Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1942)

M»*^W«^ **3Kt ' J^' Paul WhHeman, back in radio with Burns and Allen, finds that his moustache can't be compared with Jerry Colonna's. Uncle Dave Macon is such a fixture on WSM's Grand Ole Opry that the show wouldn't be able to get along without him — although once it looked as if it might have to. At right, Milly and Dolly Good are the Girls of The Golden West over WLW in Cincinnati. What's New from Coast to Coast (Continued jrom page 4) Crutchfield — who quickly offered Eleanor a contract that was just as quickly accepted. WBT artists like to be on programs with Eleanor because she's so full of infectious high spirits they can't help feeling better for her presence. She chews gum continuously, even during her song numbers. Nobody yet has been able to figure out how she manages to hit those high, thrilling notes with a huge wad of gum in her mouth. Eleanor is still too young to be interested seriously in romance — unless you count the way she worships Claude Casey, her co-star on the Briarhoppers program and the man who helped her into big-time radio. She likes to dance, collects pictures of hill-billy bands, and wants to sing hill-billy stuff all the rest of her life. But her own favorite band, strangely enough, isn't a hilly-billy outfit at all — it's Kay Kyser's. * ♦ • Helen Claire, who plays Sally in The c3'Neills, practically didn't even see her bridegroom, Columbia University Professor Milton Smith, for a month after the wedding. Events conspired to separate the newlyweds soon after the ceremony, when Helen left to make an operetta appearance in St. Louis. When Milton drove to St. Louis to fetch Helen home, he discovered she'd been suddenly called to New York for an appearance for British War Relief, and had just boarded a plane. And so it went for nearly four weeks before Helen's busy schedule allowed her to catch her breath. * * * Betty Winkler is another frantic commuter. From Monday to Friday she's in New York, acting on The Man I Married and other programs; Friday afternoon she grabs a plane and flies to Chicago to visit her husband and incidentally to act on Mutual's Saturday-night Chicago Theater of the Air show. PITTSBURGH — When Baron Elliott, house band leader at station WJAS, pulled out of Pittsburgh with his orchestra in search of a wider success, he lost his guitarist and swing novelty singer, Mickey Ross. Mickey decided to stay in Pittsburgh because he had a home there, complete with wife and children, and he didn't want to leave it. That was a year ago. Today Mickey leads his own band in seven broadcasts every week over station KQV — four sustaining shows and We're In the Army Now, which is on the air three times a week. Not only that, but his band made its network debut a few weeks ago, playing on the coastto-coast show with which NBC saluted KQV's addition to the Blue network. Seven broadcasts a week means a lot of work, but Mickey's boys don't mind a bit. Like their boss, they realize that one has to work, and work hard, if one cares to get anywhere in this world — and they realize, too, that they are getting somewhere, in the top spot of Pittsburgh dance bands, to be exact. Mickey's a personable young man, not handsome, but gifted with a likable personality. He's twenty-seven years old and a master of the ukulele, banjo and guitar. The desire to be a musician hit him when he was fourteen, and he began practicing on the ukulele then. Later he taught himself how to play the banjo and guitar. His band includes several musicians and an arranger, Leo Yagello, who used to be with Baron Elliott but decided, like Mickey, they preferred to stay in Pittsburgh. He has a baritone vocalist, Ted Perry, but no girl singer. In the last six months he has auditioned more than three hundred aspirants for the job, without finding anyone with the voice and personality he wants. So if you have ambitions to sing with a band, better get in touch with Mickey — you might fill the bill! 4< * * After broadcasting for a whole year and a half without a studio audience, the Monday-night Telephone Hour is moving into a new studio at Radio City so it can admit visitors to its shows and let people see as well as hear Francia White and Jimmy Melton. * * * The Lombardo family boasts a new musician, one who devotes himself entirely to vocal efforts. Brother Lebert became the father of a boy last month. * * * Orson Welles will be the death of Hollywood yet. He showed up at his radio rehearsal the other day wearing a dazzlingly white suit of terry-cloth which he had designed himself. In a sort of enthusiastic double-talk he described it as being "so warm, so cool, so light and so substantial," and soon had all the other masculine members of his Mercury Theater troupe yearning for suits just like it. If you hear that Hollywood tailors have all gone insane, you'll know why. Hf ^ * It's Mutual that will broadcast two of the big New Year's Day football classics — the Cotton Bowl game in Dallas and the East-West game in San Francisco. * H< « NASHVILLE, Tenn. — "Here he is with plug hat, gold teeth, chin {Continued on page 46) 44 RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRROR