------------------------------
The Old-Time Radio Digest!
Volume 2004 : Issue 225
A Part of the [removed]!
[removed]
ISSN: 1533-9289
Today's Topics:
7-9 births/deaths [ Ron Sayles <bogusotr@[removed]; ]
Re: Arthur Godfrey's DC-3 [ jodie <raisingirl@[removed]; ]
Radio fax, WOR and Arthur Godfrey [ Lee Munsick <leemunsick@[removed] ]
Beamer commercials [ "joe@[removed]" <sergei01@earthli ]
1940's Faxes [ George Aust <austhaus1@[removed] ]
Do recordings of the 1925 & 1929 Ina [ <historyvids@[removed]; ]
Peg Lynch and BBC [ Zharold138@[removed] ]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 14:57:39 -0400
From: Ron Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
To: Olde Tyme Radio List <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: 7-9 births/deaths
July 9th births
07-09-1878 - Hans Von "[removed]" Kaltenborn - Milwaukee, WI - d. 6-14-1965
commentator: "Current Events"; "Editing the News"
07-09-1881 - Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel - Stillwater, MN - d. 1-13-1936
emcee: "Roxy's Gang"; "Roxy Revue"
07-09-1894 - Dorothy Thompson - Lancaster, NY - d. 1-30-1961
commentator: "Commentary"
07-09-1901 - Jester Hairston - Belews, NC - d. 1-18-2000
calypso singer: King Moses "Bold Venture"
07-09-1907 - Eddie Dean - Posey, TX - d. 3-4-1999
actor: Larry Burton "Modern Cinderella"
07-09-1912 - John McQuade - Pittsburgh, PA - d. 9-21-1979
actor: Charlie Wild "Charlie Wild, Private Detective"; Steve Lansing "Our Gal
Sunday"
07-09-1917 - Ted Steele - Hartford, CT - d. 10-15-1985
bandleader: "Ted Steele's Studio Club"; "Chesterfield Supper Club"
07-09-1927 - Ed Ames - Boston, MA
actor: "CBS Radio Mystery Theatre"
July 9th deaths
02-22-1905 - Robert Weede - Baltimore, MD - d. 7-9-1972
singer: "Great Moments in Music"; "For America We Sing"
05-30-1901 - Cornelia Otis Skinner - Chicago, IL - d. 7-9-1979
actress: Mary "Johnny Presents"
08-03-1894 - Harry Heilmann - San Francisco, CA - d. 7-9-1951
sportscaster: WXYZ Detroit
10-20-1911 - Will Rogers, Jr. - NYC - d. 7-9-1993
actor: Will Rogers "Rogers of the Gazette"
11-26-1912 - Eric Sevareid - Velva, ND - d. 7-9-1992
correspondent: "Eric Sevaried and the News"; "CBS Radio Workshop"
--
Ron Sayles
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 16:26:37 -0400
From: jodie <raisingirl@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Re: Arthur Godfrey's DC-3
hi all --
Lee Munsick's anecdote about the AOPA convention, and the guy who went
on a rant about Godfrey's tower-buzz, got me [removed] anybody
know the current status of Godfrey's DC-3 (N1M, I think it was)? Last I
heard, the Godfrey Memorial Foundation was trying to raise money to
restore it, but I've heard precious little about it since.
For the record, the "Flying With Godfrey" film, for those who haven't
seen it, is a treasure -- with the Ol' Redhead flying as captain of a
spanking-new Eastern Air Lines Super Constellation on a New York-Miami
trip. It manages to pitch Lockheed, Eastern, the United States Air
Force, God and Country, and Chesterfield cigarettes all in the space of
60 minutes. That's just how good a salesman Godfrey really was! :)
Jodie Peeler
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 23:11:46 -0400
From: Lee Munsick <leemunsick@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Radio fax, WOR and Arthur Godfrey
Ken Piletic provided a great rundown on radio photography, noting its
availability in the 1940s. It goes back further.
In the 1970s, I was Director of Yesteryear Museum in Morristown NJ. It was a
museum of mechanical sound and mass communications, with working historical
examples beginning with early music boxes and working its way up through
player- and reproducing pianos and organs, gramophones and phonographs,
Victor Talking Machine and RCA, Thomas Edison, early motion pictures, early
radio (!!!) and early television. With the exception of the early digital
machines (looms, player pianos and the like), most all of this sprang from
the head of Jerseyan Thomas Alva Edison. One of my heroes.
Each year Yesteryear held a benefit program, which always had a nostalgic
theme. We presented such folk as Eubie Blake (which show included a world
premiere of his "Rhapsody in Ragtime"), Earl Wrightson and Lois Hunt (his
spouse), Max Morath (several times, by popular demand), a [removed] Fields
imitator, etc.
Each year in conjunction with these popular annual programs, we published a
"Yester-Yearbook" with original stories, program material for that year's
show, and advertising, which paid for the museum's operations. Sadly, the
last such program and yearbook was in 1977. That year we honored a number of
anniversaries, including the Centennial of the Phonograph, a major Radio
milestone, Lindbergh's famous flight, etc. Several were also being honored
with commemorative postal stamps, the phonograph one of which contained
numerous horrific artistic and historical errors. We sold hundreds of
commemorative cachets pointing this out.
As part of my story on radio, I interviewed the GM of WOR, itself certainly a
milestone broadcaster in New York City, and still going strong. When sitting
in his office, I noticed hanging on the wall, a large studio monitor in a
handsome polished wooden case. Nothing at all unusual about this in an older
station office. But there was one thing about this particular monitor which
caught my eye and curiosity. Beneath the usual round opening and grille
cloth was a slot, much like one would see in an old-fashioned office mail
slot, but with no hinged cover.
I thought this strange (a hidden tweeter?) and asked about it. It was then
that I learned that in the 1930s, WOR Chief Engineer Jack Poppele developed a
method of sending facsimile letters and the like via a sideband on the WOR
signal, one of the strongest and most widely heard in the nation. It can be
heard in Cuba, especially at night. Apparently the system was totally
successful technically, but not commercially. I didn't get a treatise on
why, but imagine it had something with a fear by business people and others
that their private communications could be read by anyone who had the
necessary receiving equipment. This was not true, as somehow the
transmissions were coded to be received and printed out only by the one
intended recipient, much as modern cable and satellite radio and television
transmissions can be limited to specific receivers. In my own career, I've
witnessed several fantastic products and ideas that were flops, simply
because the public didn't catch the bug. Edison himself learned this with
his first major invention, a vote-recording machine which he thought
legislatures around the country would all flock to install. He didn't reckon
with the fact that the legislators did not want a public record made of their
individual votes, just the final totals. He vowed he'd never again produce a
product for which the demand was not illustrated up front. Like the electric
lighting system, which required thousands of failed experiments and
construction of the entire thing from light bulbs to sockets, fuses and
fuseboxes, cable and insulation, generators, etc., etc., etc.
Back to WOR. Jack Poppele was a legend, and I spoke with him a number of
times during the 1970s about different things, including the WOR history.
Unfortunately, at the time I did not know about the one biggest question I
would have in a few years, and for which I am positive he would have had the
exact answer. It was pertaining to Arthur Godfrey. By the time the question
arose, fellow New Jersey resident Poppele had passed on.
So you tell me if you know the answer to this. When Arthur Godfrey got his
second break for a CBS network program of his own (most think it was his
first), it was going to be experimental, a 1945 summer replacement for the
CBS "School of the Air". It first ran in the early afternoon, not the
morning.
In my archives, I have a copy of the CBS news release announcing the new
program, which would run on the entire CBS (radio) network. It would
ultimately last for 27 years, ending in April 1972, the last fully
entertainment program left in network radio. The distinction being that CBS
was then essentially all-news, but until that point, CBS every weekday
cleared time for the Godfrey entertainment program. Today's young observers
may not be able to understand the distinction then easily made between
entertainment and news, but that's a whole different subject.
Now here's the important part of this story. In the CBS release, it clearly
gave the date of the first show, and the time that it would run from then, on
the full network. It also indicated one exception! In New York City, the
CBS flagship station was then called WABC. With the postwar advent of the
American Broadcasting Company net, that call went to what had been NBC-Blue
WJZ, and the CBS moniker changed to WCBS.
But while supposedly all the other CBS affiliates and O&Os carried the new
Godfrey program, in New York the program would be carried NOT on the CBS
station, but on WOR! Subsequent investigation indicates that the program
actually originated from the WOR studios for some time, which is why one
occasionally sees photographs of Arthur Godfrey chatting into a microphone
emblazened with MUTUAL or MBS or WOR.
So of course the big question is, "Why?" No, not why the call letters on the
mike, [removed] was it aired on WOR, and not WABC? I'd give my right eye
tooth to get the real story. So one of you radio dentists out there smartly
step up your drilling, and march the story to me, please!
Meanwhile, best wishes to y'all! And thanks so much!
Lee Munsick That Godfrey Guy
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 00:57:34 -0400
From: "joe@[removed]" <sergei01@[removed];
To: "OTR List" <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Beamer commercials
Does anyone have the Chrysler commercials that Brace Beemer did towards the
end of his life?
Joe Salerno
Video Works! Is it working for you?
PO Box 273405 - Houston TX 77277-3405 [removed]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 00:57:48 -0400
From: George Aust <austhaus1@[removed];
To: OTR Digest <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: 1940's Faxes
Thought I'd finally add something to this thread. Ken Piletic's
description is exactly as I remember these units, and no they did not
have to photographically developed.
My memory is of a Soap Box Derby sponsored by Chevrolet and being held
in South Pasadena California in either 1948 or 1949 when I was 12 years old.
There was a truck(a small van) filled with equipment and a man sitting
inside. I think he was with the news media but I'm not sure. He had a
machine with a metal drum that would spin, and we watched as a picture
started to form on a paper on the drum. It seems to me that the man said
it was coming in from Chicago. The van was not hooked up to anything so
it had to be coming over the air. He showed us the finished picture but
I don't remember what it was of.
So the technology not only existed but it was being used in the late 1940's.
George Aust
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 00:58:15 -0400
From: <historyvids@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: Do recordings of the 1925 & 1929 Inaugural
Addreses Exist?
I'm a big history buff and one of my primary objectives has been to collect
as many of the Presidential Inaugural addresses, acceptance speeches, etc as
I can.
I recently learned from a website that the 1925 Inauguration of Calvin
Coolidge was the first to be broadcast on radio, and I know all of them from
FDR to the Present are readily available.
My question is do recordings of the 1925 Calvin Coolidge Inauguration or
Herbert Hoover's 1929 inauguration exist, and if so how could one go about
getting a copy of them, since neither is likely to be copyrighted any longer?
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 09:12:43 -0400
From: Zharold138@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject: Peg Lynch and BBC
Hi Anybody,
I was just told by a reliable source that the BBC called Peg and told her
that they went back on their old schedule (they pronounce it differently than
we
do) and they had to reschedule her twenty-nine and a half minute interview
until September this year and she will be notified of the date and time.
A
Good Fan of Peg, Harold Zeigler
--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2004 Issue #225
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