Subject: [removed] Digest V2003 #313
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 8/15/2003 1:25 PM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

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


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2003 : Issue 313
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Re: German radio in WWII              [ "MICHAEL BIEL" <mbiel@[removed]; ]
  Re: Dr. Biel, Call Surgery            [ "MICHAEL BIEL" <mbiel@[removed]; ]
  Richard Denning                       [ "Cooper Smith" <coopersmith@[removed] ]
  Re: My Favorite Husband on TV         [ Roo61@[removed] (Randy Watts) ]
  Suspense Music                        [ "evantorch" <etorch@[removed]; ]
  Today in radio history -- sort of     [ Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed] ]
  "Smoke Rings"                         [ "Cope Robinson" <coplandr@bellsouth ]
  CBSRMT music                          [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]
  Re: History of Mystery book           [ "Jan Willis" <jlwillis@[removed]; ]
  Richard Denning                       [ Kermyt Anderson <kermyta@[removed]; ]
  CBS Radio Suspense's Closing Theme    [ Mark J Cuccia <mcuccia@[removed]; ]

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

Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 23:03:42 -0400
From: "MICHAEL BIEL" <mbiel@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: German radio in WWII

Jim Widner replied to questions from Dominick about the survival of German
wartime broadcasts and confirmed that the Germans had developed the reel to
reel tape recorder but wasn't sure if it was being used for archiving at
that time.  It was.  But many of the tapes were erased and re-recorded by
the allies at the end of the war because the BASF factory which made the
tape had been bombed out of commission.  J. Herbert Orr used to tell a
story that Eisenhower ordered him to rebuild the plant and make new tape
when a portion of a Hitler speech was broadcast following the end of an
Eisenhower speech that had been recorded on the same tape as the longer
Hitler speech.  Orr returned home to Opelika, Alabama after the war and
founded Irish Tape there.

German Radio had an extensive library of classical music concerts recorded
on tape during the war that was available for loan to stations throughout
the axis.  Several hundred of them survived, including nine that were
recorded in stereophonic sound.  Because Berlin was allowed to be liberated
by the Soviets, a large library of Nazi tape recordings were taken to
Moscow to the State Sound Archive.  During the 1970s most of them were
returned to Berlin to the EAST German Archive.  I was hoping to be able to
inspect these when I visited that archive in 1995 but found out that they
had just been transferred to the former West German archive in another
city.  Following re-unification it was decided that the Berlin archive
would house recordings from the Communist era, while the other archive
would hold the recordings made before 1946 and after 1990.  But many
wartime German tapes do exist, and many have been used for reissues on many
labels including an extensive opera series on BASF records in the 1980s.

Discs were also used for recording by the Reichrundfunk, but they were not
of the type that we are used to here in the [removed]  The 16 inch size was
rarely used anywhere in Europe, and by the war the two main types of
recording discs used in Germany were the Simplat, which was a solid vinyl
disc that was soft enough to be recorded on, and another disc type which
had a lacquer coating similar to ours but used a white vinyl base instead
of metal or glass.  The Simplats have held up well, but the other type
usually exhibit delamination.  The one example I have has lost most of the
lacquer coating, and in the Vienna Phonogramme Archiv I saw a pile of them
that had solidified into one lump that could only be separated by peeling a
lacquer coating from a white vinyl base.  Which, of course, they don't
do--waiting for someone to figure out how to properly separate them.

Both the Germans and the Italians used regular shellac pressings for some
broadcast recordings.  The famous propaganda jazz recordings by Charlie and
his Orchestra were manufactured this way.  The National Archives has an
enormous number of metal stampers of Italian broadcast recordings including
speeches by Mussolini.

But in addition to the recordings made by the Axis broadcasters themselves,
there are the recordings made by the Allied monitoring facilities in
England and the [removed]  Daily printed transcripts of the most important
foreign broadcasts were published--the British still publishes them--but
some of the dictating machine cylinders made of the broadcasts for
transcribing still survive in the National Archives, and probably also the
Library of Congress and the British Museum.    There also were some higher
quality recordings made of the axis broadcasts, most notably of William
Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) and Ezra Pound.

Wire recording was strictly an American device during these years.  Martin
Camras had developed a machine that was used in several forms during the
war.  In fact, the broadcast of the Japanese surrender ceremony from Tokyo
Harbor was heard via a wire recording made by a friend of mine, the late
Steve Cisler, who at that time was a Marine signal corpsman.  MacArthur did
not want the ceremony broadcast live in order to give the press reporters
an even chance, so the Army recorded it on disc and Steve recorded it on
two wire recorders for the Navy.  The Army had to take the discs to a
shore-based station while all Steve needed to do was to get to an adjacent
ship.  Despite the fact that one of the wires flew off the machine while it
was being rewound, it was his other wire which got on the air first, and
thus was the one that was broadcast by the American networks.  If you have
a recording of the fifteen minutes before this broadcast began you will
notice that there is a great amount of confusion as to when the broadcast
would begin.  This is why.  I am mentioning this here because the question
about the German broadcasts included a note about the use of wire.  The
Germans were not using wire recording at all.

Michael Biel  mbiel@[removed]

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

Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 23:55:38 -0400
From: "MICHAEL BIEL" <mbiel@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re:  Dr. Biel, Call Surgery

Chris Chandler's summary of the events of the broadcasts of the House
debate following FDR's Dec 8 Declaration of War Address is quite correct.
I used the recordings of the CBS and Mutual broadcasts for a C-Span
broadcast on Dec 7, 1991 which was repeated many times that weekend but
never again due to the restrictions of the use of the film of FDR's speech
by the archive controlling the Fox Movietone material for 1941.  Following
the broadcast I deposited the full recordings of the two networks in the
National Archive and the Library of Congress, neither of which had these
broadcasts nor the film of FDR's speech.  My Mutual recording is missing
the material before the speech and about two or three minutes following the
speech, so if Chris has that first fifteen minute segment, I would love to
have a copy of it.

The CBS reporter in the House gallery was Park Simmons, someone we have
never been able to trace to any other broadcast.  He is not listed as an
accredited Congressional reporter, so it might have been an innocent error
on his part that the broadcast on CBS continued from the House after the
speech was over.  Simmons did not talk during the debate broadcast, so this
part of the recording is the best way to hear the proceedings.  He did pull
the plug as soon as he was advised to, and the broadcast then shifted to
New York.  Over on Mutual, Fulton Lewis, Jr. knew exactly what he was
doing, and yes, he can be heard clearly laughing at the idea that he was to
stop broadcasting.  He did stop a few minutes later, and I bet the aide had
brought with him an armed guard to assert his authority over Lewis!
Although Lewis kept on talking while many Representatives had the floor,
his asides help tell us about the adventure of Janette Rankin trying
unsuccessfully to be be recognized by the Speaker of the House.

On the C-Span broadcast I had to remove the segments I had included of Park
Simmons because at the last minute CBS threatened to charge C-Span $700 a
minute for the airing of the voice of any of their reporters.  But most of
the debate that was heard on C-Span came from the CBS recording until they
took the debate of the air, and then I switched to Mutual.  The speech was
broadcast from the film, and there were two short segments missing.  A few
months later a friend reminded me that Blackhawk Films had the speech in
their catalogs for many years, and I am still surprised why we had not
found anyone with this version of the speech film.  I'm still looking for a
Blackhawk print of the speech just to say I have it.  As for the broadcast
recordings, CBS does have it in their archive but they don't know it and do
not know of its significance.  You might remember that in 2001 Walter
Cronkite embarrassed himself on NPR when it was evident that he did not
know that his own network HAD broadcast the debate.  Portions of the CBS
broadcast appeared on an LP that was sold at the Pearl Harbor memorial for
many years.   Sides 2, 3, and 4 of the Mutual broadcast had been found
hidden away at WGN, and I also found a home recording of much of the Mutual
broadcast in a garage sale around 1971.   I'd love to know the background
of the Mutual recording that Chris has.

Because the C-Span broadcast was on Dec 7 rather than on the 8th, that left
me free that day to go and sit in the House gallery 50 years to the minute
of the time of FDR's speech.  And then a half hour or so later I went down
to the statue gallery to the statue of Janette Rankin, 50 years to the
minute from when she tried to speak during the debate before becoming the
only Representative to have voted against entry into both WW I and WW II.
She may not have been correct, but she had guts.  (Of absolutely no
interest to some of the people reading this digest is the fact that two
statues away is the statue of Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of the
Image Dissector TV camera tube.)

Michael Biel mbiel@[removed]

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

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 01:10:29 -0400
From: "Cooper Smith" <coopersmith@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Richard Denning
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

After a variety of roles during the last days of OTR and the
early days of TV, Richard Denning reached what was probably the peak of his
career when he played Deborah
Kerr's wealthy "patron," in "An Affair To Remember."
Although he didn't make the nominations for best supporting actor he was
prominently mentioned as a potential candidate.
He had better luck as a candidate near the end of his life when he had a
recurring role on, "Hawaii 50," as the governor.

  *** This message was altered by the server, and may not appear ***
  ***                  as the sender intended.                   ***

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

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 01:11:02 -0400
From: Roo61@[removed] (Randy Watts)
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: My Favorite Husband on TV

Did CBS ever go though with thier plans to
make the radio series a television sitcom
besides I Love Lucy? If it did happened I'm
sure that they had a differant cast.

MY FAVORITE HUSBAND ran on CBS Television from 1953 through 1955,
originally with Joan Caulfield -- later Vanessa Brown, as Liz Cooper and
Barry Nelson as husband George.  I saw a couple of episodes of the
series on tape a few years ago and it didn't seem to have a great deal
in common with the radio version.  Same basic premise but played in a
more subdued, less "wacky" manner.

Randy

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

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 12:49:43 -0400
From: "evantorch" <etorch@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Suspense Music

While on the subject of the excellent use of music on SUSPENSE, it is worth
mentioning that in Fugue in C Minor the organist was Joseph Kearns, who
played from a church (live) not far from CBS.

Evan Torch
etorch@[removed]

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

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 12:49:52 -0400
From: Joe Mackey <joemackey108@[removed];
To: otrd <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Today in radio history -- sort of

 From Those Were The Days --

1911 - Procter & Gamble Company of Cincinnati, OH introduced Crisco
hydrogenated shortening.  (Where would all those shows have been with
Crisco as a sponsor?  And remember, its digestable! -ed)
   Joe

--
Visit my homepage:  [removed]~[removed]

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

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 12:50:40 -0400
From: "Cope Robinson" <coplandr@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  "Smoke Rings"

Jim Cox wrote:

All my life I've sung the catchy little Chesterfield commercial to the
words "Smoke dreams, smoke, smoke dreams, while a Chesterfield burns <snip>

I am happy, Michael Hayde, that Jim Cox sings that Chesterfield theme at
all.  Too bad that all his life he has been on key with slightly off lyrics.
Thanks to you he will sound a great deal better from now on.

Cope Robinson

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

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 12:50:24 -0400
From: "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  CBSRMT music

Dixon Hayes asked:

Now I've heard the "Twilight Zone" music on CBSRMT (the actual RMT opening
theme can be heard in the TZ episode "Two," with Charles Bronson and
Elizabeth Montgomery), but where did the "Dark Shadows" theme come from?
The
1966-71 "Dark Shadows" was always an ABC fixture.  I don't remember hearing
it on the "Mystery Theatre."

I heard the DARK SHADOWS theme on an episode that featured Fred Gwynne that
took places on the moors of England - one of only two episodes of the series
I have ever heard of the series and that was thanks to a friend who brought
them along when we drove to Cincinnati together.  I do remember hearing some
sound tracks to TZ's "To Serve Man" as well.
Martin

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

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 12:51:24 -0400
From: "Jan Willis" <jlwillis@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: History of Mystery book

Regarding Chis Werner's fine recommendation of Max Allan Collins'
_History of Mystery_.
  It's a beautiful book, and well  worth the retail  $45 price
[removed]
   but it also happens to be available from one of the Kings of Remainders, 
Edward R.
Hamilton, for $[removed], plus shipping.
  (( $[removed] for the first book, $.95 additional  shipping for each book after 
that, I think)
    I've bought from them for over two decades  and can highly recommend 
them.
  This online  link should work:
[removed]
  While there, click on the "Search" feature, and do a Power Search using 
"radio" as a key word in the Title box  and you will
see other radio-related titles, books and CDs,  at discounted prices.
  You can also leave Title and/or Author boxes  blank and choose  a 
particular publisher -  Collectors Press, McFarland, etc. -  and find all of 
that publisher's books currently being offered  by Hamilton.  Lots of 
Collectors Press titles, right now.

Jan Willis

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

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 12:51:50 -0400
From: Kermyt Anderson <kermyta@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Richard Denning

Here's a page on Richard Denning, summarizing his
career (with particular emphasis on My Favorite
Husband). Interesting explanation of why Lucy's tv
transition involved a whole different show.

[removed]

Several people have mentioned that Denning played on
television the radio characters Mr North and Mike
Shayne. That's true, but don't forgot that both of
those characters appeared in print (first) and in
movies (second) before appearing on radio (third).
Brett Halliday wrote Mike Shayne stories from 1939
through 1976, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine was
published from 1956 until 1985, so I'm sure the
television show wasn't using only the radio show as
source material. (Found a pretty cool and
comprehensive Mike Shayne website at
[removed] . There are also some
screen shots of Denning as Shayne.)

Kermyt

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

Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 12:54:05 -0400
From: Mark J Cuccia <mcuccia@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  CBS Radio Suspense's Closing Theme

Chris Holm wrote:

All this talk of Suspense reminded me of something, and I thought I'd
share it and see if anyone else feels the same way.  Suspense is one of
my favorite OTR shows (the others being Gunsmoke and Lum & Abner), and I
love the intro theme music.  It's dark and a little spooky.  In the 40's
they use the same music at the end of the show as well.  However,
sometime in the early 50's (I think), they changed the end of show's
music to a rousing march, which I find more than a little disconcerting.

Like many of you, I listen to OTR when I go to bed.  Some nights, as
I'm drifting off at the end of a particularly good Suspense, it sounds
like a marching band has just started going through my bed room.  I'm
not a big fan. Why the switch?

The original theme of SUSPENSE, used for virtually every episode from the
beginning in Summer 1942, all the way through the premiere episode of the
1951/52 season in late [removed], was the "dreamy" or "spooky" theme song
with strings and chimes, etc., composed the the late great Bernard
Herrmann, who composed a great deal of the music for numerous other CBS
Radio and CBS-owned/produced television programs of days gone by, this
music eventually being incorporated into the recorded CBS Music Library.
(Herrmann also composed music for several movies of Hitchcock and Orson
Welles. He also composed the score for Welles' Mercury Theater episodes
on CBS Radio in the 1930s/40s).

But shortly after the 1951/52 radio season of Suspense began, for WHATEVER
reason (STILL UNKOWN to me!), the *closing* theme song was changed to this
"march". The opening was still the "eerie" strings and woodwinds with
chimes of Bernard Herrmann, but only for a few brief seconds though. This
was what I refer to as the "second half" of the Autolite years. (Also
beginning in late Summer/Fall 1951 was the change of the closing CBS
outcue from "This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System" on both radio
and TV, to "This is the CBS Radio Network" and "This is the CBS Television
Network"). I do seem to remember in an early [removed] episode (I can't
remember which one), that the Suspense/Autolite announcer did identify the
title or composer of this "march" closing theme. But I only remember
hearing that "march" theme credited in this *ONE* episode! The *brief*
opening of the traditional Herrmann "eerie" chimes, woodwinds, strings,
along with the closing "march" theme, continued through the  "sustained"
years of June 1954 thru late 1956/early 1957.

Beginning in [removed], CBS Radio seemed to migrate all of the more popular
remaining dramas into a Sunday afternoon/evening block (perhaps to compete
against the ever-growing-in-popularity/profits NBC Radio's Monitor?).
Suspense, Johnny Dollar, CBS Radio Workshop, Gunsmoke, and others, all
moved to this Sunday afternoon/evening time slot. During this period, with
the real "deep voiced" announcer, Suspense returned to (a now pre-recorded
version of) the original (closing) theme song of Bernard Herrmann. And
this continued for Suspense all the way through the very end, 30-Sept-1962
even the New York produced/originated period starting [removed]

*IF* you hear the "march" theme on Suspense episodes of 1957-59, it is
*THOSE* episodes which are AFRS-edited. During the closing theme song, the
staff/booth announcer at CBS/KNX Hollywood (Roy Rowan, Hugh Douglas,
George Walsh, etc) would read the outcue and even promos for maybe another
CBS Radio programming or the network "in general". The cast credits were
read just prior to the beginning of the closing theme itself. That outcue
and promo might not have been desired by AFRS, if the local AFRS base
station didn't carry that program being promo'd by CBS, or if it were not
going to "immediately follow Suspense" when AFRS would air that program.
Thus, AFRS probably felt it better to completely replace the theme song
with their own "stock" copy of the 1951-56 "march" theme.

When Suspense moved production/origination to NYCity in [removed], the
closing was modified a bit, to where the NY-based CBS announcer (usually
Stuart Metz, but also sometimes Art Hanna and others) would read the cast
credits while the (Herrmann-composed) theme song played. AFRS-edited
copies do *NOT* edit this closing theme, except for Stuart Metz final
words of the CBS outcue or promo+outcue ([removed], "Listen to Arthur Godfrey
time, weekdays on the CBS Radio Network), these outcues, sometimes with
brief promo, would follow the final note of the closing theme with Metz
saying "... another tale, well calculated to keep you [removed] SUS-PENSE".

[removed] AFRS-edited copies for the 1959-62 timeframe sometime do *ADD* the
march theme at this point, sans original CBS-outcue/promo. During this
march, you'll hear an AFRS announcer say something like "Suspense has come
to you through the worldwide facilties of the United States Armed Forces
Radio, and Television Service".

As for which closing theme song I like?

I too prefer the "Herrmann-composed" version, used from 1942-51 and then
1957-62. But I can tolerate the 1951-56 "march" years as well, as I also
associate this with Suspense. BTW, that "march" almost sounds like the
theme song for another CBS Radio drama of the 1940s/50s, "The FBI in Peace
and War". I guess that in 1956/57, the new producer at that time, William
N. Robson, preferred the earlier "Herrmann" composed theme as well (like
we do), and decided to restore it for the closing!

Mark J. Cuccia
mcuccia@[removed]
New Orleans LA USA

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2003 Issue #313
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