Radio stars (Sept 1933)

RADIO STARS KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN! Because, if you don't, you're going to miss an awful lot of fun! RADIO STARS is going zooming onto the newsstands next month with so much good stuff in it. FIRST— It will be twice as big. Which means twice as good, too. Oh, but it will be the same price — just one dime. SECOND— There will be one of the most amusing stories you ever read in this first bigger-andbetter issue of ours. The title is "Off the Air!" No, it doesn't concern radio stars who have been fired from their jobs. It's all about this business of keeping the ether pure for young America's ears. In other words — what does a radio censor do when he finds a blue joke in the scripts? And what does he do with sexy song lyrics. AND THIRD— You'll find a whole slew of new departments. WATCH FOR IT! OUT SEPTEMBER FIRST! l«d al half I GOODWIN TIRE ft RUBBER CO. 1S40 S. MIcMcan Av*^ Chicago, III. ■^ILVERUTK■hHcht Lantarn I Ortfv far 2 Tim I \ -/i mobile Dfrcw light beam. / DONT oemv ORDER TODAY. HooMhold wid I Sherlock Holmes Unmasked (Continued from page 23) more popular fellow at any of his clubs — the Lambs, the Players and Town Hall Club — than he is. He just doesn't bother much about practicalities. It's Mrs. Richard Gordon — Emily Ann Wellman, of Broadway fame — who is the practical and efficient member of the family. All Richard Gordon knows about being a detective you could put in your eye, but he's forced to be Sherlock Holmes off the air as well as on. His fans take him literally as the world's most astute crime-detector. His mail is filled with requests to solve the mystery and catch the criminal of every major crime that is committed in the country. He was swamped with letters begging him to find the Lindbergh baby. Even the cops treat him with unusual respect. I N his neighborhood at Shippan Point. Stamford, Connecticut, Dick Gordon is literally up to his ears in the Sherlock Holmes legend. His neighbors won't let him be anything but the detective. They're very proud of him. They made him Honorary Deputy Sheriff of Fairfield County and he wears the solid gold badge of his office pinned on his biM-fold. "If I ever had to help figure out a crime, you'd see a very rattled deputysheriff," he said, laughingly, when I asked him about it. Any time of the day or night you can find a congenial crowd of men gathered about Mr. Gordon in the basement of his home, where he has an elaborate workshop with every tool necessary for the following of his hobby, woodworking. Kibitzers are plentiful. The plumber, laundryman or anyone else who happens to drop in, always makes a trip down to the basement to see what Sherlock is up to now. Yes, there is a bar which Mr. Gordon built himself, and a spittoon from the Metropolitan Opera house, which he boasts has been "spat in by Caruso." There's a pool table, too — everything built by this man who may not cut much of a figure as an amateur detective, but who certainly knows his woodworking. In the Gordon household, there are Peanuts, a very cute dog, and Pandora, the most amazing cat you could imagine. When I fir.st beheld Pandora, I wanted to jump up on the nearest table out of her way. She is half Angora and half raccoon — simply enormous and as wild-looking as one-half her ancestry. Pandora likes to wander in the woods near the house and pick up dead woodchucks or anything else that appeals to her fancy. On the air, Richard Gordon's faculties are intensively alive to the task of making himself into the shrewd and invincible Holmes. Yet, off the air, his day-dreaming and absentmindedness are traditional. The practical Emily Ann despairs of him. "When I send him shopping, I never e.xpect to see him bring back the thing I sent him for," she says. "Once I asked him to get a birthday card for a listener — a nice gesture for him — and he came back with a threader or some sort of gadget for curtain rods. He had forgotten all about the card. "He can never pass up the hardware department of a store. He'll always get a new tool or something for the house that I'd never think of using." Mr. Gordon often finds himself on a shopping tour without as much cash as he thought he had. And sometimes it is embarrassing when he starts to complete a purchase and finds he can't pay for it. But once it proved to be amusing. He was in a store and he wanted a certain article. It cost $12.50. He had $12.15 with him. He told the section manager that he would write a check for the amount, and the manager replied that he would have to be investigated in the business office first. "I'm the man who plays Sherlock Holmes on the air," Mr. Gordon said. "Oh, Sherlock Holmes !" the man exclaimed. "Well, that's perfectly all right, Mr. Holmes. You don't need to go to the office. Say, I think you're swell ! Now, how in the world did you figure out that murder last night ?" I WAS spending a very delightful week-end with the Gordons. Soon after my arrival. Mr. Gordon took me down to the basement to show me his new toy — a modern workbench, complete with all electrical appliances. On Sunday afternoon, I was lying on a divan in the livingroom, reading. Emily Ann was upstairs in her room, resting and "Sherlock" was in the basement, of course, happily experimenting with his new tools. Suddenly, I heard a nuiffled groan and, startled, I dashed down the basement stairs to see what the matter was. I ahnost fainted at what I .saw. There stood Mr. Gordon, with blood streaming from his left hand, while he looked dazedly at the tips of two fingers that had been cut off and were lying on his workbench before him. As I burst upon the scene, he swept the finger-tips into a handkerchief and held the handkerchief over his mutilated hand. "Don't tell Emily Ann," he said. "I don't want to frighten her. She would be terribly upset." He ran upstairs and told Emily Ann that he had had a sligh^ cut, and would ask George, the next-door neighbor, to drive him to a doctor. But George, it seems, was not at home and Dick Gordon calmly climbed into his car and prepared to drive himself. I was frantic. "You go, Emily." I said. "No." she said, believing the story he liad told her. "Not unless he asks