Louie, Take a Look at This! Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Luis A. Fuerte

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Prospect Park Books

  2359 Lincoln Avenue

  Altadena, CA 91001

  www.prospectparkbooks.com

  Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

  www.cbsd.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress. The following is for reference only:

  Names: Fuerte, Luis, author; Duron, David, co-author

  Title: Louie, take a look at this! My time with Huell Howser

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781945551031 (ebook)

  Subjects: Huell Howser—Biography. | Huell Howser and Luis Fuerte—Memoir. | “California’s Gold”—television.

  Book layout and design by Amy Inouye, Future Studio

  I dedicate this book to my lovely wife, Gloria,

  for her support, inspiration, and encouragement,

  and to all the people who have told their stories

  to Huell Howser (and later, to me),

  for without them this book would not be possible.

  “All you have to do is open your eyes and have a sense of adventure and go out and find them for yourself. I’m convinced that if you put a spotlight on any person or any subject, and you’re genuinely interested in them, you can make something people enjoy watching.”

  — Huell Howser

  CONTENTS

  Introduction: That’s Amaaazing!

  Meeting Huell

  Our Backgrounds

  KCET’s Golden Age of Television

  Nita & the Genesis of California’s Gold

  California’s Gold Takes Shape

  Our Working Relationship

  How We Shot California’s Gold

  The Physical Challenges

  Bloopers, Blunders, & Things Gone Wrong

  Themed Shows & Opportunity Shoots

  The California Missions

  Shoots I’ll Always Remember

  Huell in Control

  Beyond California’s Gold

  Huell Behind the Scenes

  Huell’s Impact

  Leaving California’s Gold

  Huell’s Illness

  Epilogue

  Our California’s Gold Shows

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  About the Authors

  Introduction

  THAT’S AMAAAZING!

  I’m Louie. I’m the cameraman who Huell Howser called out to in KCET’s beloved series California’s Gold. Viewers so often heard him exclaim, “Louie, take a look at this!” but I rarely went in front of the camera. My given name is Luis Alejandro Fuerte, but I’m more comfortable with Luis or Louie.

  This is the story of the twelve years I worked with Huell as his cameraman. It’s not only the account of my personal recollections of the conversations, events, and experiences Huell and I shared during our years working together, but also the stories of the people we knew, both professionally and as guests in the shows. Most of all, it’s the story of two people with personalities and backgrounds so dissimilar, one wouldn’t think the two of us could ever get along. Yet our differences are what made us so perfectly matched as the shooting team you knew and loved on California’s Gold, Visiting with Huell Howser, and many other television productions.

  It is my hope that you’ll enjoy reading about all of these things as our story unfolds, and that you’ll find more than just interesting tidbits about Huell Howser. I also need to say that this project never could have happened without David Duron, a former producer at KCET and the man who helped me get these stories written, find photographs, and make the project happen. By the time you’re done with it, I hope you’ll come away pleased that you got to know the big, smiling man from Tennessee as I knew him.

  As I listened to Huell on our shoots, talking to people from all walks of life throughout the state of California, I came to realize that he was genuinely and deeply interested in the people he interviewed and their personal stories. He was truly fascinated with his discoveries, from the stupendous to the downright ordinary. They all mattered to him. And he especially loved the history of California, his adopted state.

  Knowing how much Huell cared about all these people, and California, inspired and even compelled me to do the best I could as his cameraman, so he could tell his stories exactly as he wanted them told. I am still saddened by the unexpected passing of my old friend and shooting partner. Every time I think of him, I can still hear his friendly Southern voice and the exuberant reactions to his discoveries—most famously, this rousing and endearing exclamation: “That’s amaaazing!”

  MEETING HUELL

  The year was 1987. In Los Angeles, KCET-TV was in the swing of the Golden Age of Television, and I was enjoying working there as an engineer. The public television station’s big production stages were busy with both national and local programs, and remote units were stationed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and other Southern California theaters to cover a variety of marvelous performances. It was a time of innovative, even daring productions that the area’s dozen or so commercial television stations either couldn’t or wouldn’t ever consider doing. And then came a local KCET show called Videolog.

  The idea behind Videolog was for a reporter-producer to make a three- to six-minute show about interesting people from all walks of life in Southern California. The stories were to be aired between regular programs when they ran short. In the television industry, these are called “interstitial programs.” We just called them fillers.

  To put it plainly, these little shows were major pains in the butt for the engineers (that’s what we early cameramen were, engineers) who shot them—not because they weren’t the high and mighty productions we liked to do, but because, more often than not, we had to go on all-day shoots with producers and came back with incomplete or half-baked stories. Often, producers would shoot everything in sight yet they’d still forget something and we’d have to go back out to shoot the missing elements—all for only a few minutes of story.

  Then along came Huell Howser.

  I first met Huell that year when I was assigned to shoot a Videolog episode for him. I saw an imposing man: about six-four and handsome, with short blond hair and big muscles showing through a tight shirt. Add an even bigger Tennessee-flavored voice, and you had a man who stood out from everyone else. I had heard that he was on the lot before that shoot—the word around the station was that he’d been hired to shoot Videologs on the side while he also worked at KCBS Channel 2 doing short features that ran in its news programs. I wish I could remember what we shot on that first Videolog we did together, but we did so many episodes and saw so much that those early shoots are all kind of lumped together in my head.

  Huell worked with many cameramen on his Videolog shoots, so getting to work with him was hit or miss. And we all wanted to work with him, because we saw that the man with the heavy Tennessee accent really knew his stuff. I recall that his style of shooting on Videolog was simple and straightforward. I’m pretty sure that Huell came to shoots with the whole story already in his head; he knew what he wanted the story to look like, how it should flow and develop, and he did his setups carefully to make sure his vision would happen.

  By working with Huell on the Videolog shows, a good cameraman who saw and understood his setups could get into the flow pretty easily. From just one setup, you could anticipate what he’d want to shoot next and always be ready for him. One of the be
st things that came from watching how Huell executed his vision of a story was that you could suggest shots that could serve as a bridge (or cover his narration), and he would actually listen to your ideas. Better yet, if he knew that you shared his vision, he’d be more likely to take the suggestion, and we’d shoot it.

  Huell’s style of shooting was also more cost effective, as he wasn’t overutilizing the engineers for the shoot or the editing. When he came back from a shoot, everything we needed was all there, so the story could be edited in only a few hours. The videotape editors loved him. Pretty soon, it seemed that Huell was doing all the Videologs.

  I loved to shoot for Huell and was always happy to see my name next to his on the assignment sheet. In fact, it was my work on one of the Videologs I shot for Huell that inspired him to ask me to be his cameraman on California’s Gold.

  Huell and Luis at the original KCET campus in Hollywood.

  The Howser family.

  Our Backgrounds

  HUELL’S EARLY YEARS

  If you’re reading this, I figure you’d like to know something right off the bat about Huell. So here’s a little bit about his upbringing, where he came from, and the path he set out on that brought him to KCET, where he and I would eventually meet.

  Huell Burnley Howser came into the world on October 18, 1945, in Gallatin, Tennessee, a small town northeast of Nashville, America’s country music capital. His parents were Harold and Jewell Howser, who combined their first names to come up with the unique name they gave their son. He and his sister, Harriett, enjoyed a happy and adventurous childhood, what he called an idyllic life. Their parents traveled with them often, and during the Christmas holidays, they’d take Huell and Harriett to New York City, where they saw Broadway plays and skated at Rockefeller Center. From an early age, Huell was exposed to people and places that were far outside of the experiences he knew growing up in a small town.

  After his high school graduation, Huell joined the Marine Corps, and from there he got involved in politics. He started as an aide in Howard Baker’s 1966 successful campaign for the Senate and later became a member of Baker’s Senate staff. After enrolling at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Huell wasted no time getting into campus politics. He also wrote for the school newspaper, and in his columns he had opinions on just about anything and everything that could affect students. From an unfair parking situation around campus to his thoughts about the Vietnam War, Huell always had a lot to say.

  Huell in the Marine Corps.

  Huell wasn’t going straight through college, and his father wasn’t happy with his son’s meandering path. He once told me that his dad had said, “Huell, you’re going to have to get off this gravy train and do something with your life. You need to get out into the real world.” The path that would lead to his real world came to him by chance.

  In 1970, when he was twenty-five, Huell appeared on Nashville’s Noon show on WSM-TV, promoting the student outreach group he’d helped create called U-T Today at the university. Huell did well in front of the cameras, explaining his story with passion and ease. The station’s president was so impressed by the young man’s appearance and on-camera personality that he hired him to work on documentary programs. From what I’ve heard, he told everyone that Huell was going to be a huge star someday.

  Later that year, Huell went on television for the first time as the host for a series called Rap On. That show did well and led to another assignment, doing man-on-the-street interviews about the 1970 Tennessee governor and senate races. This was his first time in the out-of-studio interviewing business, and the segment was such a hit with viewers that it got him hired as one-fourth of a team of reporters on WSM-TV’s nightly news.

  WSM’s president apparently had a real eye for spotting and hiring talent, because at the station, Huell also worked with John Tesh, a news anchor there from 1975 to ’76 who went on to become not only a TV and radio star, but also a world-renowned composer. Another well-known guy who worked with Huell at WSM was Wheel of Fortune’s Pat Sajak, who was an announcer and did the weekend weather from 1974 to ‘77.

  Huell at WCBS in New York.

  Dolly Parton, Huell, and Loretta Lynn.

  It was at WSM-TV that Huell developed his familiar, easy style, producing and hosting short segments known as “Happy Features.” Huell covered just about everything of interest, from quilting bees to a trip to the Middle East, and he interviewed such celebrities as Paul McCartney, Burt Reynolds, Dennis Weaver, and the Jackson Five. He had such a marvelous interview with Dolly Parton at her high-rise apartment overlooking Central Park in New York that you would have thought they were old high school friends. His unique style was truly disarming, friendly, and engaging, and he didn’t let celebrity and fame get in his way when asking for interviews.

  In 1979, after almost ten years at WSM-TV, Huell left the Nashville station and journeyed to New York City to work at WCBS-TV, the CBS flagship station. He’d hit the big time. In November of that year, he launched his own half-hour weekly newsmagazine show called Real Life. The style was about the same as in the features he’d become known for in Memphis. The name of the series was changed to To Life a month later, and it ran until it was canceled a year later.

  Television has a way of doing that—changing the name of a show and/or changing the set, hoping changes will both bring in and retain viewers, but ultimately, I guess, Huell’s easygoing style just didn’t quite fit into the fast-paced New York City life.

  Huell then accepted a job with Cable News Network (CNN) in Los Angeles as a reporter and relocated to the West Coast, beginning work in November of 1980. In 1981 he left CNN and began working as a feature reporter at KCBS-TV in LA. During that year, NBC also hired him to do a pilot for a new show called Wedding Day. He was teamed up with Mary Ann Mobley, a popular television actress who’d appeared on Burke’s Law in the 1960s, as well as on Fantasy Island, Perry Mason, and many other shows. I’d guess that the former Miss America from Mississippi must have meshed pretty well with the Tennessean.

  The idea behind the show called for Mary Ann and Huell to film and follow a couple around on their wedding day, including the actual ceremony. The pilot went on the air but, unfortunately, wasn’t picked up. It could have been that the show was ahead of its time; I’m sure it would have fit better in today’s reality show world. Whatever the reason, it didn’t sell, and Huell went back to Tennessee, perhaps to regroup after the failure. Fortunately for us, Hollywood beckoned him once again, and he returned to California.

  Huell with Mary Ann Mobley on Wedding Day.

  Huell went back to KCBS-TV (Channel 2) and continued doing feature reporting. In 1987, while still at Channel 2, he also began working for LA-based public broadcasting station KCET as a part-time producer on Videolog. It was for this series in 1988 that Huell produced the now-famous story of the reunion of elephant trainer Charlie Franks and Nita, the elephant he had given to the San Diego Wild Animal Park when Charlie retired from the circus. (You’ll read more about that in a couple of chapters.) The popularity of that feature inspired KCET to ask Huell to expand Videolog into half-hour specials, which he did. These were critically acclaimed by Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg, who wrote that each show was an “intimate, magnificently un-slick, utterly charming, absolutely irresistible half hour that is Howser at his populist best, just meeting common folk and letting them be themselves.”

  California’s Gold was barely below the horizon.

  MY EARLY YEARS

  Now that you know something about Huell and where he came from before we met at KCET, I thought you’d want to know something about me—the guy named Louie on the California’s Gold team whom you knew only by name. So here’s a bit of my story. You’ll see it’s pretty much the opposite of the well-to-do nature of Huell’s life, yet I believe that life has been generous to me, giving me one of the main things that I guess we all want in life: having a job that you love.

  I was born on June 10, 1941, in
San Bernardino, California—a workingman’s city about sixty miles east of Los Angeles. My dad came to America from Mexico City as a young boy, and my mom was born in Riverside, just down the freeway from San Bernardino. My mother cleaned homes, and my father worked as a machinist at the Santa Fe railroad maintenance shops in San Bernardino.

  I was the first of four children, with a younger brother and two sisters. My grandmother lived with us, and she and I spent a lot of time together. Tita spoke Spanish, and out of respect for her, that was the primary language we spoke at home. But in the neighborhood, with the kids, and at school, I picked up English and spoke it everywhere else outside the home.

  When I was growing up in the 1950s, the music we listened to at home was mostly Spanish. When I was out of the house with my friends, however, we’d listen to the new rock and roll—but even back then, my preference for music was classical.

  I absolutely loved classical music. Where my love for it came from, I’m not certain, but it may have been sparked by some of the classical music we played in the school band (I was on trumpet).

  My brother also loved classical music. What were the odds of that—two brothers from the barrio digging Mozart and Bach? We shared a bedroom, and at night we’d tune our little radio to LA’s classical music stations and be in heaven.

  My dad was ambitious and hard working, and I admired him for that. He leased a grocery store in the nearby town of Colton while working full-time at the railroad shops, and when I was eleven, he put me to work as a meat cutter. I was something of a kid butcher, and I got pretty good at it—I still have all of my fingers. I was getting paid, so I didn’t mind the work, although I can’t say my father was paying me minimum wage. I had a goal for the money I made, and it seemed to take forever—but finally I saved enough to pay for what I really wanted: to become a Boy Scout.

  I joined the Scouts and bought the uniform and everything else needed to be a Boy Scout in good standing. I really enjoyed the scouting life, so when I became too old for the Boy Scouts, I joined the Sea Scouts. I learned navigating skills, sailing, ropes, and pretty much everything essential to being a good seaman. I also began practicing long-distance ocean swimming, and was eventually certified as a lifeguard. When I graduated from high school in 1960, it seemed only natural to enlist in the Navy.