by Lost Fresno » Fri Jul 31, 2020 10:10 am
Her obituary appears below and written by our friend at the Fresno Bee, Joshua Tehee. Joshua covers breaking news for The Fresno Bee, with a focus on entertainment and a heavy emphasis on the Central Valley music scene. You can see him share the area’s top entertainment options Friday mornings on KMPH’s “Great Day.”
She blazed a trail in Fresno television. 1960s KMJ-TV movie hostess dies at 101
By Joshua Tehee July 28, 2020
Lorraine Hanna Martin hadn’t been on TV in more than four decades, but she still got recognized around town. She’d be out at Trader Joes, making her way around the store with her walker and people would stop and ask, “Are you Nancy Allan?”
“Just in the past year that happened,” her son Jeff Hanna says. Nancy Allan was the name she was given when she started working in television in Fresno in the 1950s and the name associated with her most recognizable show — “Nancy Allan’s Movie Matinee,” which aired each afternoon on channel 24 in the 1960s. Hanna Martin died July 18, 2020, in Fresno. She was weeks shy of her 102nd birthday.
Early days of KMJ
Born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1918, Hanna Martin lived in Oregon before moving to Fresno with her then-husband, who worked at Fresno State. She auditioned for a job at KMJ-TV in 1954 at the behest of a family friend. This was back when the station was owned by the McClatchy company and housed in the original Fresno Bee building on Van Ness Avenue. On the last day of auditions, she was the last person to be seen and was hired without any real experience. Not that anyone had much experience in television at the time. The station had just come on the air the previous year and the idea of TV programming was still new. “I had no stated goal, except to be entertaining,” Hanna Martin said in a podcast interview in 2015. “And they kind of left it up to me.”
She started doing book reviews and then interviews with local dignitaries and politicians along with celebrities who were passing through town. She interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt during one of her stops in Fresno in the 1950s. She interviewed Jack Benny, actress Judith Anderson and original “Masterpiece Theatre” host Alistair Cooke.
‘Nancy Allan’s Movie Matinee’
In the 1960s, she served as host of “Nancy Allan’s Movie Matinee,” which featured late-release and first-telecast films. She would introduce the films and give tidbits of information at the commercial breaks. She also had a weekly “Garden Clinic” show, where people would write in with questions about plants and gardening. Hanna Martin eventually retired the station — and TV — in the 1970s. “And that was the end for mom,” Jeff Hanna says. “She became a housewife for the next decades.” But then, she was never forgotten.
The website Lost Fresno has a page dedicated to Nancy Allan’s memory. Its lead post is titled “I had a ‘Crush’ on Nancy Allan of Movie Matinee.” “I would get home from school around 3:30 pm, turn on the tube and promptly click the large knob on our black and white set to the channel 24. And there she would be: the lady I wish was my girl friend, Miss Nancy Allen appearing on Movie Matinee,” the post reads. “I was 10 years old and knew it was unlikely that I would ever met her. But every weekday, she appeared to me in our living room. I was always impressed with how poised and classy she was sitting on the couch talking about the movie selection of the day. To tell the truth, the movies themselves never seemed too interesting to me, maybe they were just over my head. Back then I preferred to good monster movie over a romantic tale or detective drama. But I knew she would reappear on the couch during the commercial, so I stuck around and finished whatever movie she was showing.”
Hanna Martin is survived by her son and several stepchildren.
Her obituary appears below and written by our friend at the Fresno Bee, Joshua Tehee. Joshua covers breaking news for The Fresno Bee, with a focus on entertainment and a heavy emphasis on the Central Valley music scene. You can see him share the area’s top entertainment options Friday mornings on KMPH’s “Great Day.”
[b]She blazed a trail in Fresno television. 1960s KMJ-TV movie hostess dies at 101[/b]
By Joshua Tehee July 28, 2020
Lorraine Hanna Martin hadn’t been on TV in more than four decades, but she still got recognized around town. She’d be out at Trader Joes, making her way around the store with her walker and people would stop and ask, “Are you Nancy Allan?”
“Just in the past year that happened,” her son Jeff Hanna says. Nancy Allan was the name she was given when she started working in television in Fresno in the 1950s and the name associated with her most recognizable show — “Nancy Allan’s Movie Matinee,” which aired each afternoon on channel 24 in the 1960s. Hanna Martin died July 18, 2020, in Fresno. She was weeks shy of her 102nd birthday.
[b]Early days of KMJ[/b]
Born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1918, Hanna Martin lived in Oregon before moving to Fresno with her then-husband, who worked at Fresno State. She auditioned for a job at KMJ-TV in 1954 at the behest of a family friend. This was back when the station was owned by the McClatchy company and housed in the original Fresno Bee building on Van Ness Avenue. On the last day of auditions, she was the last person to be seen and was hired without any real experience. Not that anyone had much experience in television at the time. The station had just come on the air the previous year and the idea of TV programming was still new. “I had no stated goal, except to be entertaining,” Hanna Martin said in a podcast interview in 2015. “And they kind of left it up to me.”
She started doing book reviews and then interviews with local dignitaries and politicians along with celebrities who were passing through town. She interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt during one of her stops in Fresno in the 1950s. She interviewed Jack Benny, actress Judith Anderson and original “Masterpiece Theatre” host Alistair Cooke.
[b]‘Nancy Allan’s Movie Matinee’[/b]
In the 1960s, she served as host of “Nancy Allan’s Movie Matinee,” which featured late-release and first-telecast films. She would introduce the films and give tidbits of information at the commercial breaks. She also had a weekly “Garden Clinic” show, where people would write in with questions about plants and gardening. Hanna Martin eventually retired the station — and TV — in the 1970s. “And that was the end for mom,” Jeff Hanna says. “She became a housewife for the next decades.” But then, she was never forgotten.
The website Lost Fresno has a page dedicated to Nancy Allan’s memory. Its lead post is titled “I had a ‘Crush’ on Nancy Allan of Movie Matinee.” “I would get home from school around 3:30 pm, turn on the tube and promptly click the large knob on our black and white set to the channel 24. And there she would be: the lady I wish was my girl friend, Miss Nancy Allen appearing on Movie Matinee,” the post reads. “I was 10 years old and knew it was unlikely that I would ever met her. But every weekday, she appeared to me in our living room. I was always impressed with how poised and classy she was sitting on the couch talking about the movie selection of the day. To tell the truth, the movies themselves never seemed too interesting to me, maybe they were just over my head. Back then I preferred to good monster movie over a romantic tale or detective drama. But I knew she would reappear on the couch during the commercial, so I stuck around and finished whatever movie she was showing.”
Hanna Martin is survived by her son and several stepchildren.