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The early days of Inner Sanctum gave a generous mix of classics and original stories. Boris Karloff was a regular, appearing in, among others, the Poe classics The Telltale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher. Peter Lorre was heard in The Horla, by Maupassant, and George Coulouris, Paul Lukas, and Claude Rains were also starred performers. But Karloff propelled it: fueled by his film portrayals of Frankenstein's monster, he appeared mo..
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John Dunning |
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Only on Inner Sanctum could a man be haunted for 40 years by the wailing of his dead wife, then learn that the sound was the wind rushing through a hole in the wall where he had sealed her body. Only here would a man be sentenced to life imprisonment after committing murder to obtain a scientific formula that made him immortal.
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John Dunning |
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Though the series took its name from, and promoted, Simon and Schuster's Inner Sanctum line of mystery novels, the radio stories were mostly originals. More than 100 shows are available, valued today as high camp.
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John Dunning |
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The show made national news in June by yanking off the air at the last minute a story detailing the 1937 escape from Alcatraz of convicts Ralph Roe and Theodore Cole. The FBI had always maintained that Roe and Cole drowned, a point hotly disputed by ex-inmate Pat Reed, the story's main source. NBC pulled the show at the FBI's request, leaving Reed crying coverup.
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John Dunning |
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THE JACK WEBB SHOW, madcap comedy-variety. BROADCAST HISTORY: Spring 1946, ABC West Coast, from KGO, San Francisco. 30m, Wednesdays at 9:30 Pacific time, premiering March 20. This insane bit of fluff was one of Jack Webb's earliest efforts, so out of character for the man who created Dragnet and airing three years before that landmark police show.
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John Dunning |
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Kieran was particularly alert when Fadiman asked what political leader was a bastard's son. Levant thought it might be Adolf Hitler, ne Schicklgruber, an answer challenged by a woman in the audience who thought Hitler himself was the bastard. "He is, if he wasn't," said Kieran to thundering laughter."
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John Dunning |
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Moe Berg, Boston Red Sox catcher, had a quick mind and a vast store of general knowledge (and later became a spy, searching out atomic secrets for the OSS in Europe). Harpo Marx appeared without speaking, whistling his way riotously through the program. Fred Allen took over the show, relegating Fadiman to a panelist's chair. Wendell Willkie did the same. Deems Taylor was a regular fill-in, appearing no less than 30 times.
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John Dunning |
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The idea behind Information, Please was almost incidental to its long-running success. What made it an immortal piece of radio was the mix of personalities who fit the idea so perfectly. The quiz, in fact, was the least important part of the formula. The questions were an intellectual exercise, something to get the talk rolling and the humor bubbling from within. "An uproarious error or a brilliant bit of irreverence was rated far above any..
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John Dunning |
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At 34, Clifton Fadiman had already enjoyed a solid career in letters. Born in Brooklyn in 1904, Fadiman had been an editor at Simon and Schuster and was now, in 1938, book critic for the New Yorker. He was a prodigious reader.
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John Dunning |
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Benny toured with her for two years, traveling through Illinois and Wisconsin under the billing "Salisbury and Kubelsky: From Grand Opera to Ragtime." When Salisbury retired, Benny continued the act with pianist Lyman Woods. For six years he played his violin and never spoke or told a joke. He enlisted in the Navy for the First World War and found himself in a maritime revue at the Great Lakes Naval Station. Here he told his first jokes, an..
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John Dunning |
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By 1932 he was a vaudeville headliner. He was on Broadway as part of Earl Carroll's Vanities when newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan invited him to appear on a radio interview and gossip show. At the time he had no great interest in the new medium, but he went on Sullivan's quarter-hour show March 19, 1932, as a favor. His first words on the air were these: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while y..
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John Dunning |
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Benny asked his wife to play the part, and Sadye Marks became Mary Livingstone. She discovered mike fright, a malady that never really left her. She had never been unusually nervous in vaudeville, but now, performing for the nation, her jitters were acute. The infectious laugh that squeaked out of her was the result of nerves, but it stuck and became part of her character.
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John Dunning |
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On April 6, 1934, Don Wilson became the new announcer. Wilson would remain with Benny to the end of the TV show in 1965. His deep, rich voice was one of the show's trademarks, and the role he played--a roly-poly Gargantua--was yet another stretch of Benny's imagination. In reality, Wilson stood a little over six feet and weighed in the mid-220s: hardly the behemoth that Benny would chide with endless fat jokes in the years to come.
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John Dunning |
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Occasionally he'd get a letter like the one in 1947 from the silly attorney in Ohio, chastising him for his parsimonious treatment of his Negro valet, Rochester, and threatening to sue on Rochester's behalf. But as Cleveland Amory pointed out in the Saturday Evening Post, the real Rochester wasn't complaining: he "has never been anybody's valet, has a block-large estate and three servants of his own, drives an expensive car and a big statio..
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John Dunning |
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By May 16, the role had been filled by Earle Graser, a slender young man who had joined the station in the summer of 1931. Graser's voice soon became as well known as the president's, though his name remained unknown. Trendle wanted the actor to remain anonymous, to further the idea of the "man of mystery" he was portraying. Even Graser's neighbors had no idea what he did for a living until the morning of April 8, 1941, when he fell asleep ..
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John Dunning |
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That right, and you still kemo sabe. It mean 'faithful friend.'" Reid asked about his companions. "You only Ranger left," said Tonto. "You lone Ranger."
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John Dunning |
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In Who Was That Masked Man?, David Rothel gives verbatim, often conflicting, interviews with people in key positions at the time of The Lone Ranger's creation. And Dick Osgood, who worked 36 years at the Ranger's birthplace, combines his experience with the accounts of his coworkers in Wyxie Wonderland: An Unauthorized 50-Year Diary of WXYZ, Detroit.
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John Dunning |
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Goff knew the salesman for Quaker Oats. It happened that Quaker was then sponsoring Gene and Glenn, a series going off for the summer, and the company was looking for a replacement. Lauck and Goff were invited to audition then and there, on the spot. But they were afraid their act would be spoiled by a visual impression (they were in their 20s, playing oldtimers), so they asked the Quaker people to sit facing a wall and just listen. They pl..
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John Dunning |
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It was Striker, most agree, who came up with the ideas of the silver bullets and the silver shoes for the great stallion. It was Striker who at least pointed the way toward the Ranger's famous call, "Hi-Yo, Silver!" The early scripts had the hero shouting "Hi-Yi," a cry that didn't impress Jewell or True, who would announce it. They worked on it right up to air time, according to Osgood, settling on "Hi-Yo, Silver!" with less than a minute ..
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John Dunning |
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Like many of these romantic anthologies, the Grand Hotel format was mere window dressing to general romance. The opening had a switchboard operator (Betty Winkler) connecting calls to rooms. The people in those rooms became the story of the week. Arch Oboler wrote some early shows.
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John Dunning |
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Bendix died Dec. 8, 1964, at age 58. It was said that he had always looked 58.
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John Dunning |
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He was a knight of the range, a western hero who quickly became part of popular American folklore. His beliefs and personal habits were sketched as a guideline to those who wrote his adventures. "The Lone Ranger believes that our sacred American heritage provides every individual the right to worship God as he desires. The Lone Ranger never makes love on radio, television, in movies, or in cartoons. He is a man who can fight great odds, yet..
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John Dunning |
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In 1940, it wasn't surprising when an elderly couple was arrested for speeding through the Broadway tunnel in San Francisco and used this as their defense: it was time for The Lone Ranger, and they couldn't get radio reception inside the tunnel.
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John Dunning |
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Accounts vary as to how much DeMille had to do with The Lux Radio Theater beyond his job of announcing the plays. He was billed as producer and sometimes referred to as director, though he certainly never directed and was probably limited to consulting on prospective plays. In one magazine account, he was shown in the booth, allegedly giving orders from on high.
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John Dunning |
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In another incident of show-must-go-onsmanship, DeMille was transported to the theater in an ambulance. He was recovering from surgery, and was said to be performing against doctor's orders. He spoke his lines from a stretcher, photographed, of course, by the press.
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John Dunning |
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Marlene Dietrich breezed in and, "after snubbing the entire cast," announced that there would be no dress rehearsal because she was "not in the mood." Woodruff told her calmly that "we haven't got time to wait for moods here," and the rehearsal went on."
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John Dunning |
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Peary was born in 1908, son of a Portuguese immigrant, and christened Harrold Jose de Faria. He once pinpointed his first radio job as Jan. 21, 1923, at KZM, Oakland. In the late 1920s he worked at NBC in San Francisco. The Spanish Serenader, a series vintage 1928, gave him a chance to use his singing voice as well as acting talent. Landing in Chicago in 1937, he soon became one of radio's insiders, gaining a reputation as a top utility man..
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John Dunning |
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Then there was a major disruption with Errol Flynn, who arrived at rehearsal in the midst of a heated argument with his wife Lili Damita. The couple kept bickering through the reading until Woodruff erupted. "It was magnificent," said Flynn's costar, Olivia De Havilland, in Radio Mirror. "Never in all my life have I seen such wrath. I stood before my mirror night after night, trying to register anger like that."
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John Dunning |
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Two of the best westerns ever heard were done in the waning years of Lux: Broken Arrow (Burt Lancaster, Jeff Chandler, and Debra Paget, Jan. 22, 1951) and Shane (Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, and Ruth Hussey, Feb. 22, 1955).
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John Dunning |
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Tonto belonged to the Potawatomi tribe of northern Michigan, though the origins of the term "kemo sabe" puzzled scholars for years. One academic made a lighthearted attempt to trace it through various Indian dialects and finally gave up. In later years, Jewell admitted that he had coined it: his father-in-law had once run a camp called Ke-Mo-Sah-Bee in upper Michigan."
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John Dunning |
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Lassie was an unusual series in that the canine star did its own acting, with owner-trainer Rudd Weatherwax giving cues and providing on-air narration. The original Lassie (a male named Pal) took "about 15 whining and barking cues a week. He also pants with exquisite nuance, but cannot be depended upon to growl or snarl on cue" (Time) Animal imitator Earl Keen was thus on hand to fill in where Lassie failed to speak, and to play the roles o..
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John Dunning |
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Their romance was interminable, on again and off for seven years as one thing after another disrupted their lives. The disruptions were standard serial fare--Stephen's self-pity, jealousy, spite, and the ever-present fickle nature of soap opera males. In 1943, Stephen ran off to California with Maude Kellogg. At another point, he was partly cured of his paralysis in an amazing operation, but lost his legs again in an accident. Enough was en..
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John Dunning |
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Wyllis Cooper, who created, wrote, and produced it, was then a 36-year-old staffer in Chicago's NBC studios. Cooper, Newsweek continued, created his horror "by raiding the larder." For the purposes of Lights Out sound effects, people were what they ate. The sound of a butcher knife rending a piece of uncooked pork was, when accompanied by shrieks and screams, the essence of murder to a listener alone at midnight. Real bones were broken--spa..
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John Dunning |
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The Lineup took its listeners behind the scenes of a police headquarters "where under the cold, glaring lights pass the innocent, the vagrant, the thief, the murderer." The police lineup opened and closed each broadcast: Sgt. Grebb would be heard instructing the prisoners and thus setting up how the case was investigated and solved. Dragnet was the trendsetter in police drama, and realism was what each new show was striving for. Grebb was q..
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John Dunning |
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The initial guiding principle was simple: "Buy the rights to a fine play, hire the biggest names available, and hope the public will listen." But competition for big names was fierce in New York. When film stars came east--usually on a train between movies, en route to Europe--they were mobbed by agents seeking their appearances on the big variety shows. An appearance on The Rudy Vallee Hour or Shell Chateau paid more and was less demanding..
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John Dunning |
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Many of the staffers claimed to represent groups, with all their members voting for Edwards. Some of these votes were accepted, some rejected, some taken in part: if the caller claimed to be part of a formal club or service organization, all the votes claimed by that person were allowed. The magazine drummed its singer into a fourth-place finish, proving to its own satisfaction at least that The Original Amateur Hour was highly riggable.
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John Dunning |
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An article the following week charged that one amateur had been cruelly set up for national ridicule. Barely had his song begun when Bowes gave him the gong. The audience roared with laughter: the major smiled, not unkindly. But when the defeated amateur was ushered backstage, he stole a peek at the program log. He had been scheduled for one minute only, confirming his sudden realization that he'd been made a goat. "I knew I couldn't do my ..
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John Dunning |
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For anyone with busfare and a harmonica, The Original Amateur Hour was a grab at the brass ring. Some came without busfare, hitching rides across the country. Poor blacks came up from the South; cowboys from the West. Freak acts came from everywhere. Many had sung in choirs back home. Some had played tank towns in the corn belt, with three-piece combos held together by long strings of one-night stands. They were supposed to be "simon pures,..
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John Dunning |
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Bowes collected many honorary titles in his life: his real title, "major," was often suspected of being a trump-up, but it was genuine enough--he had held that rank in the U.S. Army Reserve during World War I. In retrospect, the show produced few stars of the first magnitude (Beverly Sills, Frank Sinatra, and Robert Merrill were the best-known Amateur Hour winners). "To be sure, minor talents have been discovered," Radio Guide conceded. "Bu..
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John Dunning |
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Still they came by the thousand, most without ever considering the odds they were bucking. The Original Amateur Hour was getting 10,000 applications a week: the producers could only hear 500 to 700 amateurs in weekly auditions; only 20 were selected for the broadcast, and the rest were sent back into the streets. Broke and alone, they soon ended up on the city's already bulging relief rolls.
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John Dunning |
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So Bowes had a bodyguard, "a good strongarm," he told the New Yorker, "who hustles them up to the microphone and down again. I always signal him before letting the bell go, and he is always ready to grab the poor boob before he can say anything vile."
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John Dunning |
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The show helped make famous such Kyser evergreens as Three Little Fishes and Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.
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John Dunning |
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But Grigsby had encountered stiff competition from RCA, which claimed to hold patents on radio tubes essential to the manufacture of modern radio equipment. Grigsby thus had to pay royalties to its staunchest competitor. Grigsby "loved CBS," Paley recalled in his memoir, "because they hated RCA," and RCA was the parent company of NBC."
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John Dunning |
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He was successful where it counted, at the box office and record stores. He was one of the most ardent bond salesmen on the air during the war years, making an estimated 1,000 appearances at camps, hospitals, and other bond-raising functions. Kyser married one of his singers, Georgia Carroll, in 1944. A TV version of his Kollege ran on NBC in 1949-50, and another in 1954: neither approached the success of the radio show. He disbanded soon t..
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John Dunning |