Radio stars (Oct 1934-Sept 1935)

RADIO STARS the broadcast laughed, of course, and I'll never forget Rosaline creeping out of the studio that night as if she'd been socked with a yard-arm. On the air, Mary Lou is sweet as cider, isn't she? Take her off the air and you've got two parts of as torrid a little feud as ever scorched the paint on a girl's upper lip. Remember that when you tune in next Thursday night. And while you're about it, notice that Tiny and Maria and the others aren't calling Frank Mclntyre Captain John Henry any more. Nossir, he's Captain Henry just like Charles Winninger used to be Captain Henry. There's a story for you that hasn't seen the light of day till now. Why Charles Winninger quit the Showboat has been argued and discussed ever since that afternoon last winter when the shocked producers of the Showboat picked up an evening paper and read the numbing news that their Number One star was leaving their river packet. I know of several reasons. One thing, he didn't like his salary, which was one thousand dollars a week. He had been signed at that figure and promised more, so they tell me. He never got more. The Showboat moved from a zero entertainment to the top drawer of radio fare. You couldn't tell it by looking at his pay check, however. Another reason, he liked to stick in his own wisecracks. Being a seasoned Broadway actor, long accustomed to pleasing the public, he felt his experience provided lines better fitted for him to say in certain situations than those provided by the boy wonders who write the script. The boy wonders disagreed and the big bosses backed them up. The third reason is that he drank cocktails at cocktail time on Thursday instead of waiting until after the broadcast which, on at least one occasion, brought him a semi-public dressing down from the man who was spending the twenty-seven thousand dollars necessary to pay for each hour of Showboat fun. Paying that kind of money, the bossman didn't want to take chances with a Captain Henry who drank cocktails at the cocktail hour, though I'm here to tell you that Charles Winninger was a better Captain Henry with a cocktail than he was without it. I know Winninger never got over that call-down. When he got a chance to go into a Broadway play, he jumped at it and quit the Showboat cold. I'll never forget the ruckus that stirred up among the writers and producers. The listening public couldn't be told that Charlie had quit, nosirree ! Captain Henry was a real guy on a real boat and he just couldn't disappear without explanation. There were more studio huddles that week than you'll see in a whole football season. They decided the captain either had to die or go away. I remember hearing them talk it over. The boy wonders who wrote the script allowed that it wouldn't do for him to die on account of too many millions of Americans might feel so bad about it that they'd tune off the Showboat and turn to some more cheerful entertainment. On the other hand, some argued a good dramatic death might jerk a few profitable tears out of the chair-warmers. Remember the night Maria missed the Captain and went below to find him alone in his cabin? He told her he didn't feel so good, told her to run along and let an old man sit and suffer. The show upstairs had to go on. Remember how she made him lie down on his bunk and promise to get some rest and sleep? Captain Henry was mighty close to death that night, but the program ended with him still gently snoring. That was the week the boy wonders couldn't make up their minds whether to kill him off or simply send him ashore. Eventually, they turned up a childhood sweetheart, got him married, and then bundled him away to a fictitious farm. You listeners can't appreciate this fully but it was both beautiful and astonishing the way they left the running of the whole Showboat to a strange Captain John Henry, old Captain Henry's longlost brother, who up to that moment hadn't even been mentioned. In a few brief weeks, Tiny and Maria and the others who had to talk to Captain John Henry began to bend under the strain of using such a long name, I guess, because they just completely dropped the John. Since then, it has been Captain Henry all over again. And the wonderful part is that the Showboat puffs right ahead from Thursday to Thursday, without a complaint from any one of its millions of loyal listeners. Even an orchestra or an orchestra leader can cause you to work up an appetite for aspirin occasionally. Don Voorhees was the original band master, and a jim dandy, too. He plays plenty of shows and gets along fine, but I guess that is because people don't try to tell him how to run his band. On the Showboat, he was told. It was a producer, one of the fellows who does the same job for a radio show that a motion picture director does for a movie. This producer is always a radio expert, and he can prove it to you any time, day or night. Well, this expert tried to select Don's music for him and even direct his band. And Don didn't let him get away with it. So it came to a show-down . . . there was something about musicians' union rules and the boss-man trying to pull a fast one mixed up in it . . . and Don walked out with his band. Gus Haenschen moved in then with the understanding that he was just a music master, the expert was boss. And the expert was boss for a whole couple of months until the big bosses got tired of him. They got rid of him cute as could be, too. That expert was a temperamental sort of bird with a Hugh S. Johnson opinion of himself. The big bosses left him out of some important conferences, switched the show around on him without asking his opinion. Just as they had calculated, the expert exploded. He waved his arms and his hair and resigned in a loud, threatening voice. Before he could change his mind, the big bosses accepted it and went out and hired an expert they liked better. Finding a baritone with this river ship wasn't easy, either, as you might imagine. Jules Bledsoe, the Negro, was the first; fitted right into the picture, too. Wasn't this a cotton boat, wheeling its way do* the Mississippi? Folks down south didn want a black baritone singing with a those pretty white girls about. Bleds< left the cast. Later, they dismissed the Hall Johnso Singers . . .• no better chorus exists . . and I'll always believe it was on accour of the color of their skins. After Bledsoe left, Nelson Eddy caml aboard, only to be replaced by Wilbu Evans. Neither satisfied. Then Q>nra Thibault knocked on the captain's doo and was allowed to show what he coul do. W hat he did was impressive cnoug to get him a salary of one hundred an fifty dollars a week. He was hired an glad to' be hired. He's still hired an. getting three hundred and fifty. An. singing on a fistfull of other shows, toe Right now, he is the only fly in th ointment for Lanny Ross. Now, get thi straight. Lanny Ross is a prince and : great guy, but he doesn't like another mal. singer cutting into his pull. It wouldn't surprise me to see' him leav. the Showboat during the hot month ahead. Certainly, he's done more thai any other single person to make the pro gram what it is ; certainly he's got a goo< rest coming to him. But then, if he did clear out, wha would happen to the show? I don't so how the new Captain Henry could ho it together. We all admire Frank Mcln tyre for the job he's doing, but he neve will be the equal of the old Captain Henr who swelled up and turned red in th face and yelled : "It's only the beginnin't folks. Onlceece the beeeee-ginnn-in's." Annette Hanshaw is gone, playing tru ant on the Camel Caravan for twice th( fun and thrice the money. Mary Lou'; roles are getting scantier and scantier Some Thursdays, she has barely a verst and chorus to sing. Too many signs indicate that the boy wonders who write the show are moving her toward an exit. No Captain Henry, no Annette, no Lanny, what is there left? Well, Tiny Ruffner doesn't quit easily. He's still got Maria and the John Henry who has become Captain Henry and Conrad. Tiny has seen close to five million dollars spent on these programs since we both started to work on the old tub. And more millions are available if he needs them. So there'll be a Showboat for a while longer, I don't doubt. Maybe there will always be a Showboat. New talent comes along and some of it is good enough to wear a star's crown. Some of it is smart or zippy or ingratiating enough to make the public like it so well that it forgets the old favorites. That's progress, I guess. Personally, I'll never forget the old crew. Maybe they did scrap with each other, maybe they weren't dependable and letter perfect, but Nells bells! Who is? I'll never forget that they buried their hates and heartaches once each week long enough to live up to Captain Charles Henry Winninger 's promise of "the greatest show on the river." * * * See Program Section for Thursday at 9:00 p.m. EST for station list. 70