retired
Retirement is the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from one's active working life. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours or workload.
Many people choose to retire when they are elderly or incapable of doing their j ...
American local
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
KGO-TV
KGO-TV (channel 7) is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's ABC network outlet. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, KGO-TV ma ...
KTVU
KTVU (channel 2) is a television station licensed to Oakland, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's Fox network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside San Jose ...
channel 2, where among many jobs he was the nightly news' weatherman, hosted the midday movie ''Dialing for Dollars'' program, and co-hosted the local edition of the '' Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.''
"Charley and Humphrey"
McCormick was raised in the southern Oregon town of Myrtle Creek. While working at ABC-TV in Los Angeles, McCormick pitched a children's program to a
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
affiliate in
Fresno
Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...
, California, and went on the air there in Spring
1959
Events January
* January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance.
* January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...
with Charley (inspired by Dennis Weaver's character Chester on Gunsmoke) and his sidekick Humphrey. Charley was a
horse
The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million yea ...
who wore a sea captain's hat, and Humphrey Hambone was a
bulldog
The Bulldog is a British breed of dog of mastiff type. It may also be known as the English Bulldog or British Bulldog. It is of medium size, a muscular, hefty dog with a wrinkled face and a distinctive pushed-in nose.PSAs. Humphrey eventually wore a trademark Oakland Raiders sweater sent to McCormick by Sonny Barger of the Oakland
Hells Angels
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) is a worldwide outlaw motorcycle club whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In the United States and Canada, the Hells Angels are incorporated as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporati ...
.
In a 2008 interview, McCormick admitted that the "Charley and Humphrey" skits were his favorite aspect of working on television: "All the other things I did on television were just jobs. It was my work. By contrast Charley and Humphrey were my passion. They were me. I miss working with them more than I can describe."
In 2021, it was announced a comic book series based on the characters will be published by new publisher Acme Ink in January 2022.
Some "Charley and Humphrey" episodes
*Bees
*Boating Safety
*Borrowing Without Asking
*Think For Yourself
*Park
*Exercise
*Interruption
*Hostility
*Kitten
*Library
''Dialing for Dollars''
McCormick also hosted a show in the 1970s called '' Dialing for Dollars'' where random Bay Area people were called and asked to guess the "Count and the Amount". The "count" was used to determine which person would be called. The host would pick a slip of paper from a drum containing pages from local phone books sliced into convenient sizes. At the beginning of the show, the count was determined by spinning two wheels, one of which resulted in a number and the other in "top" or "bottom". If the count was, for instance, 3/top, the host would start at the top of the slip of phone book and count three numbers down from the top and call the resulting number. The "amount" was the amount of money to be won. It would start at $100 and increase by a fixed amount with every unsuccessful call. The calls were made during commercial breaks while the afternoon movie was being screened.
Personal life
After his retirement, McCormick settled in
Gold Beach, Oregon
Gold Beach ( Tolowa: yan-shu’-chit, yan-shuu-chit’-dvn) is a city in and the county seat of Curry County, Oregon, United States, on the Oregon Coast. The population was 2,241 at the 2020 census.
History
The community was originally named Ell ...