Marvin Harold Zindler (August 10, 1921 – July 29, 2007) was a news reporter for television station KTRK-TV in Houston, Texas, United States.

Abe wanted his sons to inherit the store, a career course that Marvin was reluctant to take because of his father's sometimes angry behavior.

[3] Beginning in 1951, when he worked for KATL, he hosted The Roving Mike, a 30-minute radio program airing on Sundays that documented crime and the people involved in Houston.

[4] In 1950 Zindler became a reporter and cameraman for Southwest Film Production Company which produced the 6 p.m. news for KPRC-TV, but in 1954, he was fired by an executive who said he was "too ugly" to work in TV.

[3] Two years later, Zindler joined the Scripps Howard Houston Press to work part-time as a crime reporter and photographer.

While working for the newspaper and his father's store, Zindler became dissatisfied with the retail business and in 1962 took a career detour to join the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

On January 1, 1973, Marvin Zindler joined KTRK, a station with a news program languishing in third place.

Zindler made local and national headlines when he and fellow journalist Larry Conners reported on a long-lived brothel known as the Chicken Ranch in Fayette County, Texas, near La Grange, which led to its closure in 1973.

[7] The story, along with his trademark reporting style, was instrumental in Zindler signing an unprecedented lifetime contract with Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. and KTRK-TV in September 1988, which he honored.

Zindler's reports on KTRK also included international stories, many involving trips to various third-world countries; segments in which local business owners (known as Marvin's Angels) provided services to people in dire financial or physical health; and stories focused on the elderly, including nursing home abuse investigations.

[3] At one point in the 1970s, Zindler considered running for Congress as a Republican, and the local GOP commissioned surveys that predicted he would win.

[16] Zindler's father was a four-term mayor of suburban Bellaire and was also a liberal; he was a card-carrying member of the NAACP and opponent of the Ku Klux Klan and his clothing store was among a handful of Houston businesses that advertised in African-American newspapers.

[17] On July 5, 2007, it was announced on KTRK's 6:00 p.m. newscast that Zindler was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer that had also spread to his liver.

The role of Melvin P. Thorpe, as played by Clinton Allmon in the original Broadway production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Dom DeLuise in the 1982 film version, is based on Zindler.