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DAVID ROSS was a Russian baroness' secretary
JOHN S. YOUNG wears Russian pajamas
DAVID ROSS was born in New York City in 1895 and his memory of those early years is one of a desperate struggle against poverty. Some of those years he was a newsboy, a kid on a windy corner with a stack of papers almost as large as he was. The voice that later would thrill millions with its magnetic dramatic readings was then but a ready pipe that could hardly lift through the clangor of city noises loud enough to say “Papers . . . . papers!”
Somehow, that struggle on the city’s street taught the boy beauty. When he grew older he discovered something in books that thrilled him. He began to read poetry and plays — and to write.
Today, he owns one of the finest assortments of poetical works in the English language. And his own poems have been published in many leading magazines.
There were lean years, of course. Part of them he taught classes in an orphan asylum and acted as dramatic director of a summer camp. Once, he got a job as secre¬ tary to a Russian baroness. He wasn’t a good secretary, he remembers, but he suspects he was hired because he looked like a poet — or hoped he did. Probably, the baroness had a weakness for poets. But Ross doesn’t say very much about that.
When he talks, it is about drama and art. Sometimes he gets excited (but not when he is on the air) and then the sight is one to behold. Persons have described him as a bundle of gesticulations. With a voice. And what a voice. It has brought him a vast following for his work in “Arabesque,” “Poet’s Gold,” and the “True Story Hour.”
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NOT many years ago there was a young man at Yale, a classmate of Rudy Vallee’s, who could not decide whether he wanted to he an actor, a playwright, or a law¬ yer. So he flipped a coin — and playwriting won the toss.
Today he is Mr. John S. Young, the famous radio an¬ nouncer.
How did he skip from play writing to announcing? It was pretty much an accident. He studied playwriting and actually wrote several dramas — but his experience with managers was not the kindest. They did not want his plays. So he tried acting. That took him before the microphones of WBZ and WBZA and he found that he liked the kindly little gadget called a “mike.” A friend asked him if he would like to announce a program, “just for fun.” Young agreed . . . and his career got under way. His first assignment was on the fifty yard line of the Yale bowl where he reported a football game.
A year or so with the famous New* England stations gave him a sure knowledge of his business and he came to New York to become a staff announcer for the NBC.
Persons around the NBC office immediately noticed one thing. He took his work seriously. And did it well. He was assigned to some big programs. With Milton Cross, he was among the first radio announcers to be assigned to make phonograph records. His voice now goes into 4,000 theatres each week in news, sport and travel reels.
In appearance, he represents what the “well dressed man will wear.” Has a suit for every day in the week.
His one extravagance is Russian pajamas and his one passion in life is beefsteak cooked rare.