Radio mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

RADIO MIRROR The Life Story of Bob Burns, Arkansas Traveler A year went by; still the movies ignored Bob Burns. He and his family were almost as poor now as they had ever been in carnival times. Friends advised him to turn to radio. But the door was not wide open for him there, either. His first audition was at KNX, in Los Angeles. The joker is that Bob's idea for them was a I5-minute program called "Gawkin' Around," in which he played a guitar and talked about " 'most anything." They heard him do exactly what he does now for ?1000 a week, and said, "We'll let you know if anything turns up." Just recently, a file clerk at KNX sent Bob his first audition card, to keep among his souvenirs. But still no job. Finally Bob got his chance at KFI — but sans salary. He was "Colonel Blaine" on one of the many semi-Show Boat broadcasts which appear from time to time. But "Colonel Blaine" never roused a sponsor. Another gratis job was on a program also familiar to West Coast listeners: the Sunday night Fun Factory. Next he became a member of the Gilmore Circus, at the princely stipend of $20 a week. After trying several characterizations he became well known as "Soda Pop," in blackface. In addition to broadcasting, he played benefits as Gilmore's good will ambassador. These he played au naturel, with much better results than in charcoal. He was getting $60 a week finally from the Gilmore outfit. He also made records for Jimmy Murray's Varieties, in which he was "Bill Ozark" — again doing the same type of running comment he does today. He participated in the KHJ Hi-Jinks till it went off the air. Once more— and this, mind you, less than a year and a half ago — Bob Burns was out of work. This time it was club engagements that saved his life. Kiwanis and Rotarians, Lions and Breakfast Clubbers liked his brand of humor and his bazooka. Still, a week when he made $75 was a rarity. One day he took time off to think. What was the matter with him, anyway? He got laughs; his material was original. Yet he couldn't click on anything worth while. What was the answer? . . . Flash! He wasn't a big name. If he could just get on an important program, once — Rudy Vallee's hour, for instance. THE next day, he started driving to New York. He took with him all the money the Burns family could lay their hands on — which wasn't much. He went with the sole purpose of getting on Rudy Vallee's broadcast. You think you know the rest. I thought I did, too. When Bob got to New York, he kept putting off calling the advertising agency which handled Vallee's program. He sat in his hotel; he walked in the park. He kept devising excuses. He wasn't exactly scared, but he was next door to scared. One day he decided to phone a friend to ask him for lunch. Thumbing through his little black book, he dialed a number. "J. Walter Thompson!" a feminine voice parroted. He had called the fateful number by mistake! He couldn't hang up. No use wasting a nickel. He asked for the man in charge of the program. He had no speech prepared; simply told the man what he wanted, cited his radio experience on the West Coast. "How long will you be in town?" the executive asked curiously. "Till I get on the Rudy Vallee pro 56 {Continued from page 38) gram," Bob answered. _ He got an audition — and a tough audition it was, with cold-eyed gentlemen sitting critically behind glass. Bob told a few yarns, even ribbed radio a little. "My folks down in Arkansas will shore be disappointed," he opined. "You see, I came to New York to get on one of these here amateur shows. But it's so darn' hard to get on one of them amateur programs unless you're known. So I thought . . ."■ You know what happened. He knocked 'em for a row of microphones. He also got the job. Then he got stage fright, after he was scheduled to appear on the Vallee hour. He thought of 20,000,000 listeners, and his feet froze under him. Believe it or not, he got out a map — a map of the United States. He looked for New York, and found it was a small, black dot on the map. He looked for Radio City, for chromium-trimmed NBC — but they weren't to be found. "So I figured," he chuckled, "that it couldn't make much difference to the world in general whether I made good or not, and I just got up and talked." And when he did, Vallee and a good portion of his millions of listeners all over the world sat up and took notice. The next day Bob turned up at the agency again, laid something on the executive's desk. "What's that?" he was asked. "That's my script for next week's Vallee show," Bob answered. When the agency took an option on his services, Bob Burns suddenly became a big name. Between broadcasts with Vallee and Paul Whiteman, personal appearances were sandwiched in at big theaters in important cities. Bob made as much as $1000 a week. And he walked through it almost as in a dream. He still pinches himself often, to make sure he's not just dreaming, down on the Arkansas Levee. Next came the wire summoning him West, to open the first Kraft show in Hollywood in January, with Bing Crosby. He couldn't have been more pleased, because he describes Bing in one word, said over and over: "Tops!" He thought he couldn't be more pleased. But there was still another telegram to bring tears to his eyes, wonder to his heart: the one from Mayor Tom English of Van Buren, asking Bob to the great Homecoming to be held in his honor. Could he take the time to stop off on his way to California? Of course he could — and did. But nobody — at least of all Bob Burns — could have been prepared for the welcome he received last December 7, when he stepped off Arkansas' crack train. All of Van Buren's 5,122 inhabitants were at the depot to meet him, not to mention a number just as great from the surrounding country. Police escort on bicycles. fire department, half a dozen bands (including Frank MacCIain's Silvertone Cornet Band and a 50-piece aggregation from Ft. Smith), Veterans of Foreign Wars, a float called "The Bazooka Factory," yokes of oxen with log wagons, carrying Bob's fictitious kinfolk in costume. , There was a special program at the high school, a reception at the home of his dear childhood friend, Caroline Scott, in his honor, A sign "Welcome Home, Bubber" in the window of the State Bank. Folks clustering to shake his hand. He might have been terribly changed, that boy who went home. But not Bob Burns. Why should he be? He had simply made good in the same career he followed in his youth — making people laugh. Fine clothes, sure. Doesn't any country boy get himself a fine suit of clothes as soon as he's able? If he had appeared in a ten gallon hat and hightop boots, Bob Burns would have been out of character. He didn't have to dress like a hillbilly, he was really from Arkansas. IT was the same sense of balance, a bal■ ance few of us ever attain, that saved Bob Burns from losing his mind early this summer. Only a man who had found his philosophy could have withstood the shock Bob had to stand when his wife, Betty, died suddenly following an operation. Fate seldom enjoys a more bitterly ironic jest than this — robbing Bob of the woman who had sacrificed the greater part of her life to his ultimate success just at the moment he was beginning to gather the fruits of her devotion. The same week that she died, Paramount made up a new contract for Bob by which he was to be paid over $50,000 a picture. The joy that was to have been theirs turned to ashes in his mouth. His only consolation, if indeed there was any consolation, was the knowledge that all this money would more than provide for the future of his son, Robert, who is going to Hollywood high school. A year ago, it looked as though he would have to stop his schooling and go to work. Now, he can graduate, and go on to college to study whatever interests him. As Bob said, before he had lost Betty, "There's no telling what he'll turn out to be — any more than anybody could have known about me at the same age. He's just a regular boy, fourteen years old. As apt to be a trombone player as anything else — I wouldn't know." It was two weeks after Betty's death before Bob could return to his job on the Kraft Music Hall as the star comedian. And when he did, he had to keep his hands in his pockets to hide their trembling as he stood at the microphone. But listening to him in your own home, you couldn't guess that personal tragedy had left him speechless and grief stricken. Since then he has turned more than ever to his hobby, studying microscopic life. He claims it has helped him greatly in working out and sticking to his own peculiar brand of philosophy. Certainly it works. How else surmount the loss of Betty? "You take a quart jar of pond water," he told me, "and scoop out a little and look at it through a microscope. See how wonderfully everything is worked out, according to the plan of nature. It's almost like a small town. Then take out some more water and look again. You'll find another tribe of creatures, getting along all right too, in an entirely different way! It makes you see how unimportant all your petty worries are, how little they can matter in the scheme of things." He believes that this is true of every phase of life, and that farther up _ the scale there are probably superior beings, to whom men and their activities appear as little insects. "I've come to the conclusion," he says, "that the main difference between onecell critters and human beings is in the number of cells." If that's the brand of philosophy that helped Bob Burns, it's well worth thinking about. Pardon us while we write finish. We're going out now and price microscopes.