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The Old-Time Radio Digest!
Volume 2010 : Issue 124
A Part of the [removed]!
[removed]
ISSN: 1533-9289
Today's Topics:
A little rehearsal time [ <otrbuff@[removed]; ]
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Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:14:48 -0400
From: <otrbuff@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject: A little rehearsal time
The current issue of Time devotes a whole page to "the end of an era" as it
marks the passage of As the World Turns into oblivion, set to occur Sept. 17
after 13,858 installments, all of them new (no reruns). It's the last of
P&G's daytime dramas, the company that produced and/or sponsored more hours
than anybody in the business. After 54 years since its debut as the first
half-hour serial on April 2, 1956 (later expanded to an hour), ATWT set a
lot of precedents, won a lot of awards, and weathered many trials and
tribulations. This is a milestone about to be marked in the lineage of soap
operas and one wonders, with the durable Guiding Light having succumbed not
long ago, is the form now marking time until its extinction?
Cost is everything in the business today. Time notes that ATWT applied all
sorts of expense-saving measures like using fewer actors, shooting outdoor
scenes to avoid building costly sets, and speeding production to the point
that at least some or all rehearsing on the set was omitted entirely with
scenes simply blocked and filmed. As I detailed in my 2006 release "The
Daytime Serials of Television, 1946-1960"
([removed]), many pages
focused on the pivotal ATWT as well as contemporary narratives, painstaking
effort was given to rehearsals every day. This included numerous hours of
literal walking through every scene and saying every line at least once,
usually twice or three times before airing live or taping.
When I read the Time piece, I thought back to Radioland and how they handled
rehearsals for daily washboard weepers. Some producers, hired by
advertising agencies, required what almost seems like inordinate time for
practice with peers. Florence Freeman, who played Wendy Warren, told me she
had to be in place at the studio every morning at 10:30 [removed] for the 12 noon
broadcast of Wendy Warren and the News. By the time it was over, she'd been
at CBS almost two hours for a 15-minute broadcast. Yet her commitment of 90
minutes before going on the air was typical of shows produced by virtually
anybody except those under the flag of Air Features, Inc., owned by the
medium's most prolific producers, Frank and Anne Hummert.
Always cutting corners to save a few bucks, the Hummerts could get blood out
of a turnip. Like a mother hen Anne clucked over as many as a dozen
quarter-hour drainboard dramas airing at any given time in the heyday of the
industry. And to keep expenses down, even though they paid actors,
musicians, announcers and directors the least minimal wages allowed by AFRA
regulations, one of their sure-fire methods was to cut practice to the bone.
Vivian Smolen, who for 14 years was the beleagured Our Gal Sunday, an Air
Features production, told me in the 1950s that she and her colleagues
assembled at 11:45 [removed] for their daily 12:45 [removed] broadcast, a half-hour
less than Wendy Warren rehearsed and presumably most other non-Hummert
vehicles required. And George Ansbro, the illustrious announcer of the
Hummerts' enduring Young Widder Brown at 4:45 [removed], declared that he didn't
have to be present until 4 [removed], just 45 minutes ahead of the live
broadcast! Hummert announcers, who usually remained in the fold for
decades, may have done their jobs so long they were given special
dispensation (directive?) not to show up for work as early as the rest of
the cast. (Translation: the Hummerts saved 15 minutes of time they'd be
paying George if he was at work!)
Of course, spending less time in rehearsals could be a meal ticket for
casts, too: if they could get out of one studio in an hour or 75 minutes as
opposed to nearly two hours, they could often walk to another studio (or
catch a cab to another network) and perform in several other dramas on the
same day. In doing so they were, like the Hummerts, lining their own
pockets, albeit at poverty levels (if all their work was for Air Features).
Staats Cotsworth, who was journalist David Farrell on Air Features' Front
Page Farrell, revealed to a Newsweek reporter in 1948 that he was working a
half-dozen shows several days a week. And Anne Elstner, in the namesake
role of Air Features' Stella Dallas, once claimed she was appearing on as
many as 12 shows in one day! (If so, it must have been the all-time record
for a non-news series.)
Julie Stevens, who was the memorable Helen Trent forever, expressed
disappointment when she saw the figure on her initial contract as she was to
be the heroine. But the Air Features attorney who gave it to her to sign
(the Hummerts seldom showed up for such trivial ceremonies), on seeing her
crestfallen face, explained: "Don't worry. You'll be taken care of.
You'll be used on plenty of other Air Features shows, and you'll see your
income rise to a respectable sum." Ms. Stevens noted years later, "It
happened just the way he said it would."
Jim Cox
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End of [removed] Digest V2010 Issue #124
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