I’m big, overpowering, flamboyant and loud … I might put my foot in my mouth five times out of six but the sixth time, I strike a chord and people respond.” “I also know that just the fact that I’m alive offends some people. “I work because people know I love them,” Scott once told People magazine. More than 27,000 respondents to a USA Today phone-in poll said Scott was an asset to the show, with 854 saying he hurt it. Scott was miffed but popular sentiment was on his side. “This guy’s killing us and no one’s even trying to rein him in,” Gumbel wrote. In a 1989 internal memo that was leaked to the media, “Today” co-anchor Bryant Gumbel said Scott was holding the show “hostage to his assortment of whims, wishes, birthdays and bad taste.” ![]() Not everyone appreciated Scott’s on-air antics. ![]() In all, he announced some 40,000 100th birthdays, NBC said. The show received hundreds of requests for 100th birthday shout-outs and Scott did them once a week on the show into 2015, long after he had turned over the full-time weather job. In 1983 Scott wished a happy 100th birthday to a woman on the air, starting a tradition that became one of the “Today” show’s most popular features. Viewers sent him gifts and flocked to see him when he did the weather live from county fairs, parades and civic events around the country. Scott’s success in Washington led to the weather job at “Today” in 1980 and his outsized personality, good ole boy demeanor and small-town values made him a fan favorite. It was a crude costume – Scott wore a food box on his head and had a paper cup for a nose – but the people at McDonald’s headquarters liked it enough to take the character nationwide.įor the national ad campaign McDonald’s hired someone else to play Ronald, leaving Scott to think it was his size – he was 6-foot-3 (1.9 meters) and weighed close to 300 pounds (136 kg) at times – that cost him the job. While working in Washington TV and radio, Scott took a side job portraying Bozo the Clown on a children’s show, which led to another clown role that became one of the world’s best-known marketing characters.Ī Washington-area McDonald’s franchise owner hired Scott in the early 1960s for ads for his restaurants as the first Ronald McDonald, the hamburger-loving clown. Scott was born and grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, a Washington suburb, and was a teenager when he took his first broadcast job as a page for an NBC station in Washington in 1950. That’s my act.”Īt his peak popularity, Scott also was a well-paid, in-demand convention speaker and ubiquitous pitchman, promoting sodas and tea, oranges, cars, hotels, jelly, hardware and other products. “People said I was a buffoon to do it,” Scott told the New York Times. Most famously, he went on the air dressed as 1940s dancer Carmen Miranda – including dress, earrings, high heels and fruit-laden hat – to benefit a charity. He dressed as Cupid for one Valentine’s Day, came out of a manhole in a groundhog costume on Groundhog Day, had an on-the-air bar mitzvah (he was a Southern Baptist) and kissed a pig. His act was aided by a high threshold for embarrassment. ![]() He described Scott as a broadcast icon.īelieving television weather forecasters needed to have some sort of shtick, Scott gave viewers a madcap, eager-to-please persona during a 35-year run on NBC’s “Today” that ended with his retirement on Dec. ![]() Roker tweeted that Scott died peacefully surrounded by family but released no further details.
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