Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

COMEDY ERRORS REGINALD SHARLAND A Blissfully Dim-Witted Jap and a Humor-less Britisher Are Frank Watanabe and Honorable Archie, Whose Comic Dialogues Delight KNX Listeners DIALECTS from off the misty shores of two islands half a world from each other have traveled a circuitous and strange route to meet in California. The result of this strange marriage of the most cultured tongue in the world and that of the most polyglot of lingos is a comedy team which threatens to cut in on the popularity of the biggest of them all. It is time we introduce that far-famed pair: Frank Watanabe and the Hon. Archie, readers. It will be best if we take the gentlemen up one at a time. Their nightly program over KNX has aroused so much comment that letters by the thousands flood in asking information about these two gentlemen who each eve at seven o'clock create more laughs than half of the other programs on the air together. Let us consider the redoubtable Frank: that silver voiced, suave Oriental who has the humor of a Rabialias and the seriousness of a Bible class instructor. Frank, in private life, is Edmund James Holden, son of the late E. J. Holden, conteemporary of Theodore Roberts and John Drew. Edmund James, or Eddie as the boys and girls call him, was cradled in the arms of the theater. At the advanced age of four years he had his first experience, according to his own memoirs, at which time he gallantly waved the American Flag in a theatrical production written by his father to celebrate the winning of the Spanish American War. Born in San Francisco and nurtured in the heart of that cosmopolis, Eddie attended its public schools and associated with a wide group of friends, among them a number of Japanese students, whose efforts to reproduce the RADIO DOINGS English language were at times pathetic and at other times quite laughable. With a natural aptitude for imitation, it was not long before Eddie began making a studied effort to speak after the fashion of his slant-eyed compatriots of the class room. The odd incongruity of a few well chosen words, preferably as long and complicated as possible, delivered by a high and uncertain voice, was bound to make for humor. Eddie capitalized. As the boy Holden grew into manhood, (these are his own words, readers) he found a romance in the shady, silent streets of San Francisco's Oriental section. He spent long hours lounging about in the dens of his friends, picking up not only their perverted rehash of the English tongue, but a certain amount of their true language. The last fifteen years has seen many changes in the life of Eddie Holden. He has tried many things. It was in 1923 that he first went on the air. KFRC was to put on its initial program. The streets of 'Frisco were gone over with a fine toothed comb in an effort to find talent that could offer something out of the way. Eddie was one of those found. As he puts it: "Was I nervous? Yes, ma'am. I put on a comedy act. Was so scared by the cold, suspicious and one-eyed look of that mike that I kept forgetting things; kept repeating things. It was lucky it was a comedy act. Nobody knew I was making mistakes except myself. I was told afterward I had made a remarkably studied effort in taking the part of a backward child. It wasn't studied though — it was awfully, painfully natural." After several years on the air, Holden created the character of Frank Watanabe, that lovable Jap servant, who has entertained thousands, yes hundreds of thousands of radio fans in California and on the west coast. For awhile Holden played his role on the Blue Monday Jamboree Program. But he grew ambitious. He wanted to find a spot of his own in the flickering light of the radio sun. He wanted to write continuity; to handle a regular program which would feature himself. He thought he had enough stuff to put over a real daily feature. You may judge from his recent successes whether or not he was right in the assumption. His fame rapidly spreading over the EDMUND HOLDEN