|
|
 |
| Col. Barney's gone |
|
Demise of oldest VARIETY stringer
Over the weekend, the following (slightly edited for Simesite) was posted on the www.oldfields.org web site, together with a memorable pic, also viewable here Barney holds the front page
By DENISE MARTIN
Hollywood, April 29 – Barney Oldfield, VARIETY's first Nebraska correspondent, Hollywood press agent and retired Air Force colonel, died Saturday (26) at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from cirrhosis of the liver brought on by diabetes. He was 93.
Oldfield became a VARIETY stringer in 1936, after writing then-editor Abel Green about a correspondent position. He was the oldest surviving mugg. Previously, he worked for the Lincoln Star, and later the Lincoln Journal, as a columnist, feature writer and film reviewer. During his decade-long tenure as a newspaperman, Oldfield interviewed such screen stars as Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Shirley Temple, Doris Day and Fred Astaire.
Journo's show biz coverage ran in a number of other industry trades including Billboard, Film Daily, Motion Picture Daily, Motion Picture Herald and Box Office. As a broadcaster, he brought Hollywood into Midwest homes with his nightly radio program "Hollywood Highlights" on KFOR.
Barney, a cinephile, was later christened the "marathon movie seer" in the pages of Robert Ripley's "Believe It of Not" cartoons for having screened more than 500 films in a single year.
Born in 1909 and named for famed racecar driver Barney Oldfield, the Tecumseh, Neb.-native first developed a love for all things entertainment during a college-long stint as a theater usher. He graduated with a journalism degreefrom U. of Nebraska in 1932.
Alongside military brass, Oldfield fought in WWII – he was the first journo to become a paratrooper – and served as a press aide to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1945, he organized and established the Berlin Press Club in the home of former Hitler finance minister Walter Funk.
After the war, he landed in the Warner Bros. pr department, repping such players as Ronald Reagan, Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Janis Paige and Elizabeth Taylor.
Barney joined L.A.-based aerospace and defense firm Litton Industries Inc.as director of international relations in 1962. After his retirement in 1990, he took up philanthropy and funded some 40 scholarship programs totaling $3 million.
On April 9, the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation, which Barney founded, held a tribute to him at its annual luncheon during NAB in Las Vegas. Among those paying homage to Oldfield was heavyweight boxing champion, George Foreman, who has called him "my best friend." Barney helped launch Foreman's career.
The former stringer will be buried in Fort McPherson National Cemetery in Nebraska where services are pending.
/// The following is an extract from Peter Besas’s book
Inside Variety (page 138).
VARIETY’s former stringer in Nebraska, Barney Oldfield, recalled his first impression of the VARIETY building and Ibee in 1934:
There it was pinched like a thin slab of cheese in a bargain sandwich, five floors high. I was across the street, saw people perched on a shelf halfway up the front window . . . No-one stopped me at the door. There were four or five steps downward to the ad department, so I climbed the several steps leading to the sound of typewriters. At the water-cooler was a brutish-looking guy, shirt-sleeved, with a glowering scowl.
“Who ya lookin' for? “ he said. I asked him which was was Abel Green. He pointed over his shoulder to that mezzanine-in-the-window.
“That’s him on the right.”
He crumpled his paper cup, tossed it into the waste basket, and moved slowly down the skimpy aisle between the desks to the farthest desk on that level and grumpily sat down.
That was my introduction to Jack Pulaski. A Brown University football player, I believe, who Sime had taken a fancy to, and was the legit critic! He looked more like the lead butcher in a packing house, the one who pole-axed cows.
/// The internet is full of information about Col. Barney. Any search engine will bring up hundreds of mentions. But for a quick reference, try the following links:
www.oldfields.org
www.rtnda.org
www.beatricedailysun.com –
Desk Los Angeles -- Apr 29, 2003 |
|
|
More from this Mugg |
|
|
 |
|
| Col. Barney Oldfield – show biz journalist and philanthropist who died April 26 in L.A. |
|
 |
|
| In military mode – Barney was the first journalist to join the U.S. airborne. |
|
|
|
|
|
