Swing (Jan-Dec 1953)

Record Details:

Title:
Swing
Date:
Jan-Dec 1953
Publisher:
Kansas City : WHB Broadcasting Co.
Volume:
Swing (Jan-Dec 1953)
Leaf #:
000109
Language:
English
Subjects:
Radio broadcasting -- Missouri -- Kansas City -- Periodicals, Radio broadcasting -- Kansas -- Periodicals","WHB-AM (Radio station : Kansas City, Mo.) -- Periodicals","Kansas City (Kan.) -- History -- Periodicals","Kansas City (Mo.) -- History -- Periodicals","Cook Paint and Varnish Co. -- Periodicals","WHB Broadcasting Company (Kansas City, Mo.) -- Periodicals.
Collection:
Broadcasting & Recorded Sound
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
University of Maryland, College Park
Sponsor:
LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
The official magazine of Kansas City's WHB radio station, SWING printed far more than the station's schedule (which, as the title SWING suggested, relied heavily on music). From 1945 to 1953, SWING offered readers something eclectic every month -- profiles of entertainers on one page, discussions of citizenship in the postwar world on the next, with write-ups of nightlife offerings in KC, Chicago, and New York mixed in. WHB spent decades lobbying the FCC for clear channel status; the magazine's ambitious scope may have been part of the station's attempt to legitimate itself. But it was SWING'S first editor, Jetta Carleton, who later wrote a celebrated novel, that gave the magazine its distinctive style. -- Eric Hoyt, 2015
Date Added:
March 28, 2024
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APPLE-POLISHING, BACK-STABBING AND OTHER SPORTS 103 in the future we are promised some Cooke features of his own which ought to be highly entertaining. "The Bad Men," which probably took the individual honors of the afternoon, had Mr. Saroyan's fingerprints all over it. It dealt lovingly on a couple of vaguely intoxicated Indians who were the bad men of the title but actually the good men of llife. The theme, I gather, was that all linen should love one another, a theme with Iwhich Mr. Saroyan has toyed before and ifinds inexhaustible. It was marked by that Ichildlike grace and manic charm which lis Mr. Saroyan's special gift and it was thoroughly delightful. Mr. Anderson's playlet was completely Idifferent in mood and substance, full of |Mr. Anderson's heavily costumed poetry. Fortunately it was graced by those two professionals, the Harrisons, who can oring a measure of authority to even the most tree-ripened of the Anderson blank verse. ("Her lips were an overeaten plate.") It was a passionate piece and the Harrisons acted it with passion and eloquence and great subtlety. There has been i little too much of Anne Boleyn's mishandling by Henry on television of late and I couldn't help wondering why they picked this one for the opening show. The production was impressive but far from flawless. Shadows from the microphone boom were visible a good deal of the time. Some of the audio was pretty oad. In conclusion Mr. Cooke recited a verse from Ecclesiastes as a rather unusual salute to Armistice Day. It was a beautiful Dit of prose but it was horribly disfigured oy the use of some of the most hackneyed still pictures I ever saw — the rows of white crosses, the marching men, the breaking waves. Still, "Omnibus" was on the whole a splendid and remarkably rapid hour and a aalf of telivision. Harpo and Chico HARPO and Chico Marx have been belting around the television circuit ;eparately and not entirely successfully. 3ut they teamed up on the Colgate Com• ?dy Hour to give some of the younger . members of the class — Martin and Lewis, let us say — a lesson in advanced lunacy of the sort that won them fame and fortune in the '20s and '30s. As lunatics go, Martin and Lewis are funny people, all right, all right, but they haven't anything in their bag of tricks quite like Harpo's stolen silverware routine. This is the one, you'll recall, where a cop shakes Harpo's hand to congratulate him on his honesty. A cluster of spoons drops from his sleeve. His face remains a study in innocence. Another handshake and more silver cascades to the floor. It keeps coming, a drumfire of stolen silver, until Harpo is up to his ankles in the stuff. The contrast between the seraphic faces and the preposterous quantity of boodle is what makes this one of the funniest bits I know. Harpo's is a wonderful face anyhow, alternating with the speed of light between unimaginable evil and total innocence, a combination of a small boy and a satyr. His mute act doesn't do well by itself, more's the pity. Harpo needs Chico's expert assistance; the face needs a voice to respond to and make grimaces at. To' gether, the two assaulted a piano in a hilarious duet and created some large scale pandemonium in a sketch in which Harpo impersonated the worst bad man in the southwest. This bit has seen heavy service on TV, but somehow Harpo and Chico endowed the thing with more polish and finish and sheer maniac hilarity than the rest of the boys. The comedy team seems to be a big thing on television these days, so I don't see why the Chico and Harpo team shouldn't be perpetuated. Alone they're not much. Together they're terrific. The Prop Laugh ON comedy shows this season there's an awful lot of what I can only refer to as the prop laugh. The prop laugh, kiddies, is when a comedian is suddenly convulsed by some miscue which isn't apparent to the rest of us. He then turns his back and shakes with laughter while you and I wonder what the hell is the matter. It's a private joke, and I don't think private jokes ought to be allowed on national networks. They're a terrible waste of time.