Subject: [removed] Digest V2001 #400
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 12/16/2001 1:52 PM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

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


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2001 : Issue 400
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Cardboard Records?                    [ "Dave" <davewh@[removed]; ]
  Re: WJSV                              [ Michael Biel <mbiel@[removed]; ]
  Lux Radio Theater                     [ WBKID2@[removed] ]
  Kraft Music Hall                      [ Michael Biel <mbiel@[removed]; ]
  MP3 Players                           [ "[removed]" <swells@[removed]; ]
  Happy Landings                        [ "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@ ]
  Re:Arthur Anderson and Orson Wells    [ Fred Berney <berney@[removed]; ]
  OTR web-sites                         [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]
  Re: Jack Benny MP3                    [ OTRChris@[removed] ]
  BBC Favorites                         [ AandG4jc@[removed] ]
  prominent figures quiz                [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]
  Sound Effects                         [ Dennis W Crow <DCrow3@[removed] ]

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 17:44:21 -0500
From: "Dave" <davewh@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Cardboard Records?

All this talk of cardboard records finally moved me to root around my
basement.  So I'm sitting here looking at a 10 inch 78 cardboard Hit of the
Week record. " When The Organ Played At Twilight " by Fio-Rito's Music Lew
White, Organist. This was a hit?!!  It's a brown shiny plastic-like coating
on the playing side and plain cardboard on the reverse.  Made by Barium
Products Corp., NY.  Looks pretty old to me.

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:03:42 -0500
From: Michael Biel <mbiel@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: WJSV

From: William L Murtough <k2mfi@[removed];
According to the FCC rules a particular owner could only
actually own five stations in each category, AM, FM, and TV.

Not true.  The rules from at least the late 1950s into the early 90s was
seven AM, seven FM, and seven TV but no more than five of the TV could
be VHF. I don't have all of my reference books at hand to note when this
set of numbers was instituted, but I have traced this back as far as
1960.  But back before the FM and TV services were firmly established,
the ownership rules were different.  Indeed, in the 1920s and 30s there
were no rules against anyone owning more than one station in a city--NBC
owned two stations in each of several cities.

CBS basically owned  WABC(WCBS) in New York, WEEI in Boston,
WBBM in Chicago, KMOX in St. Louis, and KNX in Los Angeles.
That totals five.

Looking at the CBS multi-page advertisement in the 1937 Broadcasting
Yearbook, it shows that they then owned and operated eight stations
while further operating one more.  The eight they listed as owning and
operating are WABC, WBBM, KMOX, WCCO in Minneapolis-St. Paul, WBT in
Charlotte, WJSV in Washington, WKRC in Cincinnati, and KNX.  They list
WEEI as an operated station that they did not own, but in the directory
section they are listed as the licensee.

Looking thru the FCC rules in that 1937 yearbook I do not see any
mention of ownership caps.

Michael Biel  mbiel@[removed]

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:03:22 -0500
From: WBKID2@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Lux Radio Theater

Can anyone tell me where I can get a tape of a Lux Radio program titled "I
Found Stella Parish".  The movie came out in 1935 so I'm pretty sure the
radio program aired in 1936.
Starred Kay Frances,Ian Hunter and Sybil Jason.
                                                      Hope some one can help
me.

WBKID2@[removed]

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:04:14 -0500
From: Michael Biel <mbiel@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Kraft Music Hall

A. Joseph Ross remembers:
Ignoring the fact that Milton Berle's show the previous year had
been called the Kraft Music Hall, Perry Como's first Kraft Music
Hall show began showing a radio studio, with a silhouette of Bing
Crosby, and the announcer's voice over saying that at some specified
date, "Bing Crosby closed the doors to the Kraft Music Hall."

Apparently corporate memory had failed earlier than that because Al
Jolson had earlier re-opened the doors to the Kraft Music Hall in the
late 1940s.  One of the Decca LPs that Milt Gabler compiled from
recordings of the series starts with Al saying "Good evening folks, this
is Al Jolson from the good old Kraft Music Hall."  And later on this or
one of the other LPs he is heard introducing the song "The One I Love
Belongs To Somebody Else" saying: "The One I Love--that's me; (laugh)
Belongs To Somebody Else--thats Mr. Kraft!" (HUGE laugh).

By the way, the sound quality of the broadcast recordings on these LPs
are phenomenal.  They could have been recorded yesterday.

Michael Biel  mbiel@[removed]

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:04:50 -0500
From: "[removed]" <swells@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: MP3 Players

I was out shopping this past morning and I ventured into Best Buy. I had
previously seen a "Philips CD/Radio/CD-Mp3" boom box style player. Anyway, I
took along a CD that I made to see if it would play it. I was surprised to
find that it would. I was pretty "tickled" to hear Arch Oboler come over the
all the sounds around me from other people and say, "LIGHTS OUT FOR THE
DEVIL AND MR. O !!" It did turn some heads, and I laughed a bit. I didn't
think of it at the time, but when I had left the store I realized that the
disc I took was one that I encoded at 44,100 and on the higher bitrates so I
am not for sure if this player will play the lower ones or not. However I
did see another "unusual player," it was basically a hard drive with ear
plugs. No kidding, this thing was a "dressed up" 6 GB hard drive that you
can use to play anything I suppose. I guess you would just hook it into your
computer and then transfer the shows to it and your off and running. It was
really neat, and I can't recall the name of it, but if you saw it you could
not mistake it for anything else.
Anyway, I thought this info. might be helpful.
Thanks
Shawn

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:05:33 -0500
From: "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Happy Landings

Joe Mackey quotes Those Were the Days for "Today in Radio History" for 15
December,

1949 - After a decade on radio, Captain Midnight was heard for the
final time. Put your secret decoder rings away now, [removed];<

Well, often the "season" refers to the coming year, just like car models.
 The show started on October 17, 1938 as a 15-minute serial sponsored by
Skelly Oil.  After two seasons under Skelly sponsorship, the program was
picked up by Ovaltine and became a network program, still as a 15-minute
serial.  The last show in that format was on June 17, 1949.  From the
first Skelly episode to the final 15-minute program, there was complete
continuity, with the principal writers, Robert Burtt and Wilfred Moore,
retaining characters from the Skelly years in the Ovaltine programs.
However, in the Fall of 1949, the show went to half-hour,
complete-within-one-program, shows.  These were aired from September 20
to December 15 of that year.  However, the show only aired on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, and bore only superficial resemblance to the serial
programs.

 From the beginning, Captain Midnight was written for an audience besides
children: the first sponsor, after all, sold almost no products for
children (the only thing that comes to mind immediately was the Captain
Midnight bicycle tire).  However, when Ovaltine took over sponsorship,
and with that a little creative direction, the show went from merely a
good OTR show to one of shows characterized as "great" in terms of
memorability.

Since Captain Midnight was an aviator, perhaps an aviation analogy will
clarify this change.  Before the United States entered World war II,
North American Aviation developed a new fighter, the P-51.  Originally,
it was equipped with an Allison engine.  It performed well, but lost
performance at high altitudes.  However, in 1942, the Allison engine was
replaced with a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, and this transformed the P-51
into arguably the premiere fighter of World War II.  Likewise, borrowing
the concepts of the Secret Society and the decoder "club pins" from the
(previously Ovaltine sponsored) Little Orphan Annie show, the Captain
Midnight show was likewise transformed.  Rather than an altruistic loner,
Captain Midnight became the head of a paramilitary organization, and the
Secret Squadron became an organization that seemed to help in national
defense -0- even to the point of having its own cryptographic equipment
in the form of its Code-O-Graphs. As noted, Captain Midnight had a high
proportion of adult listeners: Ovaltine informed me that the adult
listenership was just under half of its audience.

Most of this was abandoned in the half-hour programs, which were markedly
juvenile.  The vocabulary was aimed lower, the plots were simpler, and
the Secret Squadron, save as a name, minimized.  This is why in
developing the history of the character, I couldn't consider the
half-hour shows "Canonical," meaning part of the true history: they
deviated from what had gone on continuously for better than a decade.
(It's worth noting that the voice of the "real" Captain Midnight, Ed
Prentiss, who had played there role for all but one year of the serials,
was replaced by Paul Barnes for the half-hour shows.)

As I've noted before, there never was a Captain Midnight Decoder Ring
offered on OTR as a premium (nor on TV, for that matter).  Ovaltine did
offer a Decoder Ring in 2000 - 2001, but it wasn't tied to any character.
 (Amusingly, one of these was offered on eBay recently as an Orphan Annie
Secret Decoder Ring).

Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:07:14 -0500
From: Fred Berney <berney@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re:Arthur Anderson and Orson Wells

Here is an interesting bit if trivia. At the Sunday Panel in NJ's FOTR
Convention, Arthur Anderson told a story of how he set off a sprinkler
system in a theater in which Orson Wells was performing.

Just this afternoon, I was listening to a recording of The Mercury Theatre.
It was Treasure Island. At the end of the program, Orson Wells mentions
that the part of Jim was played by a young 14 year old who happen to cause
rain to come down on one of his performances.

He then gives the name of this young lad. Arthur Anderson.

It was kind of neat just hearing the story a few months ago from Mr.
Anderson, and then listening to a radio show which talked about the incident.

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:10:37 -0500
From: "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: OTR web-sites

Here's a couple new web-sites for anyone interested in a little excursion
into OTR, that I stumbled upon recently:

[removed]
Interesting story about Helen Sioussat, a woman who as it turned out, was
responsible for more radio establishment than I initially thought when
checking out part of her bio.  She did more than work with J. Edgar Hoover
for G-Men and Gangbusters.

[removed]
Offers sound clips and recordings, interviews with radio personality Jim
Ameche, and for curio fans, a few other oddities like JFK assassination
info.  This web-site isn't as large as the one above, it's from the
Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia.

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:15:15 -0500
From: OTRChris@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: Jack Benny  MP3

James Horn Writes in response to Rodney W Bowcock jr:

  As for the quality, I have sold HUNDREDS of these shows
 with-out one complaint. Most of our business are repeat customers.   As for
substandard recordings, we  work hard at restoring the best quality
possible,
sometimes it is very  difficult when you are dealing with 60 year old
[removed];>

I have this set!   I  didn't  realize it until  James Horn  posted this
response  and the light went on enabling me to connect Old time radio home
with  James Horn .
There may very well be duplicates but with 690 shows I haven't noticed  that
as of yet  .Even if there are  45  duplicates as Rodney claims  I still find
 $ [removed]  for  645 shows a darn good deal . And the   CDs I received  contain
some pretty good sounding  shows.   In my opinion of course.
The set strives to be complete  so there are SOME  bad sounding shows .
Particularly some of the early 30s shows for Canada Dry . However,  the
source material doesn't sound that good either  and is probably to blame in
these cases. In fact  Sperdvac has these  same  Canada Dry shows in their
library and  the MP3 version in the collection supplied  by Mr. Horn sounds
superior to the  Sperdvac version.
So in all fairness I have not found that the collection is of such bad
quality
that it  should  be avoided at all costs.  I still maintain that the set
sounds good ...but even if Rodney has the ears to tell that it doesn't sound
like a remastered radio spirits cassette I need to remind him that it was
only  $ [removed]  whereas a radio spirits collection of  645 shows would cost
hundreds of dollars (perhaps even a thousand or more) .


Just my  two cents.


-Chris


[ADMINISTRIVIA: Of course, there are many people in the hobby who would
cheerfully _give_ you the shows if you asked. So far as I can tell, 
there's no good reason to purchase MP3 discs from "auctions," and a lot 
of reasons NOT to do so.   --cfs3]

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:15:33 -0500
From: AandG4jc@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: BBC Favorites

This might be a little out of the area of "Old," but since the BBC continues
to broadcast dramatic radio shows, does anyone have a favorite program that
was produced by the BBC? I know that they produce mystery/dramatic shows like
Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. Does any know if they produce comedy
shows? My favorite special shows that the BBC produced were, The Adventures
of Superman: Doomsday and Beyond (Superman Lives, over here in the USA) and
Batman:Knightfall. I have some of the Sherlock Holmes programs and I am
looking for more. The ones that I do have are from the "Memoirs of Sherlock
Holmes" series. If any one else can help me find the other series it would be
greatly appreciated.
Allen

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

Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:43:22 -0500
From: "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: prominent figures quiz

Got a fun quiz for any "Mr. Know-It-All"s out there (that's a Bullwinkle
joke, folks).  Enclosed is a list of prominent or non-prominent figures who,
during the 1930s and 40s, were "someboddies" and now, unknown obscurities.
A friend of mine in Michigan is presently looking for an occupation for any
names on this list, whether they be a mere telephone operator in Michigan,
or a famed explorer who wrote his autobiogaphy and won a Pulitzer in 1943.
Since they are from the time period of the golden age of radio, and not
modern-day figures, I figured some of us on the Digest will be able to help
supply an occupation of two.  If any had a connection to radio such as
having their own radio program, even better, but I'm only looking for their
occupations, nothing more.  If any members of the digest looking over the
list knows the occupation of the people below, please let me know.  (Perhaps
a couple will lead to interesting discussions on the [removed])

Christopher Coates          Pauline Simmons
Francesca La Monte          Michael Krozier
John J. Martin              Mrs. Mary E. Hamilton
Constance Smith             [removed] Bragdon
Leonard Carlton             Joe Ranson
Hugh Hawley                 Esther Tyler
Camilla Boone               George Shoemaker
Marge Kerr                  Mitzi Cumming
M. Kingsley                 Lady Hardwick
D. Fritsch                  [removed] Locker
[removed] Donahoe                [removed] McDermott
[removed] Miller                 [removed] Conaty
L. Brophy                   [removed] Lathan
R. Porterfield              E. Deutsch
C. Agar                     Kay Lorraine
C. Barrie                   G. Parsons
R. Day, Jr.                 O. Serlin
D. London                   A. Ames
B. Briskam                  P. Schoestein (or Scoestein?)
[removed] McKelvey               T. Dugan
J. Hogan                    [removed] Ross
[removed] Kimball                B. Yost (or Yoss?)
Abe Lyman                   F. Mercer
[removed] McCabe                 J. Shettleworth
[removed] Knight                 H. Mueller
[removed] Kelly                  B. O'Neill
N. Bodanya                  F. Sammis

The following I'm looking for an actual one-paragraph bio about them, or
some info that would eventually, compiled, add up to a paragraph.  The three
names below are definately associated with radio, but even turning to
McFarland books and radio biographies don't [removed]
Charlotte Keane, Tom Victor, and Dick Woolen.
Have a happy holiday!
Martin

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

Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 15:43:10 -0500
From: Dennis W Crow <DCrow3@[removed];
To: OTR Digest <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Sound Effects

I believe that production of sound effects for radio drama constitutes an
art form.  In my view, it is the most creative aspect of program
development.

How the sound effects were created comprises numerous chapters in many OTR
books. Sound effects artsists have written their own books. The information
they contain is fascinating.

I have always wondered about the credit line at the end of the GUNSMOKE
show that attributes an artist to what is termed "sound pattern." The
announcer says, "sound patterns created [removed] ."

The lexicon of radio play production and engineering gives rise  to  my
question.  Is "sound pattern" the same as "sound effects."  I have only
heard the credit for "sound pattern" on GUNSMOKE.

Dennis Crow

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2001 Issue #400
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