INT: So where we left off was you're talking about your, the traveling, the remote shows [THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW], particularly talking about Israel. The surprises of guess what, Merv's gonna be conducting a, the Israeli Orchestra [Israel Philharmonic Orchestra], whatever. And as much as I had said what great freedom for Merv, still, for you, first of all you had to be seat of your pants so much that you must have come back with just miles and miles of footage. And how did these become shows, and who was responsible for that?

DC: Well, I became the Editor for this particular show in Israel. And we put an editing, a machine for, I think we were on three-quarter tape by then, I think, or half, I forget. Anyway, well the whole funny thing was, the whole trip is that we never got enough footage as we went along. We would do something and, 'cause he was reading cue cards occasionally, and he would, I remember halfway through the shoot, Bob Murphy, the Producer, would turn to the AD [Associate Director] and Kevin [Kevin McCarthy] and say, "How much time do we have left to do?" Say, "Oh, you've got an hour left." Or, I mean, everything was so, done so quick, short bits that we didn't really have enough material. The end result is, when we got back we did not have enough. Merv wanted to make two shows out of it, which we really had to stretch to make two shows out of it. And so we, he came up with a--Merv sent Mike Doherty to New York and interview Bishop Sheen [Fulton J. Sheen], who'd done television. He’s very interesting, so Mike did that. We got an opera singer to come over from the Met [Metropolitan Opera] and I went to a rare screen of something religious, not religious but kind of churchy if you will. And he sang us an op--something to do with, and fitting, something fitting. I don't recall. "How much show we got now Kevin?" "Oh, we're about 10 minutes short." This is after all that. Because we would race through these things and Merv would only, he didn't, you know, he, wanted to go, go, go. And so he, said, "No problem. Take your camera, come over to this church here in Beverly Hills. I'll play, I'm gonna play some organ music for the..." So that's what we did. We came over, and he played the church organ. And I think we got by on that. But we lost logs, one long segment I must say. They decided, Merv--I think it was Merv's idea. He, it sounded like a good idea. There are so many religions there [Israel]. And the idea was that we would ask a Christian, a Jewish, Protestant, so forth. They're all there. And they came, and we did it in Teddy Kollek's office, which was not very large. And we had a semicircle of these people. And they're quite, dressed really, really nicely with all the... And I don't know if we had a moderator. Mr. Griffin wasn't there. It was, we had, maybe Teddy Kollek did it. I don't remember. Anyway, they spoke very quietly and slowly. And we're trying to mic all these people. And in editing it wasn't very audible. We brought Merv down to the bay, edit bay and I said, "Merv this, I don't know if this is usable or not. Would you please watch it?" And he watched it and he says, "That's all right. We don't need it." So we dropped that. That's a good 20 minutes gone. And, but nothing bothered Merv on that. I don't know what he, he said, "Don't worry about it."

DC: Anyway, so I did this in my office after shows [THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW]. After I did a show, I'd go up to my office, and I would have the tapes there, and I would play back, and I would make my editing notes. And we would take that to, I don't know what we did then. Gave it to somebody, and put it together. I was just making a-- [INT: Paper cut?] --reel, yeah. It was a lot of work and especially, you know, doing a show that same day perhaps and then-- [INT: You'd have to go...] Yeah, it was a lot of work. And then I had to find music. I had no idea... I wasn't ready when I had to go out. We didn't have a Music Producer like a lot of editing bays had, you know. And I had to play a lot of LPs trying to find an opening theme and all of that. Yeah, I did the whole thing. [INT: You pretty much had the freedom to do all of that and then would, those, and of course Merv ultimately would sign off.] Oh, they were off on another trip, working on their next trip. I hadn't even finished this one. But I got it done and got an Emmy, so I, hey, not too bad. [INT: Yeah. Not too bad. You're telling the story and again this is, I won't spend time 'cause it's… I remember 1982 he’d done a show in Ireland with, I think, the Irish prime minister who then--it was for St. Patrick's Day. But then by the time the St. Patrick's Day air, showed that this fellow was not reelected. So I think a whole show had to be put back together--] Oh, yeah. [INT: --again. So that was '82. Were you still, yeah, you were--] Yeah. Let's see. [INT: I remember--] Yeah. I was there. [INT : --I was communicating with Kevin [Kevin McCarthy].] I think it might have been a film thing that they, sometimes he would take a film Crew over and do stuff like that. [INT: But just you're talking about having to grab things to make enough content for the St. Patrick Show, because this whole thing had to be dropped. And actually I got to go to Neary's pub, and I did Peter O'Toole, and I went to, did Mickey Rooney out in front of SUGAR BABIES, just grabbing footage and sending--I remember communicating--] Oh did you? [INT: --with Kevin, much like the story you told.] Yeah. That's-- [INT: Having to put together a show.] You kind of, you use what you can get, and that's it. You know, you make a show out of it.

INT: Let's see. I'm looking to see that it's not here, but I'm remembering about the White House interviews [for THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW]?

DC: That was quite unusual because no one had ever--this is the Reagans: Ronald Reagan and Nancy [Nancy Reagan]. No one had--first of all, the background is Merv [Merv Griffin] and Mrs. Reagan were contract players at Warner Bros. about the same. So they had a long history of friendship. They had same birthday or very close to it. [INT: That's right.] Yeah, remember that? And-- [INT: That's right. July, early July.] The governor, when he was governor of California, they were on two or three times for interviews in Hollywood. So they were invited or, to go to the White House, to the private living quarters up on the second or third floor, I forget. And it had never been done before. No president had ever done this before. So we all arrive and, to do this, to the White House, and it was quite exciting. And we're ushered up to the second floor, and Mrs. Reagan is there and, 'cause we're gonna do her--he, the president is busy doing other things down below, so we did her interview first, she and Merv. And in the other room where I had the monitor, we had the two cameras. Didn't switch, of course, we just had, everybody rolled at the same time. And there were two or three people of his advisors. I forget the one fellow who was the main fellow. And they watched the monitor and make sure everything was cool. And then the president came up, and came in, and he's really impressive man, big, shake that hand and it was very exciting. I got a picture with him, and Merv was there and anyway… It turned out very nice. We had a very just simple interview between the two of them, and then we packed up and left. That's all there was to it. I put it together later, A and B roll and switched it to a master. Yeah. [INT: Yeah.]

INT: You mentioned, I guess, in relation to the Israel show, your Emmy [Daytime Emmy]. You won a couple of Emmy's for Merv's show [THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW], right? I know you were nominated.

DC: Well, I forget. I have five. And some for WHEEL [WHEEL OF FORTUNE] and some for MERV. Yeah. [INT: Yeah. Did you say that the Israel show in particular, did that one win or...] You know, I gotta tell you, I don't have copies of anything. Even all back, making Kinescopes back in the '60s [1960s] was very, very expensive. I didn't make--I didn't have a reel. I always thought the Griffin shows would be available to us being part of the, but they're now in a storage somewhere and very hard to get I guess. I checked. I tried to get some. But anyway, yeah. I wish I did have a copy of some of those shows. [INT: Yeah. Absolutely.]

INT: Before we move on or move away from MERV GRIFFIN SHOW, I know you mentioned Kevin McCarthy as your long-time AD [Associate Director]. And a couple of times Ray Sneath's name has come up. And I have to ask you about your relationship with Ray because, for me personally, I wouldn't be sitting here in this building as a Directors Guild Stage Manager if it weren't for my mentor Ray Sneath. So I'm hoping I could ask you a little bit about that relationship?

DC: He was a lot like you. You both had wonderful, winning personalities. But both of you, especially Ray, he had a relationship with Merv that made it wonderful. It was like, I could say to Ray, "I want to know something. What are we..." And he'll, he'd get the information or he already had it. He knew a lot of what was going on. And he was a great source there to, connection. Oh, he was terrific. And you too. I mean you, both of you were top drawer. I, you know, when you're in a booth kind of enclo--you don't really know what's going on backstage. And you would say, "I got so and so here. He's ready to go. Dah, dah, dah, dah." "Fine. Yeah." "But he wants a drink," or something, yeah. You kind of knew. You're the guy, the contact between the talent-- [INT: I always said we're the eyes and the ears for the Director.] Absolutely. Yeah. I-- [INT: And mouthpiece for the Director.] That's right. And you needed that. And you need that. And I'll link one cray… When we were doing a live New Year's Eve show, the last one, in Merv's hotel in Atlantic City, live. And some of the talent was, hardly made it there. I remember the Pointer Sisters. We had no rehearsal a lot of times with these people. Live show. And they were up next, and you said, "I only have one Pointer Sister." [LAUGH] But there are three, really. And we were like, "Oh, that's next. What are we gonna do next?" And I'm sure you were running around looking for the other Pointer Sisters. You got 'em on at the last minute, you know. And Merv, you can't, he doesn't, nothing bothers this guy. And I guess Ray or you were giving the cue or somebody, "We got 'em. We got 'em. Introduce 'em." I mean that's the way those live New Year's Eve shows, what'd we do, four or five of, three or four. [INT: Yeah. Yeah. I think I only did the one with you.] Oh did you? [INT: I was honored to be able to, that you asked me.] One was probably enough, wasn't it? [INT: Oh, you know, I'd been doing a lot of others and now maybe Ray, I'm not even sure Ray could go, but you had asked him to go.] They were, it was pretty wild. And, but yeah. Can't do without a good AD or a... yeah. [INT: Well, the best Stage Managers, and I learned it from Ray, is you take pride in being part of the team. And, you know, one thing I always said, "Director's the boss" you know. I, you know, I clear this with the Director back and forth. I learned that from him. And I, it carried with me through my career so--] Good. [INT: --I had good, a good start with you guys.]

INT: So WHEEL OF FORTUNE happens. As many people know, Merv, as well, he was a game show host, player hunchback when he was auditioning for THE TONIGHT SHOW, and then created JEOPARDY. And JEOPARDY had its long run, and then WHEEL OF FORTUNE.

DC: So you were, this is the middle of THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW run that--] Yes, oh definitely. [INT: --WHEEL OF FORTUNE was created. And he manages to sell it to NBC. And, were you the original Director?] No, no. [INT: Or were you doing both? Or how did that work?] No I think the original pilot was done, it might have been Marty Pasetta. [INT: I think it was, actually.] It might have been. I know after the [THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW] Venice [Italy] trip, which was really a, almost really getting, really, very, it was getting very difficult. And I felt that it was time to talk to Merv. And after the Venice trip, I walked into his office and I said, "Merv, I'm still working on the last show almost, and I just, it's too much." And he says, "Oh, I'm sorry. That was a tough shoot in Venice, wasn't it?" And I said, "Really." He said, "Oh, why don't you do WHEEL OF FORTUNE?" Just like that. I mean bam. And I said, "Perfect. Get out of this rat race." I mean it was really getting a lot of stuff. And he was very kind, and I went over to, started doing WHEEL. And at first it was like a vacation for me. I mean, you know, you'd go in on a weekend, as you know, and you might do three shows, and you might do five, do a whole month's worth of shows in two or three days. So I really enjoyed that. It was a nice change. So they brought another Director in and he took over. And Kevin [Kevin McCarthy] was still the AD [Associate Director] on the show.

DC: And about, gosh I don't know how many months went by, I get a call from Bob Murphy. He says, "Dick, would you consider coming back to do MERV [THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW]? He would like that if you could." And I said, "Yeah. But what about WHEEL?" "Oh you arrange it. You can do both." But anyway, Bob knew I was wanting to get off this railroad track that I was on. And I agreed. Bob Murphy could talk you in, anybody into anything, really. So I came back and I was doing both. And we, you know, it was hard. We'd do MERV three shows I think, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday let's say. And on the weekend I'd go to NBC and do the game show [WHEEL OF FORTUNE] for a couple of days. Well we didn't do WHEEL every weekend. [INT: That's true.] So there was a weekend occasionally in there and I was-- [INT: But you were home. That's, you weren't travelling and that was the other good thing.] Oh yeah, absolutely. And no travelling. And it seemed to work. I, again, I had great people around me and it was great. It worked out. I had Mark Corwin-- [INT: Mark Corwin.] --as an AD [Associate Director]. [INT: The late...] And Robin Corwin was on the-- [INT: That's right.] --producing on the floor. [INT: Talk about family.] It was family. It was good. [INT: There were a couple people that met and married.] It was fun. [INT: I think there were a lot of...]

DC: The only problem with WHEEL [WHEEL OF FORTUNE], they hadn't really moved technically into the next generation. Other game shows had Chyron and all this stuff. Our Producer didn't want to spend the money. We were still doing the old chalkboard. You take a camera over and pan down and… You know, and we tried to talk him into, let's update this, you know. Finally we did, but yeah, it… Plus, it was a whole different format. It took a lot of rehearsal. The prizes were on a big wheel and then we had to pre-shoot every prize. We had a cove over in the corner. [INT: When you were talking about the beer commercial it made me think about shooting that jewelry in the cove. That would take...] We would shoot all, pretape all this jewelry in case somebody won this ring, boom. Get that tape up 'cause we're gonna play it back. So they were long. And the post was, not post but prep was a lot of work. And I gotta hand it to Robin and her people. They got all this stuff in, furniture, living rooms. And that was hard. Later they dropped that format. They didn't do the actual prizes. They would roll a piece of tape. You could win this or you could win that. Got rid of all that carousel business. That took a lot of time to set it up, light it, tear it down. Yeah. [INT: Also, I'd say it was fun for us on the floor. It was a lot of work, but it was fun making that big machine work.] Yeah. [INT: But you're right. Thinking back there was a higher tech way to do some of that but...]

INT: Then WHEEL OF FORTUNE started to travel some, and what was that like? And...

DC: Well, that was fun at first, you know. I think we started with a Hawaii trip. I figured how they gonna get all that to Hawaii, all that huge… We did it. We taped from the hotel in Hawaii overlooking the ocean. It's beautiful. It was like a vacation for some of 'em, you know. Not, you know... But then we started going back East to, that was interesting, Radio City Music Hall. [INT: I did one week with you at Radio City Music Hall.] Yeah. I had never even been in Radio City Music Hall, even though on THE TONIGHT SHOW [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON] my office was right--I could see Radio City Music Hall. But yeah, that was exciting. That was-- [INT: Place was packed as I recall.] Yeah. [INT: I mean we filled Radio Music.] Oh yeah. It was a big deal and it still is. But yeah, we taped at Lincoln Center, at the big theater there. But WHEEL was New York City. We did that, 'cause that was… never done a big show in a-- [INT: Radio...] --major place like that. But yeah, we went... Oh, and some of the cities we went to twice, you know. I went, we did Boston, San Francisco twice. We did Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; it just went on and on many places, yeah.

DC: I was still doing THE MERV SHOW too. But on THE GRIFFIN SHOW, especially, we did a lot of great music. I was really thrilled with a lot of stuff that we did. And on THE TONIGHT SHOW [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON] too. Fantastic band there with all major players. You know, Doc Severinsen was playing first trumpet, eventually became the conductor. And all, like you mentioned with Merv [Merv Griffin], we had big name-- [INT: The best.] All guys who all played in the '40 bands. [INT: Mort Lindsey was Merv's conductor. Had conducted for Judy Garland and Barbara Streisand and arranged, and the world's greatest bass player, Ray Brown. And that was their daily gig, coming to play on THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW. It was fantastic.] Yeah.

DC: There was a couple of things that I didn't mention if there were time. Speaking of theater in New York on THE TONIGHT SHOW [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON]. There's a show called “Hair” on Broadway. Producer said, "I got two tickets. I want you to go to “Hair” and see the shows tonight because they're gonna come and do a whole segment on THE TONIGHT SHOW. I said, "Tomorrow night?" "Yes." So the AD [Associate Director], Bob Quinn at that time, we said, "Here we go. We're going to ‘Hair’." And we go in. And it was quite an experience because the first time they seemed to have a little nudity, and they were making a lot of it. It was a wonderful show. Try and find out what's, they're gonna do. Well we kept the stage empty and they came in. I guess it was a pretape I think. Yeah, it was because we couldn't, and they had a show to do themselves. So in comes, I look out the control room window and there's about 25 people there. And they're all in their costumes and everything and I said, "What do we do here?" [LAUGH] You know? And I had some of the Producers, I guess, nearby. And I said to camera, I said, "Just shoot anything. I'll take anything and we'll dissolve around." Because, [SINGS] "Let the sunshine in, let the...", and they're dancing, and there's no blocking, you just, bunch of people. Well they loved it, 'cause we were taking weird shots and slowing a dissolve to a guy dancing and then we'd get a close up, you know what I mean? [INT: Yeah. You're doing psychedelic...] And they loved it. Oh yeah, we made it psychedelic lights and everything. I mean that was the kind of thing that would happen, you know. And, but we would get Broadway singers like, I was told that Barbara Streisand's going to come on and sing. Well I read somewhere she'd never done a talk show. I read later after I was long gone. And I said, "Wait a minute. She was on THE TONIGHT SHOW." So I looked up the date and she...

DC: But I gotta tell you a very brief story about Barbara Streisand. She was in a Broadway show; I think it was her first show. [INT: “Funny Girl”.] I saw her later in the other show. And so we meet on [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON] stage and she walks out and... That's another thing about Ray Sneath, or, he introduced me. You know, he brings this talent out. I don't have to search her, you know. "Barbara, this is Dick." And we said, "Hi." She was going to sing “Cry Me a River”, big... And she said, "What are these three cameras for?" I said, "Well the center camera really is the number one camera, the other cameras might take side shot." She said, "I want one camera." I said, "You got it." And she sang “Cry Me a River”. She says, "Just keep the camera in front of me." And she did, because that's her audience. She said, "I'll give you some angles." And she put on a performance that just blew me away. It was great. And I used to think she didn't like the-- [INT: Right was wrong.] --she didn't like her profile. And she came back a second time. I thought well that's great. One camera. I'm gonna put one camera out there, make her feel at home. But I'd built a set with mirrors behind her. And each mirror had a... But all she saw was one camera. I don't think she ever knew it was being... [INT: Yeah. Good for you.] It was just an effect. And she came back a third time. And I thought, well, this is, that's a good sign. In the meantime she had done a big special at Central Park. And I said, "Well I gotta watch this." Well the Director that did that... [INT: Dwight Hemion.] ...my favorite director... [INT: I think it was Dwight, wasn't it? Wasn't it Dwight Hemion?] Who? [INT: Dwight Hemion.] Dwight Hemion. Thank you. Loved him. I had met him earlier years ago. I won't go into that, how. But all of a sudden, I'm looking, and here's a side shot, big profile. Well I guess she's changed her mind. And she looked marvelous. I mean-- [INT: As long as it was the left profile, she was...] --very classic. And I thought, hmm. Anyway, she did come on third time. And this is quite unusual. She rehearses with the orchestra and I can tell they're, she's working with 'em pretty good. So now she leaves and gets ready for the show and she comes out and she's introduced to sing first. I can't tell you the name of the song. But it was, she's just standing in one mark. And she's singing the song, and she's, right in the middle of the song, she looks over at Skitch [Skitch Henderson]. I don't think she threw him a glance. She stopped, quit singing, and walked over, and sat down with Johnny [Johnny Carson]. It was never discussed. I never heard anything later why, I don't think she liked the tempo or something like that. Unusual. But three times. [INT: Three times is...] Yeah. [INT: ...yeah. Three times is..] It was quite an experience.