A CONVERSATION WITH GEORGIA MCCARTNEY

When I first found this website we were so excited because I found the page about George Sontag. George played the piano for me when I was on Especially For You which was Pat Sundine's show on WOC TV 6. I also knew Marge Meinert.

My time on television originated when I was doing exercise classes at different places during the week. I taught them at a couple of bowling alleys, the YWCA, Friendly House in Davenport and at the Moline YMCA. Before I took the class over, the manager of the YMCA was teaching a class and he called me and asked me if I could pinch hit for him. He was going out of town and I said certainly. So I went over and Pat Sundine was in the class. That is how we met and then she talked to me and asked me to come on the show. I started out doing it once a week. We received so much mail from my appearances that pretty soon I was on two days then three days, four days, five days and the next thing you know I was on every show. At that time my ex-husband was the swimming coach out at West High in Davenport. He went back to Iowa to work on his doctorate. As a result I went to WMT TV 2 in Cedar Rapids to see if I could do something and I ended up doing the Home Fair show there. That was for two years, during the time he was in grad school. We next moved to Missouri where he was coaching at Southeast Missouri State. As a result, instead of being on TV I was playing golf every day. I did not care for that.

Then we ended up moving back to the Quad Cities. That is when I went on the air on WQAD in the early 1970's. Jean Engman was the Romper Room teacher at the time on WQAD. She also had a talk show that was not doing very well rating wise. It was at that point I came into the picture and they explained that they would like for me to replace her show. I was on Channel 8 for about four or five years. When my show first started on WQAD it was on from 3pm to 4pm. After that they changed it from 11am to 12pm. They also moved the show to 8am to 9am at one point. We had great ratings. It was the highest ratings that the station had ever had up until that time. The show left the air after a five year run because I had enough of the show being moved around to different time slots. When it ended I moved to Chicago and sold real estate in the Naperville area. All of my ideas for my show came from my show on WMT. That was because there was a such a rich variety of interesting people on the University of Iowa staff who would appear on my show. This included doctors and writers and artists. They have the number one writer's workshop in the country at the U of I. That is where playwright Tennessee Williams came from. It was very diversified. I always went into it with the idea that I wanted to do things that people could learn from and when their husband came home from work they could say "I learned so much on Georgia's show today and here are the interesting people that she had on."

I had guest on the show. They included people from the Broadway Theater League, many authors, doctors and many others. I had stars on as well including Theodore Bikel from Fiddler on the Roof, Tony Award winning Mary Martin who played Maria in The Sound of Music, John Voit and too many more to remember. Jimmy Dean was always on my show when he was in town. I kept in touch with him for a long time. He was always a really nice guy. He was also a really funny guy, you never knew what he had to say next. There were usually around twenty-five people in the audience on any given show. When Jimmy Dean was there it was always packed and we would have around fifty. I did a lot of cooking shows with a woman named Jan McBride who was an excellent chef. She was out of Chicago with Swift Company who is one of the largest beef producers in the world. We always had a large live audience when she cooked on the show. I had a lot of live audiences on my program and the crew did not like it because it was a lot more work for them. I used to do a segment on animals from Niabi Zoo on the show. One day they brought in a python. Unfortunately they had fed it two or three chickens before it came on the air. I had this long dress on. They were holding the python and all of a sudden he got rid of the chickens all over my dress, my shoes, the works. It was brutal.

Some of our local regular sponsors were Bob Neil Oldsmobile in Rock Island and Sexton Ford. We also had local banks who advertised on the show as well as a variety of retail businesses. One of the popular shows for advertisers was the fashion shows that we would put on. WQAD's Jim King and I worked together occasionally. He and I presented the very first Thanksgiving parade in the Quad Cities with all of the big balloons. We did this outside and nearly froze to death. I knew Jim very well. He was one great guy and you can not think about Channel 8 without thinking of him. Sportscaster Bob Wilford was at the station, I knew him very well too. He married Carol Graflund, Miss Moline. I judged the contest the year that she won! There was a tall guy who used to do sports on Channel 8 at that time. He used to do the weather on my show as well. That gentleman's name happens to be Thom Cornelis who now works at KWQC. Both Bob and Thom are super nice guys. I did not save film from the show except for one. This film was from the Quad City Downs and they wanted me to take a horse around the track, which I did. When I was still living in Southern California and working at Burbank Studios, I contacted WQAD to see if they had any film of the show because I would really like to have one of my tapes. Unfortunately they do not have any tapes of the show. I also tried KWQC to see if they had any tapes from my appearances on Especially For You but they did not keep any either. So unfortunately unless someone out there has a copy and comes forward, the history of these live local programs has been lost. - Georgia McCartney

By Shirley Davis Woman's Editor October 4th 1964 The pretty blonde that Quad-City housewives do exercises with every morning has now added another phase to her already-busy career. Little Miss Georgia, as she's known on Pat Sundine's "Especially For You" show each morning on WOC-TV, is Mrs. Fred Friedrichsen of 3229 W. 17th St., Davenport. Her husband, a swimming coach and physical education teacher at West High School is now on sabbatical leave from his position - the first ever granted by the Davenport School system - to study for his doctorate at the State University of Iowa. The Friedrichsens have temporarily moved to Iowa City, so Georgia commutes to the Quad-Cities for her daily TV appearance. And in addition to this, she ALSO commutes to Cedar Rapids where she is now hostess of a daily half-hour TV show on Channel 2. Georgia says, "I'm co-hostess on a cooking and interview show; I do the interviews - on beauty and fashion - and do exercises once a week. The Friedrichsen's six-year-old son is now in school in Iowa City, and Georgia is continuing her speaking engagements in the Quad-City area in addition to her appearances on WOC-TV and WMT-TV. Georgia got her start in television by teaching exercise classes at the Moline and Rock Island YWCAs. Nationally-known exercise instructor and author Bonnie Pruden talked her into tyring television, and she began by having a once-a-week spot six years ago. In the past three years, she's made daily appearances on the "Especially for You" show.

Georia Friedrichsen appears on WOC TV 6's Especially for You. In her hand is a copy of TV Guide. This is the local edition in which an article about her appeared.

Taking dancing lessons for 13 years was to prepare Georgia for a career in dancing, but when she married her childhood sweetheart, she switched from dancing to her present form of show business. "I love every minute of it," smiles Georgia. "Of course, I do a lot of traveling each day, but I enjoy riding. It gives me time to think."

She's vivacious and like most women she loves to talk! What makes her special is her ability to meet many interesting people and get them to talk about themselves. Five days a week Georgia talks!!! She talks to doctors, celebrities, politicians, housewives, businessmen, the butchers, the bakers and the candlestick makers. These guests are almost always interesting and very often entertaining. Georgia On Q is local, live television doing what it does best! Picture on the right - Georgia with special guest Jimmy Dean

Today's column is going to be a "whatever happened to ...." collection. It begins with "Whatever happened to Georgia Friedrichsen, the exercise gal on Pat Sundine's WOC show in Davenport quite a few years ago and later star of Georgia on Q at Channel 8 in Moline? The answer came with a phone call from Burbank, California. Georgia Friedrichsen McCartney says she's now working with Columbia Studios, specifically on new game shows. "Lingo" will debut with Michael Reagan as host; "Yahtzee" will star Peter Marshall. Georgia's job is to find private investors for the show. "There are three in our department," she says. "One is Tom Pierson, husband of actress Jane Withers." "Of the President's son, "He's a diamond in the rough. They signed him up in 10 minutes. He's another Pat Sajak, and the women will love him." Both shows debut in the fall. Georgia is married to Roger McCartney, formerly of Dewitt, Iowa. Her father is Trav Shankle of Clinton, Iowa. Shirley Davis Column in the Quad City Times

01/24/2009 ... WQAD's Bob Wilford wrote....

Interesting enough, I took over Georgia's show when she left WQAD. Georgia was a dear friend. Her ex-husband just so happened to be my gym teacher when I was a kid growing up in Davenport, Iowa public schools.

Georgia was just a delight. She was gracious and intelligent and always smiling. She had a delightful personality, everybody absolutely loved her. I don't think she had a non-fan anywhere in the world. She is just absolutely dazzling.

One of my earliest memories at WQAD was my interview with Jimmy Dean. I was guest-hosting for Georgia while she was on vacation at the time and Jimmy had been booked for the show.

Our paths only crossed for not very long, a year and one-half or so. I remember her mostly from Premier Nights at the station. Premier nights were when the new fall season would start and it is a really big deal. The newscasters and on-air personalities appeared there and all of the men would wear tuxes and all of the women would wear something nice, usually a dress. The party was in WQAD's Studio B. I remember Georgia entered the room. The room was back-lit with blue light and she entered the room with this electric blue dress on. I will never forget this - she literally stopped everybody who was at that reception as they watched her walk into that room. That is one of my big memories of her.

Click here to go to the WQAD page!

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