Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

Having Doors Slammed in His Face Was a Common Experience For Alexander Gray, But, Nothing Daunted, He and His Good-Natured Smile Boldly Assaulted the Gates of Opportunity — He Has Sold Pots and Pans, Operated Punch Presses, Stoked Ship. Taught School and Then Turned to the Stage and Radio ALEX GRAY, who once had the l\ doors of two continents slammed _L^_ in his face, today wins a nightly hearing in homes covering a quarter of the globe. He turned the trick with a song and a smile. This blue-eyed, stalwart American is much like a medieval minstrel brought up in a modern setting. He adventured into life in many roles and emerged with a song. Then, alone, he crashed Broadwav. Hollywood and radio land. Alex first knocked at the gates of opportunityas an adventuresome college boy, working his way. He scarred his fingers in the punch presses of Philadelphia. His toes were pinched in the door sills of Pennsylvania while he sold pots and pans. He banged fire doors as a stoker aboard a transatlantic ship. Vaulted entrances of English estates clanged shut against him on a selling trip around the world. Gray studied to be an engineer and turned to the stage after he had been a technical writer, teacher, and business man. His life explains his vigorous, yet gentle manner, his dashing artistry, yet modest presence among friends, and his chum set out to girdle the globe. They worked their way across to England as deckhands on a freighter. Alex first learned the value of his voice on the high seas. His harmonizing with a deckhands' quartet won him a dinner in the skipper's cabin. But disappointment awaited them in England. Their plans to sell stereoscopic travel pictures didn't click. "The idea," Gray said, "was that if you bought the set, you merely had to sit down and see the world in your front parlor. But the sets were too expensive. The people who could afford to buy them were the same people who preferred to travel. We didn't even get to the road to Mandalay, the heaven of baritones. We dissolved partnership and I came home in the stoke hole of a yacht." Alex, stripped to the waist, wheeled and heaved coal in the fireroom as the small vessel lurched in large waves. There was no ventilation. Six men sweated before the fires. They alternated with chills and fever. The angrycrew vented their grudge on the mess boy, who Alex warned to stav clear Alex Gray — Gate Crasher simplicity in living. He maintains no manager, no secretary, and gives his bachelor household on Long Island to the care of a cockney maid. Alex Gray has hoed his own row and enjoys life without fanfare. He was born in Wrightville, Pa., a town otherwise distinguished when revolutionary forefathers once hoped to make it the capital of the United States. He was christened Alexander Pringle Gray VI. For six generations it has been the custom of the Grays to so name their eldest sons. His father was a Baltimore shoe manufacturer and his mother a Pennsylvania school teacher. When Alex was a year old the family moved into Baltimore. There he attended grammar school and chased fire engines. He grew up through summer vacations spent on the dairy and tobacco farms of his uncles in Lancaster County. Pa. He milked eighteen cows, pitched hay and picked tobacco. His parents next moved to Philadelphia. Gray attended Central High School and developed a liking for mechanics by working in the machine RADIO DOINGS shops. "I operated a punch press on thin sheet iron strips," Alex recalls. "See the scars? That was my first salaried job — I got $12 a week." His enrollment as an engineer in Pennsylvania State College followed. There he spent four years to win a degree in industrial engineering, took part in school activities and was a member of Delta Upsilon fraternity. He pitched hay, fired furnaces, sold magazines and cooking utensils for expenses. "And, believe me, I had many a door slammed in my face," Alex adds. While there he crashed into his first musical comedy. He was cast as "Belinda, the boiler-maker's daughter," title role in the college operetta. "Beautiful Lady." Alex was the 170-pound and muscular lady. "I also played a little football and baseball, but I wasn't what you would call a prima donna in the latter," he says. After graduation, Gray and a college by Con A. Higgms after the others threatened to toss the lad overboard. Gray rates it as his hottest and toughest job. At the end of the two-weeks trip to New York he was given $15 in wages. Back home, he met Madame Louise Homer, opera star, who encouraged him to take his voice seriously. She gave him access to see a season's perormance at the Metropolitan Opera House. He studied music, language and the opera in his spare time while serving as a technical writer for a New York magazine. Then began a circuitous route to Broadway and Hollywood. Alex accepted any work that would enable him to continue his voice culture. He taught wood-turning and carpentry in a boy's school. He moved to Chicago, teaching at a military academy, singing in a church choir, and adding to his vocal education at Northwestern University. The National Federation of Musical Clubs, holding an audition, cited him as an outstanding young singer. He sang at their convention in Los Angeles. Con(Turn to Page 30) National Broadcasting Company, Inc. Page Nineteen General Library