From the desk of Robert Rappaport on Tuesday, March 24th 2009 at 6:38

FAREWELL "DR. SCAR" JACK JACOBSON

Even though I've "known" him most of my life, I first got the opportunity to meet Jack Jacobson in late 2007 to document his career for a radio feature, focusing mostly on his character of "Dr. Scar." The "Kindly, Lovable" late-night horror movie host was one of the early campy characters of local television. I first learned of Jacobson's death via email early Monday morning.

Although Jacobson will be remembered by many longtime Tucsonans as "Dr. Scar," a TV executive at Channel 9, host of the MDA Telethon and local pitchman, Jacobson's career actually began in 1929 at the tender age of eight in Rochester, NY. He came from a show business family and talked to me at length about his early days in the new medium of TV.

I've lost track of all of the interviews I've conducted after 25 years or so in the news business, but I honestly can say the Jacobson interview was my most favorite and most memorable.

I grew up watching "Dr. Scar" on TV and always wanted to meet him. The opportunity arose in 2007, when Arizona Spotlight host Mark McLemore was planning a special Halloween show and we were tossing around some "scary" ideas and "Dr. Scar" came to mind. Now, I finally had an excuse to do something fun that really had no hard news value at all, but allowed me to re-live some of childhood.

Ironically, a week or so before Jacobson's death, I was working on a special web page for the man his friends called "Jake." When I first did the feature for radio, our website wasn't very robust and didn't allow for extras. Now, it does and I've put up the page so you can hear the interview, view pictures and even see a rare video. It's all here. I hope you enjoy it.

To prevent spam, comments are no longer allowed after sixty days.