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The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.
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photography
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John Dunning |
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804707e
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The Benny of the air was a fraud, a myth, a creation. It should have surprised no one to learn--after years of toupee jokes that played so well into the vanity theme--that Benny never wore one. He overtipped in restaurants, gave away his time in countless benefit performances, and was lavish in his praise of almost everyone else. "Where would I be today without my writers, without Rochester, Dennis Day, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, and Do..
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John Dunning |
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Throughout his life, he was the opposite of all show business cliches. His marriage endured: by all accounts, he dearly loved his wife. Words most often used by those who knew him were "decent," "genial," "gentle," and "generous." He was a constant target of panhandlers and always had a roll of money in his pockets for handouts. He was not, apparently, a chummy man. His few real intimates, old friends like Doc Rockwell and Uncle Jim Harkins..
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John Dunning |
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The ever-reliable Bill Thompson filled the gap with a new character, Wallace Wimple. Wallace gave new meaning to the word "wimp," for this was the nickname pinned on him by Fibber McGee. Wimple was terrified of his "big old wife," the ferocious, often-discussed but never-present "Sweetie Face." Also in 1941 came Gale Gordon as Mayor LaTrivia, who would arrive at the McGee house, start an argument, and become so tongue-tied that he'd blow hi..
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John Dunning |
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Sinatra's final radio days were filled with minor quarter-hours and one full-length series in which he was relegated to the role of a disc jockey. By 1950 people were writing his professional obituary. His public image had taken a beating, his personal life a succession of wives, scrapes, and alleged friendships with gangsters. It would take a 1953 film, From Here to Eternity, and a subsequent acting career to save him.
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John Dunning |
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Orson Welles answered almost everything thrown at him, prompting Fadiman to comment dryly, "This is your last appearance on this program, Mr. Welles."
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John Dunning |
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Blanc went on to speaking parts, playing a wide variety of sardonic and hysterical characters. He played caustic delivery men and punchdrunk fight trainers. As Benny's beleaguered French violin teacher, he suffered through Benny's scrapings and then had to plead for his money. Inevitably, Benny had no small change--he was a dime off, and this called for a trip to his vault. At last, liberated, Professor LeBlanc would scream, "I'm free! I'm ..
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John Dunning |
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Benny's most famous gag, when a robber demanded, "Your money or your life!" and the hilarity kept building while Benny thought it over."
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John Dunning |
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His first play, Burial Services, concerned the burial of a paralyzed girl who was still alive. It caused such a furor (more than 50,000 letters were written to NBC) that Oboler would never again write a story with such a personal theme that could adversely affect a vast audience." Oboler remembered it this way: "I had taken a believable situation and underwritten it so completely that each listener filled the silences with the terrors of hi..
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John Dunning |
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Chandu the Magician was among the first and last shows of its kind, in two distinct runs separated by 12 years of silence. Partners Raymond R. Morgan and Harry A. Earnshaw were brainstorming in 1931, looking for a new radio idea, when Earnshaw mentioned the public's high interest in magic. They created Frank Chandler, who would fight the world's evil forces with occult powers and a far-reaching crystal ball. Evil was personified in Roxor, a..
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John Dunning |
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74f9ac9
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When President Roosevelt suggested to Archibald MacLeish that radio be prodded to help celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, Corwin was given the job. It was an enormous undertaking, a 60-minute broadcast to air on the four national networks simultaneously. But We Hold These Truths was to have a special meaning, for the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor the week before, and the show arrived on an unprecedented wave of patr..
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John Dunning |
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b0e2174
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It seems strange that George Burns and Gracie Allen would be discovered, as radio properties, by the British. They were doing a vaudeville tour in England, playing to packed houses everywhere. The British just loved Gracie; her routines became so well known during the six-month trip that the audience would sometimes shout out the punchline in unison. They were aided in this by radio, using the infant medium to promote their stage shows, doi..
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John Dunning |
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The cast in 1938-39: Bob Hope, madcap Jerry Colonna, announcer Bill Goodwin, and bandleader Skinnay Ennis. Blanche Stewart and Elvia Allman as high-society crazies Brenda and Cobina. Judy Garland, resident songstress, 1939; Frances Langford for many years thereafter. Barbara Jo Allen as Vera Vague by 1943. Stan Kenton as maestro, 1943, when Skinnay Ennis went into the Army; Desi Arnaz Orchestra, 1946; Les Brown beginning in 1947. Singers of..
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John Dunning |
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GLENN MILLER, the epitome of big bands, a group that burst on the scene in 1938, reached the heights, and spent its primary career in five years. Miller was a trombonist, unable to match the technical ability of Tommy Dorsey or the creativity of Jack Teagarden. But he was a superb arranger who knew what he wanted and how to find the men who could produce that esteemed sound. Miller disappeared over the English Channel in December 1944.
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John Dunning |
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cfa44f6
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His shows on tape do not wear well. Topical humor can be hilarious at the time, but it seldom holds up. The moment is lost, the immediacy gone, and a modern listener is left, perhaps, with a sense of curiosity. The opening of the June 2, 1942, show from Quantico is a good example. There is little doubt that Hope is playing to the best crowds of his life, a cheering section that many another comedian would die for. His theme is all but drown..
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John Dunning |
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There were no singers, no musical interludes, no quizzes or money to be won. It was wall-to-wall Breneman and his ladies: crazy questions and spontaneous, witty, sometimes devilishly clever answers. "What's your favorite morning fruit juice?" Breneman asked a young woman. "Gin rickey," she said, delighting the crowd. "Did you ever milk a cow?" Breneman might ask out of the blue. There was no telling what marvelous anecdote he might pry out ..
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John Dunning |
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The troupe also made a 20,000-mile trip into the European war. Hope was the first American entertainer to perform in Sicily. He did a show at Messina just after the enemy had fled the town and was still bombarding the area with its artillery. By the end of the war, it was estimated that Hope had appeared at virtually every camp, naval base, and hospital in the country. He had made half a dozen trips overseas, including a tour of the South P..
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John Dunning |
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The dates often lasted till early morning. Chaperones guided the winners home, leaving them only when they went their separate ways and the sponsor's responsibility ended. But Cupid was not denied: at least half a dozen marriages and many "lively correspondences" came out of the show. And the idea worked on television as well. Blind Date ran on early ABC-TV, again with Francis as hostess, from 1949 through 1952."
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John Dunning |
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These shows have all been in circulation more than 20 years. Since then: almost nothing. Connoisseurs of the Hollywood run generally disdain the New York shows as inferior product. But as William Faulkner once said, "Given a choice between Scotch and nothing, I'll take Scotch." --
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John Dunning |
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In the storyline, Judy's father Melvyn owned the Foster Can Company. Her mother was a typical radio housewife. Her brother Randolph had a large vocabulary and a "supreme distaste for girls" (Radio Life). Oogie Pringle, Judy's boyfriend, was a paragon of radio adolescents. Her friends were named Gloria, Mitzi, Eleanor, Stinky Edwards, and Jo-Jo Duran. The plots were almost interchangeable with others involving teenagers of either sex: less z..
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John Dunning |
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After a short trial as a weekly show, the serial leaped to a 1932 rating of 25 points, becoming one of the all-time favorites of the air. Berg journeyed into the Lower East Side for her research, browsing among the rat-infested tenements, vegetable stands, and pushcarts. She went incognito, to avoid inhibiting the people with her celebrity. She did take a Radio Mirror reporter on a tour through narrow Orchard Street in 1936, showing him the..
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John Dunning |
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Parsons was known for ruthlessness and a long memory. The biggest celebrities in America came when "invited," with Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, and Greta Garbo among the few to ignore Parsons's call. In truth, those who worked Hollywood Hotel usually prospered. Their films became box office hits, their personal fame was enhanced, and all for an hour's work. But many found it demeaning."
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John Dunning |
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After these walk-ons, she would banter with announcer Ken Niles and perhaps indulge in more stargazing. In her memoir, radio actress Mary Jane Higby recalls working the show. The "underpaid radio actors" soon took to calling themselves "the Gay Ad-Libbers." They "would circle the microphone, trying to simulate people having a marvelous time. 'What fun to be here!' they would cry. 'My, doesn't Myrna Loy look gorgeous! Whoops, there's Bette D..
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John Dunning |
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When the series tackled freedom of religion, it wasn't simply with another show on Roger Williams: instead it told of Dr. Martin Niemoeller, who defied Hitler's German Christian Church and was imprisoned for his trouble.
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John Dunning |
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George Herman "Babe" Ruth was an awkward radio novice who croaked his lines and had almost no sense of timing. But he was the biggest sports hero of his day. His radio shows consisted of chatter, interviews, stale jokes, analysis, and predictions of upcoming games. Ruth had done vaudeville tours as early as 1921: he was an old hand at working crowds but still suffered periodic bouts with mike fright."
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John Dunning |
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The show is said to have originated on WCAU, Philadelphia, the sponsor's home city, in 1927. Its arrival in New York in 1931 kicked off an unusual commercial identity--a children's song-dance-and-story hour sponsored by one of the strongest symbols of New York city life, the automat (where nickel coffee and a piece of pie was a Broadway tradition). With its first New York broadcast, Horn and Hardart admitted it had nothing to sell to kids b..
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John Dunning |
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Among the guests who appeared on Information, Please were Ben Hecht, George S. Kaufman, Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Thompson, Lillian Gish, Alexander Woollcott, H. V. Kaltenborn, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Carl Sandburg, Albert Spalding, Boris Karloff, Marc Connelly, Dorothy Parker, Beatrice Lillie, and Postmaster General James Farley. Prizefighter Gene Tunney surprised the nation with his knowledge of Shakespeare. Moe Berg, Boston Red Sox catc..
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John Dunning |
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The fight spilled out into the press. Allen blasted the censors. "They are a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference. Their conferences are meetings of men who can do nothing but collectively agree that nothing can be done." The thin-skinned network reacted again, cutting Allen off in the middle of a barb. Now other comics joined the fray. That week Red Skelton said on his show that he'd have to be c..
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John Dunning |
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claimed he was a victim of Stop the Music, a big-money giveaway show that ABC had inserted into the 8 o'clock Sunday timeslot. But other critics suggested that the old formulas that Allen had been using for 18 years had simply worn themselves out. He dropped from the top to 38th on the charts in one year. His sponsor offered to move him, but he refused to take a more advantageous schedule. He was a regular on The Big Show, but his life afte..
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John Dunning |
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When Roosevelt was elected, rumors spread that Coughlin was in line for a high administrative post and would quit the church to enter government service. But this failed to materialize, and Coughlin became disenchanted with Roosevelt as well. His first public break with Roosevelt came in 1934, when he urged payment of a soldiers' bonus and the president publicly threatened to veto it. By 1935 Coughlin's break with Roosevelt was complete; by..
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John Dunning |
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This series capitalized on the new Red scare of the early 1950s: 78 episodes were recorded, without any assistance from the FBI, which refused to cooperate. It didn't matter: anti-Communist hysteria was at a peak, and by the end of 1952 I Was a Communist was scheduled on more than 600 stations--far more than if it had been on any network. The show was based on the book (and subsequent movie) by Matt Cvetic and purportedly told of his advent..
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John Dunning |
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After Orson Welles terrified the nation with his Halloween 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, his name became a household word. The immediate result was sponsorship for his theatrical air company, The Mercury Theater on the Air. Campbell Soups had been sponsoring the once-famed but fading variety hour Hollywood Hotel, which closed its doors in December 1938. The soup company immediately picked up Welles and his players, and the first Campbel..
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John Dunning |
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Crosby's name was mentioned, and Peyton got on the telephone. He tracked Crosby to the set of The Bells of St. Mary's, where Crosby was working on the role, ironically, of a priest. On the spur of the moment, Crosby agreed to do the show. Francis Cardinal Spellman also appeared, and the Mother's Day broadcast was such a success that Peyton pushed ahead with plans for a regular series. Mutual donated the time, under four conditions: that the..
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John Dunning |
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The stories reveal little or no religious dogma: they are virtually indistinguishable from other high-quality anthologies on the air. There were 482 dramas broadcast. Father Peyton himself released almost the entire run to collectors. In 1967 he published his autobiography, All for Her, which includes several chapters on his radio work.
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John Dunning |
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In his four months in England, wrote Corwin, "I did not once interview a high government official. The main objective of the series was to establish the character of the British people and not disseminate the handouts of the Ministry of Information. The people were soldiers, sailors, workers, miners, the theater manager, the elevator man, Police Officer Gilbert, the Everingtons, the Westerbys, Betty Hardy the actress, Henry Blogg the lifesa..
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John Dunning |
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As many as three characters were murdered in a single quarter-hour ILAM episode. People were killed in ghoulish, imaginative, and sometimes mystifying ways. Throats were ripped out by wolves; there were garrotings and poisonings and mysterious slashings. In the story Monster in the Mansion, a headless black cat was found in a lady's bed, and a man had his arm amputated while he slept; in The Thing That Cries in the Night, a slasher was at w..
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John Dunning |
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An example of such was the story of three travelers who crash their car and are thrown back into prehistoric times. They encounter a Neanderthal man who doesn't respond to reason and must be shot. "This is Oboler's oblique approach to alerting the public that tyranny could only be dealt with by force of arms, not appeasement." --
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John Dunning |
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Cassidy had been created by Clarence Mulford, writer of formula western novels and pulpy short stories. In the stories, Cassidy was a snorting, drinking, chewing relic of the Old West. Harry Sherman changed all that when he bought the character for the movies. Sherman hired Boyd, a veteran of the silent screen whose star had faded, to play a badman in the original film. But Boyd seemed more heroic, and Sherman switched the parts before the ..
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John Dunning |
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Newspapers ran the wrong mugshots, and it was the self-fulfilling prophecy: the studios, believing his name had been damaged, canceled his contracts. Only four years later did Hopalong Cassidy ride up and save him. Boyd made more than 50 Cassidy films with Sherman, and another dozen on his own between 1943 and 1946. His acquisition of the Cassidy film library was complete by 1948, when he joined the Whites in the radio venture.
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John Dunning |
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a western hero, as writer J. Bryan III described it in a 1939 Saturday Evening Post article, "who goes around righting wrongs against tremendous odds and then disappearing immediately." Trendle is given the salient quote. "I see him as a sort of lone operator. He could even be a former Texas Ranger." At this point, according to Bryan, one of the XYZ staffers cried, "There's his name! The Lone Ranger! It's got everything!"
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John Dunning |
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Irene Rich had been a notable star of the silent screen in the 1920s, playing opposite Will Rogers, Dustin Farnum, and Wallace Beery. But a disagreement with Warner Brothers sent her into a new career--radio! By her own account, it was an inspiration: at "three o'clock in the morning I took a plane for New York, and the next day I presented myself at the National Broadcasting studios." Irene Rich Dramas, which ran for more than a decade in ..
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John Dunning |
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A listen to tapes only confirms the judgment of contemporary critics. This was truly a bad show, a creaking monstrosity, an ill wind whose time had inexplicably come. Who cared if the contestant won the refrigerator? Refrigerators were boring.
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John Dunning |
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It Pays to Be Ignorant was radio's lamebrained answer to such intellectual quizzes as Information, Please and The Quiz Kids. It was a feast of the absurd in which questions were asked but seldom answered. The three nitwits who made up the "board of experts" spent most of the time trying to figure out what the questions were, between rambling monologues, irrelevancies, and rude interruptions."
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John Dunning |
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Kenny Baker, brought another dimension of comedy to the singer's role, the addled young man with the voice of gold. His tenure was solid, four full seasons. He was almost, but not quite, the answer in the singer's role.
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John Dunning |