Portal:Houston/Selected biography/August 2007

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Marvin Harold Zindler, Sr. (August 10, 1921 - July 29, 2007), was an iconic and influential news reporter for television station KTRK-TV in Houston, Texas, USA. His hard-hitting investigative journalism, through which he mostly represented the city's elderly and working class, made him one of the city's most influential and well-known media personalities. Zindler attended Pershing Middle School and Lamar High School in Houston, and went on to John Tarleton Agricultural College in Stephenville, Texas. In 1941, when the United States entered World War II, Zindler joined the United States Marine Corps and later received an honorable discharge.

Zindler made local and national headlines when he closed the Chicken Ranch in Fayette County, Texas, near La Grange, after he made a news report on it in 1973. The Chicken Ranch story was featured in two 1974 issues of Playboy magazine, was the basis for the Broadway and film musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and served as the basis of the song La Grange by ZZ Top. The closing did not go well with the Sheriff of Fayette County, who later attacked Zindler in a fight that left Zindler with two fractured ribs, along with a snatched toupee, reportedly waving it in the air as if it were a prized enemy scalp.