MARVIN ZINDLER, EYEWITNESS NEWS
David Carson
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Marvin Zindler, a Houston institution for more than three decades and a
pioneer of consumer reporting, died Sunday at M.D. Anderson Hospital after
a fight with cancer.
The irascible, flamboyant 85-year-old television personality had been
diagnosed in July with inoperable pancreatic cancer that had spread to his
liver.
Even in his last days, Zindler continued to work, filing reports from his
hospital bed. In his last report, broadcast Saturday, in which he helped a
45-year-old U.S. citizen secure a social security card necessary for
employment, Zindler appeared thin and his voice was weak.
Still, he signed off with a hearty "MAARVIN ZINDLER, EYEWITNESS NEWS" —
his trademark for 34 years with KTRK Channel 13.
To youthful viewers, Zindler is perhaps best known as the kind-hearted,
grandfatherly figure in white wig and blue shades who delivered the weekly
"rat and roach reports" based on health department restaurant inspections.
After his ideosyncratic signoff, his most famous catch phrase comes from
the frequent health inspector findings of (all together now) "SLI-I-IME in
the ice machine."
But to generations of low-income Houstonians, Zindler was the champion of
last resort, the man to whom you turned when bureaucracies seemed
indifferent and businesses tried to take advantage. The station said
Zindler received 100,000 appeals for help each year.
Though he was proudest of his work championing "the little guy" and
helping secure medical care for needy children, he was best known for
stories he did a mere seven months after starting the job in 1973 that led
to the closing of the state's best known "bawdy house," as Zindler called
it — a notorious La Grange brothel known as the Chicken Ranch.
The reports not only won him national notoriety but also a public
thrashing by Fayette County Sheriff T.J. Flournoy, a Chicken House
partisan, who broke two of Zindler's ribs and snatched his toupee from his
head, reportedly waving it in the air as if it were a prized enemy scalp.
Larry King (the Texas author, not the CNN interviewer) wrote an article
about it for Playboy magazine in 1974, which was turned into a
long-running Broadway musical four years later and which in turn became a
kitschy 1982 movie starring Dolly Parton, Burt Reynolds and Dom Delouise.
Delouise played a character based on Zindler, a vainglorious reporter who
goes on a crusade to close the brothel.
Though Zindler's Chicken Ranch stories often were characterized as a moral
crusade or a quest for publicity, Zindler maintained that he'd pursued
them because he'd been persuaded by state law enforcement sources that the
Chicken Ranch and another nearby brothel were making payoffs to local
officials and were involved in organized crime.
"I didn't care that they had a whorehouse," he'd say in later years. "We
had plenty here in Houston."
Zindler seemed to enjoy the spotlight the musical and movie shone on him —
he kept a poster for the film on his office wall — though he always said
he felt his most important stories were 1985 reports on financial
mismanagement by the Hermann Hospital board of trustees.
Zindler also loved to talk of the thousands of children who'd received
free medical care from Marvin's Angels, doctors who donated their services
because Zindler asked them to. In addition to his frequent on-air reports
about such cases, Zindler started a foundation with his friend and plastic
surgeon Dr. Joseph Agris that helped children around the world.
These activities, he told a reporter last year, were why — in his 80s and
after enduring open-heart surgery and surviving a previous bout with
prostate cancer — Zindler continued to work.
Zindler signed a lifetime contract with the station in 1988. He honored it
to the letter. Even after being diagnosed in early July with the disease
that would kill him, he went on the air in a bathrobe, pajamas and
slippers to report the news.
It was the lead story on Channel 13's 6 p.m. news, and — to make it clear
he was still on the job and not using his illness as an excuse to slack
off — Zindler ended the report as he ended all the others, by braying his
famous signoff.
Though he was off the air for a time, the station's Web site boasts six
stories from Zindler within the past two weeks.
Zindler's unusual lifetime contract — reportedly earning him $1 million a
year, though he insisted it was lower — recognized his worth to the
station, which until recently consistently had the most watched local news
program. His was one of the city's most recognizable faces, even if it
kept changing.
Zindler had countless cosmetic surgury procedures, beginning with his
first one in 1954 after he was fired from an earlier television job by an
executive who said he was "too ugly" to work in TV.
Born into wealth, Zindler admitted to having had an unfocused youth. Abe
Zindler, his father, considered his middle son frivolous and irresponsible
and died in 1963 deeply disappointed in him. The successful retailer and
longtime mayor of Bellaire left no inheritance to Marvin but rather placed
it in a trust for Marvin's five children. Marvin could draw only the
interest.
Abe Zindler also left Marvin a harsh letter in which he derided his middle
son as "a silly playboy with no sense in your head" and urged him to make
something of himself.
Despite his love of clothes, Zindler had never liked working in his stern
father's clothing stores. In the 1940s, while still working days for his
father, Zindler began at a night DJ and spot news reporter for KATL, a
now-defunct radio station. In the 1950s, while working as a volunteer
policeman, he began writing and taking photographs for the Houston Press,
a long-gone daily newspaper, and did spot news reports for KPRC
television's fledgling news operation.
In 1962, he began working for the sheriff's department where he eventually
found his true calling — helping "the little guy" — and also found an
outlet for his constant for attention. He created and ran the department's
consumer fraud division.
Known for his fancy clothes, the press conferences he held at the drop of
a hat and the mink-lined handcuffs he carried (in case he had to arrest a
woman), Zindler rose to the rank of sergeant. After 10 years with the
department, he was fired in late 1972, allegedly for angering local
business people by doing his job too well.
Ward recommended that Zindler be hired by Channel 13. The television job
gave him a bigger platform for his eccentricities and greater
opportunities to anger people.
Zindler helped pioneer consumer advocacy and reporting in 1973 when he
came to Channel 13 after having spent 10 years as a Harris County
Sheriff's deputy during which he'd created the department's consumer fraud
division.
Channel 13 gave him greater opportunities to anger people and a bigger
platform for his eccentricities. From the beginning he was an oddity —
intense, uncomfortable on camera, and he had the mien of a crusader.
The son of a politician, Zindler considered running for Congress in the
1970s at the urging of local Republican leaders. A survey was commissioned
that said he could win, Zindler says, but he decided not to run because
Gertrude, his first wife, didn't want to live in Washington.
Zindler's authorized biography tells of an earlier aborted entry into
politics. In 1949, when he was 28, Zindler announced his candidacy for the
mayorship of Bellaire, where his father had served as mayor for several
terms.
The Houston Post came out against him, calling the younger Zindler a
"pinhead." The paper retracted the statement after Zindler filed a
lawsuit, the book says, but the retraction ran under an eye-catching
headline: "We won't call Marvin Harold Zindler a 'pinhead' again.
Zindler became involved in Democratic Party politics, serving as a
delegate one year at the Democratic State Convention where a conservative
delegate slugged him after Zindler had made desparaging comments about the
conservative wing of the party in a speech.
Zindler went on to work in the senatorial campaign of Lyndon Baines
Johnson and in other Democratic campaigns before switching to the
Republican Party, where he continued to espouse liberal notions such as
national health insurance.
Zindler often says he doesn't consider himself a journalist, but he could
claim credit for helping to pioneer broadcast journalism in Houston. In
the 1940s, while working days in his father's clothing store, he toiled at
night as a DJ and spot news reporter for KATL, a now-defunct radio
station. In the 1950s, while working as a volunteer policeman, he also
worked for the Houston Press, a long-gone daily newspaper, as a
photographer and reporter. He also did spot news reports for KPRC
television's fledging news operation until an executive fired him, he
says, for being "too ugly."
That's what led to Zindler's first plastic surgery. He's been tinkering
ever since.
David Carson
>his trademark for 34 years with KTRK Channel 13.
These are possibly the four most recognizable words in Houston. You have
to say them very loudly, and with a slow-as-molasses drawl. If it takes
you less than five seconds, and you aren't hoarse afterward, you aren't
doing it right.
Oh, and the next three words are Channel 13 anchor Dave Ward's line,
"Thank you, Marvin."
Speaking of Ward, he doesn't look like he's aged a bit since the 70's.
>To youthful viewers, Zindler is perhaps best known as the kind-hearted,
>grandfatherly figure in white wig and blue shades who delivered the weekly
>"rat and roach reports" based on health department restaurant inspections.
>After his ideosyncratic signoff, his most famous catch phrase comes from
>the frequent health inspector findings of (all together now) "SLI-I-IME in
>the ice machine."
As far as five-word sentences go, that one ranks right up there with
"Houston, we have a problem."
David Carson
--
Why do you seek the living among the dead? -- Luke 24:5
Who's Alive and Who's Dead
http://www.whosaliveandwhosdead.com
Barbara L Sherrill
"David Carson" <da...@neosoft.com> wrote in message
news:5LKdnZzHXoYg-TDb...@speakeasy.net...
> >Still, he signed off with a hearty "MAARVIN ZINDLER, EYEWITNESS NEWS" -
>>his trademark for 34 years with KTRK Channel 13.
>
> These are possibly the four most recognizable words in Houston. You have
> to say them very loudly, and with a slow-as-molasses drawl. If it takes
> you less than five seconds, and you aren't hoarse afterward, you aren't
> doing it right.
>
> Oh, and the next three words are Channel 13 anchor Dave Ward's line,
> "Thank you, Marvin."
>
> Speaking of Ward, he doesn't look like he's aged a bit since the 70's.
>
>>To youthful viewers, Zindler is perhaps best known as the kind-hearted,
>>grandfatherly figure in white wig and blue shades who delivered the weekly
>>"rat and roach reports" based on health department restaurant inspections.
>>After his ideosyncratic signoff, his most famous catch phrase comes from
>>the frequent health inspector findings of (all together now) "SLI-I-IME in
>>the ice machine."
>
> As far as five-word sentences go, that one ranks right up there with
> "Houston, we have a problem."
>
> David Carson
Last night they were doing some memory footage and of course "The Chicken
Ranch" was the first one they showed. I was living in Lafayette when that
happened and remembered how it made it to national news. Marvin was a
character of all sorts. He did do a lot for the poor in this city.
Barbara