Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

248 Radio Broadcast people from around the studio. Electricians in shirt sleeves, scrubwomen with their skirts tucked up, telephone operators, and artists who were billed later on the program, were invited to come into the studio-theatre and enjoy the show. It was a strange audience but their approbation turned the trick. With their giggles, guffaws, and shouts of merriment to encourage him, Wynn proceeded with the entertainment. He needed only the responsive sight of his hearers doubled over with laughter. Had he been a more frequent radio performer, he would have been able to imagine the fans in their homes, tuned-in to his program and convulsed with mirth. An audience, although silent, is not necessarily unappreciative, according to Paul Whiteman, the well-known jazz orchestra leader. His first experience with the radio audience was rather terrifying. Now that he is used to it, he says he enjoys imagining all his various hearers— some in homes dancing, some in remote localities with a radio set as their only home tie. And sometimes, he likes to visualize the crew of Captain MacMillan's Bowdoin up near the North Pole, perhaps giving the Eskimos the benefit of a jazz band concert, while he plays on. Whiteman is quite a radio fan, himself. That is one reason why so many radio fans went to a party he gave a few months ago. He had always gone home for his mother's birthday. Last October, when the birthday came around, he was in New York unable to go to Denver to be with his mother. About a week before the birthday, as he sat before his professional looking set, a sudden inspiration came to him. It was such a wonderful idea that it didn't seem possible, but Whiteman said nothing to any one and went to work. A few days later, a sweet faced little lady CECIL ARDEN "I don't mind singing to an unseen audience. To me, the only drawback in radio is the inability to gauge how your audience likes you" in Denver heard from her son that because he couldn't come home for the birthday, he was going to give her a party that day. Three million persons had been invited; the party would be held on the evening of the birthday. Part of the schedule when the son was at home, was his playing on his violin, his mother's favorite songs. It was this custom which Whiteman was to incorporate in his birthday party. Only instead of playing to his mother alone, he arranged to bring his ten-piece orchestra with him to Newark and broadcast the entire program. Many of you fans probably attended the party. The guest of honor, Mrs. Whiteman, calls it her happiest day. Instead of a birthday cake, the party had a birthday song, "Wonderful One," which Paul Whiteman himself wrote especially for the occasion. "At first," Whiteman relates, " I felt ill at ease. My orchestra and I had never played before such a silent assembly. We were used to a crowd which encored the numbers they liked and which inspired us to better playing. This quiet studio was an entirely new thing for us; we felt alien. Then I realized that this was my mother's birthday, that way out in Denver she and my father were listening to me. A new spirit was infused in us; we felt that although the audience was silent, they were not necessarily unappreciative. Responses would come later, we believed. They did. Hundreds of birthday congratulations came to my mother, hundreds of letters of thanks came to the orchestra, from our birthday guests. It takes longer to get the applause from a radio audience than it does from an audience there in person, but the people who listen-in are no less enthusiastic and grateful." Cecil Arden, Metropolitan Opera singer, is