The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
‘Today’ show’s longtime weatherman and resident merrymaker dies at 87
Willard Scott, the portly, toupee-sporting TV personality who spent 35 years enlivening the “Today” show as its weatherman and resident merrymaker, whether delivering the forecast dressed in drag or giving shout-outs to farflung centenarians, died Saturday. He was 87.
The death was announced by NBC’s “Today” show, via a statement by Scott’s successor, Al Roker. Complete details were not immediately available.
Scott first made his name as an irrepressible comedian of Washington radio trading in shtick and satire as half of “The Joy Boys.” On local TV, he was the original Ronald McDonald — the hamburger chain went with a thinner actor for the bulb-nosed clown mascot in the national campaign — and had stints as a weather forecaster and Bozo the Clown.
In a broadcasting career spanning six decades, he was best known for his role on “Today,” the popular NBC weekday morning program. He debuted in 1980 and immediately made his presence known, draping his 6-foot-3 frame in outrageous costumes. He once dressed up as Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian entertainer known for her outré fruit-covered hats and garish dresses. On Groundhog Day, he appeared as the rodent.
His tomfoolery drew private scorn from “Today” show contemporaries and predecessors such as Hugh Downs, but Scott was unapologetic. “People said I was a buffoon to do it,” he told The New York Times. “Well, all my life I’ve been a buffoon. That’s my act.”
The centenarian segment began soon after he joined the show, when a friend asked Scott to wish a happy 100th birthday, live and in color, to his uncle. NBC bosses didn’t like the idea, but Scott went ahead with it. He was soon fielding about 200 requests a week.
Before his first year on “Today” was out, the Los Angeles Times called him a “big friendly man who’s become a national folk hero.” When “Today” went on the road, as it often did, Scott was routinely besieged by well-wishers and autograph seekers. Just as routinely, he kissed babies and pressed the flesh.
With his sunny disposition and jovial personality, he became a favorite of Madison Avenue and the lecture circuit. He reaped a small fortune giving upbeat talks to trade associations and promoting products from Diet Coke to Florida oranges.
He once described himself as a “human after-dinner mint” compared with the more polished
anchors on the show, including Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley, who liked to conduct serious-minded sit-downs with world figures.
Unlike viewers who embraced Scott’s sincerity and warmth, his co-hosts did not find him refreshing. Pauley once publicly called him “an alien being,” and he endured an embarrassing public scrap with Gumbel.
NBC brass insisted that Scott and Gumbel make up, and they soon did, at least publicly. Scott, who told a reporter that the memo “cut like a knife,” had the last laugh. The weatherman was soon earning $1 million a year from NBC, even though he was seldom on the air for more than three minutes an hour.
Willard Herman Scott Jr. was born in Alexandria, Virginia, on March 7, 1934. His father was an insurance salesman. His mother worked as a telephone operator and became a homemaker when her only child was born.
He went into semi-retirement in 1996 and retired fully in 2015. “If you were to look at my resume,” Scott wrote in his 1982 autobiography, “The Joy of Living,” “you’d see that I’m ... bald, I’m overweight, I don’t make all the smooth moves, and I dress like a slob.
“I take tremendous pride,” he added, “in the fact that I beat the system.”