The Specialist

It happens daily outside the TV studios: as in a dockworkers' shapeup, prospective audiences are sorted and herded into queues. After a long, foot-shifting delay, they are shuffled inside for another wait, told to douse their cigarettes and keep the chatter down. Invariably, they are disappointed by the cramped studios, the tawdry sets, the cameras and microphones that block their view. Scrunched into their seats with their Macy's shopping bags, surrounded by strangers, discomfited in the glare of overhead floodlights, studio audiences radiate a mood that is, as Mike Douglas puts it, "instant chill time."

But not for long. Seventeen different television shows a week begin with the shot-from-a-cannon entrance of Johnny Olson, the only professional warm-up man in TV. This is a gruesome but, by the laws of TV at least, a necessary specialty. Ten minutes or so before air time, Olson crouches backstage like a half-miler, waits until he feels the "right psychological moment," and then bolts out before the audience, shouting "Hey! Helloooo everybodeeee!" As the APPLAUSE sign flashes on and off, he bounds about like a cheerleader and cries: "Good morning, everybodeeee! Good morning! Say good morning, everybodeeee! [Audience shyly replies.] Oooh, that was bee-yoo-tee-ful! Now I'd like to say good morning to you! My name is Johnny Olson, your announcer for What's My Line?,* Snap Judgment, The Match Game, etc., etc., etc. Oooh, it's nice to see you!" As latecomers are ushered in, he yells: "Come in, folks! Come in! Hey, there's a strange man following you, lady! Oh, that's your husband! [Audience titters.] Ha, ha, ho!"

Ready, Gang? Scanning the audience for sober faces, Olson dashes up the aisle, hugs a blushing matron and kisses her on the cheek. (Audience chuckles.) "How are you, darling? Are your knees bothering you? Well," he says, tugging down the hem of her skirt, "they sure are bothering me! [Guffaws.] I'll pick you up later, dear! [Louder guffaws.] Ah, everybody's in a good humor today! Did you have your prune juice this morning? [Laughter.] That's niice! By the way, while you're here in New York, we'll see to it that you are well taken . . . care of, that is! [Loud laughter.] Oooh, you're good! You're going to be all right! Now ladies and germs . . . er, gentlemen. [Gales of laughter.]

Ha, ha, ho! Now we're going to.try the applause on the show! Are you ready, gang? Let's take it! One . . . two . . . three . . . pow! [Wild applause.] Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Yeeow! Oooh, audience, that's bee-yoo-tee-ful!"

Olson keeps rehearsing the audience until a few seconds before air time, then exclaims, "O.K., the time has come! Sit up straight! Take a deep breath of New York's freshest air. [He coughs.] Ha, ha, whee! Folks, you're terrific!" Then he launches into a soft-shoe shuffle or, if the show is on NBC, his bird ballet: flapping his arms, he pirouettes around the studio, turns his back to the audience, bends over and flips up his coattails to reveal a picture of the NBC peacock pasted on the seat of his pants. While the audience is roaring, the cameras flash on, the star makes his entrance, and another show is off to an artificially rollicking start.

Precooked. Now 53, the squat, pixie-faced Olson has been warming up TV audiences for two decades. He begins his stint by "working the sidewalk," glad-handing the audience as they wait in line. Once the program is in progress, he checks the air conditioners (65 DEGF. produces the loudest laughter, he claims), runs up and down the aisles cueing applause. Lest interest lag during commercials, he hands out $1 bills to the "best clappers."

Olson gets a minimum of $500 per show, which is petty cash for on-camera performers but adds up to a six-figure yearly income. His services are in great demand. Jackie Gleason flies him down to Miami each weekend to precook his audiences. There, exhorting 2,500 Gleason fans to "give me a real belly-buster laugh," Olson works one aisle while "my million-dollar wife Penny" works the other. "Johnny is electric," says Gleason. "He gets the people in a frame of mind for what's going to come out, just like a burlesque show when the girl starts peeling delicately and gets the audience anticipating." Adds Ed McMahon, who adjusts the taping schedule of his game show Snap Judgment to meet Olson's timetable: "If there are seven people waiting in line at a telephone booth, Johnny will warm them up."

In the big daytime years of radio, Olson was the hyped-up host of Ladies Be Seated and Name That Tune. Today he concedes that it is a comedown to be warming up someone else's audience. But he is consoled by the fact that he makes more money now. He likes to describe himself as a specialist in "the mass breakdown of tensions. I'm a psychological second banana who acts as a liaison between audience and performer. I don't pretend to be a comedian, just someone in whom the audience can develop confidence." He recalls the lady who approached him after one show and thanked him for imparting that special warm, comfortable feeling. She had rushed to his warmup, she explained, directly from the funeral of her husband.

*A new daily, syndicated version of the now-defunct CBS weekly nighttime show.

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