Seal Beach host of ‘Best of California’ gets local Emmy nod for WWII episode
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Ever since Pat Pattison decided to create for himself a “second-act career” as an actor and on-air personality at the tender age of 55, things have been taking off.
The Seal Beach resident, who spent three decades in merchandising and marketing for toy companies and as vice president of Creative Services at Disney, appeared in a handful of roles before putting on his producer’s hat in 2021.
That’s when he began filming segments for “Pat Pattison’s Best of California,” a series of adventures on a whirlwind road trip captured in 30-minute segments about the state’s hidden gems, historical spaces and their human caretakers.
Since the endeavor began, Pattison has filmed more than 30 episodes alongside daughter Liza, who works as a producer behind the scenes and occasionally appears on camera. The show airs locally on Sunday mornings at 7:30 a.m. on MeTV station KAZA-TV Los Angeles.
The pair have filmed Southern California’s haunted hotels, mansions and theme parks, taken viewers into the Petersen Museum’s automobile vault and tested the veracity of the claim that the state’s best steaks are served up in the city of Nipomo.
Oftentimes, the hosts take tips from viewers or announce their travel plans ahead of time and let people weigh in on obscure or must-see stops along the way.
But an episode that premiered last Veterans Day, on the region’s many ties and contributions to World War II, has been accepted as a nomination for special recognition — an Emmy Award.
Pattison nominated the episode for consideration by the Los Angeles chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, in the Culture/History category and got official word last month that he’d been picked as a contender.
“I was sitting in my car in Seal Beach when [“Best of California”] former Executive Producer Shirley Neal texted me, ‘Congrats on the Emmy nod,’” Pattison recalled Tuesday. “That was my first clue.”
One thing that sets “Our World War II: California, Part 1” apart from other installments of the show is that Pattison shares hosting duties with a special guest visitor. Chris Cangilla is a Chicago-area videographer/producer and co-host (with brother Ken Cangilla) of the podcast “Our WWII Dad,” which allows the children of veterans to share the histories and highlights of their father’s service.
The two men met through a mutual friend and instantly hit it off, Pattison being the son of a retired Army captain who fought in Okinawa and Cangill, whose father, despite being of Italian descent, was attached to the Army 99th Infantry Battalion (Separate), a unit composed of Norwegian-speaking Scandinavian Americans.
While recording a podcast on the topic, Pattison and Cangilla began discussing Southern California’s rich World War II history — from blimp hangars in Tustin that housed dirigibles for use by the Navy at the El Toro Marine Corps base to the Queen Mary’s transporting troops across seas to the little known fact that the only land attack on the continental U.S. by the Japanese happened in Goleta.
“Pat said, ‘You know what, Chris? You need to come out here to Southern California,” Cangilla recalled in a call Wednesday. “I didn’t know anything about these areas. Southern California has such an interesting World War II history that not many people know about.”
During a trip last August, Cangilla got an up-close look at the one remaining blimp hangar and filmed a segment with Pattison on Goleta’s former Ellwood Oil Field where, on the night of Feb. 23, 1942, a Japanese submarine shelled 25 5-inch rounds, destroying an oil derrick and pumphouse while President Franklin Roosevelt was delivering one of his famed fireside chats.
“This was just months after Pearl Harbor, so everyone was on high alert, and everyone assumed the Japanese were going to come,” Pattison said.
In the episode, the pair order a meal at the city’s Timbers Roadhouse, where scorched beams from the attack have been incorporated into the restaurant’s building, before moving on to the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing’s aviation museum in Camarillo.
Awaiting them there was uniform historian Jack Luder, who inspects the many insignias, patches and decorations on the uniforms worn by Cangilla and Pattison’s fathers to learn more details about their military service.
“He looked at my dad’s uniform and told me things I’d never heard about my father,” Pattison said, recalling how he learned his father had participated in an amphibious assault. “It was like discovering the Rosetta Stone.”
The co-hosts were so enthusiastic about their subject that they filmed enough for a second episode, which aired Feb. 23. It includes an interview with the daughter of Bob Clampett, a Warner Bros. animator who created Porky Pig and penned patriotic Bugs Bunny clips during World War II, and a trip to Lake Norconian, a former luxury resort once transformed into a Naval hospital after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Although a local Emmy Award would not be Cangilla’s first — he’s won two Chicago-area awards for previous production work — the podcaster acknowledged a win would be a fitting way to memorialize a rewarding collaboration and a personal learning experience.
“I can’t thank Pat enough for connecting me with California’s history. It just really worked out and was really cool that we were able to put that together,” he said. “Winning this Emmy would mean a great deal, because of the connection we share with our World War II dads and honoring them. I’m hopeful — we’ll see what happens.”
The Local Los Angeles Emmy Awards ceremony, presented by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, takes place July 26. For more on Pattison’s road trips, visit bestofcal.tv. To watch “Our WWII Dads,” visit youtube.com/@OurWWIIDad.
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