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The Old-Time Radio Digest!
Volume 2008 : Issue 19
A Part of the [removed]!
[removed]
ISSN: 1533-9289
Today's Topics:
Cincinnati convention [ "Bob Burchett" <haradio@[removed] ]
Magic Island [ "Ian Grieve" <austotr@[removed]. ]
Re: Vic and Sade [ "Jan Bach" <janbach@[removed]; ]
Jewish characters [ "Bob C" <rmc44@[removed]; ]
Re: Fibber & Molly, and when their p [ Michael Shoshani <mshoshani@sbcglob ]
Accents [ Rentingnow@[removed] ]
Re:Jewish Radio CDs [ "MICHAEL BIEL" <mbiel@[removed]; ]
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Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 22:05:19 -0500
From: "Bob Burchett" <haradio@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Cincinnati convention
The dates for this year's Cincinnati convention (April 11, 12) have already
been posted on the Digest. The hotel is under new ownership. Last year the
convention was held during the sale. The old owners at that point did
nothing to the hotel or for the quests. The new gal I'm dealing with assures
me the house keeping is back, meaning you will have a clean room with towels.
Renovations probably may be done by convention time, but they should be well
underway. The cost of the space for the recreations and the dealers
rooms depends on the number of room rental nights we have. If we don't get
our number the cost goes up. Those who came last year, and had a bad
experience with hotel give the new owners another chance. It will help them,
and the convention. Cincinnati North is the new name of the hotel.
[removed] When making room reservations ask for Betty. It Will make you
life easier. Send your mailing address and I will put you on our mailing
list. For more information call Bob Burchett toll free [removed]
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Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:45:00 -0500
From: "Ian Grieve" <austotr@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Magic Island
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain
In issue 18 BJ Watkins asked if Magic Island was 128 or 130 episodes, the
answer is 130 episodes.
128 was always circulating in mp3, because the originator who encoded the
series from R2R only had 128 and so 128 it became.
Thanks to Jerry H whose log is correct at 130 and Ben K who worked on the
first lines of each episode, we were able to pinpoint where the episodes went
wrong and Jerry H supplied me with the missing ones. The 130 episode series
certified by the researchers group on [removed] is correct.
The way the series repeats the story of previous episodes, the 2 episodes were
not missed and the series seemed to flow well without the 2 episodes, but it
annoyed me after Jerry H confirmed that 130 episodes was the correct number
and after several attempts over several years we finally put it to rest.
Ian Grieve
*** This message was altered by the server, and may not appear ***
*** as the sender intended. ***
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Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:45:31 -0500
From: "Jan Bach" <janbach@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Re: Vic and Sade
Hello again --
I too feel I have to remove Vic and Sade from the stereotypes mentioned in a
recent OTR Digest article. I grew up only forty miles from Bloomington IL,
Paul Rhymer's birthplace, and no doubt one of the reasons I am such a nut
about Vic and Sade is because, like my mother from Memphis remarked when
Jimmy Carter was president, "Finally they have someone in the White House
without an accent!", I could paraphrase her remark by saying, "Finally they
have someone on the radio that speaks like I do."
Vic and Sade talked exactly like the folks from my home town. Their
expressions like "come here once," or "you can appreciate (understand) how
shy Ruthie is," or "Give me five" (yes, Rush actually said that in one
program from the early forties, while I thought it was my generation's lingo
around the early fifties). Of course, they also had expressions of their
own, like "I cleaned the house today until who laid the chunk," or "That's
the bullet that choked Billy Patterson," or "When you hear this news you'll
throw your shoes over the People's Bank building." But most of my high
school friends' fathers were 9-5 businessmen, most of their mothers were
stay-at-home housewives, and few if any of their parents had any education
beyond high school. So Vic and Sade were truer to life than many might like
to admit.
A moment of silence here in memory of Bill Idelson, Vic and Sade's son Rush,
who passed away on the last day of 2007. As long as we can still hear the
old V and S recordings, Bill will live in our memories, and in our
appreciation and gratitude, through his great comic delivery and sense of
timing.
Jan Bach
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Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:47:20 -0500
From: "Bob C" <rmc44@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Jewish characters
As a WASP kid in West Texas, I can tell you that in the late
'40s, early 50s, I didn't know anything about the Jewishness of
hardly anyone. There was the man who ran a department store in
our town who was Jewish.
Other than that, on the radio, maybe I knew Eddie Cantor and Al
Jolson were, but it was of no significance to me. And as Kermyt
pointed out, Jack Benny and George Burns participated in the
Christmas ritual of shopping. Who would have guessed?
If my parents knew, they didn't let on to us kids, anymore than
they told us the truth about Santa Claus. Being a tad slow, I
didn't catch on to that until the summer between the fifth and
sixth grades ... and I didn't learn the truth about Benny and
Burns until I was in my 20s. And it didn't make any difference.
Bob Cockrum
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Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:06:53 -0500
From: Michael Shoshani <mshoshani@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: Fibber & Molly, and when their program
showed up
Charlie North asks:
I hope someone can answer this question for me. I found a site that shows
radio station air time slots, for different network programing, and local
programing. For example. In Chicago, on Tuesday, December the 2nd, 1941, it
shows
Fibber, and Molly on at 8:30 PM, CST. If I go to Los Angeles, and search the
same time slot, the same day, not only is Fibber, and Molly not there in
that
time slot, it is not even there on that day, and date, for any time slot.
My question is: Were radio stations then, unlike network TV stations today,
allowed to air a particular network show, at any time they chose, on any day
they chose? I even went so far as to check the days before, and after in Los
Angeles, with no results there either. A total mystery to me.
If I understand the situation correctly, the program advertiser had
total control over which stations carried their particular program;
there was no way for an individual station to "opt-out" of carrying a
program. In fact, while large metropolitan areas usually had at least
one full-time NBC Red affiliate and one full-time NBC Blue, smaller
market stations that had only one NBC affiliate would have both Red and
Blue programs mixed together on their station, all depending on how that
time slot was sold to the advertiser.
By 1941 I believe FM&M had moved from Chicago to Hollywood, as a lot of
NBC programs that had originated from Chicago moved to those sunny
climes after NBC's studio complex in Hollywood was built in 1937. Having
access to Fibber production logs would be helpful, because while most of
the popular programs were actually aired twice each evening (the first
time for Eastern and Central time zones, the second for Mountain and
Pacific time zones), it is not unreasonable to assume that perhaps the
odd program only aired once and was carried live across the country.
If a program only aired once, the program airing at 8:30 in Chicago
would appear at 6:30 in Los Angeles. If a program aired twice, the gap
was usually an hour - a program originating at, say 8:30 in Chicago
would be on at 9:30 in New York; the entire performance would be
repeated at 9:30 in Chicago, going on the air live at 8:30 in the
Mountain time zone and 7:30 in California. (There were exceptions to
the one-hour delay; Amos 'n' Andy, whose creators had originated the
practice, had a gap of almost four hours between the two editions of
their fifteen-minute serial program. They did the first performance at
6:00 PM in Chicago strictly for a 7:00 PM airing in the Eastern time
zone, then the program was repeated at 10:00 - the hour it had always
appeared on the local station in Chicago - for Central, Mountain, and
Pacific.)
So unless Fibber was pre-empted by something like a speech by the
Governor of California, Fibber should have aired in Los Angeles on
12/2/41. I cannot imagine that a program of its national popularity
would not have appeared; it should have been on KFI, if Fibber was a Red
network program. (KECA was the Blue affiliate.) A trivial aside, Los
Angeles was the only major metro market in which NBC did not own their
own affiliate stations. KFI and KECA were owned by local automobile
dealer Earle C. Anthony, and were not for sale.
Michael Shoshani
Chicago IL
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Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:11:58 -0500
From: Rentingnow@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Accents
I would agree with the comments that accents were important if not critical
to provide to vocal variety needed to differentiate the characters. Without
the differences the shows wouldn't be interesting. Imagine a walk down
Allen's Alley without characters having any accents. BOOORING.
One thing I noticed, thought ,was the change over time in the accent of
Marian Jordan. In the early shows she had a very charming brogue which I
thought
helped in her continuing but futile attempt to keep Fibber under control.
But it disappeared in later shows.
It added charming color but might have become objectionable because by
having the accent she would have lost some of her universality. That is my
guess
thought but I don't remember if it disappeared before or after her bout with
mental illness.
Could be she needed to reinvent herself and out went the accent.
Larry Moore
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Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:15:34 -0500
From: "MICHAEL BIEL" <mbiel@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Re:Jewish Radio CDs
Russ Butler recommends (as do I) a wonderful recreation of the sound of
ethnic Jewish/Yiddish radio "Kapelye On the Air" (Shanachie 67005) It is
important to note that we are now going into the area of ethnic broadcasting
meant for the ethnic group itself, rather than what had started this
discussion, ethnic characters on general broadcasting meant for the
non-ethnic audience. The leader of Kapelye is Henry Sapoznik who is an
archivist at the Yivo Institute where he headed the Yiddish Radio Project, a
collection of all known Jewish broadcast recordings. There is a two-CD set
of their narrated presentations from NPR's "All Things Considered" on
Highbridge HBR 89173, and another CD with the original broadcast recordings
"Music From the Yiddish Radio Project", Shanachie 6057.
Of interest to the original subject area of this thread is listening to the
performers on both the original and re-created recordings when they speak in
English. Some of them speak in perfect non-accented English, yet others are
in accents that can be far, far thicker than any we discussed in earlier
postings. Oy, when I hear them I hear my grandparents. My grandmother
loved Mr. Kitzel, and she cherished Molly Goldberg (she was "MY Mollie" --
and Eleanor Roosevelt -- don't interrupt her when either of them were on the
air.
Although I often played some of the great Jewish/Yiddish 78s I inherited,
alas, unlike Stuart Lubin, I never really listened to the ethnic programs on
WEVD although I knew they were there. I never learned Yiddish -- it was the
"secret" language my parents spoke when they did not want the kids to
understand!! (ALL 3rd generation kids of EVERY immigrant ethnic group had
this happen to them. I experienced it first hand when visiting my college
chum at his South Philly Italian-American home!) But I did listen every
Sunday to "The Eternal Light" on NBC and the "American-Jewish Caravan of
Stars" on WMGM, although sometimes I had to miss half of the Caravan's hour
when WNBC moved Eternal Light opposite it. Most of "The Eternal Light"
recordings exist, and there is an excellent book about it by Eli Segal
(available in the new Radio Spirits catalog), but Henry Sapoznik has been
unable to find any recordings of the Caravan, even thru its announcer, Dick
Defreitas, who is heard on the "Kapelye On the Air" CD.
By the way, please, please do not pirate dubs of these CDs. Buy the real
ones because you will want to have the very informative and detailed
booklets that also contain the all-important translations so that you (and
I) can finally be let in on the "secret" language. And don't forget the
Siegel's "Radio and the Jews" that also has a CD. (usual disclaimers
apply.)
Mykele Bielsky mbiel@[removed]
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End of [removed] Digest V2008 Issue #19
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