40 Years in a Box -- Film From My Dad's 1970s Talk Show - A Controversial Interview with Two Activists

Every so often, we find something — a note, a picture or video tape that reveals something important about the past and, perhaps, helps us understand current events. This happened recently when I uncovered an old TV show that my Dad (Dr. Marshall H. Chazen) produced back in the early 1970s. After sending the tape (which had been in storage for about four decades) off to be converted to digital, I had the chance to watch it for the first time. Never one to shy away from controversy and always accepting of people's differences, my Dad's show explored the topic gay liberation. Put into proper context, this show was being aired in Southern Arizona, sometime in 1973 or 1974. While I'd like to give credit to the guests on the show, they appear to remain anonymous.

The opening sequence features my Dad getting into his 1969 Plymouth Barracuda in North Tucson and driving to the KOLD studio where the show was taped.

Dr. Chazen was a lifelong educator — director of the Arizona Ranch School, founder of the Stress Management Institute of Wyoming, a TV and radio host, lecturer, college teacher, writer, pilot and musician (French Horn and bass). He received a Doctorate of Education at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. Throughout his life, he worked with people with challenging conditions, including those with mental illness, emotionally disturbed teens, disabled adults, people in severe pain, victims of childhood traumas and those with visual impairment. As someone who was afflicted with diabetes from the time he was in his thirties, he set about to study and then write about the condition (Your Diabetes Control Handbook).

He believed that you could take any bad situation and turn it around. This type of thinking was, perhaps, best expressed in a T shirt with the words "Duck, smile and keep on dancing," that he and his staff would wear at The Arizona Ranch School.