For years, Nick Clooney has joked that most of his life he's been known as singer Rosemary Clooney's baby brother or actor George Clooney's father.
But Clooney's career was no joke. Clooney, who turns 90 on Saturday, Jan. 13, is one of the greatest broadcasters in Greater Cincinnati history.
On a special WVXU-FM Cincinnati Edition Friday at noon, Clooney reflects with host Lucy May on his versatile career — as a newsman, disc jockey, Cincinnati TV variety show host, ABC TV network game show host, AMC movie host, PBS concert host and the WKRC-TV news anchor who ended Al Schottelkotte's 22-year dominance of the local TV 11 p.m. news ratings. The show will be available as a podcast before it repeats at 8 p.m. Friday on WVXU-FM (91.7) and WMUB-FM (88.5).
"I never had any specific goal except to be in broadcasting," Clooney told me when I interviewed him in 2010 for a WCET-TV five-part series called Clooney on Clooney. Clooney started his career in 1952, while attending Maysville's St. Patrick's High School, at WFTM-AM, which stood for "World's Finest Tobacco Market."
Clooney came to WLW from Lexington, Ky., in 1966 to join the cast of Ruth Lyons' iconic 50-50 Club and host shows on WLW-AM and WLWT-TV.
His Cincinnati credits over nearly six decades include hosting variety shows on WLWT-TV, WKRC-TV and WCPO-TV in the late 1960s and early 1970s; anchoring WKRC-TV's newscasts in the 1970s and '80s; returning to radio in the 1990s to host big band music on WCKY-AM and WSAI-AM until 2002; and writing columns for the Cincinnati Post until it closed in 2007. He was honored as a Great Living Cincinnatian in 2012.
In my mind, he ranks near the top of any Greater Cincinnati all-time great broadcasters list with WLW AM/TV founder Powel Crosley Jr. and Lyons, whose weekday WLWT-TV 50-50 Club aired nationwide on NBC for a year (1951-52) and returned to NBC to co-host the Today show with Dave Garroway in 1958.
Clooney, while doing his weekday WKRC-TV variety show in the 1970s, flew to New York on weekends to tape The Money Maze, a weekday ABC game show. He also anchored a nationally syndicated daily court show called On Trial in 1988 (three years before the premiere of the Court TV cable network); taught journalism at American University in Washington, D.C.; wrote a book, The Movies That Changed Us (2001); hosted the "Reel Journalism" movie series in Washington; eulogized close friend Walter Cronkite in 2009; and anchored local newscasts at KNBC-TV Los Angeles (1984-86); WLAP-TV Lexington, Ky. (1961-66); KSTU-TV Salt Lake City; (1991-93) and WGRZ-TV Buffalo (1994).
Taking chances
Clooney's transition into Cincinnati TV news was not easy. Even though he had done TV news in Lexington, Cincinnati had only seen him hosting local variety shows.
"Channel 12 took a chance on me (in 1976)," Clooney said in 2010. He told WKRC-TV General Manager Bob Weigand that Cincinnati viewers had seen him "taking a pie in the face and doing game shows. I said, 'It's going to be very different for people to see me in a different role, and we're going to have to work at this for a long time.'
"And he said, 'What do I have to lose? I'm fourth to Mary Hartman at 11 o'clock. So let's give it a try.' "
On Cincinnati Edition, Clooney will talk about how Channel 12's live broadcasts from the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire was a turning point in luring viewers away from Schottelkotte's news because Channel 12 had better live video of the blaze than Channel 9. Former WKRC-TV staffers Ira Joe Fisher, Deb Dixon, Howard Ain and Dennis Janson also tell May about Clooney's influence as WKRC-TV news anchor and managing editor.
He returned to the role of reporter in 2006, after his son won an Academy Award for Syriana. George asked him to go with him to the African nation of Darfur, where a half-million people had been killed and 3 million people forced out of their homes. They made a TV documentary for the American Life TV channel; Nick was the reporter and George was the cameraman.
George's Hollywood career provided some special moments for his father, a lifelong movie fan who auditioned for several film roles in Los Angeles in 1957 after his U.S. Army stint with the Armed Forces Radio Network. (He appeared in Handle With Care, starring Dean Jones, and lost out in auditions to Michael Landon for the lead role in I Was A Teenage Werewolf.)
At publicity events for George's 2005 movie, Good Night, and Good Luck, about legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, Nick developed a close friendship with veteran CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite. Four years later, the elder Clooney was asked to speak at Cronkite's memorial service along with President Barack Obama; former President Bill Clinton; CBS' Andy Rooney, Katie Couric and Bob Schieffer; and NBC's Tom Brokaw.
In 2014, Nick reluctantly was drafted into service by George for a cameo appearance in The Monuments Men. Nick played the older version of George's World War II soldier in the film, directed and co-written by George, about art historians, museum directors and curators rescuing art stolen by the Nazis.
"I suggested to him that it was not a good idea. I can't be someone else," Nick told me back then. "I never thought of myself as an actor. It's very difficult. You have to be someone else. I don't know how to do that."
Living his dreams
The one-hour radio tribute ends with Clooney's passion project: restoring St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church a few blocks from the Clooneys' home in Augusta, Ky. The congregation, founded by former slave Sara Thomas, built the church in 1894.
"Every person has a dream. This was a dream to ... show what it was like for African-Americans, enslaved or free, at the time the church was organized," Clooney told me two years ago.
When I taped the five half-hour Clooney on Clooney conversations with Nick in 2010, he told me his fascination with broadcasting began as a child listening to the radio, a decade before television was invented.
"We actually sat down (in the 1940s) and watched the radio… and listened to those magic voices coming out of it. From the earliest days, I wanted to be one of those (voices). I didn't think I could be, but that's what I wanted to do.
"The question was: Where do I fit in (broadcasting)? It was such a broad spectrum of things to do, and I wanted to be able to do any of them, when that moment came. And I wanted to do them with as much integrity as I could — if it was hosting a music program, or doing the news. I wanted to be prepared for that, so I studied it hard," he said.
And he did, resulting in an amazingly diverse career.
"I'm not the best broadcaster in Cincinnati history, but I had the most versatile career," he told me on WCET-TV.
And how did the anchorman/variety host/author/disc jockey/newspaper columnist/historian see himself? He said the he was simply "a reporter." (I'd add storyteller.)
"I think I'm a reporter. If anyone wants to put that on my grave stone, that's what I was and have been, one way or another. That can cover a multitude of genres."
John Kiesewetter's reporting is independent. Cincinnati Public Radio only edits his articles for style and grammar.
