A Whitmore Sampler

Tonight you can hear what Air America radio is calling the last interview with the late, great actor James Whitmore. The talk network's CLOUT! show host, Richard Greene, spoke to the 87-year-old Whitmore last Election Eve in the ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel, where the actor had joined more than 200 volunteers to phone-bank for Barack Obama. Whitmore, a frank, plain-speaking man who passed away last Friday, recalls his first presidential election, in 1948, when he bucked his father's advise to vote for Republican Thomas Dewey and instead chose the Progressive Party candidate, Henry Wallace.


Although he would become a fervent Obama supporter -- it was Whitmore who introduced Obama at a huge Universal Ampitheatre rally -- at first he wasn't sold on the Illinois Senator, who'd yet to announce his candidacy.

"Darling, he's really just the flavor of the week," he told his wife Noreen. "We've got pet rocks in America and hula hoops and then we forget [them] -- they're gone."

But once his wife got Whitmore to read one of Obama's books he was hooked on the man. Whitmore will talk politics and Hollywood with Greene, who also speaks to Noreen Nash Whitmore and takes calls. Tonight's show can be heard in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. on KTLK 1150 AM, and will be available as a Podcast and archival download. For a three-minute sample, go to Air America's Web site and click on the audio link.