Harold Greene, a longtime Los Angeles television news anchor and reporter whose career stretched across several stations, died last night at 82. His family announced his passing, and his daughter Courtney said he had signed off for the last time on Tuesday.
For viewers who grew up with local news in L.A., Greene was a familiar face across decades of changing anchors and time slots. He worked for ABC7 Eyewitness News, KCAL 9 News and CBS 2 News, and his career reached back to his first L.A. job as a reporter and producer for KABC before he left for San Diego and later returned to Los Angeles.
Greene’s path through local television was long and unusually varied. He co-anchored the news in L.A. with Jerry Dunphy in 1978, became ABC7’s weekend anchor with Joanne Ishimine in 1982, then later took over the 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. weeknight editions of Eyewitness News after Dunphy left. He eventually moved to the 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. slots, and at ABC he also hosted Hollywood Close-Up and A.M. Los Angeles.
His career did not stay in one place. Greene later moved to the NBC affiliate at the time, KGTV, to co-anchor the news, and after years on air he joined CBS 2 in 2001. He was laid off by KCBS/KCAL in 2008, but by then he had already built a résumé that included 10 Golden Mike awards, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Award, two Emmys, three Edward R. Murrow Awards and twelve L.A. Press Club Awards.
Courtney said she and her mother were with Greene when he died, a detail that gives the announcement a quiet finality behind the professional milestones. She also said the family is planning a memorial after the holidays, setting the next public moment for a broadcaster whose voice and face were part of Los Angeles television for years.
One of the most durable stories around Greene followed him long after the newscasts ended: the notion that his on-air look helped inspire parts of the Ron Burgundy character in Anchorman. The legend has circulated for years, even as Will Ferrell denied it. That kind of rumor tends to follow people who became part of the city’s visual memory, and Greene was one of them. What endures now is simpler. He is gone, his family has said goodbye, and Los Angeles news lost a veteran who helped define it across generations.
