FOOTRIB - Friends of Old Time Radio in Berlin - will ease you into that nearly forgotten world of your Parents, your Grandparents, and Beyond.
HearWig
HEARWIG, FOOTRIB's twice monthly podcast, will feature Old Time Radio programs that have captivated listeners around the World. Our goal at FOOTRIB is not only to entertain - or to enthrall - or to delight - but to inform listeners that these programs are still with us, still to be enjoyed. And, with today's technology, easy to collect.
The Schaltraum: HearWig Episode 3
Benny Kubelsky's public persona was as defined and toned to perfection as the stringed instrument he was famous for "never" mastering.
The world knew him as Jack Benny. He was 39 years old at the time of his death in 1974 achieving and sustaining - this magic age for half of his 90 year life.
A fortunate appearance with Ed Sullivan in an interview aired on March 29, 1932 led to his first featured radio show the twice weekly Canada Dry Ginger Ale Show making its debut on May 2, 1932. With success on the radio, Benny like Burns and Allen eased off from the rigors of the vaudeville circuit.
Of all the famous American comediennes to grace us with their wit and merriment, Jack Benny left us a vast legacy unrivaled by others of his era. And one that will continue to entertain and amuse audiences for years to come. His humor was pure, simple, clean, understandable. He had an inert ability to tap gently into many of those human traits - pettiness, self serving arrogance, vanity, and a blunted egotism that American audiences might find annoying in their friends, relatives, and colleagues but, in Benny, charmingly amusing.
His radio shows lasted well over 20 years and were still being broadcasted after his successful transition to television in 1950. In future episodes of HearWig, we'll feature Jack and Mary, Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Rochester, Polly, and the others who contributed to the success of the Jack Benny Show on both radio and television.
For this HearWig episode, our first for the New Year, we have another aspect of Jack Benny to explore - Benny side-stepping outside his persona of Jack Benny.
With the possible exception of W C Fields, no other entertainer worked so hard to sustain a public image so far from the truth. Who else but Benny could attend a Baseball Season Opener and instead of throwing out the first ball - pocket it and gets laughs and applause?
But on one playing field, the Big Screen, Benny hardly made it to second base.
Perhaps his low keyed humor and precise comic timing could not transcend the intimate narrowness of radio to the large screen of the movie theatre? A quality of performance to best shine, later, in the not too distant future, from a small box, before a small audiences, in a dimmed living room...
Not that he didn't have some of the most talented people in Hollywood along on his film projects. The Meister-Himself, Ernst Lubitsch, had directed Benny in a tour de force called "To Be Or Not To Be" that found only relative acceptance with the motion picture viewing public. Some in Hollywood said the film was doomed by fate. An elaborate publicity campaign was scrapped on the account of the tragic death of Benny's co star Carol Lombard who perished weeks before the film was completed. Upon its release, film critics, at that time, were only lukewarm to "To Be". Hitler send-ups, of course, had been done before, notably by Chaplin (and, previously, too, by The Three Stooges!). By 1942, with the atrocities of the Nazi Concentration Camps being unmasked, audiences found little associated with Hitler to be entertaining.
Three years and several unremarkable films later, Benny is again in front of the cameras this time with a script by Hollywood veterans Sam Hellman and James V Kern. Direction this time falls to Hollywood icon Raoul Walsh. The cast includes the seductive Alexis Smith, supported by an ample cast consisting of Guy Kibbee, Allyn Joslyn, Franklin Pangborn, Margaret Dumont, and a very young Robert Blake. The music score was by future double Oscar winner Franz Wexman,a onetime Berliner who to finance his University music studies in the late 1920's pumped out piano riffs for the legendary German jazz band, The Weintraub Syncopaters. This Warner Brothers film was released as 'The Horn Blows at Midnight' and was to be the last film featuring Jack Benny in a leading role.
Bottom line on "The Horn Blows at Midnight" - great cast giving it their all, somewhat of an interesting story, elaborate and lushly staged musical scenes, but, overall a disappointment for Benny and Warner Brothers. With the launching of atomic bombs over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the whimsical matter of an Angel planning to end the world on New Year's Eve may have been again as with "To Be Or Not To Be" a bit more morose in subject matter than a viewing public could take to heart.
Benny, though, true in form, milked "Horn" for all it was a box-office disaster and soon this became embedded into the staple of the self deprecating jokes that the adapt Benny writers were noted for.
But our story doesn't end here. In fact, this is where our episode of HearWig begins.
Jack Benny had a chance to revive "The Horn Blows at Midnight" as a radio drama for the Ford Theatre... and, to set it right..
In a re-working of the basic story - the Paradise Coffee motif was dropped we get, in the words of the NY Times, "a more sentimental and "meaningful" finale." This time around Benny is again supported with a superb cast including Mercedes MacCambridge, Claude Reins, Jeanette Nolan, and Hans Conried.
So, without any more fanfare... time now to thump on the old Crosley - sit back, relax, reach for the Sekt, pop open the cork, latch onto a silly hat, sip and listen to our first HearWig presentation for the New Year as we highlight The Ford Theatre's presentation of The Horn Blows At Midnight, originally aired across the CBS Network on March 4th, 1949.
Enjoy, Folks... Schalti for FOOTRIB
The Schaltraum: HearWig Episode 2
The Disk that Launched a Thousand Shows
Freeman Gosden had a call in life of immense pre Marshall McLuhan proportions
He was fascinated with the idea of mass entertainment.
As a vaudeville entertainer, often performing in Black Face - a staple of the 19th Century ministerial tradition - Gosden had a sense that America, now well into the 20th Century, was prepared for finding entertainment in new forms. Silent Movies were well on their way of getting a voice and the prospects of commercial radio never looked more promising.
America - as many entertainers down through the years have discovered - is a hard nut to crack. Booking agents, vaudeville chains, and syndicates had controlled the nature of the Entertainment Industry for decades, often setting up road shows and touring companies that paid little or no royalties to the artists of record. Gilbert and Sullivan fumed for years over licensing fees never recovered from Stateside presentations of their works.
From the performers perspective at that time, traveling in America to keep booking dates was one nightmarish and complex mishmash of entangled train, boat, and bus schedules. As such, life on the road took it's toll on numerous entertainers who burned out as a result of the harsh rigors and strain put upon them by a life style seen by many "normal" folk as decadent. Gosden perceived that the coming of radio - with its ethereal mystique - could vastly alter the forms of entertainment that America had been accustomed to since the time of Jefferson.
One simple hurdle remained, though, achieving the impossible.
How would it be possible for listeners in pre-digital America living scattered throughout the Nation from one coast to the other and spanning 6 time zones - let alone folks living in cities a few hours ride from Chicago - be able to hear the same program from the same script and employing the same actors simultaneously?
Gosden perceived that the pervasive, undeniable power inherent in radio - like the magician's trained hand - could solve what in today's jargon would be identified as a logistics problem. As it is so often during the journey down the road of technological advancement, one turns towards a previous technology for inspiration. Gosden picked up the shellack record and found a new way to use this medium. Just their luck that WGN, the radio station Correll and Gosden were under contract to at that time, didn't share their vision.
Correll and Gosden had already been at the microphones of radio station WGN in Chicago as early as May 16th, 1925, as part of the team sent to cover the 51st running of the Kentucky Derby. Nearly 7 months later, radio history was made on January 12, 1926 when Correll and Gosden signed on with their new show patterned after the popular comic strip, "The Gumps." This 10 min program was called 'Sam n Henry' and aired nightly at 10 p.m., thus laying claim to be the first nightly serial program on American radio. Within a short time, the program became immensely popular - in fact, some of the shows skits were recorded and released commercially by Victor Records. Capitalizing on their success, Gosden and Correll approached the management of WGN with the prospect of broadening their market by systematically pressing recorded shows for broadcasting in other cities. WGM Management balked at this idea. By the end of 1927 Correll and Gosden let their contracts expire and moved their show, their talents, and their creative ideas to the competition, the other major Chicago radio station, WMAQ.
What they weren't able to move to their new home was the show's name, "Sam n Henry."
Their new show was coined "Amos and Andy." A promotional episode was recorded and aired for three weeks before the first episode hit the air on March 19, 1928 as a live 15 minute broadcast and by transcribed subscription to 38 other stations. The concept of a transcribed subscription is rather simple: arrangements were made for advance recordings of each episode on 12" 78-rpm discs -- which would be distributed to the subscribing stations for airing in synchronization with the live broadcasts emanating from WMAQ. Correll and Gosden called this a "chain-less chain," and, believing the concept to be of value, attempted to secure a patent. They were unable to do so, and by the early 1930s, their idea became the corner stone for the entire broadcast syndication industry.
Correll and Gosden logged 438 episodes recorded for syndication in less than two years and each episode had a pressing run between 60 and 150 copies. Today, relatively few copies of these transcriptions - about 50 - are known to exist. Pictured above, is one of the known remaining transcription disks.
After the series moved to live broadcasting on August 19, 1929 - having been picked up by NBC Blue Network - transcription subscriptions were discontinued. Technological advancements made it possible for Broadcasters to use more cost effective ways to distribute content to their affiliates. In the course of "Amos and Andy's" 10 year run on NBC, only six episodes were known to have been transcribed.
and now... welcome to our Second HearWig program.
We offer you a post Thanksgiving program - just when you though it was safe to go back to the dinner table.
Our show features a Thanksgiving classic from Amos and Andy.
Light hearted and spirited as it may have been for millions of Amos and Andy enthusiastists, the program would often offer in sights into - and shed light on - conflicts that are common to the human condition.
Much aligned - and to some extent not wholly appreciated by todays's more PC sensitive audiences, Amos and Andy has had its supporters. Roy Wilkens - of NAACP fame - thought highly of the program and publicly characterized Correll's and Gosdens's work as having "... all the pathos, humor, vanity, glory, problems and solutions that beset ordinary mortals -- and therein lies its universal appeal.
So, have a listen to this episode... as we find Amos and Andy and the King Fish encountering a situation that is more about manna from heaven than drum sticks from Swifts.
Time - then - to settle in the old easy chair, have a plate of cookies at hand, a mug of hot mulled wine nearby and have a listen to this Amos and Andy Episode from November 20th, 1949 - The Turkey Falls Off the Truck
Schalti for FOOTRIB Friends of Old Time Radio In Berlin
FOOTRIB@Berlin.comHearWig Episode 1
Hello, Berliners ... it's time to gather your lobes together, sit down by the old computer, rev up your iPod, and listen to our first Broadcast of HearWig.
Down Load link: http://rapidshare.com/files/3358382/Hearwig__Episode_1_.mp3
In this series, FOOTRIB (Friends of Old Time Radio in Berlin) will ease you into the forgotten world of your Parents, your Grandparents, and beyond.
We get the ball rolling with a broadcast from Lights Out, first presented in 1946 and originating from Chicago for broadcasting throughout the United States by NBC. This series was created by Wyllis Oswald Cooper, a prolific writer of radio scripts who later contributed to the serious drama then being created for the new medium known as television. From 1936 to 1939, Cooper also flirted with Hollywood and had a winner with scripting Son Of Frankenstein for Universal. Some of his other film projects - such as The Phantom Creeps with Lugosi and Nr. Moto Takes a Chance with Peter Lorre lacked the flair of SOF, but to some extent remain cult classics.
The Haunted Cell, our HearWig's Lights Out presentation, is a fine example of the writing skills of Wyllis Cooper and is an example of how Radio can entice your imagination.
Lights Out along with Suspense, The Whistler, Inner Sanctum, I Love A Mystery and so many more speak well to the sustaining powers these shows have on our imagination.
Over the next few months, FOOTRIB will present other great shows that were part of what made US popular culture so entertaining to listeners around the World. Our goal at FOOTRIB for presenting Old Time Radio is not only to entertain, or to enthrall and delight, but to also inform listeners that these programs are still with us, still to be enjoyed today. And, with the newer technologies at hand, easily collectible. Those of us at FOOTRIB want to help you get started and in the coming weeks we'll provide information to help you begin your own private collection of OTR.
Till, our next presentation, this is Schalti wishing you, Happy Trails ahead - till we meet again...
(Schalti can be emailed at this address: ![[MAILTO]](?source=moinmoin&mode=attachment&uri=%2Fwiki%2Frightsidebar%2Fimg%2Fmoin-email.png){kind=small}
FOOTRIB@Berlin.com)
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