http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=bios&id=3251561

Well, it's been a while, but "these things" really happened in three over the weekend. First, Ingmar Bergman, then Tom Snyder, and finally local legend Marvin Zindler. I lived with all of these gentlemen and their work, off and on, for over thirty years. Bergman, for the longest, but I've probably clocked more time with Marvin Zindler of the three.

Zindler was a local phenomenon. I remember, as a kid, hearing about his attempts to close down the chicken ranch in LaGrange, Texas, a small town where I used to go to summer camp. I then avidly watched his progress in the case on the daily news, and there were one or two half hour specials. Zindler's nemesis was the ancient sheriff, who looked like the typical seedy, corrupt lawmen in contemporary films such as BILLY JACK and WALKING TALL. Zindler wasn't indignant about the brothel ("There were plenty of whorehouses in Houston."), but the widespread corruption. Zindler was physically attacked by the sheriff on camera. Zindler parlayed his fame from the incident into being the consumer advocate for ABC affiliate KTRK-TV, Channel 13 for over 30 years.

Larry L. King wrote about Zindler's clash with the sheriff and madame in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" article for Playboy. This was adapted to a theatrical musical and to an (inferior) movie starring Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton. Zindler appeared on David Letterman at the time the movie came out and showed the original news footage. Letterman got a big laugh when he quipped that the sheriff and madame looked just like Reynolds and Parton. He asked Zindler who was playing him in the movie. Zindler had one of the most sour expressions I've ever seen on an adult and spat "Dom DeLuise". Zindler opined that Ted Knight would have been his choice. (Agreed!)

Zindler would have some of the most heart wrenching stories on his consumer advocate segment of the news, fired out with a Walter Winchell / UNTOUCHABLES delivery. He also had a famous restaurant report, where he would go back in the kitchens of most famous and little known restaurants around Houston. (Later called "the rat and roach report".) Favorite segment was when he went into a Chinese restaurant and found that they were mixing up the egg roll ingredients in a chid's wading pool. "How do you sterilize this?" "Oh, spray it down with water hose!" He then sees a pile of food on the floor, points it out to the cameraman, who zooms in for a close up, and manages to capture a couple of flies on film. "What is this garbage doing on the middle of the floor?" "Oh that not garbage, that for soup." Cut to an exasperated Zindler who had a look of disgust that rivalled Jack Lord's in the "Skinhead" episode. I had gone for a while without watching that segment, and was amused to see a newer version had a "slime in the ice machine" graphic and sound effect.

Zindler was in his mid-80's when he died, and he worked almost right up to the end. He wore hairpieces that make William Shatner's look conservative, and had so many facelifts over the years that he has looked like a mummified Roy Orbison. (One of Zindler's favorite charities was arranging for facial surgeries for the poor! His plastic surgeon (or one of them) wrote Zindler's biography.) Zindler was a larger than life personality, whose heart was in the right place, and a vanishing breed in these days of cable news.

"Marrrrrvin Zindler, Eyewitness News!"

((Channel 13, referenced above, has several evocative photos of Marvin Zindler over the years, including his first interview (with Humphrey Bogart!), several black and whites of his days in the sheriff's department, Zindler interviewing a woman with a white mask (which I vaguely remember seeing like a half forgotten dream), and kissing a chimp wearing a Zindler hairpiece. One of the more remarkable images is the large plastic roach sticking out of the flowers in the Zindler makeshift memorial.))

"Slime in the ice machine!"

Anyone who did any time in Houston during Marvin's on-air reign couldn't help but hear that phrase. In an increasingly homogenized world, he was indubitably idiosyncratic, and I'm sorry he's left us. Thanks for your tribute, Erik - lots there I didn't know.

Sounds like the world--and certainly broadcast journalism--are much less colorful today.

A little taste of Marvin can be found at YouTube - the offending restaurants and their list of sins (including, undoubtedly, "slime in the ice machine") have been edited out of the broadcast so it's a bit jumpy but you get the idea.

Yet another of the continually-disappearing links to a far different Houston of the past gone. My sole encounter with Marvin was around ten years ago, when he purposefully strode into the lobby of the post office I was waiting in line in, producer in tow, wanting to speak to the person in charge. I remember thinking that he appeared more susceptible to the infirmities of age in person than he did on TV, but even after he was well into his eighties I still half-expected him to be around forever. I haven't quite accepted the fact that he's not going to be doing his usual segments on the news any more - KTRK had to have been well aware that he was a huge part of the reason they were regularly the top-rated newscast.

Something I wasn't aware of was mentioned in the Houston Chronicle's obit. Marvin didn't really discover his true calling as an advocate for consumers, the poor, and the powerless until relatively late in life; his father, a successful clothing retailer, died in 1963 and, instead of leaving him an inheritance, left him a letter excoriating his aimless behavior and exhorting him to make something of himself. I find it quite poignant that his father didn't live to see Marvin become more successful by any standard than he could probably ever have imagined.

RIP, Marvin. TV will be ever poorer in your absence.

Marvin's last report is online now, filed 9 days before his death from his hospital bed.