Charles Longenecker, 93; TV Film Pioneer, Talent Agent and Radio Producer

In 1940, he went to see a movie, “Flight Command,” and decided he wanted to marry the leading lady. Two years later, he did.

Charles Robert “Bob” Longenecker, who forged a career as radio producer, talent agent and pioneer in moving television from live production to film while maintaining a 60-year marriage to actress Ruth Hussey, died of unspecified causes Dec. 10 in Thousand Oaks. He was 93.

At the time he picked his bride from the screen, Longenecker had already completed a couple of years in radio production at Los Angeles’ CBS radio affiliate KNX, and was working for the talent agency Myron Selznick & Co.

Named head of the Selznick radio department, Longenecker helped choose radio scripts for top actors, including Joan Bennett, Olivia de Havilland, Paulette Goddard, Myrna Loy, Loretta Young, Claire Trevor, William Powell, Norma Shearer, Pat O’Brien and Fredric March.

In that kind of company, he was able to meet Hussey. The couple meshed their careers successfully from Hollywood to Broadway and back for several decades.

Longenecker formed a company he called Telepak Inc. to package filmed shows for television beginning in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, when most programs were telecast live.

“I am trying to fight the battle for television films. I believe that economically they have a future,” he told The Times in 1949.

“The cost of live shows is constantly rising, whereas film costs may be maintained at a certain definite level, and furthermore video pictures have a wider distribution.”

One of his greatest successes was with the military. An Army lieutenant during World War II, Longenecker in 1950 began providing filmed recordings of top television shows by Milton Berle, Arthur Godfrey, Pinky Lee and others for use around the world from front lines to training camps, hospitals, ships and submarines.

He offered video programs on both 16-millimeter and 35-millimeter film for use “wherever there happens to be a film projector and a white bed sheet.”

Nevertheless, Longenecker’s film concept was ahead of its time for mainstream television stations. So he formed the Robert Longenecker Agency, and spent much of his remaining career as a talent agent, specializing in booking his 130 or so clients for television commercials.

For a couple of years in the early 1950s, Longenecker also stepped in front of the camera on late-night CBS affiliate KNXT to host a movie and celebrity interview show.

He established a theme remembered for years by opening and closing the program with a lighted candle and a recording of Perry Como’s “Light One Little Candle.”

Born in Lititz, Pa., Longenecker attended Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa., and graduated from Pennsylvania State University, playing basketball for both schools.

During the Depression years, he worked for his car dealer father, sold radios and refrigerators, played semipro baseball, waited tables and drove a bread delivery truck.

He began working in radio in New York, but moved to Los Angeles in 1937. In his early days at KNX, he worked with such radio luminaries as Lum and Amber, Edward Robinson and Kate Smith.

In addition to his wife, Longenecker is survived by a daughter, Mary Hendrix of Thousand Oaks; two sons, John of Beverly Hills and Rob of Houston; a sister, Sylvia Longenecker; and four grandchildren.