Remembering Vince Tampio This piece was written on Nov. 18, 2003 by Rich Eisbrouch, who volunteers as the Webmaster and coordinator for the Class of '65 weekly reunion email updates. This was contained in an update, and is reprinted here with his permission. - SPC |
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| Vince Tampio died late last week, shortly after his 71st birthday. He taught at South through most of the 60s, before moving to California in 1970 to work in TV. He'd been raised in Ohio, spent a couple of years in the Army, in Korea, then moved to New York in the late 50s to work in theater. He continued working in theater while at South, and originally moved west to direct. But his second love was design, and while supporting himself as a scenic artist one day in the early 70s, he realized he was as happy doing that as directing. "And there were a lot fewer hassles, too," he'd laughed, explaining it to me years later -- he was almost always laughing. When he retired, just a few years ago, he'd been head of the Scenic area at CBS for over 10 years, and he'd worked there for almost 30.
Vince got me sanely through high school and started my career. He started several other people's, too: in our class, Robert Fiveson, Barnet Kellman, and Paul Zegler; in the Class of '64, Steve Cohen and Ken Ulric; later on, Art Grand and Amy Lieberman. In fact, Amy convinced Vince to teach at South for one final year, because she didn't want to be there without him. Soon after college, we all seemed to lose track of Vince, maybe partly because he wanted to lose track of us. For one thing, without us, he could be younger, always an asset in the entertainment business. When I saw him again in 1990, and began working at CBS myself, the first thing he said was, "Oh, good, you look younger than you are. That way I can stay younger, too." Only recently had he started admitting his age. Maybe another reason he temporarily left us all behind was we were beginning the careers he'd set us on, and he wanted to be there, too. He was a talented, competitive man who never stopped going to the theater and movies, or talking about them. Even more, he wanted to be part of those worlds, and working at South just wasn't going to do that for him. He got to CBS with perfect timing. The 70s were double-shift years at the network, with shows cramming into rehearsal halls, sound stages, and shops, and Vince ran second shift, painting sets for, among other shows, All in the Family, Three's Company, The Smothers Brothers, Sonny and Cher, and Carol Burnett. He talked about watching Burnett and company rehearse and play for CBS-employee-only audiences with the same enthusiasm he talked about shows he'd seen in London and on Broadway. And he learned as much from watching people like Burnett as we had from him. Eventually, we found him, of course, though maybe Amy had never lost touch. I think Robert reconnected first, when he was also working in L.A., then Barnet, Steve Cohen, and finally me. Vince was one of my two strong contacts when I moved to California, Barnet being the other. I wasn't sure I wanted to live in Los Angeles, or leave theater for TV, but Vince hooked me up with some people I could trail for several weeks, to follow their work and see if it interested me. Once I did move west, he promised to put me to work in the CBS scene shop if I couldn't find what I really wanted. He never stopped helping out. But I did find what I wanted, and it gave me the added pleasure of working in the same building as Vince. I didn't see him every day. As I've mentioned before, there's this outside illusion that everyone in Hollywood knows everyone else, and they all go out for drinks at the same tiny bar every night. But I saw him often enough. I'd stop by Scenic to talk, and he'd tell me about his trips to London, New York, and Berlin. In his 50s, or what everyone else took to be his 40s, he'd made friends in Germany and had taught himself their language. When Nancy Garfield turned up to visit in the mid-90s, we all went out to lunch, and he remarked on what a beautiful woman she'd turned out to be. As she puts it, she looked 14 when we graduated, so her appearance came as a big surprise to Vince. Sunday night, talking about him, Nancy returned the compliment, remembering what a good-looking man Vince had been at South. "And that's the way I still think of him," she added. A few years after Nancy's visit, Steve Cohen escorted his nephew -- Linda Cohen Greenseid and Rob Kelman's son Jamie -- to L.A. to begin his career as a special effects make-up artist, and Vince, Steve, Jamie, and I all had lunch in the CBS commissary. We probably would have gone somewhere fancier, but it was a typically busy day for Vince, and he could only get an hour off to eat. CONTINUED NEXT PAGE |
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| Vincent Tampio - 1968 |