Well, I can tell you the REAL story of Molly's. My husband, Bob, and I opened it in OKC in 1976. We opened the one in Tulsa about 2 years later. The oil bust in the eighties caused us financial problems because we had just built a 2 million dollar Mexican restaurant in OKC...so we had to liquidate all our business, except for Molly's in Oklahoma City.

It was the goose that laid the golden egg. It was successful for 20 years. The problem came after KFOR wanted an interview and Bob, knowing he did not legally have to grant an interview refused and physically threw a reporter and cameraman out the door. He was arrested and it was all shown on the news, for several days, and painted Bob in a really bad light. Business went down so badly that we had to close on Jan 1, 1996.

It was like losing a part of the family. We loved the business. We did sue Ch. 4 and finally had our day in court and won. It is still in appeals at this time. During the 8 years since having such a disgraceful closing, times have been very difficult. Bob and I divorced after 37 years of marriage. We both live here in the desert and he has remarried and plays a lot of golf. I work. I say I always wanted to be a wealthy widow, but he struggled so every time I put the pillow over his head...I finally had to divorce him!

I have thought several times about compiling a book of all the kids who once worked at Molly's. They were all such bright people and most have gone on to be very successful in their careers. When I remember Molly's I always get teary-eyed. It was such a special place and such a special time in our lives. Well, it WAS our life!

It is great reading the comments today...even the ones that are untrue...like being owned by the syndicate!

Great hearing from you, Jeffiee. I added a clarification to Lowell's note below.

Added 10/31/2005:  A web site, Molly Murphy's House of Fine Repute, inspired by Jeffiee's comments here, seems to have disappeared, so I linked to the Wayback Machine's saved version from 9/2004.

If memory serves, during my one visit, we were served by Gilligan. One of our party left a camera at our table during our trip to the salad car, and when the pics were eventually developed, there were at least two of Gilligan and Catwoman.

There was also some sort of middle school prom that night, so during our meal we saw a line of no less than 8-10 preteen girls in formals go parading by in their quest for a restroom.

Anywho, a very strange "other" type of play was performed there! It was for "experienced" persons, & if you have ever been "experienced" you can imagine the trails & tribulations happenin' within our very heads! Needless to say, just as "MAINTAIN" died quickly so did this fine place of ill repute.

The OKC MM's was open until at least '93. I never ate there myself, but I hear it was definitely an experience.

The only thing I could think it might be like is Dick's in Dallas.

What a fan!

Overheard at Molly Murphy's: "Boy, what a great place! They sure don't have anything like this back home in Chicago!"

It was my understanding MM's was owned by the syndicate and it was supposed to be a tax write-off (not so, per Jeffiee Tayar, former co-owner; see her note above...webmaster). Instead of losing money, it was so successful that they had to close it down while it was still in its prime. Rumor, I suppose, but it seemed like it was doing awfully well when it suddenly went out of business.

Be sure to read the 1967 master's thesis about Tulsa TV history, added to this site recently. Helen Alvarez played the key role in Chapter 2 about KOTV.

Edwin - where was the "party house" down the Bee-line where some of the Hank Thompson segments were shot? Was that Halsey's or Hank's or what? I vaguely remember some pool shots and walking shots outside.

And of course we all remember Ray Clevenger - the first of 2 "Hollywood" directors to make Tulsey their home for a while. Ray was a fashion statement - usually in a turtle neck, a nice blazer - who wore dark glasses even in a darkened control room or truck - with a fake white fur muff on the headband of his Western Electric headphones He looked like Mr. Clean's brother from Las Vegas...Ray actually directed the Academy Awards one time way back when and some other stuff. Maybe he was one of the NBC staffers that Oral brought to T-town to work on his show....

Now if I can remember who was the SECOND Hollywood director to work in Tulsey...

The legendary story on Bonner -- which I witnessed live on the air -- is of the time a tornado was approaching Little Rock from the south and KARK had the "live eye" pointed at it from a few miles away. Bonner was narrating the action and said something about how it was too bad the tornado wasn't closer into us so we could get a better picture of it. Bonner, unwittingly we're sure, had just advocated that the tornado tear through a substantially populated area of town for the sake of a better live shot, a gaffe duly noted in the papers for a long time to come.

I was a waiter at Molly Murphy's from 1980 to 1984. I did "The Little Green Man From Mars" Groucho Marx and "Wally the Camp Counselor". I met my wife of 18 years there....she was Diamond Lil and Foxie Flanker...when she was a cocktail waitress. This was during "liquor by the wink" and we were busted several times....although I was lucky enough to have never been taken to jail. This was the most fun I have ever had making money. I have lots and lots of stories....almost one for every night I worked.

Now, about the "potty call". This joke about going to the bathroom started long before I started working at Molly's. Although it is one of the memories for most customers I can tell you the staff was tired of the joke. However, on a twist of that joke...

I was the waiter that sang the first birthday song to a customer in the bathroom. I had a table of four teenage girls. At the end of the meal we were going to sing a birthday song. When I rounded up several waiter and went to the table I found out that the birthday girl and two others had gone to the girls room. We (all males) went barging in...the birthday girl was on the can with her knickers about her knees. I lit the candle, slid the cake under the stall wall, we sang and then walked out laughing. I'm sure the management (who always worried about us going too far) was wondering exactly what had happened.

If you ever went to Molly's for dinner...or better yet, if you were one of Molly's Kids, drop me an e-mail.

I found this site via Mazeppa's site....wow....don't know if I feel young again or way old. I showed my now nine year old twins Oom-a-gog and Lee and Lionel. Where's Mr. Zing and Tuffy?

Thanks for the memories!

I realize that he did many, many commercials for many companies over the years, but perhaps proceeds from the sale of such a compilation could go to a local charity...perhaps one affiliated with Television & Radio?

Just a thought...what do all y'all think? Is something like this possible or am I just wishin' in the wind?

Lee Gideon was remembered here in Guestbook 148.

Not sure if that adds much to the snow conversation.

One of the links below states that the largest observed snowflake was 15" in diameter.

Is it true that no two snow crystals are alike? It depends on exactly what you mean by "alike". The answer is at CalTech's site.

Someone at work posed to me the question of how many snowflakes are in a cubic foot of snow. According to http://www.scienceshorts.com/030203.htm:

"Snowflakes are about ninety percent air...each cubic foot of snow contains about twenty million flakes."

Other sites (e.g., http://twotrees.www.50megs.com/attic/trivia/weather.html) also name the 90% figure.

But http://e2.pef.czu.cz/~xmaldi/snih.htm says:

"The commonly used ten-to-one ratio of snowfall to water content is a myth for much of the United States. This ration varies from as low as 100-to-one to as high as about three-to-one depending on the meteorological conditions associated with the snowfall."

I asked KOTV's James Aydelott about this, specific to Tulsa. He replied:

"We can have wet and dry snow in Tulsa. Usually our big just-below-freezing March snows are very wet, between an 8:1 and 12:1 ratio. Some of our super-cold snows are on the dry side, as much as 40:1. I think we tend toward the wetter end of things, probably because most of our heavy snows fall when it's close to freezing and warmer air holds slightly higher amounts of water."

So that works out to from 16-25 million snowflakes per cubic foot for wet Tulsa snows, but ranging up to 80 million for dry snows (if that original 20 million figure is accurate).

I left a year or two later for KTHV, Channel 11, after Pitcock became bored with politics and had a secret deal with Jimmy Leake or Bob Doubleday to return if he didn’t like life in Jonesboro. (This was a minor detail the brass didn’t tell me about.)

To Mike Bruchas: The KATV sportscaster who was the “Voice of the Razorbacks,” I believe was named Dave Woodman. He was a large man with an ego to match. Ron Sherman still shows up on commercials I see here in Fort Smith. I can’t figure out why he hasn’t aged. I can’t remember the weatherman’s name at KARK, Channel 4, but he was good looking and extremely cocky. BTW, the anchor there at the time I believe was Bill Mitchell. Can someone confirm that? (Roy Mitchell, per Dave's 1/11 note above...webmaster)

Also, for you trivia buffs, when I moved across town to Channel 11, the co-owner, Bob Brown wanted to clean house. I managed to save two or three jobs. One belonged to our old friend, Sam Jones, who was forced to move from weekdays to weekends. Sam did not take the “demotion” well.

Anyone know where Walter Warren Powers is? 20 years ago he worked as a programmer for Bonneville. Bonneville now owns commercial classical station WGMS here and in the last 2 years has become a classical "lite" station in some day parts.

Was wondering if this was Walter's touch or not...

To you of Russian or Greek Orthodox faith today - Merry Xmas! At least by the Gregorian calendar!

I couldn't find Harry on that site (though Jim Ruddle is mentioned there), but he does have a bio and pic on the FoxChicago site, where he is still working. He was Tulsa's first weatherman in 1949!

Needless to say, the lady went over to where the other waiter was standing lighting the way with her very red face while everyone else stared and giggled. Guess who didn't ask where anything was that night.

I saw many photos of past news teams. Gusty was there--as a drawing! They even had a Happy 50th drawing of Gusty. According to the display, Don Woods is credited for creating Gusty at sister-station KTUL in Tulsa! They even had a T-shirt with the 1977 STILL THE ONE logo with Gusty! They even had a license plate cover with the same design with Gusty! They had a card with something on it "Woods Weather Wisdom starring Gusty."

The radar system of the early to mid-70s had a basic radar screen. To the side, they had three images that showed different maps for different zooms for the radar. I believe they would superimpose the radar image over the map! I think it was called the RAD 300.

Only three KATV weathermen drew Gusty: I recognized all three! You may have seen Ron Sherman if he does any home improvement infomercials in the Tulsa area. Ron has done some in the Little Rock market and I saw him in a similar commercial in the Tupelo area a few years ago. He used to be at KATV. He operates his own ad agency in Little Rock.

KATV mentioned on its timeline about a gentleman named Mike Miller of KTUL arrives in Little Rock in the 1970s when Jim Pitcock, former KATV News Director, goes to Washington. Pitcock later returned.

In the 1978 photos of KTUL's newscast on your site, KATV had a similar white, red and blue striped anchor desk for its newscasts back in the mid-70s. KATV may have discarded of its white, red and blue striped anchor desk by 1978. At that time, KATV newscasts were called Newscene 7 with the 7 appearing as a Circle 7 logo. In the 1978 KTUL newscast audio, I noticed that Don Woods gave away the Gusty drawing. I do not remember Gusty drawings in Little Rock being given away.

Speaking of the KATV's news set in the early 80s around 1982, KATV dropped the unified news desk and dropped to one anchor behind a desk. When they switched to weather or sports, the news anchor would turn toward a TV-like display "screen" at the edge of the desk and the weather guy or Paul Eells would appear on the "screen." The unified desk returned sometime around 1984. Personally, I found this split concept to be somewhat cold. Even if all three were in the studio, they were in three different places in the studio.

The KATV special that aired on December 19 was playing at the exhibit all commercial-free and they had some segments that did not air in the televised special including two news promos from early 1970s with the "Move Closer to Your World" of WPVI fame and a localized promo of Monty Hall of "Let Make a Deal" inviting viewers to tune to KATV Channel 7 for "Let's Make a Deal" and some ABC movie.

This email of John's adds detail to his post in the last Guestbook. Note his comments above about Gusty, Mike Miller and Jim Pitcock, brother of the late Bill Pitcock of KOTV and Bob Gregory, former News Director of KTUL.

Photo courtesy of Mike Bruchas

Work got in the way of posting again, danged eatin' habit messes me up ever' time. So there's some unfinished stuff.

The Gates boards I worked on were the Solid Statesman, the Stereo Statesman, the Stereo Yard and the Producer. Great tactile feel on the pots that were the size of a cat's head. RCA rigs didn't feel so great, and had smaller, knurled pots.

I don't recall ever working with a Collins board, but did have Collins xmtr tubes (showing my age now) glowing thru the window as I DJed. A pal worked with a massively re-wired 1930s vintage Western Electric board in the 70's at WPLO, Atlanta, A broadcast service of Plough, Inc. (Later Schering Plough). Plough, more famous as the maker of St. Joseph Aspirin, owned some large radio stations around the country.

In my career with Allbritton, I did some work with KATV as well as KTUL. KATV benefited I think from less quality competition than there was in Tulsa, and dominated the market for a long, long time. Incidentally, KATV G.M. Dale Nicholson celebrated his 40th anniversary with the station a couple of years ago. He sats a record nobody's likely to break. One of the nicest things my boss at Allbritton said about me many years ago as that my people liked me about as well as Dale's liked him. Pretty high praise.

Headline: Original KOTV Anchorman Larry Bettis Dead at 63
Publication Date: July 16, 1994
Source: Tulsa World Page: N11
Region: Oklahoma
Obituary: KOTV's first news anchor, Larry Bettis, died July 4 in El Paso, Texas. He was 63. Memorial services are planned for a later date in Tulsa. A native of Monroe, N.C., Bettis moved to Tulsa in 1931 at age 4.

Theater dominated most of his life. He started acting in grade school, and continued to act at Central High School and at the University of Tulsa, which he attended on a drama scholarship. Bettis was named best actor his freshman year and had the leading role in 18 plays while in college.

While at TU, Bettis' other vocation, journalism, blossomed. In 1949, he was hired as a news anchor for the new KOTV station. Upon his graduation in 1953 with a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism, Bettis continued his employment at KOTV.

In 1956, Bettis joined the Watts-Payne advertising company in Tulsa as a television production coordinator. He was co-founder of Tulsa Experimental Circle Group Theater and University Summer Theater. He later worked for Ward-Hick Advertising in Hollywood, where he was involved in the production of shows such as "The Untouchables," "The Flintstones" and "Bonanza."

Bettis also later served as president and vice president of White and Shuford Advertising in Albuquerque, N.M., and El Paso. In 1975, he founded Bettis and Schwartz Advertising in El Paso.

In the last 20 years, Bettis continued to work for various advertising agencies in El Paso. He also remained active in theater.

He is survived by a daughter and son-in-law, Jan and Rusty Ameen of Phoenix; a son, Jack L. Bettis of Wichita, Kan.; sister and brother-in-law, Janet and Tom Holyfield of Tulsa; friend Jo Mae George of El Paso; two grandsons; and several nephews and nieces.

Time: January 03 2004 at 14:09:40
Name: John Mooney, Jr
Location: Rockville, MD
Comments: Just looked at your site trying to see if Molly Murphy's was still around. My wife and I ate there once back in the early 70's.

I remember Groucho was our waiter and the menu was on a pull down shade on a hanger that they stuck into a hole at the end of the table. It was most definitely a fun place and the salad car was either a T-bird or an E series Jaguar. I seem to remember the Jag more as I thought it was such a waste when I could be driving it instead of my tired old Dodge.

Thanks for the memory. If you are interested, I could tell you about the lady who asked where the bathrooms were. Hilarious!

Molly Murphy's is now "Night Trips" (a strip club). In the 80s, it was "Scarlett's" (a strip club). I guess the full title, "Molly Murphy's House of Fine Repute", got a bit upended, as it were.

These pictures of a Molly Murphy's are from Penn State's site.

Yes, let's hear that story.

What were the names of two KVOO newswriters?

YES, CARL BOYE (I agree on being doubtful about the spelling.) AND---WAS IT FORREST BROKAW?

What was the name of the KOME morning news show? THE CROWN EDITION (Sponsored by Crown Drug Stores.)

What were the names of the KTUL and KVOO “Women’s” programs? "WOMEN ARE WONDERS" ON KTUL, AND "FOR FEMININE EARS" ON KVOO

What was the real name of singer “Cinderella G. Stump?" You got that one right: JO STAFFORD. Stafford, who had perfect pitch, later said that the most difficult thing she ever did was to sing off key, the way she had to do in a couple of these comedy numbers.

What band did she record with? RED INGLE AND THE (His?) NATURAL SEVEN.

Who was the director of KVOO’s “Eggs at Eight?” JOE O'NEAL

Who used the phrase/logo “Music in the ( ) Manner?” CORRECT AGAIN. RUSS MORGAN

What band used the theme song “Man With the Horn?” YOU GUYS ARE GOOD: RAY ANTHONY. If you look at any of Anthony's pictures, he always was always photographed from his left side, "my best side," he insisted.

Which local sportscaster referred to race horses as “bangtails?” KVOO'S JOHN HENRY

What local singer got her name from a dairy? YES, IT WAS PATTI PAGE.

Who was the main sponsor of the Tulsa Oiler baseball games that were announced by Mack Creager? WELL, THEY'RE MIGHT HAVE BEEN OTHERS, BUT, WHEN I WAS AT KAKC (AND DID THE SOUND EFFECTS FOR OUT-OF-TOWN GAMES), BARNES-MANLEY CLEANERS WAS THE SPONSOR. (There is a previous page about this.)

What was the name of the announcer for the New York Philharmonic broadcasts? JAMES FASSETT. If I remember correctly, Ed Dumit told me about a not-too-productive interview he had with Fassett about how to become a host for a symphonic orchestra program.

What were the two main sound board brands that were used at combo stations? WELL, I DON'T REMEMBER THE GATES, BUT I RECALL THE COLLINS. IT WAS MUCH SIMPLER TO USE THAN THE MUCH MORE COMPLEX WESTERN ELECTRIC. KAKC HAD A COLLINS.

What ET brand recorded from inside out rather than the traditional outside in and required special filtering? I CAN'T RECALL THE ANSWER TO THIS ONE. WAS IT THE "WORLD" SUBSCRIPTION SERIES? IT DROVE ME CRAZY. I MUCH PREFERRED THE "LANGWORTH" THAT KTUL HAD.

But one preacher from TX/CA/Hawaii is shown with a clean-cut Robert Tilton in 1982 at a Texas revival. Do ya'all remember KOTV breaking the story on Tilton years ago - his prayer requests went into a Tulsa landfill unread - all checks and cash to his ministry in Texas?

It is a much smaller "TV-world"....By the way - a nephew or grandson of Ohio televangelist Rex Humbard is working as a producer in DC these days...

Archived Guestbook 154, where we had just noted the closing of Wonderama, a comedy club/theatre at the site of the old Park Lane movie theatre at 51st & Sheridan.

Jim Forbes, a Channel 2 "Troubleshooter" 23 years ago, now host of VH1's "Behind The Music", visited us for the first time. Frank Morrow presented a quiz (answers probably forthcoming in this Guestbook). Chuck Adams returned to tell us about his days as weatherman on Channel 2.

Head Nitecap Herb Jepko, whom Larry King replaced on the Mutual (Radio) Broadcasting System in 1978 (after the interim reign of Long John Nebel), was mentioned again. Herb's show was carried on KVOO-AM 1969-71. We heard a KTOW jingle, courtesy of Chris Kelly. Uncle Zeb complimented "Beef Baloney".

Stay tuned for year six of Tulsa TV Memories.