Radio Digest (May 1931-May 1932)

WLW — Cincinnati . . . BOB NEWHALL, The Mail Pouch Sportsman IN ORDER to appreciate Bob Newhall, The Mail Pouch Sportsman, you must know him intimately. Before writing this article, I asked Bob to put down, in black and white, the things I didn't know about him. His return letter filled the bill so thoroughly, so completely, I decided to let you read it yourself. It gives you an "inside" picture on an "outside" man, so to speak. "Dear Don : Tickled to death to hear from you, as was the good wife, who is still one of your admirers. Now for the dope you desire. Full name: Roberts De Saussure Newhall. Married three years. Age : Forty-six. Height : Five feet eleven inches. Weight : One hundred seventy-six pounds. Blue eyes, brown hair (what there is left). Taste in clothes: Tweeds strongly favored, and would wear nothing in the way of trousers save plus-fours if it were only permissible. Crazy about pets, and am moving out of present neighborhood with one strong reason being neighbors poisoned family cat whose name was "Imogene." Present prideful possession, one Boston Bull of high degree. Given me by manager Dan Howley of the Reds, and hence his name 'Dapper Dan.' Had a well-loved young squirrel up to a month ago, but had to give her to the Zoo after she gnawed most of the Gold-Frame off autographed photo of General Pershing, showing she had no idea of rank or discipline. I LOVE the army and hate prune-whip, and go absolutely mad when they say I try to imitate Floyd Gibbons on the Radio, as I have never heard him. Favorite dish — grape-fruit salad, with four times usual allowance of French dressing, buckwheat cakes (the set-overnight sort) and green apple dumplings with hard sauce. Hoping you are the same, I am, yours in haste — BOB !" Now you know all of Bob Newhall's innermost secrets, and I suppose I shall be hung on a gibbet to dry, when he reads tin's, but the radio audience must be served ! His professional career reads like a book and is not unlike the colorful story of Lowell Thomas. Under the title of the Mail Pouch Sportsman, sponsored by the Mail Pouch Tobacco Company of Wheeling, W. Va., Bob Newhall has blazed a new Sjv Don Becker trail in fifteen minute ether-chats over WLW, Cincinnati, each evening at 6 :30 P. M., E. S. T. He brings to his audience a real "Close-Up" of Sport Life. This is attributed to the fact that he is personally acquainted with almost every major and minor sportsman in the game. He tinges his yarns with authenticity — a precious trait in radio ! And he, himself, is a Sportsman ! What more could you ask? The story of his first punch at the Newhall in action writing racket has been told over and over again, but a schoolboy's tale is the wonder of the hour, so it must be told again ! When Bob was in the third grade of the twenty-second district school in Cincinnati, the local pedagogue suddenly became enshrouded with a swell idea. It was just before Christmas, so all the clear little tots were instructed to write a composition about "A Christmas Snow Storm." Scratch, scratch, scratch, the pencils went a-flying. Soon Miss Teacher was flooded with an avalanche of papers. Jack Frost, Snowballs, Evergreens and Snowmen, received their usual amount of uncalled-for publicity — that is, until Teacher ran across Bob Newhall's contribution. The teacher ogled. Now what? Instead of choosing the usual, little Bob Newhall reached out and grabbed a handful of the unusual. His precocity had jibed him into making the locale of his snow storm, a tropical, Cannibal Isle ! Assuming all the license of a true artist, Bobby completely ignored climatic conditions and pictured for his reader, a veritable Garden of Eden. No cold, bleak Frozen North scenes for Bobby. Instead, the palm trees were swaying in the gentle breeze, and the climate was up around 160 in the shade. Suddenly a great black cloud came upon the scene. North winds started blowing a warning, and then — AND THEN CAME THE SNOW! By this time Bob's aesthetic enthusiasm became an ungovernable frenzy of scribbling, and his stubby pencil soon had the naked natives yelling and whooping and running for shelter, while the world, for the first time, was given a graphic picture of the only South Sea Isle ever to be buried in ten feet of snow ! Could you blame the teacher for osfl ins:? L ATER she told Bob's family, "At first I wanted to give him a big zero, but then I just couldn't ignore the amazing scope of his mind in that composition, so I closed my eyes and marked the paper 100." Speaking of school, Bob Newhall, was once quoted as saying, "I used to tip my hat to every school in which I had once been enrolled. But this didn't work out. I was bareheaded most of the time !" In fact, the only school from which he actually graduated, was the dear old Twenty-second District. The scene of the Tropical Snow Storm fracas. Before Bob hopped over to England, however, he used up a calendar in Los Angeles, writing up golf, which was then taking hold in the land of sunshine and juicy grapefruit. Leaving England, he hopped over to Japan and then on to the Philippines, which at that time, were experiencing a few difficulties in governmental operation. Bob saw a little soldiering there, and did a little soldiering , but the wanderlust bug had bitten him, so he "offed" again. This