The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal Page A

was attended by 150 people, the paper stated. The fare was “champagne and nuts, nuts and more nuts,” the society columnist wrote, but the hosts seemed to take a backseat to the star of the evening:
    Another guest with a story was Christopher Chichester, a former member of the British peerage and grandson of the legendary sailor, Sir Francis Chichester, who is now an American citizen and a resident of San Marino.
    â€œI’m the one who put Howard Morrow together with the fund-raisers for the Republic’s Olympic team,” said Chichester, whose mother owns a construction business located in the other San Marino.
    Peggy Ebright pulled out more clippings, including a newspaper advertisement illustrated with stars and klieg lights shining down on the following copy: “What is everyone talking about? Watch Inside San Marino and find out. 7 p.m. on Channel 6—Cable Vision. Inside San Marino is a Gipsy Moth Production.” Gipsy Moth, the name of the production company, was also the name of the ship Sir Francis Chichester sailed around the world.
    It was 1984, and the era of cable television had arrived. The San Marino City Council awarded its first cable TV franchise to a car dealer in Pasadena, mostly as an advertising vehicle for them. The first requirement for a fledgling channel was to produce a local TV show. As he vaulted between church socials, city council meetings, and various clubs, Christopher Chichester heard about the cable TV opportunity—and seized it.
    One day, the phone rang in the home of Peggy Ebright.
    â€œHello, Peggy, Christopher Chichester here.”
    â€œOh, hi, Chris!” she exclaimed. Of course, Peggy knew who he was. By now, everyone in San Marino knew Christopher Chichester; he was ubiquitous. He told her some very exciting news: cable TV was coming to San Marino! And he had been given the honor of producing the city’s first cable TV show, which he wanted her to host.
    â€œPeggy, you’re a natural!” he said, and that much was true. Petite and perfectly dressed, Peggy always got the Doris Day roles, people said, because she looked and acted like Doris Day: perpetually cheerful. Peggy would be the perfect face of his show, Chichester said, an interview program he would call Inside San Marino . She would be Barbara Walters and he would be the producer pulling the strings behind the scenes.
    â€œChris, that sounds like fun! I’d love to do it!” said Peggy.
    Sitting in her living room on the day of my visit, Peggy Ebright laughed—and kept laughing, her laughter punctuating our conversation, her sunny disposition clouded not one whit by the mysterious stranger. “We just couldn’t have believed people would not be telling the truth,” she said. “In San Marino? No way.”
    She joined the show, becoming the face of Inside San Marino.
    Although it was essentially a three-person shoestring production—Christopher Chichester, Peggy Ebright, and a high school student cameraman—with minuscule viewership, Chichester pursued the program as he did everything: full tilt. “ Inside San Marino —7 p.m., American Cable Vision Channel 6,” read the now-yellowed little ads that Peggy Ebright showed me, which Chichester had placed in the local newspaper. He typed the schedules, which he would give to Peggy, who would pick him up in her car for the day’s shooting, and they would meet their cameraman and storm the offices and playgrounds of the Super Marino elite.
    Chichester booked all the guests. “Lovely, ten a.m. at your home,” one can imagine him telling the mayor’s wife, the chief librarian, or the museum curator. “Just dress as you normally do, and don’t be nervous, dear. You’re a natural.”
    The guests enjoyed the attention, even though they almost never watched themselves on the show. Nobody watched cable TV back then, and Inside San Marino wasn’t catnip enough to