Subject: [removed] Digest V2008 #1
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 1/2/2008 11:25 AM

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

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

                                The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                                  Volume 2008 : Issue 1
                             A Part of the [removed]!
                                 [removed]
                                     ISSN: 1533-9289

                                     Today's Topics:

      Jack Benny's birthplace               [ Dan Hughes <danhughes@[removed]; ]
      Fullness of Times                     [ Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed] ]
      OTR (FOTR) actor in new film          [ <vzeo0hfk@[removed]; ]
      JB's birthplace                       [ Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed] ]
      Jack Benny's True Orgin.              [ Frank McGurn <[removed]@sbcglobal. ]
      Clearing the air                      [ <otrbuff@[removed]; ]
      Re: Waukegan                          [ John Mayer <mayer@[removed]; ]
      Don MacLaughlin                       [ "Bob C" <rmc44@[removed]; ]
      Re: The Great Debaters                [ "R. R. King" <kingrr@[removed]; ]
      Catching up, he [removed]               [ Wich2@[removed] ]
      1-2 births/deaths                     [ Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed] ]
      #OldRadio IRC Chat this Thursday Nig  [ charlie@[removed] ]
      [removed] Bill Idelson                   [ "Derek Tague" <derek@[removed]; ]
      Bill Idelson, RIP?                    [ wboenig@[removed] ]

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 15:10:43 -0500
    From: Dan Hughes <danhughes@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Jack Benny's birthplace

    I think the reason Jack claimed to be born in Waukegan is because that is
    a lot funnier than being born in Chicago.  Just like being 39 forever is
    funnier than being your real age.

    ---Dan

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 15:10:55 -0500
    From: Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Fullness of Times

    Tom Kirby asks:

>     Apparently, in the 1930's, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
>     Saints (Mormons) produced a radio show, with dramatizations of church
>     and sciptural history. Has this series survived?

    Indeed, most of it has. I have 25 chapters.

    Ron Sayles

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 15:11:31 -0500
    From: <vzeo0hfk@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  OTR (FOTR) actor in new film

    Look for FOTR's 93 year old Cliff Carpenter in a small role in "Synecdoche",
    a new film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman which will be out in March.
    Cliff is also doing a bunch of voice overs.

    Howard Blue

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 15:11:12 -0500
    From: Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  JB's birthplace

    James H. Arva states:

>     Perhaps Jack Benny was born in Chicago, but spent his formative
>     years in Waukegan.

    True, but if he needed his birth certificate for any reason he would
    have to had to have gone to Chicago to get it.

    Ron Sayles

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 16:13:18 -0500
    From: Frank McGurn <[removed]@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Jack Benny's True Orgin.

    Jack Benny and I have one thing in common, I too was born in Chicago,
    but after leaving the hospital never spent another night there.
    I was born there because our family doctor was on the staff of St. Ann's
    hospital in Chicago.
    Ron Sayles is 100% correct, who could question the OTR Official  Keeper
    of Births & Deaths.
    Jack's daughter, Joan, wrote a book in 1990 "Sunday Nights at Seven" I
    bought it and read it and liked it.

    Joan found a manual script of an autobiography  that Jack had started
    and included part of in her book. Here is a quote from it:
    "There are a few things you should know in advance. In the first place I
    was not born in Waukegan. I was born at Mercy Hospital in Chicago on
    Valentine's Day, 1994. My parents lived in Waukegan, but my mother
    insisted on giving birth in Chicago. She believed it was an Honor to be
    born in a big city"

    Joan's book was a very good insite of Jack Benny's life. If you haven't
    read it your missing alot about Jack and what agreat person he was.

    Frank McGurn

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 16:14:16 -0500
    From: <otrbuff@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Clearing the air

    When CBS cut four of its long-playing daytime serials from the roster on
    Jan. 2, 1959 -- including Backstage Wife, Our Gal Sunday, Road of Life, This
    Is Nora Drake -- that many hours of matinee misery with combined airtime
    approaching 78 years hadn't occurred in history.  The four averaged network
    lives of about [removed] years each.  If the years that two of those broadcast
    concurrently on separate chains every weekday was added the numbers would be
    inflated substantially.

    Only on one other occasion -- the proverbial Black Friday, "the day radio
    drama died," Nov. 25, 1960, when the plug was finally pulled on the last of
    the genre including Ma Perkins, The Right to Happiness, The Second Mrs.
    Burton, Young Doctor Malone -- did more than 78 years of dishpan dramas
    disappear on a single day.  That day nearly 84 years of narrative history
    bit the dust.  Again, were all those episodes of a couple of them aired
    simultaneously on dual networks to be added, the epoch would register even
    more impressive numbers.

    The CBS brass at last succumbed to the demands of affiliates who had pleaded
    for years for the release of more and more traditional network air time so
    they could sell it more profitably themselves.  To his credit, William Paley
    took a firm stand throughout the 1950s to protect his radio web, even as
    advertisers, actors and audiences steadily eroded, defecting to television.
    It was not until the affiliates threatened mutiny by going independent or
    joining other chains (including some prestigious outlets in very large
    markets) that Paley finally threw in the towel and cleared the air (with the
    exception of House Party, Godfrey, three primetime dramas, Lowell Thomas,
    Crosby, Clooney, 10 minutes of news on the hour and a few others).

    If you liked network radio, Jan. 2, 1959 was a foreboding foretaste of
    things to come.

    Jim Cox

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 16:23:04 -0500
    From: John Mayer <mayer@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Waukegan
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from text/html

       James H Arva <wilditralian@[removed];

>     Ron Sayles insists that Chicago -- and not Waukegan -- is Jack Benny's
>     birthplace.  I had never heard this before.

       Nor had I. I well remember the chorus of the well-known song,
       "Waukegan:"

         "Wau-kegan, WAU-kegan!

           Your son has brought you fame;

           Jack Benny is his name."

       It was sung by Peter, Paul and Mary on, let's see ah, yes; The Jack
       Benny Show. I can't believe that Peter, Paul OR Mary would lie.

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 16:57:35 -0500
    From: "Bob C" <rmc44@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Don MacLaughlin

    I love Jim Cox's alliteration re Irna Phillips, "drama mama" and
    "mavin of matinee." Her attitude reminds me of the oft-told tales
    about the Hummerts ... which brings me to the question - which I
    could answer myself if I were to dig through some boxes of
    biographies, but will defer to the scholars on this list with
    instant recall: What about the attitudes of the other scribes
    (producers, directors) of the airwaves, such as Norman Corwin,
    Wyllis Cooper, Carlton E. Morse and Arch Oboler? Was everything
    to be their way or the highway? How much leeway did they grant
    their performers?

    Bob Cockrum

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 16:59:08 -0500
    From: "R. R. King" <kingrr@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: The Great Debaters

    Jack French asks:

>     Me and the missus went to see Denzel Washington's "The Great
>     Debaters" at our local  movie theater last night. The climax of this
>     compelling film, supposedly based on a historical event, is the
>     first debate between a team from the all-Black Wylie College and a

    white

>     university team in the [removed] This happens on the Harvard campus in
>     1935. It is also broadcast as a "remote" by the local NBC radio in
>     Boston for nation-wide airing. (It is not recorded; it goes out live
>     so the relatives and associates of the Negro team are listening to
>     it in Texas.)

>     Since the script takes liberties with some of the facts ([removed] the
>     actual debate took place between Wylie College and University of
>     Southern California) I suspect this NBC broadcast element of the
>     script was also invented.  Any body know for sure?

    I tried to look this up but didn't find anything to indicate the
    debate was broadcast. Maybe it was, but I drew a blank.

    An article at

    [removed]

    says the Wiley-USC debate "came the night of April 2, 1935 before an
    audience of 2,200 at Southern California's Bovard Auditorium." A
    biographer of Melvin Tolson, the debate coach played by Denzel
    Washington, gives the date as April 1 but that may be an error. April
    2 was a Tuesday and the April 13 Chicago Defender indicates that the
    debate took place on a Tuesday:

    "Breezing into southern California after a triumphant tour through
    Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, where they debated white college teams
    on Disarmament of the Nations, Wiley college debating team, of Texas,
    met the University of Southern California team (white) on Tuesday in
    Porter hall. [sic] The Wiiley [sic] team debaters, headed by Hobart
    Jarrett and the others, Daniel Ford, and Cleveland, [sic] are all good
    at the forensic art. All were accompanied by Prof. Tolson, Urof. [sic]
    J. S. Mason and Rev. C. L. Pearson. Dr. M. W. Dogan, president of
    Wiley, will join the members of the party, arriving in Los Angeles
    Saturday."

    No mention of the debate being broadcast. I only glanced at the
    evening radio listings in a few April 1st and 2nd newspapers (Oakland
    Tribune, Los Angeles Times) but didn't see any indication that the
    debate was scheduled.

    I also saw some newspaper items about some of the team's other stops
    on what was called "an inter-racial good will tour of the Pacific
    Coast." For example, Wiley faced "a picked team from the University of
    California" at Oakland Technical High School on March 29. The Chicago
    Defender called it "the first entertainment of its kind ever presented
    in the Bay section" and later reported: "By popular decision and
    applause, the Wiley debaters were declared the winners." On March 22,
    Wiley met a team from the University of New Mexico.  The debates took
    place in the evening and were open to the public but there's no
    mention of any radio coverage.

    On the other hand, while searching the newspapers, I found quite a bit
    of college and high school debating was being broadcast in the 1930s,
    nationally and locally. CBS and NBC often had it on their schedules.
    If the filmmakers are taking dramatic license, it's not entirely
    unbelievable that NBC might have carried an exhibition like the
    Wiley-USC match-up (although I imagine the network would be more
    likely to air it on a weekend rather than preempt, say, Amos 'n' Andy
    at 8 [removed] Pacific on a Tuesday night). Interestingly, on the day of
    the debate, the Syracuse Herald published this blurb:

    "On Saturday, April 13, NBC-WEAF will carry a debate between Harvard
    University and the University of Hawaii. The debaters will be heard
    from Boston and Honolulu in the longest-range radio argument on
    record."

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 19:02:22 -0500
    From: Wich2@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Catching up, he [removed]

>     From: rand@[removed]
>     Subject:  Hello and "Night Beat"  record set

    Dear Randy-

    Welcome back to the fold!

>     I was wondering if anyone else has run  into this set or if NBC produced
>     "sample" sets like this for any of there  other series.

    Did we set in stone the concept that this was some kind of promo, or
    DJ-only, thing? Because Dragnet's THE BIG LITTLE JESUS was released as a 45 set, was
    it not? And commercially, to the public?

    Blessed New Year,
    -Craig W.

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

    Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 22:56:41 -0500
    From: Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
    To: Olde Tyme Radio Digest Digest <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  1-2 births/deaths

    January 2nd births

    01-02-1865 - William Lyon Phelps - d. 8-21-1943
    author, critic, scholar: "Information Please"
    01-02-1888 - Tito Schipa - Lecce, Italy - d. 12-16-1965
    operatic tenor: "Metropolitan Opera"; "La Rosa Concerts"
    01-02-1892 - Artur Rodzinski - Dalmatia, Yugoslavia - d. 11-27-1958
    concuctor: "NBC Symphony Orchestra"; "Cleveland Symphony Orchestra"
    01-02-1894 - Robert Nathan - NYC - d. 5-25-1985
    writer: "CBS Radio Workshop"
    01-02-1901 - Hugh Ross Williamson - Romsey, England - d. 1-13-1978
    author: "Paul, a Bondslave"
    01-02-1904 - Bernardine Flynn - Madison, WI - d. 3-10-1977
    actor: Sade Gook "Vic and Sade"; Mathilda Barker "Welcome Valley"
    01-02-1904 - James Melton - Moultrie, GA - d. 4-21-1961
    singer" "Palmolive Hour"; "Telephone Hour"; "Harvest of Stars"
    01-02-1913 - Anna Lee - Ightham, Kent, England - d. 5-14-2004
    actor: "Soldiers in Greaspaint"; "Lifebuoy Show"; "Screen Guild Theatre"
    01-02-1915 - Nick Fatool - Milbury, MA - d. 9-26-2000
    drummer: (Member of the Big 7 Band) "Pete Kelly's Blues"
    01-02-1917 - Vera Zorina - Berlin, Germany - d. 4-9-2003
    ballet dancer: "Duffy's Tavern"; "I'm An American"
    01-02-1918 - Joan Merrill - Baltimore, MD - d. 5-10-1992
    singer: "Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show"
    01-02-1920 - Corny Peeples - Oak Park, IL
    actor: William Snood "Tom Mix"; Bud Fairchild "Stepmother"
    01-02-1920 - Isaac Asimov - Petrovich, Russia - d. 4-6-1992
    Author: "I, Robot"; "Nightfall"
    01-02-1925 - Richard Jessup - d. 10-22-1982
    writer: "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet"
    01-02-1928 - Howard Caine - Nashville, TN - d. 12-29-1993
    actor: "The Brighter Day"; "The Guiding Light"
    01-02-1930 - Julius LaRosa - Brooklyn, NY
    singer: "Arthur Godfrey Time"
    01-02-1931 - Renee Roy - Buffalo, NY - d. 7-30-2005
    actor: "CBS Radio Mystery Theatre"

    January 2nd deaths

    01-12-1906 - Tex Ritter - Murvaul, TX - d. 1-2-1974
    singer: "Lone Star Rangers"
    02-09-1902 - Fred Harman, Sr. - St. Joseph, MO - d. 1-2-1982
    cartoonist: Creator of Red Ryder
    02-19-1915 - Dick Emery - London, England - d. 1-2-1983
    comedian: "Educating Archie"
    03-08-1918 - Alan Hale, Jr. - Los Angeles, CA - d. 1-2-1990
    actor: "Smiths of Hollywood"
    03-30-1883 - Jo Davidson - NYC - d. 1-2-1952
    sculptor: "Information Please"
    04-14-1915 - Richard Hart - Providence, RI - d. 1-2-1951
    actor: "Family Theatre"
    05-04-1913 - Joe Aleman - d. 1-2-1996
    disk jockey: KPRL Paso Robles, California
    06-15-1921 - Erroll Garner - Pittsburgh, PA - d. 1-2-1977
    jazz muscian: "Jubilee"; "Command Performance"; "Arthur Godfrey Show"
    08-23-1906 - Harriet Parsons - Burlington, IA - d. 1-2-1983
    commentator: (Daughter of Louella Parsons) "Hollywood Hotel"
    08-25-1912 - John Rarig - Washington - d. 1-2-1991
    singer: (Member Sportsmen Quartet) "Jack Benny Program"
    09-08-1902 - Milton Watson - Salinas, CA - d. 1-2-1982
    vocalist: "Burns and Allen"
    10-20-1897 - Adolph Deutsch - London, England - d. 1-2-1980
    arranger, conductor, composer: "Kraft Program"; "This Is Hollywood"
    10-27-1910 - Jack Carson - Carmen, Canada - d. 1-2-1963
    comedian: "Jack Carson Show"; "New Sealtest Village Store"
    11-02-1921 - Shep Menken - NYC - d. 1-2-1999
    actor: "Six Shooter"; "NBC Presents: Short Story"; "Four-Star Playhouse"
    11-14-1904 - Dick Powell - Mountain. View, AR - d. 1-2-1963
    actor: Richard Diamond "Richard Diamond, Private Detective"; Richard
    Rogue "Rogue's Gallery"
    11-19-1897 - Bud Green - Austria - d. 1-2-1981
    lyricist: "Great Moments to Music"
    12-10-1903 - Una Merkel - Covington, KY - d. 1-2-1986
    actor: Adeline Fairchild "Great Gildersleeve"; "Johnny Presents";
    "Texaxo Star Theatre"

    Ron Sayles
    Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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

    Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 02:12:01 -0500
    From: charlie@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  #OldRadio IRC Chat this Thursday Night!

    A weekly [removed]

    For the best in OTR Chat, join IRC (Internet Relay Chat), StarLink-IRC
    Network, the channel name is #OldRadio.  We meet Thursdays at 8 PM Eastern
    and go on, and on! The oldest OTR Chat Channel, it has been in existence
    over nine years, same time, same channel! Started by Lois Culver, widow
    of actor Howard Culver, this is the place to be on Thursday night for
    real-time OTR talk!

    Our "regulars" include OTR actors, soundmen, collectors, listeners, and
    others interested in enjoying OTR from points all over the world. Discussions
    range from favorite shows to almost anything else under the sun (sometimes
    it's hard for us to stay on-topic)...but even if it isn't always focused,
    it's always a good time!

    For more info, contact charlie@[removed]. We hope to see you there, this
    week and every week!

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

    Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 08:55:33 -0500
    From: "Derek Tague" <derek@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  [removed] Bill Idelson
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

    Mark Evanier reports on his "News from ME" pop-culture blog
    [removed] that TV-sitcom writer Bill Idelson, known to us OTR
    fans for having played young Rush Gook on "Vic  'n'  Sade"." died this past
    Monday (12-31-2007).

    Bummer.

    Derek Tague

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

    Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 13:26:25 -0500
    From: wboenig@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Bill Idelson, RIP?
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

    The following URL will link you to a website which is reporting the death of
    Bill Idelson. Given that this is a personal website, rather than a news
    service, I'm not sure how much credibility to give it. Can anyone here can
    either confirm or deny this report? I'm leaning toward believing it, based on
    a posting in another newsgroup from an actor who knew him.

    The link is [removed]

    (scroll down a little bit to find the relevant article.)

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    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V2008 Issue #1
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