Joe Pyne

Joseph Pyne was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. His father, Edward Pyne, was a bricklayer; his mother, Catherine, was a housewife. Pyne graduated from Chester High School in 1942 and immediately enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. In 1955, he lost the lower part of that leg due to a rare form of cancer. In 1965, at age 40, Joe Pyne married 20-year-old Norwegian actress Britt Larsen in Las Vegas. After getting married, they went to a show where Frank Sinatra was performing. Reportedly, Sinatra recognized "the great Joe Pyne" in the audience and asked him to stand and take a bow. ==Career==

Radio disk jockey Discharged from the Marines at the end of World War II, Pyne attended a local drama school to correct a speech impediment. While studying there, he decided to try radio. After an argument with the owner he was fired. Next, he got a job at radio station WILM (AM) in Wilmington, Delaware, the first of three times he would work at that station. A few months later, in March 1948, he left WILM to work at WVCH, a newly-opened station in Chester. Seeing little chance to advance his career in Chester, Pyne left after a year and a half. He moved to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he was hired at WLIP. He quickly realized that he wanted more than playing music and reporting on community events like the county fair or a new business opening. Six months after starting at WLIP, he got into a heated confrontation with the station owner, William Lipman, and stormed out of the station afterwards. One of Pyne's cohosts later recounted the events of Pyne's fight with Lipman to Smithsonian Magazine, saying "Joe was yelling. He had one hand on our boss' lapel. He picked up a typewriter and threw it against the wall." He called his new show ''It's Your Nickel'', a popular idiomatic phrase referring to the fact that calls from a pay phone cost five cents. The format was Pyne expressing his opinions on various topics. Listeners would call to ask questions, offer their own opinions, or raise new topics. At first, Pyne didn't put callers on the air; he paraphrased for the audience what they had said. Soon the callers and his interaction with them became the heart of the show. Pyne became famous for arguing with or insulting those with whom he disagreed. One of his trademark insults was "go gargle with razor blades." Television In the late 1940s into the early 1950s, television began to usurp radio as America's main medium for news, leading Pyne to experiment with a television version of his radio program. In 1954, Pyne hosted The Joe Pyne Show on Wilmington's WDEL-TV, which was only moderately successful and ran for just a few months. In 1957, he stopped hosting ''It's Your Nickel and sought out television jobs in Hollywood, Los Angeles, but his search lasted over a month and "nobody even talked to [him]." He eventually found employment in Riverside hosting a radio show very similar in format to It's Your Nickel''. After exposing a narcotics scandal at a local high school, his popularity exploded, and soon multiple TV stations were vying for his attention. Later that year, he returned to Los Angeles, and by 1960 he was hosting a radio show on KABC (AM), later transferring to KLAC and eventually KTTV. In 1966, Pyne hosted the short-lived daytime game show Showdown on NBC. It was similar to other game and quiz shows of the era where teams competed to answer trivia questions, but its distinguishing feature was that when a contestant incorrectly answered a question, the chair they were sitting on would break and they'd fall to the floor. Showdown was cancelled after three months. Syndication In March 1966, the NBC Radio Network began syndicating The Joe Pyne Show, which connected Pyne to an audience nationwide. That July, Time reported that almost 100 stations in the L.A. metro area alone and more than 250 stations in total were broadcasting the daily radio program, and the weekly television show was syndicated in three major markets, with 21 additional television stations expected to begin syndication by September. Between his radio and television program, Pyne reportedly earned annually or per week, noted as being roughly twice as much as President Johnson's salary. ==Controversies==

Throughout his career as a talk show host, Pyne was consistently polarizing and controversial. His tendency toward insult and vitriol offended most critics, who called him "outrageous," "belligerent," and "self-righteous." A spokesman for KABC reportedly said that "Joe Pyne can make some people angry by merely commenting on the weather." During Pyne's time in Wilmington, he was outspokenly critical of those he considered his political enemies, including Wilmington's mayor and Delaware's attorney general. Many listeners and guests threatened him with violence. Pyne never shied away from having provocative guests on his program. He said that guests on his show should be "visceral" because "we want emotion, not mental involvement." and the FCC, who strongly recommended station managers more carefully vet Pyne's program He told a reporter, "I don't like tha apathy in America today [...] people should actually take an interest in what's going on [...] If [my shows] have made people think [...] then I think it was all worthwhile." Pyne frequently invited hippies, homosexuals, and feminists onto his show, and would ridicule their looks and their lifestyles. Author Donna Halper posits that these guests were brought on the show just so that Pyne could argue with them and rile up his audience. Pyne was vocal about his support of labor unions. According to Lou Rugani, Pyne's coworker at WLIP in Kenosha, Pyne would talk to listeners who called to request a particular song. One such caller wanted to argue with Pyne about unions. While talking to the caller, Pyne had the idea to place his phone receiver right next to the microphone so listeners could hear both sides of the argument, rather than only Pyne's half. Pyne often campaigned against racial discrimination. During his tenure at WVUE, the local black press generally praised him for inviting black newsmakers on his show to discuss issues of concern to their community. One of his regular guests was a member of the editorial staff of the area's black newspaper, the Philadelphia Tribune, usually a columnist or the newspaper's publisher. Years later, he also had Maulana Karenga, a black author, political activist, and creator of Kwanzaa, as a guest on his syndicated show. Few things were off limits on The Joe Pyne Show, and the unpredictability of never knowing what might happen next was a major perk for both viewers and guests alike. Although video clips of portions of Krassner's appearance on the show have been archived, none of them contain video of the incident. Krassner insists that it occurred, but was edited out of the broadcast. ==Death and legacy==

Pyne was a life-long smoker and was rarely seen without a cigarette in his hand, even when on the air. In 1969, he noticed it was becoming increasingly hard to breathe, leading to his being diagnosed with lung cancer. He stopped his television show after it became too difficult to drive to the studio, but he set up a makeshift studio at home to continue the radio show for a few more months. Eventually even that became impossible and he retired altogether in November 1969. He died in Los Angeles on March 23, 1970. Sean Hannity, in turn, took inspiration from, and gave praise to, Grant. The Los Angeles Times and Radio Only magazine have also made similar remarks. Likewise, Bill Press, author of the book Toxic Talk, characterized Pyne as "a precursor to [Rush] Limbaugh." A lot of the footage from The Joe Pyne Show has since been lost, either because the videotape was destroyed or because another program was recorded over it, and much of what does exist is of poor quality. The organization Films Around the World owns a collection of over 100 episodes of The Joe Pyne Show and is working with videotape archival specialists to restore the reels of tape. In 2019, The Film Detective, an organization self-described as "a leading distributor of restored classic programming," published a press release stating they had obtained and restored six hours of footage from The Joe Pyne Show which would be available on their website starting in June of that year. However, their website is now defunct and the footage is no longer available. Pyne was posthumously inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame on November 16, 2012. ==Footnotes==