TV Radio Mirror (Jul - Dec 1956)

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why don't you take a try at the job?" "I was always going to be a business man," says John. "Never seriously considered writing — then Fate plopped a $25-aweek job right in my lap. Four weeks at Roach's, and I was fired. Fate hadn't intended me to be that lucky. But the job had whetted my appetite for writing. I started turning out short stories — and I have one hundred and sixteen rejection slips to prove it." In the course of the next few months, John sold one five-dollar joke to Esquire and one fifteen-dollar story to a confession magazine. Then, one day, he met an old high school chum who was working as a cartoonist. They decided to pool their talents— his friend was to draw the cartoons, John was to write the captions. They sent a sample of their work to all the newspaper syndicates in alphabetical order. NEA, the Scripps-Howard Syndicate in Cleveland, was the first to respond. "They wanted the continuity without the cartoons," says John. "So I borrowed seventy dollars on my old Ford, and went to Cleveland to write a humorous column called 'Barbs.' " Whenever he had a chance, John took a crack at the motion-picture industry in his column, making sure to send a copy to the producer or studio he happened to be insulting at the moment. Roach took the bait a second time ("He figured it was better having me working for him"), and John was back on the payroll. John was glad to be back in California. "Cleveland winters are cold," he says, with a shiver, "and I had no overcoat. Don't know which is worse — no coat or no calories. In the next two years at Roach's, I was fired six times. After the last and final firing, I thought maybe a copywriter's job at an advertising agency might be for me. As luck would have it, the first place I applied hired me to write jokes for a radio show. Fate, it seems, had stepped in again." Once in radio, Lady Luck didn't give up on Guedel. After twenty-two weeks of joke writing, he was assigned the "Reunion of the States" series for Forest Lawn. At the end of four years, he was still writing the dramas when, at the library one day, researching "Garfield," by accident— or luck — he pulled down a book of games. John thought: Old parlor games in the new radio medium — and Eureka! the stunt audience-participation show was born. Gue'del's first show, Pull Over, Neighbor, was turned over to him — by chance, again — by its producer Clyde Scott, who gave up production to take a sales manager's job at KFI. Originally a traffic quiz, John introduced his first silly game on "Neighbor": A contestant tried to sing "Smiles" while filling his mouth with ice cubes at the end of each line. The stunt made Los Angeles laugh for weeks. Neighbor changed titles in 1941, becoming All Aboard, and again in 1942, when Linkletter and Guedel met, exchanged ideas, and People Are Funny was born. People Are Funny soon went coast-tocoast, bringing John to the big-time. Production chores on the Red Skelton show followed, then the Ozzie and Harriet Nelson radio show, all topped off by House Party and You Bet Your Life. On weekends, John is forced to create new ideas to entertain his children, John, Jr., ten, and Heidi, seven. "After we've seen all the Western movies in town," he says, "we ride our motor bike up into the Beverly Hills to find 'bad men.' It seems to me we've shot all the badmen on this continent, and I'm trying to think of some new area — within a motor-bike ride — where the 'bandits' will be more plentiful." Whether creating for his children or for the American radio-television audience, for idea-man Guedel, there are always new worlds to conquer. PHOTOPLAY Sl«mp»d by Se»**cisi — 'stamped by scandal55 the Jeanne Crain Paul Brinkman breakup stuns Hollywood ! AT NEWSSTANDS NOW also in PHOTOPLAY "I WAS LETTING 'MARTY' DOWN!" . . Ernest Borgnine's wife takes a cold look at some personal problems TAB HUNTER! "Caught in That Tender Trap?" EXCLUSIVE! "The Sexiest Girl In Town"— PHOTOPLAY'S Earl Wilson in sizzling interview with Cyd Charisse Spring Byington answers your letters and Sidney Skolsky, Cal York and Ruth Waterbury bring you the newsiest gossip in town. PHOTOPLAY— at newsstands now— 20^ SAVE NOW WITH A PHOTOPLAY SUBSCRIPTION ■ mail this • PHOTOPLAY Dept. TVRM7-56 • 205 E. 42 Street, New York 17. N. Y. — Check One — • Sirs: (a) Sen d me the next 12 issues of PHOTOPLAY for only $2. $2 enclosed □ Bill me □ • (b) Send me the next 24 issues of PHOTOPLAY for only $3. $3 enclosed □ Bill me □ —Check One— J □ Extend my present subscri ption □ New subscription I J City . . . State 1 75