Jim Horne

By John Mehno and Jim Horne

Dec 1, 2005
   

Jim Horne arrived at KDKA 18 months after Rege left. He started on the all-night show, soon moved to evenings, then spent the rest of his KD days in the afternoon slot.

Jim was gifted with an incredibly quick wit, which was on display when he did a short-lived but fondly-remembered Saturday night talk show that sailed merrily over the heads of most listeners.
  
Sample exchange:
  
Caller: "I saw a show on Channel 53...."
Jim: "Channel 53? My TV only has channels 2 through 13."
Caller: "No, it's UHF."
Jim: "Ma'am, we're all adults here. There's no need to spell words."
Caller: "No, no, UHF...Ultra High Frequency."
Jim: "Oh, right, that's the TV only dogs can see."
 

Jim was known as "The Little Round Devil" and used the "Teddy Bears Parade" as his theme song. He started his radio career as a teenager in Paris, TX and had stops in San Antonio, Cincinnati, Hartford and Knoxville before he came to Pittsburgh. He moved to New York after finishing at KDKA in 1972 and worked at WPIX-FM for a time.

He launched an acting career and has been busy on the Broadway stage as well as movies and television. He's also in demand as a voiceover specialist and narrator of books on tape.

Now billed as J.R. Horne, his credits include "Turk 182," "Die Hard With A Vengeance" and Woody Allen's "Radio Days," as well as the Hallmark of Fame presentation "What the Deaf Man Heard." He also appeared in the CBS miniseries "Stephen King's The Golden Years," as well as movies-of-the-week "Don't Look Back" and "The Gentleman Bandit."

Jim appeared on Broadway opposite George C. Scott in the critically acclaimed revival of "Inherit the Wind," and with Sam Waterston in "Abe Lincoln in Illinois." His most recent appearance for the New York Shakespeare Festival was with John Goodman in "Skin of Our Teeth" in Central Park. He first paired with Tim Blake Nelson (who plays Delmar in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?") in Nelson's off-Broadway play "Anadarko."

Jim has also appeared in a wide range of touring theater productions including musicals such as "Guys and Dolls," "The Fantasticks" and "Great Expectations," as well as "The Front Page, Cyrano de Bergerac, School for Wives," "The Chimes," "Greater Tuna," and "Our Town." 

These are Jim's own memories:

I came to KDKA in May of 1967 from a very brief stay doing mornings at WNOX Knoxville, Tennessee. Legendary program director Tony Graham hired me to work the all-night show after Terry McGovern was going in for his six months basic training in the National Guard. It was not a temporary assignment as Terry was to be given another time slot upon his return.

I was 23 years old and had been offered a job at Westinghouse's new station KFWB in Los Angeles, but declined for some reason and came to Pittsburgh. I also had an offer from WOR-FM in New York, but FM was just beginning to make noise and the heyday of the big AM power-houses like KD was still going strong.

KD flew me up on the weekends to do the famous Sunday morning show while I was still working off my commitment to WNOX. I remember a night at the Gateway Center studios when I was introduced to Wendy King. She asked where I was staying. I said "the Carlton House." Her eyes lit up and this attractive, pert little blonde told me, "Oooh, there is a lot of action around there." Wendy was not all kielbasa recipes.

It was impossible during my five and a half years at KDKA not to feel the haunting prescence of Rege Cordic. Never before or since have I seen such a dominance of one radio personality in a market. He was gone to Hollywood, but you wouldn't believe it. I loved Pallan & Trow, but they must have had a hard row after Cordic. I only met him on a couple of occasions, but always somehow felt I knew him just from working at KD.

Most people in Pittsburgh thought that the "family" at KDKA did their laundry together which was true up to a point. I certainly fell in with the Clark Race, Big Jim Williams nightly assault (with various record promo men and suspect women) on the pubs of Pittsburgh. I would not commit to a public web site too many of our exploits but let's just say we all enjoyed the fellowship and camaraderie of a good debauch.

Clark, of course, was the star of the station then, a man for whom the term charisma was invented. Charming, handsome in his white Nehru suit and commanding the roads in his Excalibur or his Rolls Royce, he was a figure of some awe in Steeltown. And what sometimes was forgotten, a genuinely nice man and loving father.

My best friend among the KD cast was Terry McGovern and his lovely wife Molly, to whom he is still wed. I remember a time at a place we called "Dean's Diner" for the proprieter Dean Steliotes. Very late. Ed and Wendy were there. Terry and Molly. Betty Aberlin ("Lady Aberlin") and her then husband and me and my then wife. Dark and dim in the comfortable bar area All the ladies, as is their want sometimes, left together for the ladies room. The men continued with their late night beverages for sometime before the women returned. The gathering resumed. Only much later did we realize something was amiss. The women all looked sexier somehow..their clothes were more revealing in some cases, tighter in others.

While in the ladies room at Wendy King's suggestion they had all exchanged outfits.
Wendy wore Molly's. etc. This is an example of the very odd sense of humor Wendy and Ed had. They loved to shake things up and see what happened.

The KDKA family was such a collection of eccentrics, unique talents and downright oddballs, it would take a large book to do justice, but I loved every one of them. I remember thinking even though I was a young man that this couldn't last. It was just too great a place to work. I was right It didn't. But more on that later.

"Uncle Ed" Schaughency, dapper with a ribald sense of humor. "Pappy" Paul Long, who would get insulted if you didn't let him get the check, tie undone, threadbare blue suit turned purple but somehow magically transformed on camera. Marie Torre, beautiful, but basically a shy and extremely lovable woman. Bill Burns, acerbic wit and elegant dresser. Tom Bender, the voice of the Steelers who hated to fly, who wandered in to the studio for the 11 o'clock sports cast under the fog of the single malt and realizing he was in no shape to read the scores handed the script to the announcer and said, "Here, you read the son-of-a-bitch." He also bought a race horse at the track one night but had no knowledge of it except his checkbook that said "1000$--horse." Bob Prince, the old Gunner, whose off-the-air comments were the stuff of gold and I got to hear before my show at midnight on Pirate baseball nights. He would do his wrap-up show for the morning taped often from his hotel room and I dearly wish I had copies of his ramblings during the commercial breaks.

Unfortunately along about 1970, Westinghouse brought in some very mediocre men as general managers and program directors and cutbacks and bad morale seeped into what was the last glory days of a station that was as close to a complete indentification with its community as I've ever witnessed. You only had to turn on the transmitter and you were Pittsburgh's KDKA. I knew we were in trouble when the new program director from somewhere in the midwest declared in a staff meeting that "I think we have a call-letter problem".

I left in 1972 after the end of my contract for New York to pursue other fish to fry, but still feel for a couple of wonderful years KDKA was the best place I ever worked.

Jim Horne

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