Late Night Film Hosts Aired Laughs, Horror

By John Wooley
Published: 1/19/1990
Last Modified: 1/31/2009 1:41 AM

When Brent Douglas and Phil Stone first stepped in front
of the television cameras to begin taping the new "Nearly
Mondo Flick Fest," they joined a long line of Tulsa late-night
movie hosts that ribbons back 30 years, back to the days
of live, black-and-white television.
" `Shock Theater' came on about 1960 or '61," recalled
longtime Tulsa TV personality Lee Woodward. "I remember
I came up here from (radio station) WBAP in Fort Worth to
get on television, and Bob Mills followed me up. He was
on television for WBAP - a young man, but he was bald, and
played an old fellow. When he got here, he became the original
host of the morning show `Sunup.' On `Shock Theater,' he
was also the host."
"Shock Theater," on KOTV, Channel 6, came about when Screen
Gems released a package of classic horror films from the
'30s and '40s to television stations across the country.
Following the lead of such horror hosts as Philadelphia's
John Zacherley, local stations began slapping makeup on
whoever was handy and thrusting them in front of the cameras
to do "wraparounds" for the films.
"The characters were played by the camera crew, and people
like that," said Woodward. "Occasionally, I'd pop in there
as some kind of character. They wore these goofy masks like
you could get from Ehrle's Party Supply - which is exactly
where they got them."
One of the mask-wearers was former KOTV

employee Leon Meier.
Donning a caveman mask, he played Hornstaff, the assistant
to Bob Mills' Igor.
"I wouldn't have gotten involved in it if I hadn't had
something to cover my face up," laughed Meier, who still
lives in Tulsa.
"Everybody got together and had fun, trying to think up
what was going to be done that night," he added. "Everything
was more or less ad-libbed, and it was all live.
"One time they had a `This is Your Life' thing for Hornstaff.
At the time, the engineering booth had a glass front, and
when they took a camera shot up there, everyone had Hornstaff
masks on," Mieir said.
"Another time, I was supposed to come out of a refrigerator,
and when we rehearsed it, the door was left open a crack.
But when we went on, he shut the door entirely, and there's
not much air inside there, especially when you've got a
mask on. I had to keep telling myself to keep calm and take
short breaths until he opened it up."
"Shock Theater" lasted for about two years. A couple of
years after its demise, Channel 2 came up with its own late-night
horror program, "Nightmare Theater." The host was Peter
Hardt, whose deeply accented "Good evening, meine freunde,"
became the show's trademark.
"My actual name is Josef Peter Hardt," Hardt pointed out
recently. "Most people call me Joe Hardt, and I just thought
Joe didn't sound right. I thought Peter sounded more continental."
Hardt's accent was, and is, for real. A native of Germany,
he came to the United States in 1951. "I was an actor before
I came to America, but I came here as an adult, and once
you're past your teens it's almost impossible to lose an
accent. And when you have an accent, you are limited in
the parts you can play. The accent was right for that particular thing."
Hardt, who still produces commercials for KJRH, said "Nightmare
Theater" began in 1963 or '64 and ran every Saturday night
at 10:30 p.m. for four and a half years.
"It was easy to get good horror movies then - you could
pick the ones you wanted, where now you have to buy them
in packages," he said. "After we went through the run
of good ones, we ended up with Japanese and Mexican horror
films, and they weren't scary. The special effects were
so bad that they were kind of funny.
"You had to come up with creative ideas on the show - physically
rather than electronically, as we do now," he added. "Once,
they had my head floating in the air, and they did it by
using two cameras and covering my body with black cloth.
Another time, they used black powder for an effect and almost
blew me up. And we'd do things like making an air-conditioning
duct look like the inside of a U-boat."
Perhaps the best-remembered late-night local show is "Dr.
Mazeppa Pompazoidi's Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting,"
which began in 1970 on Channel 6 and moved the next year
to KTUL-TV, Channel 8, where it finished its run. Among
the people affiliated with the show were announcer Bob Brown,
now on ABC-TV's "20/20," and actor Gary Busey, who went
on to stardom and an Academy Award nomination. Host Gailard
Sartain parlayed Mazeppa into an impressive movie and television
career that includes his recent, critically acclaimed role in "Blaze."
"Gailard always says that the Mazeppa show was responsible
for inspiring a lot of viewers to go into show business,"
said Jim Millaway, who co-starred in and helped write the
program, "because people who watched it would say, `Hell,
I could do that.' "
Sartain was working part-time as a cameraman and going to
graduate school in art at the University of Tulsa when Mazeppa was born.
"Gary Chew had an afternoon `Dialing for Dollars' show,
and Gailard kept making unsolicited guest apearances," said Millaway.
Added Sartain, "Once they had all these Cub Scouts lined
up, and the camera panned past them, showing all their faces,
and there I was on my knees, with a moustache and all, in
the middle of them. I'd come in with a headset, do different
characters, ask directions, things like that."
He also, he said, kept "badgering" the station for a late-night
show. When a movie program featuring a radio disc jockey
as host didn't work out, Gailard saw his chance.
"I went to Art Elliott, the program director at the time,
and said, `How about me taking over where he left off?'
Art said, `Nope. Matter of fact, I was thinking of firing you, too.'
"Finally he relented and said I could do three shows. He
said he'd pay me $25 a show. So I went out and bought a
Mercedes and a fur coat and told Jim (Millaway), `You've
got to come down and help me. I'm scared to death.' "
Busey, whose acting career was just getting started ("He
had played a hippie demonstrator on `Burke's Law,' said
Millaway), would visit the show whenever he was in town.
He continued to make appearances when, in 1971, the show
moved to Channel 8 - with the help of soon-to-be impressario Jim Halsey.
The show was tremendously popular with teens and young adults
throughout its run. But, said Millaway, "At the station
it was always, `Hey, you could be gone next week. The salesmen
hated us, management hated us, and the technical people
especially hated us, because we filmed during a time when
all they usually had to do was sit and thumb through technical magazines."
Eventually, as more and more commercials started being done
in-house, the studio time became more precious, and that
spelled an end to the show, he added.
"Actually, that's what they said," Millaway noted. "But
the real reason is that we were found guilty of having too
much fun in the hallways, failure to show proper respect
for local furniture commercials, and espousing political, cultural and
musical preferences that made (weatherman) Don Woods nervous."
Millaway tried it again when he brought his Sherman Oaks
character to KOKI, Channel 23, in the early 1980s for "Creature
Feature." The program also featured Jeanne Tripplehorn,
who left after its first year, and Steve Pickle. It survived
three years and one name change (to "Groovy Movie").
"They ran out of their `Creature Feature' movie package,
and went to another movie package that didn't work as well,"
said Millaway, describing the package as "recent, first-run bombs."
Millaway recently hung up the half-mask that was his Sherman
Oaks trademark. He is now successfully involved in oil and gas leasing.
"I'm out of the entertainment business," he said. "I
don't have anything in writing, but when you're fired by
a UHF station, I figure that says it all."

By John Wooley

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