by G. Jack
Urso
When interviewing actor Christopher Reeve for Hot Hero
Sandwich, Dr. Tom Cottle had to fly from Los Angeles to Chicago, through
Detroit, and finally in a bumpy airlift to Mackinac Island, Michigan (where
Reeve was filming Somewhere in Time),
in what Cottle generously referred to as a “puddle jumper,” someone had to make
the arrangements, pay for the tickets, get the hotel rooms, meal vouchers, etc.
Those duties belong to the unit production department headed by Bob Newman and
Ken Aymong and the person who helped make those arrangements and prepared the
invoices was Claudia Rocco.
Network
television production units are responsible for scheduling transportation,
hotels, meals, rented equipment, technical facilities, security, and related
services for any programs, including entertainment, sports, and news. The
supervising production administrator for Hot
Hero Sandwich was Robert Newman who was assisted by production
administrators Ken Aymong and Nancy Freedman. Aymong later became
well-known for his decades as a producer for Saturday Night Live.
One thing
that former reporters like myself learn is that if you want to really know what
is going on get to know the secretaries, yet Claudia Rocco was more than that. While
referred to as a secretary in 1979, her title today might be more equivalent to
an administrative assistant. Claudia was, in fact, a trained communications
professional with a degree from St. John’s University. Right after college,
Claudia secured a position with NBC and stayed there in various positions for
47 years. It is a broadcasting tenure few people would be able to do today.
In her
interview with the Hot Hero Sandwich
Project, Claudia paints a picture of the activities and offices involved in producing
the show. We get an insider’s look at how things got down, the technology of
the era, and the low-down on a scandal brewing in the production unit that would
result in numerous charges of fraud which, although Hot Hero production staff was not involved, it would result in an
overhaul of accounting practices at the network.
 |
Claudia Rocco in the Hot Hero Sandwich cast and crew picture,
seen here with the Hot Hero Band's Mike Ratti (right) and Richie Annunizato (below). |
Here, Claudia takes us on a tour of NBC circa 1979 and gives us a
behind-the scenes and shows us how things got done and introduces us to the
people who got it done.
____________________________________________________
I, Claudia
Hot Hero
Sandwich Project (HHSP):
Claudia, thank you so much for speaking with me today so the Hot Hero Sandwich Project can get a
little insight from the production side of the series. Before we dig too deep
into that, I’d like to get some background on what led you to NBC and Hot Hero Sandwich in particular. I see
from your resume that you graduated from St. John's University in 1976. What
was your degree in?
Claudia Rocco: Communications.
I minored in business.
HSDP: That seems like a perfect combination
for where you ended up at NBC. You must have graduated in early May 1976, and
you were already working at NBC, is that correct? Did you have an internship or
was that just a bit of good luck?
 |
| WNBC logo, 1976. |
Claudia Rocco: I had an
internship in the fall of 75. I worked at WNBC [NYC, channel 4], the local
station, for Community Affairs . . . I would do research on guests that
would be on the weekend. So then, when I went back to school in January of 76,
I had one more semester, I got a call from one of the people [at NBC], they
were looking for someone to work four hours a day to do the ascertainment
interview set ups for the local station. Do you know what that is?
HHSP: No, please fill me in.
Claudia Rocco: The FCC
licensing the local station needs [the station] to interview community leaders
of all different types, business, religious, education. So, what I did was I
would research community leaders in the tri-state area, call them up cold,
introduce myself on the phone and ask them if they would like to be interviewed
by someone from WNBC TV as part of FCC licensing and requirements. I started
with that and then I graduated school in May, and when I graduated, I still had
this part time job four hours a day, paid by the hour, $5.00 an hour [$27.74 in
2024 dollars, so a pretty good wage]. So, I thought to myself, You know what? It
was pretty good back then. I'm in a TV place already. I have a degree in this.
What are my chances of if I walked out getting another job? So I stayed there
and I continue to do that for a full year part time.
HHSP: I have to say, as a Communications major
myself for my undergraduate degree, I would have killed for that opportunity.
It illustrates just how important internships are.
Claudia Rocco: When I
graduated in May, I was like, you know what? I'm not going to leave this. This
is because people weren't getting jobs. [Note: According to an August 6, 1976,
Dept. of Labor report, unemployment among adult women was at 7.6 percent in July
1976]. You know, fifty years ago they still were struggling and I said I'm
already in. What am I crazy? I have to be nuts to leave, so I stayed and II
continued to work there for another year. No benefits, five bucks an hour. I
didn’t care.
HHSP: And why not? You were already doing it.
That was some of the best advice you ever gave yourself.
Claudia Rocco: To this
day, those internships are so important. And I tell these kids, when you finish
the internship, you make sure you keep in touch three, six weeks, eight weeks,
by email. Say, hello. How are you? You know, just checking in.
HHSP: Absolutely. I kept in touch with my
internship supervisor and that led to a paying job right after I graduated. At a
certain point, however, you decided to move on and ended up in the production
unit with Bob Newman [credited as Robert Newman, Supervising Production
Administrator for HHS] and Ken Aymong
[credited as a production supervisor for HHS].
Tell me about that.
Claudia Rocco: I
continued with that job for a year and then I think I needed benefits and I
think I needed to start to put money into the savings account for retirement
because people were telling me you have to start that very young, very young.
So, I started to look at the job posters and even though I loved the local
network because it was a family, it was an unbelievable family. I applied for a
job as a unit manager secretary and I got hired and that's how I moved into
that.
HHSP: Tell me what your duties were. A job at
NBC must have been exciting.
Claudia Rocco: Yeah, that
was fun. You were assigned in the fall on different assignments, different
shows. I first started out working for all the sports unit managers, so I
worked for all these fellows who traveled every weekend. They were at all the
games — whatever games NBC was doing, they were on the road.
So, I work
for people that left on Wednesday and Thursday and came back the following week
and I would do all their expense reports when they came back. They would hand
me all the receipts and I would put all that stuff together and all the bills,
all the vendors. And then I got to move around a little bit and then I got put
on Hot Hero when that was put
together.
HHSP: It sounds like you were there about a
year or two before Hot Hero Sandwich.
Claudia Rocco: Yeah,
76-77 I think I probably started with them — probably 77, because I kept the
other job for a year after I graduated.
HHSP: So, how was the department set up?
Claudia Rocco: There was
a woman who was in charge of all of us and the VP of the department who had an
office and the furniture he had and . . . I’ll never forget this, he never had
overhead lighting. He had beautiful lamps in the office . . . his name was
Steve Weston . . . he was very intimidating to me at time because I was young
and he was an older man with gray hair. He was in charge of the whole operation.
HHSP: He [Weston] had probably been there from
the 50s or the 60s, I imagine.
Claudia Rocco: Yeah, he
was kind of famous in in that that area of what he did, but I'll never forget
that there were no overhead lights.
_____________________________________________________
Sidebar on Steve Weston
According to an
Aug. 21, 1981, New York Times
article, NBC Vice President Steve Weston was caught in a kick-back scheme with
other unit managing personnel and was fired by NBC in 1979. Weston pled guilty
to Federal fraud charges.
The scheme dated
back to 1968 and also involved and John Walsh, a director of NBC unit managers
in Washington D.C. and involved numerous productions, including the 1972 and
1976 Democratic and Republican National conventions. False invoices for
services and equipment would be submitted for which Weston and Walsh would
receive kickbacks. Several other unit mangers also pled guilty to fraud
charges.
Claudia Rocco
and the Hot Hero Sandwich production
unit were not involved, but it affected her nonetheless. According to Claudia:
“I, very
fortunately, did not type up any of the false expense documents, but some of my
friends did and they had to testify in court. After this whole thing went down,
the role of the ‘unit manager’ was revamped and ‘checks’ were put in place through NBC Finance to prevent access to funds for them as
previously were available when they went out on the road.”
“It's funny
because I was a little intimidated by this older man in this beautifully
appointed office — he never gave me any reason to feel that way — I guess it
was just the whole presence and authority figure thing — and he was stealing.
You just never know I guess!”
_____________________________________________________
Job Description
HHSP: For those of use outside the industry,
what are the responsibilities for unit management?
 |
| Bob Newman. |
Claudia Rocco: Bob
[Newman] was the production supervisor and then Ken [Aymong, later long-time Saturday Night Live producer] worked
with him as a manager. These people were responsible for the money and the budget
of the show. This was their job. The money was given. They controlled the money
and the budget. Their job was to do all the bookings for all the facilities,
studio time, crews, any travel arrangements that needed to be made, food that
needed to be ordered for crew work. They did all of it. They managed everything
except the actual acting of the people on the show.
HHSP: This was just a few years before Ken got
involved with Saturday Night Live,
which also took place on Studio 8-H. So, seems like a good training ground for
him. Interesting that he spent most of his career around Studio 8-H though. I
wonder if that was his intention?
Claudia Rocco: How it
works is the unit managers also got shifted around the way the secretaries did.
So Ken probably was assigned to SNL.
That's probably how that came about. And he probably, you know, made friends
with Lorne [Michaels, creator/producer of SNL], and they loved him, of course,
who wouldn't, and that's how he got his job at Broadway Video. [Note: Broadway Video is Michaels’ multimedia
entertainment company which he found in 1979.]
Howard
Malley [Hot Hero Sandwich producer]
was a unit manager.
HHSP: Really? I did not know that!
Claudia Rocco: I worked
with Howard before when he was a unit manager.
HHSP: I’ve only heard great things about
Howard from everybody who worked with him.
HHSP: Amazing .
. . amazing. I think he was involved in sports. He was was a shorter man, very
lovable. And there was another man, George Smith, and the two of them kind of
looked alike and they would go around together, but Howard I knew as a unit
manager before all this happening.
_____________________________________________________
Sidebar on Howard Malley
According
to the Internet Movie Database, Hot Hero Sandwich producer Howard Malley was hired as unit manager for NBC
in 1969 working at WNBC, where Claudia Rocco would later work, producing Jets Huddle with Joe Namath and Leroy Neiman.
In 1979, Malley also served as production manager for a favorite TV movie of
mine, Legends of the Superheroes, a live-action
film based on the Saturday morning Super
Friends animated series, both of which were likely on the playlists of Hot Hero Sandwich fans since the demographics dovetailed with each other.
 |
| Hot Hero Sandwich Producer Howard Malley (left), and in character as Ym's and Ur's father (right). |
_______________________________________________________________
Money and Management
HHSP: The budget for Hot Hero Sandwich is something that comes up repeatedly. It was a
very expensive show with a budget over $1 million [approximately $4,347,988.98
in 2024 dollars]. So, I'm wondering, given the position you were in, do if you
recall is there was any hand wringing going on in the unit over the great
expense of the show. It was a big ensemble and an extraordinary financial
commitment on the part of the network. I suppose part of it must have been the
Harts dedication to a high-quality product.
Claudia Rocco: These
people were perfectionists — literally perfectionists. I still to this day can't believe that I got
to sit there and witness the quality of what was going on around. That was true
TV production. This was two creative people [Bruce and Carole Hart] who were
putting together, and they brought in the best . . . the best. I used to see
Rex Smith all the time walking around the office, so I saw him all the time,
and Tom Cottle, who was a psychologist – smart, super smart.
I would
listen to all of this. My desk was like in the middle when you walked in the
front door, so it was a suite. It was almost like a big living room. I was
sitting so everybody had to walk past me and they went into their individual
offices. So I would, you know, hear and see things, but I never actually sat in
on a meeting.
HHSP: You were definitely in the center of
action. How about day-to-day interactions with the Harts and the rest of the
cast and crew who came through the suite?
Claudia Rocco: Super
nice, always super nice. As I said, when you walked in, I'm the first one that
you saw. Everybody always said hello to me. Felix [Pappalardi] would say good
morning to me and my day was set my day, literally was set.
 |
The Hot Hero Sandwich production office phone extensions.
Claudia Rocco answered lines 4167, 4174, and 4700. |
Rock Notes
HHSP: I know you love Classic Rock, so this
must have been a great experience watching all those Rock acts roll through. You had Joe Jackson,
Stephen Stills, Sister Sledge, Eddie Money . . .
Claudia Rocco:
Literally this summer, I just saw Joe Jackson at Tarrytown [NY].
HHSP: You have a pretty active schedule
hitting shows I understand.
Claudia Rocco:
This year was a little bit of a slow year. We went to see Martin
Barr [of Jethro Tull] three times in the past couple of weeks, and then I saw
Renaissance a couple weeks ago. I love Annie Haslam. Billy Joel a couple times.
I go to a lot of smaller venues now. I’m going to see Pat Travers next week,
John Ford of the Strawbs [a 1960s British rock group]. Amazing . . . Amazing.
Well, he's going to be performing. He lives here now on Long Island. He's from
England, but he moved here.
HHSP: That’s a slow year? [laughter] Between
interning and working at NBC, your path must have crossed a lot of performers.
Claudia Rocco: I was in
an elevator with John Entwhistle [The Who]. Robert Plant was being interviewed
and one of the girls and I went to the sixth floor studio just to look at him!
HHSP: For a Classic Rock fan, it must have
been a fantastic experience not knowing who you might cross paths with.
Speaking of crossing paths, I understand yours crossed with our friend Jimmy Biondolillo, the show’s music coordinator quite often. He
worked in the office writing arrangements with the help of his pitch pipe,
correct?
Claudia Rocco: Yeah. He’d be in the conference room right
next to where I was. He would go in, close the door, and I would hear that with
little sounds all day and then he will come out the end of the day with sheets
of music written. So, I would hear that all day. And then on the other side of
the corridor there was Felix [Pappalardi] with his little piano in his office
and I would hear things there too.
HHSP: So that's how things were set up. I
had this idea that they [Pappalardi and Biondolillo] were all locked up in this
little sound recording studio somewhere, but they were all right there in the
office. That building was adjacent to 30 Rock, correct?
 |
| 30 Rockefeller Center, NYC (Credit: Ephemeral New York). |
Claudia Rocco: Right, we
were right next door to Radio City. So, you had to go to 30 Rock, run
downstairs, through the subway to the underground concourse, and then came up
In 30 Rock, right next door to Radio City. I think its 1270 6th Ave., and
that's where they had beautiful suites. The Harts [Bruce and Carole] had like
an apartment. They had this incredible bathroom that was better than the
bathroom in my house, and they said “You could use it.” But I wasn’t going to
use it!
[laughter]
Long Days, Longer Nights
HHSP: I know it sounds extravagant, and it is,
but we have to realize these are people who were putting in long, long hours —
twelve hours or more a day.
Claudia Rocco: Yes, but
that's why they had all of that, because they didn't go home. Jimmy
[Biondolillo], would sometimes go to lunch with me. You would meet me at noon.
He was coming from being out all night long [working]. He would call me and say,
“Can you have lunch? You want to get together?” Then he would come meet me and
we would go eat something, and he had worked all night.
That’s how
that worked. They worked all night.
HHSP: Those are the details that get lost.
Audiences don’t really know the hard work and long hours that for into
producing television and how much work goes on behind the scenes. Whenever
somebody leaves the cast at Saturday
Night Live, the first thing they talk about are the long, long, long hours
and the endless days. And I think it's just something most people don’t think
when it comes to the industry.
Claudia Rocco: When I was with the unit managers, one of my jobs was with SNL too. So, I used to have to go up to
the 17th floor and pick things up, or get things, and I would go up there 17th
floor and 30 Rock and I would go in and I would walk past offices and I would
see a bunch of jeans and clothes in piles on the floor. One time, I saw the
blinds had been chewed up, like a dog had been chewing up the blinds, and I
would see that and I'd be like, “What goes on up here?” [laughter]. This was
their offices on the 17th floor. Obviously, they didn't go home.
They were there all night, working, so they just kind of lived there.
HHSP: There was some confusion over how the
show was cancelled. It seemed that then-NBC President Fred Silverman told
different stories to the cast and the media. Were you in the position to give
us any insight?
Claudia Rocco: No, I
didn't know. Ken [Aymong] and Bo {Newman] may have known that since they were
in charge of the money for the show.
How it Was Then and How it is Now
HHSP: Still, you were in the center of
production during an exciting time in network broadcasting.
Claudia Rocco: I always
say I'm so lucky to work in the Golden Age of TV . . . no computers, no cell phones, all done by
hand. You walked around, you saw, and you met people and you learned. So I met
and learned. Now, you just sit at a desk with a laptop. You don't see anybody.
HHSP: Distribution lists for memos today are just one click and done. People don’t appreciate the extra work that had to be done back then and how personal
computers changed all that. I’ve worked at some colleges for years and have
never met some of the people I email on a regular basis.
Claudia Rocco: No, you
don't. What I would do is like I would take all the forms . . . and all the
orders that Ken [Aymong] and Bob [Newman] had. I had to physically go to 30 Rock
and go to all the different areas and put this paperwork in . . . for this
stuff that they needed. This is how I met tons of people at NBC in different
departments, but it was all the texts that I had to go around to and I learned
all that stuff, you know, all the studio areas. I loved all that. So, Bob would
always say, “Claudia, please come back. Don't be gone for two hours!” He was
strict. He was very strict. I learned a lot from him, though. Ken was new to
this, so Ken was a lot more relaxed, and was trying to absorb everything and
take it all in because he was new to this.
HHSP: Right. It was right near the beginning
of a long career for him.
Claudia Rocco: I think
[before NBC] he was involved with another company that was owned by RCA. He
always wanted to work in TV. That's another person that at night I would sit
and talk to. I'd sit and talk to him and my last bus was at 7:30 and I won't
tell you how many times I missed that last bus to Queens! We would be talking
in the office and I loved it because I was learning, absorbing all of this
stuff that I was on a production unit on a show.
HHSP: As a Communications major, I would have
killed to be in your position not long after college, and your curiosity and
people-skills served you well. You lasted for nearly five decades! I understand
you ended up as a senior sales operations specialist for NBC. What were you
selling?
Claudia Rocco: I wasn't
selling. I put all the commercials on TV. I worked the last two Olympics from
my house. I worked Beijing and Tokyo from my house.
HHSP: I'm a little bit curious being outside
the industry? How exactly does get that done? How do you get those commercials
scheduled?
Claudia Rocco: It's now
it's all digital now. It's all just sent in digitally.
HHSP: So, you actually have the files of the
commercials you're forwarding to the clients?
Claudia Rocco: I don't
get them. They get sent in from the ad agency, the production house, they send
it all in. It’s all digital.
HHSP: I have to wonder how things changed over
the years.
Claudia Rocco: I’ll tell
you a quick story. Years and years ago, before this was all digital, the
commercials were in little boxes, little red boxes put on the belt, you know
the belt? [Note: “The belt” was a conveyor-type device used to load up
commercials for broadcast]. So, my biggest thrill was when people would come to
NBC, like friends to look around, I would take them up to videotape behind the
belt to watch the commercials. The little box, the two little red doors would
open, two rods would come in, pull the tape out, run the commercial, doors
close up, conveyor belt moves on to the next spot.
HHSP: So,
those were being played off VHS cartridges?
Claudia Rocco:
No, the big ones.
.jpg) |
| An old 3/4 inch videotape from 1987 (author's collection). |
Claudia Rocco:
Right. Then, eventually, it all became digital. I didn't see or
touch anything. I just would schedule everything and I work with the ad
agencies to see what they needed to run. But the last two Olympics, I never
thought I’d be able to work an Olympics from your house on a laptop, and we
did.
HHSP:
It's just mind boggling what we can do now versus how we had to do it 30
and 40 years ago.
Claudia Rocco: Before that, when I worked Olympics, you were there, seven days a
week, in the building. In fact, I'll tell you a real quick story. I had tickets
on a Saturday night for Neil Young at Garden. I was working Olympics. I had to
be in the office on Saturday. The show was at 8 o’clock and I said, “Oh, 8
o’clock. It's not a problem. I'll get there.” Sure enough, last minute changes and
I missed almost the first hour of Neil Young at the garden. Now I'm five minutes
away from the Garden, 30 Rock to 34th Street. I'm five minutes away. I missed
the first hour of Neil Young.
HHSP: I bet that just killed you!
Claudia Rocco:
Well, that was a good excuse to see him again.
HHSP: Well, those ad placements are what pay
the bills. I got to say, Claudia, you
are a good advertisement for NBC and for why to get into broadcast television.
When thinking of broadcasting, most people just think of the on-air positions
or the technical positions behind the camera, but there’s a whole
infrastructure behind it and production and sales are really at the hub of what
makes it all turn.
Thank you so much for your time today Claudia
and painting picture for us what the inner workings of behind the show were
like.
Claudia Rocco: This was
the best, thank you.
____________________________________________________
Concluding Thoughts
 |
| Rocco today (LinkedIn) |
One aspect
of the Hot Hero Sandwich Project is
how things got done in broadcasting, both technically and practically, in the years before
personal desktop computers and digital cameras and other technology. From
commercials on 3/4 inch videocassettes loaded up via an automated conveyor belt
to actually having to distribute by hand all the memos and invoices to every department
scattered about the NBC production facilities, broadcasting professionals today
might better appreciate the technological advantages that help satisfy
broadcasting demands that have multiplied geometrically in the decades since
1979.
For up and
coming Broadcasting and Communication majors, Claudia’s experience reinforces
the importance of internships at network-affiliated channels — and especially those
in major markets. As much as it is required of actors and writers, if you want
a job where the action is, you have to be where the action is.
As the Hot Hero Sandwich Project dives deeper
into the show, we discover that although not quite as glamorous as being in
front of the camera, or writing for it, production is at the very hub of all entertainment
and everything revolves around that. Nevertheless, the relationship between the
various departments is more akin to a tapestry. Pull one thread and the whole
thing begins to unwind. No one thread is more important than the others and
when working together the finished result is a collaborative effort.
So, the next
time you see a music performance from the show, a celebrity interview, or even
some expensive sets, like the fabulous neon Hot
Hero Sandwich sign, someone made the arrangements, got the paperwork done, got
the equipment rented, and knew how to navigate the busy broadcasting work environment
of a major national network to get the work done — that person was Claudia Rocco.
● ● ●
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