Biofile: Lou Dobbs Interview

From Scoop Malinowski

STATUS: Host of Fox Business Network TV Show “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

DOB: September 24, 1945 In: Childress County, Texas

HOBBIES/INTERESTS: “Scuba diving, horsebackriding, golf, running tractors on the farm. We’ve got a horse farm up in Sussex County, N.J. I enjoy getting out, cutting hay and playing farmer on the weekends during the summer.”

CHILDHOOD HEROES: “Gene Autry, John Paul Jones – the great naval captain from the Revolutionary War, and Huckleberry Finn.”

FAVORITE MOVIES: “Well, I have to be predictable and say Casablanca, Dr. Strangelove, Jumpin’ Jack Flash – because I love Whoopi Goldberg, and Raiders of the Lost Ark [laughs]. Do not laugh at me just because I’m a simple-minded son of a gun [laughs again].”

FAVORITE TV SHOWS: “Gunsmoke, Peter Gunn, Murder She Wrote and 60 Minutes.”

MUSICAL TASTES: “Jimmy Buffet, The Stones, and Waylon Jennings.”

CHILDHOOD DREAM: “Aside from initially a fireman and a cowboy, I wanted to be a professional football quarterback for the Baltimore Colts [laughs].”

FAVORITE MEAL: “My mother-in-law’s enchiladas.”

FAVORITE BREAKFAST CEREAL: “Mini-Wheats.”

FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR: “Chocolate.”

FIRST JOB: “As a kid, bagging potatoes in the fields. Or baling or hauling hay on the farm in Idaho.”

FIRST CAR: “1948 red Ford.”

FUNNY TV MEMORY: “I suppose a funny moment was – the worst moment – was when I was just first starting out on television on KBLU in Yuma, Arizona. My co-anchor had just done an obit which I thought was so poorly written and terribly delivered, that I started laughing hysterically. And could not stop. And they would not take the camera off me. And I thought my career had ended at a very young and tender age [smiles].”

EARLY TV MEMORY: “It’s tough enough learning to be a reporter. For one of my first assignments, I was handed a Bell & Howell movie camera and asked to film a meeting of Cesar Chavez with the United Farm Worker Union in San Luis Sonora, Mexico. And it was the first time I had ever used a movie camera. So I rushed back with the story and what I thought was the film of the story. And the film turned out to be all black film. So my career as a photographer ended rather abruptly [smiles].”

GREATEST CAREER MOMENT: “That’s a tough one. I’ve enjoyed nearly every moment of my career. I really can’t give you a good answer on that one. The Chinese have a saying, ‘If you love your work – you’ll never have a job.’ And it’s been a career of many years and a lot of moments. I’ve enjoyed nearly all of them.”

MOST PAINFUL MOMENT: “Nah. I won’t go into the pain.”

FAVORITE VACATION SPOT: “Bahamas.”

PEOPLE MOST ADMIRED: “People who are individualistic, who have courage to go against the grain and not follow the herd, with character, capacity and talent.”

CURRENT HEROES: “Lee Kwan Yui – former Prime Minister of Singapore. Because over the course of the past 40 years, he took a small island that was poor with literally no resources and built it into an amazing business, commercial, technological and societal success. Margaret Thatcher. And astronauts – Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Tom Stafford. I’m in a rut on astronauts [smiles].”

EDUCATION: Harvard University (Economics)

FAMILY: Wife, Debi; sons, Chance, Jason; daughters, Heather, Hillary; dogs, Rocky, Kurby, Max, Chipper, Sasha; cat, Mittens.

Lou Dobbs Tonight Fox Business video clip

(Note: I was assigned/commissioned by DirecTV Guide to do a Biofile with Lou in the late 90s when he was still at CNN. We did the Biofile interview face to face in his office on Eighth Ave, a block away from Madison Square Garden. – SM)