Diamond Circle Award Winner Fred Essex

Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters' Second Vice President Larry Vanderveen presented the organization's Diamond Circle Award to Fred Essex at the November 18, 2011 luncheon for Florence Henderson. Below are Mr. Vanderveen's remarks introducing Mr. Essex:

Today’s inductee began his love affair with broadcasting in high school, when as a member of an amateur dance band, he appeared in a competition on “The Fred Allen Show.” The group came in first and won a week’s engagement at New York’s famous Roxy Theater. So, he took his trumpet and began playing in clubs around the city.

Gradually he decided that what he really wanted was to direct radio programs. Figuring a good path to his dream would be through advertising, he landed a mail room job in an advertising agency. It was onward and upward from there. Before long he became an assistant producer on “Major Bowes Amateur Hour” on CBS, followed by the same job on “The Gracie Fields Show” on NBC.

Then he made the big leap to directing with the quiz show “Battle of the Boroughs” on the Mutual Network. On the same network, he directed Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.” He directed “Dunninger, the Mental Marvel” at CBS, and then it was back to NBC to direct and produce “The Wayne King Show.”

Our inductee was now a man in high demand. He produced the “Andre Kostelanetz Show” with a sixty-five piece orchestra at CBS; he directed the “Charlie Chan” and “Ellery Queen” shows on NBC.

Our honoree was also the unwitting catalyst for a slice of television history. Here’s how he told the story to me: “I was directing a quiz show in New York and our writer decided to leave. The word went out that we needed a replacement. We received an application that had a sample question for the show in it. Evidently the person had checked an almanac and discovered that the Queen Mary in New York Harbor at low tide had only seven feet of water under it, so he wrote – ‘At low tide in the New York Harbor could a diver walk under the Queen Mary and reach up to tickle her keel?’ Yes, we hired him.

“Our new writer asked if he could meet the MC. So, one night before air time, he arrived just as the MC came into the control room and I said – ‘Bill Todman, meet our MC, Mark Goodson.’ There was no way to know then that this chance meeting would lead to a whole new chapter in network broadcasting. When Goodson-Todman moved into offices on 6th Avenue, Bill wrote me, for a laugh, that they were thinking of putting a plaque on the back wall with my name on it.”

There’s so much more this genuine broadcast pioneer has done in his stellar career. But now it’s time to meet him. Health reasons prevented him from being here in person, but he’s on the screen. Ladies and gentlemen, our new Diamond Circle member, Mr. Fred Essex!

Larry Vanderveen presents the award to Fred Essex