by G. Jack Urso [Note: Originally published in RetroFan magazine #43, Jan.-Mar. 2026]
Hot Hero Sandwich is a 1979-1980 NBC Emmy-Award
winning Saturday morning children’s TV program. Often described as a Saturday Night Live approach to
children’s entertainment, Hot Hero
Sandwich featured some elements similar to SNL such as sketches and performances
by some of the hottest bands. In fact, Hot
Hero and SNL were produced in the
same famed Studio 8H and shared some of the same stage and technical crew,
which further enhanced production similarities.
As in the many
layers of a well-stacked hero sandwich, Hot
Hero Sandwich likewise had many layers: sketches, music, animation, short
films, and celebrity interviews. The creators, Bruce and Carole Hart, got their
start on Sesame Street, and the
intention here was to provide that first generation of viewers with a natural
evolution of the multimedia concept pioneered by Sesame Street.
I first turned
my attention to Hot Hero Sandwich in
2020 in an article for my blog, Aeolus 13 Umbra, which focuses on obscure
topics, and Hot Hero Sandwich certainly
qualified. There was very little information about the show online, so I
created the first-ever episode guide by going through old TV Guides, wrote up lyrics for the theme song, and researched background
on the performers. It quickly became one of my blog’s highest-ranked articles. I
wasn’t the only one — people DID remember the show!
In 2022, I
received an email from Sherry Coben, one of the writers for Hot Hero Sandwich who went on to create
the hit 1980s series Kate and Allie.
Coben, in fact, met and married the film editor for the series, Patrick McMahon,
who learned his craft on Woody Allen’s early films, worked on Kojack, and later A Nightmare on Elm Street, and many other projects up to the
current day.
This led to the
creation of the Hot Hero Sandwich
Project to document and preserve the legacy of the show. To date, the Project
has a website (www.hotherosandwich.com) with over 100 articles about the show,
including original production documents, rare photos, and interviews with over
two dozen people who worked on the show,
including cast, crew, and the house band.
With exclusive access to the series for the first time since the
original broadcast, a YouTube
channel, Hot Hero Sandwich Central,
was set up with clips from virtually every scene in the series.
So, let’s take a
look at the ingredients in this hero sandwich and see what made this show worth
our memories.
Order
Up!
From the opening
credits, Hot Hero Sandwich grabs our
attention. The theme song was an ear worm that stuck in my mind for decades,
even without any recordings to sustain its memory — and many fans feel
likewise. A straight-ahead hard rock number, it was written by Bruce Hart and
his long-time music writing partner Stephen Lawrence. You may have heard of
another song they co-wrote, the classic Sesame
Street theme! The Hot Hero theme
reframes the adolescent experience of surviving the trials and tribulations of
growing up as nothing less than heroic, and something everyone goes through.
Got
out of bed today — HERO!
Got
to school okay — HERO!
Did
what I could do
Pretty
much like you
You’re
a hero too
Having
fun and coming through
You’re
a hero to me, yes, it’s true
You
are my hero
Me,
I’m like you
I’m
a hero too!
The opening
credits themselves were directed by John Nicolella, a friend of the Harts with production
credits for Saturday Night Fever and
later for Miami Vice, for which he
would also direct several episodes, and later Nash Bridges.
Announcing the
week’s guests was none other than America’s
Top 40’s Casey Kasem, and the bumper voiceovers provided by Barbara Feldon,
Get Smart’s Agent 99 herself. The
Harts could have found any generic announcer do the voice work and paid them
scale, but they knew these familiar voices would help make the show seem more
like an extension of our everyday viewing habits.
The Sketches
The sketches hit
both comedic and dramatic notes and touched on topics ranging from basic teen
angst issues like dating and fitting in, to marijuana and running away. Some
sketches hit all too close to home, such as those on divorce, the death of a
grandparent, or the effect of too frequent moves on children, all situations I
was facing at the time.
The cast
includes Paul O’Keefe, Patty Duke’s younger brother Ross on The Patty Duke Show and a Broadway vet;
Denny Dillon, a veteran of stage and soon to join Saturday Night Live next season; Matt McCoy, in his first screen
credit, later known for his appearances on Seinfeld
and currently the Hartford Insurance spokesperson; Nan-Lynn Nelson, familiar to
audiences at the time as part of The Bloodhound Gang on 3-2-1 Contact; Jarett Smithwrick and L. Michael Craig (aka Michael
Longfield), two actors with extensive stage experience; and Vicky Dawson, at
17, the youngest of the main cast, who was doing double duty during the
production of Hot Hero Sandwich as
Ray Liotta’s wife on Another World.
Supporting cast
members include Andrew Duncan, who appeared in everything from The Andy Griffith Show to Slap Shot; Claudette Sutherland, who
was a cast member in the original Broadway production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; Frankie Faison, a
veteran stage and screen actor; and Saundra McClain, also a veteran stage and
screen actor who during Hot Hero Sandwich
could have been seen on her long-running Peppermint Pattie commercial
enthusiastically comparing the virtues of the candy with “HONEY . . . to dew drops off the cool GREEN leaves!” Handling the
various kids’ roles was child actor Adam Ross who grew up to become a noted
novelist in his own right.
Recurring
locations for the sketches take place at Nightmare High, the local school, and Ted’s Café, run by
Ted (Paul O’Keefe) a high school drop-out, who lends his advice to the teens.
Recurring characters include O’Keefe as Stanley Dypstick, an unusually
confident, if slightly dim-witted, young man who hides his face under a burlap
sack. L. Michael Craig plays the audiophile Tapedeck, series writer Andy
Breckman filled in as the Puberty Fairy, and Adam Ross as Captain Hero.
Other recurring
sketches include Phone Friends where teen issues, both funny and serious, are
explored. Paul O’Keefe and Denny Dillon play the blue-skinned, bald-pated,
alien teens Ym and Ur (him and her), whose observations about society are both
hilariously incorrect and at the same time spot on.
The issue of
racism was dealt with in a direct and head-on manner in episode 5 in the
controversial “N-Word” monologue in a sketch (written by Richard Camp) where
actor Jarett Smithwrick’s character discusses the racism he has to face on a
daily basis, using the “N-word” in the process. While the word did pop up on
rare occasions in the 1970s on shows like Sanford
and Son, The Jeffersons, and All in the Family (not by Archie Bunker,
though he did use other racial epitaphs), or in an infamous sketch with Richard
Pryor and Chevy Chase on Saturday Night
Live, I wasn’t expecting to hear it on a Saturday morning kids’ TV show.
According to series writer Sherry Coben, the Harts had to fight network censors
for the sketch to air.
Unlike sitcoms
and late night TV of the era where use of the word was made for laughs, the
sketch on Hot Hero Sandwich was an
honest and thoughtful exploration about how being called that word affects a
person. It was one of the sketches I remembered over four decades later, and
considering there were no video releases of the series, that’s a pretty
powerful statement about the quality of the show.
The approach to
the topics ranged from the satirical to the farcical to the serious, the latter
of which gave an abbreviated After-School
Special feel to some of the material. While the drama may have seemed a
distraction for those only wanting comedy and music, for me personally, as
noted above, they hit all too close to home, and those were the sketches I
remembered decades later.
The
Writers
The writing
staff included David Axelrod, Joe Bailey, Andy Breckman, Richard Camp, Sherry
Coben, and Marianne Meyer, in addition to the Harts. Axelrod was probably the
most experienced whose resume begins with Captain Kangaroo and includes Alan
King, Dick Cavett, Robert Klein, The Dean
Martin Show and Celebrity Roasts,
two Mary Tyler Moore variety show TV projects, George Burns Comedy Week, and the influential 1973 National Lampoon mockumentary stage show,
Lemmings.
Joe Bailey,
whose wife Gail Frank directed short film segments, started off with Sesame Street, where he became
acquainted with Bruce and Carole Hart, and would go one to write numerous
projects for The Muppets.
Hot Hero Sandwich was comedian Andy
Breckman’s first writing credit. He later wrote for Saturday Night Live and David Letterman, but is perhaps better
known today as the creator and producer of the series Monk. In addition to Breckman’s odd, but endearing, songs, he also
played the surreal, fourth wall-breaking, Puberty Fairy — a hairy, bearded,
pink tutu-wearing manifestation of the teenager’s psyche.
Richard Camp had
a background in stage but also had spent time writing for ABC News, which
informed him about many of the social issues that Hot Hero Sandwich would tackle. Camp wrote the alien teen segments
of Ym and Ur and the controversial “N-Word” monologue.
Sherry Coben
started off in the art department at KYW in Philadelphia and for The Mike Douglas Show. Hot Hero Sandwich was her first writing
job and she would later go on to create the hit TV series Kate and Allie starring Susan Saint James and Jane Curtin.
Hot Hero Sandwich was writer Marianne
Meyer’s first job in the industry. After the show, she would help adapt The Electric Company for foreign
audiences and go on to be a respected Rock journalist, writing Bruce
Springsteen’s first biography at the height of his Born in the USA fame.
Writers
don’t always get the same respect and recognition as the actors and one story
from Hot Hero Sandwich illustrates
that. Immediately after picking up
her Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Children's Programming for Hot Hero Sandwich, Marianne Meyer went
for an interview with the producers for The
Great Space Coaster who told her in no uncertain terms that she didn’t know
how to write for a children’s show. Later, when Meyer got home and opened up the
box with her Emmy, she discovered her name was misspelled on the award.
As the
saying goes, that’s show business folks.
The
Doctor is In
After reviewing some of the celebrity
interviews Dr. Tom Cottle conducted for the show, one of the NBC executives
expressed their collective doubt at discussing some of these topics on
television to a teen audience.
According to Dr. Cottle, “Don't you think that a
lot of this stuff is over the heads of these children?” one of the suits said.
And Bruce said, “Yeah, it may.” The suits said, “Well, how are you going to deal
with this?”
And Bruce Hart said right to these NBC guys
that are paying his salary and underwriting the show, “Well, we’ll just have
the kids stand up and then it won't be over their heads.”
—
Dr. Tom
Cottle interview with the Hot Hero Sandwich Project
Dr. Tom Cottle conducted
the celebrity interviews. Unlike today’s TV therapists who exploit the
dysfunction of their guests, Cottle used a gentler approach. He asked a few
leading questions and let the celebrities themselves control what and how much
they wanted to share. Erik Estrada talks about a friend who died of a heroin
overdose, Caitlin (then Bruce) Jenner discusses first dates and struggles with
dyslexia, Donna Pescow describes how she mistook another man for her father after
years of estrangement, and Leonard Nimoy raises the issue of masturbation.
Other guests
include Kareem Abdul-Jabber, Coretta Scott King, Christopher Reeve, and Tanya
Tucker, among others.
The most
troubling, and revealing, interview, however, never aired — that was with actor
Robert Blake. In an interview with the Hot
Hero Sandwich Project, Cottle notes, “What he [Blake] was talking about was
awful . . . a father that beat the crap out of him . . . There was some stuff
that he was sexually abused.”
According to
Sherry Coben, Blake was so upset he refused permission to air the interview.
Despite that one experience, the guests were remarkably open and frank,
answering questions not about what they’ve done, but rather who they were as
persons.
The
Music!
The soundtrack
for Hot Hero Sandwich was mostly straight
ahead Hard Rock, and little wonder with Felix Pappalardi as the Music Director.
Pappalardi, bassist for Mountain and producer of Cream, brought with him
legitimate Rock credentials. Pappalardi fought for authenticity in the music he
was going to produced, so when the network offered top-ranking session players
for the gig, he turned them down and insisted on the line-up for the Hot Hero
Band, Richie Annunziato (aka Rich Steele), guitar and vocals; Robert Brissette,
bass and vocals; Mark Cunningham, guitar and vocals; and Mike Ratti, drums.
According to
Annunziato in an interview with the Hot
Hero Sandwich Project, “The guy who was producing it said ‘Get these kids
out of here.’ And so when Felix showed up, he says, ‘No, I want these guys to
play — to give the show a sound, to give it its own sound.’ Felix was behind
all that. We didn’t read music, but Felix would get us to play what he wanted.”
Brissette,
Cunningham, and Ratti all previously played with Rex Smith. Cunningham appeared
in Bruce and Carole Hart’s hit 1979 TV movie Sooner or Later, starring Smith. Annunziato knew Cunningham who
asked him to join the Hot Hero Band lineup.
Pappalardi’s
sound engineer was Ed Stasium, who, just prior to Hot Hero Sandwich engineered the Talking Heads’ first album and
would go on to engineer and/or produce the Ramones, the Smithereens, the Jeff
Healy Band, the Plasmatics, Living Colour, and so many more.
The music
coordinator, Jimmy Biondolillo, was all of 24 years old at the time but was
selected by the Harts over their original music coordinator Gary Sherman, an
experienced professional but over twice Biondolillo’s age. The Hart’s
purposefully hired those they felt were closer in touch to youth musical sensibilities.
Jimmy would go on to work with Roger Daltry, Frankie Valli, Bronski Beat, the Communards,
Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Frank Sinatra, among many others.
The
Playlist
Between the
performances, animated music videos, and short films, the soundtrack for Hot Hero Sandwich exposed the young
audience to a broad selection of genres that went beyond Rock to include Disco,
Country, Latin Jazz, and New Wave. The Beatles, Stephen Stills, Sister Sledge, Eddie
Money and Joe Jackson rounded out the playlist, not to mention Andy Breckman’s
delightfully demented songs. Beyond the Hot Hero Band’s playlist, which also
included a cover of the Youndblood’s “Get Together (also produced by Felix
Pappalardi), live music performances on stage at Studio 8H include:
Andy Breckman
(with the Hot Hero Band): “Tommy Two, “My Friend Bernie,“ ”Here We Come and
There We Go”
- Joe Jackson, “On Your Radio,” “Is She Really Going Out with Him?”
- Eddie Money, “You Can't Keep a Good Man Down,” “Jealousys,” “Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star”
- Sister Sledge, “We Are Family, “He’s the Greatest Dancer”
- Stephen Stills, “Love the One You’re With, “Sugar Babe”
- The Little River Band, “It’s Not a Wonder, “Lonesome Loser”
- The Palmieri Brothers, Latin Jazz performance
- The Persuasions, “People Get Ready,” “Return to Sender”
- With Andy Breckman, “Puberty”
- Rex Smith, “Sooner or Later,” “Tonight”
· Short Films
- The Beatles, “I’m Only Sleeping,” “When I’m 64”
- Donovan, “I Love My Shirt”
- Kiss (at Madison Square Garden), “I Was Made for Loving You.”
- Stevie Wonder, “Ebony Eyes”
Animation
@bsquared4604 Mar. 24, 2025
I've been looking for this. I typed
"hot hero sandwich wild night video" and here it is. I remember
taping this on my cassette recorder and listening to it over and over. Decades
later I found that it was Martha Reeves and found the 45 RPM on ebay. Thank you
for posting this great childhood memory.
The above
comment left on the Hot Hero Sandwich
Central YouTube channel is typical on
many of the comments we receive — people discovering a childhood memory and the
rush that comes with it is not unlike meeting a long-lost friend. For 45 years,
the animated segment for Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ “Wild Night” stuck in
bsquared4604’s mind. Not many works can make such an impact on one viewing over
four decades ago.
Due to their
experience with the animation on Sesame
Street, Bruce and Carole Hart knew the value of animation. In an exclusive
interview with the Hot Hero Sandwich
Project, animator Al Jarnow revealed some of the secrets behind the scenes.
Instead of farming the work out to large animation houses, the Harts instead
tapped “The New York Animators,” an informal group of independent animators,
for their talent, which, in addition to Jarnow, included Mary Beams, Bruce
Cayard, and Eli Noyes. Animator Jerry Lieberman, who had his own studio, was
also tapped for the project. In fact,
Jarnow, Cayard, and Noyes, along with animator Jerry Lieberman, produced
animated segments for Sesame Street (in
addition to The Electric Company), so
there was a continuity of style.
In Hot Hero Sandwich, the Harts leveled up
the animation beyond the simple messages of Sesame
Street to engage their viewers’ growing minds. The animation was far
removed from our steady diet of Hanna Barbara, Flimation, and Warner Brothers
cartoons. On Hot Hero, the animation
had a surrealistic and sometimes psychedelic style.
Dr. Lee Salk, a
noted child psychologist and brother of Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the polio
vaccine, conducted interviews with children about their dreams which were then
translated to visual imagery with the children themselves narrating their
dreams, which lent both authenticity and innocence to the pieces. There were
also several music videos. My favorites include Jefferson Starship’s, “Have You
Seen the Stars Tonite,” by Mary Beams, and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’
“Wild Night,” animated by Al Jarnow.
Other animated music videos include:
- Chuck Berry, “School Day (Ring, Ring Goes the Bell)”
- Dave Dudley, “Rollin’ Rig”
- The Coasters, “Yakety Yak”
· Hot Hero Sandwich’s variety of content
appealed to multiple learning styles. If the kids didn’t get the messages in
the sketches or in the interviews, there was the animation and music to
reinforce it. As bsquared4604’s comment proves, the strategy worked.
Short
Films
Hot Hero Sandwich integrated both video
and film, something which increased both production time and costs, but also
emulated the visual element of the Hart’s experience on Sesame Street which used the same approach. The film segments
included music videos, kid on the street interviews, and the totally awesome
behind-the-scenes KISS performance at Madison Square Garden.
The directors of
the film segments were Gail Frank, wife of series writer Joe Bailey, and Al
Waller. Waller completed only two short films before departing, reportedly due
to creative differences. Frank stepped in and brought with her a fast-paced
style but one with a clear affection for the children involved in the projects.
Of particular
note are Frank’s work on the Stevie Wonder song, “Ebony Eyes,” which integrates
spoken word from the poems "Phenomenal Woman," by Maya Angelou and “I’m
Gonna Draw Me a Black Madonna” (author unknown). The collage of images of
empowered Black women and girls playing, learning, leading, dancing, and caring
for others, is a classic and timeless reflection of the era.
My favorite
short films are the “What’s In, What’s Out” pieces. In these segments,
teenagers are asked a variety of questions to get their candid and unfiltered
opinions — and the kids deliver. Topics
include:
- Rock vs. Disco
- Teen Slang for Who’s Hot
- Teen Slang for Who’s Out of It
- The Latest Expressions
- The In Thing To Do In 1979
My favorite is
the rock vs. disco debate as teens argue with equal conviction that both rock
and disco are “dead.” Who won? Well, I leave that to the viewers, but as for
me, in 1979, I would have agreed with one young girl who put it, in a thick New
Yorker accent, “Disco is dead, rock is rollin’. It’s the greatest going.”
Lower
Decks
With only four
weeks allotted for filming in Studio 8H, days often exceeded 12-hours and,
according to 8H audio engineer Joel Spector, once even ran for 21 hours. Many
of the technical and stage crew, like Spector’s audio engineer colleague Scott
Schachter, or veteran stage manager Bob Van Ry, had careers dating back to the
early days of television and would go on to include tenures on Saturday Night Live. By the time Hot Hero Sandwich rolled around, many of
the crew had previously worked together which made nailing a shot in one or two
takes the rule, not the exception.
Production
Administrator Ken Aymong, who provided invaluable and enthusiastic assistance
to the Project, went on to Saturday Night
Live where he remained for four decades as a producer before his retirement
in 2021. One would be hard-pressed to find an interview with Ken at all, so his
participation with the Project was a welcomed surprise and answered a lot of
questions.
Production
Assistant Liz Plonka went on to direct such shows as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and projects with Norm McDonald,
David Spade, and Bill Nye. Associate Producer Kimber Rickabaugh would go on to
produce shows starring comedians such as George Carlin, Dave Chappelle, Whoopi
Goldberg, Kathy Griffin, and Dennis Miller.
The Hot Hero Sandwich logo and font set was
designed by graphic designer David Kaestle, who worked for National Lampoon in its early years, notably as lead photographer
for National Lampoon’s 1964 High School Yearbook, which
inspired Lampoon’s first film, Animal House.
Hot Hero Sandwich benefitted from the
veterans in its ranks while also serving as a nexus for nascent talent.
This
Sandwich is a Wrap
Unfortunately,
several factors contributed to Hot Hero
Sandwich’s demise. A mid-day Saturday
timeslot — starting at 11:00 AM or 12:00 PM, depending on the market— for a show
developed for the early evening, so parents and children could watch it
together, didn’t help, nor did preemptions from the frequent Fall sporting
events. Also, the budget for the series was a rumored one million dollars (approximately
$4,722,708.64 in 2025 dollars) according to a Nov. 19, 1979, article by TV
critic Tom Shales for The Washington Post.
After a strong premiere, ratings dropped and the series was cancelled after
eleven episodes; however, according to Ken Aymong, NBC may have only planned
one season for the expensive program as it was intended to complement the 1979
UN International Year of the Child.
There was no
merchandising, no video releases, no record releases, no t-shirts, not even a Teen Beat poster! The show quietly
disappeared — but only from the airwaves, not from the memories of the fans. Sherry
Coben passed away in 2024, but lived long enough to see the revival of interest
in a show important to her career, and herself personally.
Some may note
with irony that Bruce and Carole Hart never had any children of their own, but
I disagree. They had millions of children who were nurtured on Sesame Street, rocked out on Hot Hero Sandwich, and grew up just fine
despite an increasingly confusing world.
That was nothing
less than heroic.
● ● ●
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