Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

IT'S One of the Things Kate Smith Always Wanted To Do Was Write — and Here She Unburdens Herself of a Lot of Things She's Wanted To Say For a Long Time — Among Them Her Philosophy of Life, Her Secret Desires, and Her Autobiography HELLO EVERYBODY! This is Kate Smith! I'm awfully pleased to prepare these few pages, doing a search-and-find onefinger job on the typewriter. It's surprising how soon one can lose technique. I'm ashamed to admit now that I once went to business school. You certainly wouldn't know it, if you could see me. It's amazing how I aim straight at a "g" for instance and land on an "h" with much crescendo. The trouble with me is that now, instead of writing notes, I sing them. Or — I do my best anyhow. And if that sounds like Horatio Alger I really can't help it. One funny thing about life — I suppose the powers that be invented it to avert monotony — is that there was never an author who wouldn't like to dance or sing, or perhaps even go in " — / love chocolate parfaits. and driving fast, and I liate women who talk baby talk or imitate movie stars." for professional football, — and there never was a singer who didn't wish she could turn out some poetry after the fashion of Edna St. Vincent Millay, or design Parisian clothes, or something equally remote. Take your friend, Kate Smith, for example, next to turning out a fairly personable story, I would like to direct athletics in a girl's school. Oh my! Well, one wish is granted. I am turning out a story. So please stand by, people, and read my words, and my wretched assortment of adjectives and adverbs, as sort of a good-turn-a-day gesture. Being feminine, of course, I do have a profound assortment of adjectives. I admit it. The idea, apparently, is that you're kind enough to be interested enough to know "How come?" (I have a suspicion that wasn't a good sentence, but I don't know what on earth to do about it!) Ever since I was "knee high to a grasshopper," I've sung. And by the time I was able to know what the "stage" was, I've loved the footlight feeling. It's a queer urge that can only be killed and done away with by receiving no response. Radio people, and stage and movie people know exactly what I mean. It's hard to put it into words. I always had a certain amount of response, and from the first time I sang to a bunch of the neighborhood "gang" from — literally a soap-box — and received a lot of friendly, half-teasing, half-appreciative applause, my fate was sealed. I was one, by the way, a noisy tomboy. I'd much rather play with the boys than the girls, and we had a club called "The Midnight Riders." The Midnight Riders, of course, were all tucked in bed by eight-thirty, but it was consoling to think of ourselves as being particularly formidable. I thought I was, according to some of my masculine accomplices in racketeering "the big cheese." I was incurable bossy, and insisted on being the president, secretary and initiator in our small handwrought club in the back yard. By the time I was eight, I was asked to sing at benefits around Washington, D. C, where I was brought up, and almost every night after school, provided I didn't have to stay up too late, mother allowed me to sing. My family, poor dears, thought my theatrical complex was just a Phase, and fully expected me to enter nursing school. They were so very disappointed when I confessed my real ambitions that I decided to try nursing to please them, if for nothing else. I thought Page Twelve RADIO DOINGS