Charlie Andrews

"When 'The Today Show' began in 1952 we only had two sponsors. There was a dog food and a spaghetti company … We had a dog food commercial and what we used to do … was put a plate of the dog food there, and a box with a dog, so they could see the name of the food.  And then they’d have a puppy that hadn’t been fed for awhile …  I’m standing with Mort Warner, the producer of the show … The kid put the dog down next to the food, but the dog didn’t go for the food. The dog squatted and defecated the size of a big Cuban cigar, right next to the food. Well, the kid froze … Mort stepped up to the table and he just rolled it off on his hand, stepped out of the shot, they punched up the shot, the dog’s eating the food and everything’s fine. When it was over, Mort walked over to the kid and he said, 'Son, I just want to show you the difference between a producer and a floor director.' And many is the time, as the years goes on, I stood in a studio where it’s falling down on my ears and I’m thinking, 'Here I am again, with a handful of dog doo.' But that’s what a producer does. He does whatever has to be done, and there’s almost no other definition for it. When coffee gets spilled on the floor, producers wipe it up. When dogs do bad things in the shot, they pick it up. And then there’s other little things. You get to hire girls, too."