Radio Mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

RADIO MIRROR Two Loves That Guide Ted Malone of Ted's early life. It was her own understanding of small boys that brought Ted through those early years without any of the bitterness or scars that so many boys from poor families suffer. Ted remembers most clearly the day he made his great decision. He was only six, already a solemn lad except when his mother told him one of her funny stories, and for weeks he had coveted the pony the folks across the street owned. Ted had investigated and discovered that they would sell him for five dollars. He went to his mother with the problem and explained that the only solution lay in his leaving home to find work. Gravely his mother nodded. It was a good decision. They walked out to the kitchen and Ted helped her put up a lunch for him. With an extra pair of stockings it made a neat bundle which he slung over his shoulder. They kissed goodbye and Ted started out down the street, happy in his resolve. He was gone nearly two hours before it grew dark. He felt suddenly tired. His lunch had gone an hour before. And he was hungry; he sat down awhile to think. It wasn't long before he began to trudge back home. The pony didn't seem so important just then as his own warm, soft bed. He came in the back way, his head down a little bit, his legs aching. There, on the kitchen table where the others had already finished their meal, was a place all set for him. A few years later, Ted actually did go into business. Not away from home but in his own neighborhood where he knew everyone and where he could be home for his meals. He and his mother had decided that it was time he had some money of his own, so she spent an hour every day making cookies which Ted took around to all the neighbors. When Ted finished grade school he had his first really serious discussion with his mother. It was time, he told her, that he was out making his way in the world. "No, son," she replied with a firm shake of her head. "You're going to have a schooling, four years of high school, perhaps even college." THERE isn't really any way of telling how this argument would have ended if Ted and his mother had been left to figure out themselves. But Ted's father came home unexpectedly with the dramatic, cheering news that he was back to stay. That settled it. Not go to high school? Nonsense! Of course Ted would go. And go he did, with happy pride in the way his parents always looked out for a fellow's best interests. As he explained to me, "My mother was my first great love and she remains one of the two loves which, emotionally, are my strongest guides today. If I have any real understanding of mothers everywhere, and their sons too, it's because my mother understood me so well." It has been, of course, entirely different with Verlia Mae, yet in the story of how he fell in love with her and finally succeeded in marrying her, there is the same strong emotional pull. "Verlia Mae Short was a Sophomore in high school," Ted said, "when I was a senior. She still had braids down her back the day I fell in love with her and she'd never had a date with a boy. "It was just before Hallowe'en and on that night we had a big school party, the sophomores upstairs and the seniors 54 (Continued from page 25) downstairs. You weren't supposed to go from one to the other. But I bribed my teacher with some candy and got her to go up and ask Verlia if I could take her home, after meeting her at the front door of the school. Somehow, the teacher succeeded and I did take Verlia home." It was the natural, romantic beginning of a school romance. The rest of that fall and all winter they went out together as often as both sets of parents would permit. Then Ted graduated and the problem of schooling versus work came up again. This time it was decided by Ted's father. Unknown to any of them, he had been saving money for just this occasion. Ted could go to college, not an expensive one, but to William Jewell, ten miles from home. So he started that fall what he thought would be four happy years on the campus of William Jewell. Even happier than most of the students, because he had Verlia Mae, only ten miles away. IF fortune had been good to Ted so far, it turned with a vengeance as Ted began his third year. Verlia Mae had decided that she too should attend William Jewell. Ted was wildly elated at first. It took him practically no time at all to find out how wrong he was. He hadn't counted on Verlia Mae's good looks. He had known all along, of course, that she was the prettiest girl in high school. But until she arrived on the campus, he hadn't fully appreciated her real beauty. "She was crowned Beauty Queen that fall," Ted said, "and every handsome, rich fraternity man in school was at her feet." Ted was tasting the bitter potion -of competition and he didn't like it. He was suddenly ashamed to ask her to spend the evening walking around the campus or going down to the river bank to sit and talk. Her other beaux all had cars, could drive her into town, could do all the things for her Ted couldn't. "I grew desperate. When I finally sat one day in the study hall, waiting for her to come out from a class and when she came at last, accompanied not by one but by four attentive boys, I knew I couldn't go on." That same day Ted made the most important decision of his life. It was a decision that took courage and a granite resolve, for it could have caused heartbreak to the person Ted owed the most. He decided to quit school and go to work. Love led him to Arthur Church, who then managed and now owns station KMBC in Kansas City. Ted was hired. He was, in fact, the staff of KMBC. He was salesman, actor, announcer, and continuity editor. Fortune which had frowned such a short time ago, was smiling again. Ted had stumbled into his life's work. "It was easy after that," Ted went on, "I courted her at every opportunity. Every time I did another piece of work well, I'd rush to tell her, explaining that the day of our marriage was that much nearer. It never bothered me that she always said she wouldn't think of marrying me before she was twenty, which she'd be in November of her senior year. "I don't know how I did it, I guess I'd just worn down her resistance, but on her twentieth birthday I persuaded her to run off with me to a Kansas City judge — with the agreement that we would keep our marriage a deep secret. "We did keep it quiet until about the first of the year. Maybe you know about something of that sort. Somehow we just decided to confess. So we told our families to listen in to a certain one of my broadcasts on Valentine's Day evening. They didn't even believe me at first, when they heard me say that my best valentine was the lovely girl who had married me months earlier." Two more momentous events were to fill his cup of joy to brimming. Just a year after he was married, Bubbles was born. Never has any parent loved a child more. Ted had just one more dream he wanted terribly to come true. It did, this summer. In August, Ted won a sponsor for his five broadcasts a week. It means so many things. It means that life for two grand elderly people back out in Kansas will be easier. It means that the Westchester home Ted had rented for Verlia Mae and Bubbles can be permanently their own. Two loves that guided Ted Malone, guide him as surely as any man could ever want, to complete happiness. PROGRAM DOTS AND DASHES: Between the Bookends has been on the air seven years . . . The program has had seven different accompanists at the organ in that period of time, starting with Howard Ely and now heard with CBS staff organist, Fred Feibel . . . Ely, who is now Malone's private secretary, plays the organ only for recreation these days . . . Program airs over CBS network from Paramount organ studios in Paramount theater overlooking Times Square, New York . . . Malone broadcasts in semi-dark studio . . . Only a spotlight beams down on the organ . . . "Gives the program proper atmosphere," explains poet Malone . . . Between the Bookends, which incidentally, Malone thinks is a poor title, because too many listeners think it's a book review broadcast, pulls about 400 letters daily. Top figure was 17,000 letters for one month . . . Malone likes to call these "personal letters" rather than fan mail, and actually answers every one . . . Plenty of packages are mailed in from friendly fans, including blue sweaters, pastries, towels, linens . . . Most of the gifts are used in the office . . . Of the 55,000 poems, Malone has on file, of which 20,000 were submitted by the poets themselves, his favorite is "Benediction" by Eleanor Powers ... He recites it twelve times a year for sentimental reasons . . . However his most famous poem is "A Recipe for Cooking a Husband" anonymously written . . . There have been over 15,000 requests for this and Malone's staff mail out mimeographed copies of the tome . . . Ted's in the 1936 edition of "Who's Who," and proudly tells you he received two more lines than Presidents Coolidge and Harding. Most of Malone's broadcasts are ad lib jobs, depending on the weather for their contents ... If it's raining, Malone recites moody poems; if the sun is shining, he does a bright doggerel . . . When six, he recited his first poem, "Bears" at Sunday school . . . Forgot the middle part and ran home, crying, to his mother ... At high school, Malone recited a passage from "Julius Caesar," forgot momentarily an important line . . . He scratched his head, then continued successfully . . . His English teacher later commented that the pause was wonderful dramatic suspense . . . Pond's are his first sponsors . . . Got idea for title from staring intently one day at his own desk bookends, which contained a novel, an almanac, telephone directory, dictionary, the Bible . . . "Everything was right between a pair of bookends," he says thoughtfully.