My name is Peter Imber. I’ve Googled myself and discovered there are a number of other Peter Imbers in the world. I’m the one who lives in Maine with the hot wife. Sure, I’m bragging but it’s true. It’s also true that I’ve had an interesting life on top of a good one so far. Anyway, I’ve been a Facebook poster for a number of years and I’ve entertained my FB friends with stories from my life and career and now, I want to see if I blast further into cyberspace whether or not anybody will detect my presence.
For most of my working life I was in television news and privileged to work at its highest level. I was a videotape editor and then a field producer for ABC News and was based in its Los Angeles office. I covered bad and sad stuff for the network mostly in the Western United States. Fires, plane crashes, earthquakes, riots, murders– I spent a year on O.J. Simpson and nearly lost my mind. But what I liked most to do were stories that were not in the headlines or admittedly that important but to me were interesting, even fascinating and worth sharing with our viewers. I like to tell people that much of the time my work was introduced with exactly the same words. Peter Jennings or the other ABC News anchors would introduce something I produced with the words “Finally, tonight…”
These stories were called show closers or end pieces or enders. I have uploaded a bunch of them to YouTube and you can watch them by going to:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDRB2el9OnbUwpDyuB3cKtw
So, this my first post on my blog Pawned Accordion. Yes, there is a story behind my choosing that as its name. I’m sure I’ll get to it. But for now here’s a tale about one of my experiences at ABC News just doing my job…
Twenty years ago I was asked to do a piece about Bozo the Clown. We’d gotten a press release about him celebrating his 50th year in show business and the quirky ABC News overnight broadcast, watched mainly by insomniacs and the incarcerated, wanted it for their show.
The late Larry Harmon was the man who developed and owned the Bozo the Clown empire which he licensed to many local television stations around the country and the world each then hiring their own Bozo. By the late 1960s Harmon had licensed Bozo shows in nearly every major U.S. television market. Harmon’s autobiography is titled “The Man behind the Nose” even though he rarely dressed up as the clown he so successfully marketed. I interviewed him at his office in Los Angeles on Hollywood Blvd.
When we finished Harmon made the rest of my assignment very easy by offering me a large box of tapes with an amazing variety of Bozo milestones– Bozo on safari in Africa, Bozo riding an elephant in India, Bozo with the Pope in Rome, Bozo floating weightless while training with the astronauts… And in the box was also a printout with a timeline of Bozo’s many additional accomplishments, but as I looked at it something else leaped off the page.
Now, I knew Larry Harmon hadn’t been the original Bozo the Clown and had purchased the rights to a character who had already existed. But what I didn’t know and what the timeline let slip was that Bozo the Clown wasn’t 50 at all. He was at that moment actually only 47!
I phoned Harmon to clear things up. “Larry, I think we have problem. According to the information you’ve given me, Bozo isn’t really 50 this year,” I said in a gotcha voice.
There was a long silence on the other end of the line and then Harmon spoke, “So?”
I went ahead and did the story… Please click below if you want to watch it…
pawnedaccordion 