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

[removed] Digest				Volume 96 : Issue 324

Table Of Contents: 

	 Re: Items from #312
	 Train show of the day
	 RE: Little Bastards
	 Re: Large database
	       In Defence of Uncle Don!
	 Comic weekly and  [removed] Digest V96 #322
	 Re: That'll hold the [removed]
	 Re: Dragnet
	 Whats My Line
	 Uncle Don and the Little B*ST*RDS
	 Peg LaCentra
	 Uncle Don

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

Date: Sun, Sep 8 1996 02:29:27 EDT
From: Thomas Heathwood <theathwo@[removed]>
To: <[removed]@[removed]>
Subject: Re: Items from #312
Message-ID: <[removed]@[removed]>

1. Some nice person sent me a reel to reel tape last week of MR. DA (A
   series I am looking for in its NBC version). The problem was that this
   was not the only MR. DA that arived, and, stupidly, I juggled the tapes
   and now can't figure which came from whom!! There was only one person
   who send a single episode on a 1200 ft. reel double-mono at [removed] ips.
   Would that person please let me know bny E-MAIL who they are, so I can
   send them the tape I was supposed to send them.

2. Being from Boston, I was fascinated by the article by Donna Halper.
   When I atempted to contact her by E-MAIL, I found I could not. Tried
   two different systems - neither recognized her EMAIL server. I am
   hoping Donna will see this posting and get back to me.
       <<TOM HEATHWOOD/HERITAGE RADIO/EMAIL: heritage4@[removed] >>
==========================================================================

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

Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 07:29:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: MAX SCHMID <mschmid@[removed]>
To: airwavesOTR <[removed]@[removed]>
Subject: Train show of the day
Message-ID: <[removed]@[removed]>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

X Minus One -Tunnel Under the World - the story of a man who wakes up and 
it's the same day, over and over again (including his commute to work by 
train).

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

Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 07:32:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: MAX SCHMID <mschmid@[removed]>
To: airwavesOTR <[removed]@[removed]>
Subject: RE: Little Bastards
Message-ID: <[removed]@[removed]>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

	There is a PHONY recording of this incident on one of the many Kermit
Schaffer "Pardon My Blooper" series.  Most of these are re-creations, 
although there are several hours of real fluffs around - none of them Uncle
Don.
Speculation is that it happened on some other kiddie show, and somehow 
got pinned on poor old Hibbidigib.  -Max

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

Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 07:45:11 -0400
From: JShnay@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: Large database
Message-ID: <960908074511_303869562@[removed]>

I use an old-fashioned, clunky database called PC-File III that does
everything I want in keeping track of a 15,000 program collection on reels.
I list the number of the reel, the title of the show, the title of the
program itself or plot summary, date, and comments which include guest stars
or specific highlights.
I can sort by five different methods, and when it prints out, it condenses to
keep each radio program on one line.
I haven't seen PC-File III in stores for years, but for me it works
jshnay@[removed]

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

Date:          Sun, 8 Sep 1996 08:12:06 4
From: "Ronald F. Apgar" <apgar@[removed]>
To: otr@[removed]
Subject:       In Defence of Uncle Don!
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>

This is from the book, "The Big Broadcast."
"The one story about "Uncle Don" that has been told the
most never even happened.  The story alleges that he
signed off the broadcast one night and then, thinking
he was off the air, said, "I guess that'll hold the little
bastards."  Supposedly this went out over the air, and
he was taken off the air for a period of time.  NONE OF
IT IS TRUE, even though you can find people today who
swear they heard it, and even though there is a recording of 
so-called "on-the-air mistakes" that alleges to include
this infamous fluff.  It simply never happen.  A  columnist
in Baltimore, where Uncle Don was not heard, made up
the story to fill space on an otherwise dull news day.
And the story just grew and grew.
 
To add to the confusion, two other radio performers are
suppose to have said the same thing-John Daggett, who
played "Uncle John" on KHJ in Los Angeles, and John Keough,
who played "Big Brother on KPO San Francisco.  If true,
apparently Daggett wasn't fired while Keough was.
And there it stands."
   
Ronald F. Apgar
apgar@[removed]
 
"As cold waters to a thirsty soul,
 so is good news from a far country."
                      -Proverbs 25:25
 
[removed]~hawkmtn/
  
 .
------------------------------

Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 13:15:01 +0100 (BST)
From: hbj@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Comic weekly and  [removed] Digest V96 #322
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>

On 1996 1-09-07 Joe Ross said in [removed]@[removed] said:
   >------------------------------
   >Does anyone remember the "Comic Weekly Man"?  So far as I can
   >recall, this was a syndicated show which involved a
   >semi-dramatization of selected comics from "Puck, The Comic Weekly,
   >" which was a standardized Sunday comic section in the Hearst
   >newspapers.
   Yes, I remember them quite well. Could never find them regularly. I
   remember scanning the dial, looking for it.
   Also remember finding the same one on 3 different stations, but all
   of them in either Providence, or some where else far away.
   A lot of good science fiction type strips, and high adventure. Good
   use of sound affects, which was one reason I liked them.
   I thought he brought the strips to life with his animated reading,
   and "Honey" added the personality who was the token kid who was with
   him, which was I guess, all of us.
   Which reminds me, I had the real fortune to be on "Uncle Bill"s"
   show. This was (I think his name was) Bill Coleman. He had this kids
   program on saturday nights where he played records, and used his
   voice to portray 3 characters: Happy the rabbit, Bonzo the aircraft
   pilot, and of course his own persona.
   Turned out he was related to my room mate at school.
   But, at the age of 7  I was on his show. That is, in the studeo with
   him.
   My first shock of radio. I wanted to be on the show. Reason. He flew
   the plane, didn't he. Bonzo the pilot would take them up after the
   broadcast, didn't they. They'd climb out of the studeo through the
   roof to the plane parked there, didn't they.
   Then, off they'd go.
   Course in reality, there was bill sitting there with the cans on his
   head, playing the library recording of a plane starting, taking off,
   and flying.
   He's doing the 3 voices, and I'm going "But aren't we going up
   stairs, then?"
   I think after a time, truth dawned, and I realized it was all a put
   up job.
   But, the excitement of seeing a station, and the microphones made up
   for it all.
Ah, those were the days.
regards


henry Brugsch [removed]
hbj@[removed]

`[1;34;42mNet-Tamer V [removed] Beta - Registered

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

Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 09:35:14 -0500 (CDT)
From: shoshani@[removed] (Michael Shoshani)
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: That'll hold the [removed]
Message-Id: <m0uzkx8-000Yp3C@[removed]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length:       2747

> Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 15:07:50 -0400
> From: Bigkids@[removed]
> To: [removed]@[removed]
> Subject: That'll Hold the Little B*st*rds
> Message-ID: <960907150750_473725603@[removed]>
> 
> I was a great fan of Uncle Don's, but somehow I missed the broadcast in which
> he adlibbed after he thought he'd gone off the air. The alleged line was,
> "That'll hold the little bastards."
> 
> But while this story has been repeated and repeated endlessly, and elaborated
> upon and revised . . .
> 
> For example, the version in the Digest recently, that says there were *many*
> such incidents involving Uncle Don, while not quite beyond the realm of the
> possible, strikes me as very far-fetched. For one thing, it's apparently a
> "new" version of the story, appearing some 50 years after the alleged
> incident. Unless someone can provide documentation that this version has been
> around for a long time, I am inclined to dismiss it as an exaggeration or
> distortion. For another thing, if the "little bastards" line was broadcast
> even once, Uncle Don would have been in very deep, very hot water. If it
> happened twice, he would have been gone, gone, gone-dee-n-don gone. So I just
> don't see *how* it could have happened "many" times.
> 
> But what I'm curious about at this point, is whether any documentation exists
> of the actual incident, at the time it happened. Is there by any chance an ET
> of the offending broadcast? Or a home recording? Or were there any reports of
> the incident in the general press or the radio trade press at the time?
> 
> We couldn't just be dealing with an Urban Myth now, could we?
> 
> Naah.
> 

When I was a kid, the story was that Uncle Don uttered his famous line
sometime in the 1920s and was subsequently fired. (Indeed, one of Kermit 
Schafer's Blooper Records has an alleged aircheck of this, which is a 
fake.)  One of the radio books in print then actually reprinted a 
newspaper column from the 1940s--The Column That Started It All.  I do not 
remember the columnist, but I believe the paper was The Brooklyn Eagle.
The column contained the anecdote that one time in the 20s, Uncle Don 
thought he was off the air after a broadcast and said "That'll hold the 
little so-and-sos" [sic] .

At any rate, the columnist himself later confessed that he was bored and 
made it up on a slow day, and never intended for it to have the impact 
that it did.

The story has been embellished to the point where Uncle Don was fired and 
his career in radio was ruined--yet at the time that column was written in 
the 1940s, Uncle Don was a MAJOR National Network Star, and remained so 
until the demise of the format in the 1950s.  Most radio history books 
contend that he never said it.

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

Date: Sun, 08 Sep 1996 10:41:00 -0400
From: Robert Kirk <kirk@[removed]>
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: Dragnet
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

On Sat, 7 Sep 1996 12:27:48 roy547@[removed] (Roy Trumbull) said:

>Having seen several references to the radio version of Dragnet, I
>was reminded of the radio station inside San Quentin prison. It
>wasn't on-th-air, it was actually a multichanneled wired system
>fed from a control room which also originated a local channel.
>The other channels were taken off air or by tape delay. When
>Dragnet came on, the inmates called it "This Is Your Life".
>
>------------------------------

It may be urban legend, but as a kid I heard that their
theme song was, "Time on My Hands".

Bob Kirk

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

Date: Sun, 08 Sep 1996 10:34:51 -0500 (EST)
From: SAH@[removed]
To: otr@[removed]
Subject: Whats My Line
Message-id: <01I98EFUCVGY8X0MWF@[removed]>
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

   I recently discovered an Armed Forces Radio Transcription of "Whats
   My Line".  I thought this was only a TV show.  If there was a radio
   version, does anyone have copies in their collections?

   - - - - - 

   My opinion of why network radio disappeared had a lot to do with the
   tremendous amounts of "cash" flowing into [removed] from William Paley and
   General Sarnoff.  For over 15 years the government studied the 
   domination of two medias by the same ownership.  When the same
   advertising agencies were working both sides of the street and urging
   everyone to abandon radio for TV, the networks should have been
   forced to choose one or the other and divest itself of either radio
   or TV.  It probably wouldn't have saved radio as it was but then 
   radio as we know it today might have been better - couldn't have been
   worse could it?

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

Date: Sun, 08 Sep 1996 10:46:26 EDT
From: jjyellen@[removed] (James J Yellen)
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Uncle Don and the Little B*ST*RDS
Message-ID: <[removed]@[removed]>

Dick Lupoff wrote:

I was a great fan of Uncle Don's, but somehow I missed the broadcast in
which
he adlibbed after he thought he'd gone off the air. The alleged line was,
"That'll hold the little bastards."

But while this story has been repeated and repeated endlessly, and
elaborated
upon and revised . . .

For example, the version in the Digest recently, that says there were
*many*
such incidents involving Uncle Don, while not quite beyond the realm of
the
possible, strikes me as very far-fetched. For one thing, it's apparently
a
"new" version of the story, appearing some 50 years after the alleged
incident. Unless someone can provide documentation that this version has
been
around for a long time, I am inclined to dismiss it as an exaggeration or
distortion. For another thing, if the "little bastards" line was
broadcast
even once, Uncle Don would have been in very deep, very hot water. If it
happened twice, he would have been gone, gone, gone-dee-n-don gone. So I
just
don't see *how* it could have happened "many" times.

But what I'm curious about at this point, is whether any documentation
exists
of the actual incident, at the time it happened. Is there by any chance
an ET
of the offending broadcast? Or a home recording? Or were there any
reports of
the incident in the general press or the radio trade press at the time?

We couldn't just be dealing with an Urban Myth now, could we?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The ending to the "myth" the way I heard it, Dick, is that Uncle Don not
only was in deep doo-doo, but he got fired over it. 
That being said, here's [removed]
Maybe I'm just adding fuel to the fire [removed]'s what I read
[removed] I don't remember the source.

The Uncle Don excerpt appeared on one of the first Blooper records that
appeared in the Fifties. Perhaps someone has it. BUT the article I read
said that this excerpt and many of the others on Blooper records did not
really occur, but were created by the
records' originators. I don't know if these were supposed to be
recreations of "alleged" incidents or if they just made them up. The
article never clearly stated whether the Uncle Don incident really
happened but gave conflicting comments from those who claim to have heard
it and those who said it never happened.

Jim Yellen

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

Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 16:59:18 GMT
From: veedee@[removed] (Vincent R. Damiano)
To: otr@[removed]
Subject: Peg LaCentra
Message-Id: <[removed]@[removed]>

Peg LaCentra, 86, a Singer With Shaw Orchestra 
        
       by William Grimes 
 
Peg Lacentra, a singer with Artie Shaw's first orchestra, died on June 1 at
her home in Los Angeles. She was 86. 
 
The cause was a heart attack, said David McCain, a musicologist and friend
who learned only recently of Miss LaCentra's death. 
 
Miss LaCentra, who was named Margherita at birth in Boston, studied piano
at the New England Conservatory of Music and acting at the Fenway Academy
of Dramatic Art. 
 
In 1931, after working for a local radio station as an announcer, actress
and occasionally a singer, she moved to New York, where she sang on network
radio programs, although she considered herself primarily an actress. In
1934 she made her first recording, "The Fortune Teller," with the Johnny
Green Orchestra, for Columbia. In 1939 she was given her own program on
NBC, "The Peg LaCentra Show." 
 
Miss LaCentra met Mr. Shaw when she was singing on "The Mell-O-Roll Ice
Cream Show" and he was a sideman in the Dick McDonough Orchestra. Mr. Shaw
told her he was preparing to form his own orchestra and needed a singer.
She joined the group in the summer of 1936, performing at the Lexington
Hotel and the Paramount Theater in New York. 
 
For a year she recorded extensively with the orchestra on the Brunswick
label. She later made records for the Bluebird label with Jerry Sears. 
 
Miss LaCentra appeared in many film shorts and did the vocal dubbing for
Ida Lupino in "The Man I Love," Susan Hayward in "Smash Up" and other
stars. 
 
In 1939 Miss LaCentra married the radio actor Paul Stewart, an original
member of Orson Welle's "Mecury Theater of the Air." He died in 1986. She
occasionally sang in clubs and appeared in films into the 1950's. 
 
There are no surving close family members.

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

Date: Sun, 08 Sep 1996 14:31:24 -0500 (EST)
From: GENEBROWN@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Uncle Don
Message-id: <01I98MPEI60Y8X8H3U@[removed]>
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Dick Lupoff asked about the legendary "That'll hold the little bastards" line
attributed to Uncle Don.  About a year ago this was pretty thoroughly
debunked on the urban legends usenet newsgroup.  However, back in the 1950s,
I had a few of the LPs in the popular "Pardon My Blooper" series and I'm
pretty sure the famous "incident" was on one of them.  I suppose it wouldn't
be very hard to fake something like that.  Anybody know about this?


Gene Brown  




--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V96 Issue #324
*******************************************

