Well the day is February 2, 2012 we are conducting an interview for the
Arizona State University Association video history project. We are located
today in the ASU Community Services building. I am bob ellis. The
technical staff today is john McIntosh and Dave Schatz lee is our director.
Also in attendance is linda Vance. Coy. Chair of the A. S. U. R. A video
history project. Today I will interview Charles Raymond Ellis Hi Bob and I
should disclose that chuck and I have been friends for over 50 years.
My name is Charles Allen.
I
served several tours at ASU as a student as a faculty associate, that
title bob faculty associate.
I then went out to seek my fortune
and return for a 1415 year run in
Early 1980, February february 1980
something like that. And I had several titles and the title at my exit
interview was general manager
and I was an administrator.
It didn't really make a lot of difference, but that's when they started
trying to
change everyone to service
professional.
And so I went down as, as, as an administrator.
I was born at ST joseph's Hospital
On North 4th Street, a few blocks north of Van Buren In 1938. Tell us
about your childhood. I had one,
it's here phoenix. Um
I think the state's population was maybe a half million. And the city
limits it would be about an indian school road,
those indians bob, not in the city limits, not not at that time. So all of
the indian health and schools and so forth. Were just across the line and
it was a great place to grow up. Everyone knew each other. For example, if
my mother wanted to go shopping, She would take me to my grandmother's
house on 4th street just below Roosevelt, they flagged down the,
the trolley
and uh and put me on and you simply stayed on until they flagged it down
and said we'll take him back. And so he spent of the day going, you know
from Washington
and forth up to indian school
and then and then back down. It was, it was very interesting ah
and then television came along and I was really interested in television
and this. I'm starting to bother my parents because there seemed to be no
way you could make a living with it. And phoenix had one station Kpho
Channel 5, 1949 and it was on the air several hours every day, not too
many hours, everything was on film. So let's say a politician was killed,
they'd be dying over and over in phoenix because
they would film the newscast in new york and then and the newscast will be
sent to Chicago or somewhere and eventually it gets the phoenix weeks and
weeks later before the transcontinental cable.
And but I spent every, every minute I could At Channel five and eventually
became a cable puller for several dollars a day because they couldn't get
up to a dollar an hour and all the hamburgers. Yes, because they made
hamburgers ruth Dunlap made hamburgers for the crew because it was part of
the compensation package before she did her local cooking show cook's
corner box.
I was heavily influenced as was everyone else my age by uh the depression
and what it did to families and
and and World War two and and World World War two ah
ended in the 40s the scarcity of things went on uh you know past the 50s I
mean where you had to have little red tokens. We're red tokens for meat or
gas.
The A's and B's were for and and it was just scarcity was everything so
like people are doing today and telling me how new it is and would I like
to make a little film about it? No we were raising chickens in order to
have something to eat
And I think I was probably eight when when my
my great grandmother taught me how to
kill a chicken so that it would drop dead and not flop around and become
and become hard and and make a a terrible dinner
and you know how to gather eggs, how to plant corn. Um My my father was
from columbus Ohio mm mm mm mm. And worked in a bakery and later for the
city of phoenix. My mother had started at a. S. U. And uh and couldn't
afford to to finish ah
And and of course my father went I went to the war so she I was a stay at
home mom.
Although she she worked for the war at
luke field for a while and I would have to find a babysitter for me. Um
And one of the babysitters came back to put on a birthday for me at
Channel eight
Rose Mofford. Yes.
She was a young promising secretary. Um and the tax commission and she
knew speed writing and she was from Globe and she did it just because she
she liked my mother, my grandfather. But
so there were there were some so a lot of time was spent in in in the
living room where my father had a
midwest brand all band radio which you could get radio signals from all
over the world. And I spent hours and hours and hours turning the dial and
trying to see if you could pick up Germany or London or some place. And
I'm still doing that today. Only my technology is a lot better than that
was at the time. And then my mother was a huge influence because she she
was an avid reader and
we couldn't get away to go to the library very often. But she was the best
customer the book mobile had. And you know, we had little busses that
drove around phoenix with a selection of books and you go into the
bookmobile and find something of interest. And so there was always
something to read. Ah I think a grolier encyclopedia was a big deal
because it came with updates, stamps tear off a stamp and mail it off, you
get the updated version of some event or
whatever.
So I think that was a big deal and then she was hugely civic. We had,
she raised, she sold Girl Scout cookies. No, I didn't have a sister. She
was in the first mothers march for
um
The war against Polio which is a huge deal here. I didn't learn to swim
until I was probably 20 because it was believed that polio traveled in
swimming pool and all of the swimming pools were closed and in phoenix for
fear that everyone would get polio, it's the same reason they would cover
their mouth when they passed this building because this was a TB
sanitarium
and it could get out there. Um She was a, had a cub scout meeting at my
house and I don't think I knew it until many, many years later that it was
what kept the number of people saying at at at the time because they,
their fathers are drugs who beat them up or a variety of other things.
There was
Fellow whose father owned a Chinese grocery store and he had 13 brothers
and sisters and I think they had one bedroom
and so going to my house for chocolate chip cookies
uh was a huge deal. I did not know it at the time. So ah
I am actually a real native
now, you went to phoenix union, I entered phoenix union high school In 56
. I spent all of the time in journalism that I could, I was a very good
photographer. So my faculty advisor on the annual ah got me some
freelance work with the republic uh shooting sports at phoenix union,
which was the sports capital of of Arizona all state in everything every
year.
And uh
until I was taking a terrific picture at a basketball game and just waited
a second and a half too long to pull the trigger and when I came to having
been knocked over and the crown graphic destroyed, I decided that wasn't
something I wanted to do for a living
and then I became the editor of the yearbook for two years in a row and
they both want all state competitions and the editor of the year before,
my junior was Nick Salerno
and you participated in the mask of the yellow moon, I remember right. And
who was your music professor Eugene P Lombardi
at the time, phoenix Union high school had more ph d s on the payroll than
a S. You did, sorry, A. S. C bob. Ah
and
mr Lombardi was our orchestra conductor
and harvey zorn was the band conductor and then we had a wonderful organ
and choir ah leader by the name of Sue Davis who eventually becomes mrs
Lombardi.
My first station was in my bedroom
and you'll find this, this it's something that people get into this
business Having built a station, you know with an audience of one if your
headphones worked. Uh and I had a radio station in my bedroom
and it caught fire and and that we signed it off after that the landlord,
my parents, I said no to that. But yes I had
I was within walking distance of a local sports stations
phoenix studio
and I had a dollar an hour job as the engineer for a sportscaster by the
name of Ed deforest. This is on K. r. u. x. 1340, the rest of it was in
Glendale
and
and occasionally would work with with him on baseball recreation.
So start telling us about your first experience at A S. U. As a student.
Well I think it was when I was watching football games in Goodwin Stadium
and my grandfather's pipe would set fire to his jacket and we would have
to leave early and
and then I entered a S. U. In 1957
it was either that or the U. Of a. Those were the choices
and people in my clique that I didn't like we're going to the U. Of A. So
I decided to go to Vegas. You so
so we enter A S. U. Freshman liberal arts uh Dean Arnold tilden in charge
and I was a radio tv major which operated out of the radio tv bureau
in the basement of Matthew's library
and and that was the beginning and eventually
General Electric paid for
a new engineering building and it had very, very nice studios even by
today's standards uh for a sus radio and television's aspirations.
And there was the name change was coming, a big effort to try to change A
S. C. To an A S. U. And it was going to be a public vote. So there is this
desire for visibility. So somebody said, what can we do, what could you do
?
And so I intended the sewer club and broadcast from in front of the
engineering center out of the steam pipe tunnels and gave away free
cigarettes and and free records, which of course created a crowd. And then
I told a buddy who works at Channel 12 and he told somebody there
and they were out filming it and it was going to be on on NBC National,
you know, one of those end of the news, those funny things people do out
there. And mrs Gammage, the President's wife Kay Gammage found out about
it. And and I mean, she was just, what if this is the only thing they ever
know about it, we can't let them know, we live in sewers, we've we've got
to stop it. And I mean they They all went to channel 12 at once. And so
channel 12 got it canceled. I still have the film, Oh yes, every once in a
while said that didn't really happen.
And you got involved in television about 19
58 Your predecessors over there started the station,
the, it's a big event of 59 was a Sus Diamond Jubilee.
And again, what can we do, what can we do? And,
and you know, the usual terrible I d you know, somebody's going to make a
film. Let's make a diamond jubilee documentary. That's good. We'll put it
in the, in the time capsule and then we'll forget where the capsule is,
which we did.
No, but we were there when it, when it was put in the ground and I don't
remember where, where it went. But uh, so my idea was that we have the
first televised stereo television program in the state. And of course you
get the usual, oh, it's just not possible. We don't have this, we don't
please.
So I said, you give me the chorus and the orchestra and, and I'll figure
out how to do it. And I think we,
We use channel 12 mobile unit and we used one of the FM stations. There
was a stereo FM station
and and we use that for the audio
and, and the show turned out very, very good. And it was always you talent.
But in stereo bob,
I was drafted
for a fraternity.
Um,
twice once was
phi sigma kappa
a voice, a voice. I worked for at the radio networks Charles. Don't take
it personally, we need your grades
and
I went to a couple of pledge affairs there where they explain
ah you know, first there's a secret, right? You'll have to memorize all of
it and there's only one ritual, it's the demon ritual all over again. You
know, if you stand over here, you're the sun and if you're over here,
you're a triangle
and that you'll only associate with people in this fraternity and you know
, you give up this radio stuff because we have gardens for you to dig car
washes, you know, you're to watch people's cars.
So I said, well that that's that here Mr Dodds take your pin, I'm out of
here.
Then another fraternity came to me, Bruce Ballard
guy from Chicago Charles, we need your grade two or will be toast, will be
gone, will be put on probation and if you're on probation you can't hold
drunken parties, which is what attracts people to these things. Anyway.
And we had a house off campus, A two story,
two story house built In the late 20s and it was on
ah
God
not normal,
it's way off campus. What fraternity was sigma pi
I mean this would be in the middle of campus today, but not at the time.
Uh huh. Anyway, there had been an outbreak of venereal diseases and there
was a joke that had traveled on towels,
sigma pi and
uh you know, I had to not have much interest in this and
the people were really interested. We're ready to leave. And then we had
some people who were there
because their checks were good or something, something, everything was a
very pragmatic time. So we had worked out a thing with the national
chapter where we would close, we would go out of business at on this
campus
and knock on the door one afternoon and by Charles.
I'm not surprised. I knew I'd find you in here. She didn't say that. She
acted like this is Gammage
ah
and she said well you know this is yeah this is several blocks away from a
S. You today, a sc Arizona state today, you know, but we have to think
boldly and about the future and I think the campus is going to come in
this way. Of course she's
out there under they make for a real estate company buying up parts of of
Tempe.
And we
we sold our our our house and she had the house actually moved someplace
else. And I think it's gone now. The house isn't pretty good condition as
an old temple treasure. And then she held it until the university could
afford to buy them from her. And I really don't think there's anything
nefarious in it at all. It was. She's out there dreaming of a bigger S. U.
And and you have you have to collect the property before you
can plan new boundaries and new buildings and so forth. But yes she was.
And they paid a fair price. I don't remember what it was now, but
I don't believe she didn't know I was there when she showed up.
How about the most embarrassing moment? You were part of it?
I was never embarrassed. I was
we were in the engineering center which still stands today across in the
bookstore and we had big windows, just huge, beautiful windows and
unlike everyone else at A. S. U. I had I didn't sleep. I had four or five
jobs. I was a disc jockey
who was paid in rating performance in cash out of the bag
Here. a point. Of course. He went down out
um I had another show ah what did Gilbert and Scottsdale
where they didn't pay your money? They paid you a thing, tires. Greece
jobs, movie tickets. I mean it was a trade only. Thanks. And then I had
the job at the Bureau of Broadcasting
and and so I just had more discretionary money than most people rattling
around that building. And I I've been going through a car a year, couldn't
quite decide what I liked. And then Ford came out with the skyline er the
1959
skyline. Er and I bought one from reed mullin. It was coral and white. It
was the metal convertible where the metal top goes up the back of it, open
the top of the car goes into the trunk and closes.
I can't wait to show it off to you and everyone else. So I park it across
the street from channel eight and then I go in and I opened the curtain,
see my car?
The motor was on fire. The beautiful white top covering the engine
Had a black circle which was spreading. It was a four barrel carburetor
and
and it burned up right there in front of all of these friends. All these
people I work with. I mean
boy was I was I brought down the size maybe below size. Geez
I mean that was just, I mean I was a victim of my own show. Did I give you
a good show? How often you see a car that's minutes old on fire. I mean
that's great. Then when did you graduate?
You know, I wish I had brought my diploma because there are those who, I
don't think I really did. Uh 1960
and and it was the first year of Arizona State University diplomas.
Unlike today where
people were extremely human faculty. Everyone,
they were miserably paid. I mean the most golden thing you could have here
would be some little second contract for the summer and you repaid for
nine months out of the year
$5, If you were lucky. I mean it was, I always thought
my advisor dr Bell was just really friendly guy because he and his you
know, he and Allen lived over
at palm
palm crossed whatever whatever it's called and they'd have a potluck once
or twice a week and other faculty members would come over. What I didn't
know until many, many years later was they were all broke, they could
hardly raise a family on what the issue was paying. So they the potlucks
were a way of stretching their money and getting by now this is in 57 58
things got much bigger but everyone really knew everyone extremely well
and um they were
I thought they were really a very impressive bunch. Mhm. I think that um I
was terribly lucky, I went to A S. U. And the in the first place and the
people who make a huge difference and your life for like the
you know Lois holiday and jean Lombardi and in high school and uh and then
there were people, you know teachers, professors in college um dr Portnoy
who just no matter how wacky the idea what she would sit you down and she
had an accident about like Julia child, where did this accent come from
that and tell you it was really a nice little idea but it could be a
bigger idea and it didn't have to be mediocre. Now let's work with this
and see what it was like throwing gas in my ear and these were stories,
these were ideas for essays and stories but she was priceless in terms of
always being on the encouraging side. She may have maybe she didn't like
you or dr bell I don't know you know I'll get him so cranked up hill do
something worse than the sewer. The damages were very sweet. Um Mrs
Gammage once retained me. We weren't close friends, you forgot I was the
sewer guy. But if she has suddenly had to go someplace you know they lived
right in the middle of campus. Mhm. She would need a babysitter for gigi
so when she needed a babysitter she'd just go out to her little white
picket fence. You
look good you'll do and call you over and and you know here would be g g.
Uh probably sitting around reading about the land values are water rights
or whatever little damages. Ah Right at the time because she was she was a
real estate expert shark. Ah
ah And and all of those people do kind of shape ah
your life and what happens. And so I always thought a. S. U. Was a
wonderful laboratory of of learning and
and I enjoyed all of it. I don't know if I would today it's a very
different place
and it's a very enormous place. So uh it's harder to make those
connections than than it was when when it was when everything Arizona's
which smaller but while a S. U. Was kind of small at the time. Its
aspirations are over the moon. And the people who
we're professors there really we're committed to it. I mean they really
care. I mean that's sewer thing. I don't think I ever saw anyone cares so
much and
and well I didn't all agree with her. I want to see her cry for God's sake.
And they gave me the film, they gave me the film after they had it seized.
You want to work for two guys that started the station was still I was I
was working for them again a paycheck before they hired you. I know the
hourly wage people didn't count the little people. Ah And then they hired
a professional broadcaster or professional announcer
who's going to bring professionalism which obviously people who worked out
of sewers and borrowed mobile units in the middle of the night were hardly
professional. So we hired you to come in and teach us how real
broadcasters worked. And you were our first general manager.
And
well you weren't the founding general manager that was Dick Bell.
Wonderful guy that we both liked a lot but he left. Ah
I think it took three times at the legislature before they would grant us
permission and the money to go on the air K. E. T.
Tell us about the call letters
kate.
We all had great ideas and and it was settled by the founding general
manager. This wonderful guy by the name of Dr Bell who's the only one with
the national credit. He had written scripts that have been on general
electric playhouse. Anyway he had a logo he'd been working on of of of of
the schoolmarm
which somebody explained to me was a teacher, a schoolmarm next to a
little school out of his Ohio passed that gas and the name of the school
marm and the station will be Cape. And the closer he could get to kate was
K. E. T. And you know the smart people all knew it had to be Arizona
educational television. But that was not the intention it was to be Kate.
I don't think she ever got on the air because Dick left for the University
of Colorado where he hired me in the summers while I was getting my
master's at the University of Denver.
And then there was another another fellow that worked with you that came
later later in your career was very important to you. Mr Grouper. Well he
was there um running the the Arizona state Radio network which had 60 or
70 affiliates, Not that many, probably 40. And they got um
A. S. U. Programs from its vitality
and every once in awhile there'd be a tight budget and we were not going
to be able to send out another western business roundup because stations
it really only took our programs to get the tape and they'd erase our
program and put commercials and things on. So who's going to go out there
, Not the university lawyer Charles. We're out of business if we don't get
some tape.
So, um, I would get my car. I think we were paying
27 cents a mile. I can't something like that for gas. Um, make sure your
back every night. We're not buying the motel room.
Huh? We don't want to see a state car in front of the motel
and there weren't that many state cards. So
okay. So I went from station to station became the station relations guy
and I got the tape back and
it was valuable. I met a lot of people who later on, It would be very
helpful when Channel 81 on the air because I would go visit them and then
go with them to the local cable company because the cable companies,
little town, they were for the most part owned by people who lived there.
So you go to globe and meet with Willard shoe craft. And he would see that
eight was put on the cable systems he owned and he owned them. I think all
the way down to Safford. So all all of those things sort of came back and
you know, played into the next, uh, the next step then after that you
started directing and producing programs in the, those in the early days
when we had tele courses we had tell accords. But I think unless you made
this clear in, in your
archival
portrait,
I still think the most innovative thing about Channel eight at the time is
when we didn't have anything to put on the air. We went off, we went off
the air many times. We go off the air at 11:30 and then we go to your
house and your wife would serve up a wonderful peanut butter sandwich and
chicken noodle soup. You couldn't beat it. And I mean those are those,
those memories have,
I have never gone away and then you know if your manners are fairly good,
you might end up with some of her cookies.
She's closed the cookie business which was, that went on for quite a few
years, decades by decades. But then you tell us about those wonderful
programs and I do mean wonderful programs you produced I think probably uh
, the, the, the hoot holler was was probably um,
something that it was very successful and again, ah, it was not all that
different than things I did at phoenix union or the mask of the yellow
moon or or all of these other things. I mean I just keep repeating my
childhood over and over and it goes on forever. Um,
and so we, we were going to put on the evening of live folk music in
stereo
and we put it in
next to the engineering center Where there was an inside patio with two
cement ledges and we put cameras up there, cameras you've never seen
before because they were borrowed and we,
I didn't have the remote unit or it wasn't working if we had one. And so
we had long cables and
um Dolan Ellis was part of a very popular recording group. The new Christy
minstrels at the time and he agreed to be in it and brought a lot of his
friends and uh a lot of uh there were a number of groups from A S. U. That
sang and it was absolutely,
I would say in terms of production values looked as good as anything you
would see on any network. What was the most frightening thing about the
the most frightening thing about students on the ledges? Well that was, I
wasn't frightened by that. Well you know you've, you have really put up
with a lot. I I do understand why your hair isn't black anymore. I'll take
a a big share of that. Yes, there was always a problem. What are the
students doing? You know, you could just look up there at sea. The only
thing that worried me is whether they would put their girlfriends down
long enough to get back To the camera. One of the terrific things about
channel eight for most of the years I was connected with it. It used
students
in its productions no matter how big or how important and that gave them
inspiration. It gave them resume material. It later got them jobs and I
think that's something that was not something that most public stations
did and it's something I certainly never regret it. Tell us about the cask
of Mariana. Yeah, we have to bring that up. Oh God. Well
I decided I had a future in drama
and I did, it just wasn't going to be at A S. U. So we were going to do
Edgar Allen Poe's cask of Amontillado because it was short,
it was in the public domain,
you know, Channel eight's favorite budgetary Price zero.
And we recruited some people from the drama departments and professors and
some others. And the guy who played mantra sore,
you know, he's the one that gets sealed up, I think it's monstrous or that
gets sealed in the wall.
Well anyway, he was a drunk
and you know, I started asthma. No, he was always drunk
god.
And we had to have a long tunnel that went to the cave and in the cave is
where in a niche. Uh this guy gets
cemented into the wall.
So we made our cave out of
um paper mache, we had a paper michigan to paper mache walls
which mhm once we got past the first one, the actors were walking down
walking down
then we grab the first one and run it around and put it up here so that
the tunnel will keep going
and the
graphic artist by the name of Michael brnovich misspelled the credit.
Yes,
I don't know if anyone liked the program but I sure heard about misspell
credit for years and years and I think it really made me
it developed a tic. I mean later on, I'm in Hollywood and we're about to
produce steam bath and I won't let them start until I've seen the credits
and sat there with the dictionaries going through every line. And that was
just the recurring nightmares from the cask of Amontillado.
I did not know lad mo well, he he gave me lessons on how to run A. Duma
camera in 19 59 at Kpho when it was our only station. And it was located
um
9 21 North First Avenue. No, it's in the westward ho property because the
owner of the westward Ho Was one of the owners of Channel five John Mills.
Um funny guy, gregarious, really, very, very friendly and was a terrific
cameraman. Ah
and
ah Wallace,
really creative guy. He was the station art director, he was a fine artist.
And so you know, if somebody,
I needed a rainbow bread slide or something, he would draw the love of
brad
create the slides and stuff for the for the commercial.
Ah and I like them both. But I can't really say I knew uh Wallace, he he
is one of the
ah
most
that's very uh n word turn guys, he's I'm not sure anyone knows
him very well except maybe immediate family members and maybe Pat McMahon
and and certainly Wallace, which is one of the shy ist people I've ever
ever met in my life and he would go on and be this character
and you would think, oh boy, this is gonna be the life of any party. But
the minute the on air lights were off, he would go back into this, this
very talented, but very,
and then bob can bring you up to date on famous majors. What it was like
getting a degree for Al Michaels who would be involved in the Super Bowl
this weekend
without the Al Michaels might not have ever gotten a television job. It
hadn't been for bob Ellis. I gave him a b in radio television announcement.
I kept him from getting kicked out of school because he didn't show up
for finals.
I went to see Alfred thomas JR
and
told him the reason that Al could not attend his exams
was that
they were midterms, was that the World series was on and that owl's
whole life who turned around becoming a sportscaster someday.
And and of course there was no videotape, there was no home tape, There
was no VHS or DVR. So Al would sit in his apartment staring at the game
with the sound off pretending that he is doing the play by play on the
World series. He was just not available for other engagements, including
going to class at that time
and
Alice said, so do you think he's going to amount to anything? I said no, I
think he is, he wants it so bad. He puts the work in it with no
encouragement. His family wants him to go into producing game shows and
they own a number of them. No, I think he's going to be very good. It's
just his voice is terrible, his arrest the voice. And at that time all of
the voices on the air, we're big. Alright. Like bob's voice professional.
And he said, well, have I, have you looked at my slides? I'm a historian
of a S. U.
Okay. No, I'd love to see them. Yeah,
three or 400 slides later.
Al's fine. Alice is going to go forward. We've waved his midterms
and Al was never sorry and neither was I uh and he's one of the highest
paid play by play, guys out there. And we'll say to this day that he would
have fallen off into something else and not achieved his dream.