Speaker 1: The Other Side of Midnight Randy West in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, a bomb vivant. One of the great assets
Speaker 1: to American television is Randy West. He's been an announcer
Speaker 1: on many of the shows that you enjoy, such as
Speaker 1: The Price Is Right. He is fascinated by the history
Speaker 1: of television and especially the history of game shows. He's
Speaker 1: any game show question I've ever had, he answers. And
Speaker 1: he's writing the definitive book on Television City in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: And you and I for years thought that was a
Speaker 1: made up thing that they just called the normal building.
Speaker 1: That no, No. Television City is an astonishing, an astonishing construction,
Speaker 1: and he's writing the history of it. Many pictures stories.
Speaker 1: Can't wait to see that book. Randy West, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Other side of Midnight.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much. Roll. It's a thrill to
Speaker 2: be with you always. And you give me such a
Speaker 2: write up that makes me think introduction here that I
Speaker 2: should be asking for a raise.
Speaker 1: From some You should be. But every word I said
Speaker 1: is true. Now we're fascinated by conspiracies and mysteries. And
Speaker 1: I said to Randy West, think about the spy, the
Speaker 1: conspiracy and mystery that intrigues you most, and Randy, why
Speaker 1: don't you share that? Now?
Speaker 2: It took me no time at all to come up
Speaker 2: with a great story of Dorothy Kilgallen. Now, folks from
Speaker 2: a generation past would know her as a columnist in
Speaker 2: over two hundred newspapers, of course for many years, about
Speaker 2: fifteen of them on Sunday Night TV show What's My Line,
Speaker 2: where he used to guess people's occupation and her claim
Speaker 2: to fame. I was an investigative reporter, and she refused
Speaker 2: to say no to some stories. She was the first
Speaker 2: person to write about Project Mongoose, which was the CIA
Speaker 2: and Fidel Castro. She was the first who opened the
Speaker 2: reopened the Fugitive Case, which was the Sam Shepard murder
Speaker 2: case that became the Fugitive TV show and movie. And
Speaker 2: she also dabbled and hinting about the truth between Marilyn
Speaker 2: Monroe and the Kennedy brothers, Robert and President John Kennedy,
Speaker 2: which we now have come to understand is real. But
Speaker 2: she was telling these stories when they were not in
Speaker 2: fashion and certainly weren't proven at the time, and she
Speaker 2: dug a little too deep and doug she dug her
Speaker 2: own grave. What can I say she was very intrigued
Speaker 2: by the Kennedy assassination, as we all were, but she
Speaker 2: had a personal stake in it because she was friends
Speaker 2: with John Kennedy and they used to play charades at
Speaker 2: the White House with her son. It's a crazy story.
Speaker 2: So she was really broken hearted when Kennedy was shot,
Speaker 2: and we all were, of course, and she refused to
Speaker 2: let the story die, and she would put in her
Speaker 2: column that the story will not die as long as
Speaker 2: as a reporter alive. And I'm that reporter. And she
Speaker 2: basically invited her own, what can I say, involuntary suicide
Speaker 2: because she received a number of death threats that she
Speaker 2: ignored and continue to pound down about setting this story straight. Now,
Speaker 2: how does she get much of the information that she got,
Speaker 2: which turned out to be far more truth than we
Speaker 2: ever heard. Well, she had a relationship with Melvin Belli,
Speaker 2: who was a big attorney at the time, and bell
Speaker 2: I used to feed her stories that she could put
Speaker 2: into the column as hints and vice versa. They had
Speaker 2: a cooperative relationship. And of all the attorneys in the world,
Speaker 2: guess who was representing Jack Ruby Melvin Belly. So she
Speaker 2: gets two opportunities to talk one on one with Jack
Speaker 2: Ruby without a guard within earshot. No other reporter had
Speaker 2: that access. They pushed the guards back in view, of
Speaker 2: course of the cell, but that she could speak quietly
Speaker 2: with Jack Ruby. And the story that she told is
Speaker 2: what got her in trouble. And she was gone in
Speaker 2: a matter of weeks of her beginning to get too
Speaker 2: close to telling the story publicly and over two hundred newspapers.
Speaker 2: Her demise is the one we're talking about, not so
Speaker 2: much John Kennedy's. So what happened to her, Well, there
Speaker 2: was a Sunday night that she did her last What's
Speaker 2: My Line show November seventh of nineteen sixty five, if
Speaker 2: I remember, and she was running around the Ed Sullivan
Speaker 2: Theater talking about how she's about to blow the lid
Speaker 2: off this case and the Warren Commission is a laughingstock
Speaker 2: and all this what was happening Shortly that she was
Speaker 2: going to really rip the story open. She got an
Speaker 2: appointment to meet with Carlos Marcello, who was the big
Speaker 2: mafia don in New Orleans, and she was going to
Speaker 2: get on a plane and go down there. Within days
Speaker 2: of that appointment, she was gone. And what her last
Speaker 2: Sunday night was the last time most of her friends
Speaker 2: saw her.
Speaker 1: What do you think she was going to find out?
Speaker 1: What the gangster in New Orleans?
Speaker 2: Well, what do I think that the Well, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want to make conjecture on this because it's
Speaker 2: going to alien it's alienate some people. But you know,
Speaker 2: the government itself was against John Kennedy. He was going
Speaker 2: to break up the CIA into a thousand pieces. And
Speaker 2: the government, CIA specifically and the mafia were hand in
Speaker 2: hand in Project Mongoose, hand in hand working together to
Speaker 2: kill Fidel Castro. So there was a connection between the
Speaker 2: two and both had the exact same motive because again
Speaker 2: John Kennedy was not in favor CIA and the establishment,
Speaker 2: a Democrat out on his own in an era when
Speaker 2: Republicans were in charge and calling the shots. And the
Speaker 2: other half of it, of course, that the mafia was
Speaker 2: involved and had the same goals as the government, was
Speaker 2: that Bobby Kennedy, who John Kennedy made Attorney General, would
Speaker 2: not leave the mafia alone. I mean, he was having
Speaker 2: them on the hearings and w retz and browbeating, and
Speaker 2: the only way to end that Attorney General's investigation as
Speaker 2: the Mafia supposedly said, is you cut off the head
Speaker 2: and the tail will stop wagging.
Speaker 1: What always surprised me about Robert Kennedy's attack on the
Speaker 1: mafia was it was well known that their father was
Speaker 1: in cahoots with the mafia in Chicago and swung the
Speaker 1: votes toward their son with the mob in Chicago, and
Speaker 1: therefore the mob had some reason to be pretty ticked
Speaker 1: off at the Kennedy's doing it.
Speaker 2: I promise they get my son in it and will take
Speaker 2: care of you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you just that's just a bad plan.
Speaker 1: And when dealing with the with the mafia, it's just
Speaker 1: a bad plan. Now tell us how she died. Please
Speaker 1: tell us what they found in her very wealthy townhouse.
Speaker 2: Do you know? Yes, she left Watch My Line that
Speaker 2: Sunday night and went with the cast crew to PJ. Rourke's,
Speaker 2: where they always went for drinks. She had a couple
Speaker 2: of vodka tonics, and then she said, don't take me
Speaker 2: home tonight. If anyone could drop me, because he used
Speaker 2: to drop each other off, if anyone could drop me
Speaker 2: at what was the name of the Regency House hotel,
Speaker 2: she was going to meet a new friend quote unquote
Speaker 2: maybe a romantic person. We weren't really clear, and they
Speaker 2: dropped her at the Regency and a guy I became
Speaker 2: friendly with, Bill Egan. I met him and he was
Speaker 2: a very old man in nineteen ninety. He was at
Speaker 2: an Oakwood apartment complex where I was sitting around the
Speaker 2: pool and we just started talking. He had worked on
Speaker 2: What's My Line? He was there the last night of
Speaker 2: Darthy kill Gallan's life and said she wanted to go
Speaker 2: to the Regency House. We didn't understand why we dropped
Speaker 2: her off there. She was seen there. The piano player
Speaker 2: got off at two am at the bar where she
Speaker 2: was speaking to this gentleman nobody knows, and he said, oh, yes,
Speaker 2: she was deep conversation with him at two o'clock in
Speaker 2: the morning. Come eight thirty in the morning, she's in
Speaker 2: her bed in her lovely townhouse and her hairdresser is
Speaker 2: coming because she has a morning appointment and she had
Speaker 2: personal hair and makeup come to her house. They had
Speaker 2: the key. They go into the room where she's normally sleeping.
Speaker 2: If she's not there, they go around the townhouse and
Speaker 2: they find her in the room she hadn't slept in
Speaker 2: since her husband and she had been there and her
Speaker 2: husband had been unfaithful, so she stopped sleeping in that room.
Speaker 2: But suddenly she was in this master bedroom that she
Speaker 2: hadn't used in years. She had a hair piece still
Speaker 2: on that she would have taken off at night. She
Speaker 2: was still wearing makeup. She had a book at the
Speaker 2: side of a bed that she had already finished, but
Speaker 2: she had no eyeglasses. She was blind as far as
Speaker 2: reading a book without glasses. There were no glasses in sight.
Speaker 2: The medication as they pump from her stomach for toxicology,
Speaker 2: they wasn't in the room anywhere. A lot of very
Speaker 2: strange things like that that the hairdresser found in the morning,
Speaker 2: and the wrong room, the wrong book, no glassifications. It's
Speaker 2: just a series of events spoken about by a guy
Speaker 2: who used to enter in her home on his own
Speaker 2: with his own key as a regular thing. He'd come
Speaker 2: in and wake her up and do her hair and makeup.
Speaker 2: So this is somebody who knew her habits very very well.
Speaker 2: So between somewhere after two of the morning when the
Speaker 2: pianist saw them and this eight o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: she's gone and staged in her own townhouse.
Speaker 1: It's a remarkable story, and it makes perfect sense. It's
Speaker 1: hard to explain and imagine how powerful she was at
Speaker 1: that moment in time. That was at the height of
Speaker 1: her powers. She was the most successful columnist for the
Speaker 1: Herst organization. She was paid a fortune because when her
Speaker 1: townhouse was at the time, that townhouse was worth nine
Speaker 1: million dollar. So she was very wealthy, very famous, very visible,
Speaker 1: and made the curious mistake of announcing that she had
Speaker 1: a scoop, a rare thing for a columnist, right there
Speaker 1: to announce that she had a scoop, and it was
Speaker 1: a deadly scoop. Randy West, congratulations on being the man
Speaker 1: to write the book about Television City. Two questions about
Speaker 1: Television City. Yeah, about how many shows do you think
Speaker 1: were produced there? Different productions? How many do you think
Speaker 1: was produced there?
Speaker 2: Over one thousand and this was active from nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: two until the present.
Speaker 1: And at any given time, based on the volume of
Speaker 1: studios they had, how many shows could be in production
Speaker 1: at a time.
Speaker 2: That's a great question, because before videotape, you could really
Speaker 2: only have one show a day in each studio. Videotape
Speaker 2: came in in nineteen fifty six, and suddenly they could
Speaker 2: turn these rooms around. So for example, when I worked
Speaker 2: in the studio thirty three, we did the Price is
Speaker 2: Right and we would leave at seven or eight o'clock
Speaker 2: in the evening. By the next morning, at seven am,
Speaker 2: the studios totally reset as if it had been that
Speaker 2: way forever for another show. That other show tapes, and
Speaker 2: then the next day the match game is in for
Speaker 2: Saturday and Sunday, and then when they're done on Sunday night,
Speaker 2: the room gets turned around. So some of these stages
Speaker 2: did quadruple and beyond duty, meeting multiple shows, sometimes two
Speaker 2: in the same day if the sets weren't very like
Speaker 2: For example, there were two soaps in one studio at
Speaker 2: the same time, shooting on opposite walls of the studio.
Speaker 2: So there were a finite number of studios, but an
Speaker 2: infinite number of shows. Because there was an overnight crew
Speaker 2: that did the most amazing It's a show nobody ever
Speaker 2: saw at Television City. They used to pack up everything,
Speaker 2: move it all out, and then bring these entire sets, furniture,
Speaker 2: set dressings, props. The whole place would be redone as
Speaker 2: if it had been that way all along. Think for
Speaker 2: a moment about all in the family you know what
Speaker 2: that set looked like, that living room with the chairs
Speaker 2: and all that uff. Well, that came and went every week.
Speaker 2: It was set like that, and then it was ripped
Speaker 2: apart when they got through taping on Friday nights, other
Speaker 2: shows came in, and then it was set up on
Speaker 2: Thursday of the following week looking like nothing had changed.
Speaker 1: Of course, then I have a price is right question.
Speaker 1: It has always fascinated me that that's a very complicated
Speaker 1: production for a game show, and they have tech rehearsals, right, yes,
Speaker 1: how long did those take? What do they do? And
Speaker 1: at what point does the host get involved?
Speaker 2: Very good? The host gets a private briefing from the producer.
Speaker 2: He does not come to the meeting. There's a pre
Speaker 2: taping meeting where we go over all the shows we're
Speaker 2: going to do that day to talk about anything that's unusual.
Speaker 2: Then is the rehearsal for the first show, and we
Speaker 2: rehearse the show backwards. In other words, we start with
Speaker 2: a showcase, which is the last thing at the end
Speaker 2: of the show, and then we go to the number
Speaker 2: six game, then the number five game. We end the
Speaker 2: rehearsal with the number one top of the show act
Speaker 2: and that's because when we take the prizes out from rehearsal,
Speaker 2: we lay them out in this long staging area in
Speaker 2: the hallway. So the first thing out is the last
Speaker 2: thing in, if that makes any sense. In the lasting
Speaker 2: you rehearse, you put just outside the door, because that's
Speaker 2: going to be the first thing in. And the rehearsal
Speaker 2: takes no longer than the show itself, probably a little
Speaker 2: bit shorter, and it's not necessarily because they're doing it
Speaker 2: in showtime. But they'll bring a prize out and they'll say, hey,
Speaker 2: let's decorate that a little put a little tree, our
Speaker 2: official tree there, and hang a picture on that walls,
Speaker 2: you know. So they're staging everything while I'm reading the
Speaker 2: copy and they're getting their shots. When Randi says Rice
Speaker 2: a Roni, let's shoot to camera two, camera three, you
Speaker 2: pull back, bing bongoom. They all make notes and it's
Speaker 2: like a well oiled machine. So you do the rehearsal
Speaker 2: of the show backwards. Then you do that show. Then
Speaker 2: there's a meal break. You do the same thing with
Speaker 2: the rehearsal on show for the second of that day.
Speaker 1: Randy West and I are talking about the production of
Speaker 1: The Price Is Right which has always fascinated me, especially
Speaker 1: since it's a daily game show. How many prices, right,
Speaker 1: prices that show? How many could they shoot in a day?
Speaker 1: How many did you shoot in one day?
Speaker 2: Bob Barker was able to limit it to a day.
Speaker 2: There are hour shows and two was it. In fact,
Speaker 2: at the end of his run in his eighties, he
Speaker 2: got it down to two on Monday, one on Tuesday,
Speaker 2: one on Wednesday, one on Thursday. But Withdrew carry now
Speaker 2: without that of clouch in order to tell them when
Speaker 2: they're shooting, they're doing three a day, and on some
Speaker 2: days doing four. Now these are four one hour shows,
Speaker 2: each needing a rehearsal that runs very close to an
Speaker 2: hour itself. You have two meal breaks that are required
Speaker 2: by the union. So it's a ton of overtime and
Speaker 2: it's a very long day, but it's still cheaper to
Speaker 2: pay the overtime than to book and show. Everybody show
Speaker 2: up for an another day, and it's murder. Anybody who
Speaker 2: can do four of these in a day is just superhuman.
Speaker 1: And then what do they do They get a week
Speaker 1: off or two weeks off between that production.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they'll do several days like that in a week
Speaker 2: and then there's time off. Yeah, with under Barker was
Speaker 2: he worked three weeks, one week off, work, three weeks,
Speaker 2: one week off. The whole idea is to get this
Speaker 2: all done, the whole season done as quickly as he can.
Speaker 2: Then you're not paying rental on a lot of things.
Speaker 2: You go back to prop houses. You no longer have
Speaker 2: the presence that you needed. And everybody can go on
Speaker 2: a long hiatus break. So let's get these all done
Speaker 2: as quickly as he can. And some shows will take
Speaker 2: an entire season in two months, and that's it.
Speaker 1: The mystery of Drothy Kilgallan's death and the mystery of
Speaker 1: how they produce The Price is Right, both cleared up
Speaker 1: by the legendary Randy West, bon vivant of Hollywood, brilliant
Speaker 1: television historian. And I thank you for your time tonight
Speaker 1: on the other side of midnight. Thank you appreciate it.