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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