We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Dignity goes down the
drain when madcaps Rayburn
and Finch get together.
Finch demonstrates his way
of winning at canasta —
looking at Rayburn's cards.
^Arnutk
uinina
GOES!
24
A delicate ear on a New York morning can hear a sound of falling chips that is almost deafening. The chips are falling from the shoulders of grumpy early-risers who defy anyone to be funny in the morning. They are tuned in to WNEW's Anything Goes and they are laughing in spite of themselves.
Grudgingly, listeners admit that Gene Rayburn and Dee Finch brighten the pre-coffee wasteland of early morning — anywhere from 6 to 9:30 A.M., six days a week. Their humor is sometimes sophisticated, sometimes corny, sometimes college magazine. Perhaps the key to it all is simply the unexpected. The ingredients of Anything Goes are a solid mixture of phonograph records plus the imaginations of Gene and Dee. Cutting in on lines from records, the boys come up with fantastic combinations. Picture a silken-voiced commercial announcer interrupted by: "Trow dat bum outta here," or "Aw, shut up and drink your beer," or the latest, "It's possible — ." Imagine a throbbing romantic ballad interrupted by "Now, see what you've done. You woke my baby," or "Don't sell Daddy any more whiskey." Typical Rayburn and Finch.
Gimmick records — the ones with the funny lines — are locked in a special file, carefully indexed and marked in pencil on each disc. They come from strange places: regular novelty recordings, foreign language waxings, kiddie records, old com
mercials. Radio people, severest critics of any show, have sent many to Rayburn and Finch. Robert Q. Lewis, Abe Burrows and Andy Russell are three such "scouts" for Anything Goes.
The boys also delight in poking sly fun at their fellow WNEW disc jockeys, Art Ford and Martin Block. Ford and Block share the feeling of most sponsors — they love it.
Gene Rayburn is the aggressor in most attacks on commercials, popular records or various personalities. Dee Finch is the quieter straight man. Both are tall, dark and — well — handsome. Married, they often make up a social foursome with their wives. Either can do an excellent job on straight announcing if he chooses; both prefer the zany freedom of Anything Goes. Their record choices are good and the chatter — funny as it is — never replaces records.
The show is a consistently high-rated one in the New York area, easily the most competitive radio market in the world. In the program's three years it has gained listeners constantly — the only New York program to do so during the same morning time period.
Rayburn is a self-confessed ham who lets out his acting talents in mimicry on Anything Goes. He has an eight-year-old daughter, Lynn, and his wife is a former model.
Finch is married to his childhood sweetheart, Betty, whom he says he "rescued from the teaching profession."