Subject: [removed] Digest V2002 #296
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 7/31/2002 3:01 PM

To: <[removed]@[removed];

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

                                The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                                  Volume 2002 : Issue 296
                             A Part of the [removed]!
                                     ISSN: 1533-9289

                                     Today's Topics:

      Petrillo in Wall Street Journal       [ Kubelski@[removed] ]
      "It Could Be You"                     [ Dennis W Crow <DCrow3@[removed] ]
      Harlow Wilcox                         [ "Ron Vickery" <RVICKERY@anchorwall. ]
      OTR baseball owners                   [ "Brian Johnson" <CHYRONOP@worldnet. ]
      B&A/"Keith Fowler"                    [ chris chandler <chrischandler84@yah ]
      Australian OMF                        [ chris chandler <chrischandler84@yah ]
      OTR Tapes, and Adventures In Researc  [ "[removed]" <swells@[removed]; ]
      Re: A&A and the NAACP continued       [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
      Re: Austin "Pete" Peterson            [ GOpp@[removed] ]
      Re: TV Guide                          [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
      Sleeping to OTR the MP3 Route         [ "Gerber, Barry" <bg@[removed]; ]
      Lone Ranger                           [ knight555@[removed] ]
      Amos n Andy Christmas Show            [ Kenneth Clarke <kclarke5@[removed]; ]

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 11:30:01 -0400
    From: Kubelski@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Petrillo in Wall Street Journal

    The Wall Street Journal ran a feature story on the 1942-44 musician's strike
    led by infamous musician labor leader James Caesar Petrillo on page D10 of
    the July 31 edition.  The article is not available online without a
    subscription to the newspaper.  It covers how the music industry lived for
    two years without musicians in a work action eerily prescient of the current
    Napster wars.

    The work of many radio personalities such as Rudy Vallee, Frank Sinatra and
    Perry Como are mentioned.

    In addition, the article is great background on why Petrillo is mocked so
    often in 1940s radio programs.  He shut down live performances by musicians
    for two years in a battle for royalty rights with record producers!  I had an
    inkling of his power/influence but I didn't know that.

    The coda to the article is priceless, by the way - and I quote it here as
    part of a review on accordance with the fair use exception to the copyright
    act.

    "Sixty years ago the record companies enjoyed a monopoly of that technology.
    Petrillo made them pay for it but it was theirs and their alone.  Now their
    corporate descendants are facing the loss of that monopoly to any adolescent
    with a computer, a burner and a color printer.  Meanwhile, record-label
    executives and people like Cary Sherman, president of the Record Industry
    Association of America, are sounding self-righteously aggrieved - in short,
    remarkably like Petrillo back in 1942.  Technology, it seems, is finally
    making management squirm in a way the old union boss, who died in 1984, would
    never have imagined but would have loved to see."

    Sean Dougherty
    Kubelski@[removed]

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 12:39:46 -0400
    From: Dennis W Crow <DCrow3@[removed];
    To: OTR Digest <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  "It Could Be You"

    A radio program which I always thought was done locally entitled "It Could
    Be You," apparently was produced in different regions of the country
    highlighting the importance of safe driving.  Several folks from variouis
    states were reminiscing about this program recently, and recall it as being
    very direct without apology, similar to COPS which we see on TV.

    On "It Could Be You," a police officer would be in hot pursuit of an errant
    driver.  The microphone would follow the officer to  contact with the
    driver and to whatever conversation they had.  Often you heard an arrest,
    with the narrator eventually  proclaiming, "It Could Be You." This was
    gritty, "reality" programming for the late forties and early fifties on
    your local radio station, certainly a precursor to the tons of "reality"
    shows we have today.

    Does anybody else remember "It Could Be You?"

    Dennis Crow

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 13:03:22 -0400
    From: "Ron Vickery" <RVICKERY@[removed];
    To: "OTR Digest (E-mail)" <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Harlow Wilcox

    In [removed] Digest V2002 #293, Conrad Binyon indicated he had
    worked with Mr. Wilcox (one of my favorite characters on Fibber McGee &
    Molly).  I have a couple questions about good ol' "Waxy" for Conrad or
    anyone else who knew him.  First, how well did you know him?  Can you
    tell us about what he was like off-mike?  I would guess he was a gem to
    know.  Also, is he still around?  I heard a commercial for NSP (Northern
    States Power, now Excel Energy) up here in MN a few years ago on WCCO
    830 AM, and thought the announcer said his name was Harlow Wilcox.  His
    voice sounded extremly deep, and if this is the same person, his voice
    has deepened greatly and has become more gravelly-sounding since his
    FM&M days.  Was I hearing things, or is this the same gentleman?

    Ron

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 13:04:05 -0400
    From: "Brian Johnson" <CHYRONOP@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  OTR baseball owners

    When the usually thorough Elizabeth McL waxed about OTR personalities
    involved with baseball ownership she committed an error worthy of a
    one-hopper through Bill Buckner's legs:

    Bing Crosby was a one-third owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Buccos
    were often fodder for conversation on Bing's radio shows and a several
    mentions on Crosby recordings ("How About You?" from the Clooney duet album
    "Fancy Meeting You Here" comes to [removed])

    Kathryn related a story in book, "My Life with Bing," about how they were in
    Paris during the 1960 World Series between the Pirates and the Yankees. Bing
    was listening to game seven in their hotel room on Armed Forces Radio when
    the City of Lights went dark. Hotel management provided oil lamps to the
    Crosbys and Bing put his on the mantelpiece next to his radio. When Bill
    Mazeroski hit the game (and Series) winning home run Bing got so excited he
    knocked the lamp onto the floor. Which answers the musical question, is it
    possible for someone in Forbes Field to burn down a Paris hotel?

    Brj
    (Who knows that no matter how much they whine about Jim Rice's absence, the
    Big Red Machine was STILL the best team in 1975 and Sox fans KNOW it, too.)

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 13:05:20 -0400
    From: chris chandler <chrischandler84@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  B&A/"Keith Fowler"

>     i don't know who plays the part of the boyfriend, but
>     the correct date  for this show is 11/18/41.

    And one other quick trivial note:  the real "Keith
    Fowler" was a longtime B&A [removed]

    chris

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 13:56:10 -0400
    From: chris chandler <chrischandler84@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Australian OMF

    Bill Harker asks:

>     Does anyone have any information on these three radio
>     programs that  were broadcast in Australia in the
>     1930s and/or 1940s?

>     One Man's Family (evidently taking place in San
>     Francisco but an Aussie production);

    The Australian OMF actually took place in and around
    Sydney, with the various secondary locales adjusted
    accordingly ("Sky Ranch" became the "Sky Farm", etc).
    There's one surviving recording of the Aussie
    [removed] think a chapter of Book 15 (which would
    have been aired in America in 1935)...it's alot of fun
    to hear different actors in the roles, and they hit
    the mark quite nicely.  There's no Aussie date for the
    episode, but there's some hint it may have been
    produced pre-1941.

    There was also a New Zealand production of the series
    that ran for at least a year, possibly longer; there's
    a recording of a 'cast greeting" to Mr. Morse produced
    when Hazel, in the story, was just pregnant with the
    twins.

    Morse, for what it's worth, made a little cottage
    industry out of trying to recycle the One Man's Family
    saga.  He made at least two efforts in America at
    producing the scripts over from the beginning, with
    different character names ("American Family Saga" and
    "The Younger Generation", and three if you count
    "Woman In My House").  He also tried this tactic when
    it came time to adapt the series for television, with
    middling success.  However, the original series was
    still going strong, and it had become such a
    sprawling, complex enterprise that the various
    recycling efforts could never measure up, especially
    in such thinly-disguised trappings.

    CEM had much more success when he tried this same
    approach a few years later with "I Love A Mystery",
    which had been off the air altogether for a time, and
    which didn't have various children, grandchildren,
    subplots, and backstory muddling up the picture.  Of
    course the effort to revive IT using the old scripts
    managed to run three years on the Mutual net, while an
    effort to revive the thing again one more time in 1954
    apparently came to naught.

    (It may also be worth pointing out Morse also used
    ILAM as a model when adapting OMF to a 15-minute daily
    serial in 1950:  for its first year in the new format,
    it used the ILAM formula of telling one story at a
    time, running three-to-six weeks.  For whatever
    reason, this approach was abandoned in early 1951, and
    the series became a much more traditional muddle of
    various subplots.  I prefer the former style, but
    there's no question the change apparently helped the
    old girl survive nearly another decade!)

    chris

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:07:49 -0400
    From: "[removed]" <swells@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  OTR Tapes,  and Adventures In Research

    Some may think this is strange, but I still use open reel as well as CD's.
    As matter of fact, while I am typing this, I am recording some Command
    Performance [removed]'s to some new Maxell XL II 35-90's. Granted, I will
    eventually re-run the discs and record them digitally and restore them, but
    I will always have this completely unaltered direct from disc backup tape.

    As for the 'Adventures In Research' program, I know I have 100's of these,
    but I believe they are still boxed.

    Shawn

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:10:53 -0400
    From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: A&A and the NAACP continued

    On 7/31/02 11:38 AM OldRadio Mailing Lists wrote:

>     That generation of
>     black radio listeners from the thirties and forties were now not a concern of
>     the naacp as this was tv, not radio, and a new generation was being
>     addressed.

    That's a central point to the whole issue -- by 1950 there were serious
    concerns on the part of the Association that they were going to be facing
    the same battles in television that they'd been fighting for the past
    fifteen years to get more positive images shown in the movies. This was
    something of a personal crusade for Walter White, then the Association's
    executive secretary, and he was largely responsible for promoting the
    A&A-TV campaign in 1951-52. White had little or no interest in radio --
    and indeed, it would have been difficult for the Association to condemn
    the radio A&A at this late date without looking hypocritical after
    ignoring, tolerating or (in the case of certain local branches) endorsing
    the program over the previous twenty years.

    One of White's 1951 comments is especially notable -- he pointed out that
    it wasn't a question of "not having a sense of humor," nor did he have
    any objection to dialect comedy as such. His concern was that the
    working-class imagery of "Amos 'n' Andy" was going to be established as
    the norm for black depictions on television -- what he felt was important
    was for there to be a balance: have programs featuring middle-class or
    professional-class blacks as well as those showing the working class. "If
    there *was* such a balance," he stated, "the comedy could be taken in
    stride." That was, in Walter White's own words, the whole point of the
    protest.

    To their credit, Correll and Gosden had always insisted on portraying a
    balance *within* their own programs, especially during the serial era,
    but also, to a lesser extent, during the sitcom period -- and even after
    CBS took over full creative control, this policy was continued for the TV
    series. But that's not what the Association was looking for -- they were
    opposed to the idea of *any one program* being offered as the "Negro
    Show" in an otherwise all-white world.

    When A&A started on radio in 1928 (or 1926, if you count Sam and Henry,)
    most whites thought of blacks as entirely a rural Southern group -- and
    Correll and Gosden's program was the first major force in popular culture
    to acknowledge the existance of cohesive African-American communities,
    with elaborate social-class structures, in the industrial North. Gosden
    patterned the basic structure of the community depicted in A&A after
    Jackson Ward in Richmond, the commercial and cultural capital of the
    black Southeast during the early years of the 20th Century -- and he knew
    that community firsthand, having grown up literally straddling the border
    between Richmond's white and black sections. (Gosden's first job, in
    fact, was at a drugstore in the heart of Jackson Ward.) There were
    real-life Kingfishes in this neighborhood -- but there were also
    real-life Mr. Taylors, and the A&A serial was unique for its time in that
    the full range of the social-class spectrum played a role in the drama.
    The focus was on the working-class -- not just because that's what most
    black Americans were in 1928, it's what most Americans *period* were in
    1928 -- but there was also an explicit acknowledgement that black
    Americans could and did achieve more where there were opportunities to do
    so.

    What *should* have happened in radio and television was that other
    programs should have picked up on the breakthru established by Correll
    and Gosden in the late twenties -- and followed their example in the
    depiction of a wider range of black characters dealing with everyday
    problems.  But because of a combination of cultural inertia and sponsor
    and network timidity, that didn't happen -- instead you got Molasses and
    January, Honeyboy and Sassafrass, Slo and Ezy, Rastus, Rochester, Silly
    Watson, Washington Lincoln Jefferson Lee, Calliope, Gardenia, Aunt
    Jemima, Beulah, and Birdie. Small wonder that by 1950 the NAACP felt that
    it was high time a point was made, with the emergence of television
    offering them an opportunity to do so, and the A&A TV series offering a
    conspicuous target.

    The real tragedy of the A&A story is that no one program, no matter how
    well-intentioned its creators, can ever carry or should be *expected* to
    carry the burden of representing an entire race -- and to pigeonhole the
    1951 protest as "a protest against Amos 'n' Andy" lets the rest of the
    broadcasting industry off the hook way too easily. The widespread
    acceptance of Amos and his family as positive-role-model characters by
    whites and blacks alike in the 1930s should have given broadcasters
    courage to experiment with taking such characterizations to the next
    level. But they didn't -- until the Government literally pressured them
    into doing so for the sake of wartime unity. Perhaps those who *deserve*
    to be condemned in discussions of racial images in broadcasting are the
    hundreds of radio and TV scriptwriters, producers, directors, network
    executives and sponsors who could have walked thru the door Correll and
    Gosden opened and taken their innovations even further -- but found
    excuses not to.

    Elizabeth

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:12:24 -0400
    From: GOpp@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re:  Austin "Pete" Peterson

    Sue Chadwick just sent me a copy of Austin ("Pete") Peterson's
    fascinating book, "Television is a Young Man's Game. I'm 94. Why Didn't
    Somebody Tell Me? - 67 Years in the Radio and Television Jungles and No
    Tarzan in Sight".

    Pete was the sound effects man at KFRC Radio in San Francisco when my dad
    (Jess Oppenheimer) got his start there in the mid thirties. Pat Weaver
    was running the place at the time -- as part of the Don Lee-Columbia
    Network. Pete and Dad both came to Hollywood in 1936, and ended up
    writing Fred Astaire's radio show together.

    Anyway, I was laughing so hard at some of Pete's KFRC stories that I had
    to share a bit with the Digest:

    "Jess loved  to play around with my sound effects records. One day, after
    a rehearsal for a dramatic program, I left the needle on a canary bird
    chirping. While I was out on a break, Jess came into the booth and
    changed the sound track from the canary bird to a shotgun blast. At dress
    rehearsal, the leading lady opened the door to the garden and was met by
    a shotgun blast. The producer almost had a stroke."

    "I became a ham at working my sound effects in front of an audience. I
    would always add six or seven effects to every act just to hear the
    laughs. One night I got the scare of my life. My sound effects gun was a
    .38 caliber pistol. It made so much noise it would have knocked us off
    the air if I had fired it in the studio. I had to open the front door and
    fire it off into the empty lobby."

    "One night I had a lot of efffects winding up with the gunshot. The cue
    came up and I flung open the door and there, standing in front of me, was
    a little old white haired lady with a smile on her face and a ticket in
    her hand. She had come late and was waiting for someone to open the door
    so she could come in. I heard the cue. The show must go on! I grabbed her
    head, pulled it against my chest and fired my gun over her shoulder and
    then quickly shut the door.

    When the sketch was over, I cautiously opened the door, expecting to pick
    the poor soul up off the floor. But no! She was still standing there with
    a smile on her face and the ticket still in her hand. It turned out she
    was stone deaf and thought I was a very affectionate ticket taker.

    ###

    Pete's book is available for purchase or online browsing at

    [removed]

    - Gregg Oppenheimer
    [removed]

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:16:02 -0400
    From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: TV Guide

    On 7/31/02 11:38 AM OldRadio Mailing Lists wrote:

>     TV Guide
>     has damaged its credibility (however marginal it was to begin with) and
>     authority through these dubious listings.

    TV Guide's credibility disappeared the day the Annenberg family sold it
    to dross-merchant Rupert Murdoch, and if possible it's gotten even worse
    in the years since. It's genuinely sad to remember a day when TVG was one
    of America's great magazines -- publishing serious and insightful
    journalism week after week. Even their celebrity fluff pieces were done
    with dignity and class. But no longer. (In a way it paralells what
    happened when Radio Guide became "Movie Radio Guide," shortly after Moe
    Annenberg went to prison for tax [removed])

    I'd suggest that anyone who wants to get a solid grounding in what
    serious media journalism should be like should get hold of as many 1960s
    and 1970s issues of TVG as possible and read the articles and criticism
    closely and carefully. I guarantee you'll learn more from that exercise
    than you ever will in any Media Studies class. About all you'll learn
    from today's TVG, on the other hand, is that "Hip Edgy Irreverence" is a
    euphemism for "We don't have the slightest idea what we're talking about,
    but we know you chumps will buy four copies of the same issue just for
    the cover."

    End of rant.

    Elizabeth

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:22:21 -0400
    From: "Gerber, Barry" <bg@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Sleeping to OTR the MP3 Route

>     Mike Thompson writes:

>     I wonder if anybody on this list listens to OTR the way I do. Most nights,

    I find to OTR going to sleep at night. I pop a >cassette in my Walkman and
    go to sleep. I find it helps get my mind off the troubles of the day.

    I also fall asleep to OTR.  I've perfected doing it using MP3 files.  I set
    my Sony DCJ500 CD-MP3 Walkman to play one file (one show) and then shut
    itself off.  That way if I fall asleep, I don't have to worry about the
    player going on all night playing all 138 shows on an MP3 CD.  If I awaken
    during the night, I can restart the file I was listening to just by pressing
    the Play button and then hold down the Play button to fast forward (with
    sound preview) to where I left of when I fell asleep.  Very quick and
    efficient.  Another neat thing is that the player only rotates the CD when
    it needs to pickup some more of the MP3 file.  That is a real battery saver
    (if you don't use an AC adapter) and eliminates the distracting mechanical
    noises you get with tape players.  The DCJ500 is perfect for OTR because it
    plays MP3 files recorded at very low frequencies, which is how most OTR MP3
    files are recorded.  The sound is great.  You don't need CD-quality sound
    for OTR.  The DCJ500 can be hooked up to a stereo or powered speakers for
    non-earphone listening.  The DCJ500 sells for $100.  Just for the record, I
    don't use the headphones that come with the player.  Instead, I use the
    little single earphone that they sell at Radio Shack.  The ones that have
    been around since the first transistor radios.  They're unobtrusive and let
    you sleep in almost any position.

    Barry

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:49:03 -0400
    From: knight555@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Lone Ranger

    This might be a little off otr subject, but we just got digital cable and
    found that the Lone Ranger old tv show from the 50's (actually it had a
    1949 copyright) is showing on Encore Westerns at 7pm EST.  We just saw
    "Lone Ranger gets Silver" so I don't know if they just started the run or
    if they're recycling the series.  Thought some Lone Ranger fans might be
    interested , since we didn't see a tv schedule listed anywhere for it.  MJ

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

    Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 15:48:12 -0400
    From: Kenneth Clarke <kclarke5@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Amos n Andy Christmas Show

              I remember hearing  the 30 minute Amos n Andy Christmas
    show  on Christmas Eve, 2001.  I was returning home from our
    family Christmas at my Grandmother's home in Ft. Worth.  I'd
    never heard it before, and listened to it with a completely open mind.

              I can honestly say it had one of the best stories I've ever
    heard.
    It had a very simple, heartfelt message and it's those types of messages
    which fit the Christmas season!  When Amos explains Christmas to his
    daughter Arbodella, it was done honestly.  I appreciate that.

              If there are listeners out there who disagree with me and all
    the
    others who happen to like this episode, so be it.  As far as I'm
    concerned,
    however, we need some positive messages these days to combat the
    negative messages, some of them rather subliminal (but just as impactful)
    which bombard our everyday lives.  If it's necessary to get such
    a relief from  OTR, then why not?

              One of my main reasons for listening to OTR is as a respite
    from
    the increasing difficulties of everyday life for 30 to 60 minutes.

    Kenneth Clarke

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V2002 Issue #296
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