If you grew up in Southern California and you're anywhere near my age (54), you remember watching Tom Hatten, who hosted Popeye cartoons for years on KTLA, Channel 5. He wore a sailor outfit and gave drawing lessons and was a generally genial presence on Los Angeles TV. After that job ended, he hosted movies on Channel 5 for quite some time and can now be heard on KNX radio as an entertainment reporter. All of this is in addition to a nice, ongoing acting career. (For a long time, any time a TV show needed someone to play a cartoonist, they called on Tom. There was a Hawaii Five-O about a demented comic fan who was murdering people because he'd confused the storyline in a newspaper comic strip with reality. Tom Hatten played the guy who drew the newspaper strip.)
What we have here is a recent (2004) interview with Tom. It was done for a show called Marty's Corner that is or was done in La Puente, which is about thirty miles southeast of Los Angeles. The show is telecast live on KCAT, the last three letters standing for Community Access Television. I've never seen it except in YouTube clips but Marty's apparently had his corner going out there for thirteen years, which is impressive. Even more impressive is that he somehow gets guests to drive out to La Puente. Anyway, the interview with Tom Hatten is here…
