What's the Word? Tomorrow! (And, of Course, Yesterday...)

I've written on this blog before about the intersecting lines of furtive lives and peculiar events, connections that sometimes seem to construct a bizarre whole, conducting an undercurrent of depravity and madness which thrums around our periphery whether we notice it or not.

Specifically, I touched on the mind-boggling case of debauched neo-Vaudeville producer Roy Radin, a hedonist deviant who allegedly had ties to "Son of Sam" spree shooter David Berkowitz, brainwashed Church of Satan acolytes, and a purported snuff film underground. Arising from and woven through that garden of evil, a thousand choking tendrils can be followed in as many directions, ensnaring a deviant coterie within Hollywood, established stars and innumerable aspirants alike. I barely scratched the surface, and still my fingernails were caked with an unsavory, sticky grime that's tough to scrub away.

Anyway, this post isn't that, exactly.

I was flipping through an old TV Guide (as I tend to do) and found something intriguing. If you've perused this blog, you may know that I collect the editions for the New York Metropolitan market, the 70's and 80's issues of my youth in particular. Anything local is of interest to me, especially since they are often documentation of ephemeral moments that barely exist anymore, so lost are they to the transient nature of our culture. Sometimes, even the vast expanse of cyberspace can't seem to find room.

My curiosity came from a name, jumping out at me from a listing for a show that aired in the pre-prime time slot on a Saturday evening, February 28th, 1976. Here's that listing, along with the ad run by WCBS, the New York City-based flagship affiliate for the former Columbia Broadcasting System (the full name, I've just learned, was legally dropped for the acronym several years earlier).

(click pic to enlarge)

What's the Word? was a half-hour kiddie program with musical numbers centered around the episode's topic of "Tomorrow." (If other episodes were produced using different subjects, I couldn't find them--in fact, I could barely find anything about this one.) "Music, dance, puppets, science, children's predictions and adults' memories combine to form images of the future." Adults' memories of.. the future? (I suppose they mean our old future, like Captain Video and that sort of thing.)

The name that sprung off the page was Nick De Noia, although I wasn't quite sure why at first. Turns out I had written about him before, a mention in my Facebook group of a kid's series he created and hosted called Unicorn Tales, not long after this show. (The eight episodes were released on VHS in the mid-eighties, and turn up on eBay occasionally.) De Noia's IMDb page offers credits as a director, producer, writer, editor, actor, and choreographer. There are a few photos there, all stills from his sole acting credit. To me, he looks a bit like a cross between George Maharis and Mario Cantone, which means he might have been the perfect guest for Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast.



De Noia is described online as having lived a closeted gay life, but that film he appeared in was 1971's Some of My Best Friends Are..., a film marketed with the tagline "This is the place that separates the men from the 'boys.'" This is an allusion to The Boys in the Band, the previous year's hit melodrama featuring a groundbreaking ensemble of homosexual characters. SoMBFA... sounds like it's meant to be an alternative lifestyle Weltanschauung, centering around the Christmas Eve revels of regulars in a Greenwich Village bar. There are familiar names among the performers (Rue McClanahan, Fannie Flagg, Gil Gerard, Gary Sandy) and others known but somewhat more obscure (Candy Darling, Dick O'Neill, Lou "The Creep" Steele, Sylvia Syms). Much like the majority of IMDb user opinions, Vincent Canby's review in the New York Times was not kind.

Unfortunately, the Emmy-winning Unicorn Tales and De Noia's other projects wouldn't prove to be his ultimate claim to fame. In the 1980's, he became entangled in the world of Chippendale's--not the Society for fine furniture craftsmanship, you understand, but rather the erotic male striptease enterprise, famously characterized by the bow tie/collar and cuffs worn by the dancers. It's a story that's been recounted many times recently by the usual true-crime suspects, but in case you're unfamiliar, I'll knock over the pertinent bits.

Through a contentious deal scratched onto a cocktail napkin, De Noia obtained the rights to a touring company for the troupe. When the business' founder, Steve Banerjee, realized what a profitable venture he had signed away, he grew increasingly resentful of De Noia. His paranoid jealousy culminated in the hiring of a junkie as hit man, who shot De Noia in the face in his Manhattan office on April 7th, 1987. De Noia was 45. The murder was traced back to Banerjee, who was arrested, tried, and convicted, eventually killing himself in jail as he awaited sentencing.

Around the time of What's the Word?, De Noia was briefly married to Jennifer O'Neill, the actress who was herself embroiled regularly in sordid incidents, including suicide attempts, accidents, electroshock therapy, her youngest daughter's sexual abuse at the hands of her fifth husband, and her Cover Up co-star Jon-Erik Hexum's death from mishandling a prop gun--which occurred several years after she herself had accidentally shot herself in the stomach with the abusive husband's revolver. She became a born-again Christian, owing in part to guilt over an abortion early in life. She was reportedly "upset" when she received word of De Noia's killing.

Digging for more on the show, I found that What's the Word? was nominated for a New York Emmy in the Outstanding Children's Program category. Unlike Unicorn Tales, which won multiple Emmys, it was skunked by Seeing Eye Shepherd. That program can be found in the Peabody Awards Collection (so I guess it scored one of those, as did WtW?), where it is described as the story of three children who help foster a pup being trained as a service dog. By the way, that show is denoted on the NY Emmys website as airing on WABC on October 17th, 1975, but in fact it aired on the 27th. (Aren't you glad to have me to straighten out these critical matters?)

The '75-'76 NY Emmys nominations lists De Noia's fellow Producer as Jane Norman, who was more familiar to viewers as the star of Pixanne. Pixanne was a Peter Pan-like character whose kiddie show was broadcast out of Philadelphia throughout the 60's (and later syndicated nationally), re-running well into the 70's. As well as hosting, Norman also created and produced the show. She later went on to record albums of standards and Christmas songs. She died in 2017, twelve years after being inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia's Hall of Fame.

I may as well mention that the other names in the TV Guide listing for WtW? are David Eric (originally David Eric Shapiro, who died of a brain tumor in 1999), and David Montague (about whom I have found precisely squat).

Finally, when I searched for the song titles listed ("The Gamma Ray Rag," "Count Us in on the Miracles," and "The World Keeps Rolling On"), I found a Facebook post with the first two attributed to none other than Bruce Sussman, lyricist and long-time collaborator of Barry Manilow's, with whom he wrote hundreds of songs and commercial jingles (although I can't seem to find any specific examples of their advertising credits). This led me to discover that WtW?'s Executive Producer, Linda Allen, was well known to Manilow fans as his long-time "live-in girlfriend," and we'll leave that right there. I'd love to hear Sussman's recollections about working on this show, if he still has any.

Okay, so maybe this wasn't a diabolical web of Roy Radin proportions, but still, a neat little rabbit hole to explore...

By the way, in addition to Seeing Eye Shepherd, the Peabody Awards Collection also maintains a copy of What's the Word? Tomorrow (as it is titled there) on U-matic ¾-inch videotape, and viewing can be requested. A watermarked screener download is twenty bucks, although I'm not sure how all that works, as there's also mention of a digitizing fee of $250. That's a little steep for your Non-Parader, so maybe, if an unexpected influx of disposable income comes my way, I'll go ahead and check it out... tomorrow.