Variety (Jan 1945)

ss RADIO REVIEWS Wednesday, January 17, 1945 JUDY CANOVA SHOW With Ruby Dandrldge, Mel Blanc, Joe Kearns, Ople Cates . orch, others Producer: Joe Rlnes Writers: Bill Demllng, Fred Fox, Henry Iloople 30 Mills.; 3ut.. 10 p. m. C«fLGATE-PALMOUVE-PEET WEAF-NBC, N. Y. (SJierimni, Marquette) To replace the. "Palmoliyc. Parly."' i NBC'er which had Barry Wood and ! Patsy Kelly spotted as principal soap- sales' personnel, the Colgate oryani-, zation has booked a Coa.-t cnmeclv stanza built around hillbilly Judy 1 Canova and depending upon her down-to-earth humorous style (or most o£ the returns. She's been pio- vided Willi a flrons cast as well. and. judging from teeofl' broadcast (13). chief reliance will be put on situash comedy, with the main burden fall- ing on ti.f scripting department. First program moved along swiftly; with the Canova gal moving in on her hoity-toity Brentwood aunt, ac- companied by handyman Pedro cMel Blanc > and a mammy type cook, Ge- ranium (Ruby Dandridge). The idea was played for all it was worth, with the studio audience registering strong reaction to the worthy script and oc- casional sock gags. A stock butler type in the Brentwood manse also was good for laughs, and a walk-on cab driver, with an uncontrollable case of hiccoughs, was good. Miss Canova opened the show with some trade-mark vocal acrobatics, doing "Can't Give You Anything But Love" in .a Way Jimniie McHugh never dreamed of when he penned the lyrics, and also delivered, straight. "Tears On My Pillow." near the end. Her signbll" song. "Good Night. Sol- dier," also was handled without ben- efit of yodels or falsetto tricks. Or , chestra background for the.show is outstanding, with Opie Cares, web .newcomer, delivering solidly all the "way "through. His : midway "I Want to Be Happy." featuring the inaestro's bolt clarinet, was excellently done and provided refreshing relief from the oft over-arranged stuff dished out by many of the commercial stanza musical orgs these days. "Happy" had bounce and life, the tune never got lost, and slill the interpretation had imagination and spontaneity; in other words, it was good American- style pop music. Plugs stressed the "14-day Palm- olive plan" to sell Ihe soap and the co-feature. Halo shampoo/ was gicen a jingle type commercial revolving around die refrain. "Halo, every- body. Halo!" (Better be careful, boys: remember what happened to vaude- ville.) ■. This Canova show won't cause any bonfires on Broadway, but it should make the grade with those customers out in the rest of the U.S.A Dbini. "HOUSE OF MYSTERY" AVi.'.i John Griggs, Others Producer: Frances Dexter Director: Jessica Maxwell Writer: Johanna De Will 15 Mins.; Mon.-Fri.. 5:30 p.m. Sustaining WOR-Mntual, N. Y. "House of Mystery" is a kid show- in which; a story-teller tries to dis- prove and expose assertions about the supernatural on the basis of his experiences all over the world.- It will serve its purpose. Initial yarn, being unwound in se- rial form, titled "Beast of the Ba- you," has to do with the efforts of frightened mansion owners in the swamp lands of Louisiana attempting to combat a werewolf. On teeoff stanza of series last Monday (15), in- troduction revealed that kids would be told the stories in dramatic form via flashback through narrator Roger Elliot (John Griggs), known as "The Mystery Man." Direction lacks smoothness, tran- sition from narration to' dramatiza- tion being poorly paced. Script, how- ever, is fairly worthwhile. Sten. w THEY ^-THEY WLS NEWS »■ For ten cents, WLS listeners are offered a special war map prepared under supervision of WLS News Editor Julian Bentley. First an- nouncement is made on newscast only. Ne*t morning, 4,318 dimes are received. By the second day, the total is 12,237. End of the week, 39,989 —and with no more announcements, the" total goes to 45,744. AH an- nouncements are made on newscasts only. This long established con- fidence in WLS news means RESULTS! WLS complete news, supplement' ed by a broad coverage of all markets, weather, and other time- ly information, is one of several reasons for our million letters a year. IHOCVCLJt Sw; dW "GE HOUSE PARTY" With Art Llnkletter, - Jack Slattery, Larrle Harper, annooncera Writer: John Onedel Producers: Mary Harris, John Guedel 25 Mlns.; Mon. thru Frl., 4 p. m. GENERAL ELECTRIC WABC-CBS, N. Y. (Young & Rubicam) Lots of time, effort and coin have been expended 1 in the past in a move to break the solid. daytime serial front prevailing on the major net- work. 1 -. Owens-Illinois learned to its regret last year, via its cross-the-i board CBS "Broadway. Matinee" show, that its variety stanza wasn't exactly the ideal counter-offesivc to combat the wide soap opera appeal, and finally switched over into night- time programming with the top- budgeted :Fred Waring, show on the Blue. : General Electric now has taken over the self-same CBS spot with one of the most expensive daytime shows in radio, its five-a-week "GE House Party," headed up by Art Linklelter (who's doubling from his Friday night "People Are Funny" NBC show), reportedly representing a $1,500,000 annual time-and-talent outlay. That's big money daytime, nighttime or any other time in radio. In "House Party," GE hopes to make a dent In the .daytime "hang- over" jinx with an audience partici- pation show, and on the basis of Monday's (15) getaway program it shapes up as a potentially bright later afternoon audience puller. Thanks to Linkletter, there's a spon- taneity about the stanza which keeps it moving at a fairly rapid pace. While nothing boff, Monday's show nevertheless held sustained interest and succeeded in getting across that "anything can happen" routine with .which the program is putting in a bid for wide attention. Gimmicks are ' variegated .'aifbV appropriately slants*' toward the kitchen and iemme ap- peal—with a GE "GI Dept," in which chefs exchange recipes with house- wives, etc. There's a moppet dept., too, with the kids on the initial show registering the top laughs. Commercials, plugging GE's house- hold electrical appliances, now and postwar, are integrated into the q. and a. stances, tying in with the giveaways to participants, with a tendency on the preem to overem- phasize that GE tag. . Rose. "THE BATTLE OF MAIN ST." With Fred Allen, Billy Green, Ches ter Bowles. Mrs. Albert Farns- worlh, Ernl? Pollock, Others Producer: -Walter Gorman Writer: Hobert Sherwood Musical Director: Josef Stopak Score: Oscar Charles Caswell 30 Mins.; Wed. (10), 10 p.m. (one shot) Sustaining' WJZ-Blue, N. Y. t Chester J. LaRoche brought to the Blue network a firm conviction that so-called public service programs, as aired by the major networks, were not doing a good job because pro- grammers were not using imagina lion, nor enough effort, to give the educational stanzas adequate listener appeal. LaRoche also thought that broadcasters, faced with an oppor- tunity to render a great service and, at the same time, to strengthen their stand against attacks from Govern- ment (or other) circles on grounds of monopoly, commercialism, etc., should make the most of their op- portunities to perform a real public service whenever and wherever the occasion arose. Last Wednesday's (10) presenta- tion of "The Battle of Main St" un- doubtedly reflects some of the firm LaRoche convictions on the subject. Here was a, perhaps unpleasant, to many, subject—the importance of adhering strictly to OPA regula- tions—that, treated in the ordinary manner, would, at best, have at- tracted and held only a handful of listeners. Yet by recruiting Fred Allen for the program and supply- ing him and the rest of the cast with a Robert Sherwood script, the Blue was able to offer a lively and un- usually effective show for a pro- gram of this type. « Device used was- the spot a grum- bler (Billy Green) opposite Allen and Mrs. Albert Farnsworth, a'volunteer member of the Worcester (Mass.) rationing board, to contrast the un- selfish attitude most Americans are taking towards the domestic Hard- ships imposed by the war and the unpatriotic griping by a small mi- nority. Typical Alienisms were sprinkled throughout the chatter and, although the presentation could hardly " be classified as a laugh riot, it was so much of an Improvement on what the public has learned to expect when they hear the "public service" tag that the Blue is entitled to take a bow or two. Cook's tour format for sidelights on rationing problems and incidents in all sections of ; the country also was an interestholder. Despite all these good things about "Main St.". It. still ran a trifle long. A sock 15-minute capsule undoubt- edly would better' have served the nurppse. Slgnoff portion had OPA boss Chester Bowles pitted In from Washington to kudo OPA staffers throughout the land, personally, and with the reading of appreciative messages fromz-F^H and military leaders. Don*. "WONDERFUL WORLD" (March of Dime*) With tireer Oar«on, Via Perrla, Bill Shaw, Lou Merrll, F,rank Martin, Barbara Jean Wont, Bee - Beha- daret, Cordell Hickman, Kathryn Lewi*. Sidney Miller, Shirley'Col' lies, Bruce Elliot Writer-producer: Areh Oboler 30 Mlns.; Sun,, Jan. 14, 10:30 p. m. WJZ-Blue, N. T. Due to picture commitments on the Coast, Arch Oboler scripts have late- ly become a rarity on the air. And with the dearth of creative talent, radio can ill afford to lend to Hol- lywood. Hence, those all-too infre- quent contributions from the Oboler typewriter are welcome as something potentially, promising. As the Blue network's leeolT contr'ib to the March of Dimes. Oboler joined forces' with the Hollywood Victory Committee and the National Foundation for In- fantile Paralysis Sunday night (14) to write and producer an elusive dramatization of why we must com- bat the dread children's disease if we're lighting to make the world safe for children. From a viewpoint of. artistry, craftsmanship and production values, Oboler hasn't lost, radiowise,»by his hegira into the pix studios. But in dramatizing a -need that in itself should' have afforded, a wealth of surefire material, Oboler only suc- ceeded in .cluttering up the script by jumping from the nebulous, Imagi- nary land of the child-mind to some of the real and unsolved problems of the world today. And having fallen far short in allowing his creation to prove his point, he was compelled to resort to the prolog-epilog technique to link the dramatic script with March of Dimes. Having the child protagonist* in his play briefly reveal the three great jobs facing democracy (elimination of racial intolerance, destruction of the totalitarian state and the read- justment of.the returned vets.), it was. Oboler's conclusion that we're fight- ing the war 'for all children, and therefore must make a world in which children must first be protect- ed from infantile paralysis. In effect, it's Oboler telling us that the issues involved are to be fought mainly, be- cause they affect children, an as- sumption that's as misguided as the one. about polio being, only a chil- dren's disease. But this in itself would not have invalidated the.mer- its of the.dramatization. Chiefly it was a case of'Oboler failing to pre- sent his dramatic plea simply and without complicated script detours. Greer Garson treated .the prolog and epilog effectively and with deep understanding. The cast as a whole was excellent and the production flawless. Rose. "ASK WASHINGTON" With Deaco Rossell and Ed Walker News Reports 15 Mlns.; 6:45 p.m., Mon.-Frl. WTRY, Troy WTRY has a different and tipn type of news service in "Ask Wash- ington," broadcast in the spot for merly filled by . Henry J. Taylor. Replies to questions asked by local listeners are furnished, on basis of checkups by "a distinguished Wash- ington correspondent." Answers are developed in press conferences and personal interviews with officials In the' nation's capital. Some are of general classifica- tion—the kind that might be dis- cussed and reported on any news- cast. Others are special: informa- tion sought by. individual listeners as to sons ana relatives in service, rules and regulations that affect them, the reasons for particular phases of governmental policies, etc. Service in such cases is along the line that newspapers might furnish writers of letters to the editors, although here the effort is on a broader and more comprehen- sive scale. The Washington corre- spondent (unnamed) seems, on basis of broadcasts heard, to do an excellent job of coverage, occasion- ally offering opinions of his own when none from' official sources is available. He could be duplicating part of this coverage for other stations, since some of queries are not identi- fied as emanating from a particular listener. Others are, name of the town being -given. A catch must come in. listeners' throats or tears to their eyes when "Ask Washing- ton" reports on a query from a doc- tor in Cambridge as to reason per- sonal effects of his son, killed in a plane crash in England, have not been returned. Explanation—they will, in due time-^was perfectly phrased. Air format_Js to have announcer Ed Walker read the query and'news- caster Rossell the reply.. It's straight question and answer : stuff, which tends to produce a certain amount of repetition and drag. And the fact that both mlkers are on the precise side—Rossell may be con- sidered over - meticulous -r accen- tuates this. The phrase, "WTRVs correspondent learned today," Is over-worked. Introductory and signoff wordage could be pruned, and changed slightly from time to time. Walker should .try to elimi- nate a throatydelivery, and strive for a more modulated tone and clearer diction. Program is an extension'of the all-important public service angle of broadcasting, and rates commen- dation. Army, Navy, OWI and other agencies presumably would like "Ask Washington." Jan. "BADIE HARRIS REPORTS" With Gene ftlrby Director: Boh Steveni Writer: Rrile Harrlt 15 Mlna.; Sat., MAS p.n. Sustaining WJZ-Blue, N. Y. This latest Broadway - filmland chatter column of the air has one gimmick that should deliver, copious mail returns and might conceivably land a bankroller, although it's ques- tionable whether the Saturday noon spotting will prove to be a valuable time segment, listcnerwisc, for a pro- gram of . this type. Miss Harris has introed a novel idea with fans, asked to write in and nominate guests for. the program outlining reasons for their choice. Best letter writer, will be rewarded by an invitation to appear on the show along with the guest of their choice. This, as mentioned above, undoubtedly will pull the mail, but it also is liable to make for some sloppy programs. Initial broadcast ' (13) is a case in point. Guest was Fredric March, teamed with a young gal from Jersey who, according to Miss Harris, had written in asking that he be brought to the program. Attempt to have the fan indulge in a little crossfire chatter with March failed completely, inasmuch as the femme visitor was baffled, but goott, by the intricacies of script reading and cue following. This added up to several embarrassing "dead air" sequences. However, when March and Miss Harris picked it up alone, the interview achieved pace and nroved interesting. "Bell for Adano" sta"r discussed the play, his Hollywood experiences and im- pressions of .GIs gained on his bal- tlefront tours. One . sour note, (Continued on page 34) Getting Closer to Television With a license from the KG for experi- mental television broadcasting —the first such license granted to any station between the Missis- sippl and Hie west coast—KDYL stands out in front In the miraculous new me. dium of tomorrow just as this station has led the west in radio broadcasting. Today a talented and well-trained staff of announcers assures KDYL advertisers ut- most effectiveness for their messages. s^ir i^ATe National Rapreseatatlve JOHN BLAIR It CO. m RADIO-TELEVISION AGENCY WANTED Interested in Investing In established radio and tele- vision program, merchan- dising and producing agency or in helping create same. •ex 1U1. Variety 154 WmI 4Mb 8(re«t Now York 1», N. Y.