The ‘Live!’ legendary And times of TV’S anchor Simmons
It was Valentine’s Day 1988, and Sue Simmons had a mischievous twinkle in her eye. A fluffy feature had just aired about a man who made plastic food replicas in Chinatown, and there was a close-up of a fake salami hanging in his storefront window.
Not missing a beat, she turned to straightlaced co-anchor Jack Cafferty as the studio cameras rolled.
“Jack can you get me one of those salamis for Valentine’s Day?” she asked sweetly.
“Do you want batteries with it or not?” Cafferty deadpanned.
Scripts be damned. Sue Simmons, the consummate New Yorker, could deliver off-color quips in a Manhattan minute, and whoever sat in the hot seat next to her had better be ready. But her millions of fans were not ready last week when The Post’s Cindy Adams delivered the stunning news that WNBC bean-counters were kicking the iconic anchor off the air come this
June
after 32 years, by not renewing her $5 million-a-year contract.
Cafferty shared the spotlight with Simmons during the Wild West days of broadcast journalism, when the “Live at Five” newscast shot to the top of the ratings within a year and a half of Simmons’ arrival in 1980.
“That’s the kind of crap that went on,” Cafferty, who left the show in 1990, recalled.
“The laughs are what I remember. We’d have so much fun, and most of it was walking on the edge of disaster.
“Sometimes she is capable of going over the line, but the town forgave her,” he said.
Cafferty remembered the day when a muckety-muck, who he didn’t want to name, walked by the anchor desk and Simmons shouted a hello to him. He ignored her.
“‘Go f- -k yourself,” she said, according to the anchorman. “And his head spun around.”
“Whatever she was thinking came out of her mouth,” he said
If it wasn’t her quick wit or unyielding New York toughness, it was her quiet generosity that endeared her to everyone at 30 Rockefeller. She knew the first names, and life stories, of the doormen, the camera crew, the makeup artists.
“She’s a sucker; she’s very giving,” said Cafferty. “But she takes no s- -t. She will cut you off at the knee if you do a game on her.”
Simmons, 68, was born at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village to Dorothy, a white Chicago socialite, and John Simmons, a famed African-american jazz bassist who played with Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington.
She spent her youth backstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem with her dad, who separated from her mom during Sue’s childhood.
She attended the then-all-girls Julia Richman HS on the Upper East Side but didn’t go on to college. Instead she became a typist, making $175 a week.
But in 1972, on a whim, she took an announcer’s course at night and was hooked. A career that would earn her four Emmys and make Sue Simmons a household name was born.
Within a year she landed a job as a a consumer-action reporter on WTNH-TV in New Haven, Conn. Soon she was anchoring the news.
She moved on to Baltimore in 1974 at WBAL, where the beautiful young correspondent met news director Ron Kershaw. He was a member of a tightknit group of journalists — they called themselves the “Baltimore Mafia” — who would go on to become the force behind “Live At Five” at WNBC.
One evening, Simmons, as usual, was the sole woman playing in the office poker game. A player proudly laid down his hand — a full house.
“I only have two pairs,” said Simmons pouting.
“But they’re both nines,” she added, showing off her four-of-akind to roars of laughter.
Her next stop was at WRTC-TV in Washington, DC, where she be-
friended a fledgling young reporter named Al Roker.
“I had a huge crush on her,” Roker admitted to The Post. “Sue swept me up and took me under her wing. I believe my career is what it is because I got to sit next to Sue Simmons.”
Her big break came on Jan. 7, 1980, just a few weeks after the crushing news that her father had died. She was returning home to join Chuck Scarborough on the 6 and 11 p.m. news telecasts on Channel 4.
She recalled getting the call from station brass.
“I tried to sound very cool. I said something like, ‘ Oh, sure. I’ll talk to my agent.’ Then I hung up and screamed.”
Within months, the station decided to launch a pioneering format called “Live at Five,” with a breezier, celebrity-friendly approach. She and Cafferty were named co-anchors. But Simmons would continue to co-anchor with Scarborough at 11 p.m.
She helped kick-start the careers of Whoopi Goldberg and Whitney Houston, and she hit it off with Boy George. After her sit-down with a young Janet Jackson, then a TV actress, Michael Jackson phoned a producer and asked, “Is Sue there? I want to tell her how good she was.”
But it was the chemistry between Chuck and Sue that turned them into news-anchor legends.
Although Simmons never married, Scarborough, 68, described them as an old married couple, dining together every night at Rockefeller Center’s Sea Grill.
“I’ve spent more time with her than any other woman,” he would joke.
She loved to put her colleagues on the spot.
“She used to torture [occasional co-anchor] Ralph Penza,” Roker recalled. “He would lean into the camera, and just as the director would count down to one, Sue would flick Ralph’s elbow and knock it off the desk and he would disappear off camera.
“And when the cameras came back from black, Ralph would look like he was coming up from under his desk.”
Or “she would say something rude to Chuck [seconds before they went live], and he would have this face, and he’d be on camera, and he wouldn’t know what to do,” Roker said.
Simmons’ supporting cast, which included Gabe Pressman, Liz Smith and Chauncey Howell, made the Channel 4 news shows special, but “Sue was the jewel,” said Al Jerome, WNBC station president in the 1980s.
“She brought out the best in people. Jack Cafferty, for one, played the curmudgeon to Sue’s whacky fun sister,” said Roker.
“We had a late newscast, and she snorted funny, and we were on the air, and we were laughing so hard we just couldn’t put it to- gether. We thought we were all going to get fired,” Roker recalled.
After work, the crew would hit the town, including Studio 54 and the Palladium, among other disco-era hot spots.
“There was lots of salty language, a lot of drinking and cigarette smoking in the newsroom. It was more of a rough-and-tumble place back then,” waxed former WNBC producer Barbara Rick.
Simmons candidly admitted in 2009 to the occasional cocktail before shows.
“But that stopped in the mid ’80s, late ’80s, because I looked in the mirror before — when I was ready to go on air — and my eyes were red,” she said in a TV interview.
The party lasted for 17 years, until 2007, when “Live at Five” was replaced by “LX New York.” Simmons was moved back to the 6 p.m. telecast and continued with the 11 p.m. show.
Her fast and furious tongue at times landed her in hot water. Famously, in May 2008, she dropped an F-bomb during a live promo for the 11 p.m. news. “What the f--k are you doing?” she spewed at Scarborough after catching him scribbling off camera and “playfully” trying to get his attention. She didn’t realize the promo was live.
But the Peacock Network brass apparently had long memories. In 2011 she was removed from the 6 p.m. broadcast.
“They think, ‘Oh, silly Sue,’ ” said Roker. “But when she flubbed something, she would be more upset than anyone.”
Sportscaster Len Berman remembers being constantly stumped on air by Simmons, a rabid Met fan who would toss him obscure baseball questions.
“Sue would love to say things for shock value and love to put you off guard,” said Berman. “I used to sweat before going on the air.”
But she was the one who’d lead the daily newsroom battle cry.
“Wake up!” she’d say. “We’ve got a newscast to do!”