Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1950)

gentleman just two questions: Did you ever tell a kid a joke that he didn't get or didn't think was funny? Did you get a laugh, or even a polite giggle? You got a blank stare, and that's all you got, brother. There is absolutely no put-on with most kids. And you'd better not try any put-on with them either, if you don't want to be made to feel like hunting your hole. Back in 1943 when Frank Ferrin, now the producer of the Buster Brown program, asked me to do a Saturday kid show for the Brown Shoe Company, I was pretty leery of it. "What do I know about entertaining kids?" I asked him. "You've got two of your own, haven't you?" was the reply. "You must have learned something from them, Ed." "I have learned one thing," I admitted. "They're a tough audience." So, as usual when I can't make up my mind, I went home and asked Ruth, my wife, what she thought of the idea. Ruth said, "Do it, Ed. You can do it, and you'll enjoy it." I called Frank Ferrin and told him I'd do the audition. Right off the bat, I fielded one idea for the program — one that had never failed with my own two youngsters, Jim and Mary Jane: tell 'em a good story. Dramatize it. O.K., that accounted for fifteen minutes of my half -hour. Now, what to do during the other fifteen? Ilp till then, the line of entertainment U I'd peddled had always been just songs and patter, backgrounded by my own piano accompaniment when I used to work vaudeville. I first got tangled up with the kilocycles on WSB, down in Atlanta, Georgia, back in 1922 — the early stone age of radio. How that came about was an accident. A friend and myself were walking down Peachtree Street in Atlanta one Saturday when we decided to look in on the new radio station. There was only one man in the place but he was in enough of a lather for three. He was Lambdin Kay, WSB's complete staff, and a most unhappy human being. There he was with all that equipment, all the air in Georgia, and nothing to put out on it. The lady singer hadn't showed up. My friend mentioned that I could play and sing. Next thing I knew Lambdin Kay had shoved a piano in front of me and announced that Ed McConnell was now on the air. (He figured shoving the piano would be easier than shoving me; I weighed about 275 at the time.) Well, sir, that woman never did show up. I believe I was on the air nearly two hours that first time, before I was finally relieved. And after the telegrams and phone calls started coming in, I enjoyed every minute of it, even though it was all for free. Right from the start I made a practice of mentioning over the air the names of people who wrote letters or sent telegrams. Two of my earliest and most faithful correspondents were a couple of business men down in Arcadia, Florida — a fruit broker and a car dealer. Pretty soon I figured that those fellows'd be willing to pay something to have their names mentioned „ regularly over the air. So I wired them. When my clients wired back: "Terms satisfactory. Check in mail," I was flabbergasted. I resolved that my first sponsors were sure going to get their 76 Give Me Kids Anytime! (Continued from page 52) money's worth of radio mention. They did. ' I believe my first commercial ran about half an hour. Those, to the best of my knowledge, were the first paid radio commercials broadcast on American air. Whether this historical fact entitles me to be called a benefactor of humanity is debatable. One thing isn't debatable, however: without paid commercials, radio would never have got to be the big source of free entertainment it is today. The sponsor pays the freight. After about a year I went down to Winter Park, Florida, where with a couple of partners I put in my own radio station. When the boom began to shrivel I turned over my share of WDBO to my partners and moved on. At WSM, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1928 I picked up one of the two sponsors I still have, a lamp company. (Here let me state that, though I've always called myself a salesman as much as an entertainer, I don't mean by that I can sell just anything. I've got to be sold on a product myself before I can peddle it successfully.) I worked a spell in Cincinnati, where I hooked up with a paint company, my first network sponsor. Going network led to my moving to Chicago, where I was in 1943 when, at my agent's suggestion, I took on the Buster Brown Gang. I sweat gallons of blood trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my Buster Brown time besides giving the kids a dramatized story. Without those two sprouts of my own to experiment, I doubt I'd ever have worked it out. Their reactions help a lot with the show. I've never believed in the old adage that children should be seen and not heard. How are you going to find out what kind of people your kids are, if you never give them a chance to express themselves? 'Cause, believe me, kids are people, real individual persons; they're not just small size replicas of Mom and Pop. Any parent who thinks they are is due for a lot of surprises. Whether the surprises are pleasant or unpleasant depends on whether the kids are allowed to work out their own personalities naturally or whether they have to battle every inch of the way against repressive authority, like grass trying to grow up through a crack in a sidewalk. Cultivate 'em, don't cement 'em in, is my motto for raising kids. When I first introduced Jim and Mary Jane to Froggy the Gremlin — that irrepressible needier of over-inflated personalities — and saw their delighted reactions, I knew I had me a permanent character for the Buster Brown Gang. I believe Froggy is my most popular character with the older kids at least. In the tot and toddler division, Squeekie the Mouse probably holds first rank. We also have a little music on the show, mostly comic songs which I composed myself. The first thirteen weeks the Buster Brown Gang was on the air we didn't have a studio audience. Then we invited the kids to come down and watch us. Now I can't imagine how we ever got along without 'em. Having a few hundred happy kids out front is the best tonic a radio show could have. More than once during those first few months of doing a show I wondered how big a home audience we had. Then something happened that not only reassured me but brought a lot of happiness to a little girl who'd been on short rations of that commodity for a long time. Her name was Evelyn Valentine and she was an invalid. She wrote me a letter saying she'd like to get a valentine from me. Something made me want to read that letter over the air to my Buster Brown Gang. I did, and when I'd finished, I said, "You bet I'll send you a valentine, Evelyn, and I'm asking all my buddies to send you one, too." And I gave her address. That little girl got 50,000 valentines. A couple of years later, in 1945, I got another very touching letter from a little girl in St. Louis who'd been a wheel-chair paralytic nearly all her life. She asked me to send her a birthdav card. I read that letter over the air, too, and those wonderful kids who listen to the Buster Brown Gang, you know what they did? They sent that little girl over 300,000 pieces of mail — cards, presents, remembrances of every sort. Now do you wonder why I think kids make the best radio audience? My gang writes to me, too, mainly to tell me what they like or do not like. Whenever I don't give Froggy Gremlin enough to do, I hear about it. Some of my kids go on for ten pages telling me exactly what they want Froggy to do and say — and then illustrate it in crayon to make sure I get it right. I always try to follow instructions of this kind. Another nice way the kids have of showing what they think of old Smilin' Ed is reflected in the sales records of my sponsor. When the Buster Brown Gang first took the air, children's shoes were the smallest division of their business. Now, it's the biggest. Nuff said? In 1945 we McConnells moved out here to Hollywood, California, and ever since Buster Brown's been riding the kilocycles from NBC's West Coast headquarters. I guess about the biggest thing that's happened to Ruth and me since our move is the advent of our first grandchild, a cute little carrot-top, eight months old at present writing. While waiting for my grandson to get big enough so I can start teaching him to swim in our backyard pool, I find myself putting in a lot of time with Jim, my son, who's fourteen now. Jim and I share a hobby — photography. I furnish the equipment and Jim furnishes the talent. To provide transportation for our photographic field trips I recently bought one of those little sawed-off English MG runabouts. Getting out of one of those things isn't as hard as it looks; you just unbuckle it and stand up. I'm kind of like cars like women are about hats — got to have a new one every few months. The MG is known as our 115y2 car. Right now I'm under contract to put Buster Brown on television, whenever our sponsor deems it advisable. But whether or whenever I go on television, I want to keep my kids with me. Any performer needs another pay-off besides that green stuff the banks dote on; he needs to feel some of what he puts out coming back to him from his audience. A man would go empty mighty quick, if it was all put-out and no take-in. When you're putting out for the kids, you get an awful lot back. You get a lot more back than you put out. How can you beat a deal like that?