Remembering “The Club”
“The Club” began on channel 44 as “Club 44.” I think it was around 1977-80.
Studio A was converted into a bar/club where each Friday night we would tape four, half-hour, back to back, “live” 30 minute segments. These featured local bands and musical acts, cooking segments, political editorials from Barney Frank, interviews with local celebs, and a variety of Boston based info segments. It was made more interesting by the audience who was served wine and beer. They roamed about standing, sometimes tripping on camera cables and generally being helpful. As the night wore on the fun increased.
Silvia Davis was the Executive Producer. She and her team did a great job coming up with fresh talent and ideas for the show. I recall Dick Cavett doing a guest host spot, as did Garrett Morris from SNL. We did segments on CB radio (all the rage at the time) and hot tubs (one night we had a 6′ wooden barrel that mostly didn’t leak all over.) There were movie, book and eatery reviews and even the odd pet segment.
Some might remember the unique innovation called “the stick”. This was used to ID guests. During a segment, David Atwood who was the ringmaster and chief would call out, “Okay, give ’em the stick.” At which point a piece of foam core attached to a dowel would be thrust into the frame…usually in a mostly lower third position. The guest’s name was painted on the sign. This all happened in the days before Chyron. You will hardly ever see it done today.
I’m sure others have fond “Club” memories… Care to share?
Are the videos posted anywhere? My friend is in one from the 70s and I would love to see it.
We employees loved Club 44, a chance to gather with friends at the end of a week and have a free glass of beer or wine. Also there were celebrities, live music, and did I mention free drinks. Outstanding energy and fun, and I thought pretty good TV too. Vivid in my memory is Sam Tyler on a particularly happy Club night spinning around too quickly on his bar stool and drenching me with his beer. He never stopped apologizing, ever, until he left the station.
I was impressed as a kid by the “nightclub” format and variety of CLUB 44, and remember thinking the WGBH 2 version THE CLUB seemed a bit blander and “safer”…but still worth a look.
I’m still fond of the band Human Sexual Response–unsurprisingly, their song “Anne Frank Story” remains an intense listening experience. By 1979 my family and I moved to Hawaii and the local disco show in Honolulu, THE HAWAIIAN MOVING COMPANY, was no match for CLUB 44 or its tamer child on the PBS monster ‘GBH 2.
I was a student at Boston University School of Law in the Fall of 1977. A young female neighbor whose name now escapes me asked if I wanted to make $10 for a four hour commitment one evening a week. She needed an on-air bartender for this new Club 44 show she was involved with. I dug out a light blue oxford button-down and a checkered weave blue-grey-black vest from my closet, and that became my “uniform” for the show. Never had to say a word, and only poured the limited options of beer and wine from behind the bar, but hey, I was on television!
Comes the Spring of 1978 and time for me to graduate. My parents come up from Brooklyn and are getting dressed in their inexpensive motel room, while I’m joining them to put on my BU red robe and cap. Since we were too preoccupied to watch anything on the TV, I idly tuned it into the Sunday morning showing of Club 44, which I believe was a full length 2 1/2 hour version which then got split into half hour segments aired the following five weekday nights.
I rarely had any camera time other than a split second as it panned across the studio, but for some reason the camera landed on me for about six or seven seconds just as my parents glanced at the television playing in the background of their motel room. I cannot adequately describe the look of shock on their faces when they realized that the person on the screen was me. I had never mentioned to them about my presence at Club 44. It led to an interesting conversation in the car driving to my graduation.
Bohdan Porytko
I will never forget, attending a taping of The Club, probably in 1980, with my mother who was visiting me at the time. Dr. Lester Grinspoon from Harvard was a guest. He was an early advocate for the criminalization of drugs. Also guest was Human Sexual Response, a short lived cult-like band of the time. I think their claim to fame was “Jackie Onassis” and “What Dies Sex Mean to Me,”? I also met a beautiful young woman who I ended up dating for a few years. It really was a magical night that I remember with great fondness.
One of my earliest forays into ‘GBH was via The Club. I was stationed in the lobby and ‘greeted’ the audience and explained to them the ‘shtick’ they might encounter. As if I knew. Then, after they were all herded upstairs to the studio, I was upgraded to ‘chief wine and cheese passer’ aka – waitress. No tips.
An especially, and literally painful, memory was misjudging the relationship of my head to the bottom of Greg McDonald’s camera chair lift. I stood up when I should have ducked down. Ouch. Scared the beejeesuz out of Greg too.
Silvia Davis was some kinda essence of energy and, you should pardon the expression, balls.
Fortunately, the encounter with Greg’s chairlift seems not to have dulled your memory, or otherwise disturbed any vital gray-matter, or did it?
Too soon to tell.
What was the question, again?
Agree with Bruce! Except: Actually we taped 5 shows not 4. We taped 3 in a row on a 90′ reel then took a 15 minute break to change reels and reset the studio, then taped 2 more. That had never been done at GBH as I remember. It was a feat in itself (and no small directing challenge).
The “stick sthitch” was done on the early Club 44 episodes to save money as we couldn’t afford the “Vidifont” and the operator. It was so bad they upped the budget to include one.
I’ve got some pix and I think a couple episodes on 3/4″ tape.
The building generally hated the show but we won a local Emmy.