Subject: [removed] Digest V2003 #8
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 1/6/2003 3:03 PM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

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                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2003 : Issue 8
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Struts and Frets; On Hans Conried     [ Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed] ]

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Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 15:49:35 -0500
From: Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Struts and Frets; On Hans Conried

STRUTS AND FRETS

by Harry Bartell

 ++++

On Hans Conried

Hans Conried was born a hundred years too late. He should have been touring
the country playing Shakespeare with the likes of Edwin Forrest or Edwin
Booth instead of doing most of his work in the confines of a radio studio or
TV set. He even looked the part. He was over six feet tall and slender. He
had a long, narrow face that gave the impression of being gaunt although he
really wasn't. There was an air of sadness that hung around him but he was
one of the warmest, brightest people I ever knew.

Hans had a tendency to play all out which fit perfectly with the style of
radio comedy in the forties and fifties. In hindsight, he may have been over
the top but the scripts weren't exactly subtle. In addition, Hans was an
excellent dialectician. The ability to do dialects was a very valuable tool
for the freelance actor. It was common practice to be called upon to play two
parts in the same show and accented speech helped to separate the two
characters. The secret was always to provide the music and rhythm of the
accent and still be understandable. Comedy actors like Mel Blanc usually did
caricatures of a dialect. Hans stayed with a legitimate sound and still
managed to be very funny. His Uncle Tonoose on the Danny Thomas TV show was a
good example.

Sometimes dialects, like greatness, were thrust upon you. The first time I
was called for Romance of the Ranchos I paid very little attention to accents
floating around because the character I played was a gringo and spoke
American. I was on the show again the following week and this time I was cast
as a Californio, speaking with a Spanish accent. I had studied Spanish in
High School but had never really listened to the Texicans in Houston. But I
did listen very carefully to the other actors using Spanish dialects on the
show and gradually put pronunciation and rhythms together. Years later, after
a show a man came up to me and asked if I was from Argentina. I told him, no.
And he said I sounded exactly like his cousin in Buenos Aires. I'm not sure
that was a compliment. I've been told that Argentines speak the worst Spanish
in the world.

CBS studios on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood were in a U-shaped building with
a landscaped plaza in the center. In one side of the U was Brittingham's
restaurant which was usually filled with radio personnel, actors "being seen"
by producers, actors lying to each other or just taking a coffee break. One
evening, several of us including Hans were standing on the sidewalk outside
the CBS entrance in a break between dress rehearsal and air time when a girl
swathed in mink came out of Brit's and walked over to enter the studio. It
turned out that she was Linda Darnell although I didn't recognize her. As she
came closer I said, "Boy! That is a beautiful girl!" Hans looked her over
very carefully and then replied, "Probably can't do a single dialect." The
ultimate scorn.

Hans did me a favor which I never forgot and which I always tried to pass on.
It was on the occasion of one of the first shows I did at CBS. I was nervous
and I sneaked up into the sponsor's booth before the actual time of the call
to get a preview of the playing field and what I might be supposed to do.
When I finally went down into the studio, a tall, lanky guy wearing bright
red sox disengaged himself from the table where a bunch of actors were
looking at scripts, walked over to me and said, "I don't think we've met. My
name is Hans Conried." I told him my name and he took me over to the table
and introduced me to the rest of the cast. The actors in radio instinctively
formed themselves into a kind of club. Membership requirements were simple.
If you managed to get work as an actor on more than one or two shows, you
were in. Club members took a dim view of outsiders, especially motion picture
stars who got petrified in front of a microphone. Hans didn't follow the
protocol of letting the newbies simmer until proved.

During World War II, Hans was stationed in Japan as was Jerry Hausner. They
were an interesting pair, Hans tall and thin, Jerry small and roundish. They
were both assigned to Armed Forces Radio there and became very close friend
and vicious stamp traders. Jerry, along with Mary Lansing and one or two
others had an interesting specialty. He was sometimes called only to do baby
cries - just-born to one year. It was in Japan that Hans got hooked on
oriental art. I saw his collections of small pieces at his home in the hills
above Hollywood when I went there to photograph the Conrieds: Hans, Margaret
and their four children. It is a real regret that my pictures didn't say what
I wanted them to say.

For a while, Hans directed a Saturday morning show called Stars over
Hollywood which usually featured starlets. I remember working with Debbie
Reynolds and Mitzi Gaynor, for example. As was usual, after the dress
rehearsal the cast was seated at a table while Hans gave out cuts and changes
and any other specific directions to the actors before broadcast.  He
addressed each actor in turn with a comment or two with the exception of
Jerry. Finally, Jerry said, "What about me?" Hans answered with what has
become the classic of all radio direction: "Be better!"

Hans sometimes appeared around the studios in the company of his father who
was known by all as Papa. Papa Conried was a small cherubic man with a marked
accent that I think was German. There was talk that Papa was a combination
Svengali, Rasputin, and high-powered agent for Hans. I can't speak to that
because my contacts with Papa were very casual.

I don't know how or why Hans began doing truck tours with some minor comedy
plays in the East. Maybe it was the steady money; maybe he was sick of
television and wanted to work on the stage again. He was in Cleveland when he
was hospitalized with a heart attack and I wired him his famous phrase: Be
better!

The last time I saw him, Hans and Margaret and my wife Beverly and I came
face to face at the end of adjacent supermarket aisles. Hans stared and then
declaimed, "Good God! Can it be that we are both still alive?!!" We once had
a conversation about the perfect way to shuffle off this mortal coil.  I
suggested that I would like to go having given a superb performance in a
great role before a packed house. Hans added an additional proviso: "After
the curtain call, of course." That was Hans Conried. I'm awfully glad I knew
him.

- ------------------
Harry Bartell maintains that his major accomplishment as a professional actor
for forty years was to survive with his mind, morale and marriage intact.

Born in 1913 in New Orleans, he grew up in Houston and graduated Phi Beta
Kappa from Rice University in 1933. After a stint at Harvard Business School
and a couple of years forced labor in a department store he moved to
Hollywood and stayed there for the next fifty-one years. Three seasons at the
Pasadena Playhouse led to work in 185 radio series and 77 TV series plus a
dozen or so properly forgettable motion pictures.

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