John Cameron Swayze - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

He was satirized easily enough himself, perhaps most memorably by comics Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman, whose first "break-in" novelty record (a mock newscast spliced with current rock and roll music), "The Flying Saucer," satirized him as reporter John Cameron Cameron (played by Goodman). Swayze is mentioned in a lyric of Allan Sherman's novelty song "My Grandfather's Watch", a parody of Henry Clay Work's "My Grandfather's Clock". In 1980 Ray Stevens recorded a novelty song titled "The Watch Song" where, in the song, two guys meet up in a bar and fight over an adulterous woman. Ray's character ends up having his wrist watch broken which, hilariously, sends him over the edge. He beats up his opponent so severely that the man dies. Ray's character speaks out loud to John Cameron Swayze various times throughout the song.

John Cameron Swayze made periodic cameo performances in movies beginning with 1957's A Face in the Crowd. He also hosted and narrated from 1955-57 the long-running television drama series, The Armstrong Circle Theatre (1950–1963) after leaving NBC News, as well as a daytime television game show for ABC, Chance for Romance.

He is mentioned in one of the scenes of Walt Disney World's attraction, Carousel of Progress at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida.

Swayze was fairly frequently mentioned on the television series The Golden Girls—for example in season one, Episode 9 broadcast on Nov. 16, 1985, Blanche and the Younger Man. Blanche finished telling the story when she was almost Mrs. Andy Griffith and Sophia reminds Dorothy when Blanche told a similar story but about John Cameron Swayze. His Timex commercials are mentioned in the episode "The Stan Who Came to Dinner", which broadcast January 10, 1987, where Sophia (Estelle Getty) tells of a recurring dream where John Cameron Swayze straps a Timex to her chin and tosses her across an icy pond.

In episode 805 of Mystery Science Theater 3000, when the watch of a character in the movie The Thing That Couldn't Die is found in a traderat's nest, Tom Servo exclaims: "John Cameron Traderat."

Swayze is also mentioned in Damian "Junior Gong" Marley's Pimper's Paradise when Marley uses a simile to describe how the main character in the song behaves.