WMEX 1510 Boston – Jerry Williams On Air Fistfight with Massachusetts Committeeman Jack Molesworth – May 22 1962

Courtesy Alan Tolz

Today I’m featuring an aircheck I have been asked for many times over the years. It features an even that has become part of the mythology of the Boston Area.

On May 22, 1962, late in the evening, as talks host host Jerry Williams was hosting one of the most listened to radio shows in New England, Massachusetts Committeeman Jack Molesworth muscled his way into the WMEX studios. Disrupting the live show, he demanded equal time for comments that had been made on the show. In those days, Jerry had a studio audience for his live show. Jerry repeatedly told him to leave the studio. The two went back & forth, live on air, and the exchange escalated into a knock-down, drag-out brawl as the show stopped for several minutes. The two had been feuding for months. Molesworth got the bum’s rush out of the studio. But despite reporting a “possible broken shoulder, a fractured left elbow and numerous bruises,” he claimed victory over Williams. “They took me unawares,” Molesworth said, “and then we sort of wrestled out the door. Then we were on the floor and I think Williams was on the bottom.” As the battered Molesworth drove directly to Mass General Hospital for treatment, Williams breathlessly returned to the microphone: “I’ve never experienced anything like this in 16 years of radio work.”

The brawl was front-page news in the Boston Globe the following day. More than 30 years later, aging listeners would come up to Williams wherever he appeared and tell him that they were there in the ‘MEX studio the night he duked it out with Jack Molesworth. -Ellis

  From the Ellis B Feaster You Tube Radio Aircheck & Classic TV Channel.