--
A. Joseph Ross, [removed] [removed]
15 Court Square, Suite 210 Fax [removed]
Boston, MA 02108-2503
[removed]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:28:15 -0500
From: Herb Harrison
<herbop@[removed];
To:
[removed]@[removed]
Subject: Hollywood Canteen Remembered
Sean Dougherty
<seandd@[removed]; refers to the LA Times article about
the Brown Derby. The LA Times site also had a link to another site where a
subscriber describes his visit as an airman to the Hollywood Canteen during
World War II.
Interestingly, the entertainers' careers he talks about seem to run the
gamut from vaudeville to radio to films (and later to television).
Memory of a Lifetime: the Hollywood Canteen during World War II:
[removed];rs=2
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:28:23 -0500
From: Ron Sayles
<bogusotr@[removed];
To: Olde Tyme Radio List
<[removed]@[removed];
Subject: 11-29 births/deaths
November 29th births
11-29-1895 - Busby Berkeley - Los Angeles, CA - d. 3-14-1976
choreographer: "Gulf Screen Theatre"; "Whatever Became Of . . . ?"
11-29-1895 - Yakima Canutt - Colfax, WA - d. 5-24-1986
actor, stuntman: "Daredevils of Hollywood"; "Hollywood Rodea"
11-29-1900 - Mildred "Axis Sally" Gillars - Portland, ME - d. 6-25-1988
propagandist: Radio Berlin
11-29-1905 - Chester Erskine - Hudson, NY - d. 4-7-1986
film director: "Lux Radio Theatre"
11-29-1905 - Mario Braggiotti - Florence, Italy - d. 5-18-1996
pianist, composer: "Fray and Braggiotti"
11-29-1906 - Luis Van Rooten - Mexico City, Mexico - d. 6-17-1973
actor: George Priestly "County Seat"; John Perry "John's Other Wife"; Nero
Wolfe "Nero Wolfe"
11-29-1910 - Al Schwartz - Passaic, NJ - d. 3-25-1988
writer: "Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show"; "Bob Hope Show"
11-29-1913 - Harry Bartell - New Orleans, LA - d. 2-26-2004
actor: Archie Goodwin "Advs. of Nero Wolfe"; "Adv of Sherlock Holmes";
"Gunsmoke"
11-29-1914 - Hal McIntyre - Cromwell, CT - d. 5-5-1959
bandleader: "Hal McIntyre and His Orchestra"
11-29-1917 - Merle Travis - Muhlenberg County, KY - d. 10-20-1983
singer, guitarist: "Hollywood Barn Dance"
11-29-1921 - Virginia Egnor "Dagmar" - Huntington, WV - d. 10-9-2001
dumb blonde: "Stars On Parade"; "Says Who?"
11-29-1926 - Naomi Stevens - Trenton, NJ
actress: Irene Franklin "One Man's Family"; Daphne Royce "Brenthouse"
11-29-1927 - Vin Scully - New York, NY
sportscaster (Baseball's Poet Laurate) Play-by Play announcer for the Dodgers
11-29-1932 - John Gary - Watertown, NY - d. 1-4-1998
singer: "Christmas Music - Spots for the National Guard"
November 29th deaths
01-18-1904 - Cary Grant - Bristol, England - d. 11-29-1986
actor: Jim Blandings "Mr. and Mrs. Blandings"
02-26-1933 - Godfrey Cambridge - New York, NY - d. 11-29-1976
actor: "Voices of Vista"
04-28-1896 - Edith Evanson - Tacoma, WA - d. 11-29-1980
actress: Helmi "Myrt and Marge"
05-03-1898 - George H. Combs - Lee's Summit, MO - d. 11-29-1977
congressman, commentator: "Now You Decide"; "Spotlight, New York"
05-29-1897 - Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Brno, Czechoslovakia - d. 11-29-1957
"composer: "Contemporary Composers Concerts"; "Railroad Hour"
06-05-1910 - Herb Vigran - Fort Wayne, IN - d. 11-29-1986
actor: Sad Sack "Sad Sack"; Hector Smith "Father Knows Best"
06-17-1904 - Ralph Bellamy - Chicago, IL - d. 11-29-1991
actor: "These Are Our Men"
07-19-1912 - Frank Kane - d. 11-29-1968
writer: "The Shadow"
07-20-1938 - Natalie Wood - San Francisco, CA - d. 11-29-1981
actress: "Lux Radio Theatre"
07-27-1890 - Judith Lowry - Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory - d. 11-29-1976
actress: Emma 'Stevie' Stevens "Valiant Lady"; Emmy Fergusson "Welcome Valley"
09-05-1916 - Frank Yerby - Augusta, GA - d. 11-29-1991
author: "Best Seller"
09-20-1869 - George Robey - London, England - d. 11-29-1954
music hall singer: "Music Hall"
10-04-1900 - Robert Shayne - Yonkers, NY - d. 11-29-1992
actor: Walter Manning "Portia Faces Life"
11-03-1909 - George Wells - New York, NY - d. 11-29-2000
screenwriter: "Lux Radio Theatre"
12-22-1917 - Gene Rayburn - Christopher, IL (Raised: Chicago, IL) - d.
11-29-1999
announcer, comedian: "Rayburn and Finch"
12-26-1902 - Irene Handl - London, England - d. 11-29-1987
actress: "Hello Playmates"
--
Ron Sayles
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:33:28 -0500
From: Christopher Werner
<werner1@[removed];
To:
[removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: Radio and TV Repair
Although Mark Kinsler did a good job of responding to the [removed] I
thought I'd add my $[removed] ...
The lure of opportunity presented by the proliferation of radios in
households and the numerous radio and TV repair business around the country
also caught the attention of my father in the late 1950s. A tool and die
engineer, he was always interested in the latest technology and subscribed
to Radio Electronics and Popular Electronics along with many other Americans.
He signed up for a correspondence course in radio repair offered by RCA.
Month by month the course booklets came in. He turned to Heathkit to
purchase Capacitance meters, a Vacuum-Tube volt meter, a power supply and
together with a friend from work - their pride and joy - an oscilloscope. I
don't know how many of the lessons he actually read and participated in
because I was only a baby at the time. By the time I did get exposed to it,
he had five large binders of lessons, about 30 SAMs radio repair manuals
and a pile of 20 old radios that needed repair.
Near where he worked was an Army surplus store. Here he would browse and
purchase wondrous things for this 'lab'. As a 8-10 year old I spent many
hours de-soldering old WWII 'computers' and electrical devices to rescue
the resistors, capacitors and other components for 'spare parts' in
repairing the radios. The de-soldering device was mounted to two asbestos
boards so molten solder would not start a table on fire as it fell from the
device. My father acquired some plastic tube containers from work and build
a rack from samsonite with holes for each tube. Into each tube went the
specific value of resistor with the leads straightened. Later as the
collection grew, we started saving Alka-Seltzer bottles that fit the same
size holes. I learned the resistor color code at an early age, and merrily
sorted resistors and capacitors checking each one carefully. Along with
this came many screws, bolts, nuts, brackets, and whatnot from the original
chassis.
We also began acquiring vacuum tubes not only to repair the old Sylvania
TV, but also the many radios. We had a portable tube checker to verify the
quality of the tubes (good or bad). In the end I had a double-door upright
cabinet full of RCA tube boxes.
When my father died in 1993 and we 'cleaned up' the basement, the pile of
trash included most of the 20 broken radios - never repaired (I retained
the few with nice wooden cases). The chassis went out, the old iron
capacitors went out, the old iron transformers were lugged out (heavy!) and
a chapter in family history came to a close. Even though it was the 1990s,
I will say that back in 1977/8 during my college years, a fellow student
who actually
*did* repair radios had proposed opening our own radio/TV
repair business in my parents basement and trying to earn some money doing
so. We never did, and in hindsight I'm glad because we were at the end of
the curve of the technology. But it did show that tube radio repair was
still a viable business almost to the 80s (hey, we could have always
repaired 8-Tracks!). In high school, a fresh-from-the-Air Force instructor
taught us how to design tube amplifiers. Really useful in 1974 as debates
over tube vs solid state audio amplifiers were common in the halls! Never
used the knowledge once afterward.
For better or worse, I'm happy to say that I still have the RCA course
books, the SAMS manuals, the cabinet full of vacuum tubes and the tube
checker. Most of the Heathkit equipment (I had added newer equipment during
my high school and college years, including many of the fine electronics
courses they offered), has been donated to a school for gifted children so
they can use it as an electronics lab. I sure spent plenty of hours
soldering components and making my own stereo and lab equipment (I can just
smell the solder now).
An era long past, when we spent our time making things from what was
available. The color code, like morse code, may not be learned by students
everywhere, but they have other things to think about now. 50 years from
now someone will excavate an area an find some old equipment and wonder
what all the little colored rings [removed] and the phone will ring.
BTW, the old Popular Electronics mags were responsible for my father
building an intercom system so he could hear if I was crying in my crib
while he worked in the basement woodshop. A fancy pagoda case later had the
intercom replaced with a nifty bird-song oscillator circuit. It hangs by
the front door of my parents home now, push a button the little bird will
fascinate any youngster that comes to visit. Pop Elect also provided a fine
schematic for a digital motor controller I used for a college digital
electronics course once as well. Very useful magazine in it's day.
Back to the reality of the present,
Chris.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 14:46:55 -0500
From:
"RadioAZ@[removed]" <radioAZ@[removed];
To: "OTR Digest"
<[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Casey's venue
Casey, Crime Photographer must have been one of the few "dramas" on radio
that had a live audience. Detective shows, in particular, were seldom heard
with an audience in attendance. What strikes me about Crime Photographer is
that it always sounds like the performers are in an echo chamber. Other
shows with audiences never sounded like that. Does anyone know from where
the show was broadcast? Why couldn't they do a better job of dampening the
echo of the room?
Ted
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:23:05 -0500
From:
seandd@[removed]
To:
[removed]@[removed]
Subject: Jack Benny Stamp Campaign
The Jack Benny 39-cent stamp campaign rampages on with more media coverage in
Georgia and California today. From approximately coast-to-coast, it's Laura
Leff!
Sean Dougherty
SeanDD@[removed]
[removed]
[removed]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:23:34 -0500
From: "George Tirebiter"
<tirebiter2@[removed];
To:
[removed]@[removed]
Subject: Radio programming about Dust Bowl of 1930's
I don't know about THE GRAPES OF WRATH, but in 1940 there was a CBS program
called FORECAST which did what were essentially audition programs for
potential series. One show done on FORECAST was BACK WHERE I COME FROM, a
folk music program. This featured Woody Guthrie and there was a sort of
semi-dramitized version of one of his songs dealing with the Dust Bowl.
(It's been a while since I've listened to this, so sorry I can't be more
specific.) BACK WHERE I COME FROM was, in fact, picked up a series, but
there are no circulating shows from the regular run, only the FORECAST
episode is available.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:50:50 -0500
From: "MICHAEL BIEL"
<mbiel@[removed];
To:
[removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: Radio and TV Repair
I think that Mark Kinsler unfortunately has much of the story wrong in his
explanation about radio repair because very few of the facts mesh. First
of all, Howard Sams was the Johnny-Come-Lately in the field. His Photofact
folders were a post-war development. His first publications came out in
early 1946 covering some of the early post-war models, and he NEVER went
back to cover any of the pre-war sets that were still being used and were
ever the more needing repair. While it is true that Sams did do things
differently from the other publishers by buying and actually dissecting
sets, creating his own electrical schematics and mechanical disassembly
photographs without relying on the manufacturers' publications, just about
everything else discussed in relation to Sams is not true. There were no
"secret codes" on electrical parts by the post-war years. And if there had
been, it would have been back twenty years earlier, in the earliest years
of radio receiver manufacturing before standards were set by the RMA, Radio
Manufacturers Assoc.
Mark mentions the Rider manuals, dismissing them as merely competition to
Sams, but John F. Rider's Perpetual Troubleshooters Manuals were already
being published for fifteen years before Sams even entered the field.
Rider did tend to depend on the schematics published by the manufacturers,
but each HUGE annual edition included a thousand or more different sets,
and often cut-and-pasted information and diagrams from the manufacturers
repair manuals. (Yes, most manufacturers DID supply repair manuals--RCA
started their hardbound Red Books around 1928, and I have examples from
almost all the major companies, including the ones that Mark accuses of
having "secret codes." ) Rider began publishing around 1930, with these
huge hardbound annual volumes and an abridged catch-up manual for sets from
the 1920s. A set of unabridged manuals for those years did appear shortly
thereafter. A full set of Rider manuals is now available on CD-Rom!
Also around 1930 another publisher, Morris N. Beitman's Supreme
Publications started publishing the annual Most Often Needed Radio Diagrams
Manuals, which were much less expensive. However, they only included the
electronic schematic chart. But they did remain in print -- and in fact,
might still be in print. I know that Beitman's daughter continued to
supply copies in the 1990s from her warehouse stock, years after her
father's death. My copy of the 1920s volume is a reprint from the 1960s.
In addition to these manuals and those published by the set manufacturers,
there were a number of magazines for the radio repair trade, such as Radio
News and Radio Retailing, which included hints for repairing specific
models based on experiences sent in by repairmen. These were later
compiled into a large book which is still very useful when troubleshooting
old sets from the 20s and 30s.
Perhaps Mark's story about "secret codes" comes from a misunderstanding of
stories told about Atwater Kent radios. They made most of their own parts
and used markings that where all their own, not related to the RMA color
stripe codes (which Mark puts down but just about everybody else thinks is
a fine idea.) The Atwater Kent system was complicated and needed a manual
all its own to decode -- and Atwater Kent DID publish these manuals. I
have facsimile reprints of two of them right here. One is a mechanical
parts list dated Oct 1927, and the other is "Electrical Values of Resistors
and Condensers in All Receivers, 1924 - 1932 Inclusive" published December
1932. I remember reading stories about the mysteries of the Power Supplies
in the first Atwater Kent electrical socket plug-in sets from 1927 and on
because these power supplies were in tin canisters that were filled with
tar that would supposedly prevent disassembly and repair. But here in that
1932 manual are the lists of all of the parts that were contained in those
tar-filled power supplies, so they were NOT secret after all!
I don't know why Mark does not like the colored stripe markings. They are
easy to decode and are MUCH easier to see than printed numbers and letters.
The stripes go all around the part so you do not have to twist it around to
read like you would if there were numbers. If you can memorize the colors
and their values, they used to sell little cardboard color-wheel decoders
very similar to what Little Orphan Annie used. As for the demise of the
manual system in the 1970s that he describes, it really became partially a
function of our throw-away society. It was becoming to expensive to repair
things, and once integrated circuits started to take over from the use of
discrete parts like resisters and capacitors, the manuals published by the
manufacturers became much more useful. An owner or repair shop could order
the manuals from the manufacturer for only the models he needed, rather
than buying a Sams folder or book of twenty to fifty sets when only one of
them would be needed.
I should add that most people had their radios repaired by servicemen and
dealers. It only cost between 50 cents and maybe $[removed] for an estimate,
and the repairs were usually under $10. Some of the radio repair trade
press had a series of repair shop "adventure" stories that would relate
funny or interesting tales of dealing with customers. On the other side of
the coin were a series of articles done by Readers Digest similar to what
some TV news departments do. They would do a simple disabling of a radio
and take it around to ten repair shops and see which ones were honest
enough to just reattach the loose wire for a quarter, and which shops would
change three tubes, two resisters, and a capacitor for ten bucks. I've
come across a series of interesting articles and letters to the editor in
the radio repair trade press in answer to those Readers Digest articles.
And those tube testers that were asked about to start this thread? Yes,
they did start appearing in drug stores in the pre-TV days, but until labor
costs started climbing, most people still brought their radio to the repair
shop.
Michael Biel
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:50:56 -0500
From: Rutledge Mann
<cliff_marsland@[removed];
To:
[removed]@[removed]
Subject: East & West Coast Suspense
HOw come East & West coast versions aren't in
circulation on Suspense? Every Suspense 1940s era
Radio Recorders transcription I've seen has an east
and West coast recording. I've only seen one version
of each show in general circulation.
--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2005 Issue #368
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