Radio mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

RADIO M I RROR The Reason Nelson Eddy Fears Marriage (Continued from page 23) those years a friendship, a deep understanding, grew between him and his mother. She understood his aloneness, realized how inevitable it was, and set herself the task of making up, in part, for the things he was missing. She has done that all his life. And today, in the lovely Beverly Hills house he took last year, she is making for him the first real home he has ever had. She presides at his table, receives his guests, supervises the corps of secretaries who work all day opening and answering his fan mail. When he was fourteen the thing happened that changed his life completely. He had finished grammar school and was considering what high school to enter when his parents decided — simply and without any great to-do — to separate. The family had reached Philadelphia in the endless circle of Mr. Eddy's professional wanderings, and Nelson and his mother decided to live there. Naturally there was no more thought of school. Mrs. Eddy went to work in a university and Nelson got a job in his uncle's iron works. Then began the years of struggle, of worry, of persistent, dogged work during the day and study during the evenings; there was no time — and certainly no money — for the usual adolescent running around, for dancing and parties and girls. He was a newspaper reporter for a while and then found that he had a voice; David Bispham, a famous baritone and teacher, heard him one day and offered to give him lessons. IT was while he was singing for the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company that he discovered radio and radio discovered him. In those first days of crystal sets and earphones and experimentation there was little advantage to him in pouring his rich powerful voice into an unperfected microphone. He knew there were probably only about fifty people listening to him and that the reception must be distorted. And station WCAU, Philadelphia, offered him no money for the work. Nevertheless night after night he would go to the tiny studio and pour his heart into the arias and folk-songs that made up his program. He grew up with radio. From WCAU he went to WFI and eventually to every station in Philadelphia. The Newton Coal Hour, released every other week, offered him a top spot, finally, with a contract that called for S25 an appearance. It wasn't much but he accepted, and stayed with the job for two years. His listeners liked him and wrote in to say so. Sponsors of other programs liked him, almost as much as they liked the reports on his fan mail, and besieged him with offers. Contracts called for bigger salaries, less work, more publicity. Until finally he was signed on the Firestone Hour. "From then on it's been merely a question of finding time for broadcasts between concert tours and motion pictures," he told me. "The other things followed radio. 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