Subject: [removed] Digest V2010 #124
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 7/12/2010 4:18 PM

To: [removed]@[removed]
Reply-to: [removed]@[removed]

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                                The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                                  Volume 2010 : Issue 124
                             A Part of the [removed]!
                                 [removed]
                                     ISSN: 1533-9289

                                     Today's Topics:

      A little rehearsal time               [ <otrbuff@[removed]; ]

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    Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:14:48 -0400
    From: <otrbuff@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  A little rehearsal time

    The current issue of Time devotes a whole page to "the end of an era" as it
    marks the passage of As the World Turns into oblivion, set to occur Sept. 17
    after 13,858 installments, all of them new (no reruns).  It's the last of
    P&G's daytime dramas, the company that produced and/or sponsored more hours
    than anybody in the business.  After 54 years since its debut as the first
    half-hour serial on April 2, 1956 (later expanded to an hour), ATWT set a
    lot of precedents, won a lot of awards, and weathered many trials and
    tribulations.  This is a milestone about to be marked in the lineage of soap
    operas and one wonders, with the durable Guiding Light having succumbed not
    long ago, is the form now marking time until its extinction?

    Cost is everything in the business today.  Time notes that ATWT applied all
    sorts of expense-saving measures like using fewer actors, shooting outdoor
    scenes to avoid building costly sets, and speeding production to the point
    that at least some or all rehearsing on the set was omitted entirely with
    scenes simply blocked and filmed.  As I detailed in my 2006 release "The
    Daytime Serials of Television, 1946-1960"
    ([removed]), many pages
    focused on the pivotal ATWT as well as contemporary narratives, painstaking
    effort was given to rehearsals every day.  This included numerous hours of
    literal walking through every scene and saying every line at least once,
    usually twice or three times before airing live or taping.

    When I read the Time piece, I thought back to Radioland and how they handled
    rehearsals for daily washboard weepers.  Some producers, hired by
    advertising agencies, required what almost seems like inordinate time for
    practice with peers.  Florence Freeman, who played Wendy Warren, told me she
    had to be in place at the studio every morning at 10:30 [removed] for the 12 noon
    broadcast of Wendy Warren and the News.  By the time it was over, she'd been
    at CBS almost two hours for a 15-minute broadcast.  Yet her commitment of 90
    minutes before going on the air was typical of shows produced by virtually
    anybody except those under the flag of Air Features, Inc., owned by the
    medium's most prolific producers, Frank and Anne Hummert.

    Always cutting corners to save a few bucks, the Hummerts could get blood out
    of a turnip.  Like a mother hen Anne clucked over as many as a dozen
    quarter-hour drainboard dramas airing at any given time in the heyday of the
    industry.  And to keep expenses down, even though they paid actors,
    musicians, announcers and directors the least minimal wages allowed by AFRA
    regulations, one of their sure-fire methods was to cut practice to the bone.

    Vivian Smolen, who for 14 years was the beleagured Our Gal Sunday, an Air
    Features production, told me in the 1950s that she and her colleagues
    assembled at 11:45 [removed] for their daily 12:45 [removed] broadcast, a half-hour
    less than Wendy Warren rehearsed and presumably most other non-Hummert
    vehicles required.  And George Ansbro, the illustrious announcer of the
    Hummerts' enduring Young Widder Brown at 4:45 [removed], declared that he didn't
    have to be present until 4 [removed], just 45 minutes ahead of the live
    broadcast!  Hummert announcers, who usually remained in the fold for
    decades, may have done their jobs so long they were given special
    dispensation (directive?) not to show up for work as early as the rest of
    the cast.  (Translation:  the Hummerts saved 15 minutes of time they'd be
    paying George if he was at work!)

    Of course, spending less time in rehearsals could be a meal ticket for
    casts, too:  if they could get out of one studio in an hour or 75 minutes as
    opposed to nearly two hours, they could often walk to another studio (or
    catch a cab to another network) and perform in several other dramas on the
    same day.  In doing so they were, like the Hummerts, lining their own
    pockets, albeit at poverty levels (if all their work was for Air Features).
    Staats Cotsworth, who was journalist David Farrell on Air Features' Front
    Page Farrell, revealed to a Newsweek reporter in 1948 that he was working a
    half-dozen shows several days a week.  And Anne Elstner, in the namesake
    role of Air Features' Stella Dallas, once claimed she was appearing on as
    many as 12 shows in one day!  (If so, it must have been the all-time record
    for a non-news series.)

    Julie Stevens, who was the memorable Helen Trent forever, expressed
    disappointment when she saw the figure on her initial contract as she was to
    be the heroine.  But the Air Features attorney who gave it to her to sign
    (the Hummerts seldom showed up for such trivial ceremonies), on seeing her
    crestfallen face, explained:  "Don't worry.  You'll be taken care of.
    You'll be used on plenty of other Air Features shows, and you'll see your
    income rise to a respectable sum."  Ms. Stevens noted years later, "It
    happened just the way he said it would."

    Jim Cox

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    End of [removed] Digest V2010 Issue #124
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