Jim Hawthorne, a funny man and a pioneer of TV and radio in Los Angeles, has died at an age somewhere in his eighties.
I'm just old enough (I'm 55) to recall when Hawthorne was broadcasting in this town, always doing something so fresh and clever that people were talking about it the next day. His name was often mentioned in the same sentence as an Ernie Kovacs or a Steve Allen…both of whom acknowledged him as friendly competition and occasional inspiration. Hawthorne also had a brief film career, including a period when he was teamed with comic actor Joe Besser after Besser left The Three Stooges.
I wrote about Hawthorne here and linked you to a video clip that sadly doesn't capture the general wonderfulness of his on-air energy. But to those of us who remember him fondly, it's better than nothing.