Chet forte biography of mahatma

Chet Forte first captivated audiences on the court as a college basketball star and, throughout a three-decade career as producer/director, never let them go. Chet could can 25-footers or snake his way through big men for twisting layups. “Chet fought hard to change the way the games were covered.”

Before his broadcasts, the volatile director personally supervised camera placement throughout the arena, fighting stadium officials unhappy with camera carts blocking players’ sideline views or hand-helds getting too close to the bench.

“I think Chet was one of the game-changing people in the history of the business,” says Don Ohlmeyer, former producer of Monday Night Football.

His greatest skill was the head and shoulders fake; defenders knew it was coming but somehow were helpless to from biting at it when it came.

Chet was accepted to Columbia University and became the toast of New York basketball. In 1990, he pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion after swindling a New Jersey businessman out of $100,000 and misstating his assets on a bank loan.

In 1968, he impressed network executives with his work at the Olympics. Standing 5 foot 7, “Chet the Jet” averaged 28.9 points per game his senior year, beating out 7-foot Kansas star Wilt Chamberlain for college basketball’s Player of the Year in 1957. Our goal in the early years was to get the coverage lower and more intimate.”

Such intimate coverage was no easy task with a hand-held camera that weighed 20 pounds and required an 80-pound support pack.

His coach was Jack Molinas, who would soon be indicted as the mastermind behind the 1961 college basketball point-shaving scandal. He dropped $204,000 at the tables in Atlantic City in one night, although sports betting was his major weakness. After an unsuccessful NBA tryout, Forte landed a job with CBS, where he spent five years before beginning his career at ABC in 1963.

“Chet’s real strength was understanding the moment, understanding the shot that was called for at that moment, and being one step ahead in getting that shot.”

— Dennis Lewin

In 1970, when ABC Sports President Roone Arledge tapped Forte to direct the first season of Monday Night Football, Forte knew that the shots he would need were impossible to get with the three- to five-camera setup that was then standard for NFL games.

“The same was true with switchers, slow motion, still store; all these were part of the effort to try to get the look that Chet was striving for.”

A student of Arledge’s story-first approach, Forte concentrated as much on the big picture as he did on any single shot.

“Maybe Chet’s greatest strength as a director was that he was a talented producer,” Lewin says.

He quit betting thanks to Gamblers Anonymous. The member of Chet’s crew knew he was a terrible bettor, and would frequently bet the other way after learning who he’d wagered on. He pioneered multi-camera coverage of pro football, often directing more than 20 camera operators at a time. Chet and his wife, Patricia, moved to Virginia and then to California, where he became a sports radio talk show host in San Diego.

Forte still holds all but one of those records.

His one-game scoring record of 45 points, set in 1957 against Penn, stood until Buck Jenkins scored 47 against Harvard in 1991.

After a short career in minor league pro basketball, the Hackensack, N.J., native went into sports broadcasting with ABC. He gained fame as the celebrated ABC sports director who helped to launch Monday Night Football.

Forte’s demands to pick out the perfect reaction shots, along with his trademark ground-level views of high-kicking cheerleaders, compelled manufacturers to make smaller equipment that would allow this ebullient game-changer to, in his words, “get it right.”

“The push of camera manufacturers to address what we needed led to what you have today: smaller, more portable equipment,” Ohlmeyer says.