Subject: [removed] Digest V2013 #34
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 3/19/2013 4:18 PM

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

    ------------------------------

                                The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                                  Volume 2013 : Issue 34
                             A Part of the [removed]!
                                 [removed]
                                     ISSN: 1533-9289

                                     Today's Topics:

      Walter Winchell and Louella Parsons   [ Ron Vanover <rvanover1@[removed] ]
      Unit 99                               [ <beachcrows@[removed]; ]
      Parsons & Winchell                    [ "Ted Kneebone" <tkneebone1@[removed] ]
      OTR [removed]                         [ "Ted Kneebone" <tkneebone1@[removed] ]
      Re: The Top 10 Books On OTR           [ Gregg Oppenheimer <gopp@[removed]; ]
      The Voice of Firestone                [ A Joseph Ross <joe@[removed] ]
      Truth or Consequences                 [ A Joseph Ross <joe@[removed] ]
      more OTR books                        [ Jody Davis <baroygis@[removed]; ]
      Unit 99                               [ Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed] ]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:31:49 -0500
    From: Ron Vanover <rvanover1@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Walter Winchell and Louella Parsons

    Kenneth Clarke asked if any recordings of Walter Winchell or Louella
    Parsons' radio broadcasts remain available.  He also asked if there was
    "real animosity" between Parsons and her rival, Hedda Hopper.

    There are at least 23 broadcasts of Walter Winchell's radio show,
    Jergen's Journal, that remain available. Of course, there may be more.
    The oldest Jergen's Journal broadcast show that I have is reported to
    have aired on May 18, 1941. The newest carries an air date of March 27,
    1949.  There are several of Parson's show, the Woodbury Hollywood News,
    that survived as well. I have 16 in my collection - the oldest with an
    air date of July 29, 1945 and the newest, October7, 1951.

    The animosity between Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper appears to have
    been real. Biographers of each on Wikipedia seem to lend credence to the
    rivalry.

    Ron Vanover
    [removed]
    Home of the Old Time Radio Hard Drive

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:31:58 -0500
    From: <beachcrows@[removed];
    To: "OTR Digest" <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Unit 99

    Charlie recently asked about the police program Unit 99.

    There are some 40 plus circulating episodes that date from August 1957
    thru June 1958. These feature Sacramento police Sgt Dan Meredith, who
    carried a tape recorder in his squad car, and provided tape recording
    coverage of actual Sacramento police call responses with his
    descriptive narration, witness interviews and the like. Long time
    Sacramento Police Chief  James Hicks was billed as the host and radio
    station KFBK chief announcer and special events director Tony Koester
    directed the program. Although this was a locally produced show I
    believe that KFBK was the local ABC affiliate at the time.

    Paul Thompson,
    Sacramento, CA

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:32:07 -0500
    From: "Ted Kneebone" <tkneebone1@[removed];
    To: "OTR Digest" <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Parsons & Winchell

    I have one show each from Louella Parsons and
    Walter Winchell.  Winchell appeared on TV with
    Johnny Carson in 1967, and I have audio from
    that program, also.

    Ted Kneebone

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:32:24 -0500
    From: "Ted Kneebone" <tkneebone1@[removed];
    To: "OTR Digest" <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  OTR [removed]

    The Dunning book has excellent information
    on old time radio programs.  For the collector,
    it is essential to also own Hickerson's book.
    It lists all known episodes of old radio programs
    and is kept up to date with supplements.  Here
    is the citation:
        Jay Hickerson
        4th revised ultimate history of network radio
    programming and guide to all circulating shows.
        October 2010
        Available from the author [removed]
        27436 Desert Rose Court, Leesburg, FL  34748

        My email address in his directory is incorrect.
    It should be:  tkneebone1@[removed]

    Ted Kneebone

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:32:31 -0500
    From: Gregg Oppenheimer <gopp@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: The Top 10 Books On OTR

    I would add

    1. My all-time favorite: the  wonderful "Tune in Tomorrow" by Mary Jane
    Higby. (Buy a used hardcover copy unless you've got very good eyesight -- the
    mass market paperback edition uses tiny type.)

    2. My dad's memoir, "Laughs, [removed] Lucy" by Jess Oppenheimer, which is
    filled with OTR stories, including this one, which took place in the 1930s at
    Radio Station KFRC in San Francisco (then part of the Columbia-Don Lee
    Network):

    At about this time, "Blue Monday Jamboree" host Harrison Holliway added a new
    department to the program: "Interviews with Interesting People." One
    seemingly ordinary Monday, the guest was an engineer from the railroad. On
    the day of the program, at the afternoon rehearsal, Holliway was running
    through the interview with the engineer, who had just mentioned that the
    pattern of the train whistles was actually a code with which engineers
    communicated between themselves.

    "What is the difference between the various whistles?" Holliway asked.

    "They all mean different things," the engineer replied, and went on to say
    that one long and two shorts mean one thing, two longs and two shorts mean
    another, three shorts have yet a different meaning, and so on.

    "What is your favorite whistle?"

    "That's easy. It's a private whistle; just between me and my wife. Long,
    short, long, short, long, long. I blow that when I'm about four miles out. My
    wife hears it and starts preparing dinner. She knows exactly how long it
    takes me to get home after I blow the whistle, and when I walk in the door a
    piping hot meal has just been set on the table."

    "Hold it. Hold it." Holliway was upset, stopping the rehearsal. "This is too
    sterile. We should be hearing these whistles," he called to the director. "He
    should be blowing them for us."

    Holliway grew more and more excited by his new thought. He turned to the
    engineer. "You must actually blow them for us. How can we arrange that?"

    The engineer offered that there usually were extra whistles in the shop being
    repaired. He suggested calling the railroad to see if they had one they could
    send to the studio. He did, and they had one; but they said it wouldn't work
    unless the building had compressed air they could tie into. Holliway assured
    them there was plenty of air power. He was ecstatic, like a kid waiting for a
    new toy. They promised they'd get it there as fast as they could, and for the
    rest of the afternoon Holliway paced nervously up and down, tensely watching
    the street for the delivery truck.

    No one bothered to ask the obvious question: If this fellow's wife could hear
    the whistle when he blew it from four miles away, then when it was blown in a
    closed, window-walled room with several hundred folks sitting within thirty
    feet of it, wasn't it going to be rather loud?

    It took longer than anyone expected, and Holliway was nearly out of his mind
    when finally, at about six o'clock, a tremendous truck and trailer pulled up
    in front of the building. It was about half a block long, and it was carrying
    the whistle, which appeared to me at the time to be roughly as long as the
    Washington Monument, and as big around as the Stockton Street Tunnel.
    Everyone was shocked. Somehow, when a whistle like that is mounted on a huge
    railroad engine, everything is in proper proportion. But when put next to
    ordinary objects and people, it becomes awesome-almost unearthly.

    Holliway, however, was delighted. A second, smaller truck, which followed the
    first, unloaded twenty or thirty laborers. Like Lilliputians trying to
    maneuver a trussed Gulliver, they managed to inch the whistle off the truck,
    snake it into the building, and worm it slowly up the stairs and into the
    studio. It was so heavy and bulky that airtime was approaching by the time
    they wrestled, tugged, and levered it into position. Its top cleared the
    ceiling by less than six inches.

    The whistle cord was set so the engineer could reach up and pull it while he
    stood at the microphone. By the time the workmen finally tightened down the
    connection to the compressed air pipe, there was no time to test anything.
    The audience was already filling all those folding chairs, and in the
    background, through the windows that formed the entire wall, the heavy
    evening traffic on Van Ness Avenue was crawling by, unaware of this impending
    wedding of realism and technology.

    The program took the air and everything went along fine, until it was time
    for the fateful interview. The railroad engineer and Holliway took their
    places. It was only a mildly interesting spot until Holliway asked him what
    the different whistles meant. He began to describe them, as per the original
    script, but Holliway stopped him and said, "But it's silly to talk about
    them, when we can actually hear them with our own ears. The railroad has been
    good enough to send us this spare whistle. The first one, you said, was one
    long and two shorts?"

    "That's correct," the engineer said, and while Holliway beamed at him with
    creative anticipation, he pulled the cord.

    The entire wall of windows shattered and blew out onto Van Ness Avenue. The
    performers on the stage were scattered like rag dolls. The audience, sitting
    in their folding chairs facing the stage, slid backwards across the floor as
    a unit, expressions of bemused interest still on their faces, riding their
    moving seats until they came to rest against the wall of now-glassless
    windows. The sound blew out the transmitter, and the station was off the air
    for two weeks. Mr. Lee, I understand, was hit with something like fifty-eight
    suits for broken eardrums. It was one of the more memorable moments of early
    radio.

    On Mar 17, 2013, at 9:18 AM, [removed]@[removed] wrote:

>     Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2013 10:45:14 -0500
>     From: Tom Barnett <[removed]@[removed];
>     To: OTR <[removed]@[removed];
>     Subject:  The Top 10 Books On OTR

>     Given the recent post that I saw. I thought I would create my own list of
>     best books on OTR (these are basically on my own bookshelf - so take it with
>     a grain of salt)

>     . . . .

>     What would YOU pick to be on a list?

>     Tom Barnett

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:33:28 -0500
    From: A Joseph Ross <joe@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  The Voice of Firestone

>     Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2013 10:50:04 -0500
>     From: Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed];

>     3/22

>     1948   The Voice of Firestone was the first commercial radio program to
>     be carried simultaneously on both AM and FM radio stations.

    I don't know that this was literally true.  Most FM stations in those
    days were simulcasts of a sister AM station, which means that whatever
    the AM station was broadcasting, including commercials, was on the FM
    station.  I think it more accurate to say that it was the first network
    station that deliberately tried to be on AM and FM stations in each
    market.  Several years later, when I was living in Albany, [removed], I
    discovered that it was on television as well as two AM radio stations.
    I didn't have FM at the time, but the show opening said that they could
    be heard on "regular radio," FM and television, and I quickly figured
    out (at age 10) that the CBS program was being heard on both the local
    CBS affiliate and on another station that had an FM sister station.

    --
    A. Joseph Ross, [removed]| 92 State Street| Suite 700| Boston, MA 02109-2004
    [removed]|[removed]| [removed]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:34:37 -0500
    From: A Joseph Ross <joe@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Truth or Consequences

>     Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2013 10:50:04 -0500
>     From: Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed];

>       From Those Were The Days

>     3/23

>     1940   Truth or Consequences was first heard on radio. Ralph Edwards
>     produced and hosted the [removed] The show was originally heard on only
>     four CBS stations. Later, NBC picked up the show where it eventually
>     became the most popular of all radio quiz shows.

    According to "Total Television" by Alex McNeal, it finished on CBS in
    June 1951 and premiered on NBC in January 1952.  Ralph Edwards
    originally hosted the show, but beginning in 1954, it was hosted by Jack
    Bailey, better known for hosting "Queen for a Day."  I remember it then
    on both radio and television around that time.  In Albany, where I
    lived, we didn't have enough TV stations yet for each network to have an
    affiliate, and the one VHF station carried programs from all networks.
    That meant that we got Truth or Consequences on TV by kinescope by
    delayed broadcast, and I remember hearing a particular program on radio
    and then seeing it on television a couple of weeks later.

    Jack Bailey's run ended in September 1956, and the show returned as a
    weekday morning show on NBC at the end of December, with Bob Barker
    hosting.  Since it was school vacation, I saw the first show of that
    run, in which Ralph Edwards opened the show, said that "Jolly old Jack"
    was now too busy crowning queens, and introduced Bob Barker, whom
    Edwards had discovered listening to him as an announcer on a local radio
    station.  So far as I can tell, the radio run ended with Jack Bailey's
    departure, and the show was on television only after that.  It continued
    on NBC television in one form or other until 1965 and then in
    syndication until 1974.

    But I don't see how it could be called a quiz show.  The questions were
    riddles, designed to be impossible to answer, leading directly to the
    contestant's "consequence."  Once or twice I saw contestants actually
    answer a question right, whereupon Bob Barker would acknowledge they had
    done so, but say that he had been signaled from the director's booth
    that he had asked the wrong question, and he would ask another.  In the
    late television run, the questions were omitted altogether, and people
    went directly to the "consequences," which were elaborate stunts and
    were the actual point of the show.

    Some questions that I remember:   Q. What is a paradox?  A. Two
    doctors.    Q. What do a man doing his income taxes and a girl preparing
    to go to the beach have in common?   A. They both take off as much as
    the law will allow.   Not a quiz show.

    --
    A. Joseph Ross, [removed]| 92 State Street| Suite 700| Boston, MA 02109-2004
    [removed]|[removed]| [removed]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:35:04 -0500
    From: Jody Davis <baroygis@[removed];
    To: OldTime Radio <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  more OTR books

    Allow me to add to Tom Barnett's fine list of best books on our favorite
    topic. "Radio Comedy" by Arthur Wertheim can be tough to find, but definitely
    worth your time.

    Speaking of [removed]'s the autobiography of one of our favorite
    people--"Aw, Relax Archie--Re-Laxx" by Hal Stone. As a longtime newsie, I'll
    throw in "The Murrow Boys" by Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson and "Broadcasts
    >From the Blitz" by Philip Seib. I'd also suggest "On a Note of
    Triumph--Norman Corwin and the Golden Years of Radio."

    And may I recommend the first two books in Erik Barnouw's terrific
    trilogy--"A Tower in Babel" and "The Golden Web" for a historical perspective
    of the business as well as the programming.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:06:47 -0500
    From: Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Unit 99

    Folks;

       First, a thanks to everyone who's responded so far. I ran an episode of
    the show on this week's SummersTime, so if you can catch the show on Radio
    Once More this week, you can hear an example of this "Cops" for radio.

       Dates for syndicated shows, or AFRS/AFRTS programs, always give me a bit
    of a headache. If it's The Shadow or Jack Benny, I can generally accept them,
    but for something like this, dates placed on shows make me nervous. If no one
    is certain what network carried the show, how can there be trustworthy dates?

       That said, and with the usual mention that using radio schedules is a
    lousy way to know what actually aired on a given date, I did notice in the AP
    schedules there was a program listing on ABC on dates given by early Unit 99
    episodes I have titled "Police Blotter" at 7:30pm eastern on WABC in New York.

       Almost too much of a coincidence that they wouldn't be the same show, but
    I wonder if the "Police Blotter" name was used on the network airing, or in
    any advertising. But then, I'd dearly love to know where the dates on the MP3
    files came from originally, too.

             Charlie

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V2013 Issue #34
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