Screen and Radio Weekly (Feb 28, 1937)

a Part Tuc Si Eeclusive Series: Magic Behind the Microphone By Lucille Fletcher [Ty 30 SECONDS our network radio program will be on the air! Our Production Director will go into his control booth. Our violinists will stop talking and lift their bows. Our Singer and dramatic cast will stand in place. And the little sign on the wall will flash green. But now it’s like a madhouse. People rushing about. An announcer muttering his lines. A telephone ringing frantically in a control booth. And the whole place a perfect snow storm of papers! ce In 30 seconds, those sheets of paper will slip unobtrusively into the background of the lights, the glamour and the music. But now, in rehearsal, they are the ‘very bone and sinew of your modern radio show. They contain every single instruction for every second of the broadcast. The wisecracks of the comedian are down in black and white. The musical compositions that are to be played—even themes, even the silly bar of music on the sweet potato when the stooge comes in — are there. The sound-effect-cues are indicated, the engineering cues, even the local announcements occasionally heard on the program. But these fluttering pages are much more than just a set of announcer’s speeches or a guide to what-followswhat. They’re guarantees—okays from several hundred people—that all the pitfalls of modern radio have been avoided and checked. They’re practically legal documents. Ten years ago, the radio script, as these sheets of paper are called, was non-existent. A handful of entertainers gathered in a studio and made a show up as they went along. Today the radio script is the invincible iron law. Without it, Gracie Allen, Eddie Cantor, Kate Smith wouldn’t dare to open their mouths, \ -Lers have a look at one of these wonderful radio scripts. Here in the studio everybody has an identical copy—typed, double-spaced and extremely neat. Those copies were rushed up an hour or so ago from the Ditto and Mimeographing Room by one of Columbia’s three Walters—Walter Kromenski, Walter Hearon and Walter Young. And before that, our radio scripts were a single master copy tapping out of the hectic typewriters of the Flying Squadron or the Dawn Patrol. That’s what the girls in Miss Agnes Law’s Program Typing Division are | ealled at Columbia. They live in a per petual whirl of excitement—of the feverish kind induced by having to tear out a smooth looking sixty-page script in two hours. They give a standard Columbia form to the hodge-podge sheets of yellow paper, white paper, typewritten and otherwise, that are piled on thei: desks. This afternoon it was lying on Howard Taylor’s desk waiting for his pencilled initials in the upper right hand corner. Mr. Taylor was sitting there, a stop watch before him, timing the length of the commercial announcements. That was his special contribution to your radio script. ‘Tims morning the | Copyright Division, consisting of Jan | Schimek, Clark Harrington, and a large _ staff on the eleventh floor was mull ing over each sentence and idea in it, looking for any possible copyright in Fb, _fringements, Virginia Verrill (at top) with her song arrangers, Ralph Wilkinson and N. Lang Van Cleave; below, Sound Effects The Copyright Division clears all performance rights on the air both literary and musical. Mr. Schimek spends his time among law books with the Legal Department, and sends innumerable letters and telegrams to the Library of Congress in Washington. He’s super-super-cautious. One copyright infringement, and every station broadcast _ing the program would have to pay $250 in damages. Multiply that by 103 stations on the network, and you'll see the point. Little tricky things are the worst. The Columbia Workshop program wants to present “Hamlet” by Shakespeare in a half-hour version. That looks easy with Shakespeare dead 300 years and presumably in the public domain. But Mr. Schimek discovers the acting version of “Hamlet” they’re using is copyrighted by Orson Welles, the actor. Berore Mr. Schimek got the script it was in the hands of the Continuity Writer. If you want to know what a continuity writer is, we'll Say that he’s the man who puts the mortar. between the various bricks of your radio program, and makes the whole business into a neat, tight little show. The continuity writer sits at a typewriter—whether he’s on the eighteenth floor of the CBS Building, or in an advertising agency. Before him are a lot of thinzs—a musical program with the composers’ names and the perform. ers of each number on it, a set 0f commercial announcements, and various assorted literary efforts, sketches and speeches. These are the materials he must weld together by ~irtue of his tactful literary genius—a sentence of introduction here, a few words of explanation there. Now, followmng our radio script back, we discover that it has begun to dis_ solve, Behind the continuity in pieces—musie and words. Let’s follow one of these first—the literary efforts, the sketches and speeches. We'll follow back the music in a moment. t & HE bundles of lit erary material have come from script writers and they’ve flown to the continuity writer from all corners of the world, like birds of dassage. That sketch full of gags for the comedian has just arrived by airmail from Hollywood—written by a high-powered writer who smokes big black cigars. That neatly typed episode of a popular serial was brought down by messenger from a lady writer in a Colonial house in Connecticut. And the brief dramatic commercial came over from an advertising agency next door. The script writers of radio are farflung, and have little in common—except to write in the clear-cut style demanded by radio. They may be veterans at the game—like Elaine Sterne Carrington wiuo now has several different serials on different networks besides Trouble House on CBS. They may be absolute newcomers—discoveries like Milton Geiger whose Case History was sent in cold and bought by Irving Reis of the Columbia Worksho,; inside of an hour. Time lashes all radio script writers with an inexorable whip. They can never relax after a “great work”—for there’s another “great work” due next week. They never have time for research, to catch up on_ themselves. Tae fastest lookeruppers in the world are the people who do research for radio scripts. Miss Elizabeth Farnesworth on the March of Time is one of them. She can supply details about Bismarck’s mustache or pore om mes ® Middle German term for “primo So can Columbia’s own Research Bureau—who with both hands tied behind it got together enough stuff about Nome, Alaska, to put a half-hour show on the air two hours after the city had burned down. On the whims of the script-writers depends another department, one of the most important departments in radio— Sound Effeets under Walter Pierson. With each higher flight of fancy on the part of the sciipt writer Sound Effects suffers. “Biz,” writes the script writer (“Biz” is the professional term for sound effects), “‘sound of Eighteenth Century cart rumbling over covered bridge.” Then the sound effects man has to make that a reality. Mie on our Con tinuity Writer’s desk is in the form of a musical program typed in purple and red on shiny paper. It was brought to him a couple of weeks ago by a uniformed page boy from the Copyright Division. The Copyright Division had to get it two weeks ago because there were so many things to do before that program could be typed. Each musical title had to be investigated, publishers traced down, permission received on many special numbers, fees arranged for certain great works by living composers, and such variec. people wired for special permission as the lady in Buffalo who owns all rights on “Schnitzelbank” and a man in Honolulu who wrote the music of a hymn. Then the numbers had to be recorded on long sheets of paper resembling rollertowels by two girls who checked to see that the same piece wasn’t played more than once every two hours. But music isn’t just a title. It’s living. It's a score on a conductor’s music Stand. It’s a part for every man in the .orchestra—the oboe the timpani player. It’s notes, harmonies, melody. « Now your musical portion of the radio Script is a series of orders for certain things lying on the desk of Julius Mattfeld, head of the Columbia Music Library. Mr. Mattfeld is walking about, producing the music. He’s bought some of it; rented some of it, of course But he’s also overseen the actual composing and copying of it. Here are a staff of con;ists in his office, each with 2 long manuscript Score in front of him, their pens flying across pape”? a bar a second. They’re working from the “master copy,” and they’re making that master copy playable for the men in the orchestra—in other words, they’re dividing it into parts for the oboe, the timpani player, the pianist. This morning, a panting, arranger dashed in to the Music Library and pulled that score out of ais briefcase for the copyists. He’d finished it during che night—almost a complete new composition, made to order, for the especial use of your radio show. It’s a new way or playing “The Organ Grinder’s Swing”—in the form OF a Tschaikowsky symphony. That will make all the other orchestras who are playing “The Organ Grinder’s Swing” sit up and take notice. All big name conductors have special arrangers. Arrangers are there to write music in a particular Style for the orchestras. A staff of arrangers waltzes everything up for Wayne King. Another takes the same number and goes to town for Benny Goodman. N OW we’ve got your radio seript down to infinitesimal proportions—a covered bridge and a brass chord coming from the pen of your arranger. Yet even this close tracking down of clues on that vital guide of your radio show—the radio script—has not given us the whole picture of the magic behind the microphone. Radio is artists that speak, sing and play. It is the ideas that make them move. These things will be discussed in our next article. ‘ SLPS Sept hy OS SA AP, oe ETI EY S Be. i, bs oh ‘ 4 j