Subject: [removed] Digest V2004 #39
From: <[removed]@[removed]>
Date: 1/27/2004 5:51 PM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

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


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2004 : Issue 39
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Tubes                                 [ William L Murtough <k2mfi@[removed]; ]
  Jack Benny's House                    [ "Bill Scherer" <bspro@[removed]; ]
  promo using OTR                       [ "charles lowery" <larson1@adelphia. ]
  Excised songs                         [ JackBenny@[removed] ]
  Lyle Talbot                           [ Dennis W Crow <DCrow3@[removed] ]
  The Incredible Shrinking Picture      [ "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@ ]
  Sound of Your Own Voice, and Radio/T  [ danhughes@[removed] ]
  Tonight Show                          [ littlejc2@[removed] ]
  Paul Frees' grandson                  [ benohmart@[removed] ]
  Malaprops on Easy Aces                [ <welsa@[removed]; ]
  Re: Moonstone Books                   [ Jim Widner <jwidner@[removed]; ]
  Re: Laughing Record, Geekness, OTR r  [ John Mayer <mayer@[removed]; ]
  Jack Paar                             [ " tompolley" <[removed]@[removed]; ]
  Re: Turn offs                         [ Osborneam@[removed] ]
  OTR comic strips                      [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 16:05:02 -0500
From: William L Murtough <k2mfi@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Tubes

There has lately been some comments about heatng times for
[removed] the tubes were triodes and the receivers were powered by
batteries. Also there were battery eliminators, external AC power
supplies. The triode consisted of a filament, a  control grid, and a
plate, not requiring a "warmup.  Later a cathode was added and it was
heated by the filament, requiring a "warmup period" Therefore the tube
operated immediately in older radios, but later required a "warmup".  My
family's ffirst radio was a one tube set with headphones. The tube was a
"WD-11", a triode and didn'rt require a "warmup". When that "bit the
dust" from a lightning hit it was replaced by a three tube (199's) set,
also battery powered and no warm up period. Then  about 1930, due to a
sale at a department store, we aquired a Crosley console which was AC
powered and required a warm up due to  more modern tubes, 227 detector
and 45's in the output stage. Earlier there were crystal sets (no tubes)
which did not require any power source. These receivers only provided
headphone  reception. Who would have dreaamed that someday in the future
we would be able to also see these performers, such as Rudy Vallee
singing with his band directly (and live) from his Club Vallee in New
York City, the Cliquot Club Eskimo from their igloo in Alaska, or the A&
P Gypsies sitting around a campfire in Roumania. Television sure "blew"
the joys of old time radio. Anybody out there remember when my dear
friend, announcer Frank Knight , introduced the "Gypsies" as the "A & G
Pypsies"? Oh, ffor the "good old days!

Bill Murtough

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 16:31:40 -0500
From: "Bill Scherer" <bspro@[removed];
To: ""old-time radio digest">" <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Jack Benny's House

Just heard on the radio that a former TV news anchor from here in the twin
cities lives in a house that Benny built.
Could any of you that live in LA where Paul Majors is the anchor for the CBS
station confirm that for us OTR "geeks?"
Bill

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:02:06 -0500
From: "charles lowery" <larson1@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  promo using OTR

Radio station WJAS, an "oldies" station in Pittsburgh playing music from the
1940's, 50s and 60s is promoting itself and its history using OTR. After
each hourly newscast, an announcer comes on saying, "WJAS then", followed by
an intro to an actual OTR show, such as the intro to "The Shadow", or "Ma
Perkins". Then he says. "WJAS now", followed by a few seconds of two or
three songs on their playlist. It's great to hear a radio station
remembering its past, even though the station does not play any old radio
shows. The station's listeners include many who remember the old shows, and
this makes me think of a thread on this list about those of us who listened
to the radio shows when they were first broadcasted, versus those OTR fans
who are not old enough to have "been there". No judgement either way is
intended; just as WJAS remembers it's history, we who have been there have
special ties to OTR. We not only appreciate the shows for their
entertainment value, but while listening, we are remembering and giving
value to our past.

Chuck

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:02:46 -0500
From: JackBenny@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Excised songs

Ray Druian asked?

Does anyone out there know why the songs were deleted from the Radio
Classics versions ?

I'm going to make a guess on this, since I don't know if the commercials were
excised from the shows as well.  One of the many things that makes OTR rights
extremely complicated are the songs that are embedded in the shows.  So even
if you have the rights to broadcast or sell the shows, you may not have the
rights to broadcast or sell the songs included in the shows without paying
appropriate royalties to the song copyright owner/ASCAP/BMI.  Delete the
song, and
that issue goes away.  Unfortunate, though.

In a similar vein, I don't think there are any circulating Benny shows where
you actually hear Frank Parker singing (if there are, let me know).  At that
time, the transcriber was clipping all the music to save disc space.  What
REALLY honked me off was the show where the Chicken Sisters reappear as the
Dean
Sisters (first known recording of the famous bit), and they clipped their song
which is a big part of the comedy!  I was listening to the show in my car when
I discovered that, and other drivers may have mistaken my reaction as road
rage.  Talk about being honked [removed]

--Laura Leff
President, IJBFC
[removed]

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:03:17 -0500
From: Dennis W Crow <DCrow3@[removed];
To: OTR Digest <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Lyle Talbot

Lyle Talbot, as busy as he was making scores of movies and television shows
(and I guess a couple of radio shows,  too), always found time for infamous
filmmaker,  Edward D. Woods, Jr.

Talbot was a good character actor but he was in some of the  worst movies
known to mankind. Talbot gave bravura performances  in GLEN OR GLENDA? and
PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE, as part of  Woods' peculiar little repertory
company.

At least he wasn't in Phil Tucker's ROBOT MONSTER featuring, as Leonard
Maltin puts it, "a gorilla in a diving helmet."  By the way, that
particular film featured Selena Royle, who appeared  in two of my favorite
soap operas, "Portia Faces Life," and "The Right to Happiness." Her role in
the latter was a big part.

OTR connections are everywhere!

Dennis Crow

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:05:51 -0500
From: "Stephen A Kallis, Jr." <skallisjr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  The Incredible Shrinking Picture

Laura Leff, speaking of tube electronics ("radio tubes"), notes,

a member of ours has a routine where he recalls that in turning off old
televisions, the picture would go down into a little dot at the middle of
the screen that took 20 minutes to go away completely.

Actually, once a fully tube based TV set was turned off, there were two
mechanisms: one was the stream of electrons (the "beam") continued to be
emitted.  The second was that the rest of the video circuits were losing
their charges and were deflecting and modulating the beam as it continued
to emit electrons.  Anyone with really good vision could see that even
though the picture was shrinking, things within it continued to move.
This is the reverse of the "warming up" effect.

Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:06:28 -0500
From: danhughes@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Sound of Your Own Voice, and Radio/TV/Phonos

Mark says (of his first experience with a tape recorder):

I was appalled at the sound of my own voice.

Mark, you're not alone.  I teach radio broadcasting, and the majority of
my students are appalled at what they hear the first time they play back
a voicer.  I don't like my own voice, and I've been a radio announcer
since 1967!

Any theories on this?

Also, that radio/TV/phono monstrosity you mentioned:  My family had one;
paid $279 for it at Montgomery Ward's in 1950.  A week later the price
dropped to $239, and my father asked if he could get that extra forty
dollars back.  No, they said, and if you return the set and rebuy it
we'll sue you for the extra forty dollars.

I like to think that customer service has improved since those days.

---Dan

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:10:31 -0500
From: littlejc2@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Tonight Show

Charlie,

With all due respect but wasn't it Steve Allen who "pioneered late night talk
on the Tonight Show"?

Chester Littlejohn

[ADMINISTIVIA: Nope; Steve Allen's version of The Tonight Show was a variety
show, with skits, gags, and scripted monologues. Steve Allen certainly
pioneered the late-night program, but it was Parr who pioneered late-night
talk.  --cfs3]

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:12:41 -0500
From: benohmart@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Paul Frees' grandson

Just wanted to share this with the otr people. It's from Paul Frees' daughter:

Hi all,
Just a quick note to let ya [removed]
Paul Frees' grandson, London Glenn Lomas, arrived safe and sound on
Monday Jan. 19, at 5:55 am. 7 lbs. 6 oz. 20" . All is well, mom and
baby are happy.
....carry on!
Sabrina

The Paul Frees book
[removed]

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:45:32 -0500
From: <welsa@[removed];
To: "OTR Digest" <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Malaprops on Easy Aces

I would tend to agree with the statement that Lake Marijuana might be a
malaprop, except for one thing.  It is not Jane who said this.  It was
Goodman's line talking about his wife.  Goodman didn't usually write
malaprops for himself.

Even if it was, it still seems odd to me they would choose that word.
That's only because I come from an older generation.  :)

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:45:51 -0500
From: Jim Widner <jwidner@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: Moonstone Books

At 03:53 PM 1/27/2004, you wrote:
Hello all.  I recently came across a website which appears to be a newer
company producing comics, really, they are more story than your average
comic today.

Not that new. They've been in business for quite some time. I know I wrote
an introduction for them to the Johnny Dollar book over two years ago and
it wasn't new then.

Jim Widner
jwidner@[removed]

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:15:59 -0500
From: John Mayer <mayer@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: Laughing Record, Geekness, OTR
 references, etc.

Kathleen Perry <Bonka@[removed]; inquired:
Also, I am looking for a record My dad used to play "The Laughing Record" was
it's actual name. Don't remember by who tho. Listening to the
record and the guy laughing, that's all he did, was SO [removed]

Just a guess, but I suspect this was a free vinyl insert floppy
record that came bound inside a copy of Mad Magazine. This was a
rather new gimmick at the time. I recall there were actually several
laughers, probably drawn from the staff of mad (in fact, I think that
was the claim, but, who knows? Gaines and company may have hired
professional laughers), and it was, indeed, quite infectious. If this
was the recording you have in mind, I believe it ended with the
phrase, "We also give away ice in the wintertime," if that might
strike a familiar chord.

"[removed]" <[removed]@[removed]; informed us:

"[removed]" <[removed]@[removed];
Well, any person with a strong interest in
a non-mainstream subject can now be described as a hyphenated geek.  For
example, we have crossword-geeks, anime-geeks, and of course OTR-geeks.

The equivalent back in Hippy days was Freak, also an originally
derogatory term that we scruffy folks took to our bosoms and wore
proudly. I would have been called an OTR-Freak. Come to think of it,
I was, though sources were few and far between back then.

"Alain Atounian" <[removed]@[removed]; said:

Being a bit of a "Simpsons" geek as well, i can think of at least
two [OTR references]; One is on A&A, other is a fictional otr
version of their world's cartoon show.

There were also some references to OTR on Animaniacs. The Brain is
said to have been based on Orson Welles (not a perfect impression,
but then I've found Welles to be hard to mimic). One episode involved
some sort of radio broadcast in which The Brain played an invisible
character called The Fog.

Jer51473@[removed] asked:
A couple of other slang words were "dame" for girls and "gat" for gun. Can
anyone think of others?

One that comes to mind is "gunsel," a word that seems to have misused
by generations of mystery and thriller writers. I understand it came
into common parlance following Dashiell Hammett's use of the term in
_The Maltese Falcon_.A mention is made that Willard (I thinnnk his
name was) is Gutman's "gunsel." Since that word starts with "gun"
many people assumed it was another word for gunman (or "torpedo").
Actually I am told it is a Yiddish term for a very different calling
indeed.

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:17:17 -0500
From: " tompolley" <[removed]@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Jack Paar

Now that Jack Paar has passed on we'll be deluged with commentary about "The
Father of the Tonite Show" when we old-timers realize that Jerry Lester and
his Broadway Open House was the precurser.  The name may have been different
but it was the same format with Milton DeLugg, Dagmar and the gang.  And we
can't forget Steve Allen.  Paar was OK but it took Johnny Carson to make the
show really popular.
Tom Polley

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:18:05 -0500
From: Osborneam@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: Turn offs

In Digest #37, Laura Leff said:

..a member of ours has a routine where he recalls that in turning off old
televisions, the picture would go down into a little dot at the middle of
the screen that took 20 minutes to go away completely.

Gosh, I've got one that does that NOW!  (My SONY isn't
THAT old.  And my dot is [removed])

Arlene Osborne

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

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 19:15:40 -0500
From: "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  OTR comic strips

MJ commented about Moonstone Books.  That company has been producing comics
and
novels for a few years now, based on radio shows like Mysterious Traveler
and
Boston Blackie and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.  OTR fans will probably be
glad to
hear that the ILAM comic strips will soon be available to to the public in
comic book
form or described as "graphic novel".

Here's a little history behind the ILAM comic strip and some news about the
up-coming [removed]

I LOVE A MYSTERY: THE COMIC STRIP
"There are no adventure cartoons in the papers today," quoted Morse in the
summer of 1985.  "There is good social commentary, like Doonesbury - and
there's a place for that, too - but they lack consistent characters and
sustained excitement.  The great unwashed American public doesn't have the
sophistication to understand Doonesbury.  They want fun."

What Morse was driving at was an attempted revival of his I Love A Mystery
series through the medium of the comic strips.  Among those who tuned in
faithfully to the continuing adventures of Jack, Doc and Reggie was a young
artist named Donald Sherwood.  Years later, in 1969, Sherwood still
remembered the old radio show, and decided it would make a good comic strip.
  He sought out the show's creator, Carlton E. Morse, and the two began a
collaboration to resurrect the detectives.  But the comic strip's time had
not come, and there were no interested parties willing to syndicate the
cartoons.  While Sherwood spent 14 years developing the strip adaptation, he
began other projects.  In 1975 he began illustrating "Return With Us Now . .
." A semi-weekly cartoon recalling old radio, television and movie shows and
performers.  Bill Owen (co-author with Frank Buxton of The Big Broadcast,
1920-1950) wrote the panels.

In 1980 Sherwood brought another old radio character to life on the comic
pages, Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, illustrated by Sherwood for the Wrather
Corp., then presently owners of the Lone Ranger Television, Inc., which ran
in newspapers throughout the United States.  After a new management at
Wrather decided to drop the comic strip projects, Sherwood said, Editors
Press Service looked for a substitute for Preston.  "I had never quit
working on I Love A Mystery," he said.  "I saw the golden opportunity to
bring it before them."

Just a few days after syndication began in May of 1985, more than 90
newspapers ordered the detective strip - many of them former Preston
customers.  Newspapers in Trinidad, Barbados, Stockholm and Singapore began
running the strip.  All parties involved hoped to interest a domestic
syndicate within six months.  As a further impetus, the Center for Art
Education at the Manhattan Laboratory Museum in New York City included I
Love A Mystery in an exhibition geared toward children demonstrating the art
of illustration.

While Morse and his assistant, Palo Alto novelist Kamillia Chadwick,
reworked the old scripts into cartoon format, in the form of three-panel
scripts, broken down into a week-by-week compilation, New York artist Don
Sherwood drew renditions of Jack Packard and Doc Long based on the actors
who portrayed them on the radio and in promotional photos, Michael Raffetto
and Barton Yarborough.  The third character, Reggie York, was less defined
than the others on the radio show, and the strip character was more
Sherwood's creation.  The 1940s detectives were also brought up to date in
the strip.  "You can't do that with all radio programs," said Sherwood, "but
with I Love A Mystery, it's timeless."

"Each radio episode had 15 pages of dialogue leading up to a single punch
line," recalled Chadwick.  "It would take four to six weeks to solve a
mystery.  A cartoon has to cover the same territory and come up with a punch
line in ten lines.  It'll take up to 16 weeks to solve a case."  Chadwick
compared the cartoon style to the "film noir" genre of the 1940s.  At the
same time, she said, it was very contemporary.  "This is the stuff Raiders
of the Lost Ark is built on.  Incredible things happen, at a constant change
of pace and place."

On February 9, 1984, contracts were drawn up constituting an agreement with
respect to the comic strip rights to I Love A Mystery for distribution by
Editors Press Service, Inc.  According to the contract between Morse and
Sherwood, Morse supplied radio scripts for Sherwood to use in preparation of
all artwork and dialogue, from which his estate received 12% of the 100%
of gross price received for the sale of the service, directly from Editors
Press Service, Inc.  Editors Press Service agreed to sell the I Love A
Mystery comic at the highest market value in accordance with their past
practices and marketing methods.  Sixty days after the billing period, they
liquidated sales that were in effect and Sherwood received 50% commission
off the gross price received for the sale of the service.  Sherwood's
percentage of 12% was liquidated to Carlton E. Morse while Sherwood
received the remainder of 37%.  Regrettably, the comic strip was not
widely circulated in American and Canadian syndication but the Agency did,
however, sell the strip to European markets, very possibly one of the
national newspapers in Great Britain.  The strip ran at least one year.

I know that Sherwood put THE FEAR THAT CREEPS LIKE A CAT and one other
serial to comic strip form, and those are the two that are being released
this summer in comic book (graphic novel) format.  Sherwood has even
expressed a desire that he attend FOTR this October to offer the comic books
and autograph them for any interested parties . . . this might make ILAM
fans cheer.  the comic strips will finally be available!

Martin Grams, Jr.
Material about the ILAM comic strips listed above is reprinted from THE I
LOVE A MYSTERY COMPANION.

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2004 Issue #39
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