Morley and Mike, Move Over--Seniors Try a Local ’60 Minutes’

When Lillian Haggerty of Eagle Rock first saw television in 1944, she wasn’t impressed by the tiny images flickering across a small screen. Television, she announced to her husband, “won’t be around a long time.”

Almost 50 years later, at an age she discreetly describes as “over 70,” Haggerty is breaking into TV herself.

She’s one of about 20 elderly volunteers who are creating their own variation of “60 Minutes” in Pasadena.

At a recent taping, they were doing a kind of Andy Rooney shtick about the “horrors” of modern electronic communications. Richard Works played a man trying to get through by telephone to a beauty salon.

All he could get was a voice repeating: “If you are dialing from a touch-tone telephone, press 1 now; for men’s wear, press 2; for administration, press 3.”

The electronic-sounding voice had a human origin: Muriel Rozell, another senior citizen thespian. After repeating her lines, Rozell and her companion, Neatsa Foster, broke into laughter.

That was a little unusual for “Encore Cafe,” a magazine-format cable show produced by and for senior citizens.

More commonly its hosts, seated at a set designed to look like an outdoor cafe, interview prominent senior citizens and tackle issues such as health care and age bias in hiring.

The April episode features an interview with KTLA television pioneer John Polich, who directed the transmission of the first televised Tournament of Roses parade and game, as well as an atomic bomb test. It also includes a field interview with Joan Ott, senior services coordinator of Verdugo Hills Hospital.

The show, which airs on four cable systems in 10 San Gabriel Valley cities, is the brainchild of George Chapjian, Pasadena’s senior administrative analyst.

Chapjian, 33, said he was searching for a way to reach out to the city’s 35,000 senior citizens. He originally thought of starting a professionally produced television show for the elderly but later decided to let senior citizen volunteers produce their own show.

The show, which is produced at Pasadena’s television station KPAS/55, costs about $3,000 a year. Chapjian said grants are being sought to fund it after June.

Most of the 20 or so volunteers who work as camera operators, writers, audio technicians, floor managers and set designers have no background in television. They often rotate jobs, so everyone who wants to can get work on all aspects of the production. The crew attends weekly meetings to plan and develop programs and tapes once a month.

An exception is Bill Haupt, a producer, writer and announcer of roller derby shows for 22 years. Haupt, 74, is the only member of the crew with substantial television experience. He has taken the role of director, remaining in the control room for much of the time with a pair of headphones strapped over his hearing aid, and also writes most of the scripts.

“There’s no difference between this and professional TV,” insisted Haupt, who is known to all as “Hoppy.”

Nonetheless, the kind of theatrical experience that makes “Encore Cafe” click is more closely represented by Neatsa Foster, who presides over the makeup. It’s not an arbitrary assignment. “I used to make my kids into Dracula,” she said. Last Halloween, Foster disguised her grandchildren as Dalmatians.

At least five members of the crew are taking classes to learn how to use cameras at remote locations and how to edit, a task currently left to Richard Samuels, the show’s paid producer. Samuels previously produced a show for teen-agers on KPAS called “No Seriously!”

The name for “Encore Cafe” was inspired, indirectly, by the popular sitcom “Cheers,” which takes place in a Boston pub. As a location, a cafe was the next best thing to a bar, Haupt said. In the show, visiting guests chat with the host over a cup of coffee at a table decorated with a maroon tablecloth and a vase of flowers.

Crew members said there is an urgent need nationally for television shows such as “Encore Cafe” to address the concerns of older Americans, who they complained are neglected on commercial programming.

The goal of “Encore Cafe,” Samuels said, is to “shatter the myths about grandparents in the rocking chair spending their days twiddling their thumbs.” The show also tries to educate with segments on scams against the elderly and age bias in hiring.

The volunteers, who range in age from mid-50s to more than 80, say “Encore Cafe” has made them feel like part of a family.

Haupt, who regretted the loss of an active schedule after his retirement in the mid-1980s, said “Encore Cafe” rescued him. Before “Encore Cafe,” “I was on the verge of some type of a mental breakdown,” he said.

“Believe it or not, after one show, I felt like I was my old self again,” Haupt said.

Haupt is not the only one enjoying himself. Samuels, who at 30 is the show’s “honorary older adult,” said of his job: “It’s like having 20 parents. It will drive you crazy, but you wouldn’t trade them for anything.”

“Encore Cafe” can be seen on Channel 55 in Pasadena, 10:30 a.m. Monday, 3:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. Wednesday, 8:30 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. Sunday; on Channel 56 in Altadena and La Canada Flintridge, 3:30 p.m. Wednesday and 9 a.m. Sunday; on Channel 6 in South Pasadena and San Marino, 6 p.m. Tuesday, and on Channel 56 in Alhambra, San Gabriel, Rosemead, Temple City and Monterey Park, 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.