Shelley Herman Through a Cathode TV Tube

to see Elvis, I thought it was kind of tacky. If anything, they all should have hung out with her because she got us ringside to see Elvis at the Hilton. So had I not stayed back with Janice and got to know her a little bit - and then she got to know me

Shelley Herman: In so many ways. I was working at Sears doing this retail job, barely making enough money to pay for my college and my car. So going to Vegas on a girls road trip was an extravagance for me. And I was into the Beatles, I wasn’t that much into Elvis. But I kind of thought that, ‘Well, if all my girlfriends go with me it could be fun. I’ve never been before so we’ll just hang and all be friends that way.’ But when the other three friends dumped the girl who got us the tickets

Presley? Was that a defining moment in your life?

Vents: One of the delights in reading My Peacock Tales is in realizing how inexorably linked the start of your career is to legendary rock and roll artist Elvis Presley. Have you ever stopped to ponder how different things might have been for you and your life without that road trip to Las Vegas to go see or at 30 Rock, you get different assignments that might be press publicity, you might work at BRAVO for a couple of months or the USA Network, and then hopefully within those eighteen months you’ve made the necessary contacts so that you can advance on the next rung of the corporate ladder. Or, in the case of some of my friends, realize that, ‘Y’know what? in different departments within the NBC-Universal corporation not have tried) - you basically give tours around and they still do tours at 30 Rock. Here in Los Angeles they don’t do the tours any longer because the Burbank facility itself doesn’t exist anymore. NBC was purchased by Universal. So the executive training part of it where you kind of shadow people are better than becoming a Page (if I’d known that I might in Los Angeles and in New York. The program is basically an executive training program. When you’re hired into the program - which they say that the odds of getting into Harvard

Show-biz ain’t my calling anymore.’ They then went out and got real jobs and lived happily-ever-after (laughs).

Shelley Herman: Well, the Page program itself is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. They have programs both

Studio Page program is?

Vents: Backtracking momentarily, can you describe for anyone that may not be in the know what precisely the NBC me through a cathode TV tube. How did I process all of this and how did my friends process it and have wonderful lives afterwards?

Shelley Herman: I just figured that I’d take a crack at it and then on Zoom I joined a writer’s group. I would tell the stories in a kind of ‘Then they did this’ and ‘Then they did that’ kind of way. The people in the writer’s group were like, ‘Yes, but how did you feel?’ And that’s when the book really took shape because instead of Alice Through the Looking Glass it was am I doing stuck inside during this pandemic except gaining weight?’ really gave it a thought but then I thought, ‘Well, what else

Vents: Hey, you and everyone else (laughs).

What made 2023 the right time to tell this tale?

Vents: Brilliant and likewise! First of all, major congratulations on your aforementioned book My Peacock Tale: Secrets Of An NBC Page. For anyone that’s not had the good fortune to pick up this great book and take a gander at it, can you talk a little about what got the ball rolling on this very special project?

Shelley Herman: Well, it’s a beautiful day and I’ve already done all of my chores for the morning, so I’m all ready to talk with you!

An NBC Page, how is the summer of ‘23 treating you?

Vents: Before we stroll down the proverbial Memory Lane and talk about your amazing book My Peacock Tale: Secrets Of

Shelley Herman: Nice to talk to you today!

Shelley, welcome to Vents Magazine!

Vents: For anyone not in the know about Emmy-nominated show-biz veteran, longtime host, writer, producer and personality and - WHEW! - author Shelley Herman, have we got a real treat for you today; greetings and salutations

I found Shelley to be warm, approachable and a wealth of information about the Hollywood of the 70s and we all here at the Vents offices think you’ll be just as wowed by her after reading our lighthearted interview.

It was recently my extreme privilege to sit down and chat with Emmy-nominated show business alum, producer and game show writer extraordinaire Shelley Sherman who, whether you realize it or not, has touched your life in one way or another. A fan of Love Connection circa the Chuck Woolery days? Shelley was there for that nugget of gold. Or what about the 1976 iteration of Liar’s Club or Supermarket Sweep, Balderdash, The Million Second Quiz and other celebrated game-shows? This talented wordsmith (and occasional actress) has her fingerprints all over those shows. And, not content to rest on her laurels, Shelley has just authored an incredible and addictive memoir entitled My Peacock Tale: Secrets Of An NBC Page which details her first forays into the wonky and surreal world of entertainment via the nigh legendary NBC Page Program during the hazy days of the 1970s. That book is available anywhere and everywhere good books are sold and you owe yourself a real treat by endeavoring to chase down your very own copy.

Shelley Herman: Well, I think we can thank the pandemic in part for the book. I have been really privileged to be good friends with a core group of pages. We hang out all of the time, at least once a month we get together and we celebrate each other’s birthdays and weddings and parent’s funerals; just all of life’s big milestones. We’ve gotten to the point now where we’ve all heard each other’s stories at least a million times. Now people’s children and grandchildren are beginning to hear some of those same stories. When Zoom happened and we were all stuck inside, we started reaching out to some of the other people like my friend Dinah who doesn’t live in California anymore, and friends in Kentucky and South Carolina, Florida. We’re just all over the country now. So we started hearing their stories. Pretty soon the story that Maggie had about Freddie Prinze kind of book-ended one that Linda had about Freddie Prinze; just different encounters that we all had. All of a sudden, more stories were fleshed out and people kept saying ‘Someone should write a book.’ And I am a writer, but I never thought about writing a book because I thought only smart people wrote books (laughter). So I never wonder what it is people would respond to the most?’ You’d

Shelley Herman: It’s changed vastly. In part, it’s not as much fun, I’ll say that also. At one time the networks could kind of program by the seat of their pants and they would say ‘I weeks later I had the job.

Vents: As a child of the 1970s, I grew up on the three networks of that time which were ABC, NBC and CBS. Maybe on a clear weather day if my family was really lucky and our rabbit ears cooperated we could bring in a very snowy PBS. So the era which I grew up on you actually worked in. What’s your take on network TV from the 70s when you were in that medium, versus now in 2023? Are they really now different creatures altogether? Has some of the fun and spontaneity which you write about in your book kind of left the scene, so to speak?

Shelley Herman: Oh yeah. Totally Jack Hanna’s doing (laughs). Certainly credit him for the inspiration. You’re the first person to ask about that title, by the way.

Vents: It was a little bit of kismet, wasn’t it?

I was listening to a Jack Hanna show. He did a number of wildlife shows throughout his career and the one I had on in the background was doing a story about peacocks. He said the words ‘Peacock tail’ as I was writing and I thought that was just perfect for my book title. So I can thank Jack Hanna for the inspiration for the title. I immediately looked on GoDaddy to see if the name ‘My Peacock Tale’ was taken. Then I went on to Twitter; then I went on to Facebook; then I went on to Instagram. Within fifteen minutes I had tied up all of those domain names.

Shelley Herman: I’m of a generation where I always have to keep a TV on in the background no matter what I’m doing.

Vents: Just to digress for a second, but I’ve always been a big fan of quirky and clever word-play in song or book titles, so I was immediately taken by the title of your book ‘My Peacock Tale.’ (laughs) This is probably a throw-away question, but did you come up with the title yourself? It’s such a fun bit of word-play!

I saw these people at NBC wearing these hideously ugly polyester uniforms and they were getting paid to stand around all day and listen to rock and roll music. I had one volunteering usher job on my resume at that point and I thought, ‘Well, this is a job I could do.’ When I told Janice about it she said, ‘Well, my mom’s best friend is a big-shot at NBC and she could certainly make a call for you.’ So her friend’s mom actually came into Sears while I was working just to meet me and make sure I smelled good and didn’t drool (laughs). Two when I was in high school I went to a taping of The Midnight Special. It was a late night rock and roll show that was on NBC. a little bit - I never would have got the job because I was lucky cigarette in hand and kind of hunched over on a barstool,

Shelley Herman: It was music acts, but there weren’t go-go dancers or anything like that or lip-synching, either. It was all live music. It was really cool. They’d put pillows on the floor and you’d sit cross-legged like you were a little hippie chick.

Vents: Was The Midnight Special along the lines of a variety music show like Hullabaloo?

Shelley Herman: I’ll tell you the way he did it, too. It was completely different than anyone else in that he ran a Twilight Zone episode for each class. Then he would, became a Page, there used to be a place that was called the Sherwood Oaks Experimental College above a shoe store on Hollywood and Ivar. This guy Gary - I can’t remember his last name - would get some fascinating people to come in to be guest lecturers. I took a Satire in Film class there. And when I say class, it was unaccredited. It was just a bunch of people sitting around talking. But with that said, you’d get people like Buck Henry or Mel Brooks or George Segal, like really good people. And one of the classes I took was a class by Rod Serling. field day with this era…What’s really cool is that before I

Vents: You’re now officially in my ‘Cool Book’ forever (laughs).

Shelley Herman: With the potential scourge of AI impacting the industry as well, I think Rod Serling would have had a like they used to because there aren’t the opportunities for people to be themselves. the person is behind the persona. They don’t make stars of some kind that you’re getting a little glimpse into who when you’re watching a talk show or even a variety show

Vents: And it’s very corporate-run now more than ever it feels like there’s so much more at stake. Oftentimes I wonder what someone like a Rod Serling would make of the environment today as far as creativity and being able to write outside the box. It’s definitely a different kind of climate for sure.

Now the segments are really short and inevitably they’ve got some kind of product placement in them which only helps the production companies make more money. It’s not something that’s helping the viewer and I don’t care if you’re watching ‘Deals and Steals’ on The View or if you’re watching Jimmy Fallon and all of a sudden they’re promoting some product in the middle of it. It really disrupts the flow of the conversation. If somebody’s there to plug a movie, in the old days they would plug the movie and show a clip. But the rest of the time they were talking about themselves and that’s how we developed television personalities. We looked forward to seeing Don Rickles or Buddy Hackett or Tony Randall. You know, Tony Randall didn’t always have something to talk about as a project when he went on The Tonight Show, but he always had interesting stories. I miss that part of feeling as though have your ‘Must See TV Thursdays.’ Or you’d have your sports night. They targeted certain audiences that way.

What’s happening with network television now, and you can throw FOX into that mix with the other three now, it’s almost becoming like FM radio: Now instead of having a lot of variety of shows, they are kind of narrow-casting things a little bit more. I think because we now have streaming as an option so that if people don’t want to watch single people making fools of themselves trying to date one another, there are other alternatives now. And the other thing that really, really gets me about television is how used to you could go on a talk show and you could do maybe two segments, maybe a total of twelve to fifteen minutes and you got to know the personalities on these talk shows.

Shelley Herman: Yes, and I can dovetail that into something, too: Allen Ludden hosted a version of that show in the mid70s and she was a frequent guest, of course. The object of the show was four celebrities each tell a story about an object and the contestant has to guess which is the true story. There’s a picture in My Peacock Tale of Tess white, Betty’s mother. Whenever Betty would come to do The Liar’s

Vents: Wasn’t Betty White on that quite a bit?

Shelley Herman: Rod hosted the original version of a game show called The Liar’s Club.

Vents: I know that he was a guest on a number of game shows during the mid-60s. And knowing your history in the game show world, that’s such a neat intersection between you and Serling.

Rod Serling watching the episode more than I was paying attention to the actual episode itself…I had gone to high school with Richard Matheson’s daughter Ali (Interviewer’s

Shelley Herman: Yes, the title sounded familiar when you said it. Anyhow, I totally geeked out that day: I was watching say to the class: ‘Okay, dissect this episode. What’s wrong with it?’ It was really special and I knew how special it was then. He was gone less than a year after I took that class.

Vents: Would that be the Roddy McDowall episode People Are Alike All Over?

Shelley Herman: Not being extremely versed in the series, it was the one where they landed on Mars.

Vents: Do you recall which episode of The Twilight Zone he showed to the class?

Note: Matheson was an accomplished writer who penned some of the better remembered Twilight Zone episodes). So I had a chance to say to Rod Serling that I knew Dick Matheson and his daughter and he did one of those ‘Please tell him I said hello’ kind of things. Did you know that Rod Serling once hosted a game show?

By Ryan Vandergriff

(laughs) But circling back to life lessons as to who impacts me daily, it’s not even the big stars necessarily…I adore Harry Chapin. I think if people were a little more like Harry Chapin the world would be a better place.

Shelley Herman: Well, there’s this pesky writer’s strike going on (laughs). But I did a signing at Barnes & Noble last week and one of the people asked who I saw playing me on a TV series or in a movie and I replied, ‘Me with great lighting!’

Vents: Are there any plans to adapt My Peacock Tale to film or television? It feels as if it would be a good fit in either one of those mediums.

Shelley Herman: No, but any Kevin Kline reference is okay by me (laughs)...

Vents: Perhaps that question was too much akin to a Sophie’s Choice sort of question where it’s really an impossibility to choose one from another. Perhaps that’s not a fair question on my end.

Shelley Herman: Wow. That’s a loaded question because I took so many life lessons from so many different people.

Vents: Out of all of the notable personalities that you’ve had the privilege of working with and around in the industry, who has left the biggest impression on you?

I didn’t want them to get the shrapnel from any of the stories because it wouldn’t have been fair.

Shelley Herman: There’s two stories specifically where I changed the name of the people. I didn’t do it because I was trying to necessarily protect them. But they have families and mind and I have a really good memory.

Vents: Was there anything early on while writing the book that you decided was perhaps too personal to put in? Were there things that didn’t make the cut?

Shelley Herman: What I would do since I had a little bit of a journalism background as well as game show writing is I would start verifying years and if I was referencing a certain song. Like Chuck Barris and Milton DeLugg wrote the theme for The Gong Show, so I wanted to get the right name for it and the right order for who was given credit. I would kind of verify those sorts of things. You always try to get two sources of information to verify. But the stories were really fresh in my

Vents: When you sat down to write My Peacock Tale did the memories flow for you, or did you at times have to reach out to friends that were on the scene at the time to jog certain memories?

Soon: The National Game Show Archive.’ Her Emmy is the first representation of what’s to come…

Vents: We’ve all been there.

Shelley Herman: When Betty passed away, I reached out to her assistant. I’m one of these people that sometimes I’m just too naive to know that people don’t do these things, but I did it anyway -

Vents: How neat.

Club she and Tess would go to the Elizabeth Arden Salon and they’d get their hair and nails done exactly the same way. Then they’d go to the show and Tess would sit in the audience and not only watch her daughter on the game show, but her son-in-law hosting the game show.

Shelley Herman: Right. And I wrote to her and sent her the photo of Tess so that she’d know I wasn’t some total weirdo; just a partial one. I said ‘I know you’re going to be going through Betty’s personal belongings and probably auctioning things off, but if you find any game show stuff that you’re just going to throw away because nobody cares, just so you know I do care. I’m helping to curate a game show museum that’s being established in Rochester, New York.’ She sent us boxes and boxes of things and then she said, ‘Would you like one of Betty’s Emmys?’ Betty had won an Emmy for hosting a show called Just Men. The only thing that is at the construction site right now - the museum is The Strong National Museum of Play which is a huge museum already in Rochester dedicated to board games, children’s games, video games, you name it. Our wing is opening in 2025. Right now they have Betty’s Emmy under glass with a little light on it and a sign saying ‘Coming

We’re working on releasing a new single hopefully soon. Other than that, more writing work for future releases and definitely more shows to give!

What else is happening next in your world?

We still have a few shows away from Tallinn planned, but mostly we will be staying close to home to work on writing music.

Will you be hitting the road this year?

Like most of our songs, everything started with a melody and a phrase. The chorus melody as well as the last line, “I kill myself inside to stay alive”, were the starting point and then we started to build from there. For the instrumental we took inspiration from metalcore but also pop punk and synthwave. Lyrically we wanted to explore the thoughts someone, in this case a cyborg, might have after realising they don’t recognise who they are anymore.

Where did you guys find the inspiration for the song and lyrics?

Recording itself was super quick. It was 4 separate days but total hours would probably be close to 13-14h.

We started writing “Still Alive” originally as a more stereotypical modern metal song, with only some elements of synths and ambience but after a competition for original songs in Cyberpunk 2077 was announced, we decided to rewrite the song a bit for it to fit with the theme of the game. Didn’t succeed in getting in the game’s soundtrack but we’re still happy about how the song turned out.

How was the recording and writing process?

“Still Alive” is about losing track of who you are as a person and the things you do in that kind of situation to stay afloat. Sacrificing your own self to keep up appearances.

What can you tell us about the title and meaning behind your most recent release?

Hi and thank you for your time!

Hi guys, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?