Radio Digest (Nov 1930-Apr 1931)

58 Rita Bell, bewitchingly demure, did the Helen Kane lines and boop-a-dooping in the Radio showing of Sweeties. cdt Nation KHJ Successfully Performs The Noble Experiment — "On With The Show" Brings Sound Pictures To The Air TORTURED with stereotyped Radio presentations, western listeners have at last discovered something new in what KHJ labels On With The Show, which is given each Wednesday at 7 p. m., Pacific time, from Los Angeles. Several of these have taken an entire talkie feature, cut and revised, and brought out in a Radio version which, somehow or other, never seems to lose any of the lustre of the original production even though the time element has been considerably curtailed. Besides the talkie productions, the station has also put on light operas, musical comedies and operettas during this On With The Show series which is billed to run for a full fifty-two weeks. The Love Parade, Chevalier's noted vehicle, was the initial attempt. In its original film version this production readily lent itself to numerous characters and many scene changes. But of course the Radio adaptation reduces both the number Ted White is another KHJ staff member who has had singing roles in Radio talkies. of people in the cast and the number of scene shifts. The picture at your neighborhood theatre showed some twenty-two speaking parts. But the Radio version, cutting and doubling, reduced this to exactly ten. Then again, the original picture script called for ten sequences, while the adapted Radio script culled this to only four. The screen showing viewed exactly 329 scenes, but only fourteen of these found their way into the broadcast program. All in all, the cutters and adapters, musicians and continuity men, pick out a few definite "shots" and these are protrayed by music, dialogue and sound effects. The Love Parade went over in a large-sized way. Impersonating Maurice Chevalier was one Charlie Carter. That's the boy's name, although some of the press insist on dubbing him "Charles Cartier", to create an impression of French atmosphere. A San Francisco lad of sixteen, his father is a well known physician up in the San Francisco Bay region. He manages his youthful son and heir. For The Love Parade young Carter did both the lines and songs of Chevalier, although in some of the KHJ Radio-talkies it was found necessary to use two separate and distinct casts . . . one for lines and the other for singing. The boy's impersonation of Chevalier was a knock-out. So far his Radio work has been confined to this one piece of acting. But he does it well and with plenty of snap and verve. The major portion of the score and dramatic action of The Love Parade was left intact. Yet a tremendous amount of unique labor and ingenuity were demanded of the staff in order to give the ear that which the screen feeds to the eye. This included the writing and arranging of motifs and incidental music, the skillful weaving of musical themes into the en RADIO By Dr. tfalph trance and exit of the leading characters, the placing of melodic symbols so that the listener can easily orient his imagination. Under the stimulus of a mere phrase of dialogue, and a few strains of music, the imagination of the listener creates within him the scene which, on the screen, appears concretely before the eye. Tk .HEN there was the complete Radio version of The Rogue Song, but, instead of Lawrence Tibbett, California's proverbial playboy, the lead was taken by Pietro Gentile, young Italian baritone, who was Tibbett's understudy during the filming of the production. Twenty-five years old in April, Gentile was born in Foggia, Italy. His father was a dilettante musician and his mother a noted sportswoman who was once decorated for bravery by King Emmanuel of Italy, a signal honor.