Jerry Dunphy

Jerry Dunphy was an American television news anchor in the Los Angeles/Southern California media market. He was best known for his intro "From the desert to the sea, to all of Southern California, a good evening." After serving as a pilot in World War II, Dunphy began his broadcast television career in 1953. He was the news director/anchor at then-CBS owned-and-operated (O&O) WXIX (now CW affiliated WVTV) in Milwaukee. Dunphy also was a sports reporter at another CBS O&O, WBBM-TV, in Chicago. Dunphy also served as a color commentator for Green Bay Packers telecasts on CBS in 1956. In 1960, Dunphy took over the anchor chair at the Los Angeles CBS O&O station KNXT (now KCBS-TV), where he anchored Los Angeles' most popular newscast, later titled "The Big News", a program that often attracted a quarter of Los Angeles television owners, ratings unheard of in the market. He was still popular when fired in 1975, yet KNXT sought to adopt a faster-paced, "Eyewitness News" type format. It was then that Dunphy joined KABC-TV, bringing it to the top of the ratings, making it Southern California's news leader. Since Dunphy's unceremonious firing, Channel 2 never recovered in the ratings, until the mid-2000s. Dunphy left KABC-TV in 1989 and joined the upstart KCAL-TV that July (when it was still KHJ-TV) as one of the pioneering anchors of the three-hour primetime news format, "Prime 9 News". He returned to KCBS-TV in 1995 and remained until 1997 as an anchorman, and rejoined KCAL-TV in 1997, where he remained until his death. Dunphy was one of the first newscasters to interview President Richard Nixon after his resignation in 1974. He would later sit down with Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford. Dunphy also performed regular cameos in L.A.-based films including Warning Shot, Night of the Lepus, Oh God!, Short Cuts, The Jerky Boys and Independence Day, as well as in episode 6 of Batman Film Way,,,Way Out, and is considered to be the inspiration for two fictional television characters: Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Kent Brockman on The Simpsons (the director of "Krusty Gets Busted", Brad Bird, designed the character and modeled him after anchorman Ted Koppel. Dunphy was also a songwriter. One of his songs was called, appropriately, "From the Desert to the Sea" and was recorded by country music star T.G. Sheppard. On May 9, 1984, Dunphy received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in the television industry, located at 6669 Hollywood Boulevard. He succumbed to a heart attack on May 20, 2002.

Known For: Acting

Born: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, 1921-06-09

Died: 2002-05-20

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1964	Kitten with a Whip	Newscaster	51
2	1965	Mirage		70
3	1967	Warning Shot		63
4	1971	The Love Machine	Newscaster	46
5	1972	Night of the Lepus	Television Newscaster	44
6	1977	Oh, God!	Jerry Dunphy	65
7	1990	Hard to Kill	Newscaster	60
8	1990	Impulse	TV Anchorman	56
9	1990	The Great Quake Hazard Hunt	Self	0
10	1993	Short Cuts	Jerry Dunphy	72
11	1994	Jimmy Hollywood	Anchorperson	52
12	1994	Beverly Hills Cop III	Newscaster	59
13	1996	Independence Day	Self	69
14	1996	Independence Day: The ID4 Invasion	WNN's Pentagon Correspondent Jerry Dunphy	64
15	1998	Bulworth	Jerry Dunphy	63
16	2003	Pauly Shore Is Dead	Jerry Dunphy	43

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1966	Batman	Newscaster	73
2	1979	Hart to Hart		68
3	1979	The French Atlantic Affair	Self	70
4	1991	Brooklyn Bridge	Sputnik Play-by-Play	75

Jerry Dunphy

Film

Television