Wait 'till the fire turns green

Yeah, I know, I know; I'm a day too late. So what?

In a more than 40-year career as radio and TV host, Jerry G. Bishop won three Emmys and toured with the Beatles, but he may be best remembered as the original Svengoolie.

Mr. Bishop hosted "Screaming Yellow Theater," a horror-film show on WFLD-Ch. 32 from 1970 to 1973, as the coffin-dwelling hippie with a wacky sense of humor. His character has a devoted following to this day, family and former colleagues said.

"He was making really creative TV on almost no budget," said Wally Podrazik, curator at Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications. "I'd call Jerry G. Bishop the master of the non sequitur and running gag. Not just as Svengoolie, but as a radio DJ with a superb timing and a sense of unabashed silliness."

...which is exactly what you want in a horror movie show host, right?

To wit:

Plus a few clips with his chosen (?) successor, Rich Koz:

And let's not forget one of the most obvious ploys a horror show host can utilize: shameless pandering to the sensibilities of those male fans who've already hit puberty, shown right here (NOTE: there's nothing in this clip that's so raw that it can't be shown; it's just that FuzzyMemoriesTV insists on starting them on Play mode automatically, which means that the sound for this Tina McDowall segment possibly might be on whenever you arrive at this site. Hence, the link.

First, some historical news footage:

And then The Speech itself.

When I got to the lounge, there was an older fellow sitting at one of the tables by himself, so I sat down and said something along the lines of, Hi, I’m John Scalzi, I’m a new member of SFWA. And he said, hello, I’m Harry Harrison. And I thought, Holy CRAP, because, you know, Harry Harrison. Within a minute of sitting down in the SFWA Suite, I was talking with one of the living legends of the genre. He was gracious enough to give me some of his time and to suffer my interminable rambling, because even though I referred to this as my first peer-t0-peer conversation, come on. My first novel wouldn’t be released for two years yet; meanwhile Harry Harrison had dozens to his name. The fact he treated me like a peer, however, was something I appreciated and noted well for future reference.

Yes, I was a fan of Harry Harrison’s. When SFWA named him a Grand Master, I was very well pleased. I think it’s worth noting that in his storied career, Harrison never won a Hugo (he was nominated twice, in the Novel category) and had a share in only a single Nebula (for Soylent Green, adapted from his book). The measure of someone’s influence and stature as a writer is not always immediate; the Grand Master award was a fine way of noting that Harrison’s work and reputation built over an entire career. And that’s an encouraging thing.