Aaron Spelling was a tireless charmer.

Long after he needed to prove anything to anyone in this town, he went out of his way to ingratiate himself with industry insiders, whether it was the young programming executives at WB Network or the assistants in the Miracle Mile offices of Spelling Television or a green reporter who was so obviously awestruck by his presence.

During the half-dozen lengthy sit-down interviews I did with him, starting in 1994 after HBO's "And the Band Played On" earned a bevy of Emmy nominations, Spelling always reminded me of a good-natured leprechaun. He would puff away on his pipe, recount behind-the-scenes anecdotes from his many shows and pop up every so often to find something he had to show me -- a note of appreciation from an actor, an award from a charitable organization or a gift from his beloved wife and children. It was clear that he was proud of his accomplishments and comfortable with his success. The servants in his home would walk backwards out of a room rather than turn their backs to the lord of the Manor, as his storied Holmby Hills manse is known.

Indeed, Spelling's surroundings reinforced the magnitude of his achievements. In the Miracle Mile offices where Spelling Television operated for most of its last decade, the boss' office on the top floor was the size of a small aircraft hangar, covered in brown shag carpet, brown plush sofas and overstuffed chairs, complete with his own personalized pinball machine. The ground-floor library in his home was outfitted with floor-to-ceiling shelves full of red leather-bound scripts of Aaron Spelling productions. Even the bowling alley in the basement was outfitted with awards, press clippings and various other mementos of a momentous life.

Somehow, he maintained an earthiness and a just-plain-folks attitude about it all, aided by the Texas drawl that he never lost. No matter how many shows he had that passed the golden 100-episode mark, he would recall wistfully the pilots that got away or the shows that were canceled too soon. He loved to talk about the formative years of his career, when he was hanging out with other out-of-work actors at the "no-tell motel" in Hollywood and scrounging around for bit parts.

"Dick Powell bought me my first suit in this town," Spelling told me more than once of the actor-turned-producer who gave him his first break in TV as a writer and producer. He admired how Powell had forged a new path for himself after his acting career waned. Spelling gave up acting for behind-the-camera work early on, but his memory of shoddy treatment by producers during cattle-call auditions spurred him to make sure that his company treated actors with respect, even at the audition stage.

If he had any regrets, it was that his work was usually dismissed by critics as confection, or worse, "schlock." He never said it in so many words, but it was clear he craved the recognition from the creative community that other uber-producers like Norman Lear and Steven Bochco earned with their shows. He wondered aloud why people didn't give him equal amount of credit for doing the heavy-drama stuff of "Family" and "Band Played On" as they did for "Charlie's Angels" and "The Love Boat."

Having grown up with the trauma of discrimination because of his Jewish heritage, Spelling had an innate sympathy for outcasts and the underprivileged, particularly children. He was moved by the AIDS crisis and did what he could to shed light on the disease. He hated the fact that his wealth and fame made him and his family an easy target for the tabloid media, for frivolous lawsuits and for late-night TV punch lines.

But overall, as reflected in the tenor of his shows, Spelling was an optimist. He was grateful to have lived in a time and a place when a poor kid from Texas could, through hard work and ingenuity, become a Hollywood mogul. I couldn't help but make the it's-a-great-country observation a few years ago as we were winding up a tour of the gardens on his six-acre compound.

"It certainly is," he said with mile-wide grin. "It certainly is."