crises and all that kind of stuff. I think they get burned out. Pretty soon they just say, "I don't want to hear about this anymore!" and tune it out, and turn you off. So I tried to mix it up.

WHITE: Is there any other show that's aired today that you could compare to Pacesetters in terms of subject matter?

McCORMICK: Not on channel 5.

WHITE: Any other channel?

McCORMICK: There are community affairs programs on other channels, and they do-- Things haven't really changed that much over the years. They do some of the same things we did on Pacesetters. Except that today, of course, because of the improvements in technology, they have a lot more of what we call B-roll, a lot more interesting background footage to go with it. I think some stations, too, on their public affairs programs have really gotten almost completely away from what you would really call public affairs. Some are still issue oriented, but many of them now are just entertainment programs. One of the reasons is because the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] is not as proactive as it used to be, particularly in the early days, when I first came into broadcasting, in making broadcast entities, whether they be radio stations or TV stations or now cable or whatever, live up to the original FCC act of 1933, which declared that the airwaves belong to the public and that licensees, who have a right to broadcast, should have a commitment to do things in the public interest. We realize it's a profit-making business. But the FCC, its status, its power, has been so diluted over the years by special interests, by corporate interests, that they really don't put as much pressure on broadcast entities to do things in the public service as much as they used to. They used to really apply a lot of pressure. You had to show how much public service you had done to get your license renewed every three years. Now I think it's only every seven years.

WHITE: Oh, really?

McCORMICK: They've relaxed the rules so much that you wonder how much of a regulatory agency they really are anymore.

WHITE: Regulating things every seven years doesn't seem very--

McCORMICK: And they've lost their teeth in a lot of ways. I know things change and things become generational, but the FCC that regulated the broadcast industry when I first started and for the first twenty years I was in the business--and I don't mean to point a finger of blame or anything--would never have approved the broadcasting of a program like Howard Stern's. It just wouldn't have happened. We couldn't say comparatively innocent words like "butt" and things like that on the air back then, or certainly not "damn" or anything like-- Oh! No way! Your license could be jeopardized.

WHITE: Imagine the contrast from then to now with a Howard Stern--! It's just outrageous.

McCORMICK: And the deregulation. I think there were a lot of benefits to regulation, to preventing the centralization and consolidation of power by a few broadcasters. That's happened more and more, as you can see, with big, big outfits like [the Walt] Disney [Company] and Fox [Entertainment Group] owning multiple stations. It used to be that a given company could only own one TV station and one radio station in the same market. Then they changed and said you can own two TV stations and two radio stations and one FM station. The only thing that the FCC has pretty firmly held to--and this used to be fairly common before the FCC cracked down --is that a major TV station would ally itself with a major newspaper in the same market, and they would really monopolize the dissemination of news. And when you monopolize the dissemination of news, that means you also monopolize the dissemination of advertising money.

WHITE: Of course, of course.

McCORMICK: So at one time one TV station was allied very strongly with the L.A. [Los Angeles] Times. So it puts you in a position of enormous advantage over competitors. If a TV station--let's say KTLA--can offer, "If you buy a $1,000 a week worth of ads in the Times, we'll give you another $1,000 worth of ads on KTLA for only $500," well, that puts you at an enormous advantage.

WHITE: Oh, huge advantage.

McCORMICK: So that's the only thing they haven't changed. It used to be that a given entity, like a network--like NBC [National Broadcasting Company], CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System]--could only own outright five stations around the country. Everybody else, every other station that was a part of that network, was an affiliate and just used its programming and things like that. Now a network can own I think seventeen stations, and own them outright. So that's changed. There are a lot of things that have changed since the days of Pacesetters. Back to my original point--I don't mean to wander too much!--in those days the FCC's stricter, more stringent regulatory actions really caused TV stations and radio stations to do more significant public service on their airwaves.

WHITE: Oh, of course. I see.

McCORMICK: That's the point I was getting around to the long way. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: Very interesting. It will be interesting to see what the future holds in terms of the regulatory--

McCORMICK: It looks like more and more deregulation. And I'm afraid-- The time will come, probably, when the federal government will take a look-- As the power in broadcasting becomes more and more centralized into fewer and fewer hands, inevitably one day some congress[man] or some group of congressmen-- Or there will be some movement in the private sector to again decentralize, to diffuse and divert some of that concentrated power, and it will be something like an antitrust. The monopoly will be broken up.

WHITE: Okay. Well, let's see now. We had discussed at certain points in the interviews that there were different periods in your life when you were much more active emceeing than at other times because of overlapping priorities and that sort of thing. In terms of your interactions with community organizations or emceeing various events, do you foresee a number of those events taking place in the future?

McCORMICK: Certainly as I get older there are going to have to be some cutbacks in the schedule. I simply cannot do the same number of things. I still think I have a good deal of vitality--I'm pretty active--but I can't even entertain the idea of being a part of as many programs as I was during certain periods. It's physically impossible. One of the changes that had some effect was in 1980, when I started doing the weekend news, News at Ten. There are a lot of events that take place on the weekend that I can't physically emcee anymore because I'm at work. And then working at night over the years has taken its toll. When I was a younger man I could get off at eleven o'clock and maybe not get to sleep until two thirty or three [o'clock]. And be up for an eight o'clock meeting to emcee it. That's harder to do the older you get. And in another way I'm kind of making way for and encouraging my younger African American colleagues in broadcast journalism here in Los Angeles to become more and more involved. At some point the torch has got to be passed on to the Pat Harveys and the Marc Browns and people like that. Fortunately, people like Pat, whom I'm going to co-emcee the Ebony Fashion Fair with this spring at the Hollywood Palladium-- Just talked the other day. I like working with Pat. We're good friends, and we complement each other very nicely. We've co-emceed a number of programs together. But I'm glad to see that the young people coming along today, like Pat and Marc Brown and Dave Clark and others, are community oriented. Maybe I've set the example--in fact, they have often told me that I have for them--of getting out and being active in the community and emceeing programs. At the same time I think they've learned, maybe from watching me, maybe from their own sensibilities, that there are some efforts that you'll be asked to participate in that you can't because they flirt around the edges of your journalistic objectivity. I don't get involved in purely political campaigns. I don't emcee campaign fund-raisers. I could hardly go and emcee a fund-raiser for a candidate for political office and then go back on the news and report about that person's adversaries. What would my objectivity be? So that would diminish my own credibility. So my public, my friends, even those in political office, have known for years now that I don't get actively involved in political campaigns. Way back when I was a weatherman, my wife [Anita Daniels McCormick] and I did get involved in one which I am very proud of to this day, and that was in Tom Bradley's early campaign. Because we felt it was of historic importance. That's the only one, when he ran for governor. We felt that the historic importance of what he was doing precluded everything else. And besides, I wasn't an anchorman then, I was a weatherman. I had some of those liberties. But since I've been a journalist and responsible for covering news stories I have avoided becoming associated with one side or the other of active issues. Except for the Los Angeles Urban League, and that's because I believe that the mission of the Urban League is an American mission. What it attempts to do is something that any individual, any citizen of any color, creed, background in America would find a worthwhile cause. It is wholly American; it's equality of opportunity. To me there's nothing controversial about that, there is nothing unethical about that, there is nothing that conflicts with journalistic objectivity about that. Which is one of the reasons why I decided the Urban League was the organization I wanted to be associated with. So I think my younger colleagues have been very careful about becoming involved in partisan politics and understand how that compromises your integrity. And sometimes they [consult] me. They'll call and ask advice about, "What do you think of this?" You know, "I've been asked to do this. What do you think about it? What do you think about doing this, or getting involved with that organization or this organization or this effort or this rally?" And I give them the best advice that I can give them.

WHITE: Excellent to have someone there that they can call and ask for advice.

McCORMICK: You still have got to have a career. And if you think becoming affiliated with that effort is worth sacrificing your career, go for it.

WHITE: Sometimes you need someone there just to draw that to your attention, though, and heighten your awareness in that area.

McCORMICK: You do. Sometimes you can't be sure what people's agenda are. And since I've been around longer than some of them, I can provide some background, and I can tell them, "Well, listen, you may not know, but this is the same person who did such-and-such thing about ten years ago, so you might want to be careful about that." People have hidden agendas, and if you don't know, if you don't have some information or someplace you can go for information, you can get caught up in it, and before you know it you wonder, "How come I let that happen to me?" So as much as I can help my young colleagues avoid those pitfalls, I want to do that.

WHITE: Well, I understand that we at UCLA are actually going to be honored to have your presence there on our campus in a little less than a month at our Thurgood Marshall lecture event.

McCORMICK: Yes, I'm looking forward to that. And I'm very honored to have been invited to participate.

WHITE: Good, good. We look forward to having you to honor Mr. Julian Bond. That should be a very engaging and provocative evening.

McCORMICK: It should be, yeah. I would consider that personally-- It probably will be one of the highlights of the year for me. I think I've told you about some other programs that I'm going to be involved with. I'll be the quizmaster for the U.S. Academic Decathlon taking place in Cypress [California] April 16. I think it will be the first time I've ever been the question reader for the nationals. And then the Urban League's Whitney [M.] Young [Jr. Award] Dinner honoring Natalie Cole.

WHITE: What's the date of that again?

McCORMICK: That's April 16.

WHITE: Okay. You'll be quite busy.

McCORMICK: At the Century Plaza Hotel. And then, of course, there's the Ebony Fashion Fair, which I do just about every year. It's an affiliate of Children's Home Society [of California], which is about the business of adopting black children and has been for many, many years. And there will be other programs as time goes along. Unfortunately, I have to turn down about four or five a week, either because they come on a work night and I can't do it or because I already have other commitments. So it happens all the time.

WHITE: That's quite a number, four or five. It's certainly nice to know that you're being thought about in the community and that people are still anxious and excited to have you come.

McCORMICK: Well, it's comforting to know that people still think I can help. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: Absolutely. Well, there have certainly been a number of occasions to honor you and the efforts that you have put forth. In just looking at your personal archives and a number of newspapers and what have you, I've been graced with an opportunity to review just the tremendous number of awards and honors that you have received over your professional career. And those honors and awards, they will be included in a biographical summary in the transcript from this interview.

McCORMICK: Oh, okay.

WHITE: But I did want to just chat about a few of them. I don't necessarily want to put you on the spot, but that is in fact what I'm going to do. [mutual laughter] Because there are a number of very interesting and exciting awards that I just wanted to chat a little bit about and have on tape. Starting back, actually, in 1971, I think there was something quite notable. You were honored by the Los Angeles chapter of the National Association of Media Women. It was a brunch dedicated to the 141st anniversary of the black press, and you were given a salute "To an Outstanding Man in the Field of Communication." Do you remember that occasion?

McCORMICK: Oh, yes, I do. That was very early on, when my period of community activism was really starting to pick up. I was really honored that the late Jessie Mae Beavers and some of her colleagues--and there weren't many of them then; there weren't many of us then--felt that I was worthy to receive that honor. It's always nice to be honored by one's peers, because they know what you have to go through. They know what can reasonably be called an achievement and what is not, what is glitz. So when you're honored by your peers, especially your African American brothers and sisters, that's particularly noteworthy. Because they are familiar with not only what you have to go through to try to be a good journalist but the additional pressures that come with being an African American journalist. They appreciate that, too.

WHITE: Absolutely. And actually, speaking of that very point, of being an African American journalist, I noticed another award that was given to you in 1973. This one was from the Los Angeles County Employees Association. They gave you a "Special Citation for the Successful Breakthrough of the Color Barrier in TV News," which was presented at their ninth annual Journalism Awards Luncheon. And the citation read, "Just as Jackie Robinson was the first man to break the color barrier in major league baseball twenty-five years ago"--this was in 1973--"it took real guts and ability to break into what had been the all-white preserve of TV news." So they honored you in that respect, as one of the first African Americans to break that color barrier.

McCORMICK: Again, that was quite an honor. Just as I said a moment ago, it's a particularly great honor to be given some kind of recognition by one's peers, but it is also an honor for people in the public sector, and certainly city employees, who represented a large number of people then and an even larger number of people now. When those who just watch you and experience what you're doing vicariously, so to speak, feel that you should be honored-- When they say, "Maybe you don't think what you're doing is very special--you only think you're doing your job--but we do," that's always an honor. Because it makes you feel like, well, you're reaching people.

WHITE: Exactly.

McCORMICK: And the manner in which you conduct yourself has been noticed, and somebody cares that you're trying to set a tone of excellence. So that's very, very encouraging. I think that it really makes you want to do better.

WHITE: And then to be compared also with Jackie Robinson.

McCORMICK: Oh, to be compared with Jackie! At that time I wondered whether I really deserved that, you know, to be compared at that level. Despite the experiences that I've had--and I'm sure many African Americans of my age and from my generation have had; I think our young people today have it a little easier than that--it was nothing compared to the vitriolic things that Jackie had to go through. For him to a great extent, for me to a lesser extent, it's more than just the name-calling or the denigration and things like that. But you have to endure all that and still perform. If you just lead a rather anonymous life out of the public eye where your performance is not measured on a day-to-day basis among other very, very talented people, the pressure is a lot less. You can come home and sulk or cry or break things or get mad or whatever, but when you have to get out there in front of, whether it's thousands of people in a stadium or hundreds of thousands of people on television, with all of this other stuff going on and perform, it's not easy.

WHITE: Absolutely. It takes great tenacity and perseverance and resolve--

McCORMICK: And focus. A lot of resolve and a lot of focus to-- You really have to develop the ability to close all of that out of your mind and remember that you have to perform. You still have to do that, or you're not there; you don't have a career.

WHITE: That's true. Very, very interesting. And though, as you indicated, it was perhaps to a lesser degree in terms of your public appearances or what have you, but-- You know, you have had to perform in spite of the challenges of being the first.

McCORMICK: Oh, yeah. And there were challenges. There were the usual slights. There was hate mail. There were hate phone calls. But only once did I ever feel that I was in the direct physical jeopardy that Jackie must have felt every time he stepped out on the field, that somebody could shoot at him, opposing players could try to injure him--throw a baseball at his head, spike his legs when they slid into base, any number of different ways--in addition to the virtual torrent of racial epithets that were hurled at him, screamed at him from the stands. All this stuff-- I mean, you have to be hearing it, and you're supposed to get up there and hit a pitch being thrown by one of the best pitchers in baseball. You have to perform. I had a talk show at [radio station] KLAC, and that must have been around 1969, 1970, a weekend talk show on Saturday nights and Sunday nights. And everything went swimmingly until-- There was a caller. A lot of people listened and responded, but there was one woman, a sweet lady, as I recall--at least she sounded so on the phone--an African American lady, who called, and we discussed some subject on the air. KLAC at that time was KABC's chief competitor as a talk show. It's changed formats a number of times since then, but they had some of the major personalities in the city on the station at the time, and I was the only African American on the station, as has happened so often. And at the end of the conversation on the air this lady said, "Well, Mr. McCormick, I just want to thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. And by the way, I want to tell you that the black community"--that was what was hip then [laughs]--"just love you, and we're so proud of what you're doing." A lot of the listeners-- This was like my third week on the air, third or fourth week. I don't think a lot of the listeners knew that I was black. Because that had never specifically come to the fore before, and there hadn't been any major-- There was later an advertising campaign with my picture on the literature. But I substituted for the other talk show hosts sometimes, and we talked about everything--Vietnam was big then--from Vietnam to taxes to all kinds of things. This woman had not concluded our conversation five minutes before the calls started to come. Every call that day for the rest of that show was about race, as soon as they knew I was African American. Finally, a couple of weeks later, a guy called. At that time the KLAC studios were across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits on Wilshire [Boulevard], and you had to come out the front door right onto Wilshire Boulevard facing the La Brea Tar Pits and walk around to the back of the station to the parking lot to get in your car. And this caller-- You know, you have a producer who sits behind the glass wall on the other side of the studio from you who is screening the calls and who's indicating to you-- The technology has improved so much now; they do it by computer. You can see the name of the person, where they're calling from, and all that stuff. But at that time the producer would hold up a little sign that would say "Janet from Torrance on line two." And this guy, the producer, got up, came out of his studio, came around, and said, "There's a guy on the line-- I've already called the police. He said that when you get off the air tonight, when you walk out that front door, he's going to be waiting in those dark La Brea Tar Pits across the street, and he's going to put a bullet right between your eyes." Now, probably a hoax, just some guy who was probably p.o.'d [pissed off], but convincing enough to scare me and make me nervous.

WHITE: Oh, sure. How much warning would you want?

McCORMICK: So when I got off the air that night I didn't exit the building immediately. I waited around in the studio for about an hour. And then had a couple of other people just kind of walk casually across the street and look around, just see if they could see anybody. If you've ever seen that corner right there by Marie Callender's [Restaurant and Bakery] over there, it's dark.

WHITE: Right, very dark.

McCORMICK: So about an hour after I got off I thought, "Well, this is either-- I can't sit here all night. This is either it--" And I had to go to work the next day at [radio station] KGFJ. So I got up and got my briefcase and walked out the front door, one of those moments of breathless expectation just waiting to see if a shot was going to ring out or what. And I walked out, walked around the corner with my back now toward La Brea Tar Pits, walked back to the parking lot, and amazingly I wasn't afraid. I wasn't nervous. "It's either going to happen or it's not." I got in my car and drove home.

WHITE: Uh-huh. You can't walk around in fear. But that's quite a frightening experience--

McCORMICK: It was. But to think of what Jackie went through in person every day, day in and day out. And Jackie, contrary to what a lot of people-- A lot of people commend him for his restraint. But you really have to commend him even more when you know that naturally, as a natural person, he was a fiery guy! It must have been doubly difficult for him. He knew how good he was. He was not a humble man; he was very proud. He did not like racists. He did not appreciate the treatment that he was going through there. It was really hard for him to restrain himself during those first two or three years. And of course, later on he didn't restrain himself. But people had forgotten that Jackie was almost court-martialed when he was in the military service, because he led a group of black officers-- Jackie was a very bright, well-educated guy--UCLA. I can't remember what base they were at. I think it was in the South or the mid-South--Kentucky somewhere, Tennessee--and they would not let the black officers eat or have a drink in the officer's club. It was segregated.

WHITE: Uh-huh, sure.

McCORMICK: And he encouraged these other black officers to go in. And they went in, demanded to be served. And they tried to-- In fact, I think they did courtmartial him. But it was such bad PR [public relations] for the army that they quickly dismissed it and kind of pushed it under the rug and said, "Well, it was just a misunderstanding." But that's the kind of fiery guy he was. So it must have been enormously difficult for him to accept this debasement.

WHITE: And restrain himself in the face of adversity.

McCORMICK: And things like-- You know, where they would go to some of the-- At that time there were no major league teams in the western United States or the southern United States. Really, when you think about it, there were only sixteen major league teams: eight in the American League and eight in the National League. And they were all virtually eastern teams. It was an eastern game. The southernmost and westernmost city that they played major league baseball in was St. Louis, Missouri. And St. Louis, Missouri, was where, when the Dodgers with their black players came, they had the most problems. Jackie got in trouble again, because he demanded to stay in the same hotel where the white players stayed in St. Louis. And it was only a couple of his black teammates, Newcombe and Campanella, who really prevented a wild fight. They finally persuaded him to do what they did whenever they went to St. Louis and a couple of other cities, and that's to stay with black friends. Or if there was a black hotel in the city, you stayed there. There were in some cities--Philadelphia, New York. But other than that, you'd have to stay in people's homes. So on more than one occasion he almost blew up. But what a man, to go through all that stuff and still be a great player!

WHITE: Exactly, to hold his reputation.

McCORMICK: So to be compared to him is incredible.

WHITE: Quite phenomenal.

1.28. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 22, 1999

WHITE: You were just mentioning what a wonderful opportunity it was to be compared with Jackie Robinson--

McCORMICK: Yes.

WHITE: --and some of his achievements and accomplishments being the first African American in major league baseball. So let's continue from there with some of the other awards and honors that I just wanted to chat a little bit about today. Just moving a little bit further, in 1986, a little something that was quite interesting, the California Podiatric Association gave you an award for exceptional contributions to the promotion of foot health. I thought that was quite interesting, because it directly relates to your "Health and Fitness Report" that you have been doing for a number of years. So I'm sure it was nice to have received some awards for some of the issues that were covered.

McCORMICK: Yes, it was, particularly considering the fact that I'm not a medical professional. I'm a journalist whose assignment is covering medical topics for the "Health and Fitness Report." So to have people who are medical professionals see some merit in my work was particularly gratifying to me. I think that dinner was held at a hotel in Anaheim; it might have been the Disneyland Hotel. They were very gracious and very nice, and, as I said, I think it was particularly significant to me at the time because it came from medical professionals. And when they salute somebody who does medical reports who is not a medical professional-- I thought, "That's rather exceptional, so I must be doing something right."

WHITE: In that same year, Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity gave you a humanitarian award for "extraordinary contributions to extending America's bounteous life to disadvantaged citizens." Do you recall that?

McCORMICK: Well, you know, I recall-- There have been a lot of them, and I can't recall the specifics of all of them, but I do value all of them. As you've mentioned before, sometimes the prose is so flowery it's a little embarrassing. [mutual laughter] I think, "Me? No, not really that great." But I'm grateful for it, and if that expresses their sentiments, well, that's fine with me.

WHITE: Absolutely, absolutely. One other interesting one: in 1990, the community service award as "Man of the Year" by the Los Angeles Sentinel, which at that time was the largest black-owned newspaper in the West. I think that was wonderful, to have that accolade, that honor, to you from the African American community.

McCORMICK: And from my colleagues in print journalism. It came from a newspaper of which I have been an admirer for its efforts on behalf of our people for many, many years, even before I came out here. And then, of course, at that time it was proffered by two very, very good friends; Kenneth and Jennifer Thomas were the publisher of the Sentinel and the president of the Sentinel. Ken Thomas, of course, tragically has passed on since then. I also served with Ken; he was on the Los Angeles Urban League board of directors for a number of years. But he and Jennifer expended a great deal of personal effort and money and resources of all kinds to keep the L.A. Sentinel as a singular voice for the African American community in Los Angeles, following the legacy of the late Colonel Leon [H.] Washington and Mrs. Washington, Ruth Washington, those two pioneers. If it had not been for Ken and Jennifer the Sentinel might have disappeared or it might have become something of an almost useless entity. But they saw the legacy that Colonel Washington and Mrs. Ruth Washington had left, and they tried to carry that forward. And I commend Jennifer for continuing to do it following Ken's untimely death.

WHITE: Excellent.

McCORMICK: But to receive it from them-- Again, being commended by your own is always a source of good feeling.

WHITE: Absolutely. And there are a couple of others that I had noticed in that very same vein. I noticed in your collection a beautiful trophy that you received in 1993 at the first annual Black Achievers Award Ceremony and Banquet. You received the Media Award along with Pat Harvey from [television station] KCAL channel 9, whom you just mentioned a moment ago and whom you will be working with next month at the--

McCORMICK: Ebony Fashion Fair.

WHITE: So I thought that was a very nice accomplishment. And the trophy itself is just phenomenal.

McCORMICK: It is, it's really very nice. And again, it's always a source of feeling that you've done something right when people choose to honor you. Sometimes I still am not quite-- I'm a little embarrassed when people call and say, "We're having a program at such and such a place and at such and such a time--" My first thought is-- I start looking at my schedule because they want me to emcee. And then when they say "--because we want to extend to you this honor," I'm always a little taken aback. People may think I'm being unduly self-effacing, but I really am still surprised, because I still kind of think it's really astonishing that people want to honor me for doing something that I think is really my duty, my responsibility. But it's always gratifying. And particularly to share it with a dear friend and a very talented colleague like Pat Harvey, for whom I have a great deal of admiration.

WHITE: I'm sure those awards will continue for both of you as you proceed in your careers.

McCORMICK: Well--

WHITE: I'm sure, I'm sure of it. You guys have made some significant achievements, and there aren't many other African Americans in the business at this point in time.

McCORMICK: No, there still aren't many others.

WHITE: There still aren't many others, so it's certainly nice to draw attention to the accomplishments of both of you.

McCORMICK: Well, thank you.

WHITE: To African American anchors or coanchors, for that matter. Let's see now. A little bit further along, in October of 1996, Minorities in Broadcasting, their Training Programs Award-- At their benefit dinner you received the Mal Goode Lifetime Achievement Award. Of course, Mal Goode was considered to be the dean of black professional broadcast journalists. Of course, he was the first network reporter of color, at ABC [American Broadcasting Company].

McCORMICK: Right. I had never met Mal Goode. I had heard a lot about him, of course. Everybody, every black broadcaster, has heard of Mal Goode. He comes closer to being the Jackie Robinson of [broadcast journalism], particularly on a national basis. He was the first there, and I'm sure it must have been enormously difficult for him under those circumstances. But he kept his integrity, he did a good job, and he blazed a path that the rest of us could follow. That's all you could really hope to do in the final analysis, blaze a trail for somebody else. So it was a great honor to receive that award.

WHITE: Now, there are others, of course. Less than one year ago--this time last year, 1998--the Black History Month Program, which was done in conjunction with the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA [American Federation of Television and Radio Artists], cited your very positive contributions in broadcast journalism, of which there are many. And I actually categorized some of the honors and achievements that you have been given while working at KTLA. You were nominated for an Emmy [Award, bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences] for your narrative of the TV documentary special Beautiful--and Now. Do you recall that?

McCORMICK: Yes, I do. Beautiful--and Now was produced in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots, I think on the sixth or seventh anniversary of the 1965 Watts riots. It was kind of a compilation to see where the community was, where it was going, what changes if any had come about in the wake of the [McCone] Commission reports about the causes and roots of the riots. It incorporated a great number of elements into Beautiful--and Now, with one of the great directors that KTLA ever had, a fellow named Bill Rainbolt, who directed the show. He's directed the [Tournament of Roses] Parade and all those kinds of things. He's a terrific director. They asked me to host it. And we had just about every element from the black community, from black theater to the Watts [Summer] Festival [of Art], the Miss Watts Beauty Pageant--all those things incorporated into Beautiful--and Now. The thing that so many people remember about that program was that its main theme song seemed to be such a great marriage with the rest of the program that you couldn't think of the visual images that you saw on the screen separately from the music that was always there; it was Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." The selection by the production people of that piece of music to go with it-- It's still so fresh in my mind that I can't think back about the images that were on the screen when I was doing it without hearing that music in my mind. First, it's a very poignant song anyway. And Marvin, who was a friend, used to come and hang out sometimes at [radio station] KFWB when I was on from nine [o'clock] to midnight.

WHITE: Is that right?

McCORMICK: Yeah. There was a coffee shop downstairs, and we'd sit down and drink coffee and talk about the world and what was going on. The guy was very, very conscious of the problems of all kinds of people, of our people in particular. We'd just sit downstairs at a restaurant called Aldo's [Restaurant]. KFWB at that time was at Hollywood [Boulevard] and Cahuenga [Boulevard]. And KFWB was on the second floor, and on the first floor was Aldo's Restaurant, and in the back was Aldo's Bar. But Marvin and I would sit down there and drink coffee and talk for two or three hours. He'd just pop in. I was on from nine to midnight, and about ten minutes to twelve or so there would be a knock at the back door. This didn't happen every night. This was like three or four times over a period of a couple of years or so. And it would be Marvin Gaye. Sometimes we'd go down to Aldo's and have a drink, but most of the time we'd go get something to eat and have a cup of coffee in the restaurant part. It was kind of a hangout for disc jockeys and people in the music business at that time, Hollywood Boulevard was. It was a lively, exciting, vibrant place to be at that time.

WHITE: Absolutely, in the 1960s, yeah. So this was the first occasion for you to be nominated for an Emmy, I would imagine.

McCORMICK: Let's see. For the Emmy! Yes, it was, for the Emmy. I'm thinking about the Golden Mike Awards [of the Radio and Television News Association]. That was the first time to be nominated for an Emmy.

WHITE: And, speaking of the Golden Mike Award, I noticed that in 1974 you were given quite a lovely trophy for your series on youth gang warfare, "The Gang's All Here."

McCORMICK: Yeah, "The Gang's All Here." Even at that time, 1974--we're talking, what, twenty-five years ago now--we were warning in that mini-doc[umentary], that little series, about the dangers of gang warfare and at the time the burgeoning danger, that younger and younger people were getting more and more powerful weapons and getting them more all the time. I interviewed a thirteen-year-old boy, a little, tiny kid, who was a suspect in three killings. At that time! In '74! Showed no remorse. His family finally had to bring him in from San Bernardino to do the interview because they had moved down there for his safety, because they knew that a rival gang had a contract out on him. I remember being stunned at the time by this thirteen-year-old. I said to him, "Aren't you afraid you're going to get killed?" We had his back to the camera so he couldn't be identified. And he said, "You gotta die sometime. You gotta die some kinda way. No, I'm not afraid of dyin'." That was my first glimpse--and all those who saw the series--into a very different kind of mental attitude about life and living. None of us had realized that our very young people were capable of thinking that way, of having such a fatalistic notion about life and about living and about taking life and having no regrets about killing people. He was a little kid! He said, "If anybody bothers me I'll pop his top"-- just, you know, shoot him in the head.

WHITE: My goodness, that's quite an attitude, particularly in 1974.

McCORMICK: Yeah. You would think that would be a warning.

WHITE: Exactly, that they have that mind-set.

McCORMICK: But society never heeded the warning, and only now are we discovering something that I think we suspected back then. Law enforcement agencies had been in the habit of saying that they were opposed to any more regulation of firearms, because most of the crimes that youth gangs committed were committed with stolen firearms. Now in the last two days you heard this commission report that said it's not true. Most of them come secondhand through legitimate arms dealers who sell them to illegitimate arms dealers who sell them to the gangs. They're not stolen. That's one of the truths we recognized back then. In addition to which fact, we recognized in that series that unless an entire generation of young people was going to be lost--and unfortunately, to a great extent they have now, twenty-five years later--it was incumbent upon the society to find some useful, meaningful options, alternatives, for these young people. It was also imperative because we knew back then that a very large percentage of the kids who were in youth gangs were [children of] single-parent families, dysfunctional families, usually mothers, who totally lost control of them by the time they were twelve. We knew there were kids who practically ran their families. Their mothers were at home, their younger siblings were at home, but because they were the primary source of income from illicit activities and things they ruled at home. So there was no way that mother was going to tell them what time to come in, what they could or could not do. We're talking fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds!

WHITE: That must have been quite a provocative segment.

McCORMICK: It was. I thought it should have won the Emmy. We got nominated. But at that time I think nobody wanted to hear about that, or nobody wanted to believe it.

WHITE: Probably thought just another story about the urban plight--

McCORMICK: Overdramatized. And also at that time-- And it's unfortunate to have to put it this way, but I'd be less than candid if I didn't. Also at that time youth gangs were not a threat to the larger community outside the ghetto, so the larger community didn't care. As soon as youth gangs got greater mobility-- And they show up everywhere now, and not just in L.A.--Denver, Kansas City--they have tremendous mobility. They didn't become a scary problem until they got that mobility and their activity started to spread to other sections of the city. You can see what a devastating effect-- One shooting happened in Westwood.

WHITE: Completely closed down the community just about.

McCORMICK: Yeah, that's right. And there are no safe havens from crime anymore because there is such a proliferation of weapons and because the youth that are involved in them have such mobility. It's almost impossible to solve a lot of the drive742 bys [shootings] because there is no evidence. There are no eyewitnesses, there is no license number. I can't think of a drive-by shooting that's been solved yet.

WHITE: It would be interesting to have sort of an update, twenty-five years later, "The Gang's All Here"--"The Gang is Still All Here."

McCORMICK: Probably a lot of the kids that we interviewed and talked to in that series are no longer with us. I would say most of them-- When I say "no longer with us," they are either dead or they're in long-term incarceration. We thought that was an important warning back then. America tends to be a reactive society--not reactionary, but reactive. We tend- -I don't know whether it's because of a dearth of enlightened leadership or collective will or what--not to bring our resources to bear on a problem until it's almost gotten out of control. The problem happens, then we react. We don't have the enlightened leadership to foresee a problem and prevent it from happening.

WHITE: Right, right, be proactive.

McCORMICK: To be proactive. We are reactive. And that's the way we've been with the gang problems. And that's the way we were with the drug problems. There are African American leaders like the late, great Whitney [M.] Young Jr. who were telling white audiences years ago, "You'd better try to help us stop the drug problem in the African American community, because I'll tell you, whatever is our problem today is going to be your problem tomorrow. So if you want to prevent it from becoming your problem tomorrow you'd better help us solve our problem today. And it's in your own enlightened best interest to do this. You don't have to love us or anything like that, but you're helping yourself!" And just like with drugs, you can see what's happened. As everybody knows, it is as big a problem outside the minority communities now as it is-- It's more carefully concealed and more carefully hidden, and of course you don't hear about a lot of drug busts in Brentwood, places like that, but you know they exist. Because there just is not enough money for African Americans or Latinos alone to support the billions and billions and billions of dollars that are spent on drugs. They don't have the money. The money is not there. But America-- The same way with sexually transmitted diseases. As long as they were a problem in the minority community nobody was worried. But unfortunately, when devastating diseases like hepatitis and AIDS and everything spread to the majority community, then you get organizations, you get money, you get-- It's rather unfortunate that enlightened people don't try to deal with problems before they become huge problems.

WHITE: So very true.

McCORMICK: But that was certainly true with the gangs.

WHITE: Yeah. Boy, your success in terms of the accolades that you received at KTLA just continued. In 1977, a lovely trophy for best sports segment. In 1984, 1987, another trophy for best news broadcast for News at Ten. And then 1987 was quite an interesting year. October of 1987 you really received high accolades for your coverage of Pope John Paul [II]'s visit to Los Angeles. That was forty-eight continuous hours of coverage. I understand that the station received over four thousand phone calls and about two thousand letters in response.

McCORMICK: Oh, probably more than that. Oh, yes.

WHITE: At least that, sure. Can you recall that particular occasion or event? Fortyeight continuous hours, that's--

McCORMICK: Oh, yes. Very, very unique experience, the papal visit to Los Angeles. We covered every minute that he was awake and some of the events that were going on when he was asleep, from his arrival from San Diego, which I covered at LAX [Los Angeles International Airport], to various events that were going on during his stay here, which I hosted in the studio with Stan Chambers and a Catholic priest, to events at Dodger Stadium, events downtown at St. Vibiana's [Cathedral] and the motorcade through the city. I think we did a more thorough job on a papal visit than any other American television station has ever done. I'm sure they did a lot of coverage when he recently visited Mexico City, because that's a hugely Catholic nation, but I think we did about as thorough a job at KTLA. I really am proud of the job-- Not just myself, but proud of the job all of my colleagues did on the papal visit, including myself, Stan Chambers, Hal Fishman, Marta Waller, Minerva Perez-- She had just joined us a few days before and was thrown right into this maelstrom. But such an excellent job. As a matter of fact, KTLA produced--and I have a copy of--a videotape of the entirety of the papal visit to Los Angeles. When I look back at it in retrospect, I'm proud of the way all of my colleagues at KTLA handled that historic visit.

WHITE: Quite a momentous occasion. And for your station to have covered it in such a provocative and professional way, it was certainly recognized in the community.

McCORMICK: Yeah. And deservedly so, I think.

WHITE: In that same year you did a very interesting report--two weeks of special reports--on colorectal cancer. It was the nation's leading cancer killer at that time, and I understand that you had a phenomenal response. You brought it to the attention of a wide variety of people who had never really paid much attention to it or didn't have as much information about it at that time.

McCORMICK: That was not easy to do. It's not the most pleasant subject in the world to do for television to begin with--

WHITE: But very important.

McCORMICK: But very important. We had a number of very well-known people who volunteered to come on who had been victims of colorectal cancer or [in] whom screening had discovered it at an early and treatable stage. We did it for two weeks, and it was not easy sustaining it for two weeks. We did it in cooperation with the good people at Smith-Kline-Beecham Pharmaceutical companies, which makes the samples that your doctor often gives you to look for occult blood in the stool, which you return, which is an early indication that there might be colorectal cancer. So between Smith-Kline-Beecham, KTLA-- And St. Johns Hospital [and Health Center] in Santa Monica was the primary health care facility involved. And over the two week period our job was to do a different little feature on colorectal cancer--my job. Every night I had to write-- And I produced the whole thing. It was hard. It's hard to sustain something like that for a week, [much] less doing it for two weeks. But I was informed by St. Johns and-- Thrifty Drug [and Discount] Stores, too, was also involved. Because that's where they could either pick up or drop off the stool samples, in the enclosed envelopes and everything. It was very sanitary. In the two weeks we got 122,000 responses, which was very gratifying. I got letters from a lot of people after that saying that "by calling this to my attention you might have saved my life, because they did discover it in the early stages" and things like that. I was kind of glad when that campaign was over, because sustaining it for-- I had meetings at St. Johns about four days a week to go over new material, to shoot new pieces, to shoot new interviews. We kind of did everything at St. Johns, had some people interviewed at channel 5. But it was a rat race. Because then I had to shoot all the interviews and then go back to the station and sit down and edit it and write it, which is all very time-consuming. And then it was time to grab a little bite to eat and go on the air. And then the next day it started all over again.

WHITE: So it's quite atypical for a project of a similar nature to go on for that length of time? Two weeks is quite substantial.

McCORMICK: Oh, yes, absolutely. Basically because there are very few subjects. And I recognize-- In fact, I might have asked some questions when it was first proposed. "Can we sustain interest in this for two weeks?" That was one of the primary reasons why news specials like that don't go on for that long, because it's very difficult to sustain interest. Unless there are new and electrifying, compelling developments every single day--an O.J. Simpson trial, the impeachment, something like that where-- And even the impeachment didn't draw very much TV audience. But it's very hard to sustain something like that for a very long period of time, particularly on a health subject which is not terribly pleasant to talk about anyway. In all candor, I have to admit that I was kind of glad when that project ended. But I was proud of what we achieved, and I hope we saved a lot of lives.

WHITE: It seems as though you did. Just looking at the research and some of the articles in your archive and personal records, things that you did made a significant difference to a number of people.

McCORMICK: I sure hope so.

WHITE: Thousands of people. So that in and of itself is certainly gratifying, I'm sure.

McCORMICK: Oh, absolutely.

WHITE: So, of course, the accolades continued on and on. I noticed a lovely trophy from 1989 that you have for Best Special News Program for the "Earthquake Special Report." In 1993 another trophy for Live Coverage of Unscheduled News Events for the Malibu fire coverage. But then the culmination, I thought, was extremely provocative, and there was quite a bit of literature and a very large trophy that you did receive in 1994 from the board of governors of the [Los Angeles area branch of the] Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. You received the Emmy Award [Governors Award for Lifetime Achievement], which salutes your career achievement in Los Angeles television, and I know that this is the highest honor bestowed by the academy. It was quite a significant achievement for you, I do believe, because once again you were the first, the first African American to receive that Emmy, which is substantial. I know that from the vantage point of your station, KTLA was the only TV news organization in the city to have had three recipients to have received that award: Stan Chambers, Hal Fishman, and you. I wondered if you could tell me what your feelings, what your thoughts, were at that time, when you received the Emmy.

McCORMICK: The biggest, most stunning moment actually came, Renee, about three weeks before that when a fellow who was a member of the board of governors of the academy and who was a good friend, Nelson Davis--who produces the program that I co-host called Making It! Minority Success Stories--and I went in to tape Making It one day, and Nelson called me over to the side and told me that "I want you to call Rich Frank." Rich Frank was chairman of the board of governors. And I'm going, "What in the world does Rich Frank want me to call him for?" So I said--I didn't even do it the same day--"Okay, I'll call him." And Nelson gave me the number and everything. And I called Rich Frank the next day, and he said, "Larry, you have been unanimously elected to receive this year's Governors Award from the board of governors at the annual Emmy Awards."

WHITE: Wow.

McCORMICK: And I was stunned, because I had been to the Emmys, obviously, any number of times, and I couldn't believe that-- You know, among the others who have received it, not only Hal Fishman and Stan Chambers-- Stan, you know, has been at channel 5 for fifty years; he certainly is a giant. But other people like Vin [Vincent E.] Scully and "Chick" [Francis D.] Hearn. And I thought that's pretty high company. That was the moment when I was really stunned. But it was a tremendous, tremendous honor, because it is the highest honor that the academy can give, the highest award that it makes to anybody. It is a special award that nobody competes for. The board of governors considers a number of people--it's kind of like a lifetime achievement award in the profession--and then they vote on one person. And that year they voted to honor me. So it was a signal honor both-- It's an honor to begin with--I mean, the highest honor from your peers in significance--to be given the Governors Award. It's also a tremendous honor to be the first African American to ever receive this. I think I might have been the first ever to be nominated, much less to be given the award. And then to be the third from KTLA, along with Hal Fishman and Stan Chambers, to be given the Governors Award-- And then, fourth, to be in the company of people like Vin Scully and Jess Marlow and Chick Hearn, guys who are some of my heroes, it was one really, really, really, major, major moment for me and one that I will cherish. And my wife Anita and my daughter Kitty [Kitrina M. McCormick] were there to share that with me that night, which was really, really lovely. And to top it off, something that I didn't know about until after the Emmy Awards were over that night, KTLA management had rented a restaurant and erected a tent over the parking lot to have a party for me! I can't remember whether we had any other award recipients that night, but the party was really for me after the program was over. So it was a very, very, very special night, a very special night.

WHITE: I'm sure one of the most memorable.

McCORMICK: It was.

WHITE: Well, congratulations for having received that award. It is substantial and just an outstanding, outstanding achievement.

McCORMICK: Well, thank you.

WHITE: You're very welcome. And I understand that on top of that you got a plaque of commendation from the then [Los Angeles] County Supervisor Mike [Michael D.] Antonovich for recognition for having received the Governors Award for Lifetime Achievement. It went on and on.

McCORMICK: It was really a terrific honor to get that from the board and from Mike. Mike Antonovich really had been, years and years ago-- I don't know whether he'll forgive me for telling this or not. Hal Fishman, when he was a political science professor at Cal[ifornia] State [University], Los Angeles, had two students, one liberal, one conservative, who went on to find political careers for themselves. The conservative was Mike Antonovich and the liberal was Richard [J.] Alatorre. In the same class.

WHITE: Really?

McCORMICK: Of course, Richard's had a few problems lately.

WHITE: Just a few. But he has had some achievements of his own.

McCORMICK: He has, some significant achievements.

WHITE: Those get pushed back into the shadows when there's some controversy going on. I did have an opportunity to read your speech, or segments of your speech, that you gave--

McCORMICK: The acceptance speech?

WHITE: Incredibly written, very humble, modest, and provocative, and just extremely articulate. You gave tribute to your parents and to other forces--teachers, mentors, role models--that helped to shape your style and to preachers who shared your dad's pulpit, to all the news reporters and anchors whose style and techniques you lent close attention to, such as Ed [Edward R.] Murrow, the CBS newsman and TV journalist. It was quite a profound speech, and I'm sure--

McCORMICK: Obviously I could not have said anything that profound if I had not discovered until that night, you know, like the Oscars, that I was going to be given-- Fortunately I had time to think about it a little bit and to prepare something. I recognized that it was an occasion, it was an event, for the record, and you want to have something of significance to say for the record. And it was maybe the only opportunity in such a setting that I would ever have to say those things and to pay homage to those people. So that's why. I thought at first about just two or three, a ten-second ad-lib "thanks to members of the academy" and all that kind of thing, but then I thought, "No, this is an occasion that I should really use to honor some people who have had an effect on my life. And I may never, ever have this occasion and this kind of setting"--the Pasadena Civic Auditorium--"before all these people again." So I did think a little bit about what I wanted to say and jotted down those notes. And I just hoped that would convey to the people assembled there for that event that none of us are the products of ourselves; we're all the products of a thousand other things. That's really what I was trying to convey. And also hoping that my mom [Laura Lee Lankford McCormick] and dad [Lawrence W. McCormick II], God rest their souls, somewhere up there they were looking down and sharing that moment, and saying, "Well, you know, when you were ten or twelve or fourteen we kind of thought maybe one day you might have a moment like this."

WHITE: That's wonderful. What a wonderful point in time. Absolutely. Something to really, really be proud of. So as we begin to wrap up our interview, there are a number of things that I wanted to just chat about, one of which is sort of an overall kind of general question having to do with your philosophy, just your overall philosophy-- What is your overall philosophy, I should say, concerning news coverage? You've been involved in the industry for a number of years, you've seen various stylistic changes, a number of technological changes, and I'm just curious as to what your overall philosophy is concerning the coverage of news as it relates particularly to the people in Los Angeles?

McCORMICK: Well, I think whether it's in Los Angeles or in any community, news organizations have a responsibility to provide information that, first, is useful in their lives, and, second, is of overwhelming importance or is of overwhelming interest. All of those, of course, can have an effect on their lives. I think if we ever lose track of the fact that our primary responsibility is to provide useful, compelling information, then we're going to lose our way. I think that's been the case since the days of Edward R. Murrow, and I think it's the case today. Sometimes we do that very well; sometimes we do it less well than other times. Sometimes we spend an inappropriate, inordinate amount of time covering things which are not really useful information to viewers, and we get all involved in the competitive nature of the business and forget that-- A police pursuit is only useful information if it keeps other drivers who are in the way out of the way, if it keeps them from getting harmed. Other than that it becomes-- It's news, but it really becomes entertainment. And I see us slipping further and further away from giving people useful information. For example--I think newspapers still do a better job of this than television news organizations do--people need to know if a certain freeway is going to be closed tomorrow. They need to know if their trash is going to be picked up tomorrow, if the post office is going to be open tomorrow. These days you don't see television newscasts give that good, useful information and various other kinds of information that people need. One of the stations once had a slogan that said "News you can use."

WHITE: I've heard that.

McCORMICK: We do a much better job in the consumer area, because that's information people can really use. We do a pretty good job in that burgeoning field of home computers, personal computers. I think we've really done a good job--and I'm glad to have been a part of that--in creating awareness about health issues and medical issues and bringing those to the fore and informing people about them. The American public is much more informed about and conscious of health concerns today than it's ever been before. But we still I don't think do as good a job in informing people about what their government is doing, because we think city hall and county board meetings are really too dull, when there are decisions being made every single day that are going to affect everybody in this city. But our tendency is to just--unless it's a really, really major issue--kind of kiss it off because it's dull, and we've seen these same slow, methodical city council meetings before. As we say in the business, they're not very "sexy." They're not as sexy as a fire or a police pursuit or something like that. So my overall opinion is that's what-- We need to concentrate on giving people news they can use, information that can play a part in their daily lives. I think we do that in a number of ways, but I think there are a number of areas in which we do not do that, in which we have failed to do that, in which we have drifted too much toward being entertaining in an effort to get a bigger audience, enough to generate more revenue. And making money is important, but we have to remember the original mission, I think.

WHITE: Absolutely. Very well said. Well, in that light, what would you say it takes for an individual to successfully compete in the world of broadcast journalism, to really make a difference?

McCORMICK: First, good communication skills. That's very important. If you don't communicate well with people you might as well not have said or reported whatever you reported. You mean, now, for a person who is trying to prepare themselves to get into it?

WHITE: Exactly, or to excel.

McCORMICK: Okay, yeah. Development of good communication skills, both speaking and writing. That means the ability to consume and condense important information in a very easily understood way. A good knowledgeability about how government works--that's for local government, from your city council to your county board of supervisors, to your state assembly and senate in Sacramento to the federal government. A working knowledge of the political science systems of this country. A working knowledge of the history of this country and of this city. A good knowledge of the various environs and communities and cultures of the city--more important in L.A. than maybe in any other city in the United States. It's important to be able to understand at least something not just of the African American culture in this city but of the Latin American culture, the Asian American culture, German American-- The original ranchero owners and the Anglos that they intermarried with to form the first powerful families of California. To know certainly a lot about the geography of this country. Knowing about the geography of greater Los Angeles and how one area relates to another is extremely important. In no other city in the country are you surrounded by mountains, ocean, deserts on all sides. It's an environment that has all kinds of climatic conditions. If you understand the dynamics of the city, if you understand how the power structure of downtown works with or against the power structure of the Westside, how they collaborate, when they collaborate-- And a lot of different things. I've always said that a good journalist should know at least a little bit about almost everything.

WHITE: Boy, that's for sure, to be quite accomplished and well read, to be extremely proficient and to make a difference.

McCORMICK: You have to know about finance, about how the financial systems of the city and the country work, about transportation, about families, about people. In this city, especially, you have got to be fairly familiar--even if you're not very much interested in this--with many, many facets of the entertainment industry, because it is one of the backbone industries of this city.

WHITE: Yes, it is.

McCORMICK: And some would say it is the backbone industry.

WHITE: Sure, the media capital of the world.

McCORMICK: That's right. So you can't say, "Well, I don't care that much about rap music." Well, you'd better know a little bit about it. Or "I don't care that much about jazz" or about classical music or about country and western or about movies or about TV shows or about cable. You have to in L.A. if you go on the air-- For example, last night-- Suppose I was going to go on the air and do a story and had no idea who Tia and Tamera Mowry were, the twins. You just have to know that. Not only know who Garth Brooks is but a couple of his hit songs. You have to know that. The public will know immediately if you're phony and you're pretending like you know when you don't know. They will find you out.

WHITE: You have to just really be a plugged-in citizen and keep your ear to the ground at all times.

McCORMICK: At all times. I think I might have said this to you before: it is a little like being in school perpetually. You're learning every single day.

WHITE: Which makes for a very exciting career.

McCORMICK: It does. It makes for an exciting life--sometimes. Sometimes it's just routine. And it makes for-- There's a certain sense of personal satisfaction, at least for me, and I'm sure for my colleagues, too, from knowing--or believing, anyway--that you know at least as much or probably more about what's going on everywhere than most of the other people in the city.

WHITE: That's absolutely true.

1.29. TAPE NUMBER: XV, SIDE ONE
MARCH 3, 1999

WHITE: Last time we spoke we had an opportunity to talk about a number of different things, and at the end of the tape you talked about some of the insight that you have into what it takes for one to compete in the world of journalism and broadcasting. I had asked you for some words of wisdom or advice to aspiring, say, deejays or broadcast journalists, and you were very insightful in sharing some wonderful things. I just wanted to continue on and just talk a little bit about, say, reflections on your broadcasting career. You have been considered an icon in the broadcasting industry--

McCORMICK: I hope that's a good thing. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: Absolutely, that's a wonderful thing. It's very complementary indeed. In the Californian newspaper, you have been referred to as the dean of African American news anchors in Los Angeles television, so I'm just wondering if there are any reflections on your broadcasting career that you would like to share with us today.

McCORMICK: I think being called the dean just means I'm older than everybody else. [mutual laughter] I've been around longer than everybody else. Although it's an honor to be called a dean. When I first started, of course, you could have held a meeting of all the African American television anchor types in a phone booth, there were so few of us. And now, at a recent awards luncheon that was put on by Recycling Black Dollars and Mohammed Nassardeen, there was a whole stage full of African American anchors and field reporters. That was very gratifying to see that the door has been opened--not as much as it should be, but it has been opened, and there are a lot of people who have forged nice careers for themselves here in the greater Los Angeles market. My advice for young people who aspire to be in broadcast journalism would simply be, as I've said before, that you really have to be a student of life, a student of people, a student of almost everything that goes on in the world. Because that's what you'll be dealing with on a day-to-day basis. You may be dealing with a government issue today, so you have to know something about the structure of government. You may be dealing with the medical system, the health care system, tomorrow or next week, so you have to know something about that. That means keeping yourself informed all the time. Unfortunately, a lot of young people today--when I say "young" I mean in their early to mid-, even to late twenties, and not just African Americans but all young people today--seem to think that their duties as broadcast journalists only begin when they open the door to go into the newsroom. But we tell them all the time you've got to be listening to the news broadcasts on the news stations and on all the stations all day long so that you have an idea of what's going on in the world and why. You should know at least something about Albania or about Kosovo or about Uganda, a little bit about the British royal family, something about American history, world history, local history. It's a constant learning process. And if you only think about being a journalist when you hit the door of the newsroom to go to work you're not going to be terribly successful. A good example of success earned the hard way--and this is by no means the only example--is Barbara Walters. Years ago Barbara was kind of the researcher for the Today show; she was not a personality on the Today show. But she plunged herself into her work. She developed all kinds of lines of communication and contacts, and she helped book the guests on the show, I think back when Hugh Downs was one of the hosts from the early years on the Today show. Finally they let Barbara, through all of her hard work and diligent work, be a co-host on the program, and that's how her career got started. But it started by being an information hound! There is no way in the world having a lot of information can hurt you.

WHITE: That's for sure.

McCORMICK: It can't do anything but help you. So that's what I would say to young people today. Have a thirst for information! [laughs] I often say-- As you may have noticed, I don't go to the bathroom without some reading material. [mutual laughter] It's in every bathroom. It's on my desk, it's by the bed. In every room of this house there is something to get some information from. And that's important, because when you read something that somebody else wrote you're getting an entrée into that person's mind, a thought process which you never knew anything about, a thought process which can only contribute to your own. When you read a great novel you're into somebody else's head, or just a fine magazine article or a newspaper article. You're into somebody else's head, and you invariably learn something that you didn't know before.

WHITE: That's absolutely correct. Just always endeavoring to be a plugged-in citizen.

McCORMICK: Always plugged-in and always learning. Grab at every piece of information you can. And of course, you should take great pains to hone your skills. Once you decide what facet of the business you want to be in, then you start to hone the skills that are necessary to bring you success in that respect. If you want to be a news writer, then you want to hone your communication skills in writing. In editing video if it's television, or in audio editing if it's radio. If you want to be a producer, then you really have to get your head into the technological aspects of the business. There are so many options. It's not just the people who are on camera. There are a lot of options. One of my dearest friends who works at [television station KTLA] channel 5, who has been there almost as long as I have--and a lot of people probably don't know this--is one of the cameramen, an African American guy whose work you see every time you see a [Los Angeles] Dodgers game. Harvey Clavon is up there sitting out in the centerfield camera-- He's calling the shots, he's making the shots. So that's another thing: being a technical director, the person who sits at that console and pushes the buttons and pulls all the switches as the director shouts out orders, maybe one of the most important jobs in a live broadcast, because you are the one who finally determines what picture gets on the air and the effect that it gets on with--if it's a slow fade-in, if it's a split-screen, if it's a double-box. You set all that up at the technical end and it's very, very hard to do. Not easy at all. Because, like flying an airplane, you've got to be ahead of the newscast. You have to know what's coming next before it happens and be prepared to set it up.

WHITE: Fascinating, many of the positions that are behind the stage, behind the scenes, more or less sort of obscure positions. You never really realize the level of importance that they hold in keeping the operation together. That's a great point to make.

McCORMICK: These are people whose contributions to the broadcast, whether it's a newscast or a football game or whatever, their contributions are absolutely essential. There would not be a broadcast if they weren't very good at what they do. It takes eighteen to twenty-one people behind the scenes to put on a one-hour newscast at ten [o'clock] P.M. at KTLA. But they're all over in master control, they're in video, they're setting the color tones, they're setting the picture, the kind of picture that's going to go to the transmitter at Mount Wilson and then to everybody's homes out in L.A. There are the in-house cameramen on the stage, the news photographers. That includes every ethnic group, both sexes. There have been many times when all three camera operators on the news have been female. There are female engineers, female audio technicians, female TelePrompTer operators. So you have all these people scattered in three or four different buildings. The technical director--one of our most talented technical directors, a young woman named Deborah Wilkinson, who's been there for a good little while--is a very key person to the success of that broadcast. So there are all these options, and they all pay very well. You can make a really good living. Some of the cameramen-- Because going down--volunteering or being assigned--to shoot camera on a Dodger game, say, at Dodger Stadium, is "golden time."

WHITE: Golden time?

McCORMICK: Yes, that means "much extra pay."

WHITE: I see. [laughs]

McCORMICK: Because it involves more than just shooting the camera for the game. You have to go down three or four hours before the game time and set up. You've got to straighten all these cables and wires; all of that has to be wired and set up to go. And then it takes you two to three hours to break it down after the game ends. So it's more than an eight-hour job. That's usually in addition to your other responsibilities. So there have been cameramen at KTLA--and the other stations too--who easily can make $100,000 a year. People you never hear of who are having very nice careers and making a very nice living.

WHITE: One would never know, never realize the level of success. Well, those are great pieces of advice. Thank you very much. I'm sure many people will appreciate it when they have an opportunity to read this transcript.

McCORMICK: I sure hope so. It's not easy, and learning never ends.

WHITE: Okay. On the opposite end of the spectrum, so to speak, we've had an opportunity to speak about your family quite a bit earlier on in our interviews, and I wondered if there were any updates about your family or anything that you might like to add or document for this interview.

McCORMICK: Well, my wife Anita [Daniels McCormick], a retired schoolteacher, retired educator, she and I as of last October 16 were married for thirty-eight years.

WHITE: Oh, congratulations. That's excellent.

McCORMICK: Neither of us, I guess, had a notion when we first got married in Las Vegas in the Little Chapel of the Flowers in 1960 that we'd be looking thirty-eight years later at three children, all of whom we love and who have done very well. Two sons and a daughter: Alvin [C. Bowens Jr.] and Mitch [Mitchell D. McCormick] and Kitty [Kitrina M. McCormick]. Two grandsons [Daniel and Benjamin Bowens] now-- our oldest grandson [Daniel] is a freshman at the University of Maryland in College Park and the other is in senior high school in Montclair, New Jersey. The years have gone by much too fast, so fast it makes your head swim. But it's been a really convivial, very happy, loving, giving, fulfilling family life, beginning with Alvin, the oldest, who is actually Anita's son from her first marriage. But we've always been, I guess, maybe even more like brothers than father and son, because I entered the picture when he was about nine years old. But we took to each other right away and became not only as stepfather and stepson but very, very good friends. Then later, as time went along, in a very short time, his father [Alvin C. Bowens Sr.] and I became good friends, so we kind of co-fathered his upbringing. And when he went to enroll in San Francisco State [University], his dad and I decided we'd better-- We flew up together to check it out and see what the kid was getting into. [mutual laughter]

WHITE: That's great. Boy, a kid a couldn't ask for a better situation than that!

McCORMICK: And there was never any conflict, not even a hint of conflict, between Alvin Sr.--who is recently deceased--and me. We were always good friends. Alvin Jr. always knew-- Even if he had been tempted to do this--which I don't think he would have because he's just too good a kid--but he could never play one off against the other. Our values were the same. We were both a couple of African American, midwestern men who grew up in the same kind of family settings--Baptist settings and all that kind of stuff. So our values were really very much the same, and he recognized that, and I think he has been very grateful that he really had two daddies who were always doing whatever they were doing in his own best interest--and later, of course, in the best interest of his sons.

WHITE: Great. You do have a very lovely family. I had an opportunity to meet several members of the family, and they've been very gracious and warm and welcoming.

McCORMICK: I think they're kind of nice people. [mutual laughter] If you like them!

WHITE: Okay. Well, we talked a bit about, say, future plans, thoughts that you may have about your next career when and if you decide at some point to change or make a transition from KTLA. I noticed in some of your literature that there had been one point in time when you had been approached by members of UCLA faculty through the UCLA [University] Extension program to perhaps come and maybe teach a class in broadcast journalism or what have you. Any thoughts in that regard?

McCORMICK: I still hope to do that. I was not prepared to take on that responsibility when I was first contacted about it, and I didn't want to be unfair to UCLA Extension by trying to do something I knew I wasn't ready to do and couldn't give my full attention to to make it a useful experience for the students who would enroll. I hope the invitation is still open, and I would like to do that sometime. I would really like to do that sometime.

WHITE: It would be an honor and pleasure to have you there. I think they would benefit greatly from your presence.

McCORMICK: Well, I hope so. I could just show them how to survive. But I think I could share with them. They wanted me to do, as I recall, a specific class on anchoring techniques. And I think there's a good deal that I could share there--I've been doing it for a long time--a good deal that I could share with young people there that might make the difference in whether they get their careers off on a good foot or not. Because if you don't really have somebody to help shape and mold your persona for being on television it can take you years to develop a product--you--which ultimately has a chance for success. So I could offer shortcuts. I could offer techniques that would work for them right away. So, as I said, I hope that the invitation is still open and I get the chance to do that one of these days.

WHITE: Absolutely. I certainly hope so as well. Okay. I noticed also that professionally speaking you probably have enough credits to your name in terms of experience and what have you to warrant your having a Ph.D.--if not one probably several. So I'm wondering if-- In fact, there was some note saying that at some point in your life you might consider going into the educational arena and perhaps completing an academic degree. Any thoughts in that regard?

McCORMICK: That's something again that I have thought about and I thought that I'd like to do. I don't have a specific timetable for doing it. I don't know whether I would wait until I actively retired from being a broadcaster to do it or whether I might-- The opportunity might present itself to bounce into that rather sooner than expected. But it is something I would like to do. We've often said that we would like to have two master's degrees in the family. Three. There are already two! Every now and then somebody in the family says, "Dad, when are you going to go back to school and get your graduate and postgraduate degrees or your Ph.D.?" And I say I don't know. Sometimes the things that you want to do are preempted by the press of everyday business, of just doing what you have to do day in and day out, until such time as you can see a break of-- Like with my friend John [W.] Mack, who had a chance to be a fellow at the [John F.] Kennedy School [of Government] at Harvard [University] last fall from September to December. He had to take a leave of absence from the presidency of the Los Angeles Urban League to do it, which we, the members of the board, gladly told him to go ahead and do, because this was a once-ina- lifetime opportunity. But if some opportunity like that presented itself, I think I might try to meet the challenge. I might. Right now it really depends on how the flow of life goes.

WHITE: Absolutely. I can certainly understand what you said about the immediacy of life, having to alter plans or readjust and shift accordingly.

McCORMICK: Yeah, you have to do that.

WHITE: Tell me now, in terms of your life so far, how would you like to sum it up for this interview?

McCORMICK: Well, I guess in summarizing what Larry McCormick is about, I guess you'd have to say a good deal of what I'm about was instilled by my mother [Laura Lee Lankford McCormick] and my father [Lawrence W. McCormick II], and their values as Missouri Baptists who were very moral people. They didn't have a fanatic code of morality; they were normal-moral people [laughs] who thought it was far better in God's eyes to be a good human being than to be a bad one. And my mom and dad taught-- I have two brothers and five sisters, and they instilled in us the values of hard work, of love, a lot of it filled with lore and stories and examples and parables from the Bible--the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes. They laid a strong foundation of rules to live by. To be maybe not a millionaire or anything like that, but to be a good human being and a human being who had a proper amount of respect and compassion for other human beings. I really think I was more affected by something from the Bible that my dad-- I used to hear him say often that "I am my brother's keeper." We are all one. As John Donne said, "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." We're all part of the whole. That's really the sum total of how I feel about life and about what I'm supposed to do in life, how I can best use my life, how I can best teach my children and my grandchildren how to use their lives. This can be a good journey. It can be a journey that I can find very fulfilling and in which I can help other people find the journey very fulfilling. It would be sad to depart from this journey and not have contributed anything else to your fellow human beings. That's about the saddest thing I can think of.

WHITE: This is certainly not the case with you, that's for sure.

McCORMICK: Well, I hope not. But my credo has kind of been--everybody can't be brilliant every day; a lot of people can't be brilliant any day [laughs]--do whatever you do the best that you can as long as you can. And that's really kind of it. I approach every broadcast with that thought. And this goes back to the days when I was at [radio station] KFWB, after I had kind of integrated that station. I remember the program director, Jim Hawthorne, had a big sign in the announce booth every day where the disc jockeys worked that said in great, big, bold letters-- You couldn't miss it, and he'd emphasize this in meetings. It said "Make today's show the best show you've ever done in your life." And that's what you have to shoot for. Every single program you emcee, every single broadcast, you have to think in your mind, "I'm going to make this broadcast the best I've ever done." So I really, from the disc jockey days until today, I really do hit the air every night with the idea in mind of having a perfect show, at least from my perspective--no flubs, no mistakes, no nothing. You can do that about one time in about every twenty, twenty-five. Because you're a human being, at some time or another you're going to make a mistake, you're going to make a flub. And we don't get to rehearse like the network anchors do on ABC [American Broadcasting Company], CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System], and NBC [National Broadcasting System]--[Dan] Rather and the other guys. They get a chance to go over the copy and all that kind of stuff. A lot of times we're reading it cold. But I still try to guide myself by that same dictum: "Make today's show the best show you've ever done in your life."

WHITE: Excellent, excellent. Well said.

McCORMICK: Well, thank you.

WHITE: Well, I feel that I have asked all the questions that I had intended to, but I wondered if there was anything whatsoever that you might like to add.

McCORMICK: I can't think of anything offhand except to say that it has been, of course, a thoroughly enjoyable experience doing these interviews with you. I feel like I've made a new friend, almost like I have another daughter. [laughs]

WHITE: Oh, thank you!

McCORMICK: And your questions and your attitude, your approach to it has been so warm and so friendly that you have a skill for pulling things out of people and for asking the right questions and for phrasing them the right way. So this has been an enjoyable experience, which, before I was approached by the [UCLA] Oral History [Program], I never, ever thought I would have. So it's been a warm and memorable experience. And I'm looking forward to the book! [laughs]

WHITE: Good, good. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate those compliments; they mean a great deal to me. I too have very much enjoyed having an opportunity to work with you. It's been particularly insightful and rewarding, and the hospitality that both you and your wife Anita have shown has been so very much appreciated and valued. And the candor that you have shown-- It's just been a really great experience. So I thank you personally.

McCORMICK: Well, thank you, Renee.

WHITE: Oh, you're very welcome. And on behalf of the UCLA Oral History Program, we would like to thank you as well for affording us an opportunity to sit and talk with someone who has made so many significant contributions in their life.

McCORMICK: Well, thank you so much, you and the Oral History [Program], for thinking me a worthy subject. I appreciate it.

A TEI Project

Interview of Larry McCormick

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 18, 1998

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 18, 1998

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
SEPTEMBER 1, 1998

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
SEPTEMBER 1, 1998

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 6, 1998

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 6, 1998

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 28, 1998

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 27, 1998

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
NOVEMBER 10, 1998

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
NOVEMBER 10, 1998

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
NOVEMBER 17, 1998

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
NOVEMBER 17, 1998

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
DECEMBER 1, 1998

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
DECEMBER 1, 1998

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
DECEMBER 22, 1998

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO
DECEMBER 22, 1998

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 13, 1999

1.18. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 13, 1999

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 20, 1999

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 20, 1999

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 27, 1999

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 27, 1999

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 5, 1999

1.24. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 5, 1999

1.25. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 10, 1999

1.26. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 10, 1999

1.27. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 22, 1999

1.28. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 22, 1999

1.29. TAPE NUMBER: XV, SIDE ONE
MARCH 3, 1999

A TEI Project

Interview of Larry McCormick

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE AUGUST 18, 1998

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO AUGUST 18, 1998

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE SEPTEMBER 1, 1998

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO SEPTEMBER 1, 1998

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE OCTOBER 6, 1998

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO OCTOBER 6, 1998

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE OCTOBER 28, 1998

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO OCTOBER 27, 1998

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE NOVEMBER 10, 1998

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO NOVEMBER 10, 1998

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE NOVEMBER 17, 1998

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO NOVEMBER 17, 1998

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE DECEMBER 1, 1998

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO DECEMBER 1, 1998

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE DECEMBER 22, 1998

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO DECEMBER 22, 1998

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE JANUARY 13, 1999

1.18. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO JANUARY 13, 1999

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE JANUARY 20, 1999

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO JANUARY 20, 1999

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE JANUARY 27, 1999

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO JANUARY 27, 1999

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE FEBRUARY 5, 1999

1.24. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO FEBRUARY 5, 1999

1.25. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE ONE FEBRUARY 10, 1999

1.26. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE TWO FEBRUARY 10, 1999

1.27. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE ONE FEBRUARY 22, 1999

1.28. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE TWO FEBRUARY 22, 1999

1.29. TAPE NUMBER: XV, SIDE ONE MARCH 3, 1999

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
AUGUST 18, 1998

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
AUGUST 18, 1998

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
SEPTEMBER 1, 1998

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
SEPTEMBER 1, 1998

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 6, 1998

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 6, 1998

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 28, 1998

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 27, 1998

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
NOVEMBER 10, 1998

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
NOVEMBER 10, 1998

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
NOVEMBER 17, 1998

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
NOVEMBER 17, 1998

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
DECEMBER 1, 1998

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
DECEMBER 1, 1998

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
DECEMBER 22, 1998

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO
DECEMBER 22, 1998

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 13, 1999

1.18. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 13, 1999

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 20, 1999

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 20, 1999

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE
JANUARY 27, 1999

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO
JANUARY 27, 1999

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 5, 1999

1.24. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 5, 1999

1.25. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 10, 1999

1.26. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 10, 1999

1.27. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 22, 1999

1.28. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 22, 1999

1.29. TAPE NUMBER: XV, SIDE ONE
MARCH 3, 1999