Steve Fullerton Shooster’s Night Watch Feb. 26, 1960
Shooster’s Night Watch Chester Times Dec, 30, 1960
him one of my best friends. He earned three battle stars in the war and a purple heart, his knee was shot badly. The wound healed, but he developed a rare form of cancer, so he lost the lower part of his leg anyway. Fortunate- ly, this didn’t stop his personality, because he became one of the originators of shock radio in the United States. His show may have been irreverent but highly entertaining. He got fired a few times but kept at it. Today, you would compare him to Howard Stern. When his show got popular, he left Shooster’s and began to broadcast from near- by Wilmington, Delaware. That show was called It’s Your Nickel, a play on words off the cost of a pay telephone. He made it a lightning rod for controversy by goading his guests and then calling them out on air if he didn’t like what they said. As the show caught on, his comments became more audacious, and the more audacious he got, the bigger his audience grew. I think he became famous for insulting people. It wasn’t unheard of to hear a chair being thrown at him during a show. Joe eventually, ended up in Los Angeles
where he switched from radio to the new medi- um of television. He died young at 44. I think Shooster’s Drive-in was so popu- lar that I became a local celebrity myself. For instance, one time Josh Logan visited us, and I sat with him. He was a famous movie star. He mentioned that he wanted to go to the inauguration of President Eisenhower (1953) but couldn’t get tickets. Shooster’s was a hub of activity, I knew a cross-section of almost everyone in the region. Can you believe, I got those tickets from a Democratic Party friend, who happened to be another patron of ours, and gave them to Josh. He came back and visited again after making the Broadway hit The Seven Year Itch (1955). That evening he had lost his watch. As a lark, I gave him mine without expecting anything in return. A few days later he sent me choice house seats for a performance. One thing that happened at Shooster’s was legendary. We hosted a dinner for a local orphanage and for entertainment we asked
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