Al Schwartz Live

By Susan Lampert Smith '82

Open with the birth of television: Schwartz took the first TV production class at the University of Wisconsin and helped launch Madison's first commercial television station a few months after he graduated.

Cut to the historic first televised debate between presidential candidates. Schwartz was there as stage manager when Kennedy debated Nixon in 1960. The camera loved Kennedy, while Nixon (who Schwartz says turned down his offer of makeup) came off as the sweaty, whiskered face that sunk a thousand votes.

Time for a commercial? Enter the Doublemint Twins. Schwartz tried to date both the Wrigley chewing gum icons at the same time to impress his Madison fraternity brothers, and eventually married Jayne Boyd, one of the originals.

And then we return to our programming, with a segment from American Bandstand. Schwartz, who has been Dick Clark's right-hand man for twenty-four years, deserves the cool-dad Emmy for getting his then-teenage daughters on the show as dancers.

Schwartz laughs when he describes the "wall-to-wall-celebrities" reality of his job - from Julia to J-Lo, from Dustin Hoffman to Celine Dion. As producer of awards shows ranging from the Emmys and Golden Globes to the American Music Awards and MTV Awards, Schwartz revels in the glamorous and stressful world of live television.

In fact, at an age when some of his classmates have retired to the golf course, Schwartz, sixty-eight, seems only to have accelerated. If you had tried catching up with him this past spring, you would have found him in Sri Lanka, where he produced a piece on Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, for the Academy Awards. Then it was on to Vancouver, where he is producer of the Fox TV series Beyond Belief.

To hear Schwartz tell it, his road to Tinseltown began at Camp Randall Stadium, where the Chicago native displayed the first signs of his ability to ad-lib by faking "Varsity." The year was 1951, and Schwartz, a junior college transfer, had just moved to an attic apartment on campus. He knew no one.

"The first good thing that happened to me was that I heard they needed someone to emcee a show before a football game at Camp Randall," he recalls. "They hired me, and I had to lead 'Varsity.' I had no idea of the words or how to sing it. I had to fake it!"

But that show introduced him to what would become a lifelong group of friends who also loved to perform. He soon joined Haresfoot, a show business club named for the rabbit's foot used to apply stage makeup. The group traveled the Midwest on a train, performing musical comedies at stops along the way. In those days, women weren't permitted to travel with men, so the guys happily performed the roles of both genders.

"Our motto was, 'All our girls are men, yet every one's a lady,' " Schwartz says. UW Regent Roger Axtell '53, a lifelong friend, remembers Schwartz as "an early version of Jerry Lewis," adding, "Al was a natural comedian. He had all the right timing, body language, and plastic facial expressions to be the perfect clown."

Haresfoot, which was founded on campus in the 1890s and counted luminaries such as Fredric March '20 as members, died out during the 1960s. But by then Schwartz and his buddies had moved on to a new performance medium: television.

In the spring of 1953, when Schwartz graduated, all three networks were vying to be the first on the air in Madison. And ABC (WKOW-Channel 27) won the race on July 3, 1953, in part by hiring Schwartz and his classmates.

"It was kind of like summer stock. We built scenery, swept the floors, and did everything," Schwartz says. For the princely salary of $36 a week, he also hosted two live television shows: Club 27, which he describes as a Johnny Carson-style guest interview show, and Al's Pals, a kids' show.

Thanks to the success of the Badger football team, 1953 was also the year that Schwartz first encountered Hollywood and its celebrities.

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