Subject: [removed] Digest V2009 #144
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 8/3/2009 3:13 PM

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

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

                                The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                                  Volume 2009 : Issue 144
                             A Part of the [removed]!
                                 [removed]
                                     ISSN: 1533-9289

                                     Today's Topics:

      Meredith Willson and Les Paul         [ DurangoKid@[removed] ]
      Re: Love on the Line                  [ <georgewagner@[removed]; ]
      Is Ronald Liss still Alive?           [ Sean Dougherty <seandd@[removed] ]
      I Love A Mystery                      [ pauljustmill <pauljustmill@[removed]; ]
      8-2 births/deaths                     [ Ron Sayles <bogusotr@[removed]; ]
      les paul                              [ Michael Berger <[removed]@yaho ]
      Re:Semi-OT: Radio, and the Apollo Mi  [ LBiel <[removed]@[removed]; ]
      Re: Yoohoo, Mrs. Goldberg             [ LBiel <[removed]@[removed]; ]
      Re: Yoohoo, Mrs. Goldberg             [ LBiel <[removed]@[removed]; ]
      RE: That ain't the way I - heerd? -   [ "Sammy Jones" <sjones69@[removed] ]

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

    Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 16:56:39 -0400
    From: DurangoKid@[removed]
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Meredith Willson and Les Paul

>      . . There was a guitar solo.  The guitarist sounded  a great deal like
>     Les Paul, but there was no credit given.  My Question:  Can anyone confirm
>     whether this was or was not Les Paul? . .

    In "LES PAUL: An American Original" 1993 by Mary Alice Shaughnessy, she
    writes when 28 yr old Lester Polsfuss was drafted into the Army, his friend
    Meredith Willson, whom he knew from NBC, using his high rank as
    an officer, got Pvt Polsfuss into his unit . . . Among Willson's personal
    duties was the recruitment of top-notch musicians for the AFRS's ubiquitous
    nineteen-piece orchestra . .
    Aware that Les was an electronics whiz as well as an ace guitarist, Willson
    cautioned him: "PLAY AS DUMB AS YOU CAN OR YOU'LL END UP IN THE SIGNAL CORPS"

       Glenn E. Mueller
       Rowland Heights, CA

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

    Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 16:56:55 -0400
    From: <georgewagner@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Love on the Line

    Andrew, is the line "It's bigger than BOTH of us!" regularly used on the
    program? If so, this was also a very early television show.

         Sincerely,

         George Wagner
         georgewagner@[removed]

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

    Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 16:57:04 -0400
    From: Sean Dougherty <seandd@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Is Ronald Liss still Alive?

    Hi, I was recently contacted by an author working on a book on Batman and
    he's interested in finding out if Ronald Liss, an actor who played Robin the
    Boy Wonder on the radio, is still alive.

    Does anyone know if he is and if so, how to contact him?

    Let me know,

    Sean Dougherty
    201-739-2541
    SeanDD@[removed]

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

    Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 16:57:12 -0400
    From: pauljustmill <pauljustmill@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  I Love A Mystery
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
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    Has there been any further information on the recreations of the old ILAM
    scripts?  When will they be available?

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    Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 16:57:20 -0400
    From: Ron Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
    To: Olde Tyme Radio Digest Digest <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  8-2 births/deaths

    August 2nd births

    08-02-1886 - Cesare Sodero - Naples, Italy - d. 12-16-1947
    conductor: Series of condensed operas on WEAF New York
    08-02-1890 - Leila Roosevelt - d. 11-4-1973
    explorer: (cousin of FDR) "So You Want to Be"
    08-02-1892 - Jack L. Warner - London, Ontario, Canada - d. 9-9-1978
    film studio owner" "Jack Benny Program"; "Warner Brothers Academy
    Award Theatre"
    08-02-1892 - John Kieran - The Bronx, NY, New  - d. 12-10-1980
    panelist: "Information, Please"
    08-02-1892 - Karolyn Wells Bassett - Derby, CT - d. 6-2-1931
    was very popular in early radio
    08-02-1899 - Charles Bennett - d. 6-15-1995
    screenwriter: "Lux Radio Theatre"; "Radio City Playhouse"
    08-02-1899 - Earle Larimore - Portland, OR - d. 10-22-1947
    actor: "Alias Jimmy Valentine"; "Life Can Be Beautiful"
    08-02-1900 - Helen Morgan - Danville, IL - d. 10-8-1941
    hostess, singer: "Helen Morgan, Songs"; "Broadway Melodies"; "Fred
    Allen Show"
    08-02-1902 - Guy Repp - d. 11-24-1986
    actor: Dr. Abernathy "County Seat"; Benito Mussoline "Our Secret Weapon"
    08-02-1903 - Victor McLeod - d. 12-12-1972
    writer: "The Bing Crosby Show"; "Stop or Go"
    08-02-1904 - John McClain - Ohio - d. 5-3-1967
    writer: "Hollywood Hotel"
    08-02-1905 - Myrna Loy - Raidersburg, MT - d. 12-14-1993
    actor: "Lux Radio Theatre"
    08-02-1905 - Ruth Nelson - Saginaw, MI - d. 9-12-1992
    actor: "Arch Obler's Plays"; "Columbia Workshop"
    08-02-1912 - Ann Dvorak - NYC - d. 12-10-1979 - d. 12-10-1979
    actor: "Movietone Radio Theatre"
    08-02-1912 - Gwen Plumb - Sydney, Australia - d. 6-4-2002
    scripter, actor: "Big Sister"; "Blue Hills"
    08-02-1912 - Harry Bailey - Indianapolis, IN
    writer: "Cavalcade for Victory"; "Father's Day Program"
    08-02-1913 - Hal Block - d. 6-16-1981
    writer, panelist: "Burns and Allen"; "Milton Berle Show"; "What's My
    Line"
    08-02-1914 - Beatrice Straight - Old Westbury, NY - d. 4-7-2001
    actor: "Great Scenes from Great Plays"; "CBS Radio Mystery Theatre"
    08-02-1915 - Gary Merrill - Hartford, CT - d. 3-5-1990
    actor: Bruce Wayne/Batman "Adventures of Superman"
    08-02-1915 - Johnny Long - Newell, NC - d. 10-31-1972
    bandleader: "The Teen-Timers Show"; "Judy, Joe, and Johnny"
    08-02-1916 - Johnny Coons - d. 7-6-1975
    actor: Chuck Ramsey "Captain Midnight"; Clipper "Sky King"; "Vic and
    Sade"
    08-02-1921 - Kathryn Bankston - d. 4-10-1987
    women's programming: WRBC Athens, Georgia
    08-02-1924 - Joe Harnell - The Bronx, NY - d. 7-14-2005
    jazz arranger: (Joe Harnell Quartet) "The Navy Swings"
    08-02-1942 - Doris Kenner-Jackson - North Carolina - d. 2-4-2000
    singer: (Shirelles) "Murray The K: Live from the Brooklyn Fox"
    08-02-1943 - Rose Tremain - London, England
    author: "The Wisest Fool"

    August 2nd deaths

    01-14-1911 - David Gothard - Beardstown, IL - d. 8-2-1977
    actor: Gil Whitney "Romance of Helen Trent"; Nick Charles "The Thin Man"
    02-27-1873 - Enrico Caruso - Naples, Italy - d. 8-2-1921
    tenor: On 12-13-1910 made experimental broadcast with Lee DeForest
    05-27-1921 - Redd Stewart - Ashland City, TN - d. 8-2-2003
    lyricist: "Pee Wee King and His Golden West Cowboys"
    06-13-1899 - Carlos Chavez - Mexico City, Mexico - d. 8-2-1978
    composer, conductor: "Columbia Workshop"; "Sinfonia India"
    08-06-1894 - Jack Kirkwood - Scotland - d. 8-2-1964
    actor: Jack Williams "Saunders of the Circle X"; Uncle Jim "Hawthorne
    House"
    08-22-1910 - Lesley Woods - d. 8-2-2003
    actor: Mary Wesley "Boston Blackie"; Margo Lane "The Shadow"
    09-06-1930 - Bernard Jaffe - d. 8-2-1993
    science writer: "Information, Please"
    09-13-1913 - Gretchen Davidson - Chicago, IL - d. 8-2-2002
    actor: Carol Kennedy "Carol Kennedy's Romance"
    10-03-1924 - Joe Allison - McKinney, TX - d. 8-2-2002
    songwriter: Began his career as a radio disk jockey
    11-24-1888 - Cathleen Nesbitt - Belfast, Northern Ireland - d. 8-2-1982
    actor: "Philco Radio Playhouse"
    11-27-1915 - Ralph Bell -NYC - d. 8-2-1998
    actor: Travis Rogers "Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator"; Alfred
    Drake "This Is Nora Drake"
    11-30-1894 - Donald Ogden Stewart - Columbus, OH - d. 8-2-1980
    writer: "Information Please"
    12-05-1890 - Fritz Lang - Vienna, Austria - d. 8-2-1976
    film director: "Bud's Bandwagon"
    12-08-1907 - Frank Faylen - St. Louis, MO - d. 8-2-1985
    actor: "Screen Guild Theatre"
    12-12-1919 - Seymour Korman - d. 8-2-1993
    newsman for Mutual
    xx-xx-1932 - Juan Lopez Mactezuma - Mexico City, Mexico - d. 8-2-1995
    host: "Jazz en la Cultuira"; "Panorama de Jazz"

    Ron

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

    Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 16:57:32 -0400
    From: Michael Berger <[removed]@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  les paul
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
    X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

    Heard the complete B&A show mentioned in a post yesterday and the Les Paul
    Trio was featured in a separate number.  They started that fall season as the
    second of two musical groups on the show [Meredith Willson's Orch was the
    other] but by November they were dropped for some reason.

    Michael Berger

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    Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 17:01:18 -0400
    From: LBiel <[removed]@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re:Semi-OT:  Radio, and the Apollo Missions

    Jim Burns asks about what radio coverage of the space program especially
    Apollo 11 was like.  The best answer was given two weeks ago on the
    anniversary of the lunar landing on Walden Hughes' Sunday night program on
    YesterdayUSA when he played the Mutual Radio coverage of the launch.  It was
    very detailed and exciting, and I participated in a discussion about the
    events in my regular part in Walden's Sunday night program at 11:30 Eastern.
    He followed up with the soundtrack of the CBS TV coverage of the entire moon
    walk of Apollo 11.  We discussed that there is not much radio coverage of the
    flight in circulation.  I recorded the audio of all of the coverage from TV,
    but the only radio I remember doing was a complete set of the Lowell Thomas
    broadcasts from the entire period of Apollo 11.  Walden and I will be airing
    those in a month or so -- we'll keep you posted.

    Jim wrote "TV coverage of Apollo 11 has been fairly well archived, and
    occasionally, highlights replayed."  Actually I was very disappointed in how
    the TV networks covered the anniversary.  Practically nothing of their
    original TV coverage was aired, and they seem to assume that radio had not
    been invented yet. While CBS Radio did put together an hour program, it
    probably was aired on very few stations. ABC-TV's overnight news aired a 10
    minute segment of their original post-flight wrap up (including the opening
    of the program which was sponsored by TANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) but I saw nothing
    of their original coverage in any news program aired when normal people are
    awake.  Other than an interview with Jay Barbaree on MSNBC which included
    about 30 seconds of video, none of the TV networks seemed to air any original
    coverage beyond what few seconds they were already airing from their obits
    for Walter Cronkite.  And CBS even aired only the falsified versions of their
    coverage where film that was not seen until a month after the flight had been
    edited in replacing the simulation animation that had originally been aired.
    They are either too embarrassed -- or are completely ignorant -- that CBS and
    the other networks were airing simulations and graphics during the moon
    landing.  And from what I am hearing about the staffing at the network, the
    latter is more likely.  The kiddies that inhabit the networks now are too
    young to have been there, and all they know is what they have seen on news
    clips.  They have never bothered to sit down and actually watch the original
    coverage.  Radio?  They grew up in the late 70s or 80s and 90s and never
    listened to the radio because there was no news on radio in those days.  The
    journalistic standards today are very, very, very, very low -- and Walter
    Cronkite himself was very depressed and annoyed at what had been happening
    since the early 90s to journalism.

    As a final note, Discovery Channel aired a marathon of Cronkite Remembers
    last Sunday and I watched it for the first time since it was produced in the
    mid-90s.  In addition to his pronouncements of the already declining
    standards of journalism, he gave a full explanation of what WAS really seen
    by the viewers of the live coverage of the lunar landing.  It was a very
    detailed explanation and showed what it looked like.  To bad apparently
    nobody currently in the newsrooms seem to have watched that program.

    Michael Biel  mbiel@[removed]

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

    Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 17:01:56 -0400
    From: LBiel <[removed]@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Yoohoo, Mrs. Goldberg

    In discussing the documentary on Gertrude Berg, Sean Dougherty asked "why
    there were so few overtly Jewish shows and characters on TV in the decades
    that followed" and noted "It was groundbreaking to have a seder service on
    the air in the 1930s - all of the other Jewish comedians on radio celebrated
    Christmas on their shows."  There was a whole book recently published by two
    digest members that addresses these topics Radio and the Jews: The Untold
    Story of How Radio Influenced the Image of Jews
    <[removed]
    _1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249239857&sr=8-1> by David S. Siegel and Susan Siegel.  I
    HIGHLY recommend the book, and I should leave it to them to answer your
    points.

    As for the documentary (which I was about to go in to Manhattan to see a few
    days ago but the monsoon forced me to stay holed up) I think it probably was
    an outgrowth of the Berg portion of the exhibit a few years ago at the Jewish
    Museum in NYC "Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting".  There
    is an essay about her by Donald Weber in the wonderfully illustrated book by
    that same title by J. Hobermand and Jeffrey Shandler.  (That chapter is
    followed by a chapter on Norman Corwin great full page picture of Corwin
    directing with a band-aid on a finger of both hands!) I recall that exhibit
    evidencing much of the same things that Sean discusses about the documentary.
    The centerpiece of her section was a 1950 living room where you could sit
    down and watch segments of her TV show.  Nearby was a large display showing
    the infamous book Red Channels which was very instructive to those who have
    never seen that book (I consider it a roll call of some of the greatest
    people of the century!) so that tie-in with Berg and the Philip Loeb tragedy
    is notable and is also discussed in the book.  There is a good section in the
    book discussing Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson and blackface, and in other sections
    of the book, including Berg's there are mentions of Amos 'n' Andy.  There's a
    lot of radio stuff throughout the [removed] books are highly recommended, and
    you get a CD with the Siegel book.

    Michael Biel  mbiel@[removed]

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

    Date: Sun, 2 Aug 2009 17:03:52 -0400
    From: LBiel <[removed]@[removed];
    To: [removed]@[removed]
    Subject:  Re: Yoohoo, Mrs. Goldberg

    In discussing the documentary on Gertrude Berg, Sean Dougherty asked "why
    there were so few overtly Jewish shows and characters on TV in the decades
    that followed" and noted "It was groundbreaking to have a seder service on
    the air in the 1930s - all of the other Jewish comedians on radio celebrated
    Christmas on their shows."  There was a whole book recently published by two
    digest members that addresses these topics Radio and the Jews: The Untold
    Story of How Radio Influenced the Image of Jews by David S. Siegel and Susan
    Siegel.  I HIGHLY recommend the book, and I should leave it to them to answer
    your points.

    As for the documentary (which I was about to go in to Manhattan to see a few
    days ago but the monsoon forced me to stay holed up) I think it probably was
    an outgrowth of the Berg portion of the exhibit a few years ago at the Jewish
    Museum in NYC "Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting".  There
    is an essay about her by Donald Weber in the wonderfully illustrated book by
    that same title by J. Hobermand and Jeffrey Shandler.  (That chapter is
    followed by a chapter on Norman Corwin great full page picture of Corwin
    directing with a band-aid on a finger of both hands!) I recall that exhibit
    evidencing much of the same things that Sean discusses about the documentary.
    The centerpiece of her section was a 1950 living room where you could sit
    down and watch segments of her TV show.  Nearby was a large display showing
    the infamous book Red Channels which was very instructive to those who have
    never seen that book (I consider it a roll call of some of the greatest
    people of the century!) so that tie-in with Berg and the Philip Loeb tragedy
    is notable and is also discussed in the book.  There is a good section in the
    book discussing Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson and blackface, and in other sections
    of the book, including Berg's there are mentions of Amos 'n' Andy.  There's a
    lot of radio stuff throughout the [removed] books are highly recommended, and
    you get a CD with the Siegel book.

    Michael Biel  mbiel@[removed]

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

    Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 17:13:37 -0400
    From: "Sammy Jones" <sjones69@[removed];
    To: <[removed]@[removed];
    Subject:  RE: That ain't the way I - heerd? - [removed]

>     I've followed some learned debate here, over the years, that made a
>     good case that - at the optimum re: source, condition, and transfer -
>     classic material had a good deal more range than commonly assumed.

>     And hence, deserved higher digital preservation. In fact, I've carried
>     that flag into battle in other web groups.
>     -Craig W.

    I've been saying the same thing for years.  I've never understand why old
    recording equates low bit rate encode.  It just doesn't make sense.

    If anything, old, disc-based recordings need higher bit rates than modern
    digital-born recordings when encoding for mp3.  When you encode an old radio
    show to mp3, you're also encoding all of the clicks and pops inherent to the
    original medium.  These clicks and pops take up bandwidth, and leave even
    less room for the program sound. This scenario assumes you haven't removed
    the clicks and pops beforehand.

    A dead giveaway for a poor encode is to listen and see if pops and clicks
    (and we all know what those should sound like!) have been translated into
    chirps and wind chime-type sounds.

    Sammy Jones

    [ADMINISTRIVIA: My personal thoughts on this discussion are available on my
    blog at http://

    --------------------------------
    End of [removed] Digest V2009 Issue #144
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