Radio revue (Dec 1929-Mar 1930)

/' 16 RADIO REVUE DALE WIMBROW Whittles DALE WIMBROW apparently has the same penchant for whittling that ex-president Coolidge has. The only difference is that Dale's work with the knife is doubly productive. In the first place, he turns out, for his friends, handsome walking sticks that are the envy of all who see them and secondly, the whittling stimulates an already fertile brain into greater activity. We happened upon him the other day when he was working on a walking stick that he was making for William E. Paley, president of the Columbia Broadcasting System. He had started with a solid piece of mahogany, two inches square and about three and a half feet long. He had already whittled it down to the proportions of an ordinary stout walking stick. However, in design this was no ordinary stick. It followed a definite motif. The head represented an ibis, or snake-eating bird of South America, that was lately thrust into public notice by the crossword puzzle craze. A vicious-looking snake was coiled around the shaft. Dale, who is well known as an entertainer and as master of ceremonies on the La Palina Smoker, on WABC every Wednesday evening at 9 :30, has made these sticks for, among others, Paul Whiteman, Rudy Vallee, Ben Bernie and Vincent Lopez. Has Hit Song That Is Flop While whittling, he fell to cogitating on the irony of the song-writing business. In the past he has written such Columbia Chain Artist Carves Out Bits of Radio's Past song successes as "That's What I Call Heaven" and "Think of Me Thinking of You," and now he says he is in the peculiar predicament of having a real hit song that is actually a flop. Here's how he explains it. This song, "Every Moon's a Honeymoon," has been programmed by some of the biggest orchestras on the air, of their own volition, which indicates that they realized its possibilities. It has received a number of excellent plugs but, according to Dale, the girls behind the music store counters are stocking only the moving picture theme songs and are pushing them, with the result that other songs, such as his, receive little or no attention. As the skilled knife continued its artistic moulding, Dale reminisced a bit. He has been in radio broadcasting since the days when WJZ was located in the Aeolian Building on West 42nd Street, New York. He wrote the first program that was broadcast as the Bonnie Laddies and performed it, along with Wilfred Glenn, the bass who later became prominently identified with the Revelers. About that time Dale also was responsible for the DelMarVa Hour, which extolled the beauties of the Eastern Shore peninsula. The name is a combination of the names of the three states that make up the peninsula, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Dale travelled from one county seat to the other, selling the idea. He wrote a different theme song for each county and worked tirelessly to put over his plan for radio advertising. A Great Opportunity Lost "That was a case where a great opportunity went aglimmering," said Dale, in that characteristic drawling manner, which immediately stamps him as a native of the Eastern Shore. "We tried one type of program similar to the present 'Main Street Sketches' which are now so (Turn to page 44) &. =.