Joe Pyne: America's First Angry Talk Show Host

 

 By Bruce Shawkey

I remember my grandparents watching "The Joe Pyne Show" on late-night TV, when they wanted a break from "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson. I thought it odd that my typically mild-mannered grandparents would want to watch a show filled with anger and confrontation.

But there it was. The show is being called the prototype for more modern-day "shock shows" hosted by the likes of Howard Stern, Geraldo Rivera, Morton Downey, Phil Donahue, and others.

The episodes I remember typically involved Joe insulting guests where they would walk off the set --- KKK, Nazi, and John Birch guests. One of Joe's catch phrases was "Oh, go gargle with razorblades."

The rest of this entry I am paraphrasing from an NPR article on Pyne.

One thing absolutely forbidden on the show was to mention Joe's wooden leg, which resulted from an injury during World War II, where he served in the Marines. That injury turned cancerous, which resulted in the loss of his lower leg.

In one exchange with Frank Zappa. Pyne is reported to have said, "I guess your long hair makes you a woman," to which Zappa reportedly responded, "So I guess your wooden leg makes you a table."

Pyne died of cancer in 1970, just a few years after his show went national. He was 45.

People who knew Pyne say his personality and personal views didn't always align with his on-screen persona. "Off the air, he was a totally different person," said one friend. "When the microphone went out, when it was just you and him, he was nice."

"It's just a shtick," said Ed Pyne, his son. He remembers dad telling him, "Don't ever worry if people are taking shots at you. If you want to worry, it's when people stop talking about you."

Here's another article from a 1960s TV Guide

A boy scout is courteous, kind, reverent and nine other kinds of nice things. And grows up to become a scoutmaster.

Joe Pyne is rude and rough, gratuitously cruel, blunt and brash. He is an ex-Marine who has never forgotten his barracks manners. He is never courteous, kind or reverent; and consequently he rides around in a Rolls-Royce, owns an airplane, and otherwise lives the rich and rewarding life.

Because of his nimble mind and his needling tongue, Pyne is the pride of KTTV, Los Angeles, late every Saturday night. The Joe Pyne Show—take cover—will soon be distributed nationally; his similar radio show now goes to 75 stations in the United States and Canada.

“This is a fist-in-the-mouth as opposed to a tongue-in-the-cheek show,” Joe says. “My guests know they are going to be in a fight.”

As might be expected, it is difficult to get people of substance to appear. But a parlous parade of racists, Ku Klux Klanners, Communists, wide-eyed “economic planners," and plain and fancy kooks show up weekly for verbal flagellation. When Pyne runs out of insults or inanities, his studio audience takes over. There ‘is also a telephone hookup which allows the outside audience to add its two-bits’ worth. Toward the end of the evening, the program livens up with “adult” material. The unspoken premise seems to be “as dirty as possible.”

The show is an effective showcase for offbeat books. Lee Francis, once a Los Angeles madam, sold 50,000 copies of her book in three days after appearing on the air with Pyne.

Predictably, the show is extremely popular. Pyne’s ratings have gone up steadily week after ugly week. “Only the blockbuster movies top us,” Pyne’s producer says.

Very often viewers call or write: “Why do you take such a rude tack?” “Because this tack keeps us in business,” Joe replies.

Later Joe said, “All the other interview shows pull their punches and they don’t last long. I've been doing controversial shows for 15 of my 19 years in the business.Pyne’s position as an interviewer is unassailable because he is always on the right side. He hates Nazis, racists, Black Muslims, Communists, Red China. He is for Morality, the Flag and Motherhood. People who disagree obviously are wrong.

But he can go too far. During the height of the Los Angeles riots, he presented a militant Negro. At one point, Pyne remarked that he would know what to do if threatened by rioters. Then he opened his desk drawer and displayed a revolver. The guest then pulled back his coat and showed that he, too, had a gun.

Modified pandemonium! The Negro was arrested as he left the studio for possession of a concealed weapon. He was not booked, however: He explained he was a salesman of fake jewelry and his gun was a cap pistol.

Joe Pyne’s fate was direr. He was suspended by the station—according to one executive. According to another, “He was allowed to take a week’s leave.”

“It is my considered opinion that the world is going to hell,” Pyne says darkly. “One night I held up a topless bathing suit. ‘What are they trying to do?’ I asked. ‘This was designed by a man who hates women. Men who design clothes for women almost invariably hate women.’

“T promised to have a live model in a topless bathing suit the next week. I did, too. I got a little monkey and dressed him in a diaper.”

Joe defends his “hard-nosed interviews.” “It’s kind of a town hall,” he says.

“Actually, one important aspect of the show is an attempt to expose people who need to be exposed.

“We had George Lincoln Rockwell, an American Nazi, on the show. There is nothing lower than a Nazi, particularly an American Nazi. I think we did some good by holding him up to ridicule and showing him for what he is. I told him he was trying to make a fortune from hate.”

Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother, appeared on the Pyne show for reasons best known to herself. “She is a grandmotherly type and it’s awfully hard to charge into a woman like that,” Pyne said. “T had no desire to rap her. But people called in and said some dreadful things. She started to cry. That’s the only time I feel helpless—when they start to cry.”

Pyne is a remarkable impromptu interviewer. He reads a great deal but makes no real preparations for the show.

“It’s the only live show on the air where no one knows what’s going to happen,” he says. “It’s as unrehearsed as a hiccough. I do no thinking in advance.” Joe Pyne/ continued

One delightful impromptu moment came when a guest hit Ozzie Whiffletree, then Pyne’s side-kick, on the nose. On camera. The fist in the face was in response to a Whiffletree blast: “You're a liar, that’s what you are, and a coward, too.”

The ungrammatical ranting of Whiffietree—“Put your false teeth in backwards and bite your throat’— “Thank you very large’—“I’'m aggravated all a time—I wear cheap shoes and tight shorts’—made Joe Pyne look almost angelic.

Whiffletree, actually Ozzie Curtis, a wealthy Los Angeles businessman, no longer is on the show.

Pyne, hammering hard at his guests, sometimes gets them so rattled they blurt out secrets. One man confessed to a record as a peeping Tom; another was arrested on camera. The Beverly Hills cops had been looking for him for more than a year.

Joe Pyne does not meet his’ guests before the show. “And after the show, usually they don’t want to meet me,” Joe grins.

‘We want emotion’

His producer, Robert Hayward, picks them after studying their backgrounds. “I have two qualifications for a guest. They must be well grounded in their subject and the subject must be visceral—we want emotion, not mental involvement.”

Joe adds: “This is entertainment, not education. And sometimes the people get very good conversation.” Off-stage, Joe seems almost gentle. He is 41 years and weighs 171 pounds, down from 188 after a few weeks on the drinking man’s diet. “I get fat from air,” he says ruefully. He walks with a limp because his left leg is artificial. Joe spent four years as a Marine in the Pacific and was wounded in the leg on Okinawa.

“Several years later a rare malignancy developed—synovioma. They said, ‘Take it off or you'll have only two years to live.’ So we took it off and I’ve lived 10 years so far.”

When irate mothers call to berate Pyne for showing “dirty” material to their teen-agers, Pyne has a stern reply. “Look,” he says, “I’ve got teenagers of my own and I see that they are in bed before midnight. Get your kids to bed on time.”

His teen-agers are Cathee, 17; and Edward Michael, 15. They live with Joe’s first wife in Pennsylvania.

He planned to study law

After his service in the Marines, Joe planned to study law. He was handicapped by a severe stammer, however, and went to drama school to overcome it. Somewhere law was sidetracked. Pyne recorded his voice in a booth in a Philadelphia shooting gallery and sent it out to radio stations. A Lumberton, N.C.,_ station hired him for $25 in 1946, and he has been broadcasting almost ever since.

“I quit the business in 1960 and put all my savings into a mobile home show,” he says. “Then the Eisenhower recession came along and mobile home shows recessed more than anything else. So I went back to radio.”

Joe had the highest rated radio show in Canada, he says, before heading for the West Coast. He flipped a coin: Heads, California; tails Florida.

California lost. Joe arrived in Los Angeles (he had done some TV work there previously) and this time went to work for ABC, before transferring to KLAC, where his snarling radio show quickly won top rating. In 1964, Joe went back on television and has a contract for 52 weeks. Under new arrangements, his program will be syndicated nationally. Then viewers across the country will be able to join Pyne’s crusade against the creeps of the world.