Radio stars (Oct 1938)

RADIO STARS DAVE ELMAN'S OWN STORY (Continued from page 23) three-inch-long little zebra, beautifully These translucent, opalescent little globes do look like exceptionally lovely pearls. But they're not. Gus Boh'land, the famous fisherman-sculptor of Miami Beach, presented them to me, and they're really pre Odd ? It certainly is. And sometimes it's odd the hobbies some persons will follow, and enjoy. Charles Metz, a piano salesman, makes little, miniature orchestras out of nuts. They're comic little characters two or three inches high and they all "work". The fiddler scrapes his bow, the drummer crashes his tiny cymbals, and so on. Then there's Dr. Frank M. McCluskey of Glenwood, Iowa. He's a dignified looking, gray-haired dentist, prominent in his town. And his hobby is collecting hairpins found in famous places or pins of famous persons. He has some sent him by Mae West and has given me a solid gold replica of a hairpin he picked up on the observation tower of the Empire State Building. Or there's Howard D. Gibbs. well-to-do coal man who collects coins. That's not so unusual, of course. But Mr. Gibbs, wno is President of the Pittsburgh Numismatic Society, collects some very unusual coins. There's one in the office now, resting on a couple of filing cases. It's an ancient copper coin, roughly the shape of a flat bow tie. But this old-time token is almost four feet long and weighs some thirty-odd pounds ! Imagine paying off salaries in those ! I have a beautifully carved, wooden paper-knife, too. The handle is a perfectly formed female leg — and it was done by a 78-year-old crossing watchman, Gilbert E. Lane, known as the Whittling Parson or the Jack-knife Minister. He lectures on wood-carving at times and, incidentally, reads his own poetry. Evelyn Ware, a former Ziegfeld Girl, now Mrs. C. Ludlow Smith, makes large portrait dolls as a hobby. This is one example of a hobby that led into a job, for Mrs. Smith now sells her dolls. Many other hobbyists have found what started as a pleasant pastime turning into a source of revenue. Delphine Binger was bequeathed forty thousand wishbones by her family, who collected them for luck. She started polishing them up and giving them to friends for lucky charms. Then she found there was a market for them. Now she runs a wishbone supply business that brings in a tidy income. Lyman E. Cook is a lawyer whose hobby was the collection of funny laws — like the New York law that says if a man tells his girl he cannot live without her it is equivalent to a formal marriage proposal. As a result of his appearance on Hobby Lobby, Mr. Cook received an offer to get together a book of those laws, which is now pub lished. And you may have read of Ellis Stenman of Pigeon Cove, Mass. He built his entire home and all its furnishings of rolled up, especially treated newspapers as a spare time hobby. So many visitors and souvenir hunters came to see his paper house that the Stenmans were driven out. Now they live next door and charge admission to see the newsprint home. Paul C. Grenier, who was unemployed, passed his time with his hobby of making model houses out of cigar boxes, with cardboard and rubber sponge for the landscaping. Now he's working at it, making models for architectural purposes. Perhaps one reason hobbies interest me is the fact that I'm a hobbyist myself. As a boy I was a collector of every imaginable thing, from stamps and matchbook covers to soap sculpture and model railroads. Music, too, was a great hobby of mine, since I come of a musical family. My parents, brothers and sisters formed an orchestra of which I was one of the violinists. Medicine shows, playing my home town at Park River. North Dakota, used to attract me strongly, too, and when I was only eight, the lure of the stage got me and I ran away to join a traveling carnival. I came home in the fall, but with my heart set on being an actor. And an actor I was, with stock companies, Chautauquas, showboats and repertory shows, not to mention vaudeville. In the early days of radio I worked over several stations as comedian, mimic and commentator ; also I wrote continuity, all of which led to my doing radio production work for several advertising agencies. So it would seem that the three factors — my hobbies, stage and radio ex 56