Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

Radio Tube PRICES Reduced at Southern California Music Co. Genuine RCA Radiotrons : Tube No. Was Now 201A $1.10 $ .75 226 1.25 .80 171 AMPLIFIER 1.40 .90 280 RECTIFIER 1.40 1.00 245 AMPLIFIER 1.40 1.10 227 HEATER 1.25 1.00 224 SCREEN GRID 1.50 1.00 235 MULTI-MU 2.20 1.60 247 PENTODE AMPLIFIER 1.90 1.55 224A QUICK HEATING 2.00 1.60 SCREEN GRID Free Tube Test Phone VAndike 221 and we will send a Technician to your home — for a Free Tube Test. Southern California Music Co. 806 So. Broadway Los Angeles Murder Will Out Continued from Page 29 ether. We didn't have an elephant in the studio. But we were able to give the impression of crashing brush, the heavy grunts and breathing of the beast, the shouts of native drivers, and now and then the bellow of the angry beast. Added to that, we had nicelytimed bits of dialogue that indicated that riding on an elephant wasn't very different from riding an open boat in a high sea. The combination of the sound effects and the bits of dialogue so entwined themselves in this particular fan's imagination that we actually had her believing that she had been aboard the elephant along with the characters of the play. Another listener dropped a line from a little cabin somewhere up on the top of a mountain. He said he was a forest ranger and was the only person within a radius of some fifty miles. He begged us jocosely not to send any more "terror" up his way, as it kept him in a state of cold chills and caused insomnia for days afterwards. Just to indicate how realistic voices and the action of the drama appeared to one woman, we will tell just one more anecdote. In a certain apartment house in San Francisco a housewife had her radio wide open. It happened that the action was particularly fast and the voices very forceful. The tenant on the floor above heard the awful row and thought that the woman in the apartment below was being murdered. The police were called. They rapped on the door from which issued the disturbance, but the listener was so engrossed in the program that she did not hear the knocking. Finally the police broke in the door and frightened the poor woman almost out of her wits. Apropos of radio audiences, I believe that the mystery play is by far the best medium through which to train the radio listener's ear to drama on the air. Although many refuse to recognize the fact, it is true that the average listener's ear must be trained before he can really appreciate radio drama. Before a listener can fully enjoy a radio play, he must learn to "see" with his ears. He must learn to sit before a radio in absorbed concentration. He must be able to rid himself of his home surroundings and enter into the picture and the spirit of the lines the actors are reading to him. To do this he must co-ordinate his ears and his imagination. The simplest way to do this is to listen night after night to the drama that is dispensed from various studios, and as I remarked above, the easiest drama to listen to is a mystery play. This is due to the fact that the action is rapid, the plots are not involved, and the atmosphere usually is such that it easily holds the attention. Writers of mystery dramas are asked a hundred times, "Where do you get your ideas for those awful plays?" My own reply invariably is, "I don't know." The complete serial is usually the result of some germ of an idea that has been fermenting in the back of one's mind for some time. In the case of "The City of the Dead" all I had, to begin with, was the desire to write a play about an old graveyard. The more I thought about it, the better idea it seemed. And so when the call came for this type of play, I sat down and began to write. "The City of the Dead" was the result. It may offer a novel slant to the uninitiated writer to know that a story sometimes takes itself out of an author's hands and gallops along, he knows not whither. In "The City of the Dead" I planned out what might be titled a "natural" first episode with a bang-up climax for that particular chapter. But lo and behold, when the last page was turned out it wasn't what I expected at all. On the second episode, or chapter, I began all over again, and once more I set a definite aim for the second climax. And again it came out something else. After that I simply gave up, and let events transpire when and where they would, hoping to high Heaven that along about the ninth or tenth episodes episodes the tangled web of circumstances would straighten themselves out for a smashing finish. And lucky for me, by some trick of fate combined with some fast and furious thinking on my part at the last minute, everything came out fine and dandy. The only explanation for such inexcusable fractiousness on the part of a story lies in the fact that as the story progressed, new and unexpected opportunities for enlarging and strengthening the original plot presented themselves. And each time this occurred the whole story would take a flying leap off into space and necessitate the seting of a new course toward the inevitable end. One of my peculiar wishes was to have a detective hero of my very own. Thus Captain Carter Post came into being, in the serial "Captain Post: Crime Specialist." In the beginning, about all I had was the name. Week by week. I pounded out the episodes just in time to get them into the hands of the producer for the week' show. [Turn to Page 45] Page Forty RADIO DOINGS