Santa Claus and the Philadelphia Eagles

One of the legends of the Philadelphia Eagles football team was the day fans threw snowballs at Santa Claus. Its origin, however, has been roundly misreported. I have thought about this frequently, as the story recurs every year. At age 73, I think it is past time for me to clarify the errors attached to the legend. I had an accidental but not insignifant part in the origin.

So here goes.

It was Sunday, December 15, 1968. It was the last Eagles home game of a (for them) dismal season. I was working as substitute Sunday night newscaster for KYW-TV, Channel 3, Philadelphia. The well-known and highly popular weekend newscaster until that summer, Harry K. Smith, had retired and given me as his legacy a very high Sunday night audience. It was my job to handle the last four months or so of the year and not mess things up until a replacement for Harry was free of his contract in Atlanta.

The Eagles were not popular in our newsroom that year. The assignment editor, Bill Dean, would give me a 100-foot film can each Friday when the Eagles had a home game. Bill would instruct me: “Give this to (the film cameraman of the weekend) and tell him to just shoot the touchdowns.” Everybody would laugh. But the mission statement was clear: don’t waste film on the Eagles.

One can of film, 100 feet, was fewer than three minutes worth of run time. But we just needed a good 20 seconds for the 11 p.m. newscast. And not very much was expected of the Eagles that year. That was the final year of Joe Kuharich as coach. That summer, on the shore beaches, the small plane streamers had proclaimed “Joe Must Go.”

I do not remember the name of the cameraman. In those days, it was normal to hire a free-lancer for the weekends, which served low budget newscasts. The cameraman would work eight hours Saturday and eight hours Sunday, and you would hope there would be some news worth airing. It was silent film only; no sound. The cameraman probably was NOT Denny Bossone but I do not remember. I asked his son, Larry, another Channel 3 news cameraman, if his Dad ever had mentioned taking pictures of Santa Claus at an Eagles game. Larry said he could not recall, but that his Dad kept a library in his garage of discarded film, and the Santa Claus clips could have been there. However, he said the whole garage load of Denny Bossone film work subsequently was sold to a New York film company. And Larry added that he thought his Dad was full-time in 1968.

Some years later, I read a newspaper story that said thousands of feet of KYW-TV newsfilm had been given to Temple University. So is it there??

Anyhow, in the late afternoon that Sunday, I went to the editing room with the film editor to review the film shot that day. When it came to the Eagles 100 feet of film, we did a double-take. We saw Santa Claus walking down the track at Franklin Field waving energetically to the fans in the stands. He was a jolly old soul but could not have expected what he suddenly was confronting, made possible by the snowstorm the day before.

In those days, the film came in “negative” form; the reverse polarity occurred when the film was projected for the TV screen. This was film of yesteryear: black and white, not color. But the scene was unmistakable. Those were snowballs flying past Santa Claus.

There weren’t that many but Santa went into double trot and quickly finished his on-field season’s greetings. So much for the cheerful half-time show. By checking the rest of the film with the brief play action we had, we could tell this occurred at half-time. I don’t recall if the cameraman captured any touchdowns, but the Eagles lost.

In those days, the newscast at 11 p.m. ran a half-hour. I was alone in the newsroom all evening except for the copy boy, who would continually check the news wires. Sundays are slow news days generally; we relied on national and international news and the newsmaker from “Meet The Press”. We covered the complete weather in not more than two minutes on Sundays, unlike the obsesssion with the subject the rest of the week, continuing even to today.

When the NBC-TV show ended at 10:59 p.m., I came on and gave a few headlines as was routine, and ended with: “AND TODAY SOME EAGLES FANS THREW SNOWBALLS AT SANTA CLAUS. Details with film coming up next.”

When it came time for the sports news, I gave the Eagles story straight but then went to the snowballs film. I could tell from the reaction of the studio crew that this was a grabber. It was a rather bizarre incident, and when you saw Santa Claus vigorously waving and then being forced to duck, you had immediately sympathy for Old St. Nick.

The next day, at the station, especially in the newsroom, snowballs and Santa Claus were about the only discussion. Vince Leonard, the regular Number One newscaster, made sure the Santa film was re-run during the Monday evening casts. And later in the week, Jim Leaming, sportscaster, ran it twice as a rueful analysis of the Eagles sorry season.

I know it ran at least four times that week (after Sunday night). It was only maybe 20 seconds long so it was easy to repeat.

When you do an unusual news story, it is common to check other media to see how they handled it (if they did). We knew Monday that nobody but KYW-TV had film of the snowballs and Santa Claus. I was a bit puzzled to read only one mention of the incident in the Monday newspapers. Frank Dolson, Inquirer columnist, made reference to it in about the seventh paragraph of his sad treatise on the windup home game.

I really thought we had a bit of an odd scoop, especially with the film. I believe my fellow news people in the Channel 3 newsroom agreed, based on their replays of the yarn during the week. For the most part, the incident otherwise was viewed as a non-story.

I should point out that Harry K. Smith had a huge ratings advantage on his weekend newscasts, and for as much as we could compare, the ratings for the four months I did the newscast sustained their weekly lead. During the week, Channel 3 had a decided ratings lead in news. In the late 1960′s, before “Action News” at Channel 6 surpassed us in the early 1970′s, the City Hall reporter from Channel 6 would say: “We (Channel 6) clean the transmitter when you come on at six o’clock.” Regretfully, it did not continue that way for a period of years in the 1970′s. Action News became Number One in the ratings.

But this was long after a few Eagles fans threw snowballs at Santa Claus and thousands saw the whole “legacy” that night.