Marvin Zindler has died at the age of 85, after fighting for some time the horrible illness of pancreatic cancer. 

Marvin Zindler has been an iconic and one of the most influential American television new reporters. He has been worked for the television station KTRK-TV from Houston, Texas since 1973, when he was given a job at the age of 51 after he had been fired from the Harris County Sheriff’s Department. He had fought consumer fraud at the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, but in just no time he became also a flamboyant television consumer reporter.

However, Marvin Zindler has become famous as a play and a movie have been inspired by one of his actions. He fought against a rural brothel near La Grange only few months after being hired by the Houston, Texas, television KTRK-TV on the 1^st of January 1973. Marvin Zindler’s historical fight against the Chicken Ranch from the Fayette County, Texas, near La Grange had started in 1973, with the reporters’ new report on it. The story featured also in two 1974 issues of the “Playboy” magazine, but then the Chicken Ranch had been already closed by Zindler.

However, his story became the basis for a Broadway and for a movie musical titled “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and it then inspired also ZZ Top’s song titled “La Grange”. Zindler became famous but his closing the Chicken Ranch had maddened the Sheriff of the Fayette County, who later attacked the journalist and left him with two fractured ribs and not only. This story effectively launched Zindler who later signed an unprecedented lifetime contract with Capital Cities/ABC Inc. and KTRK-TV, which he has honored.

However, it was also the illness that has stopped Zindler to do his job he had been doing for about 35 years. The beloved journalist has lost the battle against pancreatic cancer and the hoary age and has died of complications, leaving a hole in its watchers’ hearts. May he rest in peace!