Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1950)

9 m Have you seen the new "channel" winners, girls? I'm talking about JOAN LANSING the television channel program winners you see on American Broadcasting Company Television Network shows . . . winners by a mile for great class and style. Just take a good look at the line-up of shows "in the swim" these nights on ABC-TV. The famous LONE RANGER rides into view as he and Silver, along with Tonto, fight for right and justice . . . and head into the hills for General Mills. * THE LONE RANGER comes to a full STOP! as handsome BERT PARKS issues the call to STOP THE MUSIC! Now you can see this radio "sweetheart" on TV . . . and is he cute! BERT bounces along in a full hour of fun for everyone who tries to STOP THE MUSIC! Old Gold and Admiral are the sponsors. Business is booming at HOLIDAY HOTEL, so check in for a fine time at this happy hostelry. DON AMECHE, the movie favorite, is the genial, general manager . . . with the entertainment-key to TV pleasure. Packard sponsors this ABC treat that's ridin' high with every girl and guy. You might find this same guy and girl still a-whirl for BLIND DATE. ARLENE FRANCIS femcees this wit-and-woo show that's timed to perfect televiewing. Timed by Gruen, of course. ABC-TV channel activities get into terrific action with I COVER TIMES SQUARE. Follow newspaper ace, JOHNNY WARREN, as he covers the beat of these famous streets. There's dynamite in the air ... as you watch I COVER TIMES SQUARE. Appropriately sponsored by Airwick. You'll see more high-tension TV on ABC's ROLLER DERBY ... a fastpaced, high-speed program that gives you lightning looks at the sport that's sweeping the nation. It's quite lady-like, too, to cool off with Blatz Beer while you watch the torrid whizzing! The great pig-skin pro, RED GRANGE, takes over your local ABC-TV Channel -with his outstanding PREDICTIONS for football games from coast-to-coast. Florsheim Shoes "foots" the bill. You can see most of these programs on your local American Broadcasting Company Network Television Channel on Thursdays. However, there is some variation in many cities ... so please BE SURE to check your local newspapers' television logs for exact day and time. ebon laostoq 80 Advertisement business. The boss believes that there are hundreds of performers in every city in America, who have the talent to become professional entertainers but can't afford to leave their homes to take a chance in New York or Hollywood. So he has broken with the you-gotta-goto-New York by taking his show right into the home towns of candidates for fame and fortune. In this way thousands are auditioned every week as I, one of these thousands, was auditioned in Charleston, S. C. Following the first audition, five contestants are chosen to appear on Heidt's Sunday night broadcast over CBS for Philip Morris' Original Youth Opportunity Program on which they compete for the weekly prize of $250. The contestant who wins that broadcast appears on the following week's show to compete with four new contestants. As long as you keep winning you keep competing each week for the $250 prize money. At the end of each thirteen-week period (of which, for the survivors, there are three, making fifty-two weeks in all) a quarterfinal competition is held in which the outstanding performers of the thirteen weeks just past compete. The winners of the four quarter-finals receive an additional seven-hundred and fifty dollars and enter into the Grand Finals in which they compete against one another for the grand prize of $5000 and the gold championship belt. Except for the gold championship belt which, because of my vast girth couldn't be found for me (I got one later!) this is the way it went with me — which is what makes the Horatio Alger story even I, who am living it, can scarcely believe . . . In Savannah, I won again and then I, with the rest of the troupe, rolled merrily across the South, working North to Chicago where I made my first appearance on the air in the Chicago Opera House before an audience of eighteen thousand people I could see and a radio audience of uncounted thousands I could not see. But just before I went on the air, I said my prayers. I asked God to please help me, and He did. I won with my rendition of The Lord's Prayer. After the Chicago broadcast, I kept on winning and it was then I got the Lawd-a-mercy-can-this-be-I feeling about the whole thing. In my biography, written up by CBS, it says "As Ralph kept winning after Chicago, his popularity began to zoom." It sure enough did. Letters and phone calls, folks wanting autographs, agents offering to "handle" me, people asking me to endorse everything from toothpaste to television. As the show travelled West, with me winning each week, the whole city of Charleston became Sigwald town. You never in your life heard the like! Every Monday morning the Charleston News Courier carried the headline, "Sigwald Wins Again." My aunt wrote me, "The whole town is in a frenzy — and so am I." At the Fresno, California, quarterfinals I received the longest wire ever transmitted by Western Union. It was seventy-five feet long and jam-packed with more than twenty-five thousand! Charleston signatures wishing me luck in the grand finals. The head of the1 Western Union office in Fresno brought me the wire himself. After I'd looked at it for a dumbfounded minute or so, it got all blurred with tears. I was thinking, twenty-five thousand signatures from — twenty-five thousand friends! After I won the quarter-finals title (and the cash prize of seven hundred and fifty dollars) — this was in May, 1949 — the House and the Senate of South Carolina passed. a joint resolution honoring me and requesting my appearance at a joint session which was to be proclaimed "Ralph Sigwald Joint Session in Columbia." At the same time the Charleston Azalea Festival named me "King For A Day" and sent a plane to fetch me home from the West Coast. On the way to Charleston the plane was ordered to land in Columbia, S. C, the state capital, where a motorcycle escort whisked and whirled me — me! — to the legislature. There, with Governor Strom J. Thurman in attendance, plus a crowd of 5,000 legislators and state employees I sang under the capitol dome for the first time in the state's history. The place was so crowded — some people sitting two on a seat — that the Senate couldn't get in and sit down. So I was obliged to sing twice, first for the House of Representatives and then for the Senate. After which, to make up for lost time, the Governor — the Governor — the Governor himself — drove me back to Charleston, in his own car, too, so that I would be on time to catch the Azalea Festival. Nowhere — nowhere in the world, except only in America, "could the like of this happen to the like of an ordinary working man like me. On the night of December 18, 1949, I went into the Grand Finals of the Heidt show in Washington, D. C.'s Uline Arena. Of the eight thousand audience, a good one thousand were my good friends from Charleston who had come up to Washington, to be with me when I needed 'em and needed 'em, you can count on it, bad. I didn't think I had much of any chance on that final and fearsome night, the competition being what it was. There was little Tommy Check, eleven years old, from Allentown, Pa., — a drummer and boy, what a drummer! A little Gene Krupa. There was Al Hirt, a terrific triple-tongueing trumpeter— a twenty-five-year-old Harry James. There were Gilbert and Wayne Shepard, fifteen and seventeen-yearold kids, Swiss bell-ringers, from Pasadena, California, and they were terrific. On this night of nights the regular stage show of the Heidt Parade of Stars was, as always, presented first. Then the gong sounded for the Grand Finals with its five thousand dollar first prize and it's gold championship belt and although the echo of that gong may go out of my ears one day, I doubt it. Tommy went on first. He was terrific. He was so terrific and the applause so deafening I said, "That's it!" The Shepard Brothers were on next and again RADIO MIRROR DAYTIME FASHIONS: Pages 42 and 43* '// the preceding pages do not list the stores in your vicinity where Radio Mirror Fashions are sold, write to the manufacturers, listed below: Skirt, vest and blouse: McArthur, 1372 Broadway, New York, N. Y. Jersey skirt and blouse: Koret of California, 611 Mission Street, San Francisco, California