Gadabout Gaddis

Roscoe Vernon Gaddis (January 28, 1896 – October 21, 1986), known professionally as Gadabout Gaddis, was a 20th-century American fisherman and television pioneer. Gaddis was born in Mattoon, Illinois and was nicknamed Gadabout by a boss who said he could never find him.

Gaddis, an avid fisherman since his youth in Illinois, was also a pilot and adventurer. He began his career in the early days of television by showing his home movies of his fishing expeditions. In 1939 he briefly hosted a program about fishing on General Electric's experimental TV station W2XAD in Schenectady, New York. When W2XAD became WRGB in the mid-1940s, Gaddis returned to the station to host Outdoors with Liberty Mutual, which was only the second sponsored television show (Lowell Thomas's being the first). The show was eventually carried on 73 stations. Going Places with Gadabout Gaddis in the 1950s was less successful, but beginning in the early 1960s Gaddis starred in The Flying Fisherman, also sponsored by Liberty Mutual.