Elliott Granger Auditions for WNEW-TV, 1960

A better Elliott Granger audition edit. This is on or about March 2, 1960, to judge from the news briefs. The first two-thirds gets tiresome, as it is a real stack of news Elliott has to get through. Go the end for the funny bits. This is a self-indulgent Sandy Becker video that was never broadcast.

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• Sandy Becker
• Elliott Granger
• President Eisenhower
• Civil Rights
• Frank Hogan
• WNEW

[sallieparker]

This is a better version of the Sandy Becker comedy video I put up last year. As you can see, Elliott Granger, a worn-out mushmouthed newsman, is trying to audition for a local on-air TV role.

[margotdarby]

Yesh, william brown 6, he doesh at that. My guess is that Sandy is deliberately imitating the second-tier announcers who were still living in the Harry von Zell mode and hadn't make the transition to the cool medium.

[wmbrown6]

As on:

watch?v=RVfAvVe2c0E

[wmbrown6]

Also . . . one wonders if that widely-circulated Mutual News "blooper" newscast from Tony Martin in 1963 was inspired by this bit. Martin sounded about as mush-mouthed on that as on here.

[wmbrown6]

In addition, at the time of this tape the studio cameras WNEW used were DuMont TA-124-E cameras, left over from their days as DuMont-owned WABD. They were still using those cameras as late as 1964-65, at the outset of that station's incarnation of "The Soupy Sales Show."

[wmbrown6]

WNEW Channel 5, in those days, had no news department to speak of, only slides-only news updates (one of them, as of 1965, called "Faces and Places in the News") read by staff announcers (i.e. Tom Gregory, Ed Ladd, Lou Steele, Fred Scott). It was years before they actually had something resembling a news department, with the start of "The 10 O'Clock News" in 1967; by then, "Elliott Granger" was long gone from the scene, and Sandy Becker's remaining show(s) only had one more year to go. ;)