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Doral Chenoweth III (right) and Ted Williams. Photo courtesy Doral Chenoweth III.
Doral Chenoweth III has shot his share of memorable web videos. In March, TV pundits gobbled up his clip of an Obamacare protester berating and throwing dollar bills at a man who suffers from Parkinson’s. And a few months later, web surfers couldn’t resist his man-bites-dog piece on strippers protesting a church in Coshocton County.
But neither clip prepared him for the aftermath of his latest viral video, a simple piece about a golden-voiced roadside beggar. After the clip hit the Internet in early January, Chenoweth found himself riding shotgun with his subject, Ted Williams, who was transformed from a homeless former radio announcer into an improbable redemption story. “I thought maybe he’ll get one or two freelance jobs out of it,” Chenoweth says. “I had no idea that it would take off and attract worldwide attention.”
Chenoweth followed Williams to New York City as he made the talk-show rounds, hanging out backstage with actor Jim Carrey as Williams chatted with TV host Jimmy Fallon. The Dispatch videographer also became an in-demand celebrity in his own right. As the Williams story gained momentum, reporters inundated Chenoweth with calls. “My phone was ringing at the rate of 20 requests an hour,” says Chenoweth, whose father, also named Doral, is the Grumpy Gourmet, the Dispatch’s former restaurant guru. “There was no way to respond to everybody.”
Few could reach Williams, who was holed up with NBC during his whirlwind trip to New York. As a result, they often settled for Chenoweth, who got calls from the likes of the BBC, NPR, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and other outlets from around the world. “The Latin Americans were really hounding me,” he says with a laugh.
The New York trip was a surreal experience, especially when Chenoweth mediated a feud between two hyper-competitive television networks. After a disagreement between NBC and CBS scuttled an airport reunion between New York-bred Williams and his 90-year-old mother, Chenoweth arranged for the meeting to occur at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. He booked a conference room on the 39th floor for $700 (CBS promised to repay him) after talking the networks out of using the hotel’s crowded public lobby. “I thought we owed it to Ted and his mother to make their reunification somewhat dignified,” Chenoweth says.
The stagecraft was unusual for Chenoweth, to say the least. “You’d never do that in Columbus, Ohio, but in New York, it’s a different world,” he says. “It’s part journalism and it’s part show business.”
This story appeared in the February 2011 issue of Columbus Monthly.
