Radio Mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

RADIO MI RROR Recognized as America's Smartest Styles Clamorously lovely! Paris-inspired! Designed in the new soaring, high lines... and the choice of style-minded women everywhere! See these beautiful styles today. Write for name of dealer in your^ity. tid chevrons on ck or brown suede side tie. iigh-in-front ,-j of Ink blue or \ "sbadoif" kid. FREE! ft YEAR'S SUPPLY OF PARIS FASHION SHOES TO 100 WOMEN Nothing to buy! Just finish this sentence: "l like Paris Fashion Shoes because . . . .' (in 25 words or less). Winners will receive 8 pairs of Paris Fashion Shoes, Write today for style booklet . . . and name of your dealer from whom you can get entry blank. Contest closes December 15th. Dept. F-2, Wohl Shoe Company, Saint Louis, Missouri. GUARANTEED BY GOOD HOUSEKEEPING at advertised therein soon had a half-dozen profitable business ventures on hand. He helped to build Biscayne Boulevard in Miami, by persuading many of the most important stores in town to move into that section. Standing one day on a street corner, talking to Tex Rickard, who had then just turned his attention from prize fights to real estate, Joe said idly, "That's a nice car that just passed us, isn't it? Wonder who has the agency?" Tex thought a moment. "It's for sale," he said. "Let's get it." As casually as all that, Joe and Tex went into the automobile business together. And when, not many months later, Tex died, Joe bought his share of the business from the estate and became sole owner. His interests' began to be complex and interlocked— part of the vast pattern of paper finance which was the Florida boom. He became director in two banks; he made commitments for hundreds of new and used cars. At the height of it all, the crash came. The two banks of which he was director closed, and according to the Federal law he was liable to the depositors to twice the extent of his interest in the banks. All his negotiable cash was tied up in real estate and automobiles. There were two things he could do — go through bankruptcy, thereby evading his financial responsibilities. Or undertake the Herculean task of shouldering his debts and paying off every one of them. HE chose the latter. He had to. The son of that unordained minister who preached for a hobby could have made no other choice. And somehow, he succeeded, by frantically selling all his real estate and automobiles at prices so low that even the depressed Florida market couldn't resist them. Finally, all his debts, including his liabilities to the bank depositors, were paid. He had left exactly one hundred dollars and a second-hand car, eminently unsalable. Once more Joe Emerson Rose took stock of his position — even more seriously, this time, than he had done before, just after the Armistice. "There is no security," he told Wilsie. "Business is as unstable as singing. Isn't it much better for me to do whatever lies nearest to my heart?" Wilsie, too, had learned a new kind of wisdom in those years of frenzied finance. She agreed with him, now, that it was better to work first of all for the pleasure of achievement the work could give you. Back to New York came Joe and Wilsie and Carolyn, their daughter, using most of that hundred dollars to buy gasoline for the one second-hand car Joe hadn't sold. Some friends offered them the use of their apartment in swanky Beekman Place, and they lived in luxurious surroundings, even if they did have scarcely enough money to buy food. Joe's one-time contacts in the concert field were long since gone, and he turned to radio. There were long days of sitting in reception rooms, agonizing moments when he took auditions. A high radio official advised him to change his name from Joe Emerson Rose to something shorter and easier to remember, so he discarded the "Rose," thereby cutting the last link which would have identified him with the once-successful singer. It seemed as if nothing were wanted in radio except crooners and boop-a-doop boys. Time and time again Joe auditioned, to watch some youth without half his musicianship carry off the coveted job. But true to the decision he had made in Florida, he refused to change his own style of singing. From now on he would stick to what he wanted to do. For a year he made a bare living, with a ten-dollar job here, a fifteen-dollar one there. Today, he remembers those anxious weeks with but one happy thought— Wilsie and Carolyn, the latter used to luxury all her short life, proved the stuff they were made of by meeting all the hardships without a murmur. _ At last he heard of an opening at station WLW, in Cincinnati. A singer there had quarreled with his sponsor, and a new one was needed in a hurry. Joe wired, got the job, gathered together all his available cash, just enough to purchase transportation, and left in a hurry— but he wasn't there quite soon enough. He arrived to find that the quarrel had been patched up. He didn't have enough money to go back to New York. There was nothing to do but haunt the WLW studios in hope of a job. He got the work, finally, but it wasn't real radio work. For a year he was general handy-man around the WLW studios—guide, attendant, janitor, anything. His patience and willingness were rewarded with a fifteen-minute sustaining program. Even it wasn't much, but it was a living— and it was also, though he didn't know it then, the important first step in the climb that was to bring him to his present success. He had been singing on the sustaining program for a few weeks when he began including one hymn on each program. Timidly, at first— perhaps the listeners would object— he sang the hymns he had learned so long ago. The response, brought by every mail delivery, was tremendous. Overwhelmingly, his listeners approved of the hymns. One day J. Ralph Corbett, merchandising consultant of WLW, asked Joe casually, "Why don't you sing the hymns of all churches on your program?" The phrase clicked. "Hymns of All Churches! That's what we'll call it!" said Joe Emerson. Before the Hymns of all Churches program came to you on a coast-to-coast network it underwent a gruelling period of testing and experimentation over WLW. Sponsored by General Mills, the program and the public's reaction to it were studied exhaustively. Questionnaires were sent to ministers and laymen, asking for their opinion of the program, asking also whether or not they objected to having it sponsored commercially. The reaction to both questions was practically one hundred per cent favorable. THE Emersons live today within walking distance of the CBS studios in Chicago, and Joe gets up every morning at 6:30 to be in time for a 7:30 rehearsal. Each program is rigidly balanced to include representative hymns from the different churches. The Emerson library includes five hundred standard hymnals, bound volumes of Bach chorales, Gregorian chants, and old circuit-riders' hymns, as well as scores of songs which have never been published and are still in manuscript. Two things make him particularly happy. One is that the program is used as an opening exercise in two hundred schools throughout the country. The other is that he offers new hymns an opportunity to be heard — for of all kinds of songs, a hymn is the hardest to establish in the hearts of the public. So at last Joe Emerson has proved the truth of the decision he reached with the collapse of his business in Florida. He is doing work that he loves, and at the same time he is providing the security every man strives to give his family. 92