Buffalo’s Pop Culture Heritage - Buffalo Stories Archives & Blog

Remembering Mark Leitner

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

To the listener, Mark Leitner was the last of the great WBEN news men. Unerring. Rock solid. The most trustworthy voice Buffalo radio has known in decades.

Mark Leitner in the WBEN News Booth, early 80s

“Leitner provides the most effective and reassuring voice among WBEN anchors,” wrote The Buffalo News. Critics have used the words “solid presence,” “respected,” “crisp and calm.”

But the man with the most serious voice in Buffalo didn’t take himself too seriously. “I tell the jokes around here,” he’d often say with a scowl to unsuspecting newbies— before letting go with one of his always-contagious laughs.

I recorded Mark laughing when we were both at a press conference at some point in the early 2000s when Mark was working for WNED-AM and I was at WBEN. I would play his laugh in the WBEN newsroom when someone would say something silly– and we’d all laugh again thinking of Mark.

To all of us who worked with Leitner— that’s all anyone ever called him, Leitner— he was the ultimate newsman AND the funniest guy we’ve ever worked with. His decades-worth of fellow journalists and disc jockeys can’t help but feel a smile creep across our lips even at the thought of him. Even with the sad news of his passing.

This was a serious news story about “The Sniffer.” Mark treated it very seriously. He took any opportunity to add the absurdity of a news story– but never did it without clowning.

On 9/11, News Critic Anthony Violanti wrote Mark’s “professionalism and journalistic integrity provided a calming presence” on perhaps the worst day in our nation’s history.

But at the same time, the walls near Leitner’s work station in the newsroom were usually covered with “autographed” pictures from Bishop Head and Carol Jasen among others— photos which he’d inscribed himself just to be silly.

Mark talking with newsmakers with a Carol Jasen photo over his shoulder

His over-the-top acting was the source of light hazing for interns and new part-timers for decades— and the source of deep unbridled laughter for those who loved him.

Leitner’s performative conversations with himself were legendary. “I know, just shut up Leitner. No kidding, really? That’s how you’re going to treat me after all these years?”

For me personally, Mark’s mentorship and eventual friendship is something I will always treasure. He was among the many who looked out for me and helped guide me through my earliest years of radio and adulthood.

WNED Reporter Mark Leitner, Channel 4’s George Richert, and Channel 2’s Claudine Ewing. They all worked together at WBEN in the 1990s.

My students, I think, would have gotten a kick out of seeing Leitner talk to himself in a stage whisper, realizing that’s where I ripped that routine off from.

When it was time to go, Mark wouldn’t say good bye, but it was always, “I’ll bore you later, my friend.”

Never a bore. Always a friend.

Listen to Mark Leitner:

Mark Leitner says goodbye to WBEN audience after nearly 25 years, 2002.

Newsday at Noon, 1987. Tim Wenger, Mark Leitner, Kelly Day

Jeff Kaye introduces Mark Leitner and Ed Little, 1983

Mark Leitner, WBEN newscast, 2001

Bill Lacy introduces Mark Leitner, 1993

Mark Leitner & Craig Nigrelli news, 1991

One of Mark’s famous “cold intro” news wraps. “This is Mark Leitner.”

Kevin Gordon, Bernadette Peters, Mark Leitner, Stan Barron, and Rick Pfeiffer in the WBEN Newsroom, early 80s.

Milk Bottle Caps of 1940s Buffalo

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Over the last few weeks, eBay seller wmlengadairy has been selling a huge collection of Buffalo area and Western New York milk bottle caps from the late 30s, 40s, and early 50s.

These are the paper lids which came on top of glass milk bottles, which were most often delivered daily to homes nearby the particular dairy by a milkman.

Many of these are extremely rare, and together show how the neighborhood dairy was an entrenched part of life not too long ago.

Same as it ever was: Jerry Sullivan vs Bruce Smith, 1997

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Bills Safety Jordan Poyer and sportswriter Jerry Sullivan have been going back and forth for a couple of weeks now… But there’s nothing new under the sun.

I recorded this 1997 postgame exchange between Jerry and Bruce Smith at the WBEN studios on Elmwood Avenue from a live feed coming from Rich Stadium.

With the static from our wireless microphones, it’s hard to hear exactly what Jerry is asking Bruce, but most of Bruce’s response is pretty clear.
“You a punk ass motherfucker once you get (interference),” said Bruce, to the laughter of the assembled reporters, photographers and players.

“I know you’re going to say it,” said Bruce. “I know you ain’t gonna stop.”
The first clear words we hear from Sullivan on the tape are, “(something) stop being an asshole…”

To which Smith replied, “Oh, I’m the asshole! I’m the asshole! Oh yeah,” before turning to another reporter and calmly telling him, “Go ahead, man.”

That year, I produced Bills games on the radio. For years, we’d run the postgame show without a delay. My timing or the exact order of events might be off, but I think we started running a delay on the player press conferences after Thurman Thomas stormed away from the podium microphone one time yelling something close to, “half of you ain’t ever put on a jockstrap,” but with the word “fuck” worked in there somehow.

I think I have that audio somewhere, but I couldn’t find it today.

Anyway, that running live on the radio earned me a strongly-worded note from my boss about trying to make sure to avoid those sorts of words going out on the air if possible.

When this Bruce Smith interview aired live, I was able to “dump” out of delay—so the WBEN audience never heard Bruce Smith call Jerry Sullivan a “punk-ass motherfucker” on the radio. The problem was, with the 1970s technology we were using at the time, there was no way for me to hit dump a second time so quickly and avoid allowing Jerry and Bruce calling each other assholes on the radio.

Back in those days, while there were relatively few ways to hear or see full press conferences, it just so happened one of the local tv stations—I don’t remember whether it was 2, 4, or 7—aired this press conference live on its post-game show.

The complete exchange between Bruce and Jerry was aired live on TV and talked about for weeks on sports radio talk shows on WBEN and WGR—as well as in letters to the sports editor as published every week in the Sunday News.

From 1880 to Today: The Erie County Jail

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

For more than 140 years, Erie County has held prisoners on Delaware Avenue between Eagle and Church streets.

The Erie County Jail was built in 1877 with room for 200 prisoners. It was connected by an underground passage with what was then Buffalo City Hall (and is now old County Hall and the County courthouse).

The current holding center building was built on the spot in 1938.

The Friday Night Polka—One-On-One Sports with the Bulldog, WBEN

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

I don’t remember exactly how it started on the air, but I know that back in the early/mid-90s, when I was the producer of One-On-One Sports with Chris “The Bulldog” Parker on WBEN, I was buying up as many obscure albums as I could from Salvation Army and AMVETS thrift shops—including polka albums with interesting cover art of great song titles.

*Chris “The Bulldog” Parker, mid 90s at WBEN.*

At some point, with me going through these albums, Chris must have said—we should have a Friday Night Polka—so we did.

The show closed with a polka every Friday night, and we eventually had a good rotation of songs about drinking and about Buffalo.

Heard here for the first time in more than 20 years—a medley of the Friday Night Polkas from WBEN’s One-On-One Sports with the Bulldog.

We’d only play a minute or so from each selection at 10:59pm to close out the show—these are the minute long clips we’d play.

Chris and I really enjoyed the music– but we’d get side eye from the lovely call screeners Monica and Rose (which is really how most of the show went most nights anyway.)

One-on-One Sports with the Bulldog Friday Night Polka Medley

On this track:

“Bulldog Talking Sports” theme
Bulldog welcomes you to a Friday night, 1996
Ice Cubes & Beer, Ray Budzilek & The Boys
Buffalo Polka, Krew Brothers Orchestra
No Beer in Heaven, Li’l Wally
Bartender Polka, Walter Solek
Meister Brau Polka, Li’l Wally
Why don’t you people give the ball scores?— from a complaining voicemail

*ME! Steve Cichon, producing One-On-One Sports in the WBEN control room, 1995*

The Bulldog theme is taken from an aircheck… and you can hear the ancient WBEN delay system folding back on itself as the theme music plays.

One of my personal all-time favorite moments in music came when the late, great Tony Krupski of the Krew Brothers played the Buffalo Polka on demand– and grinned from ear-to-ear when I sang along with him, knowing all the words because of this great Friday night tradition in Buffalo radio.

Na zdrowie and sto lat!

Remembering Seneca Street’s Mr. Manny

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

I saw news on Facebook today that Manny Ciulla has died.

Manny’s on Seneca Street was the kind of institution we need more of… run by the kind of man we need more of.

After my ol’man’s bar closed, Manny’s was the only ginmill where dad’d feel comfortable, because Mr. Manny was more than just a guy who pushed drinks over the bar– he cared about his customers and the people of the Seneca Street community like family.

“Mrs. Manny” made great pizzas and burgers, but Manny’s was a clearly a tavern. Still, when I’d stop in as a 12 or 13 year old and ordered a Birch Beer at the bar, there was nothing untoward about it– and I know Mr. Manny loved it, and he’d talk to me like he talked to my dad or my uncles.

I can’t imagine there’s anyone who knew Mr. Manny who didn’t love him. Just like Tony Scaccia at Tony the Barber and Gerry Maciuba at The Paperback Trading Post, Manny was one of those Seneca Street shopkeepers who made Seneca Street– where both grandmas lived– feel like home to a kid who moved seven times before sixth grade.

Buffalo’s forgotten role in the birth of modern mass media 100 years ago

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Buffalo radio pioneer Charles Klinck at his radio transmitter on West Parade Avenue, weeks before “the birth of modern radio” in 1920.

One hundred years ago this week, Buffalonians were reading about the latest innovation in election returns — the wireless receiver, better known these days as radio.

Most historians agree that the broadcast of election results on the night of Nov. 2, 1920, was the birth of modern radio.

History books point to the broadcasts of experimental station 8XK in Pittsburgh — which would eventually become KDKA, but Pittsburgh was not alone on the radio dial a century ago. That same historic night, at the same exact time, election results broadcast by The Buffalo Evening News also came in loud and clear on wireless sets across Western New York.

Radio listeners in Buffalo and Pittsburgh had the same mind-blowing, history-making experience on what was a rainy evening in Western New York. People sat around their wireless sets in their living rooms, finding out in real time that Warren G. Harding had been elected president.

The newly born power of radio was equally evident in both cities, and the marvel and wonder surrounding this growing technology was exactly the same. In fact, it was all part of the same plan.

The American Radio Relay League, an amateur radio operator group still in business to this day, created a plan to “beat the regular wire service in getting the election returns to the public.”

“The plan is to have a good amateur transmitting station in each important city throughout the country send broadcast via radio the available data in his territory once every hour. This information will be picked up by thousands of radio amateurs who will arrange, through the local newspapers or in some other manner, to bulletin the returns for the general public in their respective territories.”

All this is described in a Pittsburgh Daily Post article, which goes on to say that Frank Conrad’s 8XK will take part in the effort for Pittsburgh area listeners.

Pittsburgh Daily Post, Oct. 21, 1920.

A Buffalo Evening News article announcing the broadcast of election returns for Western New York doesn’t mention the larger plan, but does offer more detail about the Buffalo plan.

Buffalo Evening News, Oct. 28, 1920.

The Buffalo Evening News had set up a special direct telephone line to the home of amateur radio operator Klinck, who was teacher of electrical science at Technical High School and was able to fund his expensive radio hobby as a member of one of Buffalo’s top meatpacking families.

After months of experimentation, he invented and pioneered the use of equipment that would allow for the clear transmission of phonograph records over his wireless transmitter.

“Well boys, how did you like that?” said Klinck, quoted in the Buffalo Courier after playing Strauss’ “The Blue Danube.” “Now listen, and I’ll give you a little jazz.”

That was the sound, on a March night in 1920, in the attic at 38 West Parade Ave., as America’s first disc jockey took to the airwaves. You pass over the historic spot where it happened when you drive the outbound Kensington as you pass the Buffalo Science Museum.

Klinck received word from as far away as Long Island that people were listening to his broadcasts. By mid-September, he reported that he was getting music requests from folks all over the northeast.

He also reported that from the beginning, the folks at the big wireless station in Pittsburgh were among his “most interested listeners.” Months before that “first broadcast,” the Westinghouse engineers at KDKA were tuned into Buffalo. On that election night 1920, Klinck was on the air from 6 p.m. to midnight, offering election results interspersed with recorded music. Not only was he Buffalo’s deejay, but also Buffalo’s first radio newsman.

That first commercially sponsored broadcast in Buffalo was described the next day in The News:

“As soon as the returns came into the Evening News office, they were telephoned over a special wire to Mr. Klinck’s residence, where they were received by a member of the Evening News staff. From 6 o’clock until midnight, Mr. Klinck sat at his wireless telephone apparatus and sent out the encouraging Republican news. Not only were city and county returns flashed out over the wireless outfit, but also state and national figures.

“During the evening, Mr. Klinck … received word from several wireless operators in the city, in Lancaster and surrounding towns that they were getting the returns by wireless with perfect satisfaction. … During lulls between dispatches, the operators who were listening for the returns were entertained by musical selections from a Victrola in the Klinck home.”

Listeners in Lancaster were amazed as the radio returns beat out the Western Union telegraph service by minutes. Pine Street druggist Harry Frost told The News that he enjoyed the “returns by wireless telephone” immensely. “We sat around very comfortably smoking cigars and commenting on the election, while every few minutes, Mr. Klinck’s voice would roar out the results as he received them.”

Both the technical aspects and the reaction to Buffalo’s election night 1920 broadcast have been better chronicled than the “more historic” program the same night from Pittsburgh. The main difference remains that the KDKA broadcast was made by the Westinghouse Corporation in an effort to promote and sell the radio tubes they were manufacturing, while Klinck was an amateur operator without much interest in self-promotion.

As the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of radio on Monday with plenty of mentions of Pittsburgh and KDKA, Buffalonians should also celebrate, understanding our city’s exact same role in the birth of modern mass media a century ago.

Streetcar turnaround sold to become University Plaza, 1941

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The Main/Kenmore streetcar turnaround, future site of the University Plaza.

Main Street at Kenmore Avenue was the end of the line for Buffalo’s Main Street streetcars until 1941, when the land was sold to the developers of University Plaza. The streetcar era ended in Buffalo in 1950 when the last streetcar lines were converted to bus routes.

Buffalo’s International Railway Corporation streetcars rode every inch of Main Street in the city, from where Main Street began at the DL&W Terminal along at the Buffalo Harbor out to the Amherst town line.

The Main Street trolleys would turn around in a loop on the north side of Main just before Bailey. Passengers could also catch streetcars bound for Williamsville at the loop as well as downtown bound cars, until the Buffalo-Williamsville line stopped operating in 1930.

In 1941, the IRC sold the property where the loop was located, and Buffalo’s first shopping plaza – University Plaza – was built and opened on the spot, featuring an A&P grocery store, Endicott Johnson shoes, W.T. Grant’s and Federal Meats.

Adam, Meldrum & Anderson opened the store’s first branch location in University Plaza in 1947. This photo shows the store shortly before it closed in 1985.

The Sample – the store that defined Hertel for generations

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The Sample Shop in 1939.

Over the last handful of years, Hertel Avenue might have finally been redefined as the home of cosmopolitan and trendy boutiques, food and drink.

But from the time the neighborhoods surrounding Hertel were being built and the 60 years that followed, North Buffalo’s main drag was dominated and defined by The Sample Shop.

The Sample on Hertel in 1990.

Anne Bunis started The Sample Shop in the front parlor of her Hertel Avenue ground floor flat in 1929, selling sample dresses from large New York City designers. Soon after, her husband, Louis, had the idea to have “living mannequins” in the front window. What had been static displays had become fashion shows for passersby on Hertel.

That one house grew into a string of five houses within a decade, all combined into a single 61-foot block tile frontage along Hertel Avenue. What started as a business with just Anne Bunis as buyer, shopkeeper and seamstress, had grown to 61 employees.

Louis and Anne Bunis inside The Sample in the 1980s.

In 1947, most of the houses were torn down and the larger, long familiar Sample store was built – although pieces of the old homes remained a familiar sight deep in the bowels of the store.

As The Sample celebrated 60 years in 1989, 88-year-old Anne Bunis watched her company open a store in the Walden Galleria – although the end of The Sample (and local retailing in general) was clearly in sight.

The 11-store chain dwindled to three, and those remaining Sample stores were ordered closed by a bankruptcy judge in 1990.

In 1993, the flagship store on Hertel Avenue was razed to make room for a senior apartment complex.

As noted in a 1990 editorial, the loss of the Sample on Hertel was as big a blow to the neighborhood as the loss of Sattler’s was to Broadway-Fillmore. News Columnist Donn Esmonde wrote about The Sample in the store’s final days, when it had “70% off” signs plastered in all the windows in 1991.

“What happened? Tastes diversified. The Sample wasn’t big enough to offer something for everyone. Specialization meant the Sample was no longer a one-stop destination. Branches opened in the malls, but rent was high and the stores were small,” wrote Esmonde.

“The big place on Hertel sat in the middle of a residential neighborhood, both serving it and defining it. The clothes were unpretentious yet refined. For a long time, it worked.

“In the end, it was another victim of the ’80s illusion of never-ending prosperity. Maybe, as time went on, it didn’t do enough things for enough people. Which doesn’t mean that it didn’t use to, or that it stopped trying.

“The world changed and, like so many other local retail outlets, the Sample lost its way. And this week, the people to whom it meant the most will leave it for the last time.”

A Buffalo ‘skins-titution’: The Palace Burlesk, 1925-1967

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

“Clever comics and pretty girls at the Moulin Rouge of Buffalo,” read a 1940s matchbook for “The Home of Burlesk as you like it,” the Palace Burlesk. This photo was taken during the final show at the original Palace on Shelton Square in 1967.

Dewey Michaels opened the Palace Burlesk on Buffalo’s Main Street Shelton Square in 1925.

His Courier-Express obituary called Michaels “an irrepressible showman” who operated the original Palace for 45 years. He was 12 years old – not even to Lafayette High School, yet – when his career in showbiz began running the hand-cranked projector at his father’s Allendale Theater. He graduated to ad writer and usher, and was soon managing his own movie parlor.

The Palace Burlesk in Shelton Square, circa 1949. The Ellicott Square Building, to the right, is the only structure in this photo still standing today.

Buffalo didn’t have a vaudeville burlesque theater when he opened the Palace, but it filled a niche that’s foreign to modern audiences. There was more titillation than there was skin, in the brief parts of the show where there was any at all.

“Basically, I’m a prude,” owner Michaels said. “The kids at the downtown Palace saw more in their minds than they did on the stage,” wrote Doug Smith in a Courier-Express remembrance of Michaels.

“Compared with modern television, (the shows) were touchingly innocent,” wrote George Kunz in The News in 1993.

“Although the Palace had been known as a burlesque house, its programs were largely vaudeville … The Palace held a unique place in the heart of downtown Buffalo. Audiences were large and spirited … (and) exuded life. Pedestrians passing during showtime heard raucous, robust sounds of extravagant fun. The orchestra blared, drums rumbled and laughter, a rollicking outrageous laughter, tumbled out the doors onto Main Street.”

Digital Newspaper Archives of US & Canada

Newspaper ads for the Palace, 1948, 1956 and 1942. Rose La Rose was one of the queens of the burlesque circuit, and well-remembered by fans in Buffalo. Appearing as a part of her act in 1948 at the Palace was Joe DeRita, who later gained fame as replacement-stooge “Curly Joe” as a member of the Three Stooges through the 1960s.

Kunz continued: “To describe a Palace midnight show is to resurrect a bygone era. Waiting for a performance, hucksters circulated among the audience, peddling popcorn, ice cream suckers, candy, programs. The atmosphere resembled that surrounding a hockey game.”

In 1967, the original Palace Burlesk closed and was torn down in the name of progress and urban renewal. The spot where it once stood is now part of the open space between the M&T Tower and the Ellicott Square Building on Main Street.

A new Palace Theater was built at Main and Tupper. Courier-Express columnist Anne McIlhenney Matthews wrote with glee about new life for old burlesque only months after the original spot closed.

“With the calendar circled and the deadline established, Michaels is now on the telephone daily contacting booking agents and tracking down stars for the rebirth of burlesque in Buffalo’s downtown.”

While Michaels built one of the theaters that would be an anchor of Buffalo’s Theatre District, it wouldn’t be as the Palace. In 1978, the renovated building opened as Studio Arena Theatre and played a monumental role in keeping Buffalo’s cultural head above water during the darkest days of the region’s history.

The contribution to “what it meant to be a Buffalonian” was celebrated as Studio Arena opened with a tribute to Dewey Michaels and the Palace.

The Palace Burlesque becomes the Studio Arena, 1978.

“An old Buffalo joke had it that to receive a high school diploma, young men, at least once, had to skip the day’s classes and attend the Palace Burlesque. Only then could an education be considered complete,” wrote George Kunz.

At the opening of Studio Arena, Buffalo bon vivant and Courier-Express critic Doug Smith wrote of the relative innocence of the Palace.

“In the world of strip and tease, Dewey always fancied himself as something of a prude. That’s one reason his new Palace at 710 Main never was a financial success.”

Michaels himself directly blamed the proliferation of X-rated movie houses across the city.

The second Palace building continues to host live theater today as Shea’s 710 Theatre, but that’s not the only piece of the Palace that lives on.

In 1980, 83-year-old Michaels donated about 60 antique painted canvas backdrops to local schools and theaters – and one beautiful art nouveau piece to the Smithsonian.

Looking at the art that set the scene for comedians and performers like Phil Silvers, Abbott & Costello, W.C. Fields, Jerry Lewis and Sammy Davis Jr., among scores of others, Michaels thought of all the great comedians who “worked scenes,” unlike the “strictly loser” modern crop of funnymen.

“Stand- up comedians are a bunch of kids who need microphones and tell jokes about their mothers. In my day, the stage wasn’t equipped with a microphone. You had to speak up,” said the octogenarian showman in a Courier-Express interview in 1980.

Outside of the Palace, Michaels brought boxing title fights to Buffalo and auto racing to the Rockpile. He also was active in raising money for the Variety Club.

Dewey Michaels died in 1982 at the age of 85, but memories linger in the minds of those boys who ditched school, tried hard to make sure their voices didn’t crack when telling the man in the ticket booth they were 18, and got equal amounts of eyes-full and imaginations-full in a bygone era.