Subject: [removed] Digest V2002 #323
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 8/16/2002 1:03 AM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

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


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2002 : Issue 323
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  The Shadow of Fu Manchu               [ "Paul M. Thompson" <beachcomber@com ]
  Arthur and Howard                     [ "Mark Kinsler" <kinsler33@[removed] ]
  Wooden Heads and Plastic Hearts       [ John Mayer <mayer@[removed]; ]
  Australian OTR - Chaterbodx Corner    [ "Jamie Kelly" <[removed]@[removed] ]
  Re: 1951 Playoff Calls                [ "Irene Heinstein" <IreneTH@[removed] ]
  Re: More WOTW Facts                   [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
  Re: Preston Bradley                   [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
  Re: The Jack Benny Show               [ Jim Stephenson <jestephenson@[removed] ]
  Tactics of '44                        [ "Brian Johnson" <CHYRONOP@worldnet. ]
  ILAM: The Fear That Creeps Like a Ca  [ "Ken Kay" <kenwyn@[removed]; ]
  Fibber/Gildy Movies?                  [ JPurc64093@[removed] ]
  Re: "S" 0n Jugheads turtleneck        [ hal stone <dualxtwo@[removed]; ]
  Beverly Washburn                      [ Dennis W Crow <DCrow3@[removed] ]

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 01:15:44 -0400
From: "Paul M. Thompson" <beachcomber@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  The Shadow of Fu Manchu

A very belated thanks to Elizabeth for her July posting, quoting a 1938
column piece in Broadcasting magazine, which identifies Lou Marcelle
as Dr Fu Manchu in the 1939 transcribed series The Shadow of Fu Manchu.

Ted Osborne was identified a few years back as playing the insidious
one and generally accepted by most. Of all the discussions over the
various role portrayals I don't recall that of Fu ever being questioned.
Now along comes an accurate identification from a trade journal of
the period. Interesting! This just serves as another reminder that what
we often come to accept in the otr community may not always be factual
without that crucial documentation of one kind or another.

Even after all these years, we continue to discover new information.
When this series first surfaced years ago, it was thought to have been
39 (or 40) episodes in length. Then in early 1974, the late Ray Stanich
said he was sure there had been 78 episodes based on some other
collectors holdings but nothing more ever surfaced except the 40
episodes already in circulation.  Fast forward 25 years to 1999 and
the late Ken Weigel identifies 44 additional episodes ending in episode
number 156. Due to the efforts of Ted Davenport,  these long missing
episodes are now available.  Many earlier episodes remain missing
but who knows what may still turn up down the road?

Lou Marcelle now joins Hanley Stafford and Gale Gordon as known
cast members. Others thought to be members of the cast include
Paula Winslowe, Edmond O'Brien, Frank Nelson and possibly
Gerald Mohr. Hopefully, in time more information will surface on
the series and cast, perhaps from some obscure fanzine article,
trade journals, scripts or even promo material from the 1938-39
time period. By the way, when was the last time you looked at that
stack of old otr related material stashed away in the closet?

Paul Thompson

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 01:16:57 -0400
From: "Mark Kinsler" <kinsler33@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Arthur and Howard

I think Arthur Godfrey would have understood and quite likely thought kindly
of Howard Stern.  Godfrey was an iconoclast: _nobody_ said the sort of thing
about his sponsors that Godfrey did, and it's fairly clear that he didn't
care greatly what anyone in the radio hierarchy thought of his work--he
worked for the listeners, not the ad agencies' egos.  The listeners thus
trusted him, and he thus became the best of radio salesmen.  As a full-page
ad for his show in Advertising Age once stated, "Arthur sells."

You have to listen to Howard Stern rather carefully.  He shocks and
destroys, to be sure.  But what are his targets?  They are invariably the
phonies of show business.  If you've ever become famous just because you're
famous, you'll be a target of Howard's.

But the audience--composed of just average people--is never ridiculed.
Howard Stern makes fun of the rich and famous.  Many current television
shows have the rich and successful ridiculing the poor or at least average
person.  Jerry Springer is the most obvious example, but all of the
advice/talent/talk shows seem to emphasize the sad state of the average
schlemiel as compared to the glamorous authors, actresses, and experts in
the interview chair.

Howard Stern, like any good host, is what Johnny Carson once termed "the
audience identification figure." The innuendoes and speculations Howard
makes mirrors those of his audience, the average guy who listens as he
drives to work: "Did you see those lesbian actresses on TV last night?  I
wonder what they actually do with each [removed]"  Stern talks a great deal
about sexual matters because that's what most people think about most of the
time.

He also uses radio in imaginative ways.  I recall one show in which he and
his sidekick Robin were supposedly leafing through a pile of pornographic
magazines that they'd somehow acquired.  All the audience heard was the
occasional crinkling of a turned page and the sparest of comments by Howard
and Robin: "Oh, my!" or, "How many people are in that picture anyway?"  A
bit like this requires skilled writing and acting.

Howard Stern's imitators are another story altogether.  They mostly lack his
wit, his basic kindness and integrity, and his impressive imagination.

Mark Kinsler
512 E Mulberry St. Lancaster, Ohio USA 740 687 6368
[removed]~kinsler

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 09:06:24 -0400
From: John Mayer <mayer@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Wooden Heads and Plastic Hearts

Anthony Tollin SanctumOTR@[removed] told us:
To the best of my memory, Paul Winchell was the only other major
ventriloquist to perform regularly on [removed]

In addition to his fine ventriloquy, Winchell was presumably also
instrumental in saving lives by his invention of an artificial heart valve, a
juxtaposition that amazes me whenever I think of it. I don't recall the
details, but I'll bet good money someone here [removed]

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 09:07:06 -0400
From: "Jamie Kelly" <[removed]@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Australian OTR - Chaterbodx Corner

My mother won second place in the talent portion of the Chatterbox Club
show one week and was invited back to the show.  I was particularly
interested in trying to track down copies of this program.  My mother most
remembers One Man's Family and the Nicky and Tuppy shows along with
Chatterbox Club.

Back in the 1930s Nancy and Nicky as part of Chaterbox corner established
the Chums Club and everyone who joined got a enamal badge. Bill I'm sure
your mother would remember the Chums club and may even have a badge still if
she was a member?

Again Chaterbox corner like so many other shows was a live to air broadcast.
I have one copy only from 1941.

Jamie Kelly

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 09:07:42 -0400
From: "Irene Heinstein" <IreneTH@[removed];
To: "OTR" <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Re: 1951 Playoff Calls
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

Alan Bell wrote:

Anyway, when I tuned in the day promoted, they played the entire
Dodgers-Giants game from 1951, concluding with Russ Hodges' hysteria.
Incidentally, Hodges was still the Giants' announcer at that time,
too. I didn't listen to the whole thing, but now I wonder. Maybe they
played the McLendon broadcast until the last of the ninth? Does
anyone from the Bay Area remember this broadcast?

I too remember the full broadcast of the playoff game.  In fact the Giants
broadcast it again about a month ago when Bobby Thomson was in town for yet
another commemoration.

Irene
IreneTH@[removed]

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Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 10:07:56 -0400
From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Re: More WOTW Facts

Anthony Tollin wrote:

However, I'm sure that some people tuned into the CASE AND SANBORN variety
show for comedy and others for comedy.  And it's likely some comedy fans went
station-surfing when Nelson Eddy and Dorothy Lamour came on to sing, and also
likely that some listeners who had tuned in primarily for music switched
stations when the comedy portions came on.

The recent discussions of WOTW led me to spend a little time last night
looking thru Cantril -- and I was interested to notice a few interesting
details I had overlooked before: of listeners who tuned into WOTW after
tuning out on another program, only eighteen per cent of these dialed
into WOTW after leaving the C&S Hour at any point in that program. In
other words, 82 per cent of the "tuneout" crowd tuned out on something
else entirely -- Father Coughlin, Alfred Wallerstien, or some local
public affairs program.

The second interesting point uncovered by Cantril's surveys is that a
substantial number of those who joined WOTW in progress didn't tune out
on any specific program at all. Approximately twenty per cent of "joined
in progress" listeners tuned into WOTW because someone called them on the
phone and told them to do so -- slightly *more* than the 18 per cent who
tuned into WOTW after leaving C&S, but we never seem to hear much about
the "telephone tuneins," who could have joined the program at any random
point.

And finally, notice needs to be made of the listeners who joined WOTW in
progress not because they tuned out on the C&S Hour or any other program
-- but because they were tuning around randomly without much idea of what
they wanted to listen to, and stopped on the Welles program because it
sounded interesting. The survey conducted several days after the
broadcast by CBS found that nearly two-thirds (33 per cent) of late
tuneins fell into this category.  Another 12 per cent of late tuneins
surveyed by CBS said that they had intended to listen to the Welles
program from the beginning but lost track of the time and switched on
their radios late.

All this said, one must conclude that the C&S Hour's role in the WOTW
story has been exaggerated considerably over the years. It gets
inordinate attention because it was the most popular program on the air
(and emphasizing it gave all the smug newspaper and magazine columnists
of 1938 a chance to try out their variations on "all the smart listeners
were listening to the dummy"). But all substantive evidence indicates
that it was actually a minor factor in tuneout listening.

As to Nelson Eddy, I'd suggest that he's singled out by latter-day
historians more as a way of subtly ridiculing 1938-era middlebrow tastes
than on the basis of any real evidence. Even in his own time there were
critics who mocked him as "The Singing Capon," and Jay Ward sealed Eddy's
fate as a camp figure by using his "righteous Mountie" screen persona as
the prototype for Dudley Do-Right. All that being so, I think it's way
too tempting for modern OTR enthusiasts to assign him a role in the
events of 10/30/38 that isn't supported by the facts, just because it
makes "a good story."

Elizabeth

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 10:23:13 -0400
From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Re: Preston Bradley

On 8/15/02 1:20 AM OldRadio Mailing Lists wrote:

If any Digester possibly knows of a recording of Bradley's program or of
a program he guested, could you please let me or us know.  Thanks.

I've heard rumors of a 1931 aircheck of Bradley being extant, but I've
been unable to track it down -- if anyone out there has details, please
fill them in.

Speaking of Dr. Bradley, is any collection of his papers available for
research? I'm trying to track down the content of a speech he made on the
"Amos 'n' Andy" episode of 12/24/36 -- I have the actual episode script,
in which Amos and Andy listen to Bradley giving a Christmas Eve broadcast
-- but the script doesn't include Bradley's actual remarks, which were
written on a separate page which doesn't seem to have been preserved.
And, of course, there's no known recording.

Charles Correll once stated that Dr. Bradley may have had some input into
the text of Amos's famous Christmas Eve scene with Arbadella, but I've
been unable to document this -- the scene was written in 1940, after A&A
had relcoated to Hollywood, and while I know that Gosden sought
suggestions for the script from a minister, a priest, and a rabbi, I
can't confirm that Bradley was the minister he consulted.  Bradley did,
however, have at least the one documented connection to A&A in 1936.

Elizabeth

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 11:47:40 -0400
From: Jim Stephenson <jestephenson@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: The Jack Benny Show

Jim Kitchen remarked:

In a past Old Time Radio Digest, someone said Harry Shearer was a
Beverly Hills Beaver.  He may be the sole survivor of The Jack Benny
Show.

And Charlie retorted:

Beverly Washburn, a guest at the upcoming FOTR Convention in
Newark, NJ ( [removed] ) may have a few things to
say about that, having also appeared on a number of Benny programs.

And I'd like to add that Thurl Ravenscroft, once a member of The
Sportsmen, is still leading an active life in a Fullerton, CA retirement
community. I've spoken with him many times there when I've gone to visit
my mother-in-law.

Jim Stephenson

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 11:49:37 -0400
From: "Brian Johnson" <CHYRONOP@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Tactics of '44

Jim Byrd asked,

What was Groucho referring to? I don't remember hearing of
any GOP "red scare" tactics in the 1944 elections, but I wasn't around then.
Does anyone know what he was referring to? Was the GOP up to something?

Throughout FDR's twelve years in the White House, western democracy was
viewed as a very fragile entity. It was very much the age of dictators and
the Great Depression was viewed as the powder keg that could blow up
America's great experiment with democracy. Roosevelt saw his "New Deal" as
the way to stave off a revolution and his opponents saw it as just an
incremental approach TO communism.

Political mud, once slung by the opposition, is very hard to get rid of.
These charges that The New Deal was socialism at best and communism at worst
wrapped in an American flag had legs. And to view himself as being more
important than George Washington by running for a 3rd term in 1940 only
proved in many minds that FDR would declare himself "president-for-life" if
he could get away with it. (His earlier "court-packing" scheme didn't hurt
that perception, either.) Groucho's parody song was probably intended to
revive those charges in the audience's mind in order to show how wrong and
shallow they had been.

Jim then stated

This is especially puzzling, since the USSR was officially
an ally at the time in World War 2.

Politics, as they say, makes strange bedfellows. The enemy of my enemy is my
friend. The west had no illussions about Joseph Stalin. You would have found
no more of an anti-Communist than Winston Churchill, and when the great man
was asked about his embrace of the USSR as an ally he quipped, "If Hitler
invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in
the House of Commons."

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 12:32:23 -0400
From: "Ken Kay" <kenwyn@[removed];
To: "OTR Digest" <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  ILAM:  The Fear That Creeps Like a Cat
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from text/html

In a previous Digest I asked why the actor who played Reggie in I Love A
Mystery's "The Fear That Creeps Like a Cat" was not given any credit at
the close of each episode.  I know the Frank Bresee played Reggie but
wonderer why it was never acknowledged in the cast announcements. Ken ---
Ken Kay--- kenwyn@[removed]--- EarthLink: The #1 provider of the Real
Internet.

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  ***                  as the sender intended.                   ***

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Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 15:52:16 -0400
From: JPurc64093@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Fibber/Gildy Movies?

Can anyone tell me where to get a copy of any of the Fibber McGee and Molly
and Great Gildersleeve movies? Either DVD or VHS. Thank you.

John Purchase

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 18:18:25 -0400
From: hal stone <dualxtwo@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Re: "S" 0n Jugheads turtleneck

You folks may not be aware, but the poster Jiminks does a neat job for
Archie Comics Publications.

When someone asked what the "S" stood for on Jugheads sweater, Jim replied:

I asked my editor at Archie Comics aboiut the "S" on Jughead's shirt, since
the
question was asked here.

My editor said that the secret died with creator Bob Montana.  It may have
stood for a sports team that Montana was a fan of, but nobody really knows.
Sorry that I couldn't find out because I've always wondered, too.

Both Jim and his editor are young pups, so they don't go back far enough to
know the whole story. Well, folks, wonder no more. The answer is as plain as
the nose on "Jughead" face.

Bob Montana was so appreciate of the job I did playing "Jughead" on the
radio, that he put the first initial of my last name on the turtleneck.

Believe that, and I have some choice oceanfront property to sell you in
Arizona.

Hey Jim. Do you ever "ink" Craig Boldman's stuff? I met him at the Cincy OTR
Convention a few months back.

Regards

Hal(Harlan)Stone
"Jughead"

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

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 22:34:47 -0400
From: Dennis W Crow <DCrow3@[removed];
To: OTR Digest <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Beverly Washburn

Charlie Summers mentioned Beverly Washburn, who he said  made several
appearances  on "The Jack Benny Show."

Though Beverly is a very familiar child actress (radio, movies, television)
she also has another claim to fame which should interest subscribers to
this list.  She played in the the first Lone Ranger movie entitled simply
"The Lone Ranger."  This Cinemascope feature was released in 1956, did a
brisk box office business, and even appealed to NY TIMES movie critic
Bosley Crowther (and he wasn't easy to please).  He said, "...apparently a
new team at Warners has taken over the job of reviving the famous masked
hero in all his glory in color and Cinemascope and has had at the task with
the vigor of  zealots inspired with a fresh idea. And  'The Lone Ranger,'
which opened yesterday at the Mayfair, has the unwearied spirit of a noisy
kid."   (from WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN: A. S. Barnes and Company 1976, p.
235; this highly detailed book by David Rothel should be on all Lone Ranger
fans' shelves.)

Beverly also had a great part in "Old Yeller," one of Disney's best
adventure stories.

Dennis Crow

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2002 Issue #323
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