Al Schwartz Live

By Susan Lampert Smith '82

"When I went out to the Rose Bowl, I sent a letter to Bob Hope and Jimmy Durante," Schwartz recalls, saying he told the stars that he'd played the Durante role in the Haresfoot production of Red, Hot and Blue. "We met them both. It was like talking to the gods." Dave Weiner '54, Schwartz's former college roommate, remembers that his pal was "delirious" about meeting the two stars, and that Schwartz and Durante hit it off especially well. "Al would hit it off with anybody," he adds.

After a year at WKOW, Schwartz was drafted into the army. The station bid him farewell by televising his GI haircut live. Even in the military, Schwartz was destined for show business. He was assigned to an officers' club in Japan and charged with booking the entertainment acts. His job involved prowling the Ginza entertainment district of Tokyo, previewing and booking the best performers. As with talent scouts everywhere, his presence created a stir, and he enjoyed the unexpected perk. "I was treated like royalty for a guy who was a private in the army,'' he says.

Back home, Schwartz was hired at WBBM, the CBS station in Chicago. It was there that he stage-managed the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate.

"I was sent by the makeup man, Sid Simons, to fetch both Kennedy and Nixon," Schwartz says. "Kennedy went to makeup when he was called; Nixon told me he didn't need any. The next day, Nixon told the press that he was never asked or offered makeup."

During those Windy City years, Schwartz joined the famed Second City comedy troupe. He also met the woman he would marry.

Schwartz recalls that his Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) fraternity brothers were coming to town for the Northwestern-Wisconsin game. He immediately thought of two twin sisters who sang on his station's radio affiliate. What better way to impress the guys than to arrive with a pair of beautiful twins, one on each arm? Joan Boyd turned him down, but she said her sister, Jayne, wasn't busy.

"I thought, 'Oh, okay, I'll just take one,' " Schwartz says. "We went to the game, and knew right away that love and marriage were in our future. We've been married for thirty-eight years."

The Boyd sisters went on to become the original Doublemint Twins, promoting Wrigley's slogan, "Double your pleasure, double your fun," and becoming commercial icons of the 1960s.

By 1968, Al and Jayne Schwartz had three little kids and were headed to Hollywood. The success of NBC's Laugh In had the other networks scrambling for competitors. Based on his Second City experience, Schwartz was hired to direct the ABC comedy show What's It All About, World? Despite ABC's stated desire for cutting-edge comedy, Schwartz says that fear of network censors and a "white-bread host" meant the show never hit its potential. It lasted one season. But for ABC in the 1960s, Schwartz says, that wasn't too bad.

"There was a joke going around that if ABC had produced the Vietnam War, it would have been over in thirteen weeks," he adds.

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