Subject: [removed] Digest V2002 #412
From: "OldRadio Mailing Lists" <[removed]@[removed];
Date: 10/21/2002 8:47 AM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

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                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2002 : Issue 412
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Struts and Frets: On KFWB             [ Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed] ]

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Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 10:04:34 -0400
From: Charlie Summers <charlie@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Struts and Frets: On KFWB

STRUTS AND FRETS

by Harry Bartell

 ++++

On KFWB

Going to work at KFWB in the early 1940s was like checking in at a ghost
town. The studios were located on the old Warner Brothers motion picture lot
at the corner of Sunset and Bronson in Hollywood and besides the building
housing the radio studio and one or two others used as warehouses there was a
collection of silent stages. It was an eerie feeling. There should have been
crew members wheeling bits of set - pieces or props and at least a few actors
in makeup and costume walking around. Sound stages have a mystique all of
their own. They have a distinctive smell for one thing. It consists of a
slight musty, dusty odor combined with hints of shellac, raw wood, makeup and
a few other odd ingredients. They are nearly always quite dark, the only
light coming from the set where the company is working.

My being there was the result of a disc jockey with the improbable name of
Peter Potter being drafted. Pete was from Oklahoma I think and had never lost
his native sound. He was a rival of Al Jarvis, the West Coast Martin Block.
The advertising company handling the account was the same one that had
handled the Dixie Hospitality Store. They had heard my untamed accent and I
was a proper replacement for draftee Potter. Apparently the country sound was
an important feature of advertising used cars and I was crowned with the
magnificent title: Cottontop. I wasn't thrilled with the idea. It didn't fit
very snugly in the megastar program, but Bev and I had just returned from a
miserable, freezing winter of frustration in New York and the job paid $25!
For that, all I had to do was go on Friday to the sponsor, pick up a list of
used cars he wanted to feature, go to the station and choose three hours
worth of records and list them in order for the engineer and myself, come
back at 8:30 AM Sunday to prepare for a 9:00 o'clock air time and do the show
until 12:00 noon.

One of those Sundays was December 7, 1941. It was about 10:30 when the staff
announcer came into the booth where I was working and handed me a tear from
the news wire. It was datelined Oahu and the whole message read, "Pearl
Harbor reported bombed by enemy planes". The announcer, Bob Greene, whose
appearances on my program were five minute newscasts on the top of the hour
said, "What do you think I should do?" I said, "It must be a mistake. Why
don't you wait and see what happens?" Well, it happened. It happened very
quickly. Additional stories kept pouring in and put on the air as soon as
they were received. I had to fill out an hour and a half of pop music while
the world was coming to an end. It was especially rewarding three and a half
years later when I was able to celebrate the end of the war as part of Norman
Corwin's VE day program.

Cottontop's sponsor called his establishment The Smiling Irishman. I think
that was supposed to imply warm, friendly and generous attention. Because I
was being paid I couldn't very well tell my listeners not to believe
everything they heard. And I couldn't very well apprise the public of the
rumor that worn out brakes were being repaired with sawdust and molasses.
With the country at war, new car production was stopped and the demand for
used cars rose even with gasoline rationing and price controls. I never could
understand why the Smiling Irishman always had a fistful of gas ration
coupons when other people had one or two. And I could never meet his demand
that I describe his cars as gems in the Cadillac class when they were quite
obviously clunkers even when washed. I had some leeway when I was on the air
because the only written copy I used was the classified ad section listing
his cars. The ad lib structure had a number of advantages. It also had
potential pitfalls. The show came on the air with a theme which faded for my
opening line which was some inspired remark like "Hi, y'all. This is
Cottontop [removed]" One morning the theme came on, I punched the announce
button, opened my mouth, and nothing came out. I couldn't think of one word,
not even my name. There was a long, unscheduled pause and then I just broke
up. I was still laughing when the theme played out but I managed to get out a
song title.

That announce button that opened the mike was right next to what was called a
cough button which cut the announcer temporarily off the air exclusive of the
engineer. In the middle of a commercial one day I knew I was either going to
have a burp or expire on the spot. I found a logical pause in the sentence,
hit the cough button and let go with a real roarer. I started to open the
mike again when I looked at the desk and to my horror noted the red light was
still on. It was then that I looked into the control booth. The expression on
the engineer's face was a marvel to behold. I suppose the audience couldn't
figure out why there was a thunderstorm in the middle of a sunny day.

My dear sponsor, the Smiling Irishman, did come in very handy. In 1941 Bev
and I had departed New York in a 1936 Plymouth sedan for which we had
tearfully paid $250. We got as far as Virginia on a Sunday afternoon when I
suddenly noticed that the rest of the car wasn't paying any attention to the
steering wheel. I managed to pull over into the red dirt and turned off the
engine. That used up my knowledge of what to do. We sat there wondering if
there was anyone we could call if there was a telephone we could find when a
pickup truck pulled up ahead of us and a man got out and inquired if we were
having trouble. I agreed that was our situation and he volunteered to take a
look. After a rather quick inspection he informed us that we had thrown a tie
rod end, whatever that was. He couldn't fix it but he said he knew a man in
the next town who could. With that he drove off and we sat wondering if we
would ever see civilization again. About a half hour later, he was back with
another man who apologized for the delay because he had to find a part. Our
tie rod was put back together. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.
I asked the two how much I owed them and the first savior said rather
bashfully, "Would two dollars be all right?" Ah, the remembrance of things
past!

We didn't have any more car trouble until the radiator gave out but we
finally made it to California. The Plymouth was performing well in the
voyages back and forth between KFWB and Santa Anita Oaks, about a 45 minute
drive, until one day when I started to leave the radio station I discovered
that the only gears functioning were third and reverse. That did it. But the
Smiling Irishman came to the rescue. He let me have a 1940 Studebaker coupe
at a tremendous discount which meant that it was the price he would normally
charge. I have to admit one thing. It really was an excellent automobile.

To the best of my knowledge KFWB never was a network affiliate but they did
considerable local dramatic programming that was quite popular in the Los
Angeles area. Sometimes their studios were used when network stations were
short of studio space. It was there that Edward G. Robinson was doing the Big
Town broadcast. I didn't know Mr. Robinson well even after working on a
miserable film called Black Tuesday in which he starred. However, I enjoyed
watching him produce a truly impressive tirade in which I was involved. When
our daughter was born I wanted to take out some additional life insurance. My
application at Equitable Life was turned down. I couldn't understand why when
I was told that it was a result of the physical exam because I knew that the
excuse was false. Through some back door inquiry I found out that the real
reason for the refusal was that being an actor I was a bad moral risk. There
had been no investigation of my personal life. This was a class action. I was
still steaming when I went to a Big Town rehearsal and mentioned what had
happened. [removed] took my problem as a personal insult to all actors and
shouted that he was going to take this to Screen Actors Guild, the President
of the United States and even higher authorities if necessary. For a small
man he was able to sound very tall. Later New York Life turned me down
because Equitable had. It had a happy ending finally when a third company
wrote the policy I wanted with no objections.

The KFWB staff included two names with which I had a lot of future contacts.
One was John Dehner. John did the news breaks on the hour and always sounded
very official. I used to drive him crazy with zany introductions and he had
to regroup before he started his news. I had no idea then that ten years
later we would work together time after time on a show called Gunsmoke. I'll
always remember and be grateful to John for something he did for me. We were
talking one day, or probably I was moaning and he was talking. I had reached
the stage of an employment slump when I couldn't figure out what I had done
wrong or whom I had insulted but I knew that everyone hated me and I would
never work again. This kind of a situation was not unusual for a freelance
actor. John said some consoling words to the effect that this sort of thing
was part of the business and that was the end of the conversation. The next
time I saw him he handed me a little box that contained a small mustard seed
in plastic on a chain, and a note: Matthew 17:20. By the time I lost it many
years later I knew he was right.

The other staff member was announcer Neil Reagan. Neil went to CBS as an
announcer, became an assistant director, then a director , especially of the
Dr. Christian series, then to McCann-Erickson of which he later became head
honcho. My first contact with him as a director was on Romance of the
Ranchos. In passing, my first Dr. Christian show provided me with some
unwanted excitement. The scripts were printed by a Ditto copier that produced
a light purple image. There was nothing wrong with that although it was not
quite so easy to read as a black copy from a mimeograph duplicator.
Everything went smoothly in rehearsal but when we went on the air before an
audience, the microphones were lit by spotlights that wore a magenta filter
over them. I walked from my chair to the microphone and all the text
disappeared in the magenta light. For a moment I was totally lost until I
figured out that by tilting the script slightly away from the direct light
the text reappeared.

A log says that I did 42 shows of the Dr. Christian series and to me that
indicates that I was on more than casual speaking terms with Neil beginning
at KFWB. As he grew in importance I sensed that he had changed somewhat from
the laidback guy he had been. Part of that had to do with Rosemary DeCamp who
played the nurse in the good doctor's office. Rosemary was a very warm,
friendly lady who nevertheless had strong political feelings that turned out
to be considerably more toward the left than Mr. Reagan's. There were
frequent jibes between the studio and the booth and some of them had more of
an edge than mere joshing. This was during the McCarthy hysteria when
everyone was being accused of something. As a non-contracted player I was
very silent until one day Neil started off on an anti-communist discourse
headed with the phrase "If you only [removed]" which indicated that he had a
personal pipeline to all intelligence services, and ending with the promised
execution of all suspects. I made the mistake of asking, "What if they are
innocent?" I haven't been shocked by too many things but his answer was one
of them, "I don't care if there are a dozen innocent men if we get one of
those bastards!" At that point my future relations with Neil indicated
extreme caution.

Then came my being blacklisted. I never made the Big Time like Red Channels,
nor was I ever called before an investigating committee. In fact, I didn't
know I was being blacklisted until Peter Leeds, an actor friend who did a lot
of work with Bob Hope and Stan Freberg asked me if I was aware of the fact.
Some dolt who was doing recordings for the American Red Cross had set himself
up as the Los Angeles Führer and using criteria unknown to me had
disseminated a list of actors whom he had personally selected for
unemployment. In light of this new unpleasantness I went to see my buddy Neil
Reagan, the Man Who Knew. The ensuing dialogue went something like this:

Harry:	What the hell is all this about?
Neil:	Well, you brought it on yourself.
Harry: 	What do you mean?
Neil:	Hanging around the Actors Lab for one thing.
Harry: Neil, not only have I not been hanging around the Actors Lab, I
haven't even seen one of	their productions.
Neil:	And then you were having coffee with Paul McVeigh at Brittingham'[removed]
Harry:	Am I supposed to ask a man's politics before I can have a cup of
coffee with him?
Neil:	I'm not telling you what to do. I'm simply answering your question.

I never worked on Dr. Christian again. Neil became a big name in advertising.

The Actors Lab to which he referred was the West Coast sibling of the Actors
Studio in New York. It was a lineal descendant of the Group Theater and
responsible for the popularity of The Method in acting. Paul McVeigh was a
character actor in radio and film. I know nothing of his background except
that he seemed to be liberal in politics. The real irony of the blacklisting,
which didn't put me out of business but did cost me, was at that time I was
working regularly on Gunsmoke and Dragnet. Every actor cast on Gunsmoke had
to be cleared in New York by the vice president in charge of Red Channels.
Dragnet actors were cleared by the Los Angeles Police Department. Not only
that, my wife and I had been checked out by the FBI when her brother applied
for and was accepted as an FBI agent.

There was another encounter with the FBI. It came about in connection with an
organization called the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee for the
Arts, Sciences and Professions. The acronym by which it was known sounded
like a drunken snake: HICCASP. It was formed ostensibly to support Roosevelt
in 1944 and presented itself as a liberal political group. In hindsight it is
easy to make out the heavy communist influence. Early on it was studded with
big names from motion pictures, and imbued with a budding interest in
politics, I joined. After some months I received notice they were forming a
subcommittee of radio performers and I was asked to serve on the board. It
didn't take too long to find out that plans were being dominated by two
actors, John Brown and Georgia Backus. There hadn't been much noise in AFRA
circles about those two setting out to overthrow the government by force and
violence and I had paid no attention to the original meeting being held in
the home of John Howard Lawson, a highly suspect screen writer. After all,
screen writers did not hire radio actors. In a planning meeting one
afternoon, John and Georgia made a suggestion that I could not follow. I
objected that it was too difficult to understand. My reasoning was that if I
didn't know what they were talking about, the man on the street certainly
would not. They then indicated that I should sit down and shut up; their plan
would be used. That was when I resigned and sent a letter to HICCASP to that
effect.

Despite my resignation I started receiving mail from the Los Angeles
Communist Party and the Progressive Party sponsoring Henry Wallace for
President. I wrote both of them to say I was not interested and wanted my
name taken off their lists. When all the blacklist noise hit me I went to the
Los Angeles office of the FBI to complain. I had copies of the letters I had
written. They made copies of those and then said, "Who do you know who are
communists?" I answered quite truthfully that I didn't know anyone I could
say was a communist and what about the fact that my livelihood was being
threatened by false charges. The reply: "If any authorized government agency
makes an inquiry we will show them the letters." I love the FBI.

Neil Reagan had a younger brother, Ronald. I came athwart him in 1947 when I
was a member of the national board of AFRA, the American Federation of Radio
Artists. My being there included some previous hassles. In the last union
election, for the first time there had been political campaigning with
broadsides written and distributed. There was a very strong right wing
element which had controlled the local and national boards. A group more
liberally inclined put up an opposition slate which was unusual in itself and
asked me to run. I agreed. Union elections, for the most part have all the
animation of a stockholders proxy vote but revolutions do sometimes crop up.
In this case one side wanted more representation by the members, the other
side wanted to save the union from the dastardly deeds of the communists who
were going to destroy it. I don't know how or why but I was elected.

There was a new player in the union field, a thing called television. Actors
Equity claimed control because almost everything was done live in New York.
The writing on the wall pointed toward production on film and/or magnetic
tape. With a very possible war in the offing, the idea which had been
proposed before was brought up again. Why not have a single union to cover
actors in all fields? The idea suffers from being entirely logical. In the
early arguments, Reagan was making hard distinctions between screen actors
and radio actors. The fact that every one in the meeting carried cards in
both unions didn't seem to register with him. He was busy protecting the
Screen Guild treasury which was much fatter than AFRA's -it probably still
is- and saving it from the peasants who were not real actors because they
worked only on the stage or in radio. As a member of the Screen Guild
hierarchy he was known as the representative from General Electric.

The thing that finished me with Ronald Reagan occurred when he was head of
SAG. At a membership meeting that was dealing with contract negotiations the
subject of residuals for motion pictures came up for discussion. Frank Nelson
who had been national president of AFRA pleaded from the floor for a strong
clause for payments for repeated use of films in television. Reagan took the
stance that the actor had been paid for his work and that was that. Frank
argued that it was a disastrous mistake to allow unlimited use of film
thereby cutting the actor's employment opportunities. Reagan got angry and
accused Frank Nelson of being a communist. I walked out of the meeting and
never attended another one.

Frank Nelson was a very conservative Republican who had devoted his life to
the union cause. He even voted against the Republican candidate for governor
of California, William Knowland, who had opposed unions with a Right to Work
program. There was a very sound reason for Nelson's argument and I can prove
it. When I worked on I Love Lucy before there was any union coverage for TV I
was paid $75 for five days rehearsal and filming and I had to sign away any
claim to future payment in order to get the job. It is still playing fifty
years later. Unions have been maligned, often with just cause, but in
situations like that the actor was at the mercy of the producer. More than
trying to establish better basic salary levels, the three unions to which I
belong have all paid pensions and two of them provided health benefits for
surgeries, dental work, and prescriptions for me and my wife that would have
been impossible to cover otherwise. And at least in the entertainment field
the unions have been run by the members' elected boards not hired executives.

- ------------------
Harry Bartell maintains that his major accomplishment as a professional
actor for forty years was to survive with his mind, morale and marriage intact.

Born in 1913 in New Orleans, he grew up in Houston and graduated Phi Beta
Kappa from Rice University in 1933. After a stint at Harvard Business
School and a couple of years forced labor in a department store he moved to
Hollywood and stayed there for the next fifty-one years. Three seasons at
the Pasadena Playhouse led to work in 185 radio series and 77 TV series
plus a dozen or so properly forgettable motion pictures.

This article will be archived at:

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