Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1950)

Cincinnati were guests on Rudy Vallee's show and made one of the fastest clicks ever known on the air. They stood before the mike without instruments and turned themselves into an orchestra. Before the last note of their.theme song, "Hold That Tiger," faded, they were a sensation. Necessity had proved a kind mother in their case. When they were youngsters in Piqua, Ohio, they were too poor to afford musical instruments. All they had between them was one six dollar and twenty-five cent mail order guitar. That forced them to imitate other instruments by voice alone, and made them great. Eddie Cantor, famous on the stage, was persuaded to make his air debut by Vallee who also put George Jessel on for his first broadcast this year. In 1932, Cantor became the star of the Chase and Sanborn show, and has been at the top ever since, beginning the Eddie Cantor Show in 1940. His success story is one everybody likes to remember. He was an orphan at two years, grew up in poverty on New York's lower East Side but became so big a musical comedy star that he had $2,000,000 to lose in 1929. This he promptly made back with three books, Caught Short, Yoo-hoo, Prosperity and Your Next President and a series of movies. These were later to be banned in Germany for no other reason than that Eddie Cantor was born Izzie Iskowitz. It was a sharp financial blow to Cantor who shared profits on his films, but all Americans can be proud of his answer to the insult: "That's fine. I don't want to make the people laugh who make my people cry." Back in the spring of 1931, two very young business men, trying to think up something funny to do for a benefit show, invented the ancient Ozark gaffers, Lum and Abner. Chester Lauck (Lum) was managing an automobile finance company and Norris Goff (Abner) was secretary of his father's grocery company when the Jot 'Em Down Store in mythical Pine Ridge was born. (Some years later the real town of Waters, Arkansas, changed its name to Pine Ridge in their honor.) Eight broadcasts later it was "Goodbye commerce— hello show business." Except for a year out for movies, Lum and Abner have been on the air ever since. Two other outstanding teams started this year. Clara, Lou 'n' Em began to gossip over their back fence, and Myrt and Marge started their sprightly adventures. Few guessed it, but these two pretty "sisters" were mother and daughter. Myrt became Mrs. Damerel at sixteen when she was in the chorus of "The Merry Widow" and married an actor in the cast. Marge was born a year later. Their radio show came to a tragic end in 1942 when Marge, after doing the broadcast and happily leaving for the hospital, died the next day in childbirth. Little Orphan Annie (who had started in the funnies in 1925) was one of the first daily serials of any consequence for children, and is doubly important in that it marked a big change in advertising — direct sales appeals to the kiddies instead of to mother. By R sending in two Ovaltine box tops, children got a free badge and a code book '' so they could understand the secret message broadcast every Wednesday. ^ After this blinding flash of inspiration Radio's Own Life Story (Continued from page 20) sponsors ran around wild-eyed thinking up ideas to attract the younger set. Ireene Wicker (she got that extra E in her name from a numerologist who s^id it would bring her luck) started The Singing Lady for Kellogg. The Cnildren's Hour, which began in Philadelphia in 1927, moved to New York. It is memorable because of the many unknown youngsters it started to fame — Ann Sheridan, Ezra Stone, Carol Bruce, Gloria Jean, Al Bernie, Joan Roberts, Arnold Stang and Kitty Kallen among others. There was big news in news. The March of Time started to sing out its dramatic name. Edwin C. Hill was The Man in the Front Row and in 1932 he began his famous Human Side of the News which brought him a vast following and which has gone on and on ever since. Pope Pius XI opened Vatican City's HVJ on February 12 with an international broadcast, and his voice was heard for the first time in America. Louella Parsons started broadcasting from Hollywood. She shared time with Raymond Paige's orchestra on the SunKist Show, doing a five-minute interview with a movie star and setting the pattern for her star-studded Hollywood Hotel which was later to be one of the first great shows originating on the West Coast. The oldest of the radio forums, The University of Chicago Round Table of the Air, began. It is most important as a trail blazer because it put emphasis on democratic discussions of all sides of controversial issues, and was very widely imitated after it went on the NBC network in 1933. Frank Hummert took time out from his newly-discovered daytime serials to produce The American Album of Familiar Music. Frank Munn, long its star, was so popular that — though he retired in 1945 — this magazine still gets heavy mail asking for news of him. Hansel and Gretel, first opera to go on a network in its entirety from the stage of the Metropolitan, was heard on December 25, a magnificent Christmas Dresent to the country from Texaco, and the first of a long series on both the Red and Blue networks, and still going today. The Boswell sisters, Connie, Martha and Vet, had been on the air for several years, but this year Connie began to emerge as the atar of the three. She had a sustaining show on CBS and later went on the Camel Caravan and the Kraft Music Hall, after Vet married in 1935 and the troupe disbanded. Connie was hurt in a fall from a coaster wagon when she was four years old, but her wheel chair was never allowed to interfere with her music. The girls were trained for concert as they grew up in New Orleans, but drifted to jazz and hot rhythms. They were famous for "triple talk" in choruses long before double talk was a fad, and developed a fascinating new style — singing against the beat — terrific! People couldn't get enough. Rubinoff, the soulful violinist from Russia, brought his widely publicized $100,000 Stradiverius to the Chase and Sanborn Show. The Street Singer, Arthur Tracy, made "Mydah, rambling rose of the wildwood," and his accordion famous. Little Jack Little started his distinctive half-talk, half-melody style, forced on him after he had strained his voice at a football victory in Waterloo, Iowa. Singin' Sam (Harry Frankel) was billed as The Old Singing Master but is remembered best for the commercial Barbasol, Barbasol No brush, no lather, no rub-in Just wet your razor and begin . . . Dear to the memory are all of these, but let us catch up with the three young singers who were just about to roar into the really big time. Dorothy Lamour had already won a beauty contest and the title "Miss New Orleans." This triumph had not paid off in much but the honor. Complete with mother, she went to Chicago to seek her fortune. While she was waiting for fate to smile, she worked as an elevator operator. This was not exciting, but she was not downhearted. She sang at her work. That was how Herbie Kay heard her and signed her as featured vocalist with his band. In 1931 she was signed by NBC to do her own program. Four years later, Paramount put her in a sarong for her first film, "The Jungle Princess," and in 1940 she made "The Road to Singapore," first of that series with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. This was an undreamed-of future for all of them in 1931, because Bing was just about to get his big chance, quite by accident. This is the way it happened. W. S. Paley, young president of CBS, was on vacation, relaxing on the deck of S. S. Europa, Europe bound. He had promised himself not to even think of radio, but his mind flew back to business when he heard a recorded voice pouring out of a stateroom, "To You My Love, My Life, My All, I Surrender, Dear." Without ceremony, Paley rushed down a corridor, knocked at the door, demanded to know who had made the record. He had never heard the name, Bing Crosby, before — and neither had the radio operator who, in a matter of minutes, was sending an urgent message to Paley's New York office. Few people had. Bing did his first broadcast on his new sustaining contract for CBS in New York at 11 P. M. He was filled with gloom after the show, and left a sad little note for his brother-manager, Everett, "Dear Ev — cancel all contracts. I gave all I had and it's no good — Bing." His brother still brings that note out on occasion to prove that Bing can be wrong, because the next day Bing was an undoubted success — and under difficult circumstances, because opposite him on NBC was the immensely popular Ruggerio Rudolpho Eugenio Columbo, otherwise known as "Russ," the Romeo of Song. Columbo's is a tragic story. He would have been one of the greatest if an accident had not ended his life in 1934. A friend, sitting across a table from him, was examining a pistol. He kept the barrel carefully pointed down, but when the weapon was accidentally discharged, the bullet ricocheted from the table, straight through Columbo's heart. He died instantly. At that time his mother was very ill and not expected to live. His heart-broken brothers and sisters decided to spare her the grievous news, told her that Russ was on tour, and gave her letters which the half-blind old lady could not read, thinking to solace the few weeks she had left. She lived nearly twenty years without knowing.