BIRTH OF A PITCHMAN
"And out there in the night they
listen. Lying in bed, curled in a chair,
driving a car, swinging on a porch-- in every likely and unlikely place-- the
restless, the workers, the insomniacs, or just the 'night people,' wonder who
will bring another fantasy to entertain them during the sleeping
hours...."-- John Nebel, The Way Out
World, 1961
Long John Nebel-- a man with a carnie's eye
for an easy mark and a child's sense of wonder-- one of the most influential
people in my life...
He paved the way for the Larry Kings and Art
Bells of today, this 6' 4" man born John Zimmerman in Chicago in
1911. His heaviest day on the bathroom
scale saw the red needle pointing at 160 lbs.
He dropped out of school in the eighth grade. But, being who he was, JZ had already become
an avid reader who loved learning about almost everything under the sun almost
as much as he loved learning how to pull off a con before he pulled it off...
 |
Flying Saucer contactee George Adamski (left) elucidates the finer points of
the utopian outer-space lifestyle led by his friend Orthon of Venus whom he
met one wintry day in the Mojave Desert. A skeptical John Nebel holds up a
clearly authentic photograph of the Venusian mothership. |
One biographer dubbed him "radio talk
king, master salesman, magnificent charlatan"...
He married one of 1940s America's famous
fashion models, Candy Jones, nee Jessica Arline Wilcox of Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania. Just a few months after
their marriage on New Year's Eve, 1972, gabfest master Nebel came to believe his
beloved wife was one of many victims of Project MKUltra, a sinister CIA
mind-control project...
By his own account, which should be viewed
with affectionate suspicion, he found his way to New York around 1930. In the introduction to his 1961 book, The Way Out World, Nebel had no real
complaints about his childhood as the son of an advertising executive (Dad) and
a dermatologist (Mom). Life, he writes,
was pretty good-- all the chocolate creams a kid could want without paying for it
with pesky pimples...
 |
A series of hypnotic sessions aimed at
shedding on light on the causes of mood
swings in Nebel's wife led the radio host
to believe she'd been part of a CIA
mind-control experiment. |
Without explaining why to the reader, other
than hinting he may have gotten in trouble for peddling stolen firecrackers,
young John found himself shipped off to live with his grandparents in the
metropolis of Wisconsin Dells. Grandma
was the president of the local Women's Christian Temperance Union. Grandpa was a man who appreciated a good card
game, cheap cigars, a shapely floozy, and properly distilled vegetation...
In the summer of his fourteenth year, the
circus came to Wisconsin Dells...
Nebel's account of how young John Zimmerman
eventually became John Nebel has it that one of the clowns took sick and that
JZ, tall for his age and a smooth talker, talked the circus' owner into letting
him fill in for the ailing funny man.
The clown stayed sick. John agreed to play the next show date in nearby
Baraboo after getting the OK from Mom and Dad back home in Chicago. His father gave him permission to spend two
weeks with the circus. John conveniently
forgot when fourteen days had passed...
 |
The circus came to town during young John Zimmerman's summer visit with
Grandma and Grandpa in Wisconsin Dells. And then he met Lady Ester... |
At the end of the summer, the eagle-eyed
adolescent knew three things: he loved
show business, psychic phenomena and the occult world fascinated him (for
reasons we shall see in a few paragraphs), and that selling was the greatest
form of self-expression in the world...
Many years later, John Zimmerman transformed
himself into John Nebel, an erstwhile Paramount Theater usher and New York City
sidewalk salesman and auction house owner who'd approached the Big Apple's WOR
radio station with a pitch for a late night interview program devoted to, as
Nebel biographer Donald Bain put it, "discussing strange and unusual
topics". For Long John, the idea
was a win-win proposition. He'd hawk his
auction business AND get paid a few extra bucks in the process. The station management wasn't overly keen on
the idea but decided it had little to lose.
WOR's ratings were in the tank and the station surely couldn't lose any
more ad revenue than it was already losing in the 12 Midnight to 5:30 AM slot...
To everyone's great surprise, including Long
John Nebel's, his graveyard shift
gabfest hooked almost every night owl within clear channel WOR's considerable
range...
 |
The circus life gave John Nebel three things-- a love of show business, a life-
long fascination with the strange and unusual, and a belief that selling was the
ultimate way of expressing himself. |
[Exactly how popular was his late night talk
show? WNBC reportedly offered Long John
a yearly salary of $100,000 to sign on after he left rival WOR in 1961. Industry analysts believe this was one of the
highest paychecks offered to a radio personality at the time.]
Why did they listen?...
Nebel's account of his years at WOR gives us
a hint (and a good reason to revisit Long John and his show in future blog
entries) with chapter titles like "Saturnian Lovers And Venusian
Mistresses", "The $20,000,000 Ticket To The Moon Plus Some Impossible
Inventions", "Edgar Cayce, Psychic Doctor, And John R Brinkley, King
Of The Quacks", "Deros, Devils, And Snowmen"...
If you were bored, and it was 2 AM, what
better way to while away the sleepless hours than hear Orfeo Angelucci weave
his tale of his chance meeting with a dying physician named "Adam" in
a nearly empty restaurant in Twenty Nine Palms, California, and the five-inch
tall blonde, scantily clad, who materialized inside a glass filled with a fine
but "very rare" champagne from Adam's home planet and danced in a
frenzy until she had exhausted herself and disappeared as mysteriously as she'd
appeared...
 |
Long John Nebel-- Auctioneer Extraordinaire-- plugging
"The Value Center of New Jersey" |
One suspects Long John became enamored of the
world of the strange and bizarre, at least in part, due to a youthful crush on
his fellow circus performer, 'The Lady Ester'...
We'll just let Long John tell us the story
himself as he takes us back to the first time he heard the circus barker make
his pitch for the hard-earned nickels and dimes of good hearted but
easily fleeced backwoods rubes...
"Ladies and gentlemen. I'd appreciate it if you'll now gather over
to this platform. Thank you. Will you be kind enough, please, to move in a
little closer. Those ladies over there,
would you please move in just a little closer.
It is a rare privilege and a great honor for the Lamont Brothers to have
this season, as our star attraction, Lady Ester. Lady Ester can read your mind without the aid
of any mechanical or electrical equipment, or personal contact.
 |
Andy Sinatra, The Mystic Barber, communicated with
folks on other planets by way of his home-made headband. |
"She was the seventh born in a family of
seven children. She was born on the 31st
day of October-- a day that we celebrate as Halloween. At the age of seven, Lady Ester was able to
answer her mother's questions and execute her mother's desires prior to the
time they were orally stated. At the age
of fourteen, she had completed her high school education. On her graduation day, she was giving the
valedictory speech when all of a sudden she stopped. For a period of time that seemed hours but
evidently was just a matter of seconds, there was complete silence in that high
school auditorium in Ashtabula, Ohio...
"Members of the audience began feeling
sorry for this little youngster who evidently had forgotten the rest of her
speech. And just then little Ester said,
in a quivering faint voice, 'There's a bad wreck that's going to happen at the
railroad crossing in a few minutes'...
"A blanket of silence covered the
auditorium. In the distance could be
heard the roar of an oncoming train"...
 |
Nebel guest Orfeo Angelucci began to suspect his
acquaintance Dr Adam wasn't from around here when
a five-inch blonde, quite scantily clad, appeared out
of thin air and began dancing in a champagne glass. |
Of course it happened! Dear readers, don't waste your time looking
for records of that tragic incident in Ashtabula, Ohio. They were destroyed in a tragic fire that
took place many years ago. Step right
up, Ladies and Gentlemen, for just a few more minutes of your time at some
point in the next few weeks, we'll learn who Lady Ester really was and what happened
when a young Long John Nebel found himself standing in front of the same judge
three times on one cold day after the Great Stock Market Crash...
But for just two quarters, half of a dollar,
my good friends, I'll see to it you get the best seat in the house. Perhaps Lady Ester, who so accurately and
uncannily predicted the most tragic event in the annals of a lovely Ohio town,
will take notice of you and speak of the many wonderful things yet to come in
your life. Who knows? Love and fortune may be waiting just around
the corner. Just two quarters, ladies
and gentlemen, yes-- you heard me right, friends-- a mere half dollar...
 |
Candy Jones in her 1940s super-model and
USO entertainer days. |
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CREDITS
Note:
All photographs for this essay were located through Google Images or Wikipedia,
without authoritative source or ownership information except as noted: John Nebel with George Adamski from
obscurantist.com; Long John Nebel Auction House ad from songpoemmusic.com; Long
John Nebel Presents The Flying Saucer Story from tower.com; Wisconsin Dells
photo from wisconsinlakes.com; Circus Comes To Town from
yesterdaystowns.blogspot.com., Orfeo Angelucci book jacket from
radiantebooks.net Lady Ester story
quoted from The
Way Out World, John Nebel, New York, 1961
