Nick Clooney, perhaps mostly known as the father of George Clooney and his performance at the cable TV station AMC, is a prolific journalist, broadcaster, and game show host, who also bears connections to activism and charity. Nick Clooney was born Nicholas Clooney in Maysville, Kentucky on January 13th, 1934. He is married to Nina Clooney, whom he met in a beauty contest. The highlight of Clooney's journalism career was covering the Beverly hills supper club fire. His journalism style could best be described as being 'hard' and 'borderline disturbing, yet straight to the point'.
Nick's early life was quite adventurous. After being the DJ of the Armed Forces Radio Network in Germany, Clooney became quite confident about his showmanship abilities and later moved to California to give show business a try. His tries failed and he later moved to Ohio where he met his wife who gave birth to his son George in 1961. He was a huge influence for his son, who fulfilled Nick's dream of becoming an actor.
After working for a
news anchor for five years, Nick Clooney left and started working at WLWC, a TV station in Ohio, where he hosted a talk show called the "Nick Clooney Show". Shortly after the introduction of his home show, Nick was hired by ABC to host the family game show "The Money Maze" that, albeit quite famous at the time, only lasted for a year, but it was by no means the fault of Clooney. The show was canceled because of the huge field necessary for the game - it was impossible to sustain a hundred square feet field in the studio.
After that, Nick remained a quite important figure in the
CBS-affiliated WKRC-TV and still held his signature talk show. Quite a few of his performances were archived (tapes were expensive at the time). As a side note, Andy Warhol was among the few who had recorded versions of Clooney's TV presentations - he owned a tape of an episode of "The Money Maze", which Warhol himself recorded back in 1975. When his local talk show went quiet, Clooney made his breakthrough only in 1994, when he was working in the American Movie Classics cable TV channel, where he introduced classic American films. Considered an influential figure in the film business, he published the book The Movies That Changed Us: Reflections on the Screen back in 2002.
He remained a local celebrity in the Cincinnati area, but ran for congress in 2004. He challenged Geoff Davis for a seat in the Kentucky's 4th Congressional District, but lost in a quite fierce battle. Clooney is now mostly known as an activist and a journalism philanthropist. He, together with his son George, traveled to Darfur and filmed the documentary 'A Journey to Darfur'. He has done numerous speeches about Darfur and the ideological and political crises in the world, and now he is preparing to teach new students in the American University. Nick Clooney has remained a quite influential figure in the world, and his benevolent use of journalism now serves as a source of inspiration for young to-be journalists.
