Volume 9 , Issue 35

Foreman Scottys Kids

"I only met Steve Powell (Foreman Scotty) twice (in the late 1950's). We worked at different TV stations, he at WKY-TV channel 4, while I was at KWTV channel 9. He came to one of our filming sessions at a ranch that was storing buildings left over from the 1957 Semi-Centennial Oklahoma State Fair (seems like the theme had been "Boom-Town USA" but it may have had another title.

We were filming a parody of TV's Gunsmoke which we called Cannon Smoke and it starred director Dwayne Friedel as the town marshal 'Muster Dillon', Barbara Powell as 'Miss Kitty' (I think Barb co-wrote the script for this silent (with titles) parody), chief of directors Gene Linder along with cinematographer Jack Jones (as the side-kick 'Chuster'), and others of us who were associated with the early morning 45 minute show called "Lagniappe" (a Cajun word meaning 'something extra').

Incidentally, those buildings were later moved to the present site and became the first buildings used as a foundation for Frontier City.

Our cinematographer for the filming was Jack Jones (using a 16mm Bolex borrowed from KWTV's news department, and also my Path - 16 which had thru-the-lens viewing). I (Roy Kendrick) was portraying one of the 'heavies' in the film which was later serialized on the Lagniappe show. We used Dwayne's little BMW Isetta car with it's open sun-roof for some 'dolly-shots' by putting the camera on a tripod above the car.

The other time that I saw Steve Powell (Foreman Scotty) was at one of our Mummer's cast parties following a stage presentation of one of the "Mummers" plays (I performed in 5 or 6 plays while also doing sound effects and background music [using a reel-to-reel tape recorder] during the 1958-1960 performance seasons.

One of the photos included in the Foreman Scotty pix shows a young John Ferguson who worked in continuity at KWTV while I was there. While he worked at WKY-TV previously, he had been cast as the robot 'BAZARK' on the '3-D Danny" show (an outer-space kids show on channel 4 that starred Danny Williams), and John had also created the character known as Count Gregor who introduced all the 'scary movies' we could find at KWTV to fill in some late night programming.

This was before CBS had anything scheduled after 10 PM CST, and we played movies every single night to compete with NBC's "Tonight Show" with Steve Allen.

Since I was senior film editor at KWTV and had already viewed all the movies (and had edited them and put in the 'breaks' for commercials), I watched the Tonight show instead and became a fan of Steve Allen, Jack LesCoulie (sp?), Ernie Kovaks, Jack Paar, Hugh Downs, and all the other hosts of that show.

John Ferguson also had a presence during the early days at Frontier City. As I recall, he was one of the 'creators' of the daily gunfights that were staged to excite the crowds there. He was performing there BEFORE Ann and I took over the popcorn stands (I also ran a 'silent-movie' booth showing 'The Great Train Robbery' and a couple of other films that I had on 8mm). Click this link for the Foremans Scottys Kids website" -- Roy K.
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