"TELEVISION IS MY LIFE
IF IT DON’T KILL ME FIRST"
Stan Hitchcock
 In 1966 I was chosen to host a new television show coming out of Nashville and playing all across America. I reckon the reason I was chosen was because the name of the show was, "The Stan Hitchcock Show" and it just kinda fit me. This was during the early years combining music and television and new stuff was being developed…it was exciting times. Little did I know that I was taking my life in my hands (not to mention my body parts) as I eagerly entered the world of live television.
We had decided that to compete with the other shows featuring Country music, we had to do more of a production type show and not just a stand-at-the-mike-and-sing show. We would open the show, after going to commercial immediately following the introduction, with a themed number that had some kind of unique twist to it. The production studio at the station had just installed an effects called "Chroma Key" that allowed you to put different backgrounds behind singers, using rear screen projection and we had a ball with it.
We were shooting a series of thirteen shows, two shows a day for a week, and we had invited the sponsor of the shows, the Chairman of the Board of Campana and his wife, to visit the set and watch some shows being produced. They were seated in comfortable chairs in the studio, and we had gone out of our way to impress them with our good production.
I was scheduled to sing a song about traveling to start the show off and the director had brought in a parachute specialist from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to strap me into a parachute harness. Now the plan was this; they would hook a block and tackle to the ceiling of the studio, tie the parachute cords to a rope, run it through the block and tackle, hook me to the cords, and pull me up to the top of the ceiling, about twenty feet off the concrete floor. Then they would super-impose a picture of an airplane flying along and a parachutist jumping out, then cut to me being slowly lowered down on the rope, holding to the parachute cords, singing my song. Everything was working fine as the crew hauled in the rope and pulled me up to the top of the studio, even though this parachute harness was a little tight, and kinda binding me where it crossed between my legs, and my entire weight was centered on a…lets say…uncomfortable area. The cameras were ready, the music started, the film of the plane was rolling, and the director gave the signal for me to start singing and for the boys on the rope to slowly start letting me down. I don’t know what happened, but somehow the rope slipped, and when they grabbed it, it jerked and one of my precious body parts got caught under the parachute straps that were between my legs. Excruciating pain, tears in the eyes, no way to get it out because my whole body weight was on it, singing at the top of my voice, hitting high notes that only a dog could hear, every color of the rainbow flashing before my eyes, oh why did I choose a three minute song, I don’t care about television anymore, am I being punished to make me be more humble? Oooooooooooome!...at last I felt the concrete floor under my boots, and the 150 pounds of pressure suddenly let up. I stood there, weak in the knees, still with tears in my eyes, when the director hollered "Cut, that’s a take." The Chairman of the Board and his wife hurried over to where I was standing, trying to get my breath and said, "My boy, that was the most emotional performance I have ever witnessed, our company is proud to be associated with you." I mumbled my thanks and stumbled to the dressing room, where I did a quick inventory and found that everything was still there, but black and blue, and throbbing like all get out. I remembered the old show biz saying, "Break a Leg", but man, this was asking too much.
Well, after that fiasco, I should have known better, but, show biz folk are not known for their common sense, just their creative sense. A couple of shows later the Director decided that he had a fool proof idea for the setting of my singing of "Jambalaya" and asked me to climb up into an aluminum fishing boat they had rigged up on some three foot high saw horses. The idea was for me to set in the boat, with my fishing rod, act like I’m fishing, while they show a scene of the Louisiana bayous on the screen behind me. They had to elevate the boat up the three foot height to get the right angle. Meanwhile, the director had told a couple of stage hands to crouch down, out of sight of the cameras, and gently rock the boat, to give the illusion of the movement of waves. Ok, everything in place. Lights, Camera, Action.....Start Music....Cue Stan....Sing...Ok, rock boat......easy, not that much......watch it.....look out......Woooooow, I am laying flat on my back, with the dang boat on top of me, and I feel like every bone in my body is broken. The energetic stage hands had rocked the boat all right, right off those three foot high saw horses, and crashing down on that old concrete floor that I am getting to know so well. It wasn’t the fall so much as it was that sudden stop, and then the boat landing on top of me. Ok, everyone take a ten minute break while we get the boat set back up....."Stan, go back to make-up...your face looks funny".
Until next time friends…..
Stan
stan@bluehighwaystv.com
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