Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

An EDITOR Who's NEVER SEEN His Magazine A MAGAZINE editor's life is never one long, sweet song — but when the magazine is a woman's magazine, and published not on paper but literally on air, life gets more complicated — or it would if Bennie Walker were not the editor. The big, good-natured chap who edits NBC's Woman's Magazine of the Air, has been entertaining an ether circulation which runs into many thousands, for so long that he and the Magazine have become a household institution on the Pacific Coast. Every member of the big staff of speakers and all the stars who appear on the Magazine program from time to time have their own followers, but Bennie himself keeps an especial niche in the hearts of the women who wait to hear him say, "Keep that old smile smiling!" every morning. Perhaps it's because he is such a far cry from the popular picture of how a woman's magazine editor looks. Bennie weighs something like two hundred and forty pounds, for one thing, and his beaming countenance seems to register through the microphone as perfectly as if television were here at last. "I knew exactly how you must look before I ever saw a picture of you, Bennie Walker," one woman listener wrote him. not long ago. "If you hadn't been fat, I would have been terribly disappointed." Upon which Bennie went right out and ate a piece of cocoacnut cream pie — crust and all! He's one of the most versatile members of the radio profession in spite of — or perhaps it's because of — that weight of his. As Bennie Walker, he edits the Magazine of the Air; as Bennie Fishel he is the piping-voiced little boy heard on many comedy programs, and under his own family name of Benjamin Walker McLaughlin, he sings ballads and lyrics in an exceedingly pleasant tenor voice, as well as he acts in Day After Day, Bennie Walker Edits the NBC Woman's Magazine of the Air, and Never Sees a Word of It in Type — Us All Printed on Thin Air! He Keeps That Old Smile Going Always, and Is One of the Most Cheerful and Versatile Artists on the Air by Louise Landis microphone appearances a joy, had to be held in abeyance in the days when he was making his early reputation as a singer. Away back in the period when radio still was a novelty which was followed chiefly by enthusiastic amateurs, he was one of the first male singers in Los Angeles to send a song winging through the ether on the mysterious waves of the new industry. "Everyone's mind seemed to center upon the fact that we were reaching a bigger audience than anyone had ever sung to before," explains Bennie. ''The early audience was pretty small compared to the present one, but it still was big enough to amaze. "Instead of thinking of this throng of persons as a great mass of humanity, I always liked to picture it as composed of individuals, and I used to think 'Some day I'll have a program in which I can let every single member of the audience know I am singing directly to him and to her — not to just a big, unidentified crowd.' "When the Woman's Magazine of the Air was offered to me, I took the opportunity it offered of being able to develop my own theory of really making folks happy — and it's been repaying every effort expended along that line, from the very start. The letters from women cooped up in small apartments or imprisoned in loneliness on great ranches — all of them so responsive to what we can offer them in music and entertainment and good fellowship would be enough reward in themselves, for everything." Helen Webster, now the home science editor of the Magazine of the Air, was the entire "staff" of the ether publication when Bennie joined it. It was "published" only once a week then. Helen and Bennie got together and planned to make a real program out of the Magazine, and now there's an aerial edition every week-day morning, and Bennie presents a galaxy of household experts and musical stars. Bennie never yet has followed a set continuity in announcing the speakers and musical numbers. In opening the [Turn to Page 20] "Memory Lane." How does he keep all his separate microphone personalities separated? "I don't — they get mixed up lots of times," he admits. "That's why Bennie Fishel intrudes into a Magazine broadcast occacionally. I think of something that an irrepressible five-year-old would say about some song or some recipe — and first thing I know, there he is, talking right into the microphone through my lips!" The little Fishel boy probably is the part that gives Bennie the most fun, but the Woman's Magazine of the Air obviously is the portion of his work in which he finds the most personal satisfaction. His "smile" slogan finds echo in the hearts of the thousands who hear the Magazine because it is so plainly sincere, and the spontaneity of his wit is the kind which springs from doing the kind of work you enjoy. That gift for unrehearsed humor and "ad lib" lines which makes Bennie's Page Ten RADIO DOINGS