NBC Transmitter (Jan-Dec 1938)

NOVEMBER, 1938 5 WiUt IjooJi Roving RefuvUe* in Aftv fl/o\h 1 hl days last month. Rod, a member of Dan Russell’s announcing class, won a diction contest over at Station WMCA. He went to see the Talk of The. Town program and was picked from the audience to compete in the contest. Out of five contestants, Rod was the only one to get a perfect score (attention Pat Kelly). His prize— a dictionary! Pat O’Connor went to see the Molle show in Radio City, Battle of the Sexes, on his night off and was picked for the men’s team. The males won and each got a Bulova wrist watch. Your reporter, who needs a watch badly tried to get one the same way but couldn’t even get a pass to the show. If wasn't hot enough for some of the boys of the pages’ and guides’ locker room last month during the hot spell of Indian Summer so they hied themselves off to Central Park one morning for a hotly contested game of touch football with their supervisors and some ringers from the announcing staff. The pages and guides asserted themselves strongly for a change and trounced their startled opponents to the tune of 13-0. Page Bud Materne, former Hamilton College flash, recovered a fumble on the opening kick-off to score the first touchdown. The extra point was made with an end-zone pass. The second touchdown for the victors was made by Art Perry, known in the locker room as “the backfield luminary from Rutgers.” He snared a pass from the clumsy arms of the opposition and ran 65 yards to score. Onlookers report that there was much rough playing— particularly by one Pete Bonardi. He was finally squelched by the victors who ganged up on him in the second half. The guest stars from Pat Kelly’s staff were Nelson Case, Ray Diaz, Jim Shellman and Jack McCarthy. iii Bill Eddy, television engineer, video effects expert, writer, cartoonist, gadgeteer and photographer, recently added radio announcing to his long list of accomplishments. He described a fellow lieutenant’s escape from a submarine compartment, 100 feet under water, during the RCA Magic Key program, dedicated to the Navy on October 23. Lt. Eddy dramatically described the stunt from a diving bell with a glass porthole. i i i Two famous names have been added to the Guest Relations staff. The new pages are Reginald Bryan Owen, grandson of that famous American statesman, William Jennings Bryan, the “silver-tongued orator”, and Henry Hull, Jr., son of the actor whose name is well-known on the stage, screen and radio. Young Owen, whose mother is Mrs. Ruth Bryan Owen Rohde, former American minister to Denmark and one-time member of Congress, is interested in sound effects and already has had experience in that phase of radio. He has worked as soundman for KFAB. Lincoln, Nebraska; KOA, Denver, and WNYC, New York. He also has had experience as a traveling salesman out West. He studied in New York schools, Staunton Military Academy in Virginia and Rollins College in Florida. On September 28, shortly after he joined NBC, he was married to Miss Marie Louise Weber of Denver. Henry Hull, Jr., came to NBC via the theatre. He had a walkon in John Gielgud’s Hamlet and better parts in two other plays produced on Broadway. He has done recorded programs, and, THREE ALLENS MEET NBC Guide Joe Allen (left) was the “Person You Didn't Expect to Meet” on the Fred Allen program, Wednesday evening, November 2. He is pictured here with Fred Allen and J. M. Allen, advertising manager of Bristol-Myers Company which sponsors “Town Hall Tonight.” for a brief spell, he did some announcing for WTIC in Hartford. Mr. Hull is a graduate of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in California and Washington and Lee University. i i i Richard de Raismes who works in the file room of the Script Division glanced at the date on a Philip Morris script, Thrill of the W eek, and threw it into the wastebasket with other outdated scripts. The next day the Philip Morris people started yelling for their scripts for the rehearsal, but the script in the wastebasket was gone. Frantically. Dick de Raismes and Jack Johnstone, author of the script, rushed to a warehouse under the Brooklyn Bridge where wastepaper from Radio City is dumped. At the warehouse they found 1.400 burlap bags of wastepaper! Undaunted, they took off their coats for the needlein-the-haystack search. Miracles of miracles! They found it in the third bag they emptied. The rehearsal went off— albeit a bit delayed— and Johnstone’s Thrill of the W eek went on according to schedule and without a hitch. And Dick claims that it was all on the level— “Do you think I like even the idea of searching through 1400 bags of junk for a script? And by the way will you please say in your column that I would appreciate it if all scriptwriters will make it a point, from now on, to write the correct date of the show on their scripts. That Philip Morris script was dated for last week’s broadcast. That’s why I threw it away.” i i i In a recent questionnaire during a membership drive by the NBC Athletic Association one of our Vice Presidents listed the following as his favorite sports fox hunting, channel swimming, finger exercises, steeplechasing, salmon fishing and moose hunting Margaret E. Primont, secretary to Vice President and Chief Engineer 0. B. Hanson, caught the bride’s bouquet at the wedding of Doris Ruuth Chief Telephone Operator Margaret Maloney reports that 800 listeners called NBC when WEAF went off the air for four hours during that recent hurricane that almost blew Long Island off the map Guide Joe Allen, noted in the locker room for his wit, and who was master of ceremonies of the Brass Buttons Revue of 1938, was the “Person You Didn’t Expect to Meet” in a recent Fred Allen broadcast. The young NBC guide really put the ex-juggler’s wit to task with his repartee Photographer Bill Haussler’s full name is William Edward Crawford Haussler . Have you heard the NBC chimes that ring out the hours through a giant loudspeaker in the Sunken Plaza?