Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1942)

CcfT^ NEXT MONTH PEPPER YOUNGS FAMILY One of radio's well-loved stories comes to you as a heart-warming novel, beginning in the September Radio Mirror. You'll find hours of reading pleasure in the romance of Peggy Young and Carter Trent, the well-meant mistakes of Pepper, and the courage of Mother Young. In Living Portraits — PORTIA FACES LIFE Full page photographs of radio's famous woman lawyer and the people who are part of her dramatic story — pictures that will make you feel you know them better than ever before. STARS IN OUR HEAVEN It was only contempt she saw in his eyes — contempt because to him she was not a woman at all. And there was nothing in the world she wanted as much as his love. • Color pictures of your favorites. • Complete words and music of a hit song. • Kate Smith's Cooking Corner. • Program guide. • And many other exciting features. September Issue On Sale July 24 CBS is trying every morning (Monday through Friday) at 9:15, EWT. It's called The Radio Reader, and on it Mark Van Doren simply reads aloud from a novel for fifteen minutes. There's no dramatization, no music, no sound effects — just a man reading a story aloud. CBS didn't know how listeners would like it, but judging from the mail that poured in after Van Doren had spent a couple of weeks reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," they like it a lot, and the chances are the new kind of radio program will stay on all summer. * » * Beatrice Kay, star of the CBS Gay Nineties Revue, turns out to be America's ' first and only volunteer fire woman. Beatrice is a member in very good standing of the Volunteer! Department near her home in Clostejl N. J., and is always on hand ready to battle blazes when they occur — ■ even if it's the middle of the night when the siren begins to wail. *• * * ATLANTA, Ga.— You might call Cliff Cameron, staff organist at station WATL and frequently heard on the Mutual network, a sleight-of-hand musician. Seated at his Hammond organ, he divides his musical moments between it and a piano placed at right angles to the organ, swinging from one instrument to the other so fast and so often it would make * anyone else dizzy. But with Cliff, this double-duty only makes for more exciting music. Cliff also plays a four-manual pipe organ in Atlanta's largest theater, and as a sideline announces his own programs on the air. ' Music, in Cliff's life dates back to the days df his adolescence, when he played the pipe organ in church, piano at dancing school and in a dance band, and for variety the organ in a funeral chapel. He studied in several schools of music and then familiarized himself with radio by becoming a pupil of Irma Glen, NBC organist in Chicago. * * * The war struck tragically at Ireene Wicker, radio's Singing Lady, when she was notified that her son, Flight Lieutenant Charles Wicker of the Royal Canadian Air Force, was killed in action somewhere in Europe on April 27. Young Wicker, who was nineteen years old, enlisted in the RCAF in November, 1940. The last time he saw his mother was in the fall of 1941, when he had a month's leave before going on active duty. * * * COLUMBUS, Ohio— Something brand new in radio is the program called Conquerors of the Clouds, heard every Wednesday night at 9, EWT, over station WHKC in Columbus. The whole half-hour program is written and broadcast by men and women who in their working hours are employees of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation's Airplane Division. Most of them hadn't even been near a microphone until they began this series of programs a few months ago. The program was started as a recreational and morale-building experiment, and it has been successful beyond all expectations — particularly when you consider that in it a group of amateurs are producing the most difficult of all types of radio shows, dramatized news events in the world of aviation. Out of the forty-odd Fred Allen didn't own a car before gas rationing so he's perfectly happy on his bicycle which he pedals round his home in Maine. people who have acted on this broadcast, only one has ever had any dramatic experience outside of school plays. He is Robert Donavon, a dispatcher in the Steel Welded Assembly department, and sickness in his family brought him home from New York just as he was completing arrangements to get a small part in "HellzapoppinV Harry links, an ex-salesman from West Virginia, specializes in the roles of aviation executives. In real life he's a plant policeman. Barbara Chattos, who works in the Bench Assembly department, has played a French boy and a Russian aircraft mechanic. Other actors are aerodynamics specialists, oookkeepers, welders and executives. Getting people to do Oriental voices was a problem until two Chinese employes, Charles Chin and Joe Yee, both in the Mold Loft department, requested permission to try out for parts. They didn't much like the idea of playing Japanese voices — Chin even held his nose while reading a Jap part in one show — they did it, and were rewarded a week later with some Chinese roles. Because the program deals with aviation, which is pretty much a man's world, there haven't been many parts for women; but Ruth Van Kirk, who works in the Final Assembly department, played an Army nurse recently, and Julia Donohoe, a voucher clerk, made a top-notch Madame Chiang Kai Shek. The script writer for Conquerors RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRBOH