Dead, Not Forgotten

Merv Griffin was at the forefront of some of the most visible industries of the second half of the 20th century. His multi-decade success as a talk show host, the wildly successful game shows his production company created and his well publicized deals in the real estate industry made him a standout among his peers.

After a childhood of entertaining the neighborhood and producing “shows” with the local kids, Griffin began his professional career as a singer when he was 19 on San Francisco Sketchbook, a nationally syndicated radio program based at KFRC in San Francisco. Being overweight at the time, Griffin did not easily move on from radio. After trimming down, however, he started a four year stint as a singer known for his good looks with big band leader Freddy Martin. Soon his entrepreneurial spirit kicked into high gear and he launched his own record label, Panda Records. His release Songs by Merv Griffin is reported to be the first American album recorded on magnetic tape.

After considerable success in the music business, including his hit “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts”, which sold over three million copies, a chance nightclub performance in front of Doris Day started him on the next step in his career when she helped him land a screen test at Warner Bros. and subsequent film roles.

In the late 50s Merv Griffin began what would become the first of the three major paths of his career; the game show business. He started as a host, first on the Mark Goodson and Bill Todman production called Play Your Hunch and then on an evening game show for ABC called Keep Talking.

Luck came his way when Jack Paar mistakenly walked on the live set of Play Your Hunch and launched him on the second major path of his career: television talk shows. Griffin took advantage of the moment and got an impromptu, walk through interview with Paar and soon was invited to substitute for Paar on The Tonight Show. His own daytime talk show followed, but soon failed. NBC offered him a new game show to host and produce, Word for Word, in 1963. The next year his production company created the iconic Jeopardy! which still enjoys great success.

When NBC canceled Jeopardy! in 1975, a short lived situation, Griffin produced the show’s successor, Wheel of Fortune. Though it was only moderately successful in its original version, a syndicated version starring Pat Sajak and Vanna White is a television mainstay to this day.

Meanwhile, back in 1965, Griffin also began a nearly non-stop presence as a talk show host on American TV that ended in 1986 when he retired from is then long running The Merv Griffin Show and sold his production company, Merv Griffin Enterprises, to Columbia Pictures Television unit for $250 million. His TV game show legacy turns out not to be over though. His current production company, Merv Griffin Entertainment, began pre-production on a new syndicated game show set to air in September 2007, Merv Griffin’s Crosswords.

After his retirement Griffin was quick to get bored and soon, after making considerable gains through investments he started on his third major career path in real estate. A notable event was his well publicized feud with Donald Trump for control of Resorts International, an operator of hotels and casinos from Atlantic City to the Caribbean. Griffin eventually acquired Resorts International for $240 million. Over his career in real estate he has also owned the Beverly Hilton Hotel (Beverly Hills), St. Clerans Manor (an Irish hotel), and Paradise Island (the Bahamas).

Merv Griffin’s phenomenal success in all that he tried left him one of America’s richest men.

Merv Griffin was born in San Mateo, California. He died in Los Angeles California of prostate cancer August 12, 2007. He was 82 years old. He said once that his tombstone would say, “I won’t be back after this message.”

For more information:
See Merv Griffin’s filmography

Popularity: 72%

I remember hearing the results of a survey years ago that explored why consumers liked McDonald’s fast food restaurants. The biggest reason was that you got the exact same food no matter which location you went to. Edwin Traisman really “supersized” the restaurant’s ability to deliver on that score in 1962 when he discovered a way to reduce moisture in peeled, cleaned and cut potatoes, allowing them to be successfully stored frozen.

His achievement led to many advances for McDonald’s: Traisman’s method improved the consistency, flavor and texture of the fries. Because they could be stored frozen, there was no longer a need for year-round sources of russet potatoes throughout the entire country. It also eliminated the need for each location to clean, peel and cut the potatoes by hand every day, reducing the cost of labor used for french fry prep.

Before McDonald’s, Edwin Traisman worked as a food scientist at Kraft Foods where he contributed to other iconic processed food products like Cheez Whiz and instant pudding.

At the time of his contribution to McDonald’s history he had left his career in favor of buying a McDonald’s franchise in the late 1950’s, proving his uncanny understanding of popular American food trends. He eventually owned five of them in Wisconsin. Traisman also used his restaurants to support public causes: he’d host fund raisers for The Capital Times’ Kids Fund (then the Kiddie Camp) in Madison by earmarking a percentage of a day’s McDonald’s proceeds from all of his locations for the fund. The paper would promote the event, sending families of fast food fans for frozen fries freshly fried the Ed Traisman way.

In 1968 the preparation of McDonald’s fries took another leap when McDonald’s food scientist Ken Strong developed a process involving quick-frying the cut potatoes prior to freezing and a short steam-blanch that preserved the sugars and other flavors of the potato. The combined techniques are called the Traisman-Strong method and make McDonald’s fries what they are today.

After selling his restaurants in the early 1970’s Traisman continued his career in food sciences as a senior research program manager for the Food Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. There, he was instrumental in projects dealing with additives and contamination of meat products. He also served until his death as the editor of the Food Research Institute’s quarterly research report.

Edwin Traisman died of a heart attack June, 5 2007 in Madison Wisconsin at age 91.

For more information:
Excerpt from “Fast Food Nation”

Popularity: 24%

Millions have been eating Cap’n Crunch cereal since its introduction in 1963, but how many of them knew that they had Pamela Low to thank for its sweet taste?

Pamela Low conducted her career at the crossroads of industrial food processing and contracted technology services. As more and more of our foods were being processed by large companies in large quantities, there arose a need for scientists who could find ways to overcome the inherent loss of flavor in these products.

Pamela was one of these people, a flavorist. Wikipedia says, “A flavorist, also known as flavor chemist, is someone who uses both chemistry and art to engineer artificial and natural flavors.”

Her degree in microbiology might have given her technical background but in the case of the Cap’n Crunch coating, her inspiration was her Grandmother. Pamela Low based the coating on the sauce of a recipe that her grandmother, Luella Low, made for Sunday dinners at their Derry, New Hampshire home, consisting of rice with a butter-and-brown sugar sauce.

Pamela Low developed the now-famous coating while working for Boston’s Arthur D. Little consulting firm, which pioneered the concept of contracted technology research. In addition to flavoring products, the company played key roles in the development of operations research, the word processor, the first synthetic penicillin, and NASDAQ.

During her three decades at Arthur D. Little, Low was also involved in flavoring snacks such as Almond Joy and Mounds candy bars.

Pamela Low died June 1, 2007 at New London Hospital in New Hampshire. She was age 79.

For more information:
Read this article about flavorists
Review these technical articles for flavorists

Popularity: 31%

Just last night on TV I saw a report where a Hispanic high school student said (I am simplifying) that it was hard for her to achieve as well as some others in school because she is not taught about her people’s own history of success and what they have accomplished. Instead they have only the image that media paints them with. I think Louis Flores Ruiz would have liked it if the student had known him. So I will make the introduction.

Do you know the joke about how great it is to be self employed? You know, ’cause you only have to work half a day and it doesn’t matter which 12-hours it is? Louis Flores Ruiz might have laughed at that if he had the time. When he started Ruiz Foods in 1964, he wore at least a couple of hats. To build his business he would wear his suit while visiting a store to sell his frozen enchiladas and would then duck into a gas station to change into work clothes, pickup a truck nearby and return to the store to deliver the products. Now, according to Hispanic Business magazine, privately held Ruiz Foods is the largest Latino-owned manufacturing firm in California with $326 million in revenue in 2005.

The Ruiz family was pushed north in the 1920’s when Pancho Villa took control of their family lands. They arrived in Los Angeles when Louis was 5 years old. Louis Flores Ruiz’s first jobs were selling newspapers on street corners and feather-dusters door to door. A few decades later he moved his young family to Tulare, California where he owned a grocery store and sold insurance. Eventually he founded a company with family members that pioneered automating the tortilla making process.

Seeking new opportunities, he started Ruiz Foods with his son Fred and struggled for years to make it work. They ran out of money repeatedly and worked harder and harder to overcome their business problems. Armed with their mother Rosita’s recipes they stuck to it and succeeded. The company now employees 2,500 people.

Long ago expanding into other Mexican food products, the company’s signature brand, El Monterey, is a dominant force in their industry and sales of their products account for almost one third of sales of frozen Mexican Food nationwide.

Born Oct. 30, 1918 in Chihuahua, Mexico, Louis Flores Ruiz became a U.S. citizen after serving in the Army during WWII. He died at age 88 at his home in Dinuba, California on Sunday April 1, 2007.

For more information:
Company background

Popularity: 13%

Saul Swimmer, film director, producer and writer had a specialty in British rock music and pop culture topics. Perhaps best known as the director of the 1972 film, The Concert for Bangladesh, Saul Swimmer worked with the Beatles (Let It Be, 1970), Queen, (We Will Rock You: Queen Live in Concert, 1982) and Herman’s Hermits (Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter, 1968), as well as being involved in a number of documentaries and dramatic titles.

If The Concert For Bangladesh is his greatest legacy, it was also the most controversial project he ever contributed to. A two concert fund raising event to benefit the suffering people of Bangladesh, The Concert For Bangladesh occurred at New York City’s Madison Square Gardens on August 1, 1971 raised nearly $250,000. The greater project, consisting of the record, film and subsequent rereleases produced a reported gross of more than 15 million U.S. dollars for Apple Records. Apple Records stated that it made no money from the project and only covered its production and advertising expenses and sued New York Magazine when they suggested otherwise. Funds from the album, CD and DVD still benefit UNICEF through George Harrison’s UNICEF Fund.

Even while 40,000 fans cheered the concerts, the stage was already set for a bad performance. The UNICEF administered funds were held in an Internal Revenue Service escrow account because the organizers of the concert did not apply for tax exempt status for the event.

The music production for the film and album documenting The Concert for Bangladesh was done by Phil Spector. The concert featured sitar great Ravi Shankar, Indian percussionist Ali Akbar Khan, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan. Fellow Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney decided not to perform though they were invited. John Lennon (or Yoko Ono) was off put by the contractual condition that Ono not perform with him. Paul McCartney was not comfortable with the recent legal troubles experienced by the Beatles as they dissolved the group.

The concert was inspired by Ravi Shankar who asked George Harrison how they could help the refugees displaced by the Bangladesh Liberation War. The refugee’s circumstances were made worse by the 1970 Bhola cyclone that brought torrential rains and caused devastating floods that produced a humanitarian disaster.

Born April 25, 1936 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Saul Swimmer died March 3, 2007 in Miami, Florida of heart and kidney failure. He was 70 years old.

For more information:
Saul Swimmer Filmography
Saul Swimmer entry from Wikipedia

Popularity: 23%