Subject: [removed] Digest V2002 #285
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 7/25/2002 7:55 AM

To: <[removed]@[removed];

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

                                The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                                  Volume 2002 : Issue 285
                             A Part of the [removed]!
                                     ISSN: 1533-9289

                                     Today's Topics:

      Re: The End of A&A                    [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
      Ned Martin, 1923-2002                 [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
      CBSRMT sounds                         [ John Francis MacEachern <johnfmac@a ]
      Erroll Flynn                          [ "Russ Butler" <oldradio@[removed] ]
      Eddie Cantor                          [ PGreco2254@[removed] ]
      Re: Tasteless Humor                   [ "Bill Orr" <billorr6@[removed]; ]
      don deans comment                     [ "Ed Carr" <edcarr@[removed]; ]
      Andy Devine & Fibber McGee            [ "Kathy O'Connell" <Kathy@Kidscorner ]
      Amos 'N' Andy PC                      [ Tsunami1000@[removed] ]
      Cruel WWII humor                      [ John Mayer <mayer@[removed]; ]
      Sic Transit Gloria Scriptia           [ "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@ ]
      OLDE TYME RADIO NETWORK - New Site P  [ HERITAGE4@[removed] ]
      One-of-a-kind OTR shows in my public  [ John Mayer <mayer@[removed]; ]
      Chicago Talent Directory              [ "Paul Feavel" <otrarchive@[removed] ]
      Re:Autographs                         [ "Ian Grieve" <austotr@[removed]. ]
      Fu Manchu/mp3 scenerio                [ "Ian Grieve" <austotr@[removed]. ]

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

    Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 17:37:22 -0400
    From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: The End of A&A

    On 7/24/02 11:16 AM OldRadio Mailing Lists wrote:

>     If you folks remember one of radios
>     greatest shows "Amos n Andy was driven off the air because of PC.

    Not so. The end of "Amos 'n' Andy" -- or, to be specific, the "Amos 'n'
    Andy Music Hall" -- in 1960 was the result of a decision by the CBS Radio
    Network to eliminate most of its weekday long-form comedy and drama
    features effective 11/25/60. The radio series was *not* terminated as a
    result of protests -- and, in fact, there hadn't been an organized
    protest of the A&A radio program since the aborted Pittsburgh Courier
    campaign of 1931. The NAACP's protest in 1951 was focused exclusively on
    the television series, and did not mention the radio program.

    It should also be noted Dunning and other OTR writers err significantly
    when they claim the NAACP "attacked the series in the thirties and was
    its bitter foe throughout." In fact the Association's national office
    took no stand on the radio program at all during the years it was on the
    air -- nor did it endorse or participate in the Courier's protest in 1931
    (although the Courier claimed that it did.) In 1939, the Association's
    then-assistant-executive-secretary Roy Wilkins visited Correll and Gosden
    at their Beverly Hills office to informally discuss the series, and was
    provided with the results of a special Crossley survey documenting the
    program's popularity among black listeners. The meeting ended on cordial
    terms.

    The NAACP's only formal action related to the A&A radio program occured
    in August 1933, when it submitted a letter to the Pepsodent Company
    questioning a fine point in the current storyline. Amos, Andy, and the
    Kingfish were traveling to Chicago for the World's Fair, and along the
    way they stopped to spend a night in a facility described in the opening
    narration as a "colored tourist camp." The Association suggested to
    Pepsodent that it was inappropriate to give the impression that tourist
    accomodations in the North were formally segregated, and Pepsodent passed
    the letter along to Correll and Gosden. In reality, de facto segregation
    *was* extremely common in the North -- and real-life African-Americans
    traveling by car in 1933 might well have had difficulty finding
    accomodations that would accept them -- but Correll and Gosden chose not
    to argue the issue and eliminated the "colored" qualifier from all future
    mentions of the tourist camp.

    Elizabeth

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

    Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 17:38:29 -0400
    From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Ned Martin, 1923-2002

    Anyone who spent any time at all in New England in the sixties,
    seventies, eighties, or early nineties has lost a link to their past,
    with the passing of former Boston Red Sox broadcaster Ned Martin, who
    died yesterday at the age of 79 -- just one day after making a final
    public appearance at Fenway Park as a participant in a memorial tribute
    to Ted Williams. (Like Williams, Martin had served as a Marine during WW2
    -- seeing combat at Iwo Jima, no less.)

    Martin called Red Sox games from 1961 to 1992, on both radio and
    television -- but it was on radio that he did his finest work, and his
    1970s teaming with the late Jim Woods is considered by anyone who had the
    privilege of hearing them to have been one of the few genuinely great
    radio baseball duos in sportscasting history. Listening with my
    grandmother to Martin's vivid descriptions of Fenway Park was my first
    introduction to the ability of radio to stimulate the imagination -- and
    my entire interest in the medium can be traced directly to the power of
    his voice.

    Martin's career was marked by conflicts with management over the
    commercial load in the broadcasts -- he and Woods both resented having to
    do idiotic drop-in spots between pitches and having to suck up to
    potential sponsors at cocktail parties, and this attitude led to his
    being dropped from the radio side after the 1978 season. (Woods then quit
    in protest.) Martin did television for the next twelve years, but it
    wasn't the same -- and you could tell he was bored working in a medium
    that let the pictures do all the work. When the Sox fired Ned at the end
    of the 1992 season, he wasn't the broadcaster he had been -- age was
    taking its toll -- but he still had his integrity, angering management by
    refusing to act as a shill for what was then a very poor team.

    I still listen to Sox radio broadcasts occasionally, but the screaming
    yahoos who do the games nowadays are no substitute for Ned Martin's
    classy and literate approach to the sport. I feel sorry for those who
    never got a chance to hear him in his prime.

    Elizabeth

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

    Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 17:41:18 -0400
    From: John Francis MacEachern <johnfmac@[removed];
    To: OTR Digest <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  CBSRMT sounds

    I'm pretty sure I'm correct in believing that H. Brown used
    stock recordings owned by CBS when he was producing the
    Mystery Theater.

    Just this past Christmas Eve,   WBZ in Boston ( a station
    recently acquired by CBS) aired a recreation of Dickens' A
    Christmas Carol starring its on-air staff.  All the music
    and sound effects were taken from the same library that Mr.
    Brown used.  If it were not for the horrible acting, I would
    have thought that I was listening to the CBSRMT.  WBZ is an
    all news station and the vast majority of the cast read
    their lines as if they were reading news copy.  Until I
    listened to that show, I never realized that I takes a lot
    more skill to be a radio actor than just reading a script in
    front of a microphone.  My appreciation of OTR was renewed
    and reinforced by listening to that one hour of amateurs.

    John Mac

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

    Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 19:35:14 -0400
    From: "Russ Butler" <oldradio@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Erroll Flynn

    <<Phil Watson posted a [removed] identify a song>>

    The song you describe seems like it could be Judy Garland's 1938 recording
    of "You Made Me Love You - I Didn't Want To Do It"  (Composers: James V.
    Monaco and Joe McCarthy)  However,( at age 15 ) she is singing to a
    photograph of Clark Gable, not to Erroll Flynn in the film "Broadway Melody
    of 1938." .   Probably she is not  the folksy-singer you heard on the radio
    since Judy usually put a lot of power behind her voice on a song like this.
    Hers might have possibly inspired another composer.

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

    Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 19:35:24 -0400
    From: PGreco2254@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Eddie Cantor
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    Hi,

       I saw on the list, about the show that nevered aired. with Eddie Cantor,
    Radio Spirits was offering a copy, I ordered from them and was told it was
    out of stock. I have wanted to hear this program for some [removed] out
    there willing to part with a copy on cassette or cd, please contact me off
    line. I have quite a large collection myself. and would be willing to trade
    or [removed]

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    Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 19:35:33 -0400
    From: "Bill Orr" <billorr6@[removed];
    To: "OTR List" <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: Tasteless Humor

    Bravo Zulu, Brian Johnson.  Well said!

    Bill Orr

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

    Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 20:55:44 -0400
    From: "Ed Carr" <edcarr@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  don deans comment

    hi
    i have just recently gotten in old radio shows of country western variety
    and as it happens don's  comment about country music time peaked
    my interest, is this the same as philip morris country music time?
    this prog is sponsored by philip morris and all it's accompaning brands
    this show was on mutual, starred carl smith, with red sovine, and up
    until now, no known copies were avalible, what i need is a tad more
    description of dons music time, can someone elaborate, and if by
    some chance someone out there does happen to have the philip morris
    country music time, would you please let me know or shows like ace
    coffe time, my shows are from 16in disc or 12 in microgroove, sound quality
    not bad, so i am looking for same quality,prefer disc copy or a clean
    2nd gen copy,
    thanks, ed

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

    Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 20:55:54 -0400
    From: "Kathy O'Connell" <Kathy@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Andy Devine & Fibber McGee
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    First off, I remember the Fibber McGee TV show of the past with Bob Sweeney
    & Cathy Lewis.  In fact, that was the first place this TV girl ever
    encountered radio's Cathy Lewis.  And I only knew the characters "Fibber
    McGee & Molly" from hearing my parents talk about them.  This was a tepid
    introduction to the characters, and I was glad to really get to know them
    via otr tapes.
    My memory tells me that the "Fibber" TV show aired afternoons.  Was it ever
    run in prime time?

    And, with all respect to other opinions expressed here, I think the role
    Andy Devine is TRULY remembered for by the generation of the 50's & 60's (my
    generation) is from "Andy's Gang."  My early introduction to anarchy came
    via Froggy the Gremlin.  And Andy will always have his place in my
    generation's collective heart for that.
    ([removed] knew of "Andy's Gang" before I had ever heard of "Smilin' Ed.")
    Plucking my magic twanger once [removed]
    Kathy O'Connell

    [demime [removed] removed an attachment of type application/ms-tnef which had a
    name of [removed]]

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    Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 21:41:44 -0400
    From: Tsunami1000@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Amos 'N' Andy PC
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    I don't know about the Amos 'N' Andy radio being forced off the air for
    clashing with the "Political Correctness" of the time, but I sure as fire
    know the television version bit the dust because of it.  The NAACP got into
    the forefray and raised cain until CBS pulled it off the air.  Period.   JIM
    Faulkner

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    Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 21:48:58 -0400
    From: John Mayer <mayer@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Cruel WWII humor

    Derek Tague wrote of Hiroshima-related jokes:

>     I've often wondered how the great Fred Allen could have participated in
>     a type of banter so callous, so tasteless, and so [removed]

    Recall the "bouncing the rubble around" jokes about Afghanistan heard in
    recent months on the Tonight show monologues and you'll see things aren't all
    that different. As Brian Johnson pointed out, we hated the Japanese even more
    than we currently do the Taliban. We didn't spare a lot of thought for
    "collateral damage;" Fred Allen was no exception to the popular mood of the
    time. There were also popular songs such as "There'll be a little Smokyo in
    Tokyo" which crooned with glee about the carnage that awaited the country of
    Japan.

    The stereoptype of buck-toothed, four-eyed Japanese devils survived well into
    the last decades of the twentieth century, long after the [removed] had reconciled
    with Japan, in the Hong Kong martial arts movies of Bruce Lee and others.
    Could the [removed] have avoided the use of the atomic bomb and achieved the same
    victory? I suspect so, in retrospect, but, though we can take no pleasure in
    the holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we can understand the national mood
    that led to them. I believe hearing the OTR broadcasts of the day can go a
    long way toward helping those of later generations to gain some feeling for
    the national mindset of that era.

    [BTW, I've heard that Kyoto was one of the original targets of the atomic
    bomb, but that it was spared due to the great artistic and national treasures
    there. Don't know if that's true.]

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

    Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 00:00:41 -0400
    From: "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Sic Transit Gloria Scriptia

    Responding to Elizabeth's speculation about radio scripts for Captain
    Midnight and Little Orphan Annie, Jim Widner noted,

>     Not sure if Steve Kallis can also confirm, but I don't believe that
>     Ovaltine holds the CM scripts anymore. I have tried to locate these -
>     they used to be at Ovaltine's then-headquarters in Villa Park near
>     Chicago, but that building has been abandoned and turned into expensive
>     Condos.

    As far as I know, they were disposed of sometime around 1990.  Ovaltine
    had a complete set of all the scripts, and they were neatly stored in a
    series of file cabinets that filled a good part of what otherwise would
    have been a conference room.  Nobody told me, but I suspect that when I
    was reviewing them to gather data for my book, some of the scripts I was
    handling hadn't been touched for decades before.  The whole thing is
    complicated by the shifting corporate organization.  Wander merged with
    Sandoz, which was and is basically into pharmaceuticals.  Ovaltine is now
    distributed by Himmel Nutrition, in Florida, but I haven't researched
    Himmel's relationship with Novartis, the former Sandoz.

    Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

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

    Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 01:09:47 -0400
    From: HERITAGE4@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  OLDE TYME RADIO NETWORK - New Site Problem

    As you may have noted in yesterday's DIGEST, the Olde Tyme Radio Network is
    in the process of switching over to a new server. Unfortunately, there has
    been a problem with the switchover and we may not be back "on the air" until
    Thursday 7/25
    about Noon time.
    Sorrry for the inconvenience.  Schedule remains as published.
    Tom Heathwood - Heritage Radio Theatre
    Jerry Haendiges - Same Time, Same Station               7

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

    Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 01:10:21 -0400
    From: John Mayer <mayer@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  One-of-a-kind OTR shows in my public library?

    Many years ago, before Radiola or Radio Yesteryear, the internet or mp3
    newsgroups, I used to check old radio shows out of our local public
    library in Knoxville. This was not an unalloyed pleasure, as these shows
    had been contributed by an individual who had recorded them, apparently,
    by the simple expedient of setting a microphone in front of his radio's
    speaker when the shows were originally broadcast, and the quality was
    fair at best. Once better options came along I quit checking these tapes
    out and haven't thought of them in years. Only recently has it dawned on
    me that some of those shows may not have survived in any other form.

    My question: is there a practical way to check the catalog of these
    shows against some master list of shows in circulation to determine
    which of them are priceless relics and which are worthless duplicates of
    shows that exist in much cleaner form? And how do I convince the library
    of their possible historical worth? Assuming, that is, that some library
    bureaucrat hasn't suddenly become concerned about copyright violations,
    noticed that the only person who ever checked them out hasn't done so in
    years, and discarded the lot of them. Isn't that the way these stories
    usually end?

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

    Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 09:40:57 -0400
    From: "Paul Feavel" <otrarchive@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Chicago Talent Directory

    'Chicago Talent Directory' aka 'Chicago Talent Directory for Radio,
    Television, Movies, Modeling etc.' seems to be one of the scarcer
    directories.  It was published each January and July by Leonard Dubkin
    from an office in the Merchandise Mart.  There are no copies listed in
    the catalogs of Library of Congress, nor at the LA, New York, or Chicago
    Public Libraries (although Chicago has a different 1987 publication of
    the same name), nor in the University of California Libraries system
    which is huge and has a large entertainment history collection.
    Presumably few copies were produced and those were distributed to
    Chicago area casting directors and to the individuals listed.

    The July 1952 edition is 128 pages, paperbound measuring approx. 7
    inches tall, 3 inches wide, printed predominantly in black and white.
    Sections include:  Actors; Actresses; Agencies and Producers; Air
    Checks; Announcers; Children; Commentators; Instrumentalists; Masters of
    Ceremonies; Narrators; Producers; Puppeteers; Singers; TV
    Designers-Artists; and Writers.  A typical page is four or five
    individuals listed by name with a phone number, show credits (if any)
    and a photograph for each.

    Most entries appear to be paid advertisements from hopefuls seeking
    work.  Many performer entries lack credits and substitute a
    characterization of the individual's professed talent - [removed] 'Leads,
    straights, heavies, characters, commercials. Announcing, interviewing.
    Television, radio, films, stage.'  And yes, that's all one person.

    Only a few names jump out in a cursory review.  Among them:  Charles
    Flynn; Ken Nordine; Art Van Harvey; Fran Allison; Hugh Downs; and Ed
    Scott (who attended the Radio Enthusiasts of Puget Sound's Showcase VIII
    in 2000 if it is the same Ed Scott).

    - Paul

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

    Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 09:41:59 -0400
    From: "Ian Grieve" <austotr@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re:Autographs

    In issue 283, Hal Stone (future author?) gave precise instructions for
    gaining an autograph.  I appeciated the information as I for one would love
    to have an autograph from Hal, though I will ask for it privately :)

    I never considered the costs associated and I guess it is worse for someone
    like Hal who is in some ways a 'captive' on the Digest.  Other famous people
    are generally only asked in the street and sign any old thing that the askee
    has handy.  But Hal in the modern age would get his requests by e-mail and
    probably cluey to not sending his signature digitally, he has to provide the
    article to be signed.

    So Hal I will send you a photo of me for you to sign, with a stamped self
    addressed envelope, just as soon as I can think of the 'specific dedication
    ' I would enjoy reading.  No need to thank me and no need for you to think
    up the 'specific dedication'.

    Ian Grieve

    [removed] found another couple of  'Archie' episodes, so it is time to reeeelax.

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

    Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 09:42:21 -0400
    From: "Ian Grieve" <austotr@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Fu Manchu/mp3 scenerio

    In issue 283 Gad asked about the Fu Manchu distribution that was previously
    discussed as being converted to mp3 by person or persons unknown.

    Gad, same here, no sign on the 'invitation only' ftp sites, newsgroups, CD
    share groups etc, though the discussion here has caused plenty of people to
    go looking for them.  If they were converted to mp3 it must have been for a
    very close trade circle or for sale.  It is good news for Ted as it could
    have had no impact on his distribution which is what I expected, but bad
    news for those of us who would love to listen to them :)

    Ian Grieve

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V2002 Issue #285
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