Scott worked with, and was a close personal friend of local on-the-air personality Pete Boyle, father of the acclaimed actor Peter Boyle.The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
Thursday, January 26, 1978
By MARCI SHATZMAN of The Bulletin Staff
Alan Scott, a local broadcasting personality for more than 40 years, died Sunday in Bryn Mawr Hospital of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 69.
Scott, a television pioneer, was among the generation of radio newscasters to successfully make the transition into the new medium in the late 1940s.
He was best known for his children’s show, "Let Scott Do It," with his mechanical sidekick, Mr. Rivets, and game show, "Cinderella Weekend."
His familiar signoff, “That’ll be all from Alan Scott" was his trademark as a radio and television newscaster and commentator.
Mr. Scott's son, Jody (Jonathan), 25 said his father was lured into radio in 1931 when he was ‘discovered’ by Stan Lee Broza, founder of the Horn and Hardart’s "Children's Hour" and then program director at WCAU radio.
A Philadelphia Normal School graduate, Mr. Scott has just started a teaching a teaching career when he visited the station with other amateur actors to ask Broza to broadcast their plays.
Broza liked Mr. Scott's voice and the tall lean man with the urbane manner became a familiar figure on the station with his newscasts, his show “Music for Moderns,” and his social commentary.
In 1936 he was denounced by then Philadelphia Mayor S. Davis Wilson or telling WPA (federal) workers not to respond to Wilson’s plea to aid in snow removal after a storm. Mr. Scott said the city should handle its own snow removal instead of giving away jobs.
Taylor Grant, a fellow commentator said Scott often spoke out for the underdog and was especially sympathetic to labor.
“He devoted several broadcasts to promoting Blue Cross which, at the time was considered a great stride in providing medical care for poor," Grant said
Mr. Scott left for Chicago before World War 11 to do an afternoon radio quiz show at the request of Carol Irwin producer of “I Remember Mama.”
He became such a popular figure there that he was appointed deputy director of Civil Defense at the outbreak of World War II.
Mr. Scott met his wife of 35 years, Maralene Bielen (Beam) in Chicago and was commissioned from them as a lieutenant JG in the Navy. He served, mostly in the South Pacific, for four years, leaving as a lieutenant commander.
Mr. Scott went network after the war. He did “Television Screen Magazine” for NBC and “Once Over Lightly," a network radio talk show.
In 1948, the Scotts returned to Philadelphia and Scott hosted the radio version of “Cinderella Weekend.”
The next year he was cited as the first television personality in the country to achieve a thousand performances on camera. At the time he was doing “Cinderella Weekend” five days a week, newscasts five days a week, and a game show three days a week.
Mr. Scott took over George Skinner’s “Let Skinner Do It,” in 1954 on Channel 3. Actor Joe Earley, who played Mr. Rivets, said he and Scott wrote all the scripts for the hour show done live every morning but Sunday.
The show, which was dropped by the station in 1957, drew an average of 3,000 letters a week, Earley recalled.
The next year he hosted a short-lived show called “Attention Please,” on Channel 6, making him the first personality to work for all three television stations in the city.
In 1965, Mr. Scott worked at Channel 29.
Mr. Scott quit in 1968 and opened a cheese and gourmet food shop in Gladwyne. But he was back two years later as a booth announcer for WCA-TV where he worked until his retirement five years later.
Mr. Scott and his wife lived in Bryn Mawr. They lost their eldest son, Jeffrey, to cancer in 1974. He was 29.
Beside his wife and younger son, he is survived by his daughter, Amy (Alexandra), 19, two sisters and a brother.