TV Radio Mirror (Jul - Dec 1961)

There's Something New on Radio (Continued from page 9) but when you mentioned your name, his eyes would light up. That's the way I felt about radio. So, for this very personal reason, I'm happy to have a big-time radio show. "On the other hand, I've been doing a lot of network radio in the past five years and I know how it could be. I have a theory that the radio audience is getting" very, very tired of listening to the local deejay with his Top Forty records. Very often, they represent the tastes of the sub-teen audience. You see this in the popular voices. Frankie Avalon's voice, for example, high and very young. A young voice for the kids. But, no matter whose record, all you have is the record. The charm, the entertainer's personality, isn't there." Richard — no one calls him Dick — is the first to admit that his attitude toward show business is a little unusual. But his career has been unusual, too. During the past couple of years, he has sung regularly on the Arthur Godfrey show and, at the same time, has emceed The Big Beat, a metropolitan TV rock 'n' roll show for a sub-teen audience. "I was strictly a blob on the show, a kind of TV deejay," he says. "I never sang. Many of the kids in the audience don't know, until this day, that I'm a singer. Some of the youngsters, however, would come up to me and say, Richard, my mother tells me she used to listen to your records when she was a little girl.' Now, I'm sure those weren't the words of her mother — because, when her mother was a little girl, I was a little boy." Actually, he looks younger than he is. He's thirty-one and, so far as he's concerned, the more people who know his true age, the better. "I've thought of taking ads to tell everyone my age. A couple of times, I was up for the emcee job on quiz shows. The producer would turn to me and say, 'Look, Richard, I like the way you work. The job would be yours, but you look like a kid and it just wouldn't set right to have you running a quiz show for adults.' " The mixed blessing of youthful looks is something Richard shares with his wife Monique. Together, they look like brother and sister. Last year, he took Monique to Miami Beach on a threeday vacation. He recalls, "If we went into a club to dance or see a show, they asked for my wife's driver's license. She didn't have it with her and they refused to serve her." Monique, a pretty brunette, is in her early twenties. She and Richard have been married since July 7, 1957, and have two children. Says Richard, "She's R very warm and very honest. Actually, l>< was born in Belgium and came to the states with her parents when she was three. She majored in journalism at Syracuse University and was working as a continuity writer at WNEW when I first saw her. I called up immediately and made a date." Curiously, Richard was then, in a sense, a "has-been." His career had begun with a bang at the age of eighteen. In 1947, he had his first millionseller record, "The Old Master Painter." He rode the crest for some six years, and another million-seller, "Our Lady of Fatima," was the first religious the morning and CBS in the evening. He earned his own local show over Station WCBS in New York. He was fired from that one — but, the next week, had a call from Arthur Godfrey. "I went up there to sing once, and Arthur asked me to stay on. This past year, Arthur came to me and said, 'Richard, I did something without asking your permission. I hope it's okay with you. I spoke to the network people and told them I'd like to have you pinch-hit for me while I'm on vacation.' Mrs. Hayes is luckier than most show-biz wives — with Richard not "on the road," he's not only home but serving breakfast! record to make the hit parade. In 1954, he went into the Army, served two years — and, when he returned, found that the recording business was dominated by rock 'n' roll. He refused to make the change. "So Monique joined up with me in a new beginning," he says. "I was no longer the 'barefoot boy from Brooklyn,' but the business had changed and I had to start over again. I wasn't frantic. I'm a firm believer that anything can happen to you tomorrow, in show business, and that's the way it turned out." He caught a guest shot on The Robert Q. Lewis Show, over CBS Radio. Robert Q. instantly signed him up as a regular performer, a contract which was renewed for four years. And Richard was signed to NBC Radio's Bandstand, emceed by Bert Parks. For a time, Richard was singing for NBC in I was so thrilled, I didn't know what to say." He sat in for Arthur two weeks and, when Arthur later took a month off, Richard again took over. The skill he demonstrated in handling the Godfrey show led directly to his getting the new show. "So you see," he says, "Monique has been sharing all the ups and downs of the business. She has missed the worst side of it — by that, I mean the traveling. I haven't been on the road since I left the Army. And if I should have to go out again, she's going to find herself sitting alone with the children for weeks at a time. That's the worst part of show business for the wife of a performer." As it is now, they live normally, no differently from businessmen who are their neighbors in their apartment building in Manhattan's Peter Cooper Village. He says, "Show people don't