Radio-TV mirror (July-Dec 1954)

He Thinks With His Heart (Continued from page 58) Flattering though such results may be to a parlor pundit, the acid test of the philosophy Galen propounds comes — not through its effect on his listeners — but in its effect on his own life. Listeners, whom he challenges into giving a personal answer to the questions he asks on the air, are also entitled to ask a most penetrating question of their own: "How well does Galen Drake follow his own advice?" The answer to this must come, objectively, from his friends, family and business associates. Querying them, you get the consistent response, "Galen Drake truly practices what he preaches." They further testify that the result in his own life is satisfyingly pleasant. 1 he pleasantness starts at home. Although Galen is always urging members of every family to enjoy and appreciate each other's good qualities, he's a bit reticent on the air in speaking about those who are dearest to him. This, friends will tell you, is due not to a contradictory state of being, but to the fact that he leans over backward in order not to set himself or his own family up as a shining example. This, he feels, would be presumptuous. In face-to-face conversation, however, this reticence vanishes and Galen reveals himself as a more than usually appreciative husband and father. There's affection in his voice as he tells you that his wife Anne continues to be one of the most beautiful and successful Powers models. "She enjoys working," he explains, "and, besides, she's one of those rare women who can manage both a family and a career." You gather, too, that he does not shift the household responsibility to her shoulders alone, for he says, "I'm lucky. I can arrange my work so that I do most of my reading at home in the mornings. That way I have more time with Anne and the children. Also, if she's out on an assignment, I can baby-sit." Delighted with his children, Galen also recognizes that already they have distinct personalities of their own. Describing Linda Anne, who is three and a half, and Galen Jr., who is two, he says, "They're as different as day and night. Linda Anne can't stay still a minute, but the boy already is bookish. Set him down with a book, and he'll happily look at it for hours and never tear a page." His parents, too, come in for a sound share of appreciation. Galen says, "They came from Indiana (I was born in Kokomo) and, when they moved to Long Beach, California (where I grew up), they retained that typically Hoosier love of conversation. We all enjoyed talking with each other. Why, I can remember how, after we were grown up, my brother would drive twenty-five miles in an evening just to sit around and talk with the folks." Galen credits his father with starting him on the course of omnivorous reading which provides the rich background for his broadcasts. It happened when he was eight and supercharged with small-boy inquisitiveness. Inevitably — as it does to all parents— the time arrived when the older Drake ran out of answers and said, "You ask more questions than Socrates!" ^Who," inquired Galen, "was Socrates?" "A man who went around Athens asking questions," his father retorted. "Here's a book. Find out for yourself." Galen dipped into it, found it pretty good reading and T has been reading ever since. Today, more v than ten thousand volumes line the walls R of his East River apartment. He has only one rule about reading: "Never read a book just because someone • says you should. Read only those things which interest you. Then one will lead to another, and they'll open up a whole new world for you." Galen himself has explored numerous worlds. He has been an amateur boxer good enough to consider turning pro. He has also sung opera and conducted an orchestra. He has studied law, medicine and psychiatry. Boxing originally seemed to him a way of earning money in order to study at the Paris Conservatory. But, when he was persuaded to stay out of the ring, he soon found that radio could also be lucrative. He began singing professionally at thirteen. A bit later, his program acquired a sponsor who wanted soft music interspersed with something to maintain the mood. The station manager had an idea: "Our boy can talk, too." That suited the sponsor. "Good enough," he decided, "let him talk a little." Galen did not need to be told twice. All the knowledge he had already gained from his reading and observation was pressing for expression. His talking, plus his singing, provided the dollars needed to take him through the University of California. There he studied both medicine and law. "I never wanted to practice, either as an attorney or a physician," he explains. "I just wanted to know about both fields and to tell others about them." He also investigated the drama. As director of plays at the Long Beach Community Playhouse, he had in his casts such not-then-notables as Roy Rogers, Laraine Day and Robert Mitchum. Throughout all his exploring, music remained a major interest. He fulfilled one heart's desire when he conducted the Southern California Symphony. "That's when I first grew a mustache," he says. "They wanted someone at least thirty, so I lied about my age and tried to look older." But, out of his multiple interests, radio emerged dominant, for radio alone permitted him to employ the full scope of his knowledge gained in other fields. Galen's first experimenting with the talk-about-everything kind of broadcast came in San Francisco ("Still my favorite city," he says) . It proved so successful that he turned the program over to a friend, Paul Gibson, and moved to Hollywood to set up a duplicate show there. The immediate result of that move is another proof that Galen Drake already was living by some of the principles he today expounds so eloquently on the air. He chuckles as he recalls, "Within a short time, Paul had alienated every sponsor, lost every account and run the show into debt." To this problem he applied a typically Galen Drake solution. "I recognized that the fault was mine. Paul simply wasn't ready to carry such a broadcast alone. So I brought him back to Hollywood for more training." His success as a teacher is attested by the fact that today the highly successful Paul Gibson does similar shows for WBBM, the CBS station in Chicago, and the two men remain fast friends. Logically, Galen's next move was to New York. He arrived in 1944 and shortly began turning up all over the CBS schedule. TV RADIO MIRROR gets in ahead of Columbus! Your favorite newsstand will have your November issue OCTOBER 7 Currently, he broadcasts almost twenty programs a week, including the hour-long Saturday morning Galen Drake Show. This is a large production program with Stuart Foster, Betty Johnson, Three Beaus and a Peep, and the Bernie Leighton orchestra. Despite the rehearsal time it takes, this is a favorite of Galen's: "It gets me back into a music show instead of just talking all the time." To many, that could sound like an overpowering schedule. Said one of the CBS staff members, "No one has ever admitted that Galen Drake was triplets, but I fully expect to drop into his office some day and find two hitherto-concealed duplicates. No one man could possibly accomplish all he does with so little fuss." Said another, "He's an island of calm in the hassle of broadcasting. I asked for a fifteen-minute interview and you'd have thought when I arrived that he had nothing else to do all week. What's more, he got me into the same frame of mind. I positively jumped when his secretary reminded him he had only two minutes until air time and he'd better start for the studio." For Galen Drake, it isn't a state of multiple being— it's those many years of multiple interests which now provide the means to achieve both satisfying accomplishment and that deep serenity. Drawing on his fund of reading and experience, he walks into the studio with only a few notes scrawled on slips of paper. He says, "I never prepare a program in advance. If I did, I'd lose the feeling I have of talking directly to a listener. As it is, I advance an opinion, then I think of what attitude someone else might take toward it, so I examine the opposite point of view. Then I think of something else I'd like to say It's strictly old-fashioned, Indiana cracker-barrel style. Maybe I'm trying to revive the lost art of conversation." His attitude toward his own job is root»t uVfn deePer in his own basic philosophy. I believe in people doing what they want to do. When you do what you choose, that's fun. When you don't, it's work. And, right now, I'm doing exactly what I would do if I had fifty million dollars and freedom to follow whatever I chose. The one thing I want is to learn more and more about different fields— and then tell some one about them." In line with this attitude, Galen Drake has recently found a significant new field of interest. Along New York's Madison Avenue — that street which is lined with high-pressure advertising agencies and hectic radio and television studios — some of the boys, in ironic protest against the pace, formed the Relaxation Club of America and named Galen its president. Far from regarding it as a gag, Galen has taken it seriously and has published a little booklet to state his views. A key section begins, "Since the days of the Puritans, we have been goaded into incessant labors. . . . We have been led to abhor indolence and to shun idleness like the plague. Witness the plethora of slogans which have exhorted us toward unending striving toward goals. We are urged to 'behold the busy bee' as 'he improves each shining hour.' "An idle moment is the devil's workshop'. . . . Nonsense! An idle moment is the best thing in the world if you use it right — if you use it to relax." The fact that Galen Drake can find such idle moments — while carrying what manywould consider a backbreaking schedule — may be due to another more terse bit of wisdom which he has stated over the air: "He who keeps his nose in the direction he wants to go need not worry about his feet finding the right path."