Dean Maddox was a popular personality and sportscaster in the 1930s and 1940s on many stations, including KYA, KFRC and KGO, where he broadcast his show on Sundays from the Cliff House.
A British Columbia native, Dean Maddox graduated from the University of Indiana and joined the British Army, transferring to the US Army during World War I. After the war, Maddox spent time working in vaudeville and on Broadway in New York City. He served for a time as the chief announcer at Madison Square Garden and in 1929, went to Asia to become chief announcer for the government radio station of the Republic of China (Nationalist Chinese).
In 1935, KYA owner William Randolph Hearst asked Maddox to develop an “Amateur Hour” show. The “Marin Dell Dairy Amateur Hour” would go on to run for 21 years on KYA and KFRC. His popular amateur hour show had made the transition to television just a year before his death.
Maddox, also known on the air as “Budda”, performed as the “Owl Drugs Reporter on the Street” for 17 years on KFRC. The role saw him set up shop at busy locations such as the Powell Street cable car turnaround in San Francisco and the corner of 13th and Broadway in Oakland to seek out “man on the street” interview subjects.
Maddox was the play-by-play announcer for the Oakland Oaks from 1939-1942 and on those broadcasts was known as “Dizzy” Dean Maddox. Some of the Oaks broadcasts were re-creations during which Maddox would receive updates from a distant game and extemporaneously provide a play-by-play account.
Rain delays or failed communication links could challenge a re-creation artist, and Maddox once misplaced his wire copy for the home half of an inning during an Oaks road game in Seattle, erroneously moving ahead to the top of the next inning. When calls began to come into the station asking about the missing half-inning, Maddox told listeners that Seattle had such a healthy lead that it waived its at-bat, allowing Oakland to hit again.
Dean Maddox died in 1955 at age 59.