William Keck is a veteran entertainment journalist who has seen it all – not necessarily by invitation – and who has interviewed many of the denizens of Hollywood — again, not always by invitation.
Confused? Don’t be. Two words: National Enquirer. If the name of that supermarket tabloid makes you cringe, well…that’s the point.
As with so many other starry-eyed twenty-somethings, Keck came to Los Angeles seeking that often-elusive goal — breaking into show business, because, well, as goes that brassy, hoaky tune, there’s no business….
Keck’s big dream? Screenwriting. But mostly, by his own admission, he kinda, sorta, wanted to meet the stars whose TV series he’d lost himself in starting from those early childhood days when he first plopped himself in front of the television and learned to handle the remote.
Young William grew up and headed west bringing those aspirations of becoming a movie scribe along for the ride. But as anyone who knows anything about Tinseltown will tell you, boys and girls, screenwriters, alas and alack, people who pound out projects that begin with those two time-honored words FADE IN? Those folks are a dime a dozen, cheaper by the dozen, and/or any other cliche you’d care to use sans consulting the nearest thesaurus.
What to do? Find a not-quite-ready-for-primetime starter job, preferably one that is primetime adjacent. And that’s precisely what the hero of our story did. Drumroll, please.
Heee-rrr-zzz, WILLIAM! Not quite, but close. Picture a cast of characters including Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen, and a man by the name of Johnny teeing up a monologue.
Yes, that would be The Tonight Show in its Heyday when Johnny Carson was the host, and Keck became a fixture — albeit it a small one — on its set: Keck landed a job as an NBC page, which, not so naturally led to a three-year gig as a reporter for the National Enquirer.
Find out how that gig landed in his lap in this episode of The Hollywood Beat. Tandy Culpepper talks with William Keck about his Hollywood memoir, When You Step Upon A Star: Cringeworthy Confessions of a Tabloid Bad Boy.
