Subject: [removed] Digest V2003 #284
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 7/24/2003 6:23 AM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

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


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2003 : Issue 284
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Payton Space                          [ "Derek Tague" <derek@[removed]; ]
  Call Letter Slogans                   [ "Russ Butler" <oldradio@[removed] ]
  The Goldbergs                         [ Mike Martini <mmartini@[removed] ]
  honors                                [ JIMWMQT@[removed] ]
  NYC update 3 - Remembering Florenz Z  [ Christopher Werner <werner1@globalc ]
  Call Letters                          [ "Marvin R. Bensman" <mbensman@MEMPH ]
  Brush Creek Follies website           [ Stephen Davies <SDavies@[removed]. ]
  hitch-hike?                           [ benohmart@[removed] ]
  Radio Drama LIVE!                     [ Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed] ]
  Outlook/Express [removed] a tip        [ "lance" <lancepawl@[removed]; ]
  Membership Club                       [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]
  For all the know-it-alls              [ "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@hotm ]
  Gotham Radio Players present THE FAT  [ StevenL751@[removed] ]
  Re: Stan Freberg and Green Christmas  [ Ed Foster <erfoster@[removed]; ]
  Call letter meanings                  [ "Jim Hilliker" <jimhilliker@sbcglob ]

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:47:50 -0400
From: "Derek Tague" <derek@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Payton Space
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Hi Gang:

      With great disappointment, I read here on these pages Martin Grams's
account of everybody's favourite Sci-Fi Guy Gordon Payton and his recent
disenchantment with the OTR hobby. It's a shame, too. Gordon's unique brand
of irreverence will be sorely missed at the after-hours hotel room parties at
OTR conventions. If Gordon's social life & home repairs ever slow down, I
hope he might consider an acting career. At the conventions, he would often
audition & win nice juicy parts in various re-creations. My favourite Gordon
Payton story involved  the rehearsal for a "Sam Spade" re-creatiom in which
we were both cast at the Cincinatti convention a couple of years ago with
Gordon essaying the title role.
     The "Spade" episode involved a sub-plot in which Sam was obsessed with
reading a pulp Western magazine. Gordon-as-Sam tells Effie (played by the
equally gifted Karen Hughes) about the Western which involved ranchers
driving their cattle, as Gordon mispronounced it, "over the BUTT," mistaking
the word for "BUTTE."  Laughter ensues. A few lines later, Gordon/Sam
mistakes the word "it" for "I" and renders this great line while describing
the cheap western's plot:
"I was about bawling [removed]" Gordon hadn't realised his mistake [read it
out loud to get the joke] amid more gales of laughter.
    A couple of script pages later, Sam, again reading from the story,
relates the events of a bar-room fistfight between two cowboys that ends up
with one of the fellows lying "PROSTATE on the floor." I corrected him on the
spot and yelled out "That's PROSTRATE!" later apologising to director Don
Ramlow for usurping the director's role explaining that I correct people's
pronunciations for a living and that blurting out a correction comes
second-nature to me.
     Fortunately, Gordon didn't repeat these three "doozies" in the actual
performance.
     We already miss you, Gordon. OTR and the wonderful people it attracts
will always be here for you  if and when you decide to come back.

Best wishes from the ether,

Derek Tague

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Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:07:14 -0400
From: "Russ Butler" <oldradio@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Call Letter Slogans

<<Bob Reynolds asked what radio call letters stand [removed];

There is an excellent reference by Tom Kneitel called "Radio Station
Treasury, 1900-1946"  (CRB Research, Commack, NY 11725)  published in 1986.
He lists three full pages of radio station call letter slogans and ID's
going back to 1926.  WCBQ, then in Nashville TN for instance, meant "We
Can't Be Quiet!".

Tom writes that "in earlier times, the use of slogans were far more
important to station recognition than it's official call [removed]
(stations) attempted to concoct a slogan to match up with their randomly
assigned set of call letters, often resulting in bizarre, awkward, or
unintentionally humorous slogans."

He also includes "The Call Letter Jamboree", a 1938 poem using radio station
call letters in the text, quite clever. The whole book has listings of radio
stations by city, by power, by frequency, international, police, airports
calls, etc. and a sprinkling of old advertisements about radio from 1900 to
1946.

(I purchased my "Treasury" from The Vestal Press in Vestal, NY 13851-0097.
Tom is also the Editor of Popular Mechanics Magazine.  I have no personal
interest in either business, just a very satisified, recommending customer.)

Russ Butler  oldradio@[removed]

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:08:25 -0400
From: Mike Martini <mmartini@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  The Goldbergs

The recent discussion about Gertrude Berg and the Goldbergs reminds me of a
delightful story told by Himan Brown, of Inner Sanctum/CBS Radio Mystery
Theatre fame.  Hi was a high school student in New York when he decided he
wanted to get into radio.  After taking odd jobs at a number of New York
hotel radio stations (such as WPCH at the Park Central Hotel), Hi was given
an audition in front of Margaret Cuthbert at then-fledgling NBC.   This
would've been around 1928.  After at first failing the announcing audition,
Hi quickly mentioned that he had a knack of imitating Jewish dialect.  He
read one of Milt Gross's Jewish fairy tales from the New York
Herald-Tribune.  Margaret loved it and told him he could have a 15-minute
Saturday morning slot reading Milt's fairy tales.  Unfortunately, the joy
was short-lived.  As Hi was leaving the room, Cuthbert asked "by the way,
you DO have the rights to read this on the air, don't you?"  Hi said later
he had no concept of copyright but lied and said "yes."  He then spent the
next three weeks "haunting" Gross until Gross relented and said, "okay,
kid, your can read my stuff on the air for four weeks but after that, I
wanna be paid!"  Hi then started his show on Saturdays.
After the second week, Hi had a telephone call after the broadcast.  It was
Gertrude Berg who said she lived in the Bronx but had a father who owned a
hotel in the Catskills and was quite familiar with Jewish dialect humor.
She suggested that they team up and do a radio show based upon her father's
hotel--kind of a rip-off of "Grand Hotel" which was popular at the time.
Knowing that the Milt Gross agreement was coming to an end, Hi agreed (he
was only 17 at the time!) to Berg's idea.   Hi went back to Cuthbert and
after some cajoling, convinced NBC to broadcast the show in New York.  "The
Rise of the Goldbergs", then, initially featured Gertrude as Molly and Hi
as her husband (they had two kids, too.)  After three months on the air,
the show was a becoming big hit and was started to get a lot of attention.
One day, after a broadcast, Gertrude pulled Hi aside and told him "thanks
for your help, but it's time we part company!"  Hi pointed out that they
were equal partners and that he was the one that got them in the door at
NBC, but she didn't care.  Essentially, according to Hi, she told him to
"get lost, little boy" (Gertrude was about 14-years older).  Well, Hi had
just started law school but wasn't yet 18.  Because he was still a minor,
his friends told him not to sue and to forget about it or risk jeopardizing
future plans in radio.  So he did.  Fortunately, as it turned out, Hi Brown
had a pretty good run in radio after all!
-M. Martini

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:12:38 -0400
From: JIMWMQT@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  honors

Hey:

Don't know if everyone's heard, but the Library of American Broadcasting (an
offshoot of the National Association of Broadcasters) has announced their
"First Fifty Giants of Broadcasting", to be honored at the grand opening of
their new quarters at the University of Maryland.

OTR's well represented, with Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, George and
Gracie, Bing Crosby, Arthur Godfrey, Gosden & Correll, Bob Hope, Jim & Marian
Jordan, H. V. Kaltenborn, Paley & Sarnoff, and Lowell Thomas among the 50.

Nice to see that *some* organizations have memories that go back more than 50
years!!

Jim Koski

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:13:22 -0400
From: Christopher Werner <werner1@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  NYC update 3 - Remembering Florenz Ziegfeld

Ron Sayles' posting of the death of Florenz Ziegfeld on July 22nd reminded
[removed]

Two weeks ago I decided to go watch one of the new movies and selected the
Ziegfeld Theatre here in New York as a venue. Although not the original
building (they actually seem to have had three theatres at one time) the
furnishings were from the earlier locations. What a wonderful treat it was
to view historic displays of some of the famous dancers in the Follies.
There were busts of both Florenz Ziegfeld and Fanny Brice prominently
displayed. Cantor, Crosby and others were on playbills. The main theatre
holds about 800 with plush velvet seats and a golden curtain that parts to
reveal the screen. Sadly only 30 of us were in attendance that night.

I would encourage any visitor to NYC to check out the theatre. I
unfortunately didn't take my camera with me (seemed unnecessary at a
Theatre) so my memory now fails me as to the names of the other 10 famous
singers that hung on the wall (I gleefully recited them to my 90 year-old
mother over the cell phone the night I was there though!).

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:13:27 -0400
From: "Marvin R. Bensman" <mbensman@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Call Letters

One of my favorite Call Letters is:

WHBQ - Memphis (We have Better Quartets)

Professor Marvin R. Bensman
University of Memphis
Dir: Radio Archive

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:44:41 -0400
From: Stephen Davies <SDavies@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Brush Creek Follies website
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        The University of Missouri - Kansas City has mounted extracts from
their archives devoted to the long-running "Brush Creek Follies" from KMBC
([removed]).  There's plenty of RealAudio and RealVideo clips giving a
very entertaining overview of this C&W variety show and other activities
at KMBC.
        The best clip is "Life on the Red Horse Ranch" which shows the
dramatic program in production.

[removed]

Stephen Davies
mailto:SDavies@[removed]

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 18:42:25 -0400
From: benohmart@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  hitch-hike?

I'll show my ignorance to all here by asking what HITCH-HIKE before a
commercial
means in an otr script. I've been editing some Baby Snooks scripts and see
this a lot.
But not sure what it means.

Ben

Books on old-time radio
[removed]

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 19:01:49 -0400
From: Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Radio Drama LIVE!

See and Hear The Odyssey of Runyon Jones at Radio Drama LIVE!
August 1, 2, and 3
Performed Live on Long Island

(HEMPSTEAD, NY) - The dog days of August will sparkle on August 1, 2, 3 as
the National Audio Theatre Festivals (NATF) presents Radio Drama LIVE!  Four
live performances will feature the Norman Corwin classic radio play, The
Odyssey
of Runyon Jones, directed by George Zarr, and a contemporary science fiction
parody Sterling Bronson, Space Engineer: Amuck the Rummylins, written and
directed by Tom Curley - a modern Star Trek parody. Featured cast members
include
Broadway's Barbara (The Secret Garden) Rosenblat.  Ms. Rosenblat is a
three-time recipient of the Female Narrator of the Year award from the Audio
Book
Publishers Association,  NPR news anchor Frank Stasio, and the voice of Alan
Kalter, announcer from The Late Show with David Letterman.
Performances are Fri. Aug. 1, 8PM; Sat. Aug. 2, 2PM and 8PM; and Sun. Aug. 3,
2PM.  For ticket prices and more information visit [removed] or
call (516) 885-8360.

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 19:03:21 -0400
From: "lance" <lancepawl@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Outlook/Express [removed] a tip

Hello,

If you're like me, who normally sends HTML text, it becomes difficult to
specifically set certain emails to send as text only, plus having to
remember to do so. Some Outlook/Express users out there might be interested
in how to set specific recipients for 'text only', such as this newsgroup.
So here is a tip:

In Outlook/Express,
Go to your Address [removed]

Right click on:
[removed]@[removed]
Select "Properties."
Click on the "Name" tab.
Click the small check box titled "Send email using text only."
Check to make sure the box is really checked.
Click on "OK" to save and exit.

Regards,

Lance

[removed] I just learned this tip, so we'll see if it works. I'm using it for the
first time. :-)

[ADMINISTRIVIA: Like a charm!  --cfs3]

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 20:58:34 -0400
From: "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Membership Club

For any interested parties,
besides the Radio Historical Association of Colorado that I mentioned in a
previous posting, there are many others.   Audio Classics Archive Membership
has recently opened membership to the archive.  By being a member of Audio
Classics Archive, you get reduced prices on their CDs and cassettes.  Audio
Classics has been around for 30 years and has one of the largest collections
in the country.  Jay Hickerson has noted this is a source of many programs
in the past that are not widely circulated and there is a large number of
non-circulated programs that will become available in the future through the
archive.
You can check it out at [removed]

Yes, I've written articles for that web-site but I'm not really associated
or benefit financially from this mention - just an FYI for interested
parties, worth checking out.
Martin

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 21:29:34 -0400
From: "Martin Grams, Jr." <mmargrajr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  For all the know-it-alls

I've got a couple questions:
I'm curious to see if anyone can answer these.  All of you know-it-alls out
there, put on your thinking caps or pull out your reference guides. . .

I acquired some memos and contracts pertaining to some radio shows and for
some reason, I can't make out the exact spelling of people who signed the
contract, because I'm awful at reading handwriting, especially signatures.
Thankfully, they signed their name beside the company they work for.  So
does anyone know the exact spelling for these two men?

Someone of the NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY , INC.  (signed by S. J.
Smollet ?)
J. WALTER THOMPSON COMPANY  (signed by Edward G. Wilson ?)

I probably have Edward G. Wilson correct but not 100% sure.  Smollet was the
best I could make out.
If this was WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE, this would be the $1,000,000
dollar question.
Can anyone help?
Martin Grams, Jr.
mmargrajr@[removed]

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 22:10:30 -0400
From: StevenL751@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Gotham Radio Players present THE FAT MAN
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The Gotham Radio Players
present

THE FAT MAN
"Murder Faces The Camera"

Live!  This Sunday, July 27
8:00pm (Eastern)

WBAI, [removed] FM in NYC
[removed] 

There he goes, into that drug store.  He's stepping on the scales.  Weight:
241 pounds.  Fortune: Danger!   Who is it?  The Fat Man!

Join us on Sunday as the Gotham Radio Players recreate a lost episode of the
detective series featuring a fast-moving criminologist who tips the scales at
241 pounds.   Although THE FAT MAN ran for more than six years on radio, only
ten episodes of this witty and exciting adventure program have survived for us
to enjoy today.  "Murder Faces The Camera" has not been heard since it's
original broadcast in 1949.  Tune in and hear us live this Sunday, July 27th,
at 8:00pm (eastern) on WBAI, [removed] FM in New York City, or over the web
everywhere else at [removed].

The Gotham Radio Players were formed in 1991 by a group of enthusiasts for
the  heyday of radio drama. Our mission is to bring new productions of classic
radio programs of the 30's, 40's, and 50's to the airwaves of the new
millennium, as well as showcase original scripts written by the emerging audio
dramatists of today. Now under the leadership of producer Max Schmid and
director S teven Lewis, the Gotham Radio Players are featured regularly in live
performances on WBAI-FM, at the annual "Friends of Old-Time Radio" Convention,
and at other personal appearances in the New York City metropolitan area.

Steve Lewis
director

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 22:44:18 -0400
From: Ed Foster <erfoster@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: Stan Freberg and Green Christmas

"Candy Jens" <candyj@[removed];  wrote:

Stan Freberg did a 45 single (remember them?) on Capital called "Green
Chri$tma$" - a satire on the commercialization of Christmas running almost
seven minutes.  Very good, of course, and even more appropriate today than
when it was first recorded!

Do you also remember that it was banned on many (most?) stations when
it first came out?  Pressure from advertisers, maybe.

Ed Foster
erfoster@[removed]

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

Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:35:39 -0400
From: "Jim Hilliker" <jimhilliker@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Call letter meanings

Hello there!  In response to Bob Reynold's question, yes, there's been a lot
of research done and a lot written on what the early radio station call
letters stood for and why, and on what some of the defunct radio station
call letters stood for and what some of the more recent radio station call
letters stand for.

In the beginning years of broadcasting, radio station call letters were
issued in sequential order.  Some station owners and/or program directors,
announcers, other staff members and sometimes even listeners, came up with
slogans or meanings for call letters that were already assigned.  One early
example, KHJ in Los Angeles in March to April of 1922.  A Los Angeles Times
story on the newspaper's own radio station said it was hoped that the call
letters would stand for Knowledge, Happiness and Judgement.  This was a few
weeks before the station's debut broadcast on 4-13-22.  However, a short
time later, and for quite a few years, the KHJ slogan became "Kindness,
Happiness and Joy."

Soon,  some new stations requested call letters for an owner, a city, a
region or state, a church group, a newspaper, [removed] stations seemed
to come up with contrived meanings or slogans for their call letters, such
as this one from KFRC-San Francisco--"Keep Forever Radiating Cheer", or
KFSD-San Diego's "Kiss From San Diego".   Another such slogan I found in
1924 for a short-lived station in Santa Ana, CA was that of KFAW,
(1922-1925) which stated, "Kept From Awful Winters."   One that easily made
sense from 1925-1931 in Pasadena, CA was station KPSN, owned by the Pasadena
Star-News newspaper.

One of the pioneer stations in Hollywood still broadcasting today, KFWB,
supposedly stood for "Keep Filming, Warner Brothers", while I've also seen
it written that part of the call letters, the FWB, stood for "Four Warner
Brothers", as in Jack, Sam, Harry and Albert.

There are plenty of other fascinating stories out there about the meanings
of radio station call letters, and how they came about.  One fantastic Web
site that deals only with call letters past and present and their meanings
is Call Letter Origins, which has slogans and meanings for over 2,700 radio
and TV station call letters. Quite fascinating to those interested in this,
and I even sent in a few of them, myself.  Here's the link:

[removed]

Also, Jeff Miller's History of American Broadcasting site has meanings of
requested call letters of the 1920s and stations [removed] may be some
duplication in these lists, but still fun to check out.

Enjoy.

Jim Hilliker
Monterey, CA

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2003 Issue #284
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