Subject: [removed] Digest V2007 #12
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 1/10/2007 6:07 PM

To: [removed]@[removed]

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

                                The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                                  Volume 2007 : Issue 12
                             A Part of the [removed]!
                                 [removed]
                                     ISSN: 1533-9289

                                     Today's Topics:

      Robert McCormick                      [ <otrbuff@[removed]; ]
      AMT-3000, XM, Tube Radios and OTR     [ Rick Botti <rbotti@[removed]; ]
      Soap Writers                          [ "Bill Knowlton" <udmacon1@[removed] ]
      African Americans on early OTR        [ "Bob C" <rmc44@[removed]; ]
      Col McCormick                         [ "Donald" <alanladdsr@[removed]; ]
      Afro American Radio Characters        [ "Mark Kinsler" <kinsler33@[removed] ]
      Re: Robert McCormick                  [ James Widner <jwidner@[removed]; ]
      RE: Colonel Robert McCormick (UNCLAS  [ "Druian, Raymond B SPL" <[removed] ]
      New OTR book available                [ <otrbuff@[removed]; ]
      Martha on the Milton Berle show       [ "B. J. Watkins" <kinseyfan@hotmail. ]
      Roy Rogers & Spade Cooley             [ jack and cathy french <otrpiano@ver ]

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 13:52:42 -0500
    From: <otrbuff@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Robert McCormick

    Of course, the Robert McCormick who's being bantered about the digest these
    days as publisher of The Chicago Tribune and thereby owner-honcho over WGN
    shouldn't be confused with another more familiar (to us) guy with the same
    nomenclature.  Our Robert McCormick signed off his weekday matinee
    quarter-hour newscasts in the late 1940s with pregnant pauses between
    "Robert McCormick ... NBC News ... Washington," in the style of some of
    today's TV reporters.  Remember that readily recognized voice?

    Aural newsman McCormick was born at Danville, Ky. on Aug. 9, 1911 and died
    Sept. 4, 1984.  While pursuing his daytime stint with "Robert McCormick and
    the News" (1947-49) and continuing to offer NBC listeners his authoritative
    news dispatches well beyond, he presided over one of TV's earliest news
    commentaries, "Current Opinion," screened Wednesday evenings by NBC-TV in
    November 1947.  McCormick later hosted a documentary spotlighting U. S.
    involvement in the Korean conflict, "Battle Report."  It aired weekly in
    primetime for 30 minutes on NBC-TV between August 1950 and August 1951.  The
    feature persisted on Sunday afternoons from September 1951 through April
    1952.

    So if the Chicago fellow's name sounds familiar to you, don't despair.  Some
    of you heard it on the air on a regular basis.  Almost daily, in fact.

    Jim Cox

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 13:59:45 -0500
    From: Rick Botti <rbotti@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  AMT-3000, XM, Tube Radios and OTR

    I just got an XM receiver and connected to my AM transmitter. I fired up the
    old Stromberg~Carlson console and am now listening to the OTR channel.
    I'm sure it just doesn't get any better.

    Rick

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:01:03 -0500
    From: "Bill Knowlton" <udmacon1@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Soap Writers

    01-10-1882 - Olive Higgins Prouty - Worcester, MA - d. 3-24-1974

    This name, no doubt, inspired Bob & Ray naming the writer of "Mary
    Backstayge" as "Gertrude Crumlift Sturdley."

    --Bill Knowlton

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:00:45 -0500
    From: "Bob C" <rmc44@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  African Americans on early OTR

    Is Kenneth Clarke, as Ron Sayles and some others on the list do
    from time to time, baiting us with the statements: "And while
    we're on the subject, why weren't the roles of "Amos n Andy"
    played by black/African American actors?  I've seen photos of the
    actors who portrayed them and they were both Caucasian.  Was
    there such a bias in radio at the time against actors of color?"

    I can imagine Elizabeth already has jumped all over this one, but
    may I chime in: Fadio programming and lots of other things are
    like water, they follow the path of least resistance. You have
    two white guys that do black dialect, they come up with the idea
    for a radio show and perform it well and are successful at
    drawing an audience and making money. Whether they are white or
    not is irrelevant. When TV came along, it became relevant and the
    necessary changes were made.

    Was there bias against actors of color? I'm sure there was, just
    like in a lot of other facets of life and opportunities. But the
    black actors who were on Amos 'n' Andy when interviewed years
    ago, I believe it was by Tom Snyder on his "Tomorrow" show, had
    nothing but good things to say about the A&A's two creators and
    stars.

    Bob Cockrum

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:04:40 -0500
    From: "Donald" <alanladdsr@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Col McCormick

    My parents, lifelong liberal Democrats, hated Robert R.
    I think the Colonel was some kind of honorary thing but perhaps that is not
    fair. He considered himself an expert on the Civil War and loved to make
    many of his speeches on that subject. My mother just referred to him as a
    "dreadful man." My father just laughed at the mention of his name. His
    Chicago Theatre of the Air was the show on which he gave his "talks." In a
    SPERDVAC interview with Marvin Miller, he spoke of Marion Claire (star of
    Chicago Theatre of the Air) as McCormick's mistress. Kind of Chicago's
    Hearst in his day.

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:19:40 -0500
    From: "Mark Kinsler" <kinsler33@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Afro American Radio Characters

>            The only roles I recall being played (and well, I might add) on OTR
>     were those of Birdie Lee Coggins ("The Great Gildersleeve) and Beulah
>     ("Fibber McGee and Molly") among a few others.  It seems to me that
>     almost all of the roles written for black and African American actors were
>     those of servants.  Granted, the lines they were given provided us with a
>     wealth of laughter.  I've yet to find any show where these actors were in
>     the
>     roles of, say, a neighbor or close friend.  Why?

    Because it wouldn't have made a great deal of sense.  In hindsight, you'd
    find that the average white American in the 1950's, north or south, was by
    today's standards a racist. We have, most of us, learned a great deal since
    then, and profited thereby.  The Golden Age of Radio was as
    racially-segregated as every other American institution of the time.

    Television shows and magazine advertisements today typically show a group of
    people getting together and laughing and interacting on a social basis, and
    there are always whites and blacks together.  But except among kids, this is
    not really the case in the US today.  Our workplaces are thoroughly
    integrated, black and white, male and female.  But when we get older, we
    still tend to retreat to single-race social groups.  It's gradually
    changing, but it's gonna be slow.

>            And while we're on the subject, why weren't the roles of "Amos n
>     Andy"
>     played by black/African American actors?  I've seen photos of the actors
>     who portrayed them and they were both Caucasian.

    Because Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll invented the characters, wrote
    the scripts, and knew what they were supposed to sound like. Nobody else
    could have done a better job.  Other actors on the show were black.

>     Was there such a bias in radio at the time against actors of color?

    Sure.  And in every other walk of life, for that matter.  The US did not
    begin to have the degree of racial integration we see today until the
    1970's.  The US Armed Forces weren't integrated until after WWII.  Through
    the 1960's, every retail clerk, every city worker, every state trooper, was
    white. So were basketball players and football players and the vast majority
    of baseball players and college students. The discrimination was perfectly
    legal until the Federal civil rights legislation of 1964, and it took easily
    ten years to get it right.

    Hell, our family couldn't buy a house in one part of Cleveland Heights in
    the '50's because we were Jewish.

>            I also realize that some of the members of this list may want to
>     mention
>     "The Beulah Show".  This is true, but there were very few other OTR shows
>     where the main characters were 'characters of color'.  At least, not that I
>     am aware of.  If there were, please enlighten me.

    The character of Beulah on 'Fibber McGee and Molly' was played by a white
    actor.

    M Kinsler

    My apologies to Ms McLeod for errors of commission and omission.

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:20:06 -0500
    From: James Widner <jwidner@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Re: Robert McCormick

    Besides what was already mentioned about McCormick, he was also as a
    political conservative opposed to the New Deal and was one of the
    millionaires who helped fund the "America First" program which was among the
    leading organizations opposed to our involvement in the European War that
    ultimately became WW II. The isolationist movement was built around
    organizations such as "America First" and was opposed to aid to the [removed]
    being fearful of our being pulled into the war. Along with McCormick's
    funding (among others) one of its leading spokesman was Charles Lindbergh.

    I believe his title "Colonel" comes from when he was an artillery officer in
    WW I. He liked it, kept it and people called him that out of respect for the
    power he garnered as head of the Tribune Company.

    Jim Widner

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:20:23 -0500
    From: "Druian, Raymond B SPL" <[removed]@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  RE: Colonel Robert McCormick (UNCLASSIFIED)

    Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
    Caveats: NONE

    The Chicago Tribune was founded around 1848 or 1849 by Joseph Medill, who was
    cursed by begetting only daughters. One of them married Robert McCormick, who
    later became a colonel, possibly in the National Guard -- that's something I
    also don't remember, but it's easy to look up if one wants to be sticky about
    it. At any rate, he became the male heir to the Medill property and ran the
    Chicago Tribune for the rest of his life. He also built a huge castle and war
    museum in a western suburb of Chicago, that still stands as a museum. (Don't
    tell me that this reminds one of another castle on the central coast of
    California that was built by another newspaper owner).

    In any event, McCormick was pretty far to the right politically, with his
    most famous statement being "A newspaper should be an editorial from the
    first page to the back." The Trib was just that, too, with even the jokes
    reflecting a rightist philosophy while the Colonel was alive. McCormick also
    introduced a 'modernized' spelling that was used in the Trib until several
    years past his death. Through became thru, night became nite, freight became
    frate, and so on. As you can see, some of these alternate spellings are still
    used while others were never used outside of the Trib.

    The Chicago Theater of the Air was designed as a soap box for the Colonel to
    deliver his weekly messages and they were part of the show until the cancer
    he had developed made him too weak to appear. The show continued until his
    death, almost immediately after which, it went off the air (this might be a
    coincidence since he died in 1955 and many shows were dying by then).

    I used to listen to the show, but I was just a kid and his monotone voice
    bored the death out of me and I never knew what he was discussing, or whether
    I agreed with him or not.

    After McCormick's death, the Trib slowly moved toward the left, finally
    becoming a paper that is in the political center or possibly, a slight bit to
    the right. With the demise of all the other Chicago papers than the
    Sun-Times, now owned by Rupert Murdoch or someone like him, the Trib has
    definitely emerged as the paper of record for the city.

    [removed]
    Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
    Caveats: NONE

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:20:36 -0500
    From: <otrbuff@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  New OTR book available

    McFarland & Co. began shipping my newest volume this week, the 360-page
    hardback tome titled "Radio Speakers:  Narrators, News Junkies, Sports
    Jockeys, Tattletales, Tipsters, Toastmasters and Coffee Klatch Couples Who
    Verbalized the Jargon of the Aural Ether from the 1920s to the 1980s -- A
    Biographical Dictionary."  Every committed OTR enthusiast will want this one
    for sure!

    There are about 600 biographies in the book plus another 600 personalities
    in an Appendix comprising radio stalwarts whose careers were devoted
    principally to added media and venues or radio performers who may have been
    too obscure to include within the main text but who still made memorable
    contributions.  Hundreds of the biographies have never been published
    elsewhere.  And of those that have, there is often expansive new information
    not previously witnessed in other sources.

    Several colleagues assisted in compiling this work.  My most resourceful
    researchers were Claire Connelly, Derek Tague and Jim Widner who
    occasionally add to this forum.  I am exceedingly grateful to them for their
    help in preserving this material for present and future hobbyists and
    historians.  They made lasting contributions to its outcome.

    The book includes a bibliography plus a 28-page index with nearly 10,000
    entries to help readers complete specific searches.  It is available from
    [removed] or 800-253-2187 (daytime only) at $55 plus $4 s/h and
    is being shipped today.  Ask for it by its main title:  "Radio Speakers."

    Jim Cox

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:20:54 -0500
    From: "B. J. Watkins" <kinseyfan@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Martha on the Milton Berle show

    I have at last received an answer to the question I posted to the Digest
    last month, and that Philip Chavin posted two years ago. According to Joanie
    Leonard the character Martha was played by Pert Kelton.

    Barbara

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

    Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:23:38 -0500
    From: jack and cathy french <otrpiano@[removed];
    To: OTRBB <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  Roy Rogers & Spade Cooley

    I suspect some of us are titillated by hearing occasional Hollywood
    gossip, perhaps shared over a beer at the Holiday Inn in Newark. No one
    expects these rumors to be factual, and frankly it doesn't matter. But
    when such gossip is posted on this Digest, we have a right to expect a
    much higher standard of validity.

    A few weeks ago, a Digester jumped in on a thread about Roy Rogers and
    told all of us that not only was Roy unfaithful to his first wife,
    Arline, he also cheated on Dale. Roy's adulterous companion was named
    as the (second) wife of cowboy band leader Spade Cooley. Digesters were
    assured that the husband actually caught Roy twice in bed with his wife
    Ella. The first time Spade beat up Roy and the second time it happened,
    Spade killed Ella. Finally, the Digester reported that Dale was so
    upset she "laid the law down" to Roy and suddenly, he "got religion."

    Some associates and I have been researching this outlandish tale. It
    turns out these accusations have been around for over 40 years, most of
    them surfacing during the 1961 well-publicized trial in which Cooley
    was convicted of murdering his wife. Moreover, it is apparent that
    these rumors originated with only two people:  Cooley, an alcoholic,
    paranoid, chronic liar and spouse abuser, and his pitiful battered
    wife, a helpless victim of mental and physical abuse for many years.

    Among the facts that surfaced at this California trial was that Donnell
    Clyde "Spade" Cooley had been arrested for beating his first wife in
    1944, had been arrested for attempted rape of a teen-ager in 1945,
    threatened to kill his brother-in-law in 1950, and had several fights
    with his band members and dance customers, including the husband of
    Ginny Jackson, his singer, whom Cooley threatened to throw off Santa
    Monica pier when she tried to quit. His second marriage to Ella Mae was
    no less traumatic, starting with Ella and her sister discovering him in
    bed with one of his singers a few weeks before Cooley's daughter,
    Melody, was born.

    Friends and relatives testified that Cooley beat Ella Mae regularly and
    forced her to confess to having numerous affairs with other men. She
    tried to escape the beatings by fleeing to Texas but Cooley and a
    private detective found her and dragged her back to California. On a
    boat trip in Carolina in 1953, he beat her up in front of her relatives
    and forced her to apologize on her knees for her bad conduct. Dorothy
    Davis, an RN and best friend of Ella, told the jury that Cooley had his
    wife confess to Davis about an affair with Roy Rogers years prior.
    Davis was firm on the stand: "I didn't believe it then and I don't
    believe it now."

     From the trial testimony, it's apparent that Cooley was beating his
    wife on a near-daily basis in the spring of 1961. Their 14 year old
    daughter, Melody, testified that she saw her mother on Easter (the day
    before the murder) and Ella was in bed, recovering from injuries
    incurred when Cooley pushed her out of the car. On the day of the
    murder, April 3rd, Melody was in school, but three different employees
    of Cooley were in his house. The trio testified that Cooley was in a
    drunken rage and did not even recognize one of his employees ([removed]
    Jetton.) They saw Ella briefly late in the afternoon; she had a black
    eye and was stumbling around. The last employee left at 5:45 PM and
    when Melody got home about 6:20 PM, her mother was lying in the
    bathroom, nearly beaten to death.

    In the presence of his daughter, Cooley then repeatedly smashed his
    wife's head on the tile floor and them stomped her with his boots.
    Melody was unable to revive her dead mother and she ran out of the
    house, with Cooley screaming at her that he would kill her too. Hours
    later, Cooley called an ambulance, saying that his wife had slipped in
    the shower. Roy was certainly not there that day, nor the day prior; in
    fact testimony indicated he was not even in California that week.

    At his murder trial, at which he pled not guilty by reason of insanity,
    Cooley tried to implicate his former friend and past employer, Roy
    Rogers, whose career had ascended while Cooley's was crumbling. Under
    oath, Cooley stated that his wife was having an affair with a movie
    cowboy, but did not name Roy on the stand. He did however testify that
    the affair had broken off and "We put this horrible thing out of our
    minds and would not allow this person's TV show to come into our home
    for nine years." In lying about this, Cooley couldn't even get the
    dates right; Roy's TV show aired for just over five years, December
    1951 to June 1957. Later, when not under oath, Cooley yelled at news
    reporters that Ella's lover was Roy Rogers. His outburst may have been
    caused by the [removed], who had just finished destroying one of Cooley's
    few character witnesses on the stand.

    So now, it's over four decades since this infamous trial. Roy and Dale
    denied all of Cooley's accusations many times. Cooley bought his wife's
    silence by killing her and then he died in 1969, while serving his
    sentence following his murder conviction. We can either believe Roy &
    [removed] we can believe Cooley & Ella Mae.

    It's not a tough choice for [removed]

    Jack French
    Editor: RADIO RECALL

    Administrative:  Digesters who helped me with my research include Jim
    Widner, Irene Heinstein, Larry Albert, and Gary Mercer.

    [ADMINISTRIVIA: Alright, this topic is now closed. Send any responses to the
    poster directly.  --cfs3]

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V2007 Issue #12
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