Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

GRAND OLD MAN OF RADIO— ( ContinueJ from Pqgi 11 ) success. He then took his idea to the planning board of the National Broadcasting Company. "I've got a little program to tell you about," Lord said. "If you can spare me a little time, I'll try to explain it to you." The board listened for 40 minutes — an unusually lengthy interview — while Phil told them about the cottage hymn sings that are a part of New England life. He wanted to put that hymn sing on the air with all its original simplicity. The board granted an audition. The following week it sat for half an hour as "Sunday Evening at Seth Parker's" came to life upstairs in a studio and was wired down to the board room. The board members were unanimous in enthusiasm. Then one member spoke up, "That was a religious program. Do you realize that?" He was right. Seth Parker's period has since been called "The most purely religious program on the air." But it is religion taken from the pages of home life — natural, elemental and freed from sectarian influence. It expresses the paramount conviction of Phillips Lord, which is "A man's religion can't mean much unless he can take it home with him." Seth Parker's universal appeal won the planning board's approval and on March 3, 1929, the first Sunday night scene in his front parlor was depicted over NBC networks. It brought an immediate response from home listeners. The clergy of all sects wrote in with approbation. The mail of Jonesport took a sudden leap and that little seaport town found itself on the map of radio fame. "If they believe that the program is picked up from an old front parlor in Jonesport and that Seth Parker and his neighbors actually are having their weekly hymn sing, so much the better," Lord says. "The thing we desire most is to make the characters and their hymns actually live for the listeners." Lord believes in the honesty of his characters. He works tirelessly on his scripts and through rehearsals to give them the stamp of reality. Many of his cast themselves spent their early years in such an atmosphere. Lord thinks Seth Parker will show people that true religion is close to the soil and very much a part of everyday life. An abashed young couple once approached Lord at the studios. "Dr. Parker," the girl stammered, "will you marry me?" Seth, a bit bewildered, said he was married already. "I mean, will you marry Frank and me?" the girl added. She thought it would be a perfect culmination if "Dr. Parker could only perform the ceremony." Lord told the young people that he regretted he was only a minister's son and not a Doctor of Divinity himself. But he sent them to a minister with Seth Parker's best wishes. One listener wrote that, after hearing the kindly philosophy of Seth, he refused to foreclose the mortgage he held on the homestead of a young married couple. Village and country churches include the Seth Parker program in their Sunday night services, many ministers writing that their congregations join in the hymn singing with the folks of Jonesport, and that frequently the texts of their sermons are suggested by Seth. A church of St. Matthews, Ky., obtained from Lord a Seth Parker continuity and reproduced it with the full membership joining in. After hearing one of Parker's hymns, a Washington listener telegraphed for a copy so that it might be sung at a family funeral. "I have seen Sunday evening bridge parties stop when Seth begins," wrote an Iowa listener. "Traveling men wait until after Seth's hour before leaving their homes. Families remain at neighbor's homes until it is ended and then fight their way home through an Iowa snow storm. His original hymns have been bound into a book known as Seth Parker's Album," by the Century Company. To the town of Jonesport, Phillips Lord and Seth Parker make up a community pride, although he had never been there until after he began presenting the sketches. He was raised a few miles from the town, but paid his first visit on a recent vacation. "Surprising as it may seem," he said, "Jonesport likes Seth Parker. The few hundred souls who make their home in the town, follow the happenings of their radio neighbors. "The citizens turned out for a big mass meeting to make us welcome. Practically every individual in the town threw his house open, and most of them gave a party in our honor at one time or another. Moose meat, saved from winter, was brought forth and cooked. "Under the personal guidance of Cleve Higgins, a leading citizen, I was shown the best fishing places. People came in from miles around to the old fashioned dances." Phil Lord in private life is a handsome young man of twenty-eight years. He is married to the girl who once played with him in his radio creation, but forsook that when their daughter Patricia arrived a little more than a year ago. When he travels, young Lord gets a kick out of signing the hotel registers two ways; first, as Phillips Lord, New York: second, as Seth Parker. Jonesport. Me. As a boy, Phil spent his summers in Ellsworth, Maine, where much of his time was spent buggy riding with Grandpa Phillips, a New England gentleman of the old school. He was graduated from Bowdoin College at Brunswick, Maine, In 1925. There he was known as a plain, full-blooded American youth, athletically inclined, not too scholarly, and active in college life. After graduation he became principal of the high school at Plainville. Connecticut, assuming that post at the age of 22. He went after the job hard for more than one reason, but whetted largely by the fact that his boyhood sweetheart was teaching in the grammar school of the town. Her name was Sophia Mecorney. now Mrs. Lord, wed two weeks after Phil got his job. Two years later they came to New York, a young couple without any friends in the city, who struggled through initial disappointments until Lord heard a poor radio program and decided to create a good one. Now America sings with him, "You go to your church and I'll go to mine, but let's walk together." In addition, the country now hears him as Captain Bill in the newly inaugurated down-east humorous series known as "The Stebbins Boys." Lord plays the role of a retired sea captain in the general store of Buckport, Maine, who has two brothers, Esley and John, and has not spoken to the former for fifteen years. Brother John, played by Arthur Allen, is trying to reconcile the two. The new series again brings together Lord and Allen, famed for a long time as "Uncle Abe and David." Their new offering is heard daily, except Saturday and Sunday over an NBC-WEAF network. Page Thirty-Three