Category: Radio

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It Might As Well Be Maytime

Well, I neither know nor care whether it is still considered a gaffe in some circles, but this was the kind of post-Labor Day that makes me want to wear white, or less. Mind you, I was just lounging in our garden, a rare enough treat this year. I am not among those who look toward fall as a fresh and colorful season, marked and marred by decay as it is. In New York City, my former home, September and October come as a relief from the stifling heat, a cooling down for which there is generally no need here in temperate and meteorologically temperamental Wales. Pop culturally speaking, to be sure, autumn is a time of renewal. In the US, at least, there is the fall lineup to look forward to as the end of an arid stretch in which fillers and (starting in the late 1940s) repeats convinced folks of the pleasures to be had outdoors.

No doubt, the producers of the Peabody Award-winning Lux Radio Theater were trying to stress this sense of a vernal rebirth when it opened its tenth season on this day, 4 September, back in 1944. Here is how host Cecil B. DeMille welcomed back the audience to what then was, statistically speaking, the greatest dramatic show on radio:

Greetings from Hollywood, ladies and gentlemen. At every opening night in the theater, for a thousand years, there’s been a breathless feeling of expectancy, a sense of new adventure. And tonight, as the light to on again in our Lux Radio Theater, there’s the added thrill of knowing that the lights are going on all over the world. With the liberation of France, the torch of Freedom burns again in Europe, and tonight we have a play that expresses something of the bond between song-loving America and music-loving Paris. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s screen hit Maytime, with Sigmund Romberg’s unforgettable music, and for our stars, those all-American favorites, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.

Leave it to the spokesperson of Lever Brothers (last spotted here with the Lord of toilet soaps) and the continuity writers in their employ, to link historical events of such magnitude as D-Day, the establishment of a French provisional government and its relocation from Algiers to Paris a few days prior to the broadcast with an escapist trifle like Maytime (1937), which, as Connie Billips and Arthur Pierce pointed out in Lux Presents Hollywood, bears little musical resemblance to Romberg’s original operetta, begot in the dark days of the Europe of 1917, before the US entered the first World War.

Commercial interests were anxious to reclaim the airwaves, after a period of restraint that we living in the 21st century have not witnessed since the attack on the World Trade Center back in September 2001. During his curtain call with co-star MacDonald (whose 1930 effort The Lottery Bride was released on DVD today), the aforementioned Mr. Eddy was further making “light” of the situation in the European war theater by plugging his new radio program. By expressing that “the lights were going on again all over the world,” Nelson remarked as he dutifully read from his script, DeMille had put him “on the spot.” After all, his sponsors were “160 leading electric light and power companies.” Houselights, please!

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In My Library: Radio Drama and How to Write It (1926)

The man behind the counter looked none too pleased when I handed over my money. This one, he said, had escaped him. The item in question is a rare little volume on radio drama, written way back in 1929, at a time when wireless theatricals were largely regarded, if at all, as little more than a novelty. In his foreword, Productions Director for the BBC, R. E. Jeffries, expressed the not unfounded belief that its author, one Gordon Lea, had the “distinction of being the first to publish a work in volume form upon the subject.”

Nothing to get excited about, you might say. I know, it is not exactly a prize pony, this old hobbyhorse of mine. Few who come across it today care to hop on, let alone put any money on it, particularly now that it has been put out to the pasture known as the internet, the playing field where culture is beaten to death. So, should not any bookseller be pleased to part with Mr. Lea’s reflection on echoes? Not, perhaps, when the money exchanged amounts to no more than a single pound coin. History often comes cheaply; it is the price for ignoring it that is high.

I had been on the lookout for Radio Drama and How to Write It while researching for Etherized Victorians, my doctoral study on old-time radio in the United States. After no volume could be unearthed in the legendary and much-relied on vaults of the New York Public Library, let alone anywhere else, I gave up the search, comforted by the thought that Mr. Lea was, after all, a British hobbyhorse fancier, far removed from the commercial network circus in which I had chosen to study that ill-treated bastard of the performing arts.

It helps to take the blinders off. After all, I spotted the obscure volume last weekend, on another trip to Hay-on-Wye, the Welsh bordertown known the world over (by serious collectors, at least) as the “town of books.” Now, I am always anxious to put my loot on display. And so, rather to let it sit on my bookshelf, I shall let Mr. Lea’s pioneering effort speak for itself:

It is asserted that no play is complete until it has an audience. This is untrue. One might as well say that a tragedy of emotion between man and wife, enacted in the privacy of their own drawing room, is not a tragedy, because the general public are not invited to watch it. A play is complete when once it is conceived by its author. But, inasmuch as this fallacy is still popular, playwrights still construct their plays with an audience in mind.[. . .].

Thus, Lea reasons, the stage play

must be such as can appeal to a crowd, as distinct from the individual. This is a difficult thing to do, but such is the power of crowd-psychology, that if the play appeals to a section of the crowd, the disparate elements can be conquered and absorbed into the general atmosphere. An audience may, at the beginning of the play, be a company of individuals, but before long hey are by the devices of stage-production welded into one mass with one mind and one emotion. If the play is incapable of this alchemy, it fails to please and becomes a thing for the solitary patron. 

There, then, are the conditions which govern the production of the stage-play, and [ . . .] within the limitations of the theatre are wonderfully efficacious. 

But, is it necessary to accept these limitations? Is there no other medium more flexible?

In stage drama there is “always the problem of the fourth wall,” the solving (or dissolving) of which lead to intriguing if unsatisfactory compromises. In a production of The Passing of the Third Floor Back, for instance, the footlights were turned into an imaginary fireplace. “[V]ery ingenious,” the author quips,

but the effect is that, when the players sit before the fire, you have the spectacle of people staring straight at you, and, unless you imagine yourself to be a lump of coal or a salamander, you don’t get the right angle.

I was reminded of my experience seeing What Every Woman Knows at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, which thrust me into a similar hot spot I did not relish.

Sure, sound-only drama can readily break the barriers of convention. Yet when Lea dreams of the new medium and its potentialities, he has technology, not commerce or politics, in mind. Whether state-run or commercially sponsored, radio was never quite as free and free as the air. The audience, its size and sensibilities, always mattered more than the voice of the single speaker.

Nor am I convinced that a play is a play without playing itself out before or within an audience, whatever its number. A thought must be communicated to mean, and indeed to be. It is for this reason that I air out my library from time to time, to dust off those forgotten books and share what I find there in this, the most flexible medium of all . . .

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Songs, Speeches, and Musical Spoons: The Noisy Closet of Marie Slocombe

How about taking that spoon out of your noodle soup for a tuneful interlude? Apparently, the Vietnamese get a lot of noise out of their flatware. Back in 1936, one woman, a BBC temp by the name of Marie Slocombe, set out to preserve such sounds, recorded for broadcast but to be discarded thereafter. This Saturday, I am tuning in to “Saving the Sounds of History,” a documentary about Ms. Slocombe and the origins of the BBC sound archive. There are rural dialects, the ancient harp of King David, and a bird song anno 1890 (more of interest, no doubt, if the captured talent had gone the way of the Dodo).

I have long been fascinated by natural and man-made sounds, endangered or representative, familiar yet fleeting. For years, I kept my own library of noise: New York City traffic in the age of breakdancing, the laughter of an old friend, the footsteps in the hallway of a former home—noises that conjure up scenes left out of pictures in an age before mobile phones and digital cameras.

Sean Street’s documentary perhaps overstresses the historical significance of “cupboard S,” in which Slocombe secretly stored the abdication speech of King Edward VIII, the recording of which the BBC did not wish to preserve. As Slocombe acknowledged in an interview, the speech (transcribed here), was available in the US, having been transmitted over shortwave throughout the world on 11 December 1936 and was rebroadcast in part on NBC’s Recollections at 30 back in 1956. As it was replaying in the US, it still sat hidden in Slocombe’s closet.

To this day, access to the BBC sound archives requires a trip to London; but “Saving the Sounds of History” at least creates an awareness of such treasures. Say, which sounds would you preserve? The spoons, if you ask me, are best kept in the bowl.

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“. . . said the spider to the fly”

Just about anyone can walk into your parlor, give it the onceover and imagine you out of the way. That is something you have to put up with when you put your home up for sale, as we have done a few weeks ago.

Last Friday, we were supposed to have moved into town, but the deal fell through earlier this month after our buyer pulled out; and now we are trying to attract others without having any place else to go at present. I do not thrill to the prospect of having to be ready at a moment’s notice, or even a day’s, to make way for a parade of strangers traipsing in, to get cobwebs out of corners and the lawn neatly cropped only to vacate the premises to facilitate the inspections.

Yesterday, a rather po-faced lady from England stopped by for a viewing of our Welsh cottage, gliding across the threshold like a dark cloud. Her parting words, the remark that we should not have any trouble selling the place, only underscored what her dour expression could not cover up. She hadn’t found what she was after. Her crystal, she later told the estate agent, just did not swing the right way.

As it turns out, she was after something very particular, indeed: the very place she once called home. Now, last summer, we’ve had someone stopping by all the way from Pittsburgh, showing up unannounced and claiming that her ancestors had once dwelled under our roof. She had no intention to buy the house; but we gladly bought her story, until we eventually proved that she had been mistaken. The dame with the crystal, on the other hand, was not simply catching up with her past. She was on a mission to find the house she had inhabited . . . in a past life. Who sent her? Shirley MacLaine?

As I said, you have got to be prepared for all sorts. In view of such strange visitations and the negotiations that may ensue, I began to wonder whether I am to be the spider or the fly, the one that catches or the one getting caught. I was a latchkey child, so yarns spun from such material have always made a great impression on me. Grimm’s “The Wolf and the Seven Kids” was an early favorite. I, of course, cast myself in the role of the littlest kid, hiding inside the grandfather clock while my older sister was being devoured by a predatory trespasser whose entrance did not so much depend on brute force but on the slyness (and the piece of chalk) with which he altered his voice to impersonate a trusted caregiver.

The soft-spoken, smooth-talking outsider who draws you in or cajoles his way inside is a figure cut out for radio drama. Yes, radio drama. If that cooky cat can dangle her crystal, let me romance a whole set. The long-running Suspense program, for instance, offered its listeners some memorable updates of the lupine intruder sneaking in and the arachnoid charmer sneaking up on its prey.

“To Find Help” comes to mind. In it, homeowner Agnes Moorehead is being harrassed by young Frank Sinatra (18 January 1945) and Ethel Barrymore struggles to fend off Gene Kelly (6 January 1949). It is an edge-of-your-contested-porch melodrama commenting on and deriving its poignancy from the post-war demobilization and the subsequent housing crisis (a contemporary edge removed from Beware, My Lovely [1952], the inferior screen adaptation starring Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan).

On this day, 30 August, in 1945, it was Peter Lorre’s turn to come a-knocking. Co-written by Academy Award nominated Herbert Clyde Lewis, “Nobody Loves Me,” is a slight yet ideal vehicle for the aforementioned Mr. Lorre, who inhabits the role of an armed man forcing himself inside a police station to relieve himself of a burdensome tale many of the folks he encountered did not live to tell. Leave it to Lorre to make the wolf sound like a poor kid, to give the spider the qualities of a hapless fly.

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"A-spinning goes our weekly wheel of fortune . . ."

Well, here we go again. As the aforementioned “Major” Bowes used to say, “Around and around and around she goes,” referring to the spinning wheel on the Original Amateur Hour. A few years after Bowes took his final bow, Ted Mack (pictured) took over as host of the show, which, when revived in 1948, was both heard on the radio and seen on television. The concept has been going around and around as well, there being more amateurs than ever on television to root for or laugh at. Another season of The X Factor is currently underway in Britain, with Simon Cowell once again heading the panel of judges, rolling his eyes, and uttering his standard “if I’m being perfectly honest” until the winner is being declared by audience vote just in time for the release of the Christmas single.

Here is how casting director Marie Correll (wife of Amos ‘n’ Andy co-creator Charles Correll) described the auditions for the televised Amateur Hour to the readers of the Radio and Television Mirror back in the summer of 1949:

“The wonderful part is that auditions are open to everyone,” she tells you. “We get hundreds of letters a week and every letter is answered, although it may take from two to three weeks. Our staff sorts the mail geographically. We set dates and enclose application blanks for those close enough to New York to audition here. We tell the others about our out-of-town audition staff and give dates when it will be in their vicinity. But every affiliated station helps as a clearing house for local talent.” 

Application forms are numbered when they go out. Applicants are auditioned in numerical order on the day they appear. No favorites are played. Everybody gets the same chance. Even second and third chances. 

“It’s amazing how much performers can improve even in a matter of months sometimes,” Mrs. Correll says. “We’ve had talent audition, be rejected, write in later for another appointment and make the grade. We never discourage anyone. We try to get a little background on them, find out what they’re aiming for. If they are singers we sometimes make suggestions about numbers that may suit their voices better, though I must say that nine times out of ten they stick to the same numbers. And you’d be surprised how many come to the first audition with only one number prepared, staking everything on a single effort.” 

Space being at a premium even in New York’s huge Radio City, the room where hopefuls wait their turn is really a long corridor, flanked on both sides with chairs that leave only a narrow passageway between. Every chair is filled. Standees lean on their instrument cases, huddled in little groups. 

Youth and hope predominate here, with a sprinkling of the middle-aged and a few elders [. . .]. 

Tonight’s auditions are fairly typical. There are about half a dozen young boys, whose occupations were listed on their applications as shipping clerk, parcel post clerk, plasterer, salesman, and the like—all eager to break away from the routine of their jobs and get into the glamorous show business world. They sing the same numbers in about the same way. 

“It isn’t that they’re bad—they’re just not good enough,” Marie explains. 

There is a harmony team of five Negro boys, a choral group with an earnest leader, and two schoolboys who have written their own material. (Under “type of talent” on their application forms they had put, “Comedy—we hope!”).

Yes, our “weekly wheel of fortune” goes a-spinning, even though talent has long become secondary to hitting the no longer quite so elusive jackpot. Discontented, determined or delusional, they are lining up by the thousands for a chance to enter that allegedly “glamorous” realm of show business, to be enfranchised and marketed, which is why decent plasterers are harder to find these days than celebrities behind bars and disgruntled clerks prepare for their seconds of fame by slipping plastered behind the wheel . . .

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Theater of the Mime

There is something magical about it. The idea that an old mirror might show us a reflection of our past, with you and me on the other side to make sense of it all. I don’t believe there is such a thing as old news, unless you are averse to or incapable of examining it in the light of your own reflections. I am still flicking through the August 1949 issue of Radio and Television Mirror, as I have been all this week, if only to test my own maxim (which, I admit, sounds rather like the slogan with which NBC once tried to vindicate its reruns).

Earlier this week, an article in the Hollywood Reporter suggested that television is on its way out (except in Australia), that people turn to their computer instead to snatch out of the web whatever they want whenever they want it rather than rely on the old TiVo, let alone simply stay put when something of interest comes on. Back in 1949, television, though practically dating back to the age when radio became the medium of the moment, was still in its commercial infancy, “commercial” being redundant, considering that its growth and maturity were determined by the medium’s viability as a promotional tool.

According to the Mirror, there were just over 1.3 million TV sets in the US that spring, half of them in New York City. Radio was still tops; but those who did not have a TV set were beginning to think of radio as something inferior, as something that would never allow them to keep up with the Joneses.

Few people defended radio those days, in part because programming had gotten worse (instead of more diverse) with the advent of tape recording, used largely for the sake of economy, rather than reportorial or artistic experimentation. Shows were no longer produced live, which gave audiences the impression that they listened to a reproduction rather than a once-in-a-lifetime theatrical event and, as summer reruns became common, the sense that one had heard it all before. Radio was losing its edge, and listeners were only too ready to find that edge and push their old receivers over it. In other words, they were pushovers for television.

So, just what could television do that was not possible on the old wireless? Not much, really, considering the picture quality was still so poor as to give you a headache finding the difference and the production techniques were so inferior as to give rise to the adage that, in radio, the pictures are better. The theater of the mind, it is true, could not recreate the enjoyment of an old-fashioned charade, as demonstrated above by Vincent Price. Pantomime. Now there’s a concept with which to silence the old wireless (even though silent movies could hardly have staged such a comeback against the talkies).

Mr. Price, who appeared on KTTV’s Pantomime Quiz, along with Lon McAllister (also pictured in the foreground), seems to have leaped at the opportunity of saying “boo” to shake up the public on behalf of the television industry. Pity, he was so much more sophisticated as the Saint of the airwaves.

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"Life with[out] Mother": Anna and Eleanor Roosevelt on the Air

Leave it to Will and Grace. That is what I used to say when that show was still on the air. Sarcasm, I mean. The kind of at-someone-else’s-expense humor those most likely to be subject to bias attacks are so quick to dispense. Sometimes, though, even I cannot hold back. While flicking through the August 1949 issue of Radio and Television Mirror, something I decided on doing all this week here at broadcastellan, I came across an essay by Anna Roosevelt, commenting on her life with former First Lady Eleanor.

Back in 1949, the two had a radio program, broadcast Monday through Friday afternoon over ABC stations. Now, imagine soon-if-not-soon-enough-to-be former First Lady Laura Bush and one of her daughters going on the air five days a week to discuss politics and social matters. Who would tune in, let alone without a smirk or the fingers-crossed anticipation of a delicious gaffe?

Now, I do have doubts that the Bush women could handle such an assignment; but that is almost beside my point. Take Hillary and Chelsea, if you must. I mean, would anyone tune in, unless Hillary were having a giant tumor removed or Chelsea defended herself after being caught driving naked under the influence?

We chuckle at the so-called “good old days” with an air of superciliousness or else wax nostalgic. The very thought of sitting still while two of the western hemisphere’s most famous mother and daughter talk without any scandal or sensational element in sight! Preposterous, right? To me, this is neither cause for ridicule nor romance. It is simply a fact that we have become more callous and shallow and than we have ever been in the best and worst of times, even in the face of what might be, according to some scientists, the worst yet to come.

I do go on a bit; but I am not one to attach as of course the adjective “cheap” to the much-abused noun “sentiment.” At any rate, here is Anna Roosevelt talking about her mother and their joint radio venture, recordings of which, I regret, do not appear to have survived for appraisal:

Life with Mother always has been rich with her inspiration. Her aim never was to mold me in her image, but to guide me along lines of intellectual independence, social awareness and understanding. If I am able to bring any of these qualities to our radio program, I recognize how deeply indebted I am to Mother—even when I have the temerity to take issue with her on a subject. 

Neither Mother nor Father ever courted sycophants among their children. And if I have learned to speak up, I can trace my assertiveness to the family hearth. Although the family has arrived at broadly the same general philosophy, it would be an error to suppose that we agreed automatically on every social and economic question of public interest. 

Certainly there was nothing to support such a notion at our spirited family gatherings where everyone was free to express opinions, where sometimes even Father would have to shout to get the floor. The dictum that children should be seen and not heard was sharply modified in our household [. . .]. 

Our silence [in front of company] was not mere obeisance to good manners, but a credit to Mother’s good sense. For she took great pains to impress upon us that we should learn by listening to others[. . .]. 

It was second nature for us to hear Mother—from the time I was a child—discuss settlement work in New York, and to hear her connect individual cases to broad social problems affecting hundreds and thousands of others in any large city in the United States [. . .] 

Whether at the White House or elsewhere, life with Mother is unfailingly eventful—and always has been. It was especially eventful recently when Mother—the very epitome of punctuality—did not arrive on time for our first broadcast together at the ABC studios in New York City. 

I couldn’t understand it. Mother had planed in the night before from the United Nations meeting in Paris. We had worked out a few questions I was to ask concerning the Human Rights Committee, and were to meet at 10:30 the following morning at the ABC studios in Radio City. 

I had thought how easy our first program at the same microphone would be. I didn’t become alarmed until I noticed that Mother still was among the missing—and it was just two minutes before air time. 

Suddenly I found myself on the air—and utterly alone. I gazed entreatingly at the door. I was certain Mother would burst in at any moment. But there was no sign of her. I ad libbed for ten and one half minutes, without a page of script or a note to guide me. I filled in two more minutes by playing a recording Mother had made in Paris. I discussed New York traffic. Christmas shopping and anything else that came to mind. 

Then Mother arrived—in time to answer just one question. I knew Mother must have had a good alibi. She did. She had forgotten about the congestion of New York City traffic. She had thought—with incredible naiveté—that she could travel from Washington Square to 50th Street in ten minutes. 

Quite a miscalculation for so adept a world traveller as Mother. It made her realize just how completely engrossing the United Nations sessions had been.

Mrs. Roosevelt, who was taking a break from broadcasting during August, kept turning to the radio for news from Korea. On this day, 22 August, in 1949, she expressed herself concerned about the use of the Atomic bomb to resolve the conflict, hoping that the weapon would never be used (and she does not write “again”) since it would create a deadly chain of retaliation that might prove the end of the civilized world. In light of the current state of broadcasting here and stateside, I have a feeling it takes less than a nuclear weapon to accomplish just about that.

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Taking Them by Storm

Well, how is this for an odd piece of cross-promotion: Linda Darnell selling face powder and a Hurricane picture. Did they really release Slattery’s Hurricane at the height of the season known for the weather phenomenon from which the film takes its title (no, not Slattery, silly)? According to the Internet Movie Database, the movie starring radio actor turned big screen tough guy Richard Widmark was indeed blowing into theaters during the month of August, back in 1949. Perhaps, these days that would be considered bad timing, a move to bring on a storm of protest for its lack of sensitivity. Besides, you try keeping your powder dry during a torrential downpour.

The pictured advertisement, featuring the alluring Ms. Darnell (who had earlier starred in Summer Storm), can be found in the August 1949 issue of Radio and Television Weekly, through the tattered pages of which I am currently leafing. Now, I have not seen the motion picture, which was radio-readied for Lux (rather than Woodbury) on 6 March 1950, with Maureen O’Hara in the Darnell part. Never mind that now. More interesting to me is that Slattery’s Hurricane was written by none other than Herman Wouk, the aforementioned radio writer whose first novel, Aurora Dawn (1946), was a satire of the advertising game and commercial broadcasting in America:

Aurora Dawn! 

[. . .] was the name of a soap; a pink, pleasant-smelling article distributed throughout the land and modestly advertised as the “fastest-selling” soap in America. Whether this meant that sales were transacted more rapidly with Aurora Dawn soap than with any other, the customer snatching it out of the druggist’s hand with impolite haste, flinging down a coin and dashing from the store, or whether the slogan was trying to say that its sales were increasing more quickly than the sales of any other cleansing bar; this is not known. Advertising has restored an Elizabethan elasticity to our drying English prose, often sacrificing explicitness for rich color. 

[The hero’s] purpose was [ . . .] to make the fastest-selling soap sell even faster. [He, one Andrew Reale,] was [. . .] employed [. . .] by the Republic Broadcasting Company, a vast free enterprise rivaled only by the United States Broadcasting System, another private property. These two huge corporations monopolized the radio facilities of the land in a state of healthy competition with each other, and drew their lifeblood from rich advertising fees which assured the public an uninterrupted flow of entertainment by the highest priced comedians, jazz singers, musicians, news analysts, and vaudeville novelties in the land—a gratifying contrast to the dreary round of classical music and educational programs which gave government-owned radio chains such a dowdy reputation in other countries.

Meanwhile, no cross-promotion could save Arctic Manhunt (1949) from obscurity. Announced in the same issue of Radio and Television Mirror, it was meant to convince both the “man-hunting brunette” and the “girl whose man needs—a little encouragement” that lipstick was indispensable to the survival of the species. As yet, no five people of either sex could be found who saw and care to cast their vote for Arctic Manhunt on the Internet Movie Database. Whether or not the advertised product “lasts—and LASTS and L-A-S-T-S,” especially under the conditions endured in the forecast melodrama, I am in no position to say; but memories of those promised “pulse-quickening” scenes certainly faded fast. It takes more than corporate windbags to take them by storm.

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A Week with Radio and Television Mirror (August 1949)

This being the 100th birthday of Lurene Tuttle, former “First Lady of Radio” (previously celebrated here), it behoves me to return to my favorite subject. So, all week I am going to flick through the August 1949 issue of Radio and Television Mirror to dig up what I hope to be noteworthy or just plain curious items.

My copy of the old Mirror is getting a bit tatty, having been cherished more for its content than for its potential trade value. The issue contains a short article about Ms. Tuttle, an Indiana native gone Hollywood: “There’s scarcely a radio program on which Lurene hasn’t been heard,” it says, “but she’s no radio Cinderella. She came to radio as a stage actress seasoned by seven years of trouping in stock.”

Cover of Radio and Television Mirror, August 1949

There is an article by Anna Roosevelt, writing about her mother, another former First Lady, wife of the President who first took such great advantage of the new medium of radio; at the time, Anna and Eleanor were heard Monday through Friday afternoon on ABC. Singer Kate Smith, broadcasting daily at noon over the Mutual network, shares recipes and shows readers around her summer residence, Camp Sunshine.

Louella Parsons, the “First Lady of Hollywood,” describes her experience in broadcasting (as illustrated here). She gossiped each Sunday, 9:15 pm over ABC, but was on her summer vacation that August. Kit Trout describes “tag[ging] along” with her husband, NBC reporter Bob Trout (whose Who Said That? was both heard and seen each Saturday at 9 pm); and Jo Stafford, heard Thursday evenings at 9:30 pm over ABC stations, relates what happened during her first audition.

Mary Jane Higby, in character as Joan Davis (the heroine of daytime serial When a Girl Marries) answers reader mail concerning marital problems, while the aforementioned Terry Burton, heard daily in The Second Mrs. Burton continues her own column in the role of “Family Counselor.”

And then there is Blondie (or, rather, Ann Rutherford), telling readers how she relates to her famous radio and movie character:

Radio’s Blondie on a page from Radio and Television Mirror

The letters we get from people who listen to the show often say that the Bumsteads help them to laugh at their own troubles.  When they laugh at the Bumsteads the laughter carries over to their own lives.  It works for us too. In fact it’s often one of us who furnishes the incident from real life. 

The Bumsteads are not only the couple next door to us on the show, we are the Bumsteads, and yes, Blondie is real to me.

In radio and on television, as in its Mirror, fact and fiction merge, making it difficult to tell one from the other. Reading this monthly is like stepping through the looking glass into a reality show, anno 1949. Sanctioned, streamlined or sanitized, what kind of story is history anyway?

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Sorry, Long Rumba

Well, this isn’t exactly the stuff of Hollywood melodrama; but being cut off from the web for weeks—and hairs—on end is likely to have anyone channelling the none too blithe spirit of Mrs. Elbert Stevenson, the telecommunications-challenged anti-heroine of Lucille Fletcher’s “Sorry, Wrong Number.” I realize that “Sorry, No Broadband,” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it; nor does it sound right to be giving you the whole song and dance about it all whenever I do get a chance to vent publicly (that is, while not at home).

Still, the thought of getting one’s dial-uppance after years of making out like a broadbandit is just about as comforting as having the aforementioned First Lady of Suspense shriek bloody murder in your ears. These days, to be sure, Mrs. Stevenson would meet her well-timed end trying to make herself understood at some call center in India. Otherwise, this outcry from the play seems to fit our latest phone bill:

“[. . .] it’s positively driving me crazy. I’ve never seen such inefficient, miserable service.”

Pardon me for turning broadcastellan into an agony column. You see, we were given to understand that repairs of our phone line, apparently requiring the digging up of precious tarmac, would be put on hold so as not to disrupt local traffic . . . until September. I never guessed that my wanting to stay home at the computer would be deemed bad for tourism. To our relief, the phone started ringing again a few days ago; but the world wide web was still being spun without us.

So, I did not get to tell you about the production of West Side Story now playing at the local Arts Centre; or the complaints launched anonymously by a squeamish audience member voicing concerns about a simulated rape scene; or how the scene was subsequently changed so as not to offend, let alone harm the impressionables who should never be left with the impression that any show could go on without them in mind.

Apparently, West Side Story, written by former radio dramatist Arthur Laurents, is now a musical about infantile delinquents. Ours are not Happy Days for social realism. As in the age of the great radio theatricals, censorship is often nothing more than the arrogance of the few speaking up to silence what is quietly appreciated by the many. The world, it seems, is full of meddlesome Mrs. (and Mr.) Stevensons, in the spirit of providing vicarious relief through an imaginary throttling of whom on behalf of us, their long-suffering contemporaries, the revenge fantasy of “Sorry, Wrong Number” was conceived.