Subject: [removed] Digest V2002 #277
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 7/21/2002 9:23 AM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

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


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2002 : Issue 277
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Re: Paul Harvey                       [ Grbmd@[removed] ]
  Re: David Rappoport                   [ Taylor401306@[removed] ]
  old electronics repair                [ vigor16@[removed] ]
  Atwater Kent                          [ "welsa" <welsa@[removed]; ]
  Walter Tetley                         [ "bkidera" <rkidera1@[removed] ]
  D-Day question                        [ "Robert W. Paine" <macandrew@prodig ]
  FDR Humor                             [ Jim Kitchen <jkitchen@[removed]; ]
  Ringing phones                        [ "welsa" <welsa@[removed]; ]
  Re: Kids' Commercials                 [ Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed] ]
  Paul Harvey's Age                     [ Tsunami1000@[removed] ]
  Re: Big Jon & Sparkie site            [ John Mayer <mayer@[removed]; ]
  RE: Howard Hughes - Kaiser Senate He  [ "Mark Goodrich/James Petri" <tootie ]
  Another whistling opening, and two J  [ leemunsick@[removed] ]
  Andy Divine                           [ Ryan Ellett <ryanellett@[removed]; ]
  Graf Spee Redux                       [ leemunsick@[removed] ]
  elliott lewis                         [ Ruk77@[removed] ]
  Graf Spee                             [ Jim Widner <jwidner@[removed]; ]
  Abbott & Costello queries             [ Ivan G Shreve Jr <iscreve@[removed] ]
  Paul Harvey's Age                     [ "John edwards" <jcebigjohn41@hotmai ]

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:45:02 -0400
From: Grbmd@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: Paul Harvey

James F. offered a nice tribute to Paul Harvey and his longevity.

It's hard to believe, but I used to listen to Paul over 50 years ago.  I was
in college, and in 1950-52 my roommate and I would eat lunch in our room
between morning and afternoon classes and listen to Paul's commentaries as we
ate.

I didn't have a tape recorder in those days, so I couldn't have recorded him,
but if I had it would have been reel-to-reel.

Spence

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:47:49 -0400
From: Taylor401306@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: David Rappoport
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In a message dated 7/20/02 11:03:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[removed]@[removed] writes:

but David Rappoport starred as a
detective of some sort in a short-lived series on that other
medium. (in the 80's, I think)

He was the star of "The Wizard". Tragically, he committed suicide when the
show was cancelled.

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Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:44:18 -0400
From: vigor16@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  old electronics repair

Hey gang:

I know this is a little off topic, but I don't know where to go with it.
I have a couple pieces of recording equipment that worked real good years
ago.  Unfortunately, whenever I take them in for repair I get, "it isn't
worth repairing".  The real sad thing is that recording equipment made
these days are not as good sounding.  I realize parts are unavailable,
but whatever happen to the innovative and creative repairman.  I wish for
answers from those of you who have been here.  Are there any people who
can or do look at older pieces of recording equipment.  Please contact me
off list, for I don't want to fill this newsletter with equipment repair,
though radio and tape equipment are part of the world of OTR.  If we
didn't have recording, we'd not have these wonderful shows to listen to
today.  Please help me if you can.

Deric

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:49:57 -0400
From: "welsa" <welsa@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Atwater Kent

Ron Sayles wrote about Atwater Kent saving the Betsy Ross house.

My, makes me proud to be the owner of a 1929 Atwater Kent console radio.
And one that still works!

(Now, if there was only something on [removed] radio worth listening to.)

Ted

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:52:17 -0400
From: "bkidera" <rkidera1@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Walter Tetley
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Not sure what else he might have done in his later years, but I do know that
Walter Tetley did many voices for Jay Ward cartoons in the early 1960s,
including Sherman on the Peabody's History segment of the Bullwinkle Show.

Bob Kidera

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Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:46:41 -0400
From: "Robert W. Paine" <macandrew@[removed];
To: "Old Time Radio Digest" <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  D-Day question
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Does anyone know if there are recordings of Blue or Mutual news on D-Day?
There is a goodly amount of CBS and NBC but have never heard about the other
networks.

This is a kind of test message as I've had to tweak my email program. My last
mailing had all that funny machine language in the text, because that little
worm that everyone said didn't [removed] Destroyed the hard drive on the
older machine and did it in right good style. Curse you, [removed] Anyway, I
hope the problems are resolved and this appears properly. If not, Charlie will
let me know via auto [removed]

   Macandrew   (technicus hopelessnus)

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Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:42:49 -0400
From: Jim Kitchen <jkitchen@[removed];
To: Old Time Radio Digest <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  FDR Humor

Perhaps, there are references to FDR in Gracie Allen's 1940 bid for the
presidency.  Quoting from the "Gracie Allen for President" album,
copyright 1995, Metacom, Inc:  "Gracie Allen added a welcomed bit of
levity to a tense year (1940).  Gracie's presidential bid had originally
been conceived as a simple radio gimmick with the expectation of a short
half-life.  George Burns later recalled its moment of birth:  "Gracie
and I were spending a quiet evening at home when she suddenly remarked,
"I'm tired of knitting this sweater.  I think I'll run for president
this year."

Tapes in this series start on 2/28/40 with Government Jobs, and end
5/29/40 with Sweeping into Office.

Jim Kitchen

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:49:45 -0400
From: "welsa" <welsa@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Ringing phones

We mustn't forget that "other" Archie and his ringing phone.  "Hello!
Duffy's Tavern!  Where the elite meet to eat.  Archie, the manager,
speaking.  Duffy ain't here.  Oh, hello, [removed]"

Ted

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:52:44 -0400
From: Elizabeth McLeod <lizmcl@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Re: Kids' Commercials

Kelli Stanley wonders,

I'm [removed] kid commercials at all monitored?

Very, very closely -- especially by militant womens' clubs and "Concerned
Parents" groups. By the mid-thirties there was a serious public backlash
against hardsell advertising on children's programming, and this had
become one of the most controversial topics in broadcasting. By the end
of the decade NBC and CBS both imposed regulations governing the sort of
sales talk that could be used in children's programs, with specific
restrictions on how often children could be urged to "tell mother to buy
our product" and on how premiums could be worked into storylines. It was
forbidden for characters in the program to make direct appeals to
children to consume the product in order to help extricate them from
their current dilemma -- there could be no "Help Annie escape from the
counterfeiting deep-sea divers by sending ten cents and an Ovaltine seal
right now to become a member of the Radio Orphan Annie Secret Society"
commercials, for example.

NBC went even further, imposing rules governing how secret codes could be
used in children's programming -- requiring that the Continuity
Acceptance office be provided with a full set of keys for any and all
codes or ciphers to be used on the air, and that plain text of all coded
messages would have to be submitted along with the regular program
scripts at least 48 hours in advance of broadcast. Presumably, the
Continuity Acceptance staff would then decode the coded text to ensure
that the message being aired actually matched the provided plain text,
and that the sponsors didn't try to slip anything past them.

Elizabeth

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:54:05 -0400
From: Tsunami1000@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Paul Harvey's Age
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I stand corrected about Paul Harvey's age.  It was a mistake caused by
morning local dj's on a Tucson radio station, and they stated on the air he
was 103 years old.  I am switching to a new station.   J. Faulkner

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Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:46:12 -0400
From: John Mayer <mayer@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: Big Jon & Sparkie site

Fred Berney <berney@[removed]; informed us:
A friend of mine has formed a group to put up a web page dedicated to
Big Jon and Sparkie [removed]

At last! Don't know why no one has done this before. Looks like it's going to
be a great site. Interesting photo, though I'm not sure Big Jon and Sparkie
don't come across better in non-visual form. Looking forward to the progress
of this site.

BTW, there was a gentleman on this list who lived, if I recall correctly,
near Sevierville, who said he had many Big Jon & Sparkie shows on
reel-to-reel and kindly offered to share them. I had intended to get dubs
from him, but circumstances intervened. Is that gentleman still here?

And how come there's no monument to Big Jon & Sparkie in Cincinnatti? I
happen to know a good [removed]

The audio sample is in MP3 and it didn't play on my computer when I
clicked it on. I'll suggest that they change it to Real Audio.

I think RA is a valuable utility; they practically invented streaming audio
and deserve our support, especially since they were one of many victims of
MicroSoft's "agressive leveraging of the Windows platform." However, I found
the mp3 sound clip here worked just fine on my Mac running OS [removed], and mp3's
are more flexible than RA clips. For one thing, RA clips are useless on
portable mp3 players. Besides, lately, for some reason, I can't seem to save
RA files to my desktop; when I try I only succeed in saving a link to the
streaming site. Perhaps someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong (I have
preferences set to "Save to Disk"). Thanks.

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:50:53 -0400
From: "Mark Goodrich/James Petri" <tootieches@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  RE: Howard Hughes - Kaiser Senate Hearings on
 MP3???

Does anyone have on MP3 the Senate Hearings with Howard Hughes from the
1940's-the Kaiser hearings?  I used to have them, but can't find them
anymore.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks so much, Mark

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:42:09 -0400
From: leemunsick@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Another whistling opening, and two Jack Smiths

 From 1937 through 1954 with a hiatus during WWII, singer Jack Berch hosted
and sang his way through two, then three, then five-a-week programs heard
at one time or another on all five networks and for a time in syndication.

The program started with four whistled notes (by Berch himself?) followed
by the same four notes sung by the host to begin the jingle, "I'm
a-whistlin', are you listnin', to this silly little ditty that I'm singin'
all in rhyme".

As a youngster (a much younger youngster than I am now) I loved to listen
to this happy show.  You could just hear the smile on Jack Berch's face.

The same held true with "Smilin' Jack" Smith, whom Ron Lackmann identifies
as "the singer with a smile in his voice".  John Dunning lists him on
numerous programs for several decades.  Lackmann says that the ubiquitous
grin was heard into the late 1950s, when it was also seen in a 15-minute
weekly television program.

"Smilin' Jack" Smith is not to be confused with "Whispering Jack" Smith,
who had an early job as a song plugger for Irving Berlin.   Not a bad
opening [removed] worked well also for George Gershwin.

One of radio's first singing stars along with Frank Parker of Jack Benny
and Arthur Godfrey programs fame, "Whispering Jack" had pretty well left
the scene before "Smilin' Jack" came along, but Lackmann says "people often
confused the two Smiths and thought they were the same performer".  Friend
Ron closes out by saying that "Whispering Jack Smith's last radio show was
in 1941, a local station in New York."

Well, I would say that all radio stations were "local stations", but I
suspect that what Lackmann means here is that the program was only heard
locally on WEAF.

That was of course the successor to WBAY and fore-runner of
WNBC/WRCA/WNBC/WRCA (oops-needle's caught!) the NBC outlet in New York
City, flagship station for NBC Red.  WJZ was then the lead operation for
Blue, and later for ABC, at which point it was given the call letters WABC
(clever, what?) which had been CBS' operation in New York, and which
changed its call to WCBS (my, my!).

Not wishing to promulgate further confusion, I'm not even going to mention
the switch in kilocycle dial settings for all of these.  Oh dear, I just did!

Happy alphabetizing!

Lee Munsick       Appomattox County Virginia

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:49:34 -0400
From: Ryan Ellett <ryanellett@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Andy Divine

I'm looking for any information on Andy Divine
(Devine?). For a while I thought he was just a minor
player on the Jack Benny show but I just recently
listed to a few Lum n Abner's from the late '40's and
early '50's and he was a recurring character there as
well. A quick Internet search found nothing. Was this
his real name? Did he just play himself on different
shows or did he actually portray different characters?
Any info would be appreciated.
Ryan in Kansas

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:53:53 -0400
From: leemunsick@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Graf Spee Redux

Since my posting yesterday, I have traced down the story on the Graf Spee
film.  Just hadn't dug deep enough.  This fine movie was issued in Great
Britain in 1956 under the title "The Battle of the River Plate", and later
simply as "Graf Spee", with a stellar cast of English actors.  It is
considered to be one of the finest British WW II films.  The following year
it appeared in the [removed] as "Pursuit of the Graf Spee".

For my comrades who love character actors and particularly British ones,
here are a few in this film--some of them teddibly young, don't you know:

John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, Ian Hunter, Patrick Macnee, Christopher Lee,
Peter Finch, and a veddy, veddy young Anthony Newley!  Whew!

One reason I was not sure if this was the film I thought, is that the IMDB
did not list anyone as "announcer", let alone NBC correspondent, and there
is no character in the list of credits named Bowen.  I still don't know who
played that lucky newsman!

Through a knowledgeable contact in Los Angeles I find this is the film I
recalled, and obviously at least some of the character names were
changed.  My contact is quite familiar with the film.  As soon as I
mentioned the NBC correspondent, he excitedly said that this was the
correct film, and went on to describe the whole scene on land with Bowen
standing in front of a cafe with what my friend kept calling a "stand up
microphone".  As I recall it was a 44, but Bowen (or whatever they call him
in the film) was holding it in his hand, not on a stand.  But I could be wrong.

The film repeatedly jumps back and forth between what's happening on the
Graf Spee, in the diplomatic offices of neutral Uruguay, with British
diplomats and Admiralty personnel, on British ships, and on the scene in
Montevideo.  The last third of the film constantly keeps coming back to
James Bowen and his excellent handling of a marvelous story coming to a
climax well offshore, but within his eyesight.  His ultimate line is
reminiscent of Herb Morrison:  "It's exploding!"

Sadly, the film is not available on video in NTSC, only in PAL.  I guess
the British distributors felt it did not do well here, and we Colonials
simply weren't interested in Royal Navy history.  If anyone out there can
obtain the PAL version and re-copy it to NTSC, it would be great.  There
are a lot of them on eBay on DVD, and a few on VHS.  I know several of you
readers have this capability.  Like the film "Hindenburg", this should be
in every OTR addict's home.

I certainly recommend it.  Important in radio history, it's one of the
earliest times that a major news story was covered live, with probably
millions of people hearing it as it developed and came to a climax over
several days that December 1939.  Thanks to NBC and their man-on-the-scene
James Bowen, the lucky newsman who found himself in the right spot at the
right time in Montevideo and handled it with aplomb.

Now the next thing is for someone (perhaps Mike Biel or Elizabeth McLeod?)
to find a recording of the original coverage (perhaps with other American
coverage for "our" slant?), do a nice editing job, and put out a tape or
CD!  Please!

All the best - Lee Munsick

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:46:20 -0400
From: Ruk77@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  elliott lewis

Does anyone know if Elloitt Lewis ever was in any movie? I know he did some
'script doctoring' for the [removed] series 'Remington Steele'

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:50:38 -0400
From: Jim Widner <jwidner@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Graf Spee

Lee Munsick writes:

According to our guru John Dunning, that was NBC's correspondent" James
[removed] on the Montevideo docks with a portable microphone and a
clear shortwave channel to New York". NBC kept the line open to Bowen as
the end neared, whatever it was to be.

I am not sure that was an NBC exclusive. According to my Listing from the
Milo Ryan collection of KIRO-CBS broadcasts, that broadcast is listed and
mentions James Bowen. I would have to dig out my copy and see what I have.
But I am sure it would not be in the Milo Ryan Collection if it was
strictly an NBC radio broadcast. One can also do a NAIL (NARA) search and
find that listing. It indicates CBS, though that is the source of the feed
(via KIRO) not necessarily the source of the broadcast.

Jim Widner
jwidner@[removed]

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:52:09 -0400
From: Ivan G Shreve Jr <iscreve@[removed];
To: Old Time Radio Mailing List <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Abbott & Costello queries

Good health to all from Rexall!

I've been listening to quite a few "Abbott & Costello" recordings in my
copious free time at my night job, and I had a couple of questions that I
thought the experts on the list might be able to answer.

I've noticed that during the first two seasons that A&C were on the air for
NBC (1942-44) their programs were liberally sprinkled with guest stars, but
as the years wore on the guest stars were practically non-existent.  Was
this due to some budgetary constraint, perhaps?

I'd also like to know if anyone could offer an explanation for A&C's move to
ABC in 1947.  My first guess was that it was a probably a ratings thing,
because their ABC show was a sustainer (they had been sponsored by Camel
during the NBC years).  But I read in Arthur Wertheim's "Radio Comedy" that
they made the switch (a la Bing Crosby and "Philco Radio Time") because ABC
was a little more relaxed on the issue of transcribed programs.

Any and all info you can provide me would be most helpful.

Ivan

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

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 10:42:20 -0400
From: "John edwards" <jcebigjohn41@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Paul Harvey's Age

Hi, A trader-friend of mine in Arizona said a talk show host claims that
Paul Harvey is in fact 103 years old.  It does not seem possible he could be
that old. Since many talk show people don't let facts get in the way of a
story, I thought I would ask if anyone can verify how old Paul is.  He has
been around as long as I can remember, but since I was born in 1941 I don't
go that far back.  Paul Harvey has a unique style and delivery that could
never be duplicated and when he finally does end his newscasting it will be
the end of an era. Could someone tell me when he started his newscasts? Has
he always been on ABC? I may not always agree with his politics but he has
been a joy to listen to for many many years.   John

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2002 Issue #277
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