Rich Landrum Passes Away

Sad to report that Rich Landrum passed away quietly back on August 14. Rich is fondly remembered as the host of Jim Crockett Promotions' World Wide Wrestling syndicated wrestling show from October 1978 until early 1982. He was 77 years old.

Long time Richmond, Virginia fans will also remember Rich as the ring announcer in Richmond throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, introducing matches at the Richmond Fairgrounds at Strawberry Hill, the old Richmond Arena, and at the Richmond Coliseum.

His broadcasting career began in local radio and television in Richmond. He got his break in wrestling when attending matches at Strawberry Hill in 1971 with family and friends and the regular ring announcer didn't show up.  Promoter Joe Murnick asked him to fill in that night. Murnick liked him and began using him as his regular announcer from that point forward.

Rich Landrum interviews Ricky Steamboat on the set of World Wide Wrestling, circa 1978.

He replaced "Truckin'" Tom Miller as host of Wide World Wrestling in October of 1978. Jim Crockett had WRAL build a new set for the show and renamed the program World Wide Wrestling and Landrum debuted as its new host. 

After moving TV production from WRAL in Raleigh to WPCQ in Charlotte in the late summer of 1981, JCP balked at the ongoing expense of flying Landrum in from his home base in Richmond VA every week and asked him to begin driving it. Rich was unhappy with that arrangement which led to his eventual departure from the company in the early months of 1982. David Crockett assumed host duties of the show at that point, eventually joined by Tony Schiavone in 1984.  

Johnny Weaver and Rich Landrum

Landrum will likely be remembered best by fans for his on screen partnership with co-host (and legendary pro wrestler in that area in the 1960s and 1970s) Johnny Weaver. Landrum dubbed Weaver "the dean of professional wrestling" and the moniker stuck, and the two had great chemistry hosting the show together for several  years. 

Obituary on DignityMemorial.com

OTHER LINKS
More from the Studio Wrestling Website
WRAL Studio Page
WPCQ Studio Page
Rich Landrum related posts on the Studio Wrestling website

Worlds Collide: Championship Wrestling and ACC Basketball

"Gypsy Joe, nay, not even Jim Austeri, was ever the villian that Bob Lakata was when he hit a free throw for Duke to send the game into its first overtime." - Ronald Green, Charlotte News

By Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway

If you grew up watching wrestling on TV on Saturday afternoons in the 1960s through the early 1980s, you knew full well the havoc traditional sports programming could cause with the schedule when they ran long, with basketball games going to overtime and baseball games going to extra innings.

On January 11 during the bleak midwinter of 1958, Jim Crockett was to debut his brand new live pro-wrestling show on WBTV channel 3 in Charlotte. It was a major development for promoter Jim Crockett to be able  to promote his local cards through the relatively new medium of television. Wrestling from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Texas had been a successful staple of national television in the 1950s, but this would be the local Crockett crew for Charlotte. 

Charlotte News sports writer Ronald Green wrote about that big news in the local paper in the week before. You can read that article in our earlier post here: "Championship Wrestling" debuts in Charlotte (1958)

The show, hosted by WBTV personality "Big" Bill Ward, did indeed debut on Saturday, January 11, but not at 3:45 that afternoon as originally scheduled. ACC Basketball got in the way. And then there were Spanky and those poor Little Rascals that got in the way, too.

In another Ronald Jordon column recently uncovered, the Charlotte News told the story. Read that entire article below for all the details.

The afternoon ACC basketball game between Duke and NC State ran long when Duke center Bob Lakata and forward Jim Newcome sent the game into two overtimes respectively. WBTV producer Gene Burke watched as the double-overtime contest threw his Saturday afternoon programming schedule into chaos, delaying the debut of "Championship Wrestling" and then, with wrestling running over, bumping the popular kids show "Little Rascals." 

It may not seem like much now, but one can imagine the stress producer Gene Burke and wrestling promoter Jim Crockett were under that afternoon with the debut of local pro wrestling on television. It was nice to read Ronald Green's positive nod to the production at the conclusion of the article.

As always, thanks to Mark Eastridge.

* * * * * * * * * *

ACC Basketball Note: Duke went on to win the ACC league championship that year finishing 11-3, a game ahead of second place NC State. Forward Jim Newcome, mentioned in the article above, went on to play in the NBA.

Promoter Paul Winkhaus (JCP/Greenville SC)

PROMOTER PAUL C. WINKHAUS

Winkhaus was the promoter in Greenville SC and surrounding area

for Jim Crockett Sr. in the 1950s through the early 1970s.

 

Edited E-mail to the Mid-Atlantic Gateway from longtime

Greenville SC wrestling historian Don Holbrook

Yes, I knew Mr. Winkhaus well. He was indeed Crockett's man in Greenville. He also handled Columbia, Asheville, Anderson back then and did a few other cities around here from time to time like Greenwood at the ball park and others. He was already up in years, we are talking late 1960's for a reference point here. He lived in Matthews North Carolina, outside of Charlotte and he was originally from Ohio I think. He told me that he was a sports writer for a newspaper somewhere before he got into wrestling. One thing I remember was how creative he was at writing press releases that he would send over to the newspaper here in town to go along with the ad they ran every week for Monday nights card.

Most of the years Billy Powell was ring announcer, he actually worked for Winkhaus. Billy would walk in the back door about 15 minutes before show time and he and Mr. Winkhaus would go over the line up and any changes or announcements, etc.

I actually rode to the Anderson Recreation Center with Mr. Winkhaus a few times on Thursdays. There was a period of time he was running a show there every other week or so. This was before I was old enough to drive. He used to stop by the Greenville Memorial Auditorium on Thursday afternoons on his way to Anderson. He also would run the tape for Saturday afternoon television by the WFBC-TV studio over on Rutherford Road on some of the Thursdays. I can remember running it in to the lobby desk at channel 4 for him a time or two.

He was a nice old man to me, but he had a gruff sounding voice and back then wrestling was so believable that many of the folks around here would be on him the minute they saw him, complaining about the heels, one thing or the other. He was interesting to talk to and he would tell me wrestling stories and at a young age. I thought it was so cool to have this inside track on wrestling.

Mr. Winkhaus died not long after he retired. After his death, there was a short period I don't think they had anyone acting as local promoter. I can remember Johnny Ringley, Crockett's son-in-law coming down a few times, and once I remember Jim Sr. was here on Monday handling things. There may have been an interim along that time, I don't remember, but the next one I do remember was Sandy Scott. He actually lived in an apartment out on Wade Hampton Blvd. for a long while and ran the same towns Winkhaus did but also helped George Harbin with Spartanburg and more spot shows in Western N.C. Then Danny Miller came in when Sandy went back to the Charlotte office.

- Don Holbrook, Greenville SC

 

 Despite what the caption indicates, promoter Paul Winkhaus is on the LEFT,
Billy Powell is on the right.

 

 

Snow Cancellation and Holiday Announcement
Asheville NC 1970

 

 

The Passing of Paul Winkhaus

 

Paul Winkhaus died November 1974. He was ill for several months prior to that and could hardly walk the last 3 or 4 times he came to Greenville, so much so that he couldn't even make it down the steps to the dressing rooms to talk to the guys. So they had to send the referee upstairs to get the instructions from Winkhaus who was in a small dressing room on the main floor level. Mr. Winkhaus "resigned", moved to his hometown in Ohio and died shortly afterward.

I remember that he took great pride in the newspaper ads and the results and write ups. He was a former newspaper writer and had a great ability so that is why the ads and the write ups were so good. I used to see him at Greenville Auditorium in an outer office typing his materials for the newspapers. Asheville was one of his towns and he worked really hard to promote it. He was the main reason WLOS had such a good relationship with Crockett Wrestling.

- Don Holbrook, June 2012

The Voice of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling

Tribute to Bob Caudle

Studio Wrestling Interview: Video Tech Tom Gallagher from WRAL

Tom Gallagher worked in videotape at WRAL television from 1979 until 1982 and his adventures with the JCP wrestling crew that moved into the Raleigh studio "A" every Wednesday paint the most complete picture of a day at WRAL wrestling tapings that has yet been published to our knowledge.

Tom and I were introduced via e-mail and I asked Tom to share with us his role in the wrestling tapings. Presented below is Tom's recent letter to me regarding those memorable Wednesdays. 

 

- Dick Bourne, January 2009

********************************************

An Email From Tom Gallagher

Most of what I would contribute regards the technical nature of the show, from 1979 to 1982 when I worked videotape at WRAL-TV.

To orient you, the videotape room at WRAL was in the basement, near the corner below the “WRAL-5” message sign that can be seen behind Bob Caudle in a picture on the Gateway. The studio was on the ground floor, and the production control room was on the second floor almost directly over the VTR room.

Just about every Wednesday, wrestling would take over production at WRAL-TV after the noon news and, except for the six o’clock news, was about the only thing that would happen for the rest of the day. It’s pretty well documented elsewhere that the shows (World Wide Wrestling and Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling) were taped in the evening, so I’ll deal with the afternoon session.

On Wednesday afternoons we produced the 2:20 commercials that followed the announcement “Let’s take time out for these commercial messages about the [World Wide / Mid-Atlantic] wrestling events coming up in your area.” This was the whole basis of the economics of these shows: stations got an hour of programming material that they didn’t have to pay money for, and the promoters got almost five minutes of commercial time to plug their local arena matches. ("Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling has been furnished to this station for broadcast at this time by Jim Crockett Promotions, in exchange for commercial consideration.") These spots ran at about twenty and forty minutes into the show. To sweeten the deal, there were commercial positions within the show that the station could sell to even make a profit, or maybe just pay the electric bill to keep the transmitter running.

The WRAL Video Tape Room

The studio was set up with just the background flats; the ring was kept on the truck and set up during the six-o’clock news break. As you can see from the pictures, we had exactly four high-quality (“quadruplex”, or “quad”) recorders that used 2” tape. Only two of them had the modules that allowed electronic editing, the alternative being a razor blade and adhesive tape. Almost all the stations that aired wrestling did it from 2” tape (the exception was Bluefield, which used BVU ¾” tape). I don’t believe any station got the show on 1” BVH. Those were the days when VTRs weighed half a ton and cost a quarter-million apiece. WRAL was lucky to have four (FOUR!) 2” VTRs. Since only four copies of each show existed, and they had to be air-shipped on Thursday to get to the stations on Friday before the program managers went away for the weekend, there was no time to make copies of shows.

What happened to the tape reels was described as a bicycle wheel, or “the bicycle.” No, we didn’t send the shows out on the back of a bicycle! If you imagine Raleigh as the hub, and the various cities on the rim, the show tapes travelled up and down the spokes. I don’t recall the specific order, of course, but the show that aired in High Point, for example, would come back, have new commercials edited in, and get sent back out to Louisville, come back, get new commercials edited in again, and then be sent back out to Buffalo. After the first week, each show would air in only four markets (Bluefield would always get the new show on ¾”, which would make five the first week.) Each show might be airing each week, somewhere, for as long as a month or more.

Producing and editing the commercials is what happened Wednesday afternoon. We edited live-to-tape, which means that as the talent was promoting the match for a city we were recording on the tape that would go to that city. On the production side, the floor crew usually had the likes of David Gill, Leonard Peebles, Rick Armstrong, Art Howard, Tilla Fern, Kara Carite, and others. The control room had Ruth Miller or Joe Johnson on audio and, depending on the week, directors George Pemberton, Bob Gubar, Kevin Duffus, Bud Brown, Tom Lawrence, Pam Parrish (Pam Paris?), or Connie Goodman. I was all alone in VTR.

My job started during the noon news. Carl Murnick would bring down about two-dozen tapes. I would cue each tape to the beginning of the first 2:20 (two-minute twenty-second) commercial, then dismount both the supply reel and the take-up reel from the tape machine. In the wide shot of the tape room (above) you can see the last eight tapes for the day stacked on the floor. To make an edit, I would load a tape onto the machine, find the exact beginning of the commercial to be replaced by the edit, zero the tape time counter, and then rewind the tape about thirty seconds. From thirty seconds back, I would play the tape and make several mechanical and electronic adjustments to the machine, while watching the timer and counting-down to the beginning of the commercial so that the studio could cue the talent (Mr. Landrum or Mr. Caudle). There was a 2/3-second delay between when I pressed the “edit” button and the actual edit, so I had to account for that. As soon as the recording started, I would move to the second machine and load that tape, cue it up, and get ready for that edit--- hopefully before the first 2:20 commercial was done, because I had to have my finger on the button to end the edit recording, otherwise we would be recording over the show! After ending that first edit on the first tape, I would put that tape into fast-forward to get to the second commercial, move to the second machine and make the first edit there, move back and cue-up the first machine to the second spot while the second was recording, end the second machine and edit the first, cue up the second, end the first and rewind and take off and cue up a new tape, and so on and on.

Tom Gallegher on the job in the WRAL video tape room.

If it sounds complicated, it sure was. It was OK once you got used to it.

I would record the commercials to be edited into the shows recorded that night onto the 1” tape machine, and Carter Bing or Walter Armstrong would edit those commercials into the tapes before they were shipped.

About halfway through the afternoon, we took a break from production while the studio flipped the background flats around from the “A” show to the “B” show; yep, as folks who went to the studio tapings will attest, the only difference between the shows was which side of the background flats faced the camera! One side had “Mid-Atlantic Championship Wresting” on it, and the other side was “World-Wide Wrestling.”

As soon as we finished taping the commercials, everyone split for dinner or some other sort of refreshment.

As I mentioned above, the late Carl Murnick handled all the tape routing and shipping. Now, I can’t say anything about Elliot or Sonny Murnick or any of the Crocketts--- they hardly ever made it down to videotape--- but I’d give anything to work with the likes of Carl again. He always treated me well, and on the numerous occasions when I made mistakes he always took it good-naturedly, shrugged it off, and simply trusted me to do better in the future. Every week, he brought down a box of chicken and a corn-cob from the Church’s chicken down the street, and that was my dinner every Wednesday. I appreciated that more than he ever could imagine, because I wasn’t making very much working in TV and it would often be the best meal I had all week. When C&M eventually got their own remote truck I was urged to go after the tape job, but I had gone back to school and wasn’t where I could change jobs, but I was sorely tempted based on the good treatment I got from Carl.

Also, as I mentioned above, the tape job was a bit complicated and, when I first started, I was a bit slow. So slow, in fact, that we’d finish the afternoon session after five-thirty, a bad thing since they had to move the cameras back over to another studio to do the six-o’clock news. (WRAL had three studio cameras. At $65,000 a pop, most stations only had two. Field cameras for ENG and EFP were about the same price.) A late finish was not desired by either the client or the crew, to put it mildly. After a couple of weeks of late wrap-ups on the promos, the wrestlers decided that enough was enough and deputized Gene Anderson to take care of the problem, which was me.

Gene came down to the tape room, which you can tell from the pictures had a pretty low ceiling, and proceeded to impress on me how desirable it was for me to do a bit better in my job. I don’t remember what he said, but I can tell you that it was the most inspirational, motivational, sensational talking to I have ever heard. I was scared witless. I just knew the cane he carried was going to impact me somewhere (it never did.)

 

Over the next week, I carefully laid out plans, practiced my editing, reviewed my plans again, practiced editing some more, and did a whole lot of praying that it would be enough.

 

By the following Wednesday, I was one of the best VTR guys on the East Coast.

As weeks went by, I got even better, which led to some eventual mischief. You probably noticed that the 2:20 promos started out the same way --- Rich Landrum giving the where and when for the local arena shows--- and the wrestlers would amble into the shot for a few moments to shout threats of violence at their opponent in that town (who was likely sitting on the bleachers a few feet away munching on some chicken.) All the while, Rich stood there holding the microphone. As a matter of fact, Rich had to stand there through all those 2:20 promos, and the only break he would get was between promos, while the studio and control room waited for the guy in VTR (me) to set up for the next edit. Well, I got things so fine-tuned that I all but eliminated the pause between promos; Rich would be lucky to have ten or fifteen seconds to rest his arm, and forget about stepping out from under the lights (still quite warm, back then!) We got the rhythm going, and before you knew it Rich had been out there continuously for about forty-five minutes without much of a break at all. Finally, HE had to ask the entire production to stop so he could take a break. I can’t remember what I said, but I’m sure it was some wise-butt remark.

Anyway, sorry Mr. Landrum. You just have to know, some of those other guys were bigger than you, and they wanted me to do things as fast as could be done!

- Tom Gallagher, January 22, 2009

The credits roll at the end of another edition of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling.

Copyright © 2009 Mid-Atlantic Gateway • Photos courtesy of Lee Collins. Photo (from newspaper clipping) of Carl Murnick courtesy of David Bullock.

Originally published on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway in January 2009