San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
S.F. native on Bay Area TV for 50 years
The first program that many Bay Area kids tuned into on morning TV in the early 1960s was “Jack’s Place,” hosted by Jack Hanson on KPIX.
It was the lead-in to the syndicated show “Captain Kangaroo,” but unlike the captain, Hanson was not in costume and he didn’t have a sidekick like Mr. Green Jeans. Hanson held his audience from 7 to 8 a.m. each morning by inventing characters and drawing cartoons of them. Young viewers would draw along with him and mail their artwork to him by the sackful.
The formula worked well enough to last six seasons, six days a week — which was one day more than “Captain Kangaroo” and his cast of regulars.
Hanson, a San Francisco native who made a 50-year career out of San Francisco TV, appeared on all four major local stations: KTVU, KRON, KPIX and KGO. To survive that long took versatility, and Hanson had the right combination of youthful looks, a quick wit, a conversational interviewing technique, and natural talent as an artist, which he could always fall back on.
When he evolved from kidsshow personality to weekend weatherman on KGO-TV, he created a sidekick in a shivering dog in a ratty coat that he would draw on a U.S. map in grease pencil to highlight the coldest place in the country each day. He developed enough of a following there to be tapped as co-host of “AM San Francisco” alongside Nancy Fleming, a former Miss America.
Hanson, who was still supplying interview segments to cable TV into his late 80s, died at his home in Novato on Dec. 10, said his wife, Pauline Hanson. He had been dealing with Alzheimer’s disease for many years. He was 91.
“What made Jack good in all areas of his work was his completely open and loving personality and his lack of ego,” said Cathy Cavey, a camera operator who filmed news segments with Hanson during his stint as
a field reporter for KGO-TV. “Jack could get a story out of anybody.”
In 2008, Hanson became one of a select group of broadcasters to attain the Gold Circle, an award for 50 years of longevity as bestowed by the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
“Jack was a tremendous man in the industry who everybody loved,” said Darryl Compton, executive director of the San Francisco chapter. “He was a kind and gracious individual and mentored many broadcasters on their career paths.”
John Arthur Hanson Jr. was born Aug. 8, 1932, a second-generation San Franciscan. His father was an electrician and paint salesman. An only child, Jack, as he was always known, grew up in a one-bedroom apartment on Fell Street that was so small “he always said he slept on a Murphy bed in the living room,” said his daughter, Annika Malik. Hanson attended
Andrew Jackson Elementary School and Roosevelt Middle School.
“As a kid, all he ever did was draw pictures,” said his son, Craig, the oldest of eight kids.
Hanson was able to walk from home to Lowell High School, then a brick building on Masonic Avenue. He served on the student council and graduated in 1950. He briefly attended
City College of San Francisco before joining the Air Force in 1951 during the Korean War.
He liked to make light about how soft his duty was. Stationed in Long Beach, his main duty was “passing out basketballs in the gym,” said his son. “He always joked that they’d seen enough of him and they let him go.”
He was released from duty in 1952 and enrolled at San Francisco State College, where he studied broadcasting on the G.I. Bill. After a short stint as a park director in the Recreation and Park Department, he took a “foot-in-the-door” job in broadcasting in the mailroom at KPIX.
From there he jumped to KRON as stage manager for “Mayor Art,” a children’s show taped with a studio audience. That led to his first break as fillin host when the mayor took off his top hat and spats and went on vacation.
From there he moved to KTVU on a 13-week stint to become host of a game show called “Watch and Win.” His first permanent on-air post was “Jack’s Place,” which ran from 1962 to 1966 on KPIX. The show featured interviews with the likes of Dick Van Dyke, Phyllis Diller, Willie Mays and Red Skelton, and in-character visits by Herman Munster, Private Pyle and Sgt. Carter.
But none of these names moved his 8-to-12-year-old demographic like the chance to hear their own names read over the air when he selected one of their drawings to showcase.
“It was a natural thing to get these cartoons from kids,” said his son Craig, who often went with him to the studio and watched him empty the sacks of mail. “People came up to him all the time to say how much they loved him. It started when I was a kid and continued to the end of his life.”
He started at KGO in 1972 and was on the air in various capacities for 30 years. Through the 1980s, Hanson was a feature reporter creating three-minute segments for the evening news, going out in the field with a camera person, mostly Cathy
Cavey, to find stories.
“We had a lot of fun adventures together,” said Cavey, noting that she and Hanson also created a half-hour Christmas special for several years. “Jack wrote the shows and each had a different theme.”
One year the special was filmed at Hanson’s home in Forest Hill, with all the on-camera talent attending as if it was a dinner party with Hanson as the host.
In one instance he drove the length of isolated Highway 395 down the back side of the Sierra Nevada and into the desert, stopping along the way and finding stories among the people he met. This formed a series of segments called “The People of 395,” which aired in 1986.
“We drove down the highway and just talked to people we saw standing near their houses,” Hanson told a Chronicle reporter, “or we just walked in somewhere, like the courthouse in
Bridgeport, where we talked to the judge just as he was on his way in to hear a case.”
He also didn’t mind broadcasting while trying to stay upright on a boat on San Francisco Bay, filing his report as a spray of bay water soaked him through his crewneck sweater.
“Jack was a kind and gentle soul, a professional and a gentleman to the core,” said Cheryl Ward, longtime executive assistant to the president and general manager of KGOTV. “I loved him stopping by my desk with a sketch. I have one from 1991 (a dog viewing an eclipse) that I still treasure.”
In 1955, Hanson married Joan Malcolm, also a native San Franciscan. They lived in another small apartment on Fell Street, directly across from the one he had grown up in. They had three boys, Craig, Kirk and Jack, before divorcing in 1969.
His second marriage was to Elizabeth Fairbanks, an art exhibit designer. They settled in the Forest Hill neighborhood adjacent to West Portal,
where they had four kids, Jennifer, Annika, Lindsay and Max, before divorcing in 1993.
At around that time, he met Pauline Elliott, who had been a touring tennis professional from Hamilton, New Zealand, before moving to Novato to become a teaching pro at Rolling Hills club. Hanson came up to do a segment on a charity tennis tournament and found his third wife.
“We did an on-thecourt interview and Jack and I have been together ever since,” she said. “He had such warmth and a down-to-earth personality.”
They were married in 1994 and settled in San Anselmo, where their son Elliott Hanson was born. In addition to eight children, Hanson had nine grandchildren.
After Hanson was let go from KGO in a management shuffle, he downscaled his talent to public access television in Marin County, where he hosted “A Time for All Ages,” a community talk show, and “Cartooning with Jack,” which consisted of Hanson sitting
on a stool and drawing at an easel, while talking extemporaneously to the camera. He could pull off a 30-minute episode without running out of things to say or draw.
“He never had to think or plan anything out,” said his wife. “He just rolled with the punches.”
That was true of his later career on cable. He would do 10 to 15 interviews in a day on Comcast, revolving between Comcast studios in San Francisco, Hayward, Fresno and Sonoma. Among his subjects was Kamala Harris, when she was district attorney of San Francisco, and Tom Brokaw, the NBC anchor.
“He was genuinely interested in talking to people, and he never prepared, ever,” said his daughter Lindsay Redmond of San Rafael. “Even when he was in his final weeks, in home hospice, he would try to interview the people who came in to take care of him. His sense of humor remained until the last hour.”